Chapter 12
The next day.
The moment I opened my eyes, I sensed someone nearby.
Hearing a sound from the office, I peered outside through the crack in the secret door and saw someone standing outside, staring intently at the inside of the front door.
It was Kim Rok-hee.
Her appearance was different from what I remembered, but there was no mistaking that staff she was clutching in her hand.
Was its name Baba Yaga?
It was her treasured possession, decorated with a giant raven skull, that she never let out of her hands.
“Hwaaaa… You’re here early in the morning.”
Two things struck me as interesting.
First was her appearance.
The Management Bureau’s photo showed her as thirty-nine, not twenty-nine, but right now she looked nineteen at most, even being generous.
She’d even curled her twin tails into bouncy little spirals.
Wasn’t using magic to get younger a bit embarrassing?
“Did she get riled up a lot yesterday…?”
And the other thing.
Auntie Rok-hee seemed to be able to see me hiding behind the secret door.
Her golden eyes had been fixed on my location this whole time.
She seemed to be using some kind of life-detection spell….
‘She won’t come in here, will she….’
It was like declaring war for a fixer to enter another fixer’s office without permission.
And if the one doing it was the representative?
Then it was basically challenging them to a death match.
‘I want to sleep a little longer….’
It was true that I’d drawn her in to put some distance between myself and Woo Cheonyeop, but shouldn’t I get to decide when I meet her?
This was the luxury of someone holding all the information.
‘If she’s still here when I wake up, I’ll deal with her then….’
But just as I turned around and tried to lie back down on the mattress,
Auntie Rok-hee turned her head toward the hallway and said:
[…Oh my. Ms. Cheong Harin, are you already well enough to be discharged?]
There was certainly a chance she’d run into someone who’d seen me or Cheong Harin while gathering information.
And even Woo Cheonyeop couldn’t do anything about the fact that Cheong Harin was hospitalized. He might be able to switch someone’s location in real time… but surely he wouldn’t go that far.
More importantly, all the nurses would remember my face, wouldn’t they?
I had a pretty distinctive appearance, after all.
A little girl with hair dragging on the floor had run to the hospital carrying an adult woman on her back.
Even a fool asking around would eventually get to the truth.
‘Is she baiting me?’
But if she was dangling bait to lure me out, that was all the more reason not to leave.
There was no reason to go out!
I casually closed my eyes….
[Well, this is perfect. I even bought a chicken to give the office representative. Shall we eat it together?]
“…….”
It’s not like I was an idiot.
Did she think I’d fall for “I brought chicken” and rush right out?
Anomaly Living Its Best Life 360 had already secured two Ssaksak Chickens.
“Gasp.”
Wait, right foot, what are you doing?
How dare you defy the brain’s decision and act on your own?
I was trying to lie down, so why were you trying to stand up?
‘No, actually, the brain wants chicken too…!’
What a shameless auntie.
Mocking a person—no, an anomaly—with chicken?
I might just swipe the chicken and run.
‘Go out through the back door… No, if she can see where I am, that’ll only give away the existence of the back door. Should I just go out the front?’
It was a ghost office that had never even been listed in the rankings anyway.
I could brazenly insist that everyone had left because the office was on the verge of collapse, and I was the only one left.
I opened the secret door, went into the office, deliberately looked around some more, and headed for the front door.
So, thinking of free chicken, I flung the front door open, and what greeted me was—
“Who’s standing in front of the office so early in the morning—”
Kim Rok-hee’s empty hands.
No matter how I looked at it, from this side or that, there was no chicken.
…She tricked me!!
“—talking to herself….”
Though I want to live among humans, becoming an anomaly hasn’t given me many advantages,
but one of the few is being able to control my emotions.
Even if I’m boiling inside, I can look calm or gentle on the outside.
With a single click, I can control my expression.
In the end, expressions are just muscle movements, and I’m a human made of blood—or rather, a blood anomaly, with even my muscles made of blood.
I looked at the auntie impassively and asked:
“Who are you?”
“…Oh. You don’t know me…? I heard that some people who witnessed the Window Da-112 operation had come by, so I thought you were a fixer who’d come to take part in the operation.”
What was with the arrogance of thinking every fixer in the world knew her?
But I couldn’t deny the truth.
Her name or nickname was all over the Fixer Gallery whenever I checked.
At first, the gallery users had called her an idiot and complained about her calling herself the Tower Master, but these days it seemed to have become a source of great amusement.
