By Zephyria 
7777 Guild
Anonymous Board >
Finally, the puppy god—oh, of course, I’m talking about our house puppy, Your Honor.
Saw the puppy at a cafe. He actually brought our house puppy to a cafe. Anyway, that’s what happened.
When the department store sightings popped up, I ignored them because I thought it was a collective hallucination lolol ah lol. The vibe was weird from the moment they walked into the cafe. They came in arm-in-arm. The puppy was arm-in-arm with ‘The One Whose Name Cannot Be Spoken.’ The size difference was a bit off…
Even when ordering, the puppy stayed behind ‘that person,’ hugging their shoulder and chatting away about how this menu item is tasty and that one is tasty, while ‘that person’ did the actual ordering. But the card used was the puppy’s black card. I have no idea what this relationship is…
Anyway, ‘that person’ placed a sleeping crow on the chair next to them. It looked like the pet bird from the photos taken at the department store. Why bring a sleeping bird to the company? Well, it’s not important. Since it’s the puppy’s acquaintance, it could happen. There are things we commoners just can’t understand.
But… sigh… I’m watching this in real-time, and I still can’t believe my eyes. Our puppy, who bites everything regardless of whether it’s his house or someone else’s, keeps having the corners of his mouth lifted and his eyes crinkled. Does any fellow employee know what this symptom is? It looks like someone injected a muscle relaxant into his face to freeze his expression.
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Ah, that is what is called a 『smile』.
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I can’t believe the puppy was capable of equipping polite honorifics…
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It’s not that he’s ‘The One Whose Name Cannot Be Spoken,’ you just don’t know his name.
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I’m at the cafe too… Our puppy’s impression is so scary that I used to think it would be better if he at least walked around smiling… I was wrong… It’s scarier… I feel like he’d still be smiling like that after stabbing me in the gut… T_T
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To think the puppy would even need a knife to kill you, you’re quite overconfident.
7777 Guild
Anonymous Board >
I saw Puppy-nim coming out of the elevator.
The private elevator only Puppy-nim uses, yeah. They came out together, arm-in-arm… I also heard a voice sounding cute and laughing, but there’s no way that could be Puppy-nim’s voice, so I think our company building is haunted.
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Together… in a house where you can’t even enter unless you’re Puppy’s friend… together… together… together… Could it be… No way…
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Don’t even mention the word ‘cohabitation.’ I’m scared it might be true.
7777 Guild
Anonymous Board >
But why aren’t you guys mentioning the important part?
‘That person’ seemed to be a man. Tall, handsome, great body, and a deep voice. Not a woman, definitely a man. Just in case, I even checked for an Adam’s apple.
“Puppy” was the euphemism used on the company’s anonymous board to refer to Tae-un. Even on an anonymous board, it was too risky to openly mention Tae-un, who was both the Guild Master and the company representative. Writing “puppy” felt less scary than writing “mad dog,” perhaps because of the cute nuance.
It was just as an office assistant manager posted a comment saying, ‘In a situation where the puppy’s mental illness is suspected, does the gender of “that person” even matter?’
“Un-i has a baby’s palate.”
“Pffft!”
At the voice coming from beside them, the assistant manager spat out the coffee they were sipping through a straw. Coffee even splashed onto the clothes of a colleague who had joined the company at the same time and was sitting at the opposite table, but the colleague didn’t even frown; they had a vacant expression. A fork belatedly clattered as it fell from the colleague’s limp hand.
The assistant manager hoped their ears were malfunctioning, but seeing the colleague’s expression, it seemed they had heard correctly, and the assistant manager fell into despair. They weren’t the only ones. A terrible silence descended upon every table within earshot of the voice.
Tae-un was someone who didn’t eat desserts or drink coffee in the first place. When he occasionally needed caffeine, wasn’t he the kind of human who drank espresso by the bottle rather than an americano?
Setting aside the fact that such a man was drinking a caramel macchiato that looked sweet enough to melt one’s tongue, what did he just say? No, fuck. I must have misheard. Logically, those words could not come out of the mouth of a fully grown adult.
While the assistant manager was escaping into denial, the reaction of the young man accompanying him was even more spectacular.
“What’s the point of being big? I’m telling you, he’s still a baby.”
With a face that looked like he found it unbearably cute, he pinched Tae-un’s cheeks with his thumb and index finger and shook them. Naturally, Tae-un’s eye-smile deepened.
‘My god, oh Lord.’
The assistant manager, a Catholic, instinctively crossed themselves.
The real-time viewing of this horror movie didn’t stop there.
“Do you still hate vegetables these days?”
“Mmm, I do. But if Hyung feeds me, I might eat it all?”
“You didn’t leave any on the table back then either.”
“It’s because I want to act spoiled in ways I couldn’t with Hyung before.”
At those words, the young man let out a small laugh. The assistant manager’s hand, frozen while holding their phone, trembled violently. Is that funny? I feel like I’ve come face-to-face with a killer holding a chainsaw.
