Chapter 42

Chapter 42

I stopped staring at Jeong Seojin and turned my head back toward Avan. The moment our eyes met, Avan began speaking again.

“The last and third reason… I am here is thanks to a certain item you recently acquired, Master.”

“…Huh?”

This was something I hadn’t expected at all. I put the pear Mr. Yoon Juyeong had naturally handed me into my mouth and looked at Avan with a puzzled expression.

“You must have obtained a certain item recently.”

“Mmph mmm….”

“Master, it sounds like you said ‘what do you mean’… I think that man is talking about the reward item you got recently.”

“Huh?”

“‘Gardener’s Scissors of Life.’”

Ah, no way.

Only then did I recall the antique-looking gardener’s scissors that had come as a dungeon clear reward. I’d definitely left them on the kitchen table before heading to Heewon Guild…

“Ugh, mm.”

I should probably swallow what’s in my mouth before speaking. I chewed and swallowed the pear in my mouth with combat efficiency, then opened my mouth again.

“Are you… really talking about the reward I got from clearing the dungeon?”

“Yes. The scissors you obtained, Master… to put it simply, they are a key item for summoning an S+-Rank item called ‘Avan Dungardner.’”

Saying that, Avan pulled a familiar object from the inner pocket of the clothes he was wearing.

The short scissors, with a slightly vintage feel and an antique design, the kind a gardener or florist might use, were definitely the ‘Gardener’s Scissors of Life’ I had left on the kitchen table.

“No, hold on. You’re saying you’re an item right now? And an S+-Rank one at that?”

While I was staring blankly at the ‘Gardener’s Scissors of Life’ Avan was holding, Jeong Seojin, who had focused on another point, asked with a face that looked unusually flustered. Only then did I recall another shocking fact I had heard.

‘He said he’s an S+-Rank item called ‘Avan Dungardner,’ didn’t he, just now?’

“Yes. I am, after all, an independent being belonging to your ‘Garden,’ Master… So to summon me into this world, you must use the methods already employed here to bring in ‘external things.’ For example, summoning me as an item through a specific key item, like the ‘Gardener’s Scissors of Life’ I’m holding now… or perhaps calling me as a ‘monster’ within a dungeon.”

Either way, it seemed a bit too extreme. One side is an item, the other is a monster. I stared at Avan with a shocked expression and moved my lips.

“So, in the future, I would be grateful if you would treat me as a valuable item belonging to you, Master. That is, after all, the truth of the matter.”

Avan finished speaking with a clean face that showed not a single hint of emotional disturbance.

Honestly, it was hard to believe that the person who had just dropped the bombshell that the person standing before everyone could talk, think, and exchange emotions, but was actually an item, not a real person, could look so composed.

* * *

What is a dating rumor?

Roughly speaking, a dating rumor can be explained as a rumor that someone has been in a romantic relationship with someone else, or that they are in love with each other.

So, the key point of a dating rumor is generally a love based on the sexual affection of two humans.

In that sense, I couldn’t hide my utter dismay over the dating rumor that had arisen between Mr. Yoon Juyeong and me.

A dating rumor? For me, who, despite being in my late twenties, had only ever brushed lips with a boy my age a few times during my school days? And with a man who calls me Master?

‘If only Mr. Yoon Juyeong weren’t calling me Master, I might have just let it slide.’

If the relationship between Mr. Yoon Juyeong and me weren’t a master-servant relationship bound by a skill, it would have been a fairly plausible rumor. In reality, setting aside that damn master-servant relationship, the situation between Mr. Yoon Juyeong and me was indeed the kind that could spark a dating rumor.

“First of all, a clarification regarding the dating rumor will be made soon, as Hunter Yoon Seohee wishes. And we will handle things at the guild level to prevent any personal information about Hunter Yoon Seohee from leaking, so you don’t need to worry too much.”

“I’m truly grateful and sorry… For this to happen on my first day joining the guild…”

“It’s not your fault, Hunter Yoon Seohee. Rather, the problem is the Hunter Daily, which is more interested in our private lives than in the hunters’ achievements.”

Guild Master Kang Mujin maintained a consistently calm attitude regarding the sudden dating rumor between me and Mr. Yoon Juyeong.

Honestly, yesterday when the dating rumor broke, I kept quiet and said nothing, but then this morning, a whole day later, I suddenly got a text asking if I could visit the guild master’s office. You have no idea how flustered I was.

