Because It Must Be So
"Thank you for visiting us!!"
The store staff bowed in unison, and their chorus of farewells rang out so loudly it reverberated through the surrounding air.
Heart all aflutter, Cho-young came hopping out of the shop, bouncing on her toes.
Jay kept a smile fixed on her face, but her hands were trembling.
Where in the world does all that money come from...?
It made no sense. A chit her age, and rolling in money on top of everything else?
Just then, Cho-young — who had been walking ahead — spun around with her hands clasped behind her back.
"Jay!"
"Uh—yes?"
"This is fate bringing us together again, you know. Why don't we at least have a meal?"
A meal?
Jay forced an awkward smile.
She had a plan: cook the woman every which way until she trusted no one in the world but Jay herself — then steal her seat as Zewibe's model, steal her ranking, steal her viewers.
She would make sure Cho-young never stood back up again, exactly like every soul she had already sent tumbling into the abyss.
Even now, that plan had not changed one bit.
And yet that sly fox of a woman was utterly, maddeningly impenetrable.
Why? How?
Pull something filthy, and everyone laughed and called it hilarious.
Pull something obnoxious, and everyone applauded and called it cool.
Pull something ugly, and everyone cooed about how pretty she was.
That's not how you people really are.
You never gave a damn whether some bottom-feeder streamer nobody lived or died.
That's how you all treated me.
"Jay?"
"...Ah! I'm so sorry — I completely forgot I have an appointment."
"Oh, you do? Well, nothing to be done, then."
"Next time, then. We'll eat together."
"Thank you so much for toda—"
Jay bolted off as fast as her legs could carry her.
"And there she goes."
Hiding in an alley between buildings not far from Sector 5, Jay gulped down ragged breaths.
This can't go on. It can't...
The gaslighting gambit had failed. Frankly, it had never looked likely to succeed in the first place.
Which left exactly one option.
Drive her into some unforgivable mistake — whatever it took — and drop her straight into the abyss.
The grip of streaming audiences was growing more ferocious by the day. Words could kill a person; words could save one, too. Plenty of streamers had plunged to their ruin in the name of "public opinion," and plenty more had ascended to paradise by that very same name.
So long as she found the right pressure point to sink her teeth into, toppling Cheon Cho-young was merely a matter of time.
She was in the middle of that thought when—
?
A call came through on her biometric chip.
Jay's face went rigid. After a long moment, she answered.
"You bungled it beautifully, from what I hear."
"...Enjoying the show? Are we even on the same side?"
"So. Now that you've seen her with your own eyes — what did you make of her?"
"...I don't like her. I always thought I had a fairly intimidating presence myself, but I have never once met anyone stronger than me."
"...There is always a heaven beyond the heavens."
Mid-call, Jay tilted her head as though something had just occurred to her.
"By the way — what could you possibly have been through, to hate Cheon Cho-young this much?"
"Me?"
"You said it yourself on the phone before, didn't you? That people who share a purpose can become allies."
"You think hatred springs from merely sharing a purpose? Hm. She must have gotten under your skin quite thoroughly."
"That's not what I said. Then why, exactly—"
"You mean, why did I ask you to drag Cheon Cho-young down?"
A few days earlier.
The call had come in right after Jay had thrown her little tantrum at her manager. Caller ID had been restricted that time as well, so she had meant to let it ring.
But—
The call had connected itself, as though her phone had been hacked. The unidentified voice on the other end — speaking with the calm certainty of someone who already knew everything — had asked her to bury Cheon Cho-young socially. And Jay, promised that unknown voice's help, had snapped up the offer without hesitation.
"Because it must be so."
"And what is that supposed to mean?"
"The details are none of your concern. All you need do is pour everything you have into pulling her down. You are still keeping the token I gave you safe, I trust?"
Jay drew a single token from her pocket and held it up.
"Yes."
"That token is the proof of our fellowship. You and we have become one body."
The unidentified voice let out a low, unpleasant chuckle.
Jay's brows knitted tight — but she handled the token like something precious as she tucked it back into her pocket.
"One body, my ass. If you promised to help, then help properly. Now that I've faced her in person, I can tell you she is no easy mark. I will drag her down by any means necessary — so don't you dare dream of sitting idle."
"Music to my ears. As expected. Entrusting the work to a seasoned professional really is reassuring."
"'Seasoned professional,' you—"
"I look forward to it. Whenever you need aid, take out the token — and I shall contact you."
Did that mean the voice was watching from somewhere nearby? Jay lifted her head and swept her gaze across the alley, but there was nothing to be seen.
"...Since you're calling anyway, let me put in a request of my own. Give me every scrap of information you have on Cheon Cho-young. Everything she has done from the day she was born until this very moment. Nothing left out. All of it."
"Information, hm. Will you be quite all right with that? It may come as something of a shock."
"What shocks me is that a bottom-tier nobody who showed up less than a month ago is running this kind of game on me."
The unidentified voice cackled, low and rasping.
"I like you. Do try to last a little longer this time."
"What? Last longer at what?"
"I shall send the information you requested. It was of no use to us whatsoever — but in your hands, perhaps, things may be different."
And the call cut off, as one-sidedly as it had arrived.
Three days later, my face went up on Zewibe's main page.
"Oh—waah... Me. It's me. I'm... I'm really a Zewibe model?"
"That is not me."
Was it the makeup? Or the hair they'd styled for the shoot?
The me on Zewibe's main page was not the disheveled Cheon Cho-young who shuffled around the house in a rumpled training robe. This woman was... an influencer! A streamer! A celebrity! No — wait, that's overselling it. Let's just call it famous-person energy!!
