Chapter 354: Weapon Management (4)

After receiving the spear I’d left for repairs from Areum, I handed over the shield this time, giving her a vivid review of its use.

I told her about how I engaged in a ‘duel’ using my sword and shield against Do Yehee, whom I met in the black mud swamp.

“Hmm, so you’re sayin’ you went head-to-head with an Earth Mage while holdin’ this shield…?”

“…Something like that.”

“Hmm, gotcha. Seems like there aren’t any major performance issues. Might be okay to make a few more.”

That’s what she said as she took the shield and started working on it with an airbrush.

Even though I confessed honestly that I used the shield for ‘beating people up’ without any lies or excuses, she was engrossed in maintaining the shield without any particular change in her expression.

“…Uh, are you okay?”

“Huh? What’s up.”

“Well, you gave me this shield to hunt monsters, but I ended up hunting people instead of monsters. I was wondering if you felt uncomfortable about that….”

“What are you talking about now? Was the reason your face looked so stiff, like you’d eaten a bug, just because of that?”

As I nodded with a tense expression, she waved her hand dismissively and replied.

“Weapons are tools, it depends on the user. How could the person who made it possibly worry about it until they die? You really think the strangest thoughts, Unniya.”

“…….”

“Dungeons are where rough girls fight and tear monsters apart. It’s natural that people might get into fights and beat each other up sometimes, right? It’s not weird at all, so don’t sweat that fucking nothing.”

“…Really?”

“Besides, if you beat someone up, Unniya, it means they deserved it! Right? Ahahat!”

…Well, I certainly agreed that the woman I hit deserved it, so I just nodded in response.

“Seeing you worry about pointless stuff like this, Unniya, you’re kinda cute sometimes.”

“…Are you complimenting me?”

“If you were a guy, Unniya, I might’ve fallen for you ages ago! …Not that it’s possible, ahahat!”

“Ah, Ahaha….”

Every time she made jokes like that, completely disregarding gender, I felt a strange sense of guilt churning inside me.

But stringing Areum along like this, pretending to be a woman, wasn’t a good long-term strategy either.

When the day comes that I have to reveal I’m a male Awakened Hunter to the world, I’d at least have to tell Areum the truth before then.

I couldn’t let her feel betrayed when she saw me on the news later.

The problem was, with Areum constantly making these gender-blind jokes, the timing for revealing the truth kept getting pushed back.

Who in the world could possibly say, ‘Hey, I’m actually a guy,’ right after hearing something like, ‘I might’ve fallen for you if you were a guy’?

If only I could use the Desire Charm right about now, I could have at least gotten a glimpse into Areum’s true feelings. But unfortunately, I’d just used it on Eunbyul at midnight, so not being able to use it now was a real bummer in many ways.

Honestly, the once-a-day cooldown felt pretty long when you looked at it from this angle.

“…Unniya?”

“……Yeah?”

“Why are you staring so hard? Is there some soot on my face?”

Lost in thought, I’d been staring at Areum instead of the shield for a long time, so she naturally reacted with awkwardness.

Since I couldn’t just tell her what was on my mind, I quickly came up with an excuse to cover up my staring.

“Just admiring how cool you look fixing the shield, Areum.”

“…Oh, is that so.”

“Yeah.”

Areum replied in a slightly subdued voice, avoiding my gaze as she handed me the shield she was holding. I took it in one hand, now cleaned of mud and scratches, back to its pre-use condition.

“I thought, maybe, since your expression changed so weirdly right after I made that joke, Unniya…”

“…Pfft, no way.”

“…So, you don’t think… weirdly of me just ’cause I made a joke… right…?”

“Don’t worry, I don’t think that way.”

Whether it was misfortune or good luck, my worries seemed to be nothing more than a joke to Areum, nothing more, nothing less.

In the slightly awkward silence that followed, Areum continued polishing the shield with polishing compound.

“Aside from a few scratches, there’s nothing much to fix. There are some shallow dents, but I’ll fix those all at once next time you bring it in.”

“Okay.”

