35 Before Me

Jessica and Namgung Yeon, as I knew them, could fairly be called polar opposites.

Namgung Yeon, the young master of the Namgung Clan, which valued tradition and lineage.

Jessica, the eldest daughter of Hellite Industries, which pursued change and innovation.

But when it comes to romance, even if someone is your type, that doesn't mean you'll last with them long.

I can't say for sure, since the differences vary from person to person, but sometimes people who are complete opposites fit together much better.

After all, a matchmaking agency isn't about meeting someone once and deciding; it's a process of meeting people over and over and finding the one that suits you.

So what I'm saying is that pairing the two of them up wasn't strange at all.

….

That was my answer to Kim Yang's question as we rode in the police car on the way to the station.

Sometimes people who look like total opposites really do get along, you know?

“I-I don't know. J-just an arranged marriage. Pair the two.”

….

Of course, there was also a fair bit of basis for matching them, since they both wanted an arranged marriage.

But if that were the case, they should have settled things politically instead of fighting.

“What a damn pain in the ass.”

“Oh, you're off work today?”

“I don't know. I'll see how things go. Did you lock the office door?”

“Y-yeah, of course.”

The way she could instantly spot an off-work opportunity was uncanny.

A moment later, we arrived at the station.

The holding cell at the far end of the police station.

A blond-haired woman with a sleek figure was crouched there, hugging her knees.

“Jessica, are you all right? I was really worried, so I rushed over the moment I heard from the detective!”

“B-but you said I was a damn pain in the ass.”

Kim Yang mulled over what I'd said earlier from behind me, but I ignored her as if I hadn't heard it.

Sorry, but Jessica is also a premium client.

Even if you curse behind her back, smiling with a capitalist grin in front of her face is the bare minimum courtesy for someone who got paid.

“Boss.”

Jessica shot to her feet.

Beyond the bars, she looked as fresh as if she'd just had her makeup done, and even her hair and skin gleamed.

So the 6th Floor's prosthetics had advanced into beauty care as well.

It certainly had.

But Jessica's expression was shadowed.

“Did I make a mistake?”

* * *

“…I'm off.”

Back at the Meracle office again.

When I motioned to the grumbling Kim Yang, she immediately started brewing coffee for Jessica.

Jessica had paid bail and been released.

Since the investigation had gone smoothly, the officers let her go right away.

During the questioning, I heard a recap of what happened yesterday.

The unbelievable story that she had turned the clan's treasured sword, the Seowol Sword, gifted by Namgung Yeon, into her own right arm.

And Jessica—.

“Did I do something wrong?”

She still didn't understand.

“I understand that the Seowol Sword is an important sword. However, if you look at it coldly, it isn't efficient.”

“What use is it to give that to someone like me, who doesn't even know how to handle a sword? Am I supposed to wear it at my waist all the time?”

“If it had been a ring or a necklace, I could have accepted it, but a sword is truly meaningless. If something precious is practical, I'll value it even more.”

“So, in my own way, I tried to follow the Namgung Clan's ideal of man and sword as one—”

It felt like talking to an AI.

Jessica calmly laid out her reasoning in a logical stream of thought.

She wasn't wrong.

But she wasn't right either.

“For the Namgung Clan, that's just their tradition. On the other hand, if someone suddenly refunded a gift you gave them and swapped it for something else, wouldn't you be offended?”

I tried to persuade her by putting myself in her shoes while handing over the coffee Kim Yang had brought, but—.

“I give gifts through catalogs and credit cards. If it's practical, people use it often, and if they use it often, they treat it more carefully.”

A chillingly rational answer came back. At this point, I needed to confirm something.

“Jessica, what percentage of your body is prosthetic again?”

“With this replacement of my right arm, 67% of my body is prosthetic.”

“So you're basically a machine?”

“That would be a misleading expression. My brain hasn't been touched beyond installing the latest Argos chip.”

This is hopeless.

Because she wanted an arranged marriage, I let the personality side slide.

I didn't know it would come back to bite me like this.

“It seems you're having trouble.”

“Huh?”

“I have an embedded emotional-spectrum scanner. From the boss's expression, concern reads at 71%.”

That gives me the creeps.

I'd heard the 6th Floor's technology was amazing, but while I was marveling at how it could even do this when

Jessica's head dipped slightly.

“He—.”

Her weak voice leaked out in a low murmur.

“I thought he'd be happy.”

“Jessica?”

“So I was the one who was wrong.”

Without even drinking the coffee, Jessica headed outside.

“I'm sorry, Boss. I got you caught up in something strange.”

“Where are you going?”

At my question, she stopped walking for a moment. She herself didn't seem sure where she should go, and there was hesitation there.

“I have to go back to Cyber City.”

In the end, she declared she would return to where she belonged.

After Jessica left, I stared at the coffee I'd given her for a moment before putting it away.

I wasn't at fault, but it still bothered me.

The fact that the relationship between the two people I'd matched had come to ruin gave me a strange feeling.

It was the first time I'd ever had that happen.

“B-Boss.”

Kim Yang called out to me worriedly.

“Th-those two people. W-what'll happen?”

What'll happen?

Wasn't it obvious?

“They'll fight. If it's Namgung Clan and Hellite Industries... I can't tell who'd win.”

Strictly speaking, if you only look at force, the Namgung Clan has a much better position.

But Hellite's wealth has a kind of power that reaches far beyond the Namgung Clan's.

They could hire Cyber City's 'fixers,' who play a role similar to 3rd Floor hunters. They could even bring in a whole PMC-style mercenary group.

“Th-then... an inter-floor war?”

No, not that far.

