Jang-mi flagged down a taxi with practiced ease. I climbed into the back seat after her.
"Pangyo… take us to □□番地, please."
Her voice, giving the driver the destination, was thick with exhaustion.
The sudden offer she'd made — come stay at her place.
I pretended to think it over, but honestly, the options weren't that plentiful.
The apartment I'd been living in was set to be disposed of soon…
And in a child's body, there was no obvious way to earn money or secure a place to stay.
For now, the best move was simply to lean on her goodwill and wait for the right moment.
The taxi pulled away, and she fell asleep with her head resting against the window.
I confirmed the steady rise and fall of her breathing, then turned my gaze outside.
Destination: Pangyo New Town.
Life had changed a great deal since the Gate incident.
I glanced at Jang-mi sleeping beside me.
Other races had settled on Earth…
All capital had flooded into the metropolitan area — safer from monster threats and dense with infrastructure.
And at the center of it all were the hunters, who had risen to the very top of society.
High-rank hunters especially were practically walking corporations.
The place where those who'd seized social status and enormous wealth gathered to live — and among those places, the one with the highest concentration of high-rank hunters — was Pangyo.
She used to ask me to move in all the time…
Jang-mi had always pestered me to relocate to Pangyo.
But every time, I'd refused flat out.
Even after retiring, I had no desire to live surrounded by hunters.
If every neighbor I ran into was a hunter, retirement didn't seem like it would be particularly peaceful.
And yet, to end up coming here like this…
People's lives really don't go the way you'd expect.
"……"
I let the thoughts drain away and watched the scenery blur past.
***
"Passengers? We've arrived."
The taxi driver's voice broke the silence, and Jang-mi, who'd been sleeping with her head against the window, slowly lifted it.
I followed her out the door.
The moment I stepped outside, the gleaming expanse of the apartment complex filled my vision.
I'd been here a handful of times before, at her invitation.
This place always had a way of making you feel small…
Maybe it felt even more so now that my body was smaller…
"Shall we?"
Jang-mi took the lead.
She squinted at the harsh sunlight pouring down overhead and raised one hand to shade her eyes.
Her pale, white skin stood out sharply in the light.
The faint glint of sharp canines between slightly parted lips. Long, slender ears poking through her hair.
The memory of her lips pressing against my neck earlier — the sensation of blood being drawn — surfaced, and I absently ran my palm over the spot.
"……"
As I'd mentioned before, various other races had settled on Earth after the Gate incident.
And she was a half-blood — born between a human and a vampire.
Walking through the complex, I let my gaze drift around casually.
An elf returning from grocery shopping. Beastfolk with twitching ears, deep in conversation.
A landscape where different races mingled together as a matter of course.
Before long, she stopped in front of a familiar building and punched in the lobby code with practiced fingers.
The automatic door slid open, cool air wrapping around us, and Jang-mi's expression finally eased a little.
I trotted along behind her and stepped into the elevator.
Beep— Beep— Beep— Ding~
The door lock chimed, and we stepped inside her apartment.
The moment we were through the entryway, Jang-mi set her bag down on the floor and knelt on one knee in front of me.
"Shin-a, here. Take your shoes off."
With careful hands, she untied my laces and slipped my shoes off.
"……"
This woman — someone who had been a close friend for years — treating me with such painstaking, almost tentative care was a little disorienting.
Jang-mi guided me to the living room sofa, settled me down gently, then picked up the remote and turned on the TV.
A children's cartoon started playing on the screen.
"……?"
She bent down to meet my eyes.
Her red irises turned toward me.
"Stay here just a moment, okay? Auntie needs to make a quick call…?"
Being treated like a child was a bit awkward, but I simply nodded.
"Okay."
***
After she disappeared into the bedroom.
I sank deep into the sofa and stared blankly at the screen.
The characters on screen were making ridiculous faces and cackling away.
A thoroughly childish cartoon — the kind only a small kid would watch.
Did Jang-mi actually think I'd enjoy something like this?
