Hiking
Kim Jinsu came out through the gate looking as rumpled as if he had been on a forced march for days. Clearing an otherworld gate took three or four days at the very least, and by the time a raid finally ended, your clothes were filthy and there was no way to wash inside. His hair stuck out in greasy, matted spikes.
"Good work."
"You worked hard out there."
Beside him, a middle-aged woman—the one who had a daughter starting high school this year—accepted the greetings in return. Gates had been appearing for so long now that plenty of hunters already had wives and children of their own. Kim Chunsik alone was in his fifties and still serving on active duty as a hunter.
Look hard enough, and there were probably hunters in their sixties still out in the field. So long as the body held together, this job had no retirement age.
"Nice work, Jinsu~ If fate brings us together again, let's meet up~"
Uncle Kim Chunsik, standing nearby, smiled and waved at him. One tooth was missing, and the gap that showed when he grinned was a little undignified. One look at the imported car he drove, though, and you started to reconsider. Looks and personality aside, what really mattered was money, wasn't it?
Kim Jinsu was dying to get home and shower. He reeked of a bachelor who had let himself go, and he had been drenched in monster fluids while he was hunting, besides.
Once he made it home, he showered, changed into something comfortable, and sat down in front of his computer. A great deal had changed while he was in the hospital. Nothing in the world of hunters, of course. When it came to food, though, plenty had.
He typed Starlight Cherry Tomato into the search engine, and the results spilled down the page. Every single review was glowing.
"So it really was this good..."
Having felt the effects for himself, Kim Jinsu could agree with every word. Uncle Kim Chunsik—older, yes, but a good-natured man—had shared his Starlight Cherry Tomatoes, which only made the feeling stronger. Normally, once you passed the second day inside a gate, your appetite fell off a cliff.
An unfamiliar place, filthy conditions with no way to wash, and instant rations that tasted like nothing at all—put them together and the synergy was enough to make you want to fast. There was no chance an appetite would come back while you were hunting something that could kill you. Even so, if you didn't want to go hungry, you had to force the food down. A single one of these cherry tomatoes skipped that whole miserable process.
While he was at it, Kim Jinsu looked up the other foods as well. The green tea the woman had given him had been pretty good, too. He had filled a thermos with hot water and tried a cup, and the effect had been remarkable. He had felt sharper, better able to focus, and when he actually hunted goblins, his vision had seemed vividly, unmistakably clearer.
"Has Starlight Foods been putting out products this good...?"
Judging by the Starlight name, it seemed like one of the most successful companies in Korea, and yet he had never once heard of it. If it had been heavy industry, or a firm making things far removed from ordinary life, even a famous conglomerate could easily go unnoticed. Those companies ran on business-to-business models, trading only with other companies, so there was no reason everyday people would ever learn their names.
But food was something you ate, wasn't it? If they had been carrying the Starlight name, they ought to have been famous enough that even Kim Jinsu would have known them long before now...
"They only started making these this year?"
Looking it up, he found they had originally been a food company that made snacks and instant meals, and the news said they had recently launched a wave of new products. A company with promising growth ahead. Kim Jinsu had felt it in his own body. He hurriedly opened his stock app.
The most important part, though, was that he couldn't buy the stock. The CEO held one hundred percent of every share. Kim Jinsu swallowed his disappointment and had no choice but to close the app.
I was packing my bag with great enthusiasm. Today we were going hiking. Not by myself, of course. Maru and I had decided to climb a nearby mountain. She had seemed run-down lately, so I figured I would top her energy back up, and we would get some exercise while we were at it.
Of course, I wanted Maru to rest properly on her days off, so I had scheduled the hike for a day she was working. A weekday hike had to be better than one on a holiday, didn't it? Sitting around the company all day only meant soaking up stress from the job. Maru was a woman, so stress wouldn't make her hair fall out—but the men her age on staff might well be going bald from it.
Anyway, I changed into something very comfortable for hiking. It was just a neighborhood mountain, so there was no need to dress like a professional mountaineer. The slope wasn't steep, and the trail was short enough that you could reach the summit in an hour.
Of course, I had packed cup ramen separately to eat at the top. No matter how good other food might be, nothing tasted better than cup ramen eaten at a mountain summit. I had heard pork belly was wonderful too, but sadly I hadn't been able to bring that along.
I put on a wide-brimmed hat shaped like a straw hat and ran to the office. Inside, Maru had already changed into comfortable clothes and greeted me with a bright welcome. The others must have gone out for lunch; they were nowhere to be seen.
"Hana, all ready?"
"Yep! All we have to do is go!"
"Then shall we head out?"
I took Maru's hand and stepped out of the building. We got into the car that was waiting and slowly made our way toward the mountain. It was too far to walk from here. If we tried, we would collapse from exhaustion before we even arrived.
"Hana, why did you suddenly want to go to the mountain?"
"Just because!"
There wasn't any special reason. I just desperately wanted to breathe mountain air. My body was craving something clean—very clean air. The city was far too full of noise and exhaust. Heading out now and then on a little adventure to heal wasn't bad at all. If anything, it would be good for us.
It was no accident that the people who lived in the mountains showed up on TV bragging about their health. They definitely looked sturdier, and far more energetic, than city folk. Mountains probably held some special power that put strength into people. Otherwise, those nature-dwellers couldn't possibly look that healthy.
We parked in the lot at the trailhead. It was a weekday, so there were fewer people than there would have been on a weekend. Middle-aged couples were scattered here and there. Maybe they had come as married pairs? For that, though, they seemed awfully close. They were even acting cute with each other.
Maru was pulling the bags out of the trunk. Set beside mine, hers was a different size entirely. I had wanted to carry a big bag too, but the moment I tried, I would have toppled over backward—because it weighed more than I did. Unless it was my own little bag, Maru's was more than I could handle.
"Hana, why did you pack so much in here?"
Maru asked while hefting my bag to guess its weight. I answered as if it were obvious. A bag was supposed to be full of things to eat. We were only going for the day, so there was no need for a change of clothes, and we hardly needed any other supplies. Just food and water.
"I packed ramen for the summit, that's why!"
I took the bag back, reached inside, and held up the cup ramen to show her. Maru looked at it and smiled.
"Think you can make it all the way to the top? Hana, no giving up halfway. Understand?"
"Yep!"
Of course I wasn't going to quit before the summit. It wasn't some peak past eight thousand meters, like Everest. It was practically a backyard hill, so for me it was easy. I could climb this mountain even with a heavier field pack on my back.
"Let's go!"
I shouldered the bag Maru had handed me and headed for the trailhead, feet pattering as I broke into a run. Maru followed slowly behind. Maybe she thought that if she sprinted from the start, she wouldn't last. Even so, on a mountain like this, going fast from the very beginning shouldn't have been a problem.