Stories of Everyday Life (5)
“…”
Ah. Han Yaeseo had completely short-circuited. And we hadn't even gotten much use out of her yet.
Lee Jihyeon, Han Yaeseo, and I all looked at the people standing there. Aside from one face, I didn't know a single one of them. It wouldn't be any different for Yaeseo or Jihyeon. Everyone except that one person would be a stranger to them, too.
The problem was that the one person was not just anyone.
If you worked in the hunter industry, you knew him. Even if you didn't, it wouldn't be the least bit strange to know who he was.
South Korea's four greatest guilds: Hwarang, Binghwa, Chulhyul, and Punghyeon.
Among them, the Guild Master of Chulhyul Guild — an SS-rank hunter, and the finest mage in the country.
Kang Suhyeon.
He was standing right here.
“…Um.”
“Uh…”
“Eh…?”
Even I was thrown. The situation was simply too unreal.
I knew perfectly well that trying to guess what someone looked like in real life based on their internet persona was a stupid thing to do.
But this was still a bit much.
Seriously… Kim Jian keeps saying he's busy and barely answers his messages while running all over the place. How does this guy have so much free time?
Well, even among the Four Major Guilds, none of them could match Hermes in influence if you set pure combat power aside — so Kim Jian being busier made sense.
Still, Guild Master of one of the Four Major Guilds was hardly a leisurely position.
And yet here he was, of all places. Fine. Whatever. Just because someone was a tycoon didn't mean they weren't allowed hobbies.
But if that hobby turned out to be an offline meetup with people he met on the internet… yeah. That was a little rough around the edges.
Not that it mattered. He could do whatever he wanted.
“Are you by any chance that AckMaGal…”
“Yes. I'm that mage.”
“Whoa…”
Of course, he wasn't unfazed either. SS-rank hunters were vanishingly rare in South Korea.
But a woman like me was vanishingly rare in South Korea too.
Even founders of major corporations — men who had everything, who were recognized for their ability, who could command top-tier romantic appeal — had never fully shaken their inferiority complexes about looks. That wasn't particularly surprising.
No matter how exceptional someone's talent or status, people always preferred what they didn't have. That was why the spouses of conglomerate chairmen all tended to be tall. They wanted tall kids. Not that there was anything wrong with that.
“Shall we head inside for now? Don't worry about the food — it's on me.”
“Pardon? Ah… yes.”
“Great. I've already got a table reserved, so just follow me.”
At his words, everyone present filed inside. Unlike the three of us, still reeling from Kang Suhyeon's appearance, the others acted like this was completely normal.
“Ah. So you brought company. One moment — could you wait just a second? I need a quick word with the staff.”
“Oh? Sure, no problem. I did bring two extra people, after all.”
“Then we'll do introductions after. I'll go talk things over first. Just hang tight for a bit? Sorry about that.”
With that, Kang Suhyeon left with one of the men and the two women. Whatever they needed to discuss, it wasn't my business.
We had our own things to talk about anyway.
“So, Sowol. How do you know him? How on earth did you end up knowing him?”
“No, seriously — how are you acquainted with the Chulhyul Guild Master? Did your father introduce you? What happened? Huh?”
And so began the girl talk. A little overwhelming, sure — but not exactly hard to understand. If Lee Jihyeon had suddenly turned out to have ties to a mage, I would have asked the same thing.
“Well, simply put… I was looking up magic-related stuff online, and one thing led to another.”
“Really? How?”
“You don't know? Yaeseo unnie said every mage except me is a total eccentric. Thinking about it that way, isn't it perfectly plausible that we just happened to run into each other on the internet?”
“…It's not like you're exactly free of eccentricity yourself…”
Hmm. What a strange thing to say. I was clearly normal.
Eccentric? I just thought rationally and selectively ignored a few of society's more unreasonable customs.
And if ignoring them would cause me serious trouble, I followed those customs too. So why was I the eccentric one?
Well, Han Yaeseo wasn't exactly a genius. She was allowed to be mistaken. Since the misunderstanding didn't hurt me, I decided to let it slide.
“I've never seen a Four Major Guild Master in person before…”
“In a way, Sowol, he's an even trickier person to deal with than the chairman of Hermes. That chairman you met last time can be replaced. But that man is an SS-rank hunter. He's basically irreplaceable.”
“Is that so…?”
“At the end of the day, Hermes is a corporation. It'll survive somehow. But Chulhyul? The Guild Master's combat power is critical. You could argue he's even harder to replace.”
From the nation's perspective, sure — Kang Suhyeon, irreplaceable because of his raw power, might be more valuable than the chairman of Hermes, who could be swapped out for any competent CEO.
But Dad had considered the Hermes chairman more dangerous than the Four Major Guilds.
No matter how well a company was doing, if the state truly decided to crush it, it would fall. Maybe Hermes had dirt on the National Assembly. Considering how unnaturally fast the company had grown, it was entirely possible.
“…Still, this is a good opportunity. In some ways, a connection born from a private meeting runs deeper than one forged through business.”
“…Business ties can get pretty solid too, as long as there's profit involved.”
“There's no such thing as perpetual profit.”
“From what I've seen, mages usually are the profit.”
Ah. Right. I was a mage, wasn't I? I kept forgetting.
