To Jurim, the mom café was an all-purpose childcare vending machine for novice fathers. He had begun to deeply respect the kind women who practically lived there.
It was just as Jurim, after worrying over this and that, was about to touch the egg.
“……?”
He stopped short and clenched his left hand. He had definitely felt a chilly coldness inside his glove.
Startled, Jurim pulled his hand away.
‘Phantom pain?’
In the meantime, Gru slipped the egg neatly into his pocket.
His gloves were a custom-made product crafted by Amakusa, an S-rank creator. There was no way they would react to any external shock or change.
“Gru, wait a moment.”
Just as Jurim was about to touch the egg again—
- I’m gonna be~ ketchup~ I’m gonna be~ dancing~ Dashing tomato~
A bright kids’ phone ringtone rang out.
“Yes, this is Gru.”
Gru, who had always watched Jurim answer his calls, had started replying, “This is Gru,” instead of “Hello.”
Jurim shook his head and tugged up the corners of his lips at Gru’s imitation of him.
At some point, Gru had begun absorbing and copying Jurim like a sponge, and because of that, Jurim was carefully monitoring his own behavior these days.
Meanwhile, a deliberately serious voice burst from the other end of the phone.
- It’s Uju.
“Mm-hmm.”
- You didn’t save my number? I even sent you a text…
“Mm? I did? I answewed your text yestewday too.”
- No, it’s fine as long as you saved it.
“Mm.”
- Anyway, you… Do you have any schedu—what’s it called? Anything scheduled these days?
Schedu… what?
“Mm-hmm. Gru has seven sketchbooks.”
- No, not sketchbooks! Schedule! I’m asking if you have any work!
“Work?”
He probably wasn’t talking about kindergarten, and since Uju had said he was in the industry as well, he must mean work related to Hunters.
Jurim glanced at him, but he only flipped through his tablet.
It had already been over two weeks since they had captured Gidan and Malikyan, but since then, Gru hadn’t even been allowed down to the training room, let alone a dungeon.
Jurim clearly had no intention of letting him do anything remotely resembling a Hunter’s work.
Tch. Gru pushed out his lips.
“I don’t.”
- I figured. Come to where I’m filming the day after tomorrow. It’s important to go around greeting everyone… I was dragged around everywhere myself for quite a while.
“I see.”
Uju went on at length about the circumstances of the industry he had seen and heard about.
But none of it made any sense to Gru, so he merely blinked and answered, “Mm-hmm,” over and over.
- So you have to come, okay? I’ll send you the location over messenger.
“Mm-hmm… I undewstand.”
As soon as he answered, a messenger window popped up.
- You absolutely have to come!
Uju ended the call after repeatedly impressing the importance of it upon him.
After checking the address, Gru stared for a long while at the word “studio.”
If he was in the industry, why was he going to a studio instead of a dungeon or training facility?
Gru tilted his head in puzzlement.
“That’s the kid from the amusement park? The one who called you pretty…?”
“Yes.”
The kid with the pitch-black hair and enormous eyes. Was his name Seo Uju? The boy had left quite an impression on Jurim.
To think a mere five- or six-year-old would smile sweetly and try to seduce someone by calling them pretty. What a little rascal.
Jurim stared at Gru without bothering to hide his displeasure.
“You like him that much?”
“He’s fun. And he’s smartew than my kindewgarten fwiends.”
Gru smiled bashfully. Since Uju was already working in society, he knew more than children his age and acted more maturely.
Ever since awakening, Gru had felt communication with his kindergarten friends becoming strained from the very beginning. With Uju, who was easier to talk to, he had quickly grown close.
“Hmm.” Jurim exhaled and rubbed his chin with his large hand. “Still, his in-laws are a bit…”
“Hm?”
Unable to follow Jurim’s abrupt train of thought, Gru merely tilted his head.
With his mouth pressed tightly shut, Jurim toyed with his glove, then lightly tapped the egg in Gru’s pocket.
Once again, a piercing chill briefly swirled inside his left hand.
His pitch-black eyes sank deeply. With his right hand, he pressed down firmly on the glove.