“Looking here, there are definitely traces that suggest it hit a person. If you look closely at this part…”

It was fortunate I’d confessed honestly instead of making up a story about fighting Mudrellos or Stonrellos.

She had an eye sharp enough to notice details like that; if I’d told some flimsy lie about something trivial, Areum, while fixing the shield, would have been the first to notice something was off.

Trust was pretty important between hunters and blacksmiths, so lying would have been a bad move all around.

Besides, I didn’t really feel like lying to Areum.

Lying to someone whose innocence was so strangely appealing felt inherently wrong, almost sinful.

“I-I’m done fixing the shield… so if you don’t need anything else, you should take it and go. Or maybe you wanna leave your greatsword too?”

“I’ll leave that next time. Compared to the shield, it hasn’t worn down much, probably because of the material.”

“O-Okay then… You must be busy, so hurry and go….”

“Uh, yeah….”

After the shield maintenance was finished, the air between us grew strangely awkward as Areum kept avoiding my gaze. Unable to stand the peculiar atmosphere, I practically fled the shop.

I never figured out the reason for that strangely awkward vibe, not even by the time I got home.

Soo Areum’s Weapon Workshop, The Flame of Creation.

After practically kicking Kim Sungchul out of the shop, she sat down on the counter stool and let out a soft sigh.

“Ugh, you idiot…. Why did you have to say weird stuff like that….”

No matter how cool ‘Unniya’ was, why did she blurt out something strange like saying she might have fallen for them if they were a guy?

Soo Areum clutched her head, groaning softly on the shop stool, regretting her foolish actions.

“Unniya… They won’t misunderstand me because of that weird thing I said, right…?”

Strictly speaking, it was closer to accidentally blurting out the truth than a misunderstanding, but she was dismissing the feeling as mere confusion.

The fact that ‘Unniya’ had saved her life in the dungeon, or that they had tested the weapon’s performance for her.

And for various other large and small favors, the feelings towards Sungchul Unniya were subtly blossoming in Soo Areum’s heart.

As these feelings grew without her realizing it, she found herself zoning out or daydreaming multiple times a day.

The one feeling the most confused by these strange emotions was none other than Soo Areum herself.

“Unniya is definitely a woman… So why does my heart pound whenever I see Unniya? I just don’t understand…”

Although Sung Taekyung was wearing a mask, playing the role of the guild hunter Kim Sungchul, there were elements that couldn’t be hidden just by concealing his identity.

His charm as a man, his masculine aura, and the overflowing yang energy that couldn’t be contained were all factors that couldn’t be hidden by a mask of unknown origin.

As a result, he had inadvertently half-bewitched the shop owner, Soo Areum.

Ever since he saved her life in the dungeon, Soo Areum had already felt a strong liking and admiration for the guild hunter Kim Sungchul, and as she saw him more often, that feeling grew bit by bit.

At first, she thought it was just strong affection being expressed that way, but as time went on, her heart pounded harder every time she was in front of Kim Sungchul.

She hadn’t yet realized that this was the beginning of love.

The reason she couldn’t recognize this blatant and obvious feeling was, unsurprisingly, the clearly visible barrier of gender.

Having been immersed in dwarf culture since childhood, the concept of same-sex love was completely incomprehensible to her.

Soo Areum couldn’t possibly understand how she, a woman, could fall for ‘Sungchul Unniya,’ another woman.

If Sung Taekyung had revealed his true identity as a man from their first meeting, she would have certainly recognized her feelings as love.

But he hadn’t corrected Soo Areum’s mistaken assumption that he was a woman during their first encounter.

Because of that, only confusing emotions continued to grow within her heart.

“Unniya… You’re not going to stop coming to my shop just because you heard something weird from me, are you…?”

That bold back as he ushered her out of the shop to prevent a disturbance when she was in trouble.

The words, ‘I might fall for you,’ that had slipped out unintentionally today, prompted by his appearance, which seemed particularly cool today.

That the words weren’t just a joke was a fact that Soo Areum herself hadn’t yet realized.