Chapter 4: Fire Spirit(3).

-Tick. -Tick.

The monotonous sound of the clock hands filled the silent room.

Seo Eunha glared at the wall clock with bloodshot eyes.

Every time she blinked her vision blurred, but she stubbornly refused to take her gaze off the clock.

Today.

Today was the day.

The day the spirit was scheduled to arrive, the day that might turn her life around 180 degrees.

Eunha moistened her parched lips with her tongue and swallowed dry saliva.

‘Will it really come? No, even if it’s a scam it should still come.’

But the sprout of doubt was not easily cut.

Spirit.

According to the information she had looked up, there was no Ascender who had actually seen a proper spirit.

Did it make any common sense to send such a precious being by regular CJ Logistics parcel?

‘Crazy bstard. No matter how I think about it that Mokinseoksim or whatever his name is is completely insane.’

It wasn’t even some special delivery, which meant it would just roll around in the cargo hold together with other houses’ water bottles or packs of toilet paper while being delivered.

[Time remaining until scheduled delivery: 5 minutes]

“Huu… 5 minutes. Exactly 5 minutes left.”

Eunha’s voice trembled slightly.

Her breathing had grown rapid enough for her to notice it herself, and her cheeks were burning as if they would burst.

Her heart rate had already easily surpassed 150 BPM long ago.

What if this was a scam?

What if inside the box there was a brick or trash, or a note saying ‘You got scammed you retard ㅋㅋ’?

‘No. That can’t be.’

Eunha clenched both fists tightly.

The other party hadn’t demanded even a single won from her.

They hadn’t tried to induce a deposit, nor had they stolen her personal information.

Above all, the current Seo Eunha was a perfect empty can that wouldn’t produce even a speck of dust no matter who tried to rob her.

There was no idiot who would carefully scam a beggar.

That single fact dominated Eunha’s brain.

If it were the usual Seo Eunha she would have written all kinds of pessimistic scenarios saying ‘there’s no free lunch in this world’.

Wasn’t she the same person who just until yesterday had been mocked on the party recruitment board with ‘Elementalist? Just setting up a scarecrow would be better, at least that one tanks ㅋㅋ’ and had cried her eyes and nose out?

But the hope she had tasted once was like a vicious drug.

Her reason had already flown away long ago.

Her expression was no different from that of a fanatic about to receive the cult leader of a pseudo-religion, or a chart addict who had poured all their assets into coins and was only waiting for a moonshot.

It was then.

“Hey! Seo Eunha! A parcel came, is this yours!?”

Her younger sibling’s shout from the living room.

She checked her smartphone.

It had arrived a full 3 minutes earlier than the scheduled time.

“Y-yeah! Delivery drivers are busy so they can arrive early…!”

Eunha almost had a fit as she sprang up from her seat like a spring.

The hand grabbing the doorknob trembled violently.

She took a big deep breath once, twice, three times in a row.

But her heart racing like crazy showed no sign of calming down.

Creak-!

When Eunha kicked the door open and went out to the living room, the first thing that entered her eyes was her younger sibling lying stretched out on the sofa watching YouTube on a laptop.

“Hey. Mom said… fck, you startled me!?”

The moment the sibling saw Eunha their eyeballs almost popped out as they opened their mouth wide in shock.

It was the expression of someone who had just seen a cockroach suddenly jump out wearing a tuxedo and politely handing over a business card.

“W-what? Are you crazy? Or did you get a boyfriend? Why the sudden dress…”

“Where’s the parcel!”

Intimidated by the aura of their older sister that they had never seen before, the sibling pointed a finger toward the entrance.

“Th-there…”

Before the words were even finished Eunha charged toward the entrance.

An ordinary-sized cardboard box sitting alone on the floor.

The familiar delivery company logo was stamped on the outside.

“Hup…!”

Eunha held her breath and carefully lifted the box.

It was heavy.

It wasn’t an empty box.

It was certain that something was inside.

At the same time it was too light to be a brick.

She hugged the box tightly to her chest and fled like an arrow to her room without looking back.

Bang!

The door closed roughly, and the sound of the lock turning was heard.

Only the sibling left in the living room stared blankly in that direction as if dumbfounded.

“Huu… huff… huu…”

Eunha carefully set the box down in the exact center of the bed with her trembling hands.

Now her heart had gone beyond mere pounding and was thumping as if it would break through her ribcage.

She could hear her heartbeat in her eardrums.

She had mobilized every superstition and ritual she could for this moment.

She had purified her body with a full bath, and changed into her cleanest and most expensive clothes.

She had even played a ‘432Hz frequency that brings luck’ video from last night until now for 12 hours straight.