If the glove lost its function, he would begin merging with the Master of the 99th Floor once more. It was the result of forcibly sealing away an existence he could never hope to handle.
In the end, it meant that two souls inhabited one body, and there was no way a mere human soul could oppose the immense entity known as the Master of the 99th Floor.
His powerless soul was gradually being eroded, and the glove was merely a contingency measure to prevent that. There was no other way.
Jurim suddenly recalled what had happened back then.
In truth, not a single bit of his will had been reflected in taking the Master of the 99th Floor into his hand.
Looking back now, it seemed everything had simply been forced upon him.
Going to the Tower. Sealing the Master of the 99th Floor in his left hand. Being unable to enter the 100th Floor.
Only two members of the team had survived before the Master of the 99th Floor, including him.
When he bit his lip, the taste of blood—familiar by now—spread across his tongue. That familiar sense of despair.
Standing atop the corpses of countless comrades, Jurim had wished to turn back.
“We really have to go back now. The two of us can’t do this!”
But what had he said?
“Jurim—”
The memory of the Tower suddenly stabbed into him.
To erase the taste of blood lingering in his mouth, Jurim habitually drank Americanos like water.
If the glove was losing its function, he might have to meet Amakusa. The man was so elusive that Jurim wasn’t sure he could find him easily.
“Guild Mas’er…”
Perhaps because he sensed the heaviness settling over Jurim, the child fidgeting beside him burrowed into his arms.
“……?”
Gru clung to Jurim’s arm and grunted as though gathering energy. Then he smiled bashfully, as if asking how he was doing.
“What are you doing?”
Jurim flicked Gru lightly on the forehead with a smile. Gru clutched his forehead and puffed out his soft cheeks.
“Gru is being filial to Guild Mas’er.”
Filial? He would be satisfied if the child simply stopped causing trouble outside.
And yet, as strange as it was… when he was with the child, the leakage of mana and his fatigue disappeared.
It seemed Gru was doing something, but perhaps he couldn’t explain this one thing properly.
“Fwoosh! And then, pow! And ta-da, it happens!”
He merely repeated abstract and inscrutable explanations.
“Did Gru use a skill?”
“Nooo, it’s the Filial Piety Skill.”
‘Well, does it really matter?’
Jurim pulled Gru into his arms.
“Fine. Be filial to me. It’s been a tiring day.”
“Pat-pat?”
Jurim chuckled deep in his throat.
“Yeah.”
He was grateful for the tiny hands patting his back.
Little by little, he was learning that raising a child meant being able to receive this kind of comfort.
*
Fortunately, Jurim readily gave permission for Gru to visit the studio. He had refused to let him do anything Hunter-related, but was it all right for him to simply go out and play?
There was one condition: an adult had to accompany him.
Since the condition specified an adult, the underage Gidan was naturally disqualified, while Jurim was eliminated because of his interview schedule.
“Ah, hyung. Dan wants to go with Gru too.”
Gidan whined a little, but—
“Keep following Gru around and you’ll end up held back.”
Even for an S-rank, high school was a terrifying place.
As Jurim agonized over whom to send as Gru’s guardian, Gidan spoke up.
“If it’s a filming set, wouldn’t Nayeon noona be the best choice?”
And so, Nayeon was selected to accompany Gru.
When Gru climbed into the round, adorable car, Nayeon handed him a drink featuring a cute character.
While she entered the address into the navigation system, Gru took a long slurp of the drink and exhaled.
“Wow!”
Orange Pororo was the best children’s drink, after all!
While he was freshly moved by the tangy children’s beverage, Nayeon took a whole bunch of pictures of Gru and uploaded them to social media.
“Ah, should we take one together?”
Gru nodded.
Nayeon took a selfie with Gru and—
[With our Gru, whom I love so, so much!]
—added the caption.
The number of hearts shot up in an instant, and comments such as “He’s so cute,” and “Unni, you’re beautiful today too,” began appearing.
There were occasional pictures of Gru on Nayeon’s social media.
‘Oh…’
His lips melted into a soft smile, as if he could see her affection for Gru with his own eyes.
‘It would be nice if noona could register as a guardian too.’