Chapter 3
A railing with an ashtray piled high with cigarette butts.
I looked out at the dreary cityscape and called again.
“She really isn’t answering.”
If Lee Kangho isn’t to her liking, she doesn’t have to meet him.
But ignoring my call too is weird.
The emergency contact list I’d saved for situations like this.
When I called, a middle-aged woman with a hoarse voice answered.
“Hello? Who is this?”
“Hello, I’m Kim Juseon, the CEO of Meracle. May I ask if you’re Yumia’s mother?”
“Meracle... Ah, the marriage agency, right?”
“Yes, that’s right. Actually, the man matched with Ms. Yumia came looking for her. He said he couldn’t get in touch with her—”
Yumia’s mother replied, sniffling.
“We don’t know.”
“Pardon?”
“We don’t know. Suddenly, suddenly Yumia disappeared. Hic! We even filed a police report—!”
What followed was the mother’s outpouring of grief after losing her daughter.
It was rambling, emotional, and repetitive.
I was shocked too.
But I listened silently to the end. That was all I could do.
“I’m so sorry for your loss.”
There was nothing else I could say.
“- Hic, but thank you for listening all the way to the end.”
After the call ended, I went inside and explained the situation with a troubled expression.
Hunter Lee Kangho went pale, then covered his face with both hands and let out a pained breath.
“Ah—.”
“That must be hard on you.”
After all those dates, he’d finally reached a good match.
And yet the world had torn the two apart.
“Could something have happened?”
I handed him a tissue as he forced himself to steady his breathing and asked calmly.
“I don’t know. For now, her mother said she’d reported it, but—”
At my words, Lee Kangho carefully took the ring box out of his inner pocket.
Proof of how serious he was about this date.
“I was even thinking about marriage. But for it to come to this.”
There’s one thing you need to know here.
Marriage agencies charge something called a “success fee.”
Simply put, they get extra money if a client marries the match they were paired with.
Lee Kangho and Yumia.
Both were high-rank clients, so the payout was expensive too.
Five million won per side.
So if the two of them got married, that’s ten million won.
Even cup ramen could turn into beef in one go.
“You’re really going to give up like this?!”
BANG!
I slammed the desk and shouted at Lee Kangho to get a grip.
“Y-yes, yes?!”
“The woman you were thinking of marrying! Are you going to give up just because she suddenly disappeared?”
“Ah...”
“Let’s find her. You have to get married, Kangho.”
Moved by my words, Lee Kangho nodded vigorously.
“Yes, yes!”
* * *
“Kim, keep the office covered. If a customer comes in, take down their contact info.”
“Yes, yes! Boss!”
I left Kim saluting behind and went downstairs with Hunter Lee Kangho.
Then there was an unexpectedly familiar person standing on the first floor.
“Ms. Renea?”
“Ahem. Uh, where are you going?”
It had been a while since we saw her again after she left crying last time.
I didn’t know what she’d been doing, but as an elf, she hadn’t changed much on the outside.
“I was so angry, and so angry, that I couldn’t sleep. How dare they insult an elf—!”
Lee Kangho, who had been following behind, tilted his head slightly to the side.
“Ah, the elf we met last time.”
“Oh my, hello, oppa!”
What is this?
Is she dreaming or something?
“Where are you going, oppa? Can’t I come with you too?”
A bright, lively smile.
A fresh, sparkling eye-smile.
In all of it, I could feel the desperate struggle of 1,901 years.
“Ah, well...”
Lee Kangho was fumbling, unable to explain. I cut in right away.
“Actually, we’re about to go look for someone. Ms. Renea, if you don’t mind, could you help us?”
“Huh? Me?”
A bored expression flickered across her face.
But I couldn’t let this pass.
“Elves can catch scents well on the wind, and aren’t you experts at finding traces? Besides, if there’s a spirit around, you can talk to it too.”
“I can, but...”
Right before she could say it was too much trouble.
Lee Kangho stepped forward and pleaded.
“Really? P-please! Please, I beg you!”
“Huh?”
“Actually, my girlfriend is missing right now. What happened is—”
Lee Kangho explained the whole story.
After hearing it, Renea thought for a moment, then smiled and nodded.
“Of course, oppa. I should help. If it’s something I can do, I’ll do everything I can.”
“Th-thank you! Thank you!”
I was honestly surprised she’d help. Since we were going to find another woman, I thought she’d refuse, of course.
“I-I’ll go get the car. Please wait!”
Afraid she might change her mind, Lee Kangho hurried to the parking lot.
“I didn’t expect you to help so easily.”
At my question, Renea glanced at me, leaned in, and whispered.
“If I comfort a man who’s lost his lover with the warm embrace of an older woman, maybe I could have a chance too.”
