The Mage's Path (3)
I had arrived early and was waiting at the meeting place. Under normal circumstances, a sit-down like this would have been arranged at the Hermes headquarters.
I was the one who chose this café.
If word got out that I had a connection to Chairman Kim Jian, it would work in my favor. On the surface it was simply a handsome man and a beautiful woman meeting for coffee. Whether the rumor mill spun it into a scandal or something else entirely, people would chew on it however they liked. I had no intention of stopping them.
In a way, it was free viral marketing.
As long as nothing solid is confirmed, it's fine. Even if public opinion is only half-convinced, the plan still works.
The fact that I was a mage, and the fact that I was Baek Dohan's youngest daughter — both would come out eventually. I had controlled the information precisely because the impact would be greater when the truth finally broke.
If a private meeting between me and Chairman Kim Jian became a hot topic online, people would grow even more curious about where I had come from. My existence would keep circulating, and then — the moment it was revealed that I was both a mage and Assemblyman Baek Dohan's daughter — every eye in the country would lock onto me.
And if you wanted a fire that big, you needed enough kindling first.
That was why I had deliberately chosen a large, open café in Jongno-gu, where foot traffic never stopped.
…Of course, I hadn't expected the chairman to accept so readily. I had assumed a man of his position would brush me off at least once. From his point of view, I was nothing more than a politician's daughter.
"Whoa. Hey. Look over there."
"Damn, she's killing it. Should I try talking to her?"
"Bro, she's clearly waiting for her boyfriend. Look at her. You think a girl gets dressed up like that and comes here alone? And the way she's just tapping at her phone — she's waiting for a guy."
"Give it up. A girl like that is way out of your league. They say fortune favors the bold, but a beauty like her already has someone ninety-nine percent of the time."
Hmm. Not a boyfriend, exactly, but I was waiting for a man. Chairman Kim Jian, to be precise.
I was actually grateful for the misunderstanding. It automatically shut down any attempt at a pickup.
Unlike before, almost no men approached me. The only thing that had changed was that I had dressed properly this time.
Anyone could tell I had put real effort into my outfit, so people simply assumed it was a date look and left me alone.
That was thanks to my sister. She had insisted that a fresh-out-of-school girl like me had no idea how to dress for these things and had picked everything out herself. I had figured a suit would be fine, but apparently that was for job interviews. For a private meeting, this was better.
She basically wants me to use the honey-trap approach, doesn't she?
When it came to a woman's instincts, my sister knew better than I did. I simply went along with it.
Pushing back any harder would have gotten me genuinely beaten. The moment she heard I was going to meet Kim Jian alone — while my memories still weren't fully intact — she nearly had a heart attack.
Fortunately I had made it crystal clear that Chairman Kim Jian would be coming by himself. Otherwise my sister would have insisted on tagging along.
A short while later the chairman messaged me, and I sent the details. Kim Jian appeared without any fuss.
Nothing about him had changed. Black hair, black eyes, and a black suit.
His eyes looked a little haggard from overwork, and the dark circles beneath them were deep, yet he never quite lost the smile on his face.
Objectively speaking, he was handsome. Extremely. There was a reason women online melted into sobbing emotes over him.
"Dude… is that… him?"
"Who? Wait— hang on a second…!"
I might have been a relative unknown, but in this country, almost no one failed to recognize the name Kim Jian. Even the live-stream crowd from before had identified him instantly.
He appeared on television often enough that the entire café stirred the moment he walked in. Every gaze naturally fixed on him, but he remained unfazed, as if attention like this was already old news.
He turned his head, spotted me, and gave a small wave. I returned it. The two of us joined each other at the table as naturally as breathing.
Behind us, the gossip went into overdrive.
"See? Good thing you didn't try to hit on her."
"Is her boyfriend Chairman Kim Jian? Damn."
"It's not even that weird, though. Looking at her, it actually makes sense."
"Tsk. Why don't I ever get a chance like that? If she didn't have a boyfriend, I'd have gone for it right then."
I didn't have a boyfriend, but they still wouldn't have gotten a chance.
I hadn't even decided yet whether I was supposed to like women or men. And even if I did fall for someone someday, that person wouldn't be ordinary.