“Even though I thought there was no way, I was anxious, wondering if maybe he was going to say something about my relationship with Mr. Yoon Juyeong.”

Even as I thought that Guild Master Kang Mujin, whom I’d met in person when signing the contract, was never that kind of person, the truth was that the dating rumor had burst so suddenly and caught me off guard that I ended up imagining all sorts of things.

But thankfully, Hunter Kang Mujin didn’t press or interrogate me about my relationship with Mr. Yoon Juyeong, just as I’d expected.

Instead, all he asked was whether I wanted to suppress the dating rumor or let it be.

“Honestly, since it’s true that I’m living with Mr. Yoon Juyeong, I was wondering how I should answer if someone called me out on that part…”

Of course, given the nature of the hunter industry, which basically prioritizes strength above all else, there wasn’t much interest in sappy stuff like cohabitation between men and women… but that was only within the hunter industry, not outside it.

“The moment I got a text from the orphanage director asking if it was true, I was sweating cold bullets.”

Here I was, bragging loudly about how I’d raise the money for Yujin’s braces, and right after that, what blows up? A dating rumor with a male hunter.

Of course, as soon as I got the text, I immediately explained as hard as I could that it absolutely wasn’t true, that Hunter Daily was pulling their usual trash-journalist stunt again.

The problem was that the text I got from the director afterward said, “From what I can see, Mr. Yoon Juyeong has a gentle impression, so he seems fine.”

“No matter how I look at it, she doesn’t seem to believe my explanation at all…”

In this situation, if the director ever found out that Mr. Yoon Juyeong and I were living together…

I didn’t even want to imagine it. Knowing the director’s conservative personality, she might start making a fuss about pushing the two of us into marriage right away.

“It’s actually possible.”

In fact, back when I was in school, the moment the director found out I had a boyfriend — someone I’d barely even held hands with — she immediately started talking about passing down the wedding dress she wore in her youth.

I shook my head vigorously, recalling the wedding dress hidden deep in the director’s closet. No matter what, I absolutely had to suppress this dating rumor. By any means necessary.

“You probably don’t need to worry too much. Hunter Daily has spread fake news with a ‘deny it if you can’ attitude more than once or twice, so everyone who read the article is probably half-doubtful anyway.”

“Hmm. Hunter Daily really is… a bit like that, in many ways.”

I agreed that, at the very least, Hunter Daily’s credibility was highly questionable. As Guild Master Kang Mujin said, they were a newspaper that had repeatedly run garbage articles with that same ‘deny it if you can’ approach.

Actually, when I thought about it calmly, even I, when it came to Hunter Daily articles that weren’t about dungeon strategies or government guidelines, usually just brushed them off with, “Who even believes their articles?”

“Thinking about it that way, it does seem like it’ll work out somehow.”

Right. As they say, if you look at everything negatively all the time, even problems that could be solved end up unsolvable. I straightened my shoulders, which kept wanting to droop, and clenched both hands tightly.

“Okay, the dating rumor problem will definitely work out somehow. And…”

If I solved the dating rumor problem, the next issue was the ball of light floating restlessly right above my shoulder. I snatched the light orb, which had been circling me frantically for a while now, like swatting a mosquito.

“Hm? Hunter Yoon Seohee?”

“Ah, sorry. I thought I saw a fly buzzing around… Guess it was my imagination.”

Of course, it wasn’t my imagination. There really was a fly buzzing around. It was just caught in my grip now.

I slowly rose from my seat, keeping the light orb — which kept squirming even in my hand — firmly clenched.

“Well, since the additional contract is all filled out and we’ve finished talking about the dating rumor… I’ll be going now. I can’t keep a busy person tied up.”

“I wasn’t particularly busy, so you don’t need to worry, but I suppose Hunter Yoon Seohee has things to do as well, so I won’t stop you. Please take care on your way.”

“Yes. Thank you, Guild Master.”

Even though we’d only met two days ago at most, I left the guild master’s office right after offering my sincere thanks to Hunter Kang Mujin, who had maintained a polite attitude in every moment we’d spent together.

And even then, the ball of light caught in my hand was still squirming restlessly.

I opened my hand and let the ball of light go, then immediately growled its name in a low voice.

“Avan.”

The ball of light, which had been flitting around my head distractingly the whole time, finally stopped moving and came to rest right over my chest. No, wait — if it could stop like this, I had no idea why it had been flying around so frantically just a moment ago.

Even if no one else could see it except me, it was still a problem when it pulled off such flashy aerial maneuvers that drove me crazy.