"……"
Somehow I'd ended up here, swept along by her…
But no matter how old a friendship it was, I had absolutely no intention of freeloading and being a burden indefinitely.
A free meal always comes back to bite you.
I'd feel better if I at least pulled my own weight somehow.
What could I actually do right now?
I propped my chin in my hand and turned the question over carefully.
Okay, first thing.
I could run dungeons.
Slitting monsters' throats and hauling back magic stones — that I could do in my sleep.
"……"
Right, skip that one.
"Hmmmm…"
What else was there.
After a long stretch of thinking, a hollow sigh escaped me.
"Oh."
Did I… not actually have any useful skills?
I'd spent my entire life rolling around in the hunter industry from the moment I awakened.
The current me had not a single trade skill that normal people learned, not a shred of real-world work experience.
The only thing I had to my name was the housekeeping I'd picked up living alone…
I looked around the living room with a flicker of hope.
But the floor without a speck of dust, the furniture arranged with ruler-straight precision — it all gleamed back at me as if mocking my ambition.
"……"
I slumped down onto the floor in a daze.
I'm way more useless than I thought.
But the grit of a former hunter doesn't break that easily.
Right. When you're lacking, you grow.
The sense of crisis — that I couldn't just become a freeloader mooching off someone — pulled me back to my feet.
I gathered my mana and drew it toward my fingertips.
A faint, tingling sensation gathered at the tips of my fingers.
My innate trait: Lightning Magic.
An ability built for combat at its core, but with fine enough control, it could serve in everyday life too.
The name 'Lightning Magic' was always a bit vague, honestly.
But in the hunter world, a vague name like that meant potential.
If my trait had been something like 'Electric Ball,' I'd have spent my whole life lobbing little sparks at things.
But mine was Lightning Magic.
The ability to manipulate electricity itself.
I worked the current pooling at my fingertips into something thin and precise — fine as a thread.
Then I pressed my fingers to my temple.
Crackle—
A sharp, electric sensation, and my eyes began to emit a blue glow.
In an instant, my blurry vision snapped into focus as if forcibly calibrated, and my sluggish thoughts began to accelerate at a startling rate.
This was a self-buff using electricity.
An applied technique that forcibly overclocked the brain's processing speed.
But this level of precision was only possible because of the hard-won know-how I'd accumulated crossing life-and-death lines for years.
A versatile ability has no ceiling — but it's difficult to control.
Either way, if I used this right, there'd be plenty of uses outside of combat.
For instance — concentrate electricity in my legs, run at superhuman speed, and do delivery work?
Or become a temporary power source when an appliance broke down…
Anyway, a baseless confidence that I could do something — anything — began to well up inside me.
I squared my shoulders with a satisfied air and scanned the living room once more.
Looking for something to prove this overflowing motivation against.
But the swagger didn't last long.
"……"
At some point — I hadn't noticed when — Jang-mi was standing at the bedroom doorway, staring at me with dead eyes.
Blue current was still flickering at my irises, leaving faint afterimages.
In my accelerated state, I was about to ask her, in a voice far clearer and more confident than usual —
Whether there was anything I could help with.
But before my mouth could open, she moved faster.
"Sh— Shin-a…!?"
She came at me with a face drained of all color.
Closing the distance in an instant, she grabbed both my wrists.
"What on earth are you doing — that's dangerous…!"
"This is… I was applying my trait to—"
"Putting electricity to your own head…! What would you have done if something went wrong!"
Jang-mi's eyes were trembling.
Still gripping my wrists, she continued in the tone of someone talking a child down.
"Now — sit right here and just watch television. Okay? Dangerous things are absolutely, absolutely not allowed…!"
Pinned under the sharp edge of her desperation, I felt the pride and drive I'd been carrying as a former hunter deflate like a punctured balloon.
The blue current that had been stimulating my brain scattered and vanished in an instant.
In the end, I let her steer me back into the depths of the sofa, and meekly gave the only answer I could.
"…Yes."
Jang-mi checked — several times over — that I was truly settled down before she finally let out a long breath of relief.
"Haah……"