Do You Think I'd Fall for Something Like That?

ㅡ톡톡

“Eugh….”

“Princess, it’s time to cough.”

“Coughing..? Suddenly, why would I cough….”

“It’s time to get up. Please look outside.”

“Eh….”

Early morning. As usual, it was a day that began with Ophelia’s wake-up call. The room felt just a little darker than usual somehow, and even with the curtains drawn back, it wasn’t all that bright.

“Uggggggggggggghhhhhhhhh~!!!”

After jolting my power-off body back to life with a super-strong stretch. Since I hadn’t properly heard her in my half-asleep state, I sat on the bed nodding off for a while and asked again.

“Ophelia.. what did you say just now..?”

“Please look outside the window.”

“Outside..?”

The sky was still dark, with a few clouds hanging over it. It was eight in the morning, so even in winter the sun should have been up by now.

“W-wahhh..!!”

“Heh-heh.”

December 20. The first snow fell.

“Ophelia! I need to wash up!”

“..!”

Ophelia, who had been standing in the kitchen preparing breakfast, felt so stunned by Eve’s jaw-dropping remark that it was as if she’d been hit in the head with a hammer. Every morning, she’d wake up, grab her phone first, roll around for thirty minutes, and only then lazily get up and ask what breakfast was.

After leisurely finishing her meal, and only once bath prep was done, she’d finally start making those tiny squeaking noises, and Ophelia would have had to personally gather up the bath supplies and push her out the door.

“Understood. I’ll prepare the bath as quickly as possible.”

“Heehee.”

Nodding with a determined expression, Ophelia went into the bathroom and started preparing the bath.

* * * * *

[Insaenganmanghetda : Yo, it snowed—awesome

Ah, it feels so nice, seriously]

-ㅇㅇ : My knees were aching, no wonder.

ㄴ Insaenganmanghetda : Grandpa..

-유부야스킹 : You're a kid, so you like the snow

ㄴ Insaenganmanghetda : Hey; adults like it too;;

ㄴ 유부야스킹 : Half of all adult Korean men hate snow, kid...

ㄴ인셍안망헷다 : (punishment mode)

-ㅇㅇ : Snowball fight? I’ll beat you down

ㄴ 인셍안망헷다 : I’m gonna put rocks in my snowballs, okay?

ㄴ ㅇㅇ : Okay. I put poop in mine.

ㄴ 인셍안망헷다 : Ew, disgusting.

ㅡ띠링!

“Eep.”

While I was waiting for Ophelia to finish preparing the bath, a note message came in.

-말랑이브 : Hello

-말랑이브 : Are you Eve??

-인셍안망헷다 : Huh

-인셍안망헷다 : Yes yes, that’s me

-말랑이브 : (gifticon)

-말랑이브 : Please accept it,,

-말랑이브 : I really enjoyed your Ansan Mausoleum raid stream.

-인셍안망헷다 : No way

-인셍안망헷다 : Why would you do something like this..!

-인셍안망헷다 : Thank you so much...

“Whaaat..!”

A message had come from a nickname I’d never seen before, and they’d even sent me a Cyburger gifticon. A set, no less, not just a single item. This was basically proposal territory. It wasn’t exactly intentional, but now I had something to do once I went out today.

“Yeah! Nice! I’m going to Mom’s Teach and eat a Cyburger today!”

MOM’S TEACH.

The proud number-one burger brand of South Korea. A super-terrific company that still held its ground even in the hamburger market being invaded by foreign knockoff brands.

What I’m saying is, we had to buy Cyburgers like crazy to save the people with the Star of the Steppe flowing through their souls.

“Heehee.”

Come to think of it, there were also a ton of DM notifications on SNS.

“Huh..? What’s this..?”

To my surprise, overnight my SNS follower count had climbed to nearly 300,000, and it seemed my live-stream reels that had circled the globe overnight had been promoted like crazy.

