Chapter 15
Not Going to Drum Up Business?
Min-jung’s eyes sparkled with wonder as she put a piece of slime steak into her mouth.
“Hey, this…”
“How is it? Is it good?”
Sori asked in a voice full of anticipation. As Min-jung chewed, her eyes gradually widened.
“There’s a potion in this, right?!”
She shouted with certainty.
Slime steak was exactly what it sounded like—thinly sliced, once-cooked slime meat topped with various spices. Other than the spices, nothing special was added.
Min-jung’s eyes shifted into a suspicious glare.
“N-no, there isn’t?”
Sori denied it hurriedly. There really wasn’t. …Right?
She gave an awkward smile, thinking she should double-check the ingredients the former owner had left behind.
“As if.”
Min-jung tilted her head.
“Then why do I feel way more energized than when I drink red ginseng?”
Holding her fork, Min-jung stared intently at Sori. Then her face brightened with realization.
“You awakened too?”
“Ah—no?”
Sori answered instinctively.
“Really?”
Min-jung sat back down.
“Then what kind of person was the previous owner? He was awakened, right?”
She asked with curious eyes. Even back when Sori only worked part-time, Min-jung had asked about the owner several times. Each time, Sori had said she didn’t know.
Back then, that had been true. Aside from his bushy beard that made him look like a medieval European bandit, there was nothing particularly unusual about him.
He always prepared the ingredients in advance during hours when Sori wasn’t around, so she never even knew what kind of meat he used.
If there was one strange thing…
It was that no one had ever seen suppliers come and go, yet there were always plenty of ingredients.
Thinking about it now, he had probably bought them from the Hunter Market, just like Sori did now.
“I think that’s right.”
She decided to admit that much about the former owner. After all, he had run away.
“Right? I thought so. It seemed like your old boss really did cook with monster meat. The hunters who tried it said the aftertaste was really moist and savory—”
Min-jung suddenly looked surprised again.
“It tastes kind of like this right now…?”
She gave Sori another suspicious look.
“Seriously, there’s nothing in it?”
Sori shook her head again—this time deliberately. After thinking it through, there was no benefit to publicly revealing she was awakened.
As Min-jung had mentioned, public perception of awakened civilians who weren’t hunters wasn’t exactly positive. Recently, they were even being monitored—officially called “monitoring,” but it was basically surveillance.
Of course, it was true that some people got drunk on power and caused trouble by recklessly entering dungeons.
But Sori had no intention of causing incidents. She just wanted to live freely. And asking Min-jung to keep it a secret would be shameless.
“Actually, the former owner left some ingredients behind. I used those.”
“Oh. Then it really is monster cuisine?”
Sori only smiled.
Well, I caught it myself, so it is a monster. Hehe.
“Anyway, I’ll enjoy it. It’s delicious.”
C-Table customer’s mood status has changed to +30 points!
That was a relief. She seemed to genuinely mean it.
“Eat a lot.”
“Okay.”
After eating for a while, Min-jung suddenly asked,
“But what happened to you? You used to say you had zero interest in cooking. Did working part-time make you want to try it yourself? I’m curious. Tell me.”
For Min-jung, whose entire daily life was buried in work, even small things were entertaining.
“Ah, well…”
Sori quickly made up a plausible story about how she ended up running Happy Restaurant—something about having admired it for a long time.
“Ohhh, so that’s why you’re so good now? Hidden cooking talent discovered! Something like that?”
“No way. I don’t have talent like that. I just practiced a bit.”
The monster dishes were cooked automatically by her skill. Everything else, she just followed roughly from the recipe book the former owner had left behind.
Or maybe Min-jung was right. Maybe Sori really did have hidden culinary talent?
Ring.
At that moment, a sound came from Min-jung’s pocket. She took out her phone, placed it on the table, and turned on the screen.
Just as she cut another piece of steak and put it into her mouth, a news clip began playing from her phone.
—“…In the second Great Dungeon, S-rank hunter Lee Ki-jun once again demonstrated outstanding performance. The boss monster was, as expected, claimed by the Seohan Guild he belongs to. Additionally, in last week’s international ranking match, he placed 12th…”
Click.
“Ahaha. Sorry. A classmate sent something pointless…”
Min-jung hurriedly turned off the phone and shoved it into her bag.
“It’s fine. It’s not like this is the first time I’ve heard about Lee Ki-jun. It’s been years, anyway.”
