Chapter 201: Reality (2)
TL: SHW
A day at Daeyeon's Villa with guests staying over began more quietly than usual.
The estate grounds had been quiet for quite some time without the students around to fill them with noise. At least there had been a little more life around the place since Woo I-rok started going to school. Hyung, at school, Teacher said this, my friend did that, there was a cat. Blah, blah, blah.
Sitting there and listening to him ramble sometimes made me think I could see why people raised kids. He wasn't my son, but with this much of an age gap, I was practically...
I hurriedly shook my head. What a horrifying thought.
Anyway, I really did need to figure something out about Woo I-rok now. His living situation, to be precise. He couldn't keep living in this... broken-down Villa forever. Besides, this place was used for work far too often. No matter how I looked at it, it wasn't somewhere a kid should be living. And on top of that, I'd invited Hope here? What was I thinking? What was Hong Seok-young thinking when he agreed to it?
Looking back now, maybe the very fact that I'd called Alex Hope to the Villa where Woo I-rok was staying without giving it a second thought had been because of that ridiculous ability he kept going on about, calling it an instinct. The only reason we'd barely gotten away with it was that Hope hadn't seen Woo I-rok. But sending Woo I-rok to a friend's house was only an option on weekends.
Woo I-rok was perceptive and thought too much for his own good. Now that he'd finally gotten some sense of how an ordinary day was supposed to go, I didn't want to take that routine away from him. He'd somehow come through Sem Bloom's attempted kidnapping seemingly unaffected, so there was no reason to dig it all back up for nothing. Sometimes, people could move past things precisely because they didn't know. I didn't want him realizing only now that what had happened to him hadn't been normal.
Hong Seok-young accepted my argument. Lee Mi-seon looked as though she had something to say, but with Hong Seok-young involved, there was no way she was going to win. So Woo I-rok came back flushed with excitement after playing to his heart's content at his friend's house. I coaxed him away from the cat, got him washed up and fed, then put him to bed.
Woo I-rok woke up at the same time as always and finished getting ready for school.
The adults staying at the Villa held their breath, tense as could be, as they watched a ten-year-old kid leave for school.
As I brought him out to the garage, I could feel a stare boring into the back of my head. I told that old man he wasn't allowed to come out, and now he was being petty again. He was the only one who could keep an eye on Hope, so what did he expect me to do?
I glared in the direction the stare was coming from. Only then did it disappear. Such a pain.
“I'm off!”
Woo I-rok, completely oblivious to his hyung's complicated feelings, called out brightly.
“All right. Listen to your Teacher.”
I smiled as though nothing was wrong and waved him off. The car carrying Woo I-rok drove away.
We couldn't keep living like this forever. This incident had made that clearer than ever.
What were the things considered essential for a person to live? Clothing, food, and shelter. Shelter. A place to live. A home.
No matter how generously I put it, this Villa could never be a home.
Then again, I couldn't exactly call the lodging near Pilot High School where I'd stayed back in the container days a home either.
Was Hong Seok-young planning to keep me on as a teacher at Pilot High School?
If it were just me, I could live in the faculty housing at Pilot High School, but not with Woo I-rok. I had no intention of raising that kid to be a Hunter.
“So...”
Only after I confirmed that the car had completely disappeared from sight did I return to the Villa. Hong Seok-young had already brought Hope out.
Hope himself, however, was smiling away as calmly as ever, completely unconcerned with the atmosphere around him.
Gamble came into the living room late, widened her eyes when she saw Hope's condition, then hunched her shoulders. For someone crazy enough to casually befriend a human who was also a monster, Gamble was strangely sensitive to other people's reactions at the oddest times. Then again, it was better than having her act as shamelessly as Hope.
“Where were we again?”
Hope, the very source of the problem, was casually spouting things that made my blood pressure rise.
Before I could sigh, I heard Lee Mi-seon sigh first.
Nothing was going right.
***
“Aaah.”
Hope swayed his body as he made a meaningless sound.
Clank.
Every time he moved, the Mana Restraints gave a heavy clatter.
“Can't we talk in a more peaceful atmosphere? Love and peace! You know. There's even a song about it. Or was it peace and love?”
Hope was wearing Mana Restraints. One on each ankle and one on each wrist, four in total. The ones I'd worn hadn't exactly been stylish either, but they were nothing compared to those. Mine, at least, disappeared under my clothes. Those were...
The crude Mana Restraints looked like handcuffs carved out of stone, but they were actually meant for controlling monsters inside Dungeons. They were used when a monster couldn't be killed because its byproducts were needed, but was too dangerous to leave running loose. It was almost funny that people went that far just to operate monster farms. Human greed, indeed.
Those couldn't be used without authorization either, yet Lee Mi-seon had somehow managed to get her hands on four of them. She'd been reporting my activities to the Association and even obtaining separate authorization for me, so maybe she'd done the same with Hope. How much did the Ability Association know about Ark? I couldn't imagine Hong Seok-young allowing anyone else to learn about Hope.
Seriously, not a single thing was going right.
Anyway, Hope had recoiled in disgust when he saw the Mana Restraints, but he hadn't resisted.
“Fine, fine. I did something wrong too, so I'll behave for now. Happy?”
As though that still wasn't enough, Hong Seok-young used the same method I'd once used to briefly awaken Kim Chae-min's Magic. He must have contacted Kim Chae-min ahead of time this time, because the Magic obediently followed Hong Seok-young's will and surrounded Hope. Gamble opened her mouth to protest, but stopped when Hope stayed still. What a touching friendship.
