Downtown (3)
White clouds stretched in every direction, blotting out everything else from view.
Through the haze, I caught glimpses of Seo Ye-in's hand slowly feeling its way through the empty air. She seemed a touch flustered somehow, so I held my arm out to her first.
"Here, take my arm."
Her searching hand gently closed around it. Anchoring her like that, I picked up where I'd left off.
"It's the random box presentation. Just stay still for now. No sense wandering around and smacking into something."
As a rule, the color and volume of a random box's light let you gauge the grade of the item it produced. Every so often, though, the presentation itself changed depending on what emerged.
And clouds were the harbinger of something very special indeed.
Besides, this one had billowed out thickly enough to swallow the entire area. That was more than enough reason to get my hopes up.
As time passed, the clouds slowly thinned, and a little while later they cleared away entirely, letting us see each other once more.
So what had the item turned out to be? I checked the jewel box, and there sat a pair of bracelets. One white, the other black.
Taking the white one first: it looked as though someone had plucked off a string of fingernail-sized clouds and threaded them along an extremely fine golden wire. When I touched it, the feel matched the look—soft and pillowy, there and not there, like an actual cloud.
▷ Summons a cumulus cloud.
▷ The cumulus cloud protects the user from magic damage.
The other bracelet was similar in design, but its clouds were pitch-dark, like a brooding storm cloud. And its name reflected that exactly.
▷ Summons a dark cloud.
▷ The dark cloud protects the user from physical damage.
Two A-rank accessories. The highest tier of reward the Fairy Queen's Jewel Box could produce.
In truth, the odds hadn't been on our side—not only was a dud a real possibility, even coming away with just a single item had been fairly likely. If that had happened, I'd have chalked it up to my luck and simply handed the result over to Seo Ye-in. Instead, we'd gone and pulled the top prize.
"Our lucky charm came through again."
"Did it help?" Seo Ye-in asked.
Same as during the Black Snake Gang loot-box spree, what mattered to her apparently wasn't the dropped item itself, but whether it had been of use to me. I nodded and asked in return,
"Of course it did. Which one do you like better?"
We'd obtained these with two exchange vouchers, so it was only right that we each keep one. And since Seo Ye-in deserved a large share of the credit for the top reward, I gave her first pick—
"......"
For quite a long while, no answer came. A glance at her face showed she'd sunk into dead-serious deliberation. She would look back and forth between the two bracelets and ponder a moment, look back and forth again and ponder some more. After repeating that cycle any number of times, she finally raised a hand, slow and deliberate—
"This one."
—and pointed at the Cumulus Cloud Bracelet.
Good choice.
Purely on performance, the cumulus cloud was the slightly better fit for her. Ranged damage classes like the Gunner ended up in blazing firefights with other ranged classes far more often than they got caught by melee types—and mages made up a hefty portion of those other ranged classes. On top of that, her paper-thin defenses had been a running criticism until now, and this bracelet would shore them up considerably.
"Give me your hand."
At my words, Seo Ye-in held out the very hand she'd pointed with. I pushed her sleeve up a little to bare her wrist, then fastened the Cumulus Cloud Bracelet around it.
"......"
She drew the bracelet close and studied it in silence. After inspecting it from every angle, she began toying with the little clouds as if they fascinated her. Looks like she likes it.
"......"
"Is it really that good?" I asked, and Seo Ye-in nodded, her gaze locked on the Cumulus Cloud Bracelet.
She seemed to like it even more than I'd expected. Even walking through the downtown district, all her attention stayed glued to her wrist—street performances and the like never stood a chance of registering.
Lunchtime was drawing near, and my stomach had started to grumble besides, so we set our course for the bakery.
At the Downtown Bakery, a waiter stood posted at the entrance as though it were some upscale restaurant. The moment we approached, he asked,
"Do you have a reservation?"
It was popular enough that without a booking they wouldn't even let you inside. And a reservation itself took anywhere from a few weeks to, in the worst cases, several months.
We, however, were the exception.
"We have a coupon."
I handed over the coupon Ahn Jungmi had given us, and the waiter scanned it into his terminal. Then he bowed politely and asked,
"A party of two?"
Such was the coupon's fearsome power. Not only did it get us in without a reservation—it covered a proper, hearty meal on top of that. Think of it as the bakery edition of the [Crafting VIP Coupon].
A coupon loaded with benefits this extravagant was every bit as valuable as you'd expect. Put up for sale, it could fetch a genuinely useful item in trade. Acquiring one surely hadn't been a smooth process either—yet Ahn Jungmi had sacrificed exactly that for our trip downtown.
— "I will make sure Kim Ho-nim's time is never wasted."
Her words from before surfaced fresh in my memory, and I offered her a silent word of thanks. No wonder they say being a butler isn't a job for just anyone.
Stepping inside, we were washed over by a fragrant, toasty aroma. And there in the display cases: breads, cookies, cakes... an entire gallery of flour-made works of art.
"......!"
Even Seo Ye-in, who'd been lost in her bracelet all this while, finally began touring the displays alongside me from that point on.
"This one looks delicious. Right?"
