Chapter 118
11 min read ·
The next day, the woman’s senior in charge asked her.
“Did you get a good look around the gallery yesterday?”
“Yes...?”
“Your name was on the log.”
“Oh, yes.”
The woman nodded.
“I think I got hit pretty hard with the initiation, but I did get a good look around.”
“Hm? Initiation?”
The Curator in charge tilted her head.
“What, did you get on the elevator at 4:44?”
“... Yes, I’m sorry. I should have learned the rules properly...”
“Ahh, don’t worry, I’m not scolding you.”
After saying that, the Curator in charge gave a small laugh and continued.
“I’m the Curator assigned to the first floor, you know. I asked the people working late yesterday, and they said they hadn’t let you out or anything. They also said you didn’t press the rescue request button.”
“Ah...”
“I didn’t hear anything about you being found alive in the elevator this morning, so I guess someone from another floor let you out. Which floor’s Curator was it? I should thank them.”
“Th-they were from the fifth floor. Thanks to them, I even got to see the gallery they say is the most dangerous.”
“... The fifth floor?”
“... Yes? Yes.”
“...”
The Curator in charge still wore the same faint smile, as if that was her usual expression, but something about her reaction was strange.
As the woman watched her carefully and waited for an answer, the Curator in charge said,
“But do you know what?”
“Wh-what?”
“There were no Curators working late on the fifth floor yesterday.”
“...”
A chill ran down her spine.
“... What?”
“Oh, come on, it was a joke! A joke!”
A bright peal of laughter. The Curator in charge burst out laughing.
“If you want to survive in this gallery, you have to be able to take at least that much of a joke.”
“... I-it was a joke... right?”
“No, to be honest, there wasn’t a name on the entry log.”
“Then it wasn’t a joke...!”
“But there’s someone in our guild who wanders around without writing his name in the log.”
“... Ah...”
“Didn’t Yu Seongun tell you yesterday? He said he gave you a heads-up.”
At that, the woman nodded.
“I-I heard. Seo Jio.”
“Right, Seo Jio.”
The Curator in charge grinned.
“Wow, you’re lucky. I heard Seo Jio hasn’t been showing up much lately.”
“Ah... Does he not come out often? Is he not a Curator?”
“He’s not a Curator. You can think of him as a special asset of our guild.”
“I did hear that from Yu Seongun, but... then does he not have any fixed duties?”
“The most important duty of Collector guild members is to be the Guild Master’s collection.”
“... Why are you suddenly bringing that up?”
“I meant Seo Jio is at least fulfilling his role as a piece of the collection.”
“... I-is that allowed? Isn’t he kind of getting paid for doing nothing...?”
“The truth is.”
The Curator deliberately lowered her voice and whispered.
“There’s a rumor that he’s a hidden S-class Hunter.”
“... S-S-class? One of those Hunters we barely have any of in the country...?”
“He just hates making a fuss, so he’s lying and saying he’s A-class.”
“Isn’t that illegal??”
“Oh, why worry about that kind of thing? This is Collector.”
“Uh... uhh, no... that’s...”
“It means our Guild Master can do at least this much for a guild member. Doesn’t it just fill you with company loyalty?”
The Curator shrugged. She pointed to the rabbit-shaped plush toy she was in charge of and said,
“Now, now, please pat our Caretaker’s head. It’s very soft and cute.”
“... Do I stroke it like this?”
“That’s right. Very good. If you do that, there’s a very low chance it will give you a fragment.”
“You said that was like a gift the works give you, right?”
“Sometimes it’s a curse... but Caretaker is a gentle work, so that won’t happen. And yes, it’s a gift.”
“What kind of gift does this doll give?”
“Ahem, calling Caretaker a doll? Please be careful what you say.”
“Ah, yes. What kind of gift does Caretaker give?”
“It gives flowers that smell nice, or a sewing kit that can mend any kind of clothing.”
“Oh...”
“Cute, right?”
“It is cute.”
After giving her some light training, the Curator returned to the earlier subject.
