Sung-Il-Kook discovered that being kidnapped was considerably less exciting than it sounded.
Forget the dramatic dungeons, the iron cages, or the torture chambers of legend; there was no ominous castle here, crackling under a sky of jagged lightning. Instead, there was only a very ordinary farm, and that absolute normalcy somehow made everything infinitely worse.
He sat on the farmhouse porch with his wrists freshly rubbed raw, a bowl of stew in his hands, and seven pigs staring at him through the fence. He had counted them three times. Not because he cared about pigs. Because it was something to do.
The woman sat on the step beside him, eating directly from a cooking pot.
"I’m Brina," she said between mouthfuls.
"Brina what?"
"Just Brina."
"That’s suspicious."
"So is your ability."
"...Fair."
Sung-Il tasted the stew, desperately wanting it to be terrible, a properly vile, kidnapper’s gruel that actually matched the bitter depth of his suffering. Instead, the rich broth tasted achingly like something his grandmother might have made, and he hated the comfort it forced upon him.
"You were at the Guild," he said. "At my test."
"Yes."
"You collected my work slip."
"Yes."
"Why?"
She set the pot down & said hesitantly, "Because my ability makes me cause some trouble to me. I thought yours might help."
"I don’t know enough to promise that."
"We’ll see." She looked at him for a long moment. "I was going to ask you to talk to me. But you were walking behind me for six streets, and then you ran into a dead end, and I made a quick decision."
"You made it badly."
"Yes."
Sung-Il blinked. "...Is that an apology?"
"It’s the closest I get." She pushed a loaf of bread toward him. "I shouldn’t have tied you up. I’m sorry. The farm was closer than the watch guard post, but I could have asked you first. I’ll give you your things back, and you can go."
She nodded toward the gate.
It was open. It had been open the whole time.
Sung-Il looked at it. Then at his half-finished bowl. Then at his empty pockets.
"Stay if you like," Brina said. "My pig enclosure is falling apart. I need help fixing the fence. You get a bed, three meals and a night’s sleep. Then you can decide."
"Three meals?"
"One meal for me. I eat once a day. But I can feed a guest."
Sung-Il looked at the gate again. Then at the pigs.
A pig grunted.
"...I’m only staying because I’m broke," he said.
"That’s why most people take jobs." Brina said jokingly
"I’m taking this one under protest."
"Understood."
He picked up the bread.
"Is the bed any good?"
"It’s a bed."
"I’ll stay."
By evening, Sung-Il had learned several things about farm life.
First, pigs had opinions.
The largest pig grunted.
"I’m not the villain here. She is."
Another grunt.
"You’re all very loyal."
The pig turned around and walked away.
"Traitor."
Second, repairing a fence was much harder than it looked. Third, Brina never rested. She hauled water, repaired hinges, split firewood, and hefted sacks of feed as if they were pillows.
And fourth, something was wrong with her.
It was subtle. She would bend to pick up a feed sack and stop halfway, shifting her weight. She would sit down and immediately stand again. Once, when she thought no one was watching, she rubbed her lower back with one hand and made a face she quickly hid.
"You okay?" Sung-Il asked.
"I’m fine."
"You made a face."
"I’m fine."
"That was the face of someone who is not fine."
Brina picked up the bucket. "It’s nothing."
He could focus, wait two seconds, and get a reading. He kept his eyes on the fence.
He had followed her without asking. She had tied him up. If they were going to be less terrible to each other, somebody had to start.
That night, Brina served him another bowl and sat across from him at the table.
For the first time, Sung-Il got a clear, uninterrupted look at her. She was no impossible fantasy warrior born of legend; she was, unmistakably, a woman who had spent a grueling lifetime working under the open sky. Her hands were rough and calloused, and old, faded scars ran like pale rivers along her forearms. Even her armor spoke of survival rather than glory, patched together with so many different scraps of metal that it resembled a heavy, mismatched quilt.
She looked tired. Her confidence did not make that disappear.
She noticed him looking and tucked a fraying cuff out of sight. He knew the movement. He had spent years hiding the worst bits of his clothes in photographs.
"Good patch," he said.
"Terrible patch. Good thread."
"I’ve been hunting monsters for eleven years," she said.
"Eleven years? That explains the smell."
She looked at him.
He immediately regretted it. "I mean—"
She laughed.
It wasn’t an offended laugh. It was warm. It surprised him.
"You’re honest. Just a bit of an asshole"
"I’ve been told that."
"My ability is called Iron Gut."
Sung-Il leaned forward. "That sounds either amazing or disgusting."
"Both." She shrugged. "It lets me digest almost anything. Monster meat. Poison. Venom. Rotten food. Certain magical substances."
"Certain magical substances?"
"I once ate a piece of enchanted leather because I was starving."
He stared at her.
"You ate leather."
"It was surprisingly chewy."
"You’re not normal."
"What else does it do?"
"It converts some of what I eat into physical energy. That’s why I only need one meal a day. I run on whatever I swallow."
Sung-Il looked at the empty bowl, then at the woman across from him, and everything fell into place. The build. The endurance. The water barrel she had lifted.
"You’re basically a walking furnace."
"That’s one way of putting it."
He leaned back, mind racing. An ability that turned difficult food into energy. An ability that could process magical material. An ability that had grown through years of hunting.
For the first time, he understood something important about Elysara.
Abilities weren’t gimmicks; they were gifts, as they called them. They shaped entire lives. Brina had become a fighter because of hers. Someone else might become a healer. Someone else might become a king.
And Sung-Il...
He glanced at his own system.
[RECTUM ANALYSIS]
He shut the window at once.
"Damn it."
Brina frowned. "What?"
"Nothing."
Later, as Brina cleared the table, she stopped at the sink and put one hand on the counter. Just for a second. Then she shook it off.
"Brina?"
"I’m fine."
He’d had enough of that. But the look she gave him was so firmly shut that he let it go.
"Fine," he said. "But if you want to talk—"
"I’ll let you know."
She walked him to the guest room: a plain wooden room with a bed, a blanket, and a small window overlooking the pigpen. His shoes were sitting by the door. The door itself was unlocked.
"Sleep," she said. "We’ll start on the fence in the morning."
"And if I leave?"
"You can leave."
She said it like she meant it.
Sung-Il sat quietly on the edge of the bed, the gentle, sleepy grunts of the pigs outside drifting through the quiet night air. Through the pane of the window, he watched her solo trek back toward the farmhouse, catching the brief moment she stopped to rub her lower back a sudden, human gesture of exhaustion she only allowed herself when she believed no one was watching.
He laid down.
He took off his shoes and found a splinter in his sock. She had left a clean pair beside the bed, too big and carefully darned.
He would fix the fence before leaving. That was what they had agreed.
For once, tomorrow already had a job in it.
He turned toward the window.
"Tomorrow," he told the pigs, "I’ll leave."
A pig squealed.
"I’ll definitely leave."
Another squeal.
He paused.
"...Unless she makes the stew again."
The pig stared at him.
Sung-Il nodded solemnly.
"Don’t judge me."