Chapter 172: Eyes of the Fairy (2)
TL: SHW
"Eyes?"
-Hm?
The mention of swapping them out reminded me of Sem Bloom, who had been on the lowest floor of the Dungeon.
Why, though. I frowned slightly.
That bastard, flapping feathers hung from his arms like wings, the same feathers as the monster that had nested in that Dungeon. At first, they had definitely been normal human arms. And considering the things he'd said afterward.
...Did that mean he could gain a monster's power, or its flesh?
"What are these eyes? What do you mean, swap them out?"
-Huh?
Hope froze mid-motion.
"You said so just now, didn't you?"
-Uh....
Hope tilted his head sideways until it nearly touched his shoulder. Then he bowed it forward. His hair spilled down, hiding his face.
Hope slowly swept his hair back and lifted his head. He was wearing a slicker grin than ever before.
-I have no idea what you're talking about!
"......."
-Eyes? What's that? Can you eat it?
"......."
-Ah, geez. If I'm gonna slip over to France and back, I'll be late even if I leave right now. Stuff like this is better handled fast, right?
"You don't have to go say it this very minute."
-No no no. Gotta take care of this stuff quickly. Right? Can't put it off. That way I can relax too. I left Sandra with you, so I should at least do that much, shouldn't I? What's it called again. Basic human decency?
"Didn't you say you weren't human?"
Hope, who had looked ready to spring up and go at any second, stopped. Tilting his head, he answered Hong Seok-young.
-Hmm? I'm half human, you know? My body's human?
"Human? Ah, that's right. Since you went into a womb."
-Being born hurt the most! No, seriously, it hurt. I had a rough time adjusting.
"Did you? You seem fine now."
-I still forget to eat and sleep sometimes.
Hope sat back down in his chair. At the same time, Gamble buried her face in her hands.
Well, not that I couldn't understand how she felt.... Though rather than letting that guy lay claim to humanity, wouldn't it have been better to have him go around calling it intelligence?
No, wait. That would amount to admitting he really had no intelligence, so maybe he just didn't want to face reality quite that squarely.
"You can't go forgetting those things."
Hong Seok-young spoke in a soft voice, like he was gently admonishing a child. I could tell Hong Seok-young was in a foul mood right now, but over a video call with picture quality this bad, it would be hard to notice.
-But how can anyone eat every few hours and sleep every single day? And if you don't, it just stops running. It's amazing humans managed to become apex predators with bodies like this. The more I think about it, the more incredible it is.
"Still, you need to eat properly. And get good sleep."
-I am! I eat all my meals and sleep every night, I swear! Ah, but it's better than when I was little. Now that I'm grown, I can get by on less sleep.
Eyes wide open, Hope had fallen right into Hong Seok-young's hands and was spilling all sorts of things about himself. Nothing earth-shattering, but nothing to dismiss either. For one thing, a human body meant human weaknesses.
I looked at Hong Seok-young with fresh eyes. He was skillfully drawing the words out of Hope.
"Even so, you should really sleep properly. Humans need eight hours on average."
-That's so inefficient!
"But what can you do."
-Right. So I just have to put up with it. Even if it's frustrating....
"It's a fragile body, after all."
-Right!! It's seriously so weak. Adjusting was so hard. I still end up breaking it sometimes when I put in too much force, and Mom worries, so I try my best not to get hurt, but it just happens, you know? So I've been trying to use my body as little as possible, but inconvenient is inconvenient.
In front of me, Father had always been an easygoing, honest man. Not that he didn't have his subtly meticulous side, but I'd thought of him as someone who couldn't tell a single decent lie.
Come to think of it, there was no way a man who had survived all that politicking, founded the Ability Management Agency, and claimed the Director's seat couldn't lie. Even the great Hong Seok-young couldn't have become Director on sheer force alone.
There must have been far more I didn't know. And plenty of things he never told me.
Just how much had Father known? Had he known nothing at all, given that he'd missed the Ark? Or?
Finally, unable to bear it any longer, Gamble lifted her head and called out to Hope.
"Alex."
-...So that's when I, huh? What?
"Go tell Michel and come straight back. You remember everything I warned you about, don't you?"
Gamble pressed hard at her temples and forced the words out through her teeth. She might well have been regretting signing that contract.
But as long as she knew this was the best way to keep Noah Michel in check, Gamble wouldn't entertain any idle notions.
Hong Seok-young could have drawn out more, and he looked disappointed when Gamble cut it short. But he didn't say anything else to hold Hope back.
Hope beamed brightly, his face and voice as vacant-looking as ever. He must have lived as a human for over twenty years, but twenty years my ass; it felt like watching a five-year-old toddling along the water's edge.
And on top of that, Gamble started giving him warnings all over again, as if Hope really were a child left alone by the water. Which only made me more uneasy.
Honestly, I couldn't care less what happened to Hope, but if he let anything slip about us, we'd be in serious trouble.
"Got it? Tell her I'm working here, and...."
-I said I got it!!
Finally, Hope shuddered and sprang to his feet.
-I'm off! After this I have to stay with Mom for a while, so I can't come over there! If anything happens, tell me through Sandra. I'll do the same.
To escape the nagging, Hope rattled it all off in one machine-gun burst and walked out of frame.
We kept the call connected for a moment without hanging up, and Hope came back and grinned stupidly.