"Mm."
She picked up the mini hot dog since it looked tasty,
"Grab one of these and split it?"
"Half and half."
—picked up a chocolate cream bread too,
"Halt. Not that one."
"......?"
—but the spicy bread was off-limits. Even to my eye, that thing looked ominous. Its very name was Hellfire Pizza Bread, and beside it hung a large tag:
How she could zero in on exactly that kind of thing with a demon's instinct while barely being able to handle spice herself was beyond me.
And so we averted the tragedy of Seo Ye-in scorching her tongue on a Hellfire Pizza Bread. After picking out a few more breads from the display, we settled into the table the waiter ushered us to, then ordered drinks and a few more dishes besides.
Menu items like the Crispy-Chewy Cheese Sandwich or the Honey-Smothered French Toast only tasted right eaten fresh on the spot, before the bread went soggy—which was why they weren't out on the shelves.
We split the breads we'd picked while we waited; then the cheese sandwich we'd ordered arrived and we each took one, and when the toast came out next, we took turns spearing pieces with our forks.
Watching Seo Ye-in chew her toast, I thought, Looks like it's a hit.
We'd been eating face-to-face every single day for a month and a half now, and I'd reached the point where one look at her eating told me roughly whether the day's menu suited her palate. Today her chewing ran a touch faster than usual, and the bread was going in almost without pause. In other words: very tasty.
And honestly, it was delicious. The Downtown Bakery hadn't been counted among Dungeon Island's three great eateries for nothing. When even the honey syrup on a humble slice of toast could summon the phrase deep flavor to mind, nothing more needed saying.
Somewhere between forkfuls, facing Seo Ye-in across the table, something occurred to me, and I asked,
"Come to think of it, what ever happened with changing the cushion's form?"
I'd given her the cushion and the shape-shifting scroll both, but I'd never heard how that follow-up went—not even from Ahn Jungmi. To be precise, I simply hadn't asked yet.
Seo Ye-in chewed down a scrap of toast, then answered.
"Haven't yet."
"Decided what to change it into?"
Another head shake. Then she asked me back,
"What's good?"
"The safest, most popular choice would be a plushie, I'd say."
That was how it went among players, anyway, and this in-game world probably wasn't so different. Who could object to keeping a cushion or pillow's effects fully intact while changing only its appearance into an adorable plushie?
Seo Ye-in's reaction, however, stayed lukewarm. Tilting her head slightly to one side, she asked,
"...A plushie?"
Setting like or dislike aside entirely, she gave the impression she'd never even thought to consider the idea. Something nagged at me, and I asked back,
"Do you not like plushies, by any chance?"
— Shake, shake.
"But you don't particularly like them either?"
"Mm..."
Ahn Jungmi had mentioned before, hadn't she, that her young lady rarely grew attached to objects? Her stance on plushies was probably much the same. Fine to have one, fine to do without. I could understand that—but having gone so far as to hand over a cushion and a shape-shifting scroll, I couldn't exactly tell her, If there's nothing you want, forget it~ If you hate plushies, call the whole thing off~
"Want me to go get one, then? A plushie."
"Okay."
Seo Ye-in accepted my proposal without a moment's hesitation. And with that, our next destination was decided.
The easiest, simplest way to get a plushie was to visit a plushie shop or a toy store and simply buy one, but good things were never that easily had. The rarer the item, the trickier the means of acquiring it. And if you had to name the go-to spot for rare plushies in the downtown district—
The Game Center.
A venue for playing every variety of mini game, where a hefty share of the prizes were plushies and other cosmetic, appearance-type items. It was also a place where hidden pieces lurked unnoticed, so even if the conversation hadn't drifted toward plushies, I'd been planning to stop by at least once regardless.
"Let's get going, then."
Our diligent forking had left the plate that once held French toast with nothing but crumbs and a puddle of honey syrup. Our stomachs were adequately filled, so we tidied up and rose from our seats.
But just as we were about to step out of the bakery, the waiter handed Seo Ye-in a neatly wrapped box and a paper bag.
The box, for one, had transparent wrapping, its contents plainly visible. Cookies, huh.
No wonder she hadn't laid a finger on any of the cookies in the display, despite there being so many. Judging by how every cookie glimpsed through the wrapping had a different shape, she must have picked up one of each kind.
"You bought a mountain of these. Can you even eat them all?"
"For research."
I see. For research. Convinced on the spot, I nodded. If her research improved the quality of the cookies Seo Ye-in baked me, then I, as Guinea Pig No. 1, had zero reason to object. Fewer shape-matching challenges to sit through would be a bonus, too.
So the box made sense—but what was in the paper bag? I shot her a look brimming with curiosity; she caught it and cracked the bag open a sliver.
A spicy aroma came billowing out at once. It was so potent my eyes actually stung.
Wait—isn't this that spicy bread from earlier? Hellfire Pizza Bread, was that the name?
"When did you even grab this? Can you even eat it?"
"No."
"Then what's it for?"
Seo Ye-in answered in a tone of perfect, self-evident logic.
"A gift for the butler."
[113] The Support Ate it All