Side Story Chapter 6
“Good morning, senior.”
As I opened the office door and entered, I heard a cheerful greeting. After confirming the source of the voice, I bowed my head slightly and returned her greeting.
“Good morning.”
There was a reason for being courteous to my junior Guide. The Kim Yu-kyung Guide who had just greeted me joined the company at the beginning of this year, and while there’s an 8-year difference in our careers, coincidentally she’s eight years older than me in age.
Like other guilds, our guild also regularly recruits new personnel in January and February each year. The new hires who joined this year after breaking through fierce competition totaled fourteen people, and among them, the personnel assigned to our team were one Esper and one Guide. That Guide was Kim Yu-kyung Guide who had just greeted me.
As a B-grade Guide, she had been very passionate about work from day one. She would take notes and listen attentively to even trivial things that would naturally be learned over time, and whenever she had questions, she wouldn’t hesitate to run over and ask immediately.
It had been four months since she joined, so her enthusiasm might have waned by now, but Kim Yu-kyung Guide’s passion was still going strong. I had just come back from making coffee in the break room as usual, and as soon as I sat down, she quietly approached me.
“Excuse me, senior. Sorry, but could I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“I’m writing a personal record and clicking the save button, but I keep getting error messages.”
“Ah, that’s because of image insertion. It’s troublesome, but if you input one character…”
Fortunately, it was a problem I encountered occasionally too, so I solved it easily. Even though it was literally something anyone could help with just by moving their hand, Kim Yu-kyung Guide was very grateful.
“Thank you. I’ll buy you coffee later.”
She said coffee, but her hand made a gesture of tilting a drink glass, which made me laugh naturally. However, since Kim Yu-kyung Guide had bought coffee two days ago as thanks for asking something then too, I thought ‘I should buy today’ and grasped the computer mouse.
The in-house cafe on the first floor of the guild was always popular. Especially during lunch time, it was difficult to find empty seats, but today it felt relatively quiet. This was because there was external guest education for all Espers.
Even though we couldn’t see a nice view, Kim Yu-kyung Guide and I settled at a table by the window. Looking now, not only the cafe but the first-floor lobby also looked equally quiet.
Kim Yu-kyung Guide sitting across from me was, thinking about it again, a very passionate talent. The trivial small talk was brief, and the conversation topic quickly flowed to work-related matters.
Like me in the past, she was serious about learning dungeon or monster types. As she had once said herself, it was regrettable that she manifested as a Guide rather than an Esper.
“Senior, did you happen to see the document registered yesterday?”
“Which one?”
“The wetland-type dungeon strategy report that Team 2 uploaded. There too, the boss mob was a regenerative monster.”
“Ah, I saw that too.”
“Ugh, they must have really suffered.”
At her shuddering words, I nodded and agreed.
Just when we thought all possible dungeon types and monster types had appeared, ridiculous things would pop up once in a while as if mocking us saying ‘who says so?’ The regenerative monsters Kim Yu-kyung just mentioned were one of them.
The first occurrence was in a Chinese dungeon. They had definitely destroyed the boss mob’s core, but the dungeon gate’s wavelength wouldn’t disappear, and while everyone was puzzled, an unbelievable thing happened. When they turned around at a gurgling sound, the monster’s flesh that had been scattered into pulp was gathering together with a swoosh, restoring its original form, albeit incompletely.
After experiencing the same thing two more times, they were able to escape the dungeon, but they didn’t know exactly why the dungeon was neutralized. After the first manifestation, identical reports came up from other countries, and after several battles, potential causal relationships were established. A report stating ‘the reviving monsters had not only cores but also soft grain-like things inside their bodies, and when these were completely crushed and eliminated, they no longer regenerated’ caught the attention of officials.
Through intentional verification processes by various teams afterward, the initially proposed hypothesis was recognized as having very high validity. While it was very fortunate that a solution was found quickly, it added complications for raid teams. It’s human nature to want to escape a dungeon as quickly as possible after dealing with a boss mob, but having to rummage through and hack up the monster’s corpse once more while already exhausted was nothing but a waste of time and stamina.
This only made team leaders’ shoulders heavier. Since it was still the very early stages of manifestation, the database was minimal, so signs or probabilities for identifying whether a boss mob was a regenerative monster hadn’t been established. So the choice depended entirely on the team leader’s decision. Whether to spend more time completely hacking it up, or just leave it to luck and coolly exit. Team 2 had chosen the latter and broken out in cold sweat when the boss mob came back to life, which I had also confirmed through the report.