Oddly enough, clashes between groups are fairly common in the Tower.

The most representative examples are the paladin order of the Rajesta Continent and the demon worshippers of Cyber City.

An inter-floor war doesn't happen that easily. Last time's Blue Dragon was an unusual case.

A presence so intense it could destroy all of Seoul just by descending.

Unless they're that strong, disputes between individuals or between companies happen quite often.

“Th-then are the two really going to fight?”

Probably. What can we do? Things have already turned out like this. We'll just stay out of it and do our own work.

All we'd do by getting involved in a battle between giant organizations is become shrimp crushed by a whale.

Just forget it. It's easier to live if you forget.

* * *

Three days later.

A huge fire was raging at Hellite's prosthetic arm factory on the 6th Floor.

Inside the burning factory, workers were evacuating in a panic, while the fixers hired as mercenaries protected them and kept pulling the trigger without rest.

“Those damn old fossils are jumping around like crazy!”

“They're moving around like that without even one prosthetic arm?”

Even under a hail of bullets, the Namgung Clan's martial artists moved with graceful fluidity.

They dodged the bullets or deflected them with their swords.

Even with water pouring down from the sprinklers, they advanced easily.

For 5th Floor martial artists from the old murim, reacting to bullets was practically a necessity.

And naturally, at the very front of those martial artists was the Namgung Clan's young master.

“Cut them down! Smash everything! Answer those who look down on our Namgung Clan with our swords!”

The martial artists surged ahead with unstoppable momentum.

The swords, honed over centuries of tradition, were that tough, and even the products of science and technology were cut apart like tofu.

The years we've built up are different!

Namgung Yeon raised his sword confidently. No matter how impressive the 6th Floor's technology was, it meant nothing to masters of murim.

While he was proudly savoring the weight and value of the tradition they'd protected—

suddenly, a sharp electric shock shot up from the soles of their feet, and the martial artists standing on the ground screamed as foam bubbled from their mouths.

“Kyaaaaaaah!”

“Kheeegh?! Kheeegh?!”

“Kyeugh! Kyeeegh!”

Amid the horrors of bodies blackening and falling apart, the culprit behind the carnage left a brief remark.

“Feels like I'm the fry cook making French fries. Or is it a frog?”

The man in the thick full-body suit was named 'Buster.' Among Cyber City's fixers, who came and went in waves, he was a veteran big shot who'd made a name for himself over a long time.

“Ggh!?”

“They say old murim even eats fried frog, right? Barbaric.”

Namgung Yeon was shocked as well and dropped to one knee. His blood vessels burst, turning his vision red, and the pain felt as if his brain were burning.

Drooling as he raised his head, Buster grinned and kept sending electricity through the suit.

“This is technology, you old geezers. Even if you spend your whole life sweating in some dusty dojo swinging swords, if I pull the trigger once, your heads get blown open all the same.”

“Shut up—!”

The sword qi fired from his wide swing severed Buster's leg.

“Thud—!”

With a heavy thud, the electric shock stopped. Namgung Yeon swallowed his humiliation and shouted.

“Retreat!”

“Kwahahaha! Get lost, you old bastards!”

Even with his leg cut off, Buster laughed and cackled. Since it was a prosthetic, all he had to do was replace it, which made him even more carefree.

“Kwahahahahahaha!”

Buster's sneering laughter kept echoing behind the retreating Namgung Clan.

* * *

A few days after the incident with Namgung Yeon and Jessica.

After my convenience-store shift, Renea and Kim Yang, who'd come to hang out, were chatting away.

They were huddling together, thinking up what kind of event Meracle should hold to prepare for Christmas just around the corner.

I didn't know why they were doing it together, though.

I wasn't sure why our customer Renea was worrying about it, but since I didn't know what might come out of the 1,901-year-old's bag of tricks, I left her alone for now.

Age and experience do count for something.

I was treating their chatter as white noise while I worked, when the office door opened.

“We'll find your miracle—”

I was about to deliver the Meracle greeting, but the person who came in was a familiar face.

Her hair was tied up with a hairpin, and a silk outer robe was draped over the Namgung Clan's martial uniform.

And even a blunt, oversized sword.

And just so we're clear, carrying a sword that big through the streets of Seoul involves a pretty complicated process.

You have to be one of two things.

Either you painstakingly got through that complicated process,

or you had a backer so big you could ignore all of it.

She was the latter.

“It's been a long time since I've felt the air of this place.”

Namgung Hwaryeong, the Impassive Sword Beauty.

The Namgung Clan's eldest daughter, a master beyond first-rate.

And she was one of Meracle's prospective customers.

Why prospective? Because we don't count the people on the martial-marriage list as customers.

We get paid from the moment a challenger comes in and handle the job then and there.

In other words, it means we don't take responsibility if the challenger never shows up.

While Kim Yang and Renea were surprised, I thought the time had come and slowly stood up.

Then I took out an analog phone from the drawer.

“You came because of the war between the Namgung Clan and Hellite Industries, right?”

I told Kim Yang to ignore it, but if you look into the reports, the situation is getting more serious than expected.

What if someone came to ask for help?

I had prepared something of my own.

With this, the chances of solving it are pretty high.

I had told them not to beat around the bush and get to the point, but—

“I'm not here about that.”

“Pardon?”

“Only, I heard one rumor that caught my ear.”

Namgung Hwaryeong glared at me with her arms crossed and asked.

“I heard one name had disappeared from the martial-marriage list.”

“....”

“That brat from the Taiji Yin-Yang Sect, the so-called Twin Veins, dared to—”

“....”

“Before me?”

“....”