Living in hiding for so long, I'd started to feel like just an ordinary hunter.
As long as a mage wasn't reduced to a complete vegetative state, they had a way to make a living. External mana release was the same for all of them — so even if only a few body parts still worked, you could craft scrolls with them and sell those.
Thankfully, no mage in the country had fallen that far yet.
“So yeah. Building a connection is a good thing. Means we've got ourselves a solid backer.”
“You two are already in the Four Major Guilds. Binghwa and Hwarang, no less.”
“Yeah, but… we do end up on the same battlefield sometimes. Hasn't happened yet, though.”
“You're S-rank and it still hasn't?”
“Unnie, I've been running as S-rank for less than four months. For an SS-rank to personally join a raid, it has to be an unconquered S-rank gate at minimum. I haven't had that experience yet.”
“Oh? Really? Then making a connection this time isn't a bad idea at all.”
In the end, the two of them smoothly changed the subject.
But since when had those two been this close? The distance between them after I died shouldn't have been the kind you could close into friendship this easily.
Had they been friends since the Heo Donghyun days? She'd said she had a crush on me, but never mentioned that.
Come to think of it, there was no particular reason she would have. Even if she had told me, I hadn't been a mage back then — I probably would have shot back a text with a middle finger emoji and gone back to whatever I was doing.
Still… I'm glad I came.
One thing was certain: showing up to this meetup had been the right call. I had no idea how impressive the rest of these people were.
But the Guild Master of Chulhyul Guild alone was an enormous gain.
My future was looking wide open. I couldn't help feeling cheerful.
“Mister, isn't this insane? How does someone like that just show up?”
“Ari. Don't you read the news? You don't know who that is?”
“Who is she? Sujin unnie?”
“Never mind. Just grow up healthy.”
The regulars of the AckMaGal meetups had gone inside and were now fretting over how to handle the newcomers.
Among them, Yu Ari — still a high school student, handle AriArirang — was chattering away at An Sujin, whose handle was ThreeYearsAsSupporterAndYouRecitePoetry.
“But that unnie was seriously pretty. Whoa.”
“Even so, you are not repeating the things you say online in real life, understand?”
“I know. Unnie, even I have that much sense. I only say that stuff because it's the internet.”
“I don't think you do know. If you weren't a minor and a girl, you would've been sued into oblivion ages ago.”
“Hehe.”
Looking at Yu Ari — who felt like a much-younger little sister she'd acquired late in life — An Sujin could feel a headache coming on. Not that she could exactly hand Ari off to either of the two men.
Kang Suhyeon was thirty-six. You'd have to double Ari's age just to match his. Absolutely not.
Lim Jeonghwan was twenty-four, younger than An Sujin herself.
Even so, a six-year-older adult man of the opposite sex didn't seem like the healthiest influence on a girl right in the middle of puberty.
“So, Guild Master. What do you think?”
“About what?”
“Come on — a beauty just dropped out of the sky. Try scouting her for Chulhyul. If you're lucky, you might even pick up a mascot.”
“She's definitely gorgeous, but…”
Of course, the other side of the table wasn't sitting in silence either.
Lim Jeonghwan and Kang Suhyeon were having their own conversation on the subject.
“Hey. She's not someone I can just approach. You know Assemblyman Baek Dohan? That's his youngest daughter.”
“…Wasn't that just a rumor?”
“Chairman Kim Jian mentioned it himself. Not an adopted daughter — a biological one. And from the way he talked, you could tell how much he dotes on her. Honestly, if I had a daughter like that, I'd protect her with my life too.
But I never heard she was a mage. Even Kim Jian has his limits, I guess. That guy usually knows every bizarre scrap of information there is.”
“Jian did?”
“Pretty much. So I can't touch this. Separate from that, if she's a mage… well. There's no telling how things will go.”
“Huh. Once the fact that she's a mage gets out, all eyes are going to be on her.”
“They'll be on her even if she isn't a mage. Looking like that?”
“True enough.”
Both men had spent a fair amount of time in the hunter industry, but even they had never seen a case like this.
A mage? You ran into those occasionally. A politician's kid? South Korea alone had three hundred members of the National Assembly. Factor in governors, mayors, and every other public official, and the number ballooned.
Not running into one would have been stranger.
But among them, the genuinely beautiful ones were few and far between. The ones who were also competent were rarer still.
Baek Sowol checked every single box. Of course they'd never seen anyone like her.
“So what about the other two?”
“The other two? I know one of them. The other, no idea. I know Han Yaeseo, at least.”
“One of them should be fine, but… is Han Yaeseo going to be okay?”
“Public opinion's been pretty favorable toward her. Not much we can do about it. She did what she did.”
“Strictly by the book, she should've done real prison time. She got off because public sentiment was on her side and there were mitigating circumstances.”
“It was an exceptional ruling, right? Having her skills publicly disclosed instead of going to jail… all things considered, she got off light.”
Their conversation eventually turned to how they should treat Lee Jihyeon and Han Yaeseo.
The others were members of the meetup too, but the real host was Kang Suhyeon. He was the one picking up the check.
The power was concentrated with him, and his opinion carried the most weight.
“If the public's fine with her, it shouldn't matter. Just let them in. What's the harm?”
Lee Jihyeon. Han Yaeseo.
Successful entry into the AckMaGal gathering.