Min-jung put down her fork and stared at Sori. Then she carefully spoke.
“Sori. Hey.”
“Yeah?”
Sori focused on her words and missed another sound.
“Want to go on a blind date?”
“A blind date?”
At that moment, footsteps sounded from behind, as if someone had entered.
“Not going to drum up business?”
Sori turned around—and locked eyes with the man.
It was Lee Ki-jun.
* * *
One day, when Ki-jun was leading a team raid—
There was a man who introduced himself by the nickname “Blackbird.”
“My name is… Blackbird.”
He looked full of motivation, yet timid at the same time. Unfortunately, he had no talent as a hunter.
Still, his excessive enthusiasm often led him down the wrong path—like trying to hunt monsters alone despite lacking the strength.
Ki-jun couldn’t shake the suspicion that he had jumped into real dungeons without properly completing tutorial training.
“Hey, Mr. Blackbird. Deviating during a team raid is prohibited.”
He was the kind of troublesome member who needed constant restraining.
One night, while the team rested around a fire, Ki-jun decided to strike up a conversation with Blackbird, who sat blankly staring into the flames.
“Why did you become a hunter?”
Conversations like that often turned candid in such settings.
Blackbird looked at Ki-jun and adjusted his glasses.
“I wasn’t originally a hunter.”
“Then what were you?”
“I was just… an awakened.”
“An awakened? Ah.”
Ki-jun recalled hearing about such cases.
“What kind of awakened were you?”
“I was a department manager.”
“…Excuse me?”
Ki-jun thought he misheard. But no—Blackbird insisted he had awakened as a “department manager.”
“I was climbing the ranks successfully. But one quest went wrong.”
Blackbird gulped down warm milk heated over the fire like it was alcohol, lamenting his fate.
“If it hadn’t been for that subordinate. I always thought he was the scheming type. Didn’t expect him to wriggle out like that.”
“I see.”
“I should’ve fired him. But that insolent brat submitted his resignation first.”
“…What?”
Something about this story felt strange. Were awakened civilians normally like this? Ki-jun found it odd but let it go.
“So I wandered around and somehow developed a hunter skill. That’s how I ended up here.”
You should probably put that skill away again. The words nearly escaped Ki-jun’s throat, but he held them back.
“What about you, team leader? How did you become an S-rank hunter?”
This time, Blackbird asked.
Ki-jun thought for a moment.
Why did I want to become an S-rank hunter?
The most accurate answer would be: he just woke up one day and found himself there.
Was Kang Sori part of that journey? Or not?
The sudden memory of her name made his head ache.
“I wanted to become stronger.”
Blackbird looked at him expectantly.
“A friend once said something like that to me.”
“A friend?”
“Yes. She asked me if I didn’t even have the desire to become stronger.”
That person had been Kang Sori.
Ki-jun was surprised at himself for sharing such trivial memories. Maybe it was easier because Blackbird was a stranger.
He took another sip of milk. Blackbird laughed.
“Hearing that kind of thing does make you more competitive. When I first joined the company—”
And from there, Blackbird launched into a heroic tale about his early days at work.
Ki-jun soon regretted starting the conversation.
[Turns out the person at that restaurant was the same one I knew from work. Hahaha.]
Before Ki-jun could even recover from the shock of realizing “ptsd-om” was Blackbird, he was stunned again.
The “scheming subordinate” had been Kang Sori? She resigned? You?
He never imagined they would meet again like this.
Kang Sori.
Sori.
The word his lips had forgotten now stirred again inside his mouth.
As Blackbird had said, they really did find a restaurant in the dungeon—but before he could feel joy, a strange emotion enveloped him.
He had never dreamed of meeting Sori in a place like this.
He remembered Blackbird’s words. He was going to fire her—but she resigned first. So she decided to run a restaurant?
His heart felt unsettled.
And then—
“Want to go on a blind date?”
The first thing he heard upon seeing her again was “blind date.”
Strange. It had been years since they broke up, and now she was talking about meeting another man.
It has nothing to do with me. Right.
And yet, for some reason, it bothered him.
Was it because of the smooth forehead peeking through her hair?
Or because, when they met again, her expression held not embarrassment—but boredom?
As she turned, her hair swayed slowly in the air—
“Uh… Welcome, customer!”
Sori’s lips curved into a bright smile.
She pretended not to know him.