Either way, that was the vibe the image gave off, loud and clear.
Wow — it's already been a full hour. Not bored yet. Why is it that I never get tired of looking at my own face?
On-screen me was holding a batch of Spirit Pills made by these very hands. Click the banner, and naturally it linked straight to my store.
Ding—
Ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding—
Store notifications were erupting like gunfire. While waiting for my photo to hit the main page, I had also listed the freshly brewed Black Moon Pills. One hour after listing: sold out. Sellout-legend status: achieved!
My store rating had already climbed to Superpower tier. If Black Moon Pills alone could do this, then the moment I brewed and listed Boiling Fire Pills, they would probably sell out in five minutes flat. For all I knew, Zewibe was about to blow up all over again.
But still.
"...Ha. So even as the model, I still have to pack every last product myself?"
I heaved a deep sigh at the boxes strewn in chaos across the house.
"When... when am I supposed to finish all of THIS?!!"
There was too much. Far, far too much. The spirit herbs already in the ground needed watering; the lava stones hauled back from Biseungdo needed placing; those lava stones needed chipping open so the Shadowflame Herbs could be planted; I had to find a home for the Yellow Butterflies and the Blue Butterflies; I had to build a lake for raising the Heaven's Water Lotus and the Deepheart Root; and I needed to procure one genuinely good refrigerator for cultivating the Spirit Ice Herbs and Frost Snow Blossoms.
And on top of all that — streaming, to push my Universal Resonance percentage ever higher.
With this much on my plate, there was NO WAY I could afford to spend time on something as trivial as packaging!!!
"..."
Hm. Maybe I really should look into hiring a part-timer?
Around the time Cho-young was entertaining the notion of hiring help, the face of Zewibe model Cheon Cho-young began appearing, one after another, on the outdoor billboards of the skyscrapers in Sectors 77, 5, 14, and 55.
Countless people — glancing up mid-stride from their biometric holograms, catching the breaking news, seeing the advertisement splashed enormous across the billboards — came to recognize that a person named Cheon Cho-young existed.
"Spirit Pills?"
"You're telling me something grows out of the ground? Does that even make sense?"
"No wonder the air's felt easier to breathe these days."
"Cut the crap. Wanna bet?"
"Honestly, I don't buy it"
"Didn't believe it at first, either. Yeah."
The public was beginning to grasp the existence of spirit herbs and Spirit Pills as well.
A few days later, the news finally recognized Spirit Pills — until then written off as just another health supplement — as a category all their own: neither drug nor supplement. Not just anyone could sell them, and mortals who paid fortunes for them felt no effect whatsoever, which proved they were neither.
Spirit Pills, once dismissed as things out of legend, had been introduced to the world through Cho-young. That was the outcome.
But as the pills caught on, a bizarre phenomenon began to unfold. Mortals, who felt nothing at all from eating them, nonetheless started buying up Cho-young's Spirit Pills one after another. Because to mortals, a Spirit Pill was—
A view-count pump!! Every time someone reviewed and swallowed a higher grade of pill, their view counts climbed and their streaming rankings rose with them — which meant Cho-young's Spirit Pills boosted something in mortals, too.
Thanks to that, money came pouring into Cho-young's account by the fistful.
Squeeek!
Screech— squeeEEEEK!!
"AAARGH! Why won't a single part-timer get hired?!"
"Cho-young, shut your mouth and keep swapping that tape! The delivery drones arrive in thirty minutes!!"
Hye-yeon and Cho-young were busier than ever — though honestly, that may have been the least important part of it all.
Every bit of this had unfolded from a single chain of events: Cho-young opened a store on Zewibe; Zewibe skyrocketed; the skyrocketing Zewibe turned around and made Cho-young its model. Her own careless actions had come full circle in a perfect virtuous cycle — and Cho-young had no idea.
Not yet.
"T-ten minutes leeeft!! We've still got fifty boxes toooo goooo!!"
The wails of the two women echoed through Cho-young's home for a long while yet.
The next day. In front of Pajeok Group Headquarters.
"Whew."
Gripping the strap of my shoulder bag tight, I arrived before Pajeok Group — and the moment I tried to take a deep, steadying breath, my body abruptly began to float.
"Oh, for crying out loud. Knew this would happen again."
It was my second time, at least, so even watching the ground shrink into a miniature diorama beneath me felt less absurd than before. Not that falling wouldn't kill me. I still hadn't learned the technique for flight, after all.
And there, absurdly, was a small door set into one corner of the 15th floor's glass curtain wall. It looked for all the world like a doggy door. Am I a dog? Am I supposed to come and go through that? What do these people take human beings for? I have dignity too, you know!
I was grumbling inwardly, glaring straight ahead, when—
Well, what do you know.
The five sect masters were staring right at me.
And behind them... behind them was—
"We welcome you, we do."
"..."
"You will have brought something good, yes?"
"Augustus. Can you not feel it? Our pill artisan's aura has grown. Tsk, tsk."
Thoom— clack! Fwoosh!
...Huh. So, um. What, exactly, is that behind the five sect masters?
Gulp.
"Pill artisan. Mind the blood on the floor as you enter — you might slip. Come along now. Come."
A heap of corpses. A colossal mountain of the dead, bodies tangled with bodies — high-rank cultivators, every last one of them still bearing the traces of the mighty spirit qi they had once possessed.
That mountain of cultivators' corpses lay piled up directly behind the five sect masters.
"...Wow. A teensy little door, just for me? How cozy. How nice. Our sect masters really are so warmhearted I might just get burned, huh? Hehe."
Anyway. This was, without question, a good door.
I liiiiiike it so much.
Yep.