“What kind of trash is that? And you call him oppa, so why are you talking about the warmth of an older woman? Pick one.”
“I’m trying to charm him from every angle. Can’t you say that makes me sincere?”
“Hah.”
“If it works out, it’ll be through Meracle, so if I say I’ll pay, would you keep quiet for a bit?”
“Of course, customer.”
This was a ten-million-won matter.
A Shinra Motors SUV arrived in front of us at just the right time.
As soon as I got into the passenger seat, I set the destination.
“All right, let’s go to her workplace first. Yumia was a nurse, right?”
“Ah, yes! That’s right. I’ll guide you. Please get in.”
“A man driving is so sexy!”
“What’s cute about being 1,901 years old...?”
As I muttered beside her, Renea immediately reached out from the back seat and poked me with a ‘poke!’
“Knock it off, will you? I’m a customer too, you know.”
“Ahem.”
The brand-new SUV rode smoothly, and the interior was spacious. As I looked around from the passenger seat, Hunter Lee Kangho gave a bitter smile.
“This is the car I bought so we could ride together after we get married and have kids.”
“Oh my! And family-oriented too!”
Do those elf bastards feel emotions differently from humans or something?
When I glared at her through the rearview mirror, Renea seemed to realize she’d gone too far and lowered her head sheepishly.
Thanks to that, we could ride a little more quietly.
Halfway through, an alert came to my phone, and it was Kim’s SNS.
“I told her to keep the office, and she’s out there dancing her ass off.”
She uploaded a Short of herself dancing in the office while I was gone.
We arrived just outside Seoul by car.
A makeshift ward built from stacked containers for hunters injured while monster hunting.
It was only a stone’s throw away, but it had been a long time since I’d been outside Seoul.
“Are the monsters around here still all beast-type?”
“They are, though. Maybe because it’s getting colder, they haven’t been showing up much lately. Hunting monsters has become competitive too, apparently.”
“There isn’t a single easy thing in life.”
Even matchmaking is fiercely competitive these days, so would hunters have it easy?
Just then, a smoking area came into view.
“Should we smoke one before going in?”
“Ah, I quit. I’ll go in first and talk to Yumia’s coworkers.”
Having said that, Hunter Lee Kangho went into the container.
After taking a drag from my cigarette, Renea came up quietly and frowned.
“Seoul really is a strange place.”
“Huh? All of a sudden?”
“To elves, monsters are just enemies that invade the forest. I’ve never thought of hunting them, dismantling them, and making money off them like you do here.”
“Well, that’s how the 4th Floor is. The 3rd Floor is the kind of place where people first think about whether something can make money.”
“Aren’t they buying and selling even bonds of fate for money?”
“So, about that.”
“Huh?”
“Could I pay later?”
After I stopped smoking and stared at her, Renea hurriedly made excuses.
“Ah, no! I just thought monster hunting seems like it makes money! I, I can fight pretty well too, you know? I’m the Elf Queen!”
“If you want to hunt monsters in Seoul, you need a hunter license. If you don’t have money, then you’re not a customer.”
“......I can get it ready quickly.”
“That bow. You said it was expensive, right? Then sell it.”
“No customer, no honorifics.”
“No, the bow can’t be sold! I-it’s not expensive!”
“What are you talking about? Didn’t you brag about how expensive it was last time?”
Looking at her in disbelief, Renea’s face turned bright red and she ended up shooting herself in the foot.
“I-I’m old, so I forget things quickly.”
“......”
“It’s dementia. At 1,901 years old, you’d forget even what happened an hour ago.”
I immediately held up my middle finger.
“Why are you insulting me?!”
“You’ll forget it anyway.”
“Humans are rude as ever—.”
“What about you? More importantly, do you feel anything unusual?”
“Unusual?”
“Elves have broad senses, don’t they? Don’t you feel anything strange or out of place?”
“Hah.”
That sigh really did sound like 1,901 years.
“Are you advertising how old you are or something?”
With her arms crossed, Renea let the cold wind brush over her skin and clicked her tongue.
“Human scent is thick in the air.”
“Because there are a lot of nurses here.”
“That’s not it.”
Renea’s expression hardened.
“It’s a bit tangled, I guess? The scents are blowing from the same direction, but there are too many of them.”
“Too many?”
The direction Renea was looking toward was beyond the area outside, where there shouldn’t have been many people.
I was puzzled, but I couldn’t keep thinking about it.
“Boss! Ms. Renea! The nurses say they’ll tell us everything!”
At Lee Kangho’s shout from behind us, we headed toward the container ward for now.
notes":"Aligned the chapter title to the nearby chapter style as '3 Finding a Bride.' Kept Yumia consistent in later references. I also preserved the source sequence by rendering the short interjection on its own line ('Huh?') where the Korean has a separate response."