That was probably because she was a likable representative who was proud and had a high opinion of herself, but still enjoyed helping people.
‘For a Grade Na fixer, she sometimes takes on and clears difficult jobs that shouldn’t be assigned to someone at her rank. And sometimes, if she feels like it, she even works for free. She’s a good auntie.’
But now that she hadn’t brought any chicken, she was a bad auntie.
Boo, you trash. Trash should be eliminated.
First I had to get the chicken, then I could eliminate her.
“Actually, I do know you. Kim Rok-hee. My name is Baek San-a.”
“I told you, I’m not an auntie….”
“But everyone on the gallery calls you one.”
“Argh, damn gallery bastards. I bet most of the people who call me an auntie aren’t even kids. They’re all middle-aged guys and old men. Who knows? Maybe there’s some hairy old guy among the people going ‘Mwah hah hah~ Hwa-wa-wa~’”
“I know. The internet is full of middle-aged guys who want to be high school girls.”
“You say it so cheerfully, now I feel bad…!”
Sigh.
Kim Rok-hee, who’d let out a small sigh, asked again.
“So, San-a. Are you the… representative of this office?”
“I’m a pet.”
“A pet… what?”
“A pet.”
“? You’re a person. What do you mean, a pet?”
“I really was the representative’s pet.”
“Did they dote on you that much…? But why past tense? ………Oh, no.”
I’d only tossed out a few sentences, but Auntie Rok-hee started making up a whole story in her head.
“Could it be… the representative… went on an operation and hasn’t come back yet…?”
Was Auntie Rok-hee really the kind of person who’d turn on a stream, watch something like an anime, and bawl her eyes out over every little thing?
I’d thought it was just a streamer act.
Anyway, I was in the position of having to deceive her, so I had to keep lying.
Time to start a perfect lie with a little truth mixed in.
“They’re missing. They left me in charge as acting representative and disappeared.”
“So that’s why the office has stayed closed all this time….”
“Yes. We can’t take any requests, no matter who comes.”
“How are you paying the office fees and things like that?”
“I’m managing somehow with the money the representative left behind.”
“That’s a relief…. Ugh, I’m so sorry. I made you remember something sad.”
Kim Rok-hee was already on the verge of tears.
If she was this overcome with emotion, what did that make me, lying to her…?
Did getting older make people more sentimental?
You know how aunties watching morning dramas laugh, cry, and swear at every single scene.
…I feel bad, so I won’t call her auntie for the rest of today.
“It’s okay. It happened years ago. More importantly, why are you here?”
“Oh. Well… I came looking for someone. I heard that the person I’m looking for shows up here from time to time.”
“Here? No one’s come here in years.”
I meant for her not to be swayed by my lie and to give up after searching for a while.
It was fun to joke around, tease, and mess with each other on the gallery.
But doing that even face-to-face was a little… much.
“Are you sure? They might’ve come by while you were asleep.”
“That’s true, but there’s really no reason for anyone to come.”
“No. I’ll check for myself before deciding. So, in that spirit, let me stay here for a couple of months.”
“Two months?”
“I’d have to stay that long to find anything before leaving. Should I just call it a secondment? Then I could take care of any jobs that come in here. How about we split the fee fifty-fifty?”
Half the fee?
These days, people were going independent because they hated even letting the company take two shares.
And she was saying she’d give half to the company? What was this?
‘Why is she so obsessed with me…?’
If she cleared requests through our office, I’d get half the contribution credit too.
I’d be that much closer to getting a pass into downtown without even working.
In that moment, a bolt of lightning struck my mind.
‘So this is why that Woo Cheonyeop guy made me the representative!’
He was trying to get me into downtown somehow because I’d turned into a demon of laziness.
Wow, so that’s the kind of brainpower it takes to become a vice director at the Exorcism Bureau.
It’d be ridiculous for me not to seize an opportunity like this.
While Representative Kim Rok-hee was staying here, I could rack up contribution credit for free whenever an anomaly incident occurred.
‘And unlike the office terminal, I can spend the pay however I want. If I get her to stay a few months, that’s just a huge win, isn’t it?’
But once I got that far in my thinking, I started wondering what she was really after.
What possible reason did she have?
“Why go this far for someone you don’t even know if they’ll come or not?”
“Of course I would. I want to work with that person.”
Kim Rok-hee let out a short breath, then suddenly started praising me.
