Chapter 9

With empty meat plates piled up high on the table, Huina and Mina finally began a proper conversation.

It was commonly said that eating together was a good way of building rapport. In that sense, the two of them had built up an immense amount of trust as they tore into meat slice after meat slice.

As a result, Huina found that she could be honest with the huntress.

“How much will all of this cost, I wonder? It’ll be expensive, won’t it?” Huina said, looking worried.

Mina cupped her chin, elbow on the table.

“Why do you ask? Do you mean to buy the meal?”

“Yes. You saved me, so I was intending to treat you as thanks.”

“Forget it. I didn’t ask you to come all the way here so you could buy me food. And I had no idea you were so talented at cooking meat... Frankly, I probably should be paying you,” Mina said, praising Huina’s skills to the skies. “If you hadn’t grilled the meat right in front of me, I might have believed you’d drugged it or something. That’s how good it was.”

Huina scratched her cheek awkwardly. It hadn’t been drugs, but there had been something more than simple dexterity involved.

“Excuse me, Miss Woo,” Huina said.

Mina waved her hand in a friendly way. “Hey, that’s no way to address me. I’m twenty-six. You’re younger than me, aren’t you? It sure seems like it. Just call me Mina.”

“R-right. M-Mina, then.”

“Go on, then.”

Mina leaned back like a sleepy lioness and watched Huina’s lips, apparently ready to hear what she wanted to say.

Huina began cautiously.

“Actually... This is also a skill of mine.”

“What? I thought you only had a skill for collecting herbs. Cooking meat is also a skill for you? That’s amazing,” Mina said, her eyes gleaming with amusement. She lowered her voice. “You’re a Housekeeper. Does that mean everything with regard to housekeeping has a skill?”

Huina considered her skills carefully, then nodded.

She had access to all sorts of skills. There was one that allowed her to be good at grilling meat, a skill that leveled up as she cleaned her home, and even one that had given her a place to stay.

“There’s a lot that I don’t know yet, but they’re all skills that have to do with daily life.”

“I never envied anyone for their powers before, but that meat-cooking skill really has me jealous...” Mina licked her lips, apparently recalling the taste of the pork belly.

“Why don’t we order just one more serving of meat, and two of pork rinds? This time we’ll eat slowly as we talk. Why don’t we have a drink, too?”

“If you can eat more, sure. Cooking the meat is no hassle. As for the alcohol... Hmm. I’d like some too.”

She’d been feeling a hankering for some soju after all that greasy pork belly.

Mina made her seventh additional order, and soon they began to drink and talk in earnest with meat and rinds sizzling on the grill between them.

“Cheers! It’s our first glass!” Mina said, then downed her first glass in one go.

Huina did the same. She’d been pretty thirsty. The stinging, sweet taste floated up her throat. It felt like her greasy insides were being given a pleasant scouring.

“That’s good,” Huina said, smacking her lips and filling Mina’s glass as well as her own.

Mina’s smile broadened as the alcohol trickled into her cup.

“You must be a pretty good drinker.”

Huina actually drank more than most men. Some people said she drank like a whale, but she didn’t appreciate the comparison since she didn’t really enjoy drinking.

What was more, knowing how bothersome and potentially harmful a reputation as a good drinker could be to one’s social life, she pretended otherwise.

“Nope. I’m just average. I can drink a little, and that’s it...”

“Is that right? The way you swung that glass suggests otherwise...”

Mina was a high-ranked hunter, all right. She had very a good eye.

After the customary drinking talk was over, Huina felt her tongue grow lighter. She finally asked something she’d been wondering about all along.

“By the way, Mina, I’m not sure if I can ask you this.... But are System descriptions always so lazy?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, my skill descriptions are all vague and hard to understand. The skill that I used to cook the meat with, for example, is called The Master Chef’s Touch. The description simply says, ‘The finest ingredient is the touch of a master chef. An active skill.’ And that’s it,” Huina said, reading the description verbatim.

Mina, who’d been drinking her second glass, nearly spat her soju back out.

Huina quickly gave her some tissues, and Mina, choking loudly, replied, “The System can be ambiguous. Depending on how well you’ve understood the descriptions, the degree to which you can use them can change completely.”

