“Three hundred fifty million won1.”
The employee’s voice trembled as she processed the payment, and my hand shook as I passed her the card.
Good lord. Three hundred fifty million won1? In barely an hour, I had blown through three years’ worth of salary from back when I worked like a dog.
No. Let’s look on the bright side.
This was money spent to protect my family from the people watching us.
I could keep earning money anyway, and the things I bought today would last me a long time.
Beep.
- Approval complete.
“Your payment has gone through.”
Thanks to me, this young lady was the only one who had hit the jackpot. I took my card back from Assistant Manager Kim Seonhee, whose smile stretched from ear to ear.
“So that’s everything, right?”
“Ah, if you give us your address, we can have everything delivered.”
“That’s all right. I have somewhere to go right now.”
Delivery, my ass. The moment I got out of everyone’s sight, I could just store everything in my Inventory.
The System sure is convenient at times like this.
With that thought, I accepted enough shopping bags to fill both hands. Of course, they weren’t ordinary paper bags. They were tough, sturdy leather shopping bags supposedly made from ogre hide. They had been free gifts, but instead of making me happy, they just made my stomach hurt.
“Take care.”
“Please be sure to visit us again!”
“…Ah, yes.”
She bowed at a perfect right angle as she held out her business card, and I accepted it.
One obsessed with sales figures. Their name: salesperson.
I stopped by a nearby restroom and stored the things I had bought at the Store in my Inventory before hailing a taxi. These days, I regretted never getting my driver’s license.
“Apartment A in Ilsan, please.”
The moment I sat down in the passenger seat, I pulled out my smartphone and searched for information.
The search term was…
Familiar.
The instant I tapped the search button, related results flooded the screen.
A considerable amount of it was restricted information that ordinary people couldn’t access without Hunter certification. One title in particular caught my eye.
No Joke: Don’t Use Familiar Magic. It Made My Hair Fall Out.
It was a title that resonated with the soul. How could I not click it?
Ah, so this is where it was posted.
The post was on a famous Korean Hunter forum.
It had made the monthly best list and racked up over a hundred thousand views and more than two thousand comments.
Let’s see what it says.
Click!
No Joke: Don’t Use Familiar Magic. It Made My Hair Fall Out.
I’m an active B-rank mage.
I’ve been around for a while and make pretty good money as a freelance Hunter. Please understand that I can’t reveal my exact stats.
Anyway, I’m writing this for exactly the reason in the title.
Familiar magic hit me with the hair-loss beam…
I’m still in my twenties, but the top of my head is classmates with a two-thousand-year-old mummy. Fuck me.
Before any assholes start arguing, let me make one thing clear: My family has always had thick hair. I’ve even seen a picture of my great-grandfather from the Japanese occupation2, and the man looked like the Rapunzel of Joseon3.
Anyway, Familiar magic. This shit is a real double-edged sword.
Any of you guys who are mages will know this, but mental magic isn’t exactly common. Even civilians can make a living if they learn a single skill, right?
For a mage, mental magic is exactly like that. If you have this one thing, you can live well no matter what.
But fuck, your hair falls out. And it keeps falling out.
Anyone here ever washed their hair with a Superior Potion? I have.
You crazy bastards, I spent tens of millions of won4 washing my hair just once. I tried every kind of crazy shit imaginable, but even that only worked for a little while.
When nothing worked, I finally went to a regular doctor. The bastard let out a long sigh and asked me:
“You’re a mental-magic mage, aren’t you?”
That’s exactly what he said, word for word. I nearly jumped out of my skin and asked how he knew. Then he told me something truly horrifying.
More than ninety percent of mental-magic mages suffer from hair loss. Among the ones who use the more difficult Familiar magic, it’s one hundred percent.
Apparently, we work our brains so hard that sooner or later, even people with thick hair end up bald.
At first, I thought he was talking out of his ass, but I looked into it and found out it was true.
I hurriedly joined a mental-magic mage café5 and searched for people like me, only to find that ninety-eight of its one hundred members suffered from hair loss.
When they heard about my situation, they said it was already too late. Potions only restore cells temporarily, so using them too often ends up killing the hair-follicle cells instead.
The café5 offered to upgrade my membership if I posted a review of my medical consultation. I ignored them, quit the café5, and am now searching for my own cure…
Three-line summary:
-
Mental-magic mages are great. But you lose your hair instead.