-Forgot my phone.
"......."
The call ended.
Gamble buried her face in her hands again, and Hong Seok-young, tickled by who knows what, started laughing hard enough to shake his shoulders. Kim Chae-min was coaxing a small rose into bloom in her palm, and Lee Mi-seon wore a somehow weary expression.
Me?
I crossed my arms and leaned back in my chair.
To think I'd been on edge over a guy as childish as that. Somehow, it stung my pride.
*
Once again, the present.
"The very idea of 'managing' Dungeons is strange. 'Controlling' them? Even more suspicious. And what is a Controller even supposed to mean?"
Lee Mi-seon, who had spent a good while hurling curses at the Ark, began muttering in a considerably calmer voice.
"And 'failures'? 'Disposal'? What do they think those kids are? No, seriously, life is supposed to be treasured. What is this...."
She didn't particularly seem to expect an answer from me. She kept talking whether I responded or not. It looked like she was sorting out her thoughts on her own.
With Lee Mi-seon's muttering as background noise, I chewed over Hope's words myself. What Hong Seok-young had gently coaxed out of Hope concerned Hope's current condition. Things that could prove useful if we ever needed to subdue or kill him.
Given how freely he'd spilled everything, enough to send Gamble into a spiral of self-loathing, the same would go for the Ark. If we wanted information, better to target Hope than Gamble.
In any case, Hope and Gamble were our only two sources of information right now. Relying entirely on people who couldn't be fully trusted was something to avoid, but there was no need to deliberately ignore them either. Thinking of it that way, there had to be a reason Hope had specifically singled it out as failed research. And even if it was a failure to Noah Michel, even if it hadn't produced the results she wanted, couldn't it still be useful somewhere else...? Judging by how I'd lived to this age without any problems, the same probably went for Woo I-rok, but if that experiment had been aiming for something more complex than simply creating Artificial Awakened, it was better to know.
Damn it, things were better back when all I had to worry about was Dungeon Raids. This kind of work was Oh Hyun-wook's job. Tracking people down, investigating, dealing with them. I'd never done any of this.
Bzzz.
My phone buzzed.
...I was sure I'd muted all the kids' messages? And the debt collection texts for the number's previous owner, which used to show up every time I'd just about forgotten they existed, had died down lately too.
I watched the message icon blink for a moment, then checked. Surprisingly, there was a name I'd never expected.
Han Eun-young.
[Teacher, I'm really sorry but]
Going to say she's dropping out again?
I rubbed my chin. Han Eun-young had gone home with Han Tae-kyung. Only after spending the holiday with their parents did they join the other kids and leave on the trip. Aside from Han Eun-young, Choi Jin-woo was the only other kid who had spent even that brief time with family.
...Lee Seung-yeon and Sun Sun-jin hadn't gone. Why bother seeing faces they already knew, they'd said. Right, they were at that age where hanging out with friends was more fun anyway.
Wondering what Han Eun-young wanted, I stared hard at my phone screen.
[Did my brother hit his head or something?]
But what Han Eun-young brought up wasn't dropping out; it was something else entirely.
Though the cause being Han Tae-kyung remained the same.
I deliberated for a moment, then sent a reply.
[What's going on?]
[My brother seems to have gone crazy, so I was wondering if you had any idea why]
For the record, Han Tae-kyung had gone along with the kids as a guardian of sorts. Given his track record, not as the main guardian, but as backup to the Daseon Hunters.
Since they'd said Han Tae-kyung wasn't brought along for Ark business, it made sense to keep him out of the way while we talked with Gamble.... Though I also had the feeling he'd simply been shipped off somewhere out of sight because he was a pain to deal with. Hong Seok-young flatly refused to admit it when I hinted at the question, though.
Han Eun-young kept the messages coming.
[It's so bad even Dad asked if he was sick???]
[Hye-eun said he got hurt back then, did he hurt his head?]
[He did, right??]
[Should he get checked out after all?]
[If I ask Seung-yeon's aunt, would she introduce us to someone she knows?]
[Gasp]
[Or is he dying?]
[Finally?]
What is this kid on about....
I clicked my tongue once, briefly, then replied.
[What's wrong with him?]
[Well]
[My brother]
Her brother what?
[He's too quiet....]
"......."
I reread the messages Han Eun-young had sent.
Probably about three times over. In case Han Eun-young might say something more.
But Han Eun-young stayed quiet. I set my phone down.
I was busy enough as it was; I couldn't afford to waste time reacting to good news. When my phone buzzed yet again, I muted Han Eun-young's messages too.
...Still, she was confiding a genuine worry in her own way, and it felt a bit heartless, so I did send one reply.
[Enjoy it while he's quiet.]
When I put the phone down, the documents scattered around me came into view. My first thought was whether it was really okay to show me all of this. There were papers not only about Gamble's work visa, but also about Daseon and Daeyeon's Potion research and development and their contracts.
No, seriously, was I allowed to look at these? I was grateful for the trust, but wouldn't it be better to be a little more guarded? These were internal Guild documents.
My conscience twinged, but nobody seemed to care even as I read them openly right in front of them, so I just read. Skimming through, there was nothing important.
There shouldn't have been.
The pharmaceutical company that had signed a joint Potion development agreement with Daeyeon caught my eye and wouldn't let go.
This. This, wait a second. These guys...?
***
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