I was a mage — someone who prized reason and logic above all else, fundamentally different from the non-mages who made up the vast majority of the population.
Anyone a person like me could love simply couldn't be ordinary.
I set that aside and focused on the meeting with the chairman.
"Well then, Miss Baek Sowol. It's a pleasure to meet you. So… what reason did you have for seeking me out? I still haven't heard that part."
"Haha. Yes. Thank you for making the time."
His tone was thoroughly businesslike. I paid attention to the people around us. A few still watched with suspicion, but none of them looked certain.
His manner was far closer to that of a working professional here on business than a man sitting across from his girlfriend.
Good. I needed them to keep guessing like this.
That was how you overheated a shipping war and turned it into real virality.
"The reason I wanted to meet is that I'm thinking of joining a guild soon, and I wanted your advice. Contracting through Hermes is the standard route, after all, isn't it?"
"Haha. If that was all—"
"You still agreed to meet me."
"I did. You never know. People with that kind of nerve often turn out to be sitting on something remarkable."
Dad had said the chairman already knew I was Baek Dohan's youngest daughter. That was almost certainly why he had agreed.
Learning that I was a mage would be far harder. I had scrubbed away every lead that might have pointed in that direction. Han Yaeseo had never contacted Kim Jian, and Lee Jihyeon wasn't even in a position to reach him.
And that assassin? Exposing my identity? Absurd. Kim Jian was not the sort of man who would take a claim like that at face value.
"Well, since we're already here, let's talk business. So what level of guild are you aiming for? Your rank was listed as D, if I recall."
"I'll be C soon. And I believe that if I wanted to, I could even join one of the Four Major Guilds."
"C-rank, is it. Well, with decent talent, anyone can reach B-rank before long. But that alone doesn't seem enough to get into one of the Four Major Guilds, does it?"
"You're right. On paper, that's how it looks. But the Four Major Guilds don't only recruit strong hunters, do they?"
I casually rested both hands beneath my chin, framing my face.
"I thought I could get in on the promotional side."
Without revealing that I was a mage, this was the only angle that could get me into one of the Four Major Guilds.
I had no real intention of joining, of course. But if I wanted Kim Jian to see me as a promising business asset rather than merely Baek Dohan's daughter, this was the only way.
If he dismissed me as someone who had simply been born to the right parents, any number of things would start going wrong.
The most airtight way to prove I was a mage?
Have Hermes vouch for it.
But if this meeting failed, he might write me off entirely. I had to prove I was someone worth something.
Everything came down to timing. Even the developments that looked sudden on the surface only happened after quiet negotiations beneath it. When every last secret finally came out, I would need him on the same page — which meant earning his favor in advance.
"Hmm… still, there's something I can't quite make sense of…"
He rested a hand against his chin, frowning in thought.
What was there not to understand? Hadn't I been perfectly reasonable?
"No matter how I look at it, it feels off. Is that really the only reason you came looking for me?"
"…Because you'd be the most reliable person to ask."
"This is something you could have handled with a simple inquiry to Hermes. Or frankly, just send any guild your photo and they'd process it. And yet you specifically insisted on meeting me…? Someone bold enough to act like that… for just this?"
…What?
His atmosphere shifted without warning.
He was still smiling the same way he had before, still trading lines with me — but the initiative had flipped entirely to him. He was smiling, and yet something unnerving radiated off him.
"What is it you actually want to do? That's what I was curious about. I pride myself on reading people accurately, you know. And Miss Baek Sowol, you are clearly not the type to waste an opportunity this foolishly.
Why did you want to meet me? Is there something you're hiding? Or is there something else entirely going on? Haha. I really am just curious."
Huh. This man was convinced I was sitting on something.
He didn't seem to know what it was. He couldn't, really. There was almost no way for him to know I was a mage.
"What… exactly are you talking about?"
I played dumb for now. He knew I was hiding something — but he might not know that something was magic.
In that case, I still held the initiative.
Or so I thought…
Without a sound, the chairman glanced around the café, confirmed no one was close enough to overhear, and leaned in until his face was less than a handspan from mine. In a voice barely above a breath, he whispered:
Ah.
As expected — this man was no ordinary human.