Kim Si-baek, who had scooped up a generous amount of salad mixed with sauce with a fork, actually lifted it to Tae-un’s lips, and Tae-un opened his mouth with a cute “Ah” sound and swallowed it. The assistant manager squeezed their eyes shut, but the scene they had already witnessed didn’t disappear; it clung stubbornly to their eyelids like an afterimage.
In the heavy silence, only the crunching sound of Tae-un chewing the salad echoed. The shocking behavior didn’t end there.
“Ah, you’ve got some here.”
The young man reached out and wiped the salad sauce from the corner of Tae-un’s mouth with a tissue, and the tips of Tae-un’s ears were dyed a reddish hue.
This is too much. If I keep watching, my sanity will be contaminated.
“L-let’s go. Let’s just go.”
“Uh, yeah…”
The assistant manager hurriedly placed the unfinished coffee back on the tray and rushed the dazed colleague out of the cafe.
‘Was I like that when I used to play around and feed my girlfriend…?’
While engaging in self-reflection, they also grew worried. They say people change suddenly when it’s their time to die; is our Guild Master really okay? Is the guild going to go bankrupt?
Meanwhile, Pi Min-hyeong and Seo Gae-un, after reading the anonymous board, gave up on visiting the cafe and went out for lunch instead. It was a wise decision.
Feeding Tae-un, who simply opened his mouth, was far from tedious; it was fun. He was exactly like a baby bird waiting for feed.
‘A baby bird… He really resembles Un, doesn’t he? Small, squishy, and feels good and fluffy when petted…’
Especially in terms of being cute.
Thinking that Biyendwe would have been horrified if he had read these surface thoughts, Kim Si-baek moved his own meal onto a piece of rye bread. Tae-un, who had ordered pasta because the portion wasn’t enough, asked as he brought back the tray.
“Hyung, what happened with the quest?”
The reason the two of them had come down to the cafe to eat was precisely because of the quest.
“Same as before.”
Kim Si-baek glanced at the quest window pushed to one side of his vision.
[If a quest is too difficult from the start, the Returner will struggle, right? The system always considers the Returner’s feelings (ʃƪ ˘ ³˘) Since you’ve been lying in bed for a long time, shall we start by loosening up your body first?]
[Quest 01]
[Spend a pleasant time at a cafe.]
[Time remaining: 216 hours 39 minutes]
He had fed Tae-un; how could he possibly spend a more pleasant time than this? He thought it was easy for a problem that determined the fate of the world’s destruction, but upon attempting it, it was an ambiguous task. Since the condition was based on the subjective emotion of “pleasure,” the criteria for determination were also vague.
“Exactly what does it say?”
“Hmm… it’s a bit embarrassing to say out loud.”
Although the number of customers had decreased as lunch hour passed, the eyes in the cafe were still glancing at them. He was used to being the center of attention, so he didn’t think much of it, but he wasn’t sure if he should recklessly blabber about the quest contents.
Tae-un wore an understanding expression and held out his phone.
“Try typing it in here.”
“What is it? A text?”
“A memo app.”
“Oh…”
It was an app he hadn’t known about. Kim Si-baek typed on the keypad so slowly that anyone watching would have been frustrated to the point of suffocating. By the time he finished typing and erasing typos, a considerable amount of time had passed.
Kim Si-baek pointed his finger at the part that said ‘Wouldn’t it be?’.
“There’s some weird drawing after this sentence, and I’m not exactly sure what it is.”
“What does it look like?”
“It’s a combination of parentheses and symbols, and it looks like a face? Ah, the kind of thing you use sometimes. It looked cute when you used it, but seeing it in the quest is quite distracting.”
“It must be an emoticon.”
“Do people use emoticons this complex these days?”
Weren’t the emoticons he used in the past things like ^^, -_-;, or -0-?
“Some people still use simple ones, and there are emoticons that are fully drawn and sold, like the ones I send to Hyung, and there are pictograms called emojis. I guess the system is part of the MZ Generation?”
“What’s that?”
“Um, basically the new generation. It’s a broad range, so I’m included too.”
“The system might be the new generation, but I guess I’m the old generation. I don’t like emoticons at all. They’re distracting.”
Tae-un raised an eyebrow and tapped the table with his finger.
“Anyway, is this all the content? The only certain thing is the time limit. Since the condition is quite ambiguous… how about visiting the cafe several times?”
“In the first place, what is ‘pleasure’?”
When he brought up the fundamental question, Tae-un leaned forward deeply. Since it seemed like he was about to say something important, Kim Si-baek also brought his face closer. Tae-un’s breath lightly brushed against his ear. For a moment, his skin shivered and felt ticklish, causing Kim Si-baek to shrink his shoulders.
As if about to lick his earlobe, Tae-un whispered softly. It was a seductive whisper that Kim Si-baek could never deny.