Chapter 76
Chapter 76
“This can’t be real.”
Lude pressed his fingertips against the inside corners of his glasses as he stared at the screen. It made no sense. The internet was a kind of hell.
A perfectly anonymous space. In there, everyone was consumable. Plenty of people liked Lude, but there were far more who wanted to tear him apart. Or so he had believed.
“This is… this can’t be real, it just can’t.”
Although they had only just met today, Lude pressed his forehead with no room in his head to be mindful of Baek Jangmi.
It was absurd. Back when he was a kid, no one had done this for him, they had treated him like he was the reason the Republic of Korea was collapsing. Everyone had joined in.
Nari had even felt death breathing down her neck. It might sound ridiculous to say a few comments could make you feel that kind of fear, but she had really thought she might die.
Now the same users were acting kind, and the dissonance hit him hard.
“Mr. Lude.”
Baek Jangmi lightly patted his back. Lude snapped back to himself with a start.
“Whatever you went through, I’m sorry. People online can be awful. They move their fingers without a thought, and they don’t even know that what they do kills people.”
She tucked her hair behind one ear and sighed. Seeing that, Lude offered no rebuttal and turned back to the screen.
“You don’t know why I changed jobs from actress to Hunter, do you?”
Lude did not answer. Unbothered, Baek Jangmi continued, her voice carrying the faintest edge of irritation.
“Before I awakened, I was fairly well known. I was in magazines a lot. Then I awakened, the Gates burst open, and after I spent ages getting things under control around me and came back, everyone had forgotten me.”
She said she could not return to the camera now even if she wanted to, and she smiled with a wistful look.
Lude glanced at her. Baek Jangmi. According to Min Jaewon, she was famous. Yet now no one knew her. People only knew she was a Hunter. If not for this incident, if Min Jaewon had not told him, he would have had no idea either.
Baek Jangmi sighed and smiled. There was a trace of bitterness in that expression. It was a far cry from the bright smile she had worn when she received her acting award.
“I would never minimize what you went through. But… you can relax your shoulders a bit. Mr. Lude, you’re not as special on the internet as you think. There is always something to replace you online.”
Not as special as he thought. To some, that line would be infuriating. For Lude, it brought a kind of ease.
Maybe not Shin Bitnari, but at least “Lude” was not that big a deal to people.
If so, maybe Lude could stand in front of a camera. He clenched the coat at his chest.
“…Yes, thank you for your words.”
“I’m sorry. I might be overstepping, but I hope your heart heals a little. I have seen a lot of people like you. In entertainment, and in the Hunter world too…”
She knit her brow. Lude recalled again that Baek Jangmi had created the first marketing department in the country, and now had opened a psychological care center inside her guild.
“It really breaks my heart. Most guild leaders these days aren’t Hunters. Someone like Sujin won’t know that pain, I’m sure.”
Looking at the browser window, she rubbed her chin and gave a long sigh. Lude found himself thinking her expression was not a lie.
Baek Jangmi was proudly sitting in the TOP 5 rankings. That meant she, too, was a Hunter, not merely an Awakener.
He could not understand why a guild leader would work as a Hunter. For many reasons, guild leaders were usually Awakeners. His uncle had been an Awakener, not a Hunter.
People brushed it off by saying the guild leader of White Night was eccentric, but Lude thought he could faintly guess the reason.
“Then, if you will accommodate me… I will come. To the Hunter’s Night.”
Lude slowly opened a fist he had clenched. If someone as considerate as this was hosting, he felt he could trust it a little.
Somehow, after meeting Kang Ihyun, his trust in people had ticked upward. Hearing his answer, Baek Jangmi beamed.
“Oh my! Of course. I’ll make accommodations. The major networks will cover the awards, but you don’t need to attend that if you don’t want to. I’ll send the trophy to the Sanctuary later!”
Smiling, Baek Jangmi chattered through her plans.
She said she would separate Hunter spaces from press spaces so only Hunters who wanted interviews would go, and she would station Priests and doctors just in case. Listening quietly, Lude clenched his fist again.
“No.”
“Huh?”
Baek Jangmi stopped and looked at him. He gazed down at her with a resolved expression.
“…I will try the awards ceremony.”
Lude’s brows were tightly drawn. It was not anger, it was tension. Seeing that, Baek Jangmi smiled brightly.
“Okay, I’ll be waiting, Mr. Lude! Wow, that’s really something. It isn’t easy to make that choice…”
At being called impressive, the tips of Lude’s ears went a little red. Baek Jangmi watched and simply smiled.
Kang Sujin had said, “Mr. Lude is calm and a bit glasslike, unlike how he seems,” and it was true.
On the internet he looked razor sharp. Face to face, he was, in his way, a composed person.
The internet did not provide accurate information. Sometimes it exaggerated certain elements for effect. You had to meet and experience people yourself.
Baek Jangmi reminded herself of that simple truth.
“Then, the promised hour is up, so I will send you out here. If you go to the elevator, Jaeyoon will come meet you.”
