[Mad Dog's caused trouble again!]
└ what kind of trouble?
└ knocked Hwang Min-woo out and dumped him in the infirmary. funnier part is he carried him there himself and shouted that he did it, then walked out;
└ lolllll he's actually insane. why'd he hit him?
└ because his face pissed him off.
└ don't lie
└ it's real; everyone there saw him say it to Professor Hwang Ye-rim's face.
└ wow, this really isn't on though? drags the National Academy's level down.
└ why hasn't he been expelled yet? that's over twenty disciplinary actions.
└ frfr makes no sense.
└ a disgrace to the Academy.
AcaNet was ablaze, and before long the sparks began flying somewhere they shouldn't.
└ there's another disgrace though.
└ who?
└ you know. that contract professor who carries a bottle around all day.
└ ah.
└ Mad Dog takes that professor's class. heard he holds it at dawn every day at the Old Hall drill grounds?
└ that's it 100%. Mad Dog got madder because of that professor.
└ someone said the other day they thought they saw the two of them in an alley swigging a bottle of whiskey each.
└ the Academy's in great shape.
The more talked-about it was, the faster the referral to the disciplinary committee came.
└ just went official! committee convenes at 2 p.m. the day after tomorrow.
└ expulsion's locked in this time, right?
└ probably? even if the earlier discipline was petty stuff, he did that to Hwang Min-woo
└ Taewang's side must be in uproar too
└ huh? but Baek Yu-yeon as a witness, what's that about?
└ Baek Yu-yeon?
└ the encyclopedia? why's she involved?
└ heard she was next to Mad Dog when he hit Hwang Min-woo, so she's the eyewitness.
***
That night.
Kang Hyeon's quarters in the faculty building.
Kang Hyeon was going over the disciplinary committee attendance list together with Lee Se-a.
Chair: Choi Byeong-gil (Dean of Academic Affairs)
Member 1: Oh Seong-hun (Student Guidance Professor)
Member 2: Park Tae-su (the party's major professor)
Medical officer: Hwang Ye-rim (Martial Medicine Professor)
Party concerned: Gwak Do-jin (Class 18)
Injured party: Hwang Min-woo (Class 19)
Witness: Baek Yu-yeon (Class 19)
“This is simply a list assembled with the intention of expelling Cadet Gwak Do-jin.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes. Oh Seong-hun and Park Tae-su, these two are Taewang's men. I looked at the records of the previous disciplinary committees too, and these two led all of them.”
“Your evidence that they're Taewang's men?”
“Every month tens of millions of won gets pushed to them under the name of guild consulting fees.”
“Hm.”
Sitting on the sofa with his eyes closed, Kang Hyeon savored the whiskey in his mouth and asked.
“Is a guild paying a professor a consulting fee legally a problem?”
“No, it's a legitimate sponsorship arrangement that cleverly skirts the letter of the law. They're even paying the taxes properly.”
Lee Se-a let out a deep sigh.
Of course a guild the size of Taewang would not be so careless.
“The consulting fee will be the wrapping. The real thing would have been handed over separately. Cash, gold bars, elixirs.”
“So there's no evidence, then.”
“Not yet.”
“Weren't you top of your intake at the Bureau?”
“Th-That's...... Even so, I can hardly get a search warrant issued within a week and empty out the Taewang Guild's vaults, can I?”
“No, I just had expectations because you said you had ability.”
“I-I'll report to the Director right now and coordinate an investigation with the NIS.”
“Never mind. There's no need to go that far.”
Glug, glug!
Kang Hyeon poured amber liquid over the ice in his glass.
‘An investigation over children's playacting, honestly.’
The way people become entangled and power rots is no different here from there.
If anything, Murim was worse.
Here at least they trade bribes under a pretense of legality within the bounds of the law; there, if things went badly they simply put on a mask, paid a visit and took the head off.
A world where killing to silence happened as easily as breathing.
