Chapter : 03
Something strange happened when she was held in his arms.
The foul stench that had been growing increasingly intense disappeared as if it had never existed, completely overwhelmed by Kim Hyun’s heavy scent. As if that weren’t enough, warmth began to flow from the shoulder where Kim Hyun’s hand touched, melting the body of Harang, which had been frozen stiff with the terror of her seizure.
What is this man?
It was an intense yang energy that was impossible to sense so easily from an ordinary human.
The sense of security was similar to what she had felt when meeting the head of the Baektaek. Instinctively, Harang gripped Kim Hyun’s arm tightly.
“You scare easily, don’t you? Our new employee.”
Kim Hyun chuckled and patted Harang’s back. His touch was gentle, almost like a guardian soothing a child.
[Ding!]
At that moment, the elevator lights came on with a cheerful chime. Harang, who had only just finished adjusting to the sudden brightness after being in the dark, frowned.
By the time her vision returned, Kim Hyun was already standing in a neat, composed posture. His professional demeanor was so different that the warm pat on her back from moments ago almost seemed like an illusion.
“We’ve arrived.”
Yang energy?
The man was the son of the chairman of Eaton Company, a place highly likely to be a nest of monsters whose very rank couldn’t even be measured. It would make sense if he were filled with yin energy, but yang energy?
She must have become too starved for yang energy for too long. There was no other explanation for why her senses had gone haywire.
Harang hurriedly followed Kim Hyun as he stepped out, waiting for her.
The area in front of the chairman’s office on the 55th floor was silent. When the chief secretary spotted the two of them, he stood from his seat with an awkward expression.
“Team Leader, I’m sorry. The chairman suddenly had a meeting scheduled.”
“Ah, a meeting.”
“I think you may have to wait for a while.”
Kim Hyun frowned and checked his wristwatch. Instead of getting angry or raising his voice, he merely clicked his tongue.
“He’s really putting his son through the wringer, isn’t he?”
He turned toward Harang and shrugged.
“I can’t tell whether you’re lucky or unlucky, Employee Lee Harang.”
“Pardon?”
“It might have been better if we’d been able to see the chairman right away.”
As though he didn’t need an answer, he simply shrugged at the chief secretary, looking genuinely regretful.
“Call me when the chairman’s meeting is over. Surely you aren’t telling me to wait right here?”
“Ah, well… Team Leader.”
“I’m a busy man too.”
Just as he had done to Harang, he lightly patted the secretary’s shoulder before turning around. Kim Hyun headed back toward the elevator, and Harang followed a beat later.
“Team Leader?”
“We’re going straight down. I don’t particularly like waiting around like this.”
“……”
Is that really okay?
“Oh, and Employee Lee Harang belongs to our team.”
What team?
According to the mission instructions from Baektaek, she was supposed to be assigned to the Human Resources Department.
“If you say our team…”
Harang almost asked whether he meant the HR Department, but bit her tongue and carefully phrased her question indirectly.
After getting back into the elevator and pressing the button for the 15th floor, Kim Hyun cracked his neck from side to side, looking displeased, and let out a short sigh.
“We can’t put a promising talent the chairman has taken an interest in somewhere like that. You’re being assigned to the New Business Division. Have you heard of Lunavion? It’s a cosmetics brand.”
Harang had heard of it.
The miracle anti-aging cosmetics that had recently taken over the first floors of department stores.
“The TF team is on the 15th floor. That’s where you’ll be working.”
Harang followed behind Kim Hyun with the feeling of a cow being led to a slaughterhouse.
She was curious about the yang energy she’d briefly sensed from him, but it wasn’t enough to make her reconsider the identity of Baektaek.
Still, walking willingly into what felt like the wide-open jaws of a monster was quite terrifying.
But when they arrived at the 15th floor, Harang’s eyes widened.
For one thing, there was an incredible amount of natural light. Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, she could even catch a glimpse of Gyeongbokgung Palace beyond Gwanghwamun.
Inside, more than a dozen employees were busily moving about. They all gave off pleasant scents and wore stylish clothes, gathering in groups of three or four to exchange opinions before dispersing again.
This is… too normal.
It was completely different from the places where she had previously been dispatched for missions related to a “Rift.”
No matter what kind of workplace it was, there was always a damp, gloomy quality unique to a Rift. But this place felt almost unnaturally fresh.
The discrepancy left her bewildered.
“Attention.”
At Kim Hyun’s voice, the employees all stopped what they were doing and turned their attention toward him. Their eyes were filled with respect and trust for their team leader.
It was almost overwhelming for Harang, standing behind him.