She moved back to the virtual keyboard as she spoke. Lude stared at her with a blank look.
“I go out alone?”
“Yeah. I have to power this down. Turn left from here, go straight, and you will see the exit.”
“…All right, then. Thank you.”
“I did nothing. Get home safe, and see you at Hunter’s Night, okay?”
Looking a bit nonplussed, Lude bowed his head and left. Baek Jangmi waved after him, then reached for the virtual keyboard.
When his footsteps had faded, and after she had pantomimed searching for a while, she craned her head to check that Lude had fully gone. She took her phone from her handbag and called someone.
[Hello.]
After a few rings, a sleep-heavy voice answered. Baek Jangmi’s tone turned sprightly, unlike the calm voice from moments earlier.
“Hey, I’m calling because Mr. Lude just left. Were you asleep?”
[I closed my eyes a bit… You didn’t push him too hard, right? I told you. He is very glasslike.]
“I know. Do I look like the kind of person who would tease kids at Ihyun’s age without a sense of decency?”
[Yeah.]
“Ahaha, that joke is too much~”
She toyed with the keyboard again, then went on.
“By the way, I helped when Ihyun went to the army, and now there is Mr. Lude~ So how are you planning to repay me for that, Ms. Kang Sujin?”
[…]
A husky sigh came over the line from the Sanctuary’s guild leader, Kang Sujin.
Predictable. She was probably leaning on her desk with her forehead in her hand. The image was so vivid that Baek Jangmi burst out laughing.
“Ahaha! You really can’t live without me, can’t you, Sujin? Like the time I read Ihyun’s fortune~ and at the guild leader meeting too~”
[Shut it. You were the one who told me to gather all the S ranks first.]
Her old friend Kang Sujin grumbled in that husky voice. Outwardly the Sanctuary and White Night were rivals, but decades of friendship did not change. Baek Jangmi replied with a snicker.
“Fine, fine. Pay me back by staying out of relationships for ten years then!”
[Every time I try, someone gets in the way, so I have no one to date anyway.]
“No~ Sujin~ If you get married too, what am I supposed to do in my loneliness? Hmm? So don’t. Stay single with me. No, marry me! I’ll take responsibility! Right! You even have U.S. citizensh—”
“Let’s hang up here. I think I have stayed friends with you too long.”
“Okay honey, love you too~”
Still, the one round of joking must have woken her up. Kang Sujin’s voice sounded a bit clearer.
As soon as Baek Jangmi smacked a kiss at her phone, a groan came back. She held her stomach and laughed, pleased at teasing her old friend.
“Mr. Lude says he will come to Hunter’s Night. He says he will even try the awards ceremony.”
[Him? How did you talk him into it? I almost admire you.]
“I told you. You sprint too straight, so you don’t understand how people like that feel. There are so many who live in crooked, jagged lines~”
Kang Sujin said nothing. Baek Jangmi’s eyes curved into half moons. Someone who sprinted straight. At those words, another sigh came through the phone.
[…Maybe that is why people with Dark affinity don’t like me. I don’t know how to approach them.]
“That is why I take those people in. You could be a little grateful?”
Dark affinity. Most people think of it as being a bad person, but in truth it usually meant people whose suspicion toward the world was far higher than others.
Those with Dark affinity had a higher chance of severe status conditions, and they used skills that were more dogged and aggressive than other Hunters.
As if they could not trust the world and had no one to trust but themselves, so they baked their aggression ahead of time.
Baek Jangmi gathered up that shunned Dark affinity. If you took time, they could become far tougher and kinder than others, hardened by the wounds they had suffered. In her eyes, Lude was the same.
“Don’t worry. You said it yourself. If you leave Mr. Lude alone, he will grow just fine. Your eye for people is still accurate.”
[…Baek Jangmi, I have thought this for a long time, and I think you are…]
She fell silent. The white roses around her were withering at speed. The flow of mana she had woven was breaking.
[The effect of Trait :: Actor Born from Heaven is reduced! It becomes difficult to distinguish false information.]
With soft pops, the withered roses bloomed back, soot black. From within them spilled every kind of illegal site and fake information.
A low animal growl rumbled at the same time. She turned, face tightened with fear. In her workshop, the whites were fading, and black shadows were settling.
From the shadows, a single scarlet, razor claw slid out. Baek Jangmi’s face went pale.
[…Baek Jangmi? Jangmi?]
Ah. She looked down at her phone again. She was still on the line with Kang Sujin.
“Sorry, Sujin. A guest just arrived, so I missed that. What did you say?”
With a bloodless face, eyes locked on the claw, Baek Jangmi kept her voice casual.
[Nah, it’s nothing. Should we hang up now?]
Her friend was very quick on the uptake, so she needed to answer fast. Baek Jangmi’s expression twisted.
“Yeah, let’s talk later.”
She clicked the phone off and took a white wooden staff in hand. With a pallid face, she took a few steps back. Cold sweat ran down the back of her neck.