“Look. The whole area was protected by a barrier, and there were fixers crawling all over the inside. It was a Window that, at most, should’ve been Grade Na. We could’ve just left it alone, no matter what kind of mess happened in there.
But they went out of their way to help. They’re my savior. The bugs could’ve spread in every direction and ruined the office’s reputation, but they helped us get through that crisis.
And their skill was incredible, too. They unleashed an area attack like that without injuring a single ally!”
“Was it really that impressive…?”
“What do you mean, ‘that impressive’? They’re a good person! And they’re skilled, too. Do you think it’s easy to find a good person these days? If you don’t check a fixer’s character in an office interview, you end up with your office robbed and someone dead!”
Good person, kind person, good character, someone trustworthy.
These days, the standard reaction when you meet someone like that is, ‘Is this an act?’
There just aren’t many people like that in real life.
So what Kim Rok-hee said wasn’t strange.
It was true that the bugs had kept getting in the way when I was trying to save Cheong Harin, so I’d had no choice.
“Anyway, if you want me to, I can act as your representative. Just say the word. Oh, of course, I don’t mean I’ll throw my weight around or take your authority. I mean I’ll handle all the annoying things a representative has to do for you.”
I’d needed to get everything ready to hire Cheong Harin at the office anyway, and after looking into it through the gallery, I’d found it was ridiculously complicated.
I mean, why was there so much hassle just to keep one meal buddy safe?
‘I did want someone to handle the work for me, so is this a good thing?’
“But will your office be all right if you just come here like this, Representative?”
“The Vice Tower Master will handle things. I travel a lot for work anyway, so I’ve been training them Spartan-style for a long time.”
“Sounds tough for them too….”
“Still, I explain everything step by step, so even if my interference is exhausting, I won’t leave them to struggle on their own.”
“I think I’d prefer that, too.”
“Really? Maybe we think alike. Do you like mint chocolate?”
I gave her a bright grin and said:
“At a time like this, crazy people who turn down mint chocolate or pineapple pizza deserve to starve to death.”
“Kya. No, San-a, I really like you. Is that why the former representative doted on you like a pet?”
“Maybe.”
I shrugged and said to her:
“Well, then I’ll leave it to you. When can you start your secondment?”
“I could start staying here right away. If I ask the Vice Tower Master to handle the paperwork, it’ll be done in no time.”
“And the chicken?”
“Chicken? Oh.”
If she’d lied about having bought chicken earlier, she’d have to pay the price, right?
If it wasn’t enough to satisfy me, I’d reject her on the spot and—
“If you promise to keep an eye out for any strange people who show up on days like weekends when I can’t come, I’ll have one Ssaksak Chicken delivered every week. How’s that? I’ll send it to this address, so you can eat it.”
“Really?”
“It’s not exactly easy for me, but I just feel like doing that for you. What, don’t you want it?”
This conversation was going so well, I was about to lose my mind.
Were you perhaps my family in a past life?
…But even I’d feel guilty if I kept lying to get chicken.
Weekly Ssaksak Chicken was too much; I’d have to be satisfied with once a month.
“Once a month is enough. It seems like a lot to ask of you.”
“Oh, really? I’m not one to turn down that kind of consideration.”
Never forget that Ssaksak Chicken, which raises and butchers its own chickens, was the absolute best.
I dashed over to her as she sat arrogantly on the old sofa, massaged her shoulders, and said:
“From now on, anyone who calls you auntie is my enemy.”
“W-what? Where did that come from? You don’t have to go that far.”
“At your command!!!”
* * *
Two days later.
Cheong Harin, now discharged, came to the Ghost Office….
“Oh, Ms. Cheong Harin! Have you recovered? You look fine, that’s a relief!”
Seeing Kim Rok-hee doing paperwork at the dusty representative’s desk left Cheong Harin in shock.
“Have a seat for now. You came to see San-a, right? San-a just stepped out to the convenience store up ahead, but will be back soon.”
She’d come planning to beg and plead with San-a for even a menial job.
But it looked like Kim Rok-hee had somehow taken over that position.
“What… are you doing here?”
“Oh, San-a and I made a deal. We both needed something, so I agreed to help her with odd jobs and paperwork.”
Cheong Harin’s jaw dropped.
The office representative was someone who’d be promoted to Grade Ga as soon as a spot opened up, and yet she was doing menial work. Cheong Harin wondered if there’d be anything left for someone like her, who was only Grade Ra.
“This… this can’t be….”