“Chick. Use your head a moment.”
“Sorry?”
“On that list, who do you think is the biggest thorn in their side right now?”
Lee Se-a thought.
The professors were mostly bought, and Gwak Do-jin had already resolved on expulsion.
Which left?
“Baek Yu-yeon, perhaps?”
“Exactly.”
The sole eyewitness, and the one who knows the whole of this affair.
“If you were the Taewang Guild, what would you do first?”
“Um...... wouldn't they try to win Baek Yu-yeon over, or threaten her?”
“Right, you understand it well. Why go rummaging in the wrong place when the evidence is plainly right there?”
“B-But.”
Lee Se-a did not follow.
Even Baek Yu-yeon would have no idea how much the professors had taken in bribes, surely?
“If you want to catch a rat, you don't dig at the rat hole — you sit down beside the rice bin.”
“......!”
“Leave it alone and it will crawl out on its own to sink its teeth in. Is there any reason to go hunting for it?”
***
Behind the women's dormitory.
Standing in front of Baek Yu-yeon was a middle-aged man with a Taewang Guild badge on his chest.
“Have you given it some thought?”
“......”
“The condition we're offering is simple. Just go in as a witness and say nothing at all.”
The middle-aged man bent at the waist to bring himself level with Baek Yu-yeon's eyes.
“Gwak Do-jin is being expelled this time no matter what. You know that, don't you?”
“Yes.”
When Baek Yu-yeon nodded, the man smiled contentedly.
“Right. He's being expelled anyway, so saying anything unnecessary in there does you no good. And it especially does that Gwak Do-jin no good either. Our Min-woo has been threatening you with an exclusive contract, I hear? The company will take care of that as well, so it stops being a nuisance to you.”
The man was an executive of the Taewang Guild and Hwang Min-woo's uncle by marriage.
Which was why Baek Yu-yeon wavered.
‘If I just keep my mouth shut......’
Hwang Min-woo would not be able to stalk her, and Gwak Do-jin would not be retaliated against after his expulsion.
It would all be over.
And her senior was in the middle of saying he would walk out of his own accord anyway.
Gwak Do-jin had begged her repeatedly, too.
To go in as a witness and say nothing.
To help him be expelled without complications.
“So please, just think about yourself. Don't ruin your life using me as an excuse.”
Gwak Do-jin's voice circled in her ears.
‘Think only about myself?’
Which meant, choose for my own sake...... but which path is for my sake?
Was covering the truth and submitting to these people truly the path that was for her sake?
She knew it instinctively.
‘Submitting here is what ruins my life.’
Because it would brand her a coward for the rest of her life.
Because she would have to live her whole life carrying a debt to Senior Gwak.
Baek Yu-yeon did not want that.
“I'm sorry, but.”
Baek Yu-yeon lowered her head.
“I'm going to decline.”
“......What?”
The man's affectionate gaze went cold in an instant.
“At the committee tomorrow I'm going to say what I saw and what I heard. That Hwang Min-woo threatened me first with a fifteen-year contract, and that Senior Gwak hit him trying to stop it.”
“Haha, this student still doesn't know how the world works.”
The man let out a disbelieving laugh.
“Fine, suppose you go in there and say all that. Do you think the committee will believe you? Do you not know who the members are?”
“Professor Oh Seong-hun and Professor Park Tae-su.”
A year ago.
The same men who buried the truth at the dungeon practical and handed Gwak Do-jin his discipline.
At Baek Yu-yeon's clear answer, the man's eyebrow twitched.
“The professors the Taewang Guild bought off.”
“What? That's a dangerous thing to say.”
“Am I wrong?”
“Pffhaha!”
The man burst out laughing as though it were absurd.
“Look here, student. A rich imagination is all very well, but say things like that carelessly and you'll be in real trouble. You could end up wearing a defamation suit all by yourself.”
“It would be fine if there were evidence, wouldn't it?”
“Evidence?”