My Command Issuance rank shot up to A+ and got upgraded again.

“They’re all in foreign languages.. Tell Koreans to speak Korean!”

If I scrolled through a few reels, Minyum’s battle footage had been edited into a mad movie and uploaded. It even had an exciting mad-movie BGM, and the editing was slick and sharp. Ophelia videos showed up sometimes too, and the comments under them looked like this:

-zifokks_01 : her @?

ㄴ rod_smehe : @realdonaldtrump

ㄴ zifokks_01 : u dumass

In the comments asking whether Ophelia had an SNS account, there were prank replies tossing out some completely unrelated person’s account. I probably shouldn’t reply to those myself, right..?

And anyway, there were flattering comments about Ophelia’s looks and nasty ones that would probably make her angry if she saw them. But this...

“Am I not there..?”

Sure, of course, I hadn’t really done much. But when you watched the live broadcast, there were tons of shots where I appeared too, and there wasn’t even a mad movie of me. Just Minyum fighting unbelievably cool, and those lewd comments aimed at Ophelia.

-jaksdwojj : oh my queen😭😭😭😭😭😭

Ophelia was being treated like an absolute queen. I’m a princess too, so why are my comments missing….

“Hah! Of course..! But I’m even more amazing!”

If you asked me what made me more amazing, I had a ton to say. First of all, I made Ophelia too, right? And I made Minyum too?? If you really went through all the detailed contributions, Ophelia had a part in it too, but still..!

“Princess? The bath is ready.”

“Hmph, okay.”

“Did something happen?”

“Nope…. Nothing….”

Foreign fans aren't any different either. I’m pouting.

* * * * *

ㅡ부우욱

“Well done. Since the outside temperature is minus 8 degrees, you need to zip it all the way up.”

“Yep, hehe.”

Anyway, the truth was that I was in a good mood. For one thing, I had become famous, and on top of that, the reaction in Japan was surprisingly huge. The reason was obvious: Minyum and Ophelia had a certain kind of appeal that really struck the hearts of Japanese subculture fans.

Minyum had already become insanely famous as a real, moving Gundam, and a cool-beauty combat maid is basically the textbook formula for popularity.

“Here it is.”

“Wow! Snow-duck tongs!”

For now, we came out to the nearby park. Dangdang, Suri, and Minyum had all come out with me after getting ready too, and it was funny that they were all wearing red scarves. Do they get cold too?

“Dangdang, you’ve got a scarf on?”

ㅡ삐빗!

“Mwahaha. It suits you!”

Minyum had come back in its giant form at that point, gathering up all the snowballs piled nearby and rolling them around like crazy. Just one snowball was already nearly as big as my shoulder.

“Wow! Minyum! Are you making a snowman with this?!”

ㅡ철컥!!

“Okay! I won’t lose either! I’ll make you 500 snow ducks!”

ㅡ철컥!

By the time Eve and her golem friends were having fun, Ophelia was sitting on a park bench, processing all the things she still had to do at super-duper speed in her head.

She was pre-screening the thousands of SNS DMs, censoring the messages Eve definitely should not see, and blocking the users.

-smithwaqq_ : Look at my big Schlong!!

-smithwaqq_ : (photo)

On top of that, there were hundreds more collaboration requests from companies, ad contracts, and all sorts of other messages piling up. She also sent a tactful “that won't do, nope” in response to the Royal Mayfair text she'd gotten before.

Or just delete the message and ignore it.

“Ophelia, aren’t you going to play?”

“I’m fine. I’d appreciate it if you were careful not to let any part of your body get too cold, Princess.”

“Yep.”

Eve also neatly shooed away anyone who came by and invited her to play.

“Huaaah!! Dangdang shut down!!!”

Dangdang, chilled stiff by the cold, was thawed back out and woken up with a blast of hot air from the hairdryer. It was practically like a mother bringing her daughter to the park to play and then doing her backlog of office work.