“So that’s what happened. Seo Jio opened the door for our junior. That’s surprising.”
“He’s still a fellow employee, so is it really that surprising...?”
“Employees aren’t all the same. Seo Jio doesn’t really like places with lots of people, so he mostly wanders around at dawn when there aren’t any.”
“He was very kind for someone like that.”
“...”
The Curator asked back,
“He was kind?”
“Yes? Oh, yes. He was extremely kind.”
“Hmm... Jio is a very bright, handsome man, isn’t he?”
“Ah...”
The woman nodded.
“Now that I think about it, yes. He was incredibly handsome.”
She felt a little strange.
“I guess I was too startled and scared at dawn to even think about how good-looking he was.”
“Everyone who runs into Seo Jio says that. That they remember how handsome he was only afterward.”
The Curator’s eyes sparkled.
“But how handsome was he? I haven’t even seen his face, but they say he’s like a blond, blue-eyed statue of a handsome man. Bright enough to smell like sunlight.”
“That’s an extremely detailed description for someone who hasn’t even seen his face... Um, I think that’s right. Maybe he has some Western blood, because his nose bridge was really high. His eyes were big too.”
“Ooh...”
After letting out an exclamation of admiration, the Curator soon murmured quietly,
“So that’s the state he’s in these days.”
“...?”
“Hmm, not bad.”
“... No matter how handsome he is, evaluating a person like that is a little...”
“Oh my, oh my, I’m not that rude, you know?”
The Curator giggled.
“I heard Jio sometimes gets gloomy.”
“... I can’t imagine that at all.”
“He has such a heavy air about him that a lot of people say he’s scary.”
“Ah... That’s true...”
He suited the pure white gallery perfectly, and yet there had been something strangely uncanny about him.
“... Maybe it was because he was too handsome, but he didn’t feel like someone from this world. He felt distant.”
“That’s how people react even though Jio is being very friendly?”
“I know he treated me kindly. When I left, he even gave me chocolate so I wouldn’t wander off somewhere else because I was tired.”
“Right, right. That’s Jio. He carries snacks in his pockets like a squirrel.”
“A squirrel...”
“You’re thinking that doesn’t suit him, aren’t you?”
The Curator placed a pink bag in the fluffy plush toy’s hand and continued asking,
“What was he like?”
“...”
“I mean Seo Jio.”
Unlike before, her voice was calm and a little lower in tone. At that, the woman thought of the man she had seen at dawn.
“... This might sound strange, but the first thing I thought was that he was perfect.”
The moment he entered her sight, it had felt as if the world had become full.
Just as it was hard to disparage sunlight pouring down on a spring day, just as it was impossible to find fault with cool summer waves. It must have been the same feeling as listening blankly to a lullaby sung by a child’s mother, or to a superstition passed down for generations in some village.
An existence one could nitpick if one wanted to, and criticize if one wanted to, but simply did not feel like doing so. An existence that could be called complete even if its skin were torn, even if it bled, even if it suffered any flaw. An existence that made one feel as if they were merely observing the flow of history.
It was the kind of presence that, by existing alone, made her feel both abundance and suffocation.
“It’s a little strange to have thought that the moment I met him, isn’t it?”
“... If it was your first time seeing someone as high as S-class, I think that could happen.”
“I’m glad if I wasn’t the strange one.”
She smiled awkwardly and continued.
“His way of speaking was a little unusual too. Should I say it was old-fashioned, or that it had dignity...? Honestly, he spoke so politely it was almost hard to handle, so I felt a bit troubled.”
Seo Jio’s manner of speaking had a certain clipped quality to it.
“Should I say he sounded like someone who used a bad translator? It wasn’t that I thought it was weird, exactly, but maybe because I was so frightened at the time, it was a little scary.”
“Well... he could really be a Hunter from the West. It’s true he looks strongly like he has that kind of blood, isn’t it? We don’t know exactly where the Guild Master recruited him from either.”
“Then maybe he still isn’t used to Korean. But I don’t mean that it was truly strange. If anything, it suited him well, so that was a little...”
