Chapter 94

“Three hundred fifty million won.”

The employee’s voice trembled as she ran the payment, and so did my hand as I handed over the card.

Good lord. Three hundred fifty million won? I had just spent three years’ worth of salary from back when I worked like a dog in barely an hour.

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 from now on, anyway, and I could use the things I bought today for 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 lottery. 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.

Thinking that, I accepted the shopping bags until both my hands were full. 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 feeling happy, they just made my stomach hurt.

“Take care.”

“Please come back next time! We look forward to seeing you again.”

“…Ah, yes.”

I accepted the business card she held out while she bent at the waist at a perfect right angle.

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.

“Please take me to Apartment A in Ilsan.”

The moment I sat in the passenger seat, I pulled out my smartphone and started searching for information.

The search term was…

Familiar.

The moment I pressed the search button, related information came streaming onto the screen.

There was quite a bit of information that ordinary people couldn’t see and that required Hunter certification to access. 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 my soul. There was no way I could not click it.

Ah, so this was where it was posted.

The post was on a famous domestic Hunter community site.

It had been selected as a monthly best post, with over one 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 a currently active B-rank mage.

I’ve been in the business for a while and make decent money as a freelance Hunter. Please understand that I can’t reveal my exact specifications.

Anyway, the reason I’m writing this post is exactly what the title says.

I got hit by a hair-loss beam because of Familiar magic…

I’m still in my twenties, but the top of my head is classmates with a two-thousand-year-old mummy. Goddamn it.

Before anyone starts nitpicking, let me say this in advance: My family has always been blessed with thick hair. I even saw a photograph of my great-grandfather taken during the Japanese occupation, and he looked like Rapunzel of Joseon.

Anyway, back to Familiar magic. This stuff 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 once they learn a skill.

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 starts falling out. It keeps falling out.

Anyone here ever tried washing their hair with a Superior Potion? I have.

You crazy bastards, I spent tens of millions of won washing my hair just once. I tried every kind of crazy shit imaginable, but even that only worked for a little while.

When none of it worked, I went to a regular doctor, and the bastard let out a long sigh and said:

“You’re a mental-magic mage, aren’t you?”

He said it exactly like that, without getting a single word wrong. I was shocked and asked how he knew, and then he told me something genuinely horrifying.

More than ninety percent of mental-magic mages suffer from hair loss, and the rate is one hundred percent among those who use the more difficult Familiar magic.

Apparently, because we overwork our brains like crazy, even people with thick hair turn into bald people at some point.

At first, I thought, What the hell is he talking about? But I looked into it, and it turned out to be true.

I hurriedly joined a mental-magic mage café and searched for people like me, only to find that ninety-eight of its one hundred members suffered from hair loss.

After hearing about my situation, they told me it was already too late. Potions only restore cells temporarily, so using them too often just ends up killing your hair-follicle cells.

I ignored the café’s promise to upgrade my membership if I wrote a review of my medical consultation, quit, and am searching for my own treatment method…

Three-line summary.

1. Mental-magic mage is great. But you lose your hair instead.

2. 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.

3. I will not give up.

That’s all.

“…”

After reading the entire thing, my vision grew blurry. So even the mages I had always envied, the people who seemed to have everything, had their own hardships.

“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 person who made the first comment even human? I cried. I’ll be rooting for you. Hang in there.

└ 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 know this, but the author is a real aristocrat. Even among B-ranks, your income is incomparable. So is the way you’re treated.

└ Author: What good is having money when you don’t have any hair?

└ Anonymous#4885: Now that you mention it, you’re right.

└ Author: If you’re going to comfort me, see it through, you son of a bitch.

.

.

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Moderator: Congratulations! You’ve been selected as a popular post!

└ Anonymous#5252: LMAOOOOOOOOOO

└ Anonymous#8984: LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

└ Author: Am I supposed to laugh at this or not?

└ Anonymous#2652: You don’t have any hair and you still feel like laughing?

└ 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 do you earn?

└ Author: That depends on the job, obviously. Still, after working for a few years, I put up a building in Seoul. The house I live in now is also under my name.

└ Anonymous#5252: Show us proof of your house.

└ Author: I’m outside working right now. I’ll properly verify it later, so wait until then.

└ Anonymous#9882: What does working have to do with it? Familiars are remote-controlled anyway, aren’t they?

└ Author: Even remote control has a range limit, you idiot. Do you use the Wi-Fi at your house while traveling in the United States?

└ Anonymous#9882: Sorry.

└ Author: The maximum distance for a Familiar connection is five hundred meters. I’m increasing the distance little by little, but it’s difficult. If the Link is forcibly severed, my stomach starts churning and I feel like I’m going to throw up. There’s also a risk of mana backflow.

└ Anonymous#9882: So you always have to stay within five hundred meters.

└ Author: Yeah. To work safely, maybe three hundred meters? 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.

It seemed I had unintentionally discovered some important information.

The connection with a Familiar is severed if it goes beyond five hundred meters?

The maximum distance was that much, and the safe working distance was three hundred meters.

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 continued searching for information about Familiar magic and was able to organize a few facts.

For a B-rank mage, the maximum Familiar connection distance is five hundred meters. The safe distance is three hundred meters. 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? Tiny Familiars don’t get caught by 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 detecting even those, but when I looked them up, they cost five hundred fifty million won as part of a summer special.

“…”

I had no idea which part of that was supposed to be a summer special. I already had plenty of places where money would be going from now on. Five hundred million won, my ass.

That’s one more reason I have 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 won.”

“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 presence of the watcher bothered me like a thorn lodged in my throat.

Should I contact Team Leader Choi?

I was looking at his number saved on my smartphone when—

“Oppa!”

A familiar “swan”¹ in a green tracksuit and round glasses, her greasy hair tied tightly back, waved at me.

“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…”

“Are you 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 won 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.

“W-Well, anyway. Where are you headed?”

“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?”

“Who’s raiding anything? 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? Did you drink?”

“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.”

“…Is that 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 her, but she’s pitiful, isn’t she? What did it ever do to deserve that? Right, Oppa?”

“…Yeah. Animals haven’t done anything wrong.”

“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. Our Mom melts for her eldest son, you know. 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 did, in fact. But this little thing sitting quietly in Hayeon’s palm was…

System

Lv. 2 Cat—Familiar

A little different.