-
Potions are useless. Use hair-loss-prevention shampoo and go to a regular hospital instead. Hair must be treated with heart and desperation, not magic.
-
I will not give up.
That’s all.
“…”
By the time I finished reading, my vision had blurred. So even the mages I had always envied—the people who seemed to have everything—had hardships of their own.
“Are you all right, sir?”
“I’m fine… Hngh.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Ah, it’s nothing. I’m fine.”
Of all things, the taxi driver happened to be bald, too. Feeling like a sinner, I lowered my head toward my smartphone.
Below the post, I found more than two thousand comments.
└ Anonymous#232: Give us the one-line summary.
└ Author: [Comment hidden due to severe profanity.]
└ Anonymous#112: Is the first commenter even human? I cried. I’m rooting for you. Stay strong.
└ Author: Thanks…
└ Anonymous#1512: I don’t know about the rest, but the second commenter seems to be suffering from hair loss, too. But after reading the whole thing, it sounds like you make a lot of money. Can’t you live without some hair? Just wear a good wig.
└ Author: [Comment hidden due to severe profanity.]
└ Anonymous#4885: Wow, I’m seeing a Familiar mage here. You guys don’t realize it, but the author is a real aristocrat. Even among B-ranks, the income doesn’t compare. Neither does the treatment.
└ Author: What good is money when you don’t have hair?
└ Anonymous#4885: Now that I think about it, you’re right.
└ Author: If you’re going to comfort me, see it through, you son of a bitch.
.
.
.
└ Moderator: Congratulations! Your post has been selected as a popular post!
└ Anonymous#5252: ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
└ Anonymous#8984: ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
└ Author: Am I supposed to laugh at this or not?
└ Anonymous#2652: How can you laugh when you don’t have any hair?
└ Author: [Comment hidden due to severe profanity.]
└ Author: Thanks for the overwhelming support. Looks like I’m about to make the monthly best list and enter the Hall of Fame. If you have any questions, leave them below. I’m working right now, but I’ll drop in and answer them whenever I get a chance.
└ Anonymous#9665: You said you’re a freelancer. What kind of work do you mainly do?
└ Author: Freelancer is a nice way of putting it. What I do is similar to running a private detective agency. I’ve tracked high-level criminals—Hunters, of course—and I’ve also taken on an affair case at a nouveau riche family’s house.
└ Anonymous#915: Oh… You must make a lot. How much?
└ Author: Depends on the job, obviously. Still, after working for a few years, I put up a building in Seoul. The house I live in is in my name too.
└ Anonymous#5252: Show us proof of your house.
└ Author: I’m outside working right now. I’ll post proper proof later, so wait until then.
└ Anonymous#9882: What does being at work have to do with it? Familiars are remote-controlled anyway, aren’t they?
└ Author: Remote control still has a range limit, dumbass. Do you use your home Wi-Fi while you’re traveling in the US?
└ Anonymous#9882: Sry.
└ Author: Five hundred meters6 is the maximum range for a Familiar connection. I’ve been increasing it little by little, but it’s hard. If the Link gets forcibly severed, my stomach churns and I feel like I’m going to puke. There’s also a risk of mana backflow.
└ Anonymous#9882: So you have to stay within five hundred meters6 no matter what.
└ Author: Yeah. To work safely, maybe three hundred meters7? You have to prepare for anything that might happen. Most people probably do the same.
I was scrolling through the comments when I suddenly stopped.
Had I just stumbled across something important?
The connection to a Familiar breaks beyond five hundred meters6?
The maximum distance was that much, and the safe working distance was three hundred meters7.
In other words, if the author’s comments were true, then the people who had controlled the Familiars yesterday had been somewhere not far from my house.
And they’d be going bald, too. Maybe completely bald.
There was a strong possibility they were wearing wigs, but knowing that couldn’t hurt.
I kept searching for information about Familiar magic and managed to put together a few facts.
For a B-rank mage, the maximum Familiar connection distance is five hundred meters6. The safe distance is three hundred meters7. If a Familiar dies, the Link is forcibly severed, and the caster also takes a slight hit.
And I realized one more thing: why they had gone out of their way to use an expensive Familiar mage to watch me.
What the hell? Tiny Familiars can slip past most detection magic?
It was like this: detection magic was a net, while tiny Familiars like flies and rice weevils were too small to get caught in it.