Thinking rationally it was retard-level behavior, but to the current Eunha that didn’t matter at all.

Because she was that desperate.

“Alright, let’s open it now…”

With a solemn expression Eunha opened the desk drawer and looked for a tool.

An ordinary box cutter caught her eye, but she firmly shook her head.

‘No. It doesn’t suit.’

Citing some logic she had no idea where she had picked up, Eunha pulled out a kitchen knife from the drawer.

A woman in a dress holding a gleaming stainless steel kitchen knife.

If a third party saw it it would look exactly like a scene from a thriller movie, but Eunha’s face was more serious than ever.

‘Please… please let Mokinseoksim not be a scammer bstard. God, Buddha, Allah, gods of heaven and earth, please…’

While summoning every deity she could think of inside, she carefully slid the blade into the gap of the tape on the box.

Rip-

The sound of the tape splitting rang out.

When she carefully opened the box flaps, the contents revealed themselves along with a pungent cardboard smell.

“…?”

Eunha furrowed her brow.

Inside the box something was curled up, thickly wrapped in suspicious vinyl foil that looked like silver picnic mat material.

The size was roughly that of a fist, and the outside was wrapped in bubble wrap so thick it was ridiculous.

“What is this…?”

Eunha had thought of something like a stone when they said they would deliver a spirit.

In her common sense there was no way they would send a living spirit itself by parcel, so she had imagined something like contracting with a spirit through some mysterious stone.

“…Is this a spirit?”

Half in doubt Eunha stretched out her hand and lightly stroked the outer surface of the bubble wrap.

“Huh?”

Warmth.

Even though it was clearly a cold room, a lukewarm warmth was transmitted through the bubble wrap.

Unable to overcome her curiosity Eunha peeled off one layer of bubble wrap, and the moment she brought her finger to the silver vinyl foil inside.

“Ah, hot as fck!”

Eunha yanked her hand back in shock.

It wasn’t enough to get burned, but it was the kind of heat that rushed at you like when you grab a paper cup filled with just-boiled water.

While she was stroking her startled chest, a very faint sound tickled her ear.

-Snore… snore…

“……?”

Eunha held her breath and carefully brought her ear toward the box.

-Soft snoring… snooore…

“Sleeping sounds?”

Is this, really alive?

Eunha’s pupils grew uncontrollably large.

The bewilderment lasted only a moment, and soon overwhelming emotion painted her face red.

Her fingertips began to tremble again, but this time it wasn’t from fear.

She carefully, very carefully began peeling off the vinyl foil.

Rustle- rustle-

Every time a layer of foil was peeled off the temperature in the room seemed to rise strangely.

When she touched the surface again it was no longer insanely hot like before.

Just a pleasantly warm level.

And when the vinyl was finally completely peeled off, there was a strange lump imbued with an orange light.

“Th-this is what?”

Eunha looked down at the object with a blank expression.

What was sleeping was a peculiar creature with orange skin.

Moreover it was so covered in fur that the facial features weren’t even visible.

The upper part was more or less round, but the lower half was strangely split so that it looked like…

“Uh… a butt?”

And a very plump and appetizing peach-like butt shape was firmly in place.

Feeling a slight sense of oddity Eunha picked up a plastic broom that had been standing in the corner of the room.

She carefully approached and poked that orange butt (…) with the end of the broomstick.

Poke, poke.

A sensation like poking elastic jelly was transmitted through the stick.

Then, it began to slowly wriggle and turn its body.

Sliide-

The lump rolled once and finally revealed its front.

There was a tiny creature the size of a fist, soundly asleep using crumpled aluminum foil as a blanket.

The orange skin imbued with a soft light looked so plump and soft that it seemed it would burst if poked.

A flame flickered above its head, but far from being threatening it swayed gently like a newborn baby’s soft lanugo hair.

“This is… a spirit…?”

When Eunha muttered in a dazed voice, the little one half-opened its closed eyes and yawned widely.

-Kuaaam… kuul…

Then it curled its body up round again and sank into deep sleep.

‘Crazy… so cute.’

She swallowed hard and stretched her hand toward the little one.

And with all her concentration she activated the skill name she had so wanted to shout.

[Skill: Attempting Elemental Contract.]

The system’s characteristic mechanical sound struck her ears.

Success.

Finally, finally I too…!

-Beep!

[Unable to confirm the spirit’s will!]

[Skill is cancelled.]

“……Huh?”

Eunha blankly stared at the translucent system window floating in the air.

Her outstretched hand lost its destination and trembled in the empty air.

The orange lump on the bed, completely unaware of its own situation, simply peacefully puffed its nostrils.

-Snooore… pyuuu…