Ever since then, whenever I saw related reports, I would get goosebumps. This was because during my days as a dual awakener, I had directly seen with my own eyes the soft grains that existed alongside cores. Back then, monsters didn’t come back to life, but the fact that such things were happening now was consistent with the fact that monsters were continuing to evolve, just like awakeners’ skills and weapons were gradually improving. In other words, there was a high possibility that new types of monsters would continue to emerge.
“Still, no one was seriously injured… Oh my.”
I could see Kim Yu-kyung Guide’s eyes widen slightly as she continued the conversation. Wondering what it was, the moment I turned around, I was also a bit surprised. Song Ji-hyeok was striding toward us – when had he arrived?
“Hello!”
As the distance narrowed, the first to greet was Kim Yu-kyung Guide. Song Ji-hyeok received her still energetic greeting with a light bow, and I soon spoke to him.
“Is it lunch time?”
“Yes. Until 1:30.”
“That’s an awkward time?”
“They said there was some problem with the equipment and started 30 minutes late.”
The instructor must be a stereotype. In cases like this, even if not a full 30 minutes, they could at least finish 5 to 10 minutes early.
Anyway, thanks to that, Song Ji-hyeok’s whereabouts were unintentionally revealed. During lunch time, while heading to the cafeteria in small groups, he must have spotted me sitting at the window table and changed direction.
“Um, I have something I need to do… I’ll go ahead, senior.”
Kim Yu-kyung Guide was not only passionate but also excellent at reading the atmosphere. Without giving me a chance to say it was fine and try to stop her, she left first like the wind, carrying her cup with a little drink remaining. Song Ji-hyeok naturally plopped down in that seat.
“You haven’t eaten yet, right?”
“No.”
“Then hurry and go eat. You must be hungry.”
“I’ll go in 10 minutes.”
This was also something whose true meaning I could immediately understand. Since my lunch time was until 1 o’clock, it was interpreted as meaning he’d stay together a bit longer and leave together when I got up.
‘Hmm, at this level I could probably get a perfect score in Song Ji-hyeok studies.’
Laughing inwardly at the silly thought, I opened my mouth again.
“Go eat first and come back. I’ll be in the guiding room.”
When I got up while advising him, Song Ji-hyeok also obediently stood up. After adding a reminder to eat slowly, I headed to the guiding room to keep my promise. Since I usually stayed in the guiding room or went to do physical training in the afternoon anyway, no one would worry about my absence from the office.
When I opened the closed door, stuffy air rushed in. Usually I would ventilate briefly before turning on the air conditioner, but today I boldly skipped that process and pressed the remote control power button. Then after brushing my teeth in the bathroom and coming out, Song Ji-hyeok appeared again before long.
At this speed, he didn’t eat the rice but drank it. That’s why I specifically told him to eat slowly.
“Want some coffee?”
“Yes. Something cold please.”
The high-performance coffee machine still boasted its imposing presence. After making coffee to Song Ji-hyeok’s taste and placing the full cup in front of him, I sat across from him.
Today Song Ji-hyeok was dressed in a suit. Not because of the education, but because he had somewhere to go right after. Since he was always in combat gear or training clothes when at work, seeing him in casual clothes within the guild felt strangely unfamiliar yet fresh.
“You said it ends at 3?”
“Yes. If they drag it out longer like in the morning, I’m just going to leave.”
It was entirely possible for impatient Espers. Song Ji-hyeok leaned back more comfortably on the sofa while loosely crossing his long legs and continued speaking.
“Should I just skip it?”
Facing his slightly raised lips as if trying to seduce me, I too equipped my face with a full smile.
“Absolutely not.”
“Tch.”
Considering Song Ji-hyeok’s position and symbolism in the guild, I knew that unless it was a major accident, they would just give a formal warning and end it. But I wished Song Ji-hyeok would follow what should be followed rather than taking such unreasonable privileges for granted.
Song Ji-hyeok also seemed to have just thrown out the comment and soon changed the topic.
“You’ve been smiling constantly. Are you happy thinking about going home?”
“Yeah. So happy.”
My smile deepened further. Actually, I had been sitting without any particular thoughts, but hearing about ‘home’ really made me feel good.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