Of course, there were products with built-in top-of-the-line detection magic capable of catching even those. But when I looked them up, they cost five hundred fifty million won8—and that was the summer special price.
“…”
What part of that was supposed to be a summer special? I already had plenty of expenses coming my way. Five hundred million won9, my ass.
One more reason to catch them myself.
My thoughts suddenly turned to the other Guild members, too. Had Familiars been attached only to my family?
I still didn’t know the exact identity of the person who had commissioned this. Sangdong Guild was only the prime suspect.
“That’ll be 8,400 won10.”
“Ah, yes. Here you go.”
I paid the taxi fare and got out. The entrance to the apartment complex, which had always looked exactly the same, seemed a little unfamiliar today.
The watcher’s presence bothered me like a thorn caught in my throat.
Should I contact Team Leader Choi?
I was looking at his number saved on my smartphone when—
“Oppa11!”
A familiar swan12 in a green tracksuit and round glasses waved at me, her greasy hair tied tightly back.
“Oh, y-yeah.”
“What’s with that reaction?”
“I guess I’d rather not acknowledge knowing you in public. You could say I’m embarrassed…”
“You’re embarrassed by your one and only little sister? Huh?”
“Go buy some clothes. What are you doing wearing a tracksuit again when you left the clothes you bought at the department store last time at home?”
“You should worry about yourself. You’re one to talk, when you go around wearing the same kinds of clothes every day.”
Hayeon’s pointed remark left me speechless for a moment. I had paid three hundred million won13 only an hour or two ago, but I was still wearing nothing but jeans and a T-shirt. Apparently, the old grime of being an ordinary little citizen, caked on over twenty-seven years, had not yet completely washed off.
“A-Anyway. Where are you going?”
“Where am I going? The convenience store!”
Hayeon, who had been sulking until just now, began grinning foolishly.
What’s gotten into her?
I asked in a bemused voice.
“Why are you so excited? Is your heart already pounding at the thought of raiding the convenience store?”
“Raiding, my ass. I’m going to buy canned tuna.”
“Canned tuna? Are we having tuna kimchi stew for lunch today?”
“No! We’re not!”
“…What’s with you today, seriously? Have you been drinking?”
“You’ll be like this, too, when you see this little one.”
Despite my reaction, Hayeon only continued to grin strangely, unlike her usual self. Then she lowered the zipper of her tracksuit and pulled something out from inside her clothes.
A tiny ball of white-and-yellow fur wriggled in her palm.
Meeoow.
“…A kitten?”
“Cute, right? I went out to sort the recycling earlier, and someone had abandoned it in a box. It had been left there for anyone who wanted to raise it.”
“…”
“I don’t know what kind of bastard abandoned it, but it’s pitiful, isn’t it? What did it ever do wrong? Right, Oppa11?”
“…Yeah. It’s not the animal’s fault.”
“I got Mom’s permission to foster it, even if it’s only for a little while. You’re okay with it, too, right?”
“Me?”
“Yeah. You know how our Lady Kim melts for her eldest son. She told me to get your permission, too, so put in a good word for me when we go inside later.”
“We’ll see.”
“What? You liked animals when you were little.”
I did. I still do, in fact. But this little thing sitting quietly in Hayeon’s palm was…
System
Lv. 2 Cat—Familiar
A little different.
Footnotes
-
About $250,000 or €230,000 at the project conversion rates. ↩ ↩2
-
Japan ruled Korea from 1910 to 1945. ↩
-
Joseon was a Korean dynasty that lasted from 1392 to 1897. ↩
-
“Tens of millions of won” is roughly 20–90 million won, or about $14,000–$64,000 and €13,000–€58,000. ↩
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A Korean online café is a membership-based internet community, often organized around a shared interest. ↩ ↩2 ↩3
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Five hundred meters is about 1,640 ft, or 0.31 mi. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4
-
About $390,000 or €350,000 at the project conversion rates. ↩
-
About $360,000 or €320,000 at the project conversion rates. ↩
-
About $6 or €5.40 at the project conversion rates. ↩
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Oppa is a term a girl or woman uses to address an older brother or an older man she is close to. ↩ ↩2
-
In Korean slang, a “swan” is an unemployed woman. ↩
-
About $210,000 or €190,000 at the project conversion rates. ↩
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