“This is the Employee Lee Harang I mentioned yesterday. She came to work as soon as she recovered. Shall we give her some encouragement?”
At Kim Hyun’s prompting, the employees responded with bright smiles.
“Hello! Welcome!”
“Wow, a new employee! Nice to meet you, Harang!”
The employees applauded and smiled brightly. The atmosphere was so cheerful, healthy, and energetic that it felt unfamiliar enough to leave Harang’s lips frozen.
What is this…?
With a bewildered expression, Harang went to the desk she’d been assigned and sat down. The employee beside her kindly handed her a file.
“Read this first. We normally don’t show this to trainees, but it’s on the team leader’s orders. It’s confidential.”
Harang nodded and opened the file.
Project: Re-Birth (Skin Regeneration)
Core Ingredient Patent Compound_X
Harang pointed to the part that caught her eye the most and asked what it was. The employee beside her answered proudly.
“It’s a patented compound developed by the research team, so we don’t know the exact details either. But the effects are incredible. Apparently, it’s extracted from a natural organic substance, and just applying it makes the cells come back to life.”
Natural organic substance? Cells come back to life?
The combination of those words gave her an inexplicable sense of discomfort. And when the explanation sounded practically like exaggerated advertising, she couldn’t help feeling skeptical.
Can I really find a Rift while looking at something like this?
For now, Harang bowed her head to thank the employee who had answered her, then met eyes with the dark computer monitor.
Seeing herself, looking like a complete mess while being handed a company’s confidential documents on her very first day, she let out a thin sigh.
What a complete disaster.
Still, since the documents were confidential, there might be something useful hidden in them.
Just as Harang was trying to convince herself of that and began carefully reading through the documents from the beginning againā
Tap.
Something cold suddenly touched her left cheek before pulling away.
“Huh?”
“Have a cold drink and wake yourself up. You’ll need to adapt as quickly as possible. Our team’s workload is pretty intense.”
“Ah… you’re giving this to me? Thank you.”
What Kim Hyun had pressed against Harang’s face and then withdrawn was a cold canned coffee.
Normally, she never ate or drank anything offered to her at a place she’d infiltrated, but since the can was sealed, it should be fine.
Suddenly feeling intensely thirsty, Harang cautiously opened the tab and drank the canned coffee.
“Even if it tastes cheap, this works best for clearing your head. That document isn’t something we show just anyone, so memorize it well.”
Pat, pat.
He tapped Harang’s shoulder again before heading into his own office.
Through the transparent glass, she could see him sit down and stare at his monitor.
The canned coffee was ice-cold and very sweet.
Just as he had said, it snapped her mind wide awake.
Harang took small sips of the sweet drink and bit her lip.
What did I miss?
The intense, filthy energy of the Rift she’d sensed on her first day.
The traces that had completely disappeared the following day.
Kim Hyun’s appearance and her sudden assignment to this department.
And even the chairman’s family’s interest in her.
Without realizing that the chills and nausea she’d experienced at home had disappeared long ago, Harang continued sipping her drink.
For some reason, she felt as though she might become addicted to the sweetness of canned coffee.
The following afternoon.
Unlike the previous day, Harang arrived at work looking perfectly fine and spent half the day there. She moved the mouse cursor aimlessly and swallowed a sigh.
She had expected pretending to do a job she knew nothing about would be difficult.
But I didn’t expect to have absolutely nothing to do.
It was especially strange considering that she’d been handed confidential documents on her very first day.
Neither the team members nor the team leader gave Harang any work.
She hadn’t even been given an ID that could access the internal server. Apparently, because the department had just been established, it would take several days to create one.
Harang wasn’t the kind of person who could comfortably waste time surfing the web, so she kept opening and closing innocent Excel windows in an attempt to soothe her anxiety.
Being treated like a transparent person. That’s new.
At the places she’d infiltrated before, there had generally been two overwhelming reactions.
Either people showed her excessive kindness for some reason, only to suddenly become aggressive toward herā
or they tried to crush her from the very beginning.
Harang had vaguely suspected that the Baektaek energy she possessed might stimulate something in people contaminated by a Rift.
That was why she’d even worried that things might be especially harsh at Eaton Company.
But…
She had never expected this.
Harang rotated her stiff neck and glanced around the office.
The office was so comfortable that it felt almost unreal.
There was no smell of a Rift, no trace of monsters, and not even the faint smell of human sweat.
The sterile, almost antiseptic atmosphere was so unfamiliar that it felt downright bizarre.
It was something that shouldn’t have been possible in a place where so many humans were gathered.
This isn’t normal. How can there not be even a single minor spirit in a building this huge?
Harang grew increasingly anxious.