“Is that right? But I’m not sure what part of my description can lend to further understanding.”

“You’re right. That’s peculiar. What about the other skills?” Mina asked.

Huina recalled something that had happened within the dungeon. She’d made a bed of plants after seeing the word “safely,” and the bed had really hidden her.

When she mentioned this, Mina nodded.

“Impressive. Your skills aren’t offensive in nature, so I really don’t know how to help you. But you’re on the right track to understanding the skills better, it seems.”

Before long, they’d emptied the bottle of soju.

“I’d like another bottle, please!” Huina called out.

The owner of the restaurant grinned ear-to-ear at the amount that the two of them had consumed. Offering a bottle of soda with the soju, she made a big fuss about this being a generous freebie.

Mina cupped her chin, unimpressed. Then she asked Huina, “So, what are you planning to do as a Housekeeper? Have you any plans?”

“What?”

This was an unexpected question, and it left her at a loss for words.

Mina looked flabbergasted as she chewed on a crispy pork rind.

“There are plenty of people who jump into dungeoneering after they become F-rank hunters, abandoning their jobs so they can ‘get rich quick.’ You haven’t thought about anything of that sort at all?”

“Uh...” Huina stammered.

Mina asked again, “I mean, there are even metahuman academies that claim to be able to turn civilians into metahumans, and they’re popular! Have you never thought about what you’d do after you became one? Your future kind of depends on it,” Mina said gravely.

Huina thumbed at her tiny glass without speaking.

Many thoughts suddenly filled her mind. Though she’d awakened as a metahuman, she’d unexpectedly lost her job and her apartment at the same time. That had thrown her for a loop. But that was just an excuse.

Huina knew that she’d really been avoiding giving actual thought to how to specifically make use of her newfound abilities.

“Actually... I don’t really want to do all the things that a hunter usually does,” she said frankly.

Thanks to her D-rank brother, she knew just how dangerous and tough such work was. The monsters had taken her parents away, leaving only a single sibling. And when her brother went AWOL for weeks or months at a time on another one of his money-making trips, she would burn with anxiety inside.

“I have an older brother, you see. He’s working as a D-rank hunter,” Huina said, filling her glass. “Our parents died ten years ago, and we’ve only had each other to rely on since. My brother is already exposed to plenty of danger as a hunter, and I don’t want to do the same thing he’s doing. I would love to tell him to quit if I could, but that’s realistically not possible... But at least I can stay alive, and be someone he can come back to at any time if he needs to.”

Having been bereft of her parents at an early age and been through all sorts of terrible experiences, Huina only had one wish—to live a normal life with her brother. She didn’t want to have to worry about a family member dying or getting hurt out of the blue.

She sipped her soju and ate a piece of meat. The meat that she’d grilled had gone slightly cold, but it was still chewy and juicy.

“I just want a stable job at a good company and to hold onto that job for a very long time. Adventurous things like being a hunter don’t suit me.”

Mina groaned at this sincere answer.

“Why do I get the feeling you’ve made me privy to some very personal information?”

“It’s not like that. This is no big deal,” Huina said casually.

There were more people than could be counted who had lost family or friends to the monsters ten or so years ago. Huina wasn’t the only one who’d been through such hardship.

The people of this era all lived hard, sad lives.

“But still, your skills are too good to be wasted,” Mina said, unable to give up on Huina’s abilities.

Huina waved a hand at her.

“I’d need to work as a hunter to make money. What could I accomplish with skills that make me good at cooking meat? It’d be better for me to work at a restaurant like this... Oh! Maybe I really should. But then again, that sort of work is too tough to continue doing for long.”

Having reached various conclusions on her own, she declared that an ordinary office job was what suited her best.

Mina furrowed her brow.

“Huina, isn’t your outlook regarding people like us—metahumans—a bit too narrow? The term ‘hunter’ does refer to a specific line of work for metahumans, but there are other things that metahumans can do. Most metahumans work as hunters, and then people erroneously reach the conclusion that all of us are hunters.”

Huina grew puzzled. “What else can we do?”

Mina banged her fist on the table.

“First, tell me about your skills. I know it’s rude to ask for such details, but you don’t seem willing to make proper use of them at all.”