Scary.
“Maybe because he was so handsome he didn’t seem human.”
She had felt a sense of incongruity somewhere.
“Yes, well. That was how it was.”
“Is there anything else?”
“Just... that he was incredibly friendly?”
But she had felt distance even in that part. Something was strange.
“It was goodwill, but rather than treating me well out of personal feelings...”
“What, what? Did you want it to develop into a personal relationship?”
“No, that’s, that’s not what I mean. You know that.”
“If goodwill isn’t a personal feeling, what is it?”
“... Right?”
Only after saying it herself did she realize it sounded strange.
“Ah, what I mean is, of course I didn’t mean that he was hypocritical or that the kindness he showed me seemed false. Really.”
“I didn’t take it that way.”
“So what I was trying to say is... the goodwill Seo Jio shows is like that of someone set apart, um... not something given and received normally... This is...”
It sounded truly bizarre, but.
“It felt like goodwill given just because I was human.”
Goodwill given without any condition, simply because she had been born human.
So it had felt more like indifference instead...
“... No, I don’t mean it made me feel bad. If anything, I think I liked it. Maybe I was just flustered because it was my first time in my life meeting someone who showed kindness without expecting anything in return so casually...”
Should she say she had felt overwhelmed, as if she had received something far too enormous without doing anything?
“Seo Jio is a Grade 1 citizen, right? Ah, did I ask something too obvious?”
“I don’t know for sure either, but wouldn’t he be?”
“No wonder his actions felt dignified. It didn’t feel Korean, though...”
There had been an air about him that naturally inspired admiration.
“He was extremely composed, and his words and actions had weight. He absolutely didn’t have an approachable air, but I could definitely tell he had good social skills. He also had this mysterious feeling, like a prince from a fairy tale.”
At the woman’s words, the Curator in charge smiled slyly.
“Oh, honey. At this rate, you’ll confess to him too.”
“... You were the one who asked for my impressions, senior...”
“Oh, I wasn’t hoping for that much.”
The Curator gave a cheerful smile.
“Anyway, I’m glad it seems like you’ll be able to get along well.”
“Can I think I have a chance of being converted to a full-time employee...?”
“The gallery is always so short-staffed that as long as you don’t cause any major accidents, becoming a full-time employee is basically guaranteed.”
“That would be really wonderful, but I’m worried because there are so many things I’m lacking in.”
“What’s there to worry about? You held a conversation just fine in front of that Seo Jio.”
“Ah... Is that the kind of standard this is measured by?”
“He’s just that unnerving.”
The Curator smiled, her eyes curving deeply.
“Please get along well with the employees...”
“...”
“And with the works.”
Her tone carried a strange resonance.
‘... Ah.’
The woman suddenly remembered that Curator Yu Seongun, whom she had seen yesterday, had worn the same smile.
Those eyes had curved strangely, holding an emotion she could not tell was goodwill or malice.
“...”
Only then did she realize that the Curators here had an atmosphere similar to the gallery.
“... I’ll do my best.”
Should she call it mysterious, or grotesque?
She was not sure.
“Honey.”
“Coo.”
“Dad has gained confidence.”
If there was one problem that came from becoming a haunted portrait, it was resolution. When he went beyond the frame while in portrait form, a resolution issue occurred, and people complained that perceiving him felt burdensome.
And now that he had fully synchronized with Giovanni, who had solved that problem for him until now. He had tried walking around outside, wondering, ‘Can I still move around without the resolution problem?’ and...
“I held a conversation with an employee without any friction.”
He had been so moved that he had even given her the chocolate he had tucked away like emergency cash.
After giving it to her, he had thought, ‘Huh? Doesn’t this mean she’ll realize Black Cloak and I are the same person?’ but he gave up on worrying about it. Jio, who had grown up absorbing the clear spirit of the remote mountains of Gangwon Province, did not know how to think deeply.
“I hope I make a new friend at this rate.”
“Coo coo.”
“My very own pen pal...”
“... Mm.”
Because he looked quite happy, Honey did not object.