“But the Dungeon I gave you really is legit, okay? Just because you don't like me doesn't mean you can ignore that too!”
Hope twisted and squirmed, apparently uncomfortable with both the Mana Restraints and the Magic. His mouth, however, never stopped moving.
Apparently, Hope had a different dictionary definition of behave installed in his head.
“What did you say I should start with?”
Hope tilted his head to one side.
“Interference? Mm, well. Sure. Shall we start with that?”
𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚
“Shanshan!”
Gamble cried out in alarm.
“It's fine, it's fine.”
Hope shrugged at Gamble as though it were nothing. Gamble anxiously bit her fingernails. That meant anything Hope said from this point on would be his decision alone.
We really should have confiscated their phones and separated them. The fact that none of us had thought of something so simple was probably Hope's influence too. A phone might not have meant much to Hope when he had some mysterious way of getting around, whether it involved Runes or something else, but he still wouldn't have been able to sneak away and talk to Gamble while Hong Seok-young was watching him.
What would Hope say without Gamble screening his words first? I was curious, but uneasy at the same time.
Hope looked at the anxious Gamble and smiled gently.
“Honestly, this is how it should be. We're basically the ones asking them for help, aren't we? These people need information on Noah too, but... they don't look anywhere near as desperate as I am.”
“Shanshan.”
“The desperate side always loses.”
The tension drained out of Gamble's body.
“So, Sandra, we should tell them too. Trying to walk a tightrope between both sides in the first place was ridiculous.”
...Hope was actually saying something sensible.
Hong Seok-young had kept Hope with him all night. It had been my way of telling him I'd look the other way even if he used some hardline methods to get information out of Hope, though I had no idea whether Hong Seok-young had taken the hint. At least, judging by the fact that Hope's arms and legs were intact... Wait. That old man carried around a whole stash of high-grade Potions.
Or maybe he'd persuaded him peacefully. Hope and Gamble both had surprisingly sentimental sides to them. I looked at Hong Seok-young, but I couldn't tell what he was thinking.
“And a Savior wouldn't stand by and watch innocent lives be sacrificed.”
Hope never took his eyes off Sandra.
After staring at her like that for a long moment, Hope turned to Hong Seok-young.
“Right?”
“Yes. As long as you don't betray humankind.”
“You heard him, Sandra.”
Hope looked at Gamble and gave her a little smile. What was that? It annoyed me. Put it like that and it made us sound like the bad guys. A few of Daseon's Hunters must have felt the same way I did, because they shifted uncomfortably with sour expressions.
Hope and Gamble were lost in their own little world and paid no attention to anyone around them. Gamble was still frowning, while Hope kept smiling brightly with an expression that made it impossible to tell whether he'd noticed or not.
“All right. Then send the other humans outside for a bit. What I'm about to say involves some very, very, very, very... very! sensitive information.”
“By ‘other humans’, you mean?”
“Everyone except you?”
Hong Seok-young glanced at Lee Mi-seon. She hesitated for a moment, then shook her head and led the Hunters outside.
Should I leave too?
But Hong Seok-young stopped me.
“Heejae-gun needs to hear this.”
“...Oh. Did you say he was your son? Then... well. Fine, he can listen. He was the first human to overcome Interference, so he's more than qualified.”
“Qualified?”
“Where should I start? Maybe it'd be better to explain what Interference is first?”
“...Rather than that.”
In the end, Gamble gave in.
Squeezing her eyes shut, Gamble made a suggestion to Hope.
“How about starting by explaining what a Dungeon is?”
“A Dungeon?”
“Yeah. Shanshan, you... are going to tell them, right?”
“Hm? Oh, yeah. That probably would be better. We have to tell them that much if they're going to prepare for what's coming. If you keep digging in the wrong places and suddenly get wiped out, that'd put me in a bind too.”
“...That's true. So you should start with the Dungeons.”
“Hmm.... Yeah. I guess that's best. That's the most fundamental part, after all. I mean, everything else is happening because Dungeons exist in the first place.”
Hope muttered to himself for a while, then nodded.
“Right. Dungeons come first.”
Unease swallowed me once again.
Seoul burning before I crossed back into the past. The clue to what had happened was finally falling into my hands with almost anticlimactic ease.
“Dungeon is the name humans came up with. We called them... if I put it in human terms, Cradles. No, we still call them that.”
“Cradles? As in the things babies sleep in?”
“Yeah. Not because everything inside them is a baby or anything.”
Hope snickered, apparently amused by his own words, then continued.
“They got that nickname because they're small and compact, and someone said the way they protect what's inside makes them seem like cradles. There's another official name, but... translating that into human language would be, hmm. I don't know.”
Hope struggled for quite a while, unable to find the right word.
“I couldn't find any examples of humans actually using it.”
“You saw it in a movie.”
“A movie?”
“You know, the one we watched at my house last time. You liked it because you said space looked pretty.”
“Ah! That one. Right.”
Gamble looked away, then stared uneasily at Hong Seok-young and me.
“Right. So, they're Escape Pods.”
“Escape?”
“Yeah. Our world got smashed to pieces, so we escaped. What was it they said back then? Once we landed, we'd wipe out the natives and settle there?”
Hope broke into a wide smile.
“Though I guess nobody expected the mana here to be incompatible with us, so we'd all start dying the moment we came out!”
***
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