In fact, the winter chill was the perfect way to cool the heat generated by sustained, high-intensity work.

‘If I don't have a law school diploma, I can't act as a lawyer.’

Ophelia possessed not only the laws of the entire world but also countless verdicts recorded on the internet; however, unfortunately, in Korea you can't become a lawyer unless you're a law school graduate or someone scheduled to graduate.

As I solved one problem after another, before I knew it Eve had gotten hungry and came trotting over to sit beside me.

“Princess, is playtime over?”

“I got hungry. Should we go eat?”

“Understood.”

Such a total kid.

* * * * *

“Number 46.. Ah, there it is. I’ll go pick it up.”

“No, I’ll go.”

Eve was eating lunch at MOM’S TEACH as planned, using the gifticon she’d received from a fan. When Ophelia went to pick up the Cyburger that had been made, a young female employee looked at Ophelia with sparkling eyes.

“Um.. are you..?”

“What do you mean?”

“The... I saw you on SNS. Fighting inside the dungeon.”

“That’s correct.”

“Wow..! I’m a fan! You speak Korean really well, by the way?”

“Is that so, thank you. I can speak every language.”

“Really..? That’s amazing….”

Ophelia took the Cyburger as it was handed to her and walked back to where Eve was waiting at the window-side table.

“What did she say?”

“It seems she knows the Princess’s SNS. She said she’s your fan.”

“Whoa, really? Hah, so it’s already gotten to this.”

At the word fan, Eve’s shoulders shot right up and she started humming without realizing it.

Even while she was mercilessly stuffing herself with Cyburger beside a YouTube video of Brawl Stars, people walking past outside and peeking into the shop would occasionally jump in surprise.

ㅡ야, 방금 봤어? SNS 그거 아냐?

ㅡ미친, 진짜 같은데.

With Minyum there beside her too, shrunk down to toy size, it was impossible not to recognize her. In fact, there was even an incident like this:

“Excuse me.. sorry to bother you while you’re eating. I was looking into the shop from outside and kept staring. This is sudden, but are you interested in entertainment work? I’m from JM Entertainment. I think you could stand on a stage just as you are now.... Could we talk for a moment?”

“Unfortunately, I don't have anything planned at the moment. If you have a business card, I'll take it.”

“Ah.. I see. Then for now….”

Watching from the side, our little grade-schooler Eve said, rubbing the sauce off the corner of her mouth with her palm:

“Wow.. did Ophelia just get cast..?”

“They seem to have no eye for talent. To come talk to me first when the Princess is right here.”

“Heehee.. Ophelia is pretty too, though.”

Eve likes praise.

* * * * *

“Hmm.. how did something like this suddenly appear?”

“I’m not sure, but it seems to be closely cooperating with the Nova Guild.”

“Are they even Korean? They don’t look like it.”

“They’ve never had any activity outside Korea. Even in Korea, there’s no record of them before now, as if they’d just appeared out of nowhere.”

“Tsk.”

A man drew in a breath and then clicked his tongue heavily.

Jingtongxuan, the leader of Tianla Gui Alliance, one of the three major Chinese guilds with Shanghai as its main base, was watching an edited version of the Desert Mausoleum raid broadcast that had gone viral on SNS.

Right now, because of the high-grade entry-type gate that had appeared in the West Sea, he was in conflict with the Nova Guild. So their activities and fame only rubbed him the wrong way.

“Yanpei. Can you go to Korea for me?”

“What? Korea? Why all of a sudden?”

“We’ll decide the reason from here. For example... protecting a Chinatown full of Joseonjok bastards.”

“Come on, since when have we ever bothered with things like that?”

“A pretext is a pretext.”

Jingtongxuan picked up a crumpled document lying on one side of the table and examined it.

[Research Results on Artificial Open-Type Gate Generation]

“Let’s make this one a bit bigger and do it properly, unlike the Han River Park incident.”