Chapter 45

Chapter 45: Why Ria's Beauty Is Dangerous

I released my arms from around Ria.

"Do not feel anxious anymore."

"Okay......"

"Well then, it is humble, but let me show you around the house."

"It is not humble at all. It has charm and I like it."

Partial remodeling and repairs had been done, but it was still an old countryside house.

We took off our shoes and stepped up onto the wooden porch, then opened the living room door and went inside.

The exterior was worn, but the interior was relatively tidy.

"Wow, there are so many fascinating things. What is this?"

Ria pointed at the standing air conditioner and asked.

"It is a machine that produces cool air."

"Like a magic tool?"

"You could say that."

"Then what about that?"

Ria asked, looking at the wall-mounted TV.

"Try not to be startled."

"Hm? Alright."

I turned on the TV with the remote.

Ria flinched and took a step back.

I could not help laughing at her reaction.

"Seon-u......!"

"Sorry, sorry."

"You just thought I was a country bumpkin, did you not?"

"Not at all. Your reaction was just adorable."

"......Hmph! Anyway, is this some kind of memory device, like a magic crystal orb?"

"It has memory device functions, but generally it is a broadcast device that receives radio signals and displays them as video."

I showed her various channels.

Cityscapes, roads packed with cars, and more.

Ria was experiencing culture shock.

"Wow, this is amazing...... The scenery of your world is captured inside this thing. The buildings are incredibly tall. Are those the modern carriages of your world?"

She pointed at the cars in the city and asked.

"That is right. Modern carriages."

"The level of technological advancement is beyond what I imagined. The magical engineering in the world I lived in was at a very basic level."

"Technological advancement is not entirely a good thing. The environment has been severely polluted in proportion to that progress. Even the air quality is noticeably poor."

"That is true. The air does not feel particularly refreshing."

And this was the countryside, at that.

Setting that aside—

I turned off the TV and continued showing Ria around the house.

After the living room came the bedroom.

"This is my room."

A barren room with one bed and one wardrobe.

"I am a bit embarrassed that there is nothing here."

"What is there to be embarrassed about? I like it."

Ria then sat down on the bed.

"It is less soft than the bed in the Rift."

"The Rift bed is a high-end one. This is just the one I brought straight from my old studio apartment."

"Oh, you did not originally live here?"

"I lived and worked in the big city."

"I see. And did you......"

She hesitated to ask.

I could tell what she wanted to know.

"Whether I have parents or family?"

"Yes."

"My father passed away when I was in high school, and my mother is in a distant country. I have no siblings."

"Oh......"

My mother and father had both worked at the same large corporation. They dated and eventually married.

Then my father was pushed out during corporate restructuring and came down to this house to start farming.

My parents became a weekend couple for a while, but before long, my mother transferred to a company in America.

Their relationship grew distant after that, and they divorced when I was in the lower grades of elementary school, leaving me behind.

Custody went to my father, and I grew up under his care.

'Mother is the quintessential career woman.'

Work was all she knew.

Still, we met once a year.

And occasionally called to check in.

Even when I was attending culinary school in America, she supported my tuition and living expenses and spared no support until I became self-sufficient.

'Our mother-son relationship is not especially close, but it is not as if we are complete strangers either.'

Because of that, I had never resented or hated my mother.

She simply valued her work a little more than family.

Come to think of it, it had been a long time since we last spoke on the phone.

She still did not know I had become an Awakened.

Ria, having asked the question, watched me carefully.

"I asked something unnecessary. I am sorry."

"How is that unnecessary? Of course you should know. If anything, I should have told you sooner."

It had been difficult to bring up the topic of family.

I at least had my mother still alive, but Ria did not have that luxury, so I had not been able to broach the subject.

After the room tour, we looked around the yard as well.

There was a persimmon tree and a small vegetable garden beside it, though nothing had been planted.

Ria looked disappointed upon seeing it.

"It is a waste to leave this little garden empty. Shall I plant something?"

"We have plenty of fields back at the Rift house. I will just leave this one empty."

"Alright."

***

After the house tour, we stepped outside the front gate.

The purpose was a simple stroll around the countryside to show her the neighborhood.

"Seon-u, what are those stone pillars?"

"They are called utility poles. They support the power lines. The electricity flowing through those lines powers the TV, air conditioner, lights, and other things we saw earlier."

"I always thought electricity was just one attribute of offensive magic, but it can do all that too. How fascinating."

While I was explaining things one by one and showing her around—

We ran into one of the neighborhood grandmothers in an alley.

With so few households in this rural area, everyone in the village knew each other.

I had seen her since childhood.

"Hello, Grandmother."

"My, my! It has been so long, Seon-u. We live in the same village, so why is it so hard to see your face? You are barely ever home, it seems."

A warm Chungcheong Province dialect.

"That is true. I have been quite busy lately."

"What was it again, you are busy working as a chef these days?"

"That is right."

"But who is that pretty young foreign lady?"

She asked, looking at Ria.

"She is my girlfriend. Pretty, is she not?"

"She is really your girlfriend? Seon-u, you are quite the capable young man. Where on earth did you find such a beautiful girl? Goodness, how can anyone be that lovely? She is far prettier than those celebrities on TV."

"You are right. Ria is very pretty."

Ria was currently using the Sigil of Wisdom only with me.

So even though she was learning Korean, she was still at a basic level and would not be able to fully understand the grandmother's words.

However, having heard my replies and grasped the general flow of the conversation, Ria bowed her head to the grandmother and spoke in Korean.

"Thank you for the compliment."

"She even speaks Korean. What a beautiful voice too. Seon-u, will we be eating noodles soon?"