Baek Yu-yeon's pale blue eyes shone for an instant.
“March 15th last year. Thirty million won deposited into Professor Oh Seong-hun's nominee account under the name Kim Deok-su. April 2nd of the same year, one case of top-grade Purple Bloom Pills delivered to Professor Park Tae-su's office. And in July, two percent stakes each in a research institute under the Taewang Guild transferred into the names of the two professors' families. Am I wrong?”
“......”
The man tried to keep his smile in place, but he could not stop the muscle in his cheek from twitching.
‘How the hell does that girl know that?’
The process of handing over bribes was a top-secret matter shared only among a few core executives even within the guild.
And it was not a vague knowledge either.
The dates, the pretexts, the items, the quantities, and even the name on the nominee account.
‘She knows it exactly, down to the last syllable?’
It was information nobody could possibly have without looking directly at the guild's internal ledger.
“......Was it Min-woo, by any chance?”
The man knew it instinctively.
‘This is that idiot Min-woo's doing!’
He would have laid his cards out in the course of threatening her with the contract.
That the Academy's professors were all in his pocket too.
That she had nowhere to run.
‘That utter halfwit!’
Inwardly the man wanted to tear his nephew to shreds.
Blabbing the lobbying ledger to charm one girl?
Cold sweat ran down his spine, but the man was an A-rank Hunter who had been through every kind of hardship at Taewang.
“Tsk, tsk. Fine, suppose Min-woo did spout that nonsense. Even so, what does it change?”
“Sorry?”
“Min-woo wakes up, denies ever saying it, and that's that. Don't be mistaken, little one. The memory in your head isn't evidence. Unless you have solid video or an audio recording...... hold on.”
Mid-sentence, the man's eyes flashed like a snake's.
His gaze went to the pocket of Baek Yu-yeon's outer coat.
Baek Yu-yeon's right hand, which had sat awkwardly inside that pocket throughout the conversation.
“Don't tell me.”
Fwap!
The movement of an A-rank Hunter was not a speed a student like Baek Yu-yeon could react to.
“Ah!”
The man's rough grip dug into Baek Yu-yeon's pocket and wrenched her phone out by force.
On the screen, the words [Voice recording - 05:12] were clearly displayed.
“Hah, would you look at this.”
The man's face contorted like a demon's.
He had wondered why she would recite the bribery record in front of him of all people.
She had been trying to manufacture solid evidence out of his reaction.
“What an impudent little bitch.”
He hurled the phone down onto the ground.
Shattered fragments scattered across the dirt.
“Ah......”
Baek Yu-yeon's face went white.
The evidence she had thought was her one lifeline had been smashed before her eyes.
“I meant to settle this nicely with words, but it seems that won't do.”
An oppressive presence poured off the man's body.
At the killing intent squeezing her throat, Baek Yu-yeon shook and stepped backward.
“Listen well. If our Taewang puts its mind to it, trampling your lives is nothing at all. You're a scholarship student, aren't you? Shall I lean on your sponsoring foundation and cut off your funding to start with? Could you handle the tuition? And you think it's all over for Gwak Do-jin once he's expelled? I can bury him in this business so he can't even work as a porter. Do you understand?”
“......Hgk.”
“This is reality.”
The man ground the broken phone under his shoe.
“So keep your mouth shut at the committee tomorrow, otherwise......”
It was exactly then.
A languid voice came from atop the wall.
“Whoops.”
“......?!”
The startled man's head snapped up like lightning.
Baek Yu-yeon's eyes went wide too.
Up on the wall.
A man crouched with the moonlight at his back.
Rumpled hair, an open shirt collar.
In his left hand was a whiskey bottle, and in the other, a phone.
By any reckoning, a recording in progress.
‘Wh-When......?’
To the astonished man, Kang Hyeon spoke, giving off the smell of drink.
“I must be drunk after all. To think I'd witness a cadet being intimidated in the middle of the Academy.”