"Ha ha! I will do my best."

The grandmother left with a promise to see us again.

Then Ria asked me.

"Seon-u, what does she mean by whether we can eat noodles?"

"Uh......?"

Ria's Korean listening comprehension was better than I had expected.

The grandmother's question about eating noodles was a colloquial way of asking about a wedding.

"Um, I will tell you later."

"What? Now I am curious."

"Sorry, I will tell you later."

"Is it something difficult to say? Alright then."

I could not tell her, since I had answered the grandmother that I would do my best.

Revealing it before the proposal would halve the anticipation.

We then walked around the outskirts of the village.

That was when I noticed a delivery truck entering through a narrow back road, and its trajectory looked wrong.

'That truck is about to end up in the rice paddy.'

In situations like this, it was usually one of two things.

Either the driver was on their phone, or they were dozing off.

But looking at the driver, it was neither.

Their gaze was directed at us.

'Do not tell me they are staring at Ria in a daze?'

Right then—

THUNK!

One wheel finally slipped off the edge of the road.

The narrow back roads here were made of rural concrete, with a significant height difference between the road surface and the fields below.

"Watch out!"

By the time I shouted, the rear wheels had already gone off the edge and the truck was tilting toward the rice paddy.

It was too late.

Or so I thought, when Ria moved.

She dashed over like a bolt of lightning and braced the tilting cargo bed of the delivery truck with both hands outstretched.

Fortunately, we had been close enough to the vehicle that she was able to stop it from falling into the paddy in time.

Ria called to me.

"Seon-u, pull it onto the road."

"On it!"

I used Acresia's Absorption Skill to pull the front of the truck back onto the road.

Ria pushed the cargo bed upward.

The delivery truck settled safely back on the road without damage.

A young delivery driver stepped out and bowed 90 degrees to me.

"Are you a Hunter? That could have been a disaster. Thank you so much for your help......!"

"It was nothing."

He also thanked Ria, who was dusting off her hands as she came over from the roadside.

He bowed his head, then looked up at Ria.

He froze in a daze again.

"Ahem!"

When I cleared my throat, he snapped out of it and thanked us once more.

He insisted on compensating us and asked for my phone number.

I told him it was fine and sent him on his way.

"Ria, now do you understand?"

"Hm? Understand what?"

"How stunning your looks are."

"What do you......"

"The driver of that modern carriage just now nearly had an accident because he was staring at you in a daze."

"......"

As I suspected, bringing Ria here was a dangerous affair.

Next time, to prevent incidents like this, I would need to make Ria wear sunglasses and a mask as mandatory accessories.

"Eriksson does not call us Beauty and the Beast for nothing."

"That is not true. You are handsome, Seon-u."

"That is just because you are looking through rose-tinted glasses."

After our walk, we headed back to the countryside house.

We went inside, had a late lunch, drank some tea, and then made our way to the Gate leading back to the Rift house.

Before heading back, I asked Ria.

"How was it, now that you have seen it?"

"Hmm, I could really feel that it was a completely different world. The technology was even more advanced than I imagined, and everything was fascinating. Most of all, I was really happy that I got to see your home, Seon-u."

"I am glad you enjoyed it. I was secretly worried you might be disappointed since there was less to see than expected."

"No chance. Just thinking about coming back again already has me excited. You will bring me, right?"

"Of course."

And so, we returned to the Rift house through the Gate portal.

***

The Sword Saint and his companions began heading out west with Bell for reconnaissance.

The night before they departed, Ria, myself, and the S-Rank trio established guidelines for when the follow-up expedition arrived.

The guidelines were as follows.

First, the follow-up expedition would not be brought near the Rift house.

The reason was to protect Rin and the home.

Second, they would be taken to the restaurant site and made to camp in the surrounding area.

The plan was to sell food to the follow-up expedition camping near the restaurant site.

This also served as advance promotion for the future restaurant.

Ideally, I wanted the area around the restaurant site to become the established outpost for the Fourth Floor.

Third, the fact that I possessed a Gate skill capable of traveling outside the Rift would be kept secret.

If it became public knowledge, it could cause unnecessary complications, so I wanted to keep it confidential for the time being.

Fourth, any attempts to learn detailed information about Ria and me would be preemptively blocked.

This too would eventually come out, but for now, I did not want it known.

All of these guidelines were for the protection and peace of our family.

The S-Rank trio promised their full cooperation.

We also relocated the large tent the S-Rank trio had been using to the bedrock zone where the restaurant would be built.

The intention was to make it look as though the trio had been staying there from the start.

I also set up cooking equipment there so I could do business once the follow-up expedition arrived.

"Santos, hold down the fort here."

"Got it."

Santos was tasked with guarding the site while the other two went out on reconnaissance to find the follow-up expedition.

'Now then, time to seriously go about taming Horn Rabbits.'

The place with the most Horn Rabbits was, of course, the Cheorwon B ice cave.

To get there, I visited Artisan Oh Cheon-seok's workshop and purchased the cold-weather gear I had previously borrowed.

With my workshop VIP discount, the 100-million-won set came to 90 million won.

'I needed it anyway for the Glace Mushroom farming.'

Farming mushrooms while enduring extreme cold every time had been an absolute ordeal.

I suited up in the cold-weather gear and opened a Gate portal, picturing the ice dungeon in my mind.

As long as I accurately remembered the location and scenery of a Rift I had visited once before, I could open a Gate portal to it.

The ice dungeon portal materialized before me.

Whether I could actually tame Horn Rabbits was unknown, but I intended to try.

I stepped through the portal to execute my Horn Rabbit farm plan.