Since when had he been up there?
The pupils of the middle-aged man, Song Cheol-ho, trembled minutely.
Not even the keen senses of an A-rank Hunter had caught a sign of him?
How on earth?
“And who might you be?”
“Why.”
Thump.
Landing on the ground, Kang Hyeon cracked his neck languidly.
The phone was still in his right hand.
“If you know who I am? Will you trample my life too?”
The corner of Song Cheol-ho's mouth stiffened faintly.
Kang Hyeon looked down at the phone screen and tilted it slightly toward Baek Yu-yeon.
“Cadet, over there.”
“Y-Yes?”
“This is recording properly, isn't it?”
On the screen, red letters were blinking clearly.
[REC - 06:15]
Song Cheol-ho's heart dropped.
‘He's been filming the whole thing from the start!’
If that footage got out, it would be awkward to contain.
He had to recover the phone by any means, but it was also awkward to use outright violence.
A Taewang executive beating someone on Academy grounds would become a far larger incident than any disciplinary committee.
“Y-Yes, it is. Professor!”
Baek Yu-yeon had been astonished for some time now.
‘It's this professor again!’
The first time, when he spilled whiskey on the contract, she had genuinely thought it a coincidence.
The second time, when he tore the contract clean in half, she had only faintly suspected.
But by the third time, she could not help but be certain.
‘It wasn't coincidence!’
He had been helping her from the very beginning.
But then why?
Her, whom he had never met and had no connection to?
Beep!
Ending the recording, Kang Hyeon slipped the phone into his pocket.
Song Cheol-ho's gaze moved naturally to follow it.
‘A professor? What kind of professor drinks on top of an alley wall?’
Of course he did not voice the thought.
If the other party was a professor, one had to approach all the more carefully.
“How do you do. I'm Song Cheol-ho, a director of the Taewang Guild. Forgive me, but might I ask with what intent you filmed that?”
“There's an outsider threatening a cadet inside the Academy. Naturally the evidence has to be preserved.”
“I-I see. Haha. Rather than a threat, it was a matter of tangled private internal relations, but there does seem to have been some misunderstanding.”
Forcing a smile, Song Cheol-ho continued smoothly.
“Only, it's awkward for you to hold footage with my face in it without my consent. I'd rather not create needless trouble, so might I check that phone for a moment?”
The words were courteous, but what he meant was hand the phone over.
Gulp, gulp!
Swallowing drink with a bob of his throat, Kang Hyeon smiled thinly.
“I said it's evidence. Is there an idiot alive who hands the evidence over to the culprit?”
“Haa.”
Song Cheol-ho let out a short sigh, as though there were no help for it.
The man was not going to be reached with words.
In which case there was only one answer.
Song Cheol-ho drew an expensive leather billfold from his inside pocket.
Slip.
A stack of crisp cheques came out of the wallet.
All in denominations of a million won.
He counted out ten of them and waved them lightly.
“Then let's do it this way. Ten million won. Can I buy that footage with this? It ought to be more than enough for your drink money, I'd think.”
Knowing full well what a professor's salary was, he assumed the man would bow and scrape to take ten million for deleting one video.
It was at that moment.
Fwap!
Kang Hyeon's form blurred, and in an instant he had snatched the ten cheques out of the man's hand.
“......!”
Song Cheol-ho's eyes went as wide as lanterns.
‘I couldn't even react.’
There had been no sign of him earlier either; this was evidently no ordinary professor.
Leaving the bewildered Song Cheol-ho where he was, Kang Hyeon counted the snatched cheques and glanced back at Baek Yu-yeon.
“Cadet.”
“......Yes?”
“That phone of yours that got smashed. How much was it?”
“......Sorry?”
Baek Yu-yeon answered haltingly, with a dazed expression.
“About one million four hundred thousand won...... probably.”
“Is that so.”
Kang Hyeon pulled three cheques from the stack.
Then he pressed them into Baek Yu-yeon's hand.
“Here's three million.”
“Why are you giving this to me......?”
“The cost of the machine plus a generous sum for emotional damages. Buy yourself a new one.”
Leaving a thoroughly bemused Baek Yu-yeon behind, Kang Hyeon turned.
And held out the remaining seven cheques to Song Cheol-ho.
“There. Seven million in change.”
“Wh-What do you think you're doing?”
It was outrageous.
By whose leave did he seize another man's money and force a settlement?
Kang Hyeon shot back with coldly settled eyes.
“You try to buy off a professor with money, and silence a powerless cadet with threats?”
“This man, honestly. I was trying to be civil about this......!”
“Stop here and go. Unless you want to see something uglier.”
“Oh, this lunatic!”
In the end, just as Song Cheol-ho set his feet, resolved to seize the phone by force somehow.
Kang Hyeon at last revealed his true presence.
A presence aimed at Song Cheol-ho alone, so that Baek Yu-yeon could feel nothing of it.
‘Hgk?’
Meeting that presence head-on, Song Cheol-ho's breath stopped.
‘Wh-What is this.’
It was as though a vast, invisible mountain were bearing down on him.
The pressure was so horrific that his lungs shrivelled and he could not so much as breathe.
Primal terror took hold of his whole body.
He was an A-rank Hunter, no less, and this man pinned him motionless with nothing but a stare and the presence pouring off him?
It was like a nightmare, yet this sensation of every joint in his body screaming was unmistakably real.
Presently, as the force strangling his throat withdrew, Kang Hyeon tossed out indifferently.
“What are you doing, still standing there?”
“I-I'll withdraw for now.”
Ashen-faced, Song Cheol-ho had no composure left to stand on ceremony and vanished into the darkness.
A brief stillness settled on the alley.
Baek Yu-yeon still wore a dazed face.
She knew this drunkard of a professor too.
The man AcaNet was calling a disgrace to the Academy.
‘So it was baseless rumor.’
How could a man who could drive off a Taewang executive with words alone — a man even most full professors found daunting — be a disgrace?
She was curious.
Why Kang Hyeon had helped her.
Why he had blocked the contract, and why he had secured the evidence.
All the more so because she believed that kindness without reason is rare in this world.
But.
“Thank you.”
She thanked him first.
“For this, and for stopping the contract the other time as well. Thank you for all of it.”
Suspicion is an easy and quick defense mechanism, but at times it makes a person forget the most basic human courtesy.
However harsh the world may be, there are words that must come out before calculation and doubt.
Namely, gratitude toward the one who saved you!
Kang Hyeon liked that.
‘Constitution matters, but disposition is an important element too.’
He needed the Seven Luminaries Formation, but that hardly meant just anyone should learn it.
One misstep and those horrific old monsters might be born all over again.
“It's nothing.”
Kang Hyeon tipped the whiskey bottle and spoke indifferently.
“I simply liked your choice, that's all.”
She had not yielded to Taewang's threats, nor hidden behind Gwak Do-jin's foolish consideration.
She had her own standard, and whatever those around her barked, she chose a road she could bear herself.
Baek Yu-yeon is solid.
Which is why she is not swayed by others.
“Do not bend on that choice.”
Look straight ahead at the road you believe is right and walk it.
The garbage catching at your ankles along the way, I'll clear away myself.
There was no need to say more.
That much would be understood well enough.
Turning away without a backward glance, Kang Hyeon swigged from the bottle.
“The drink tastes rather good today as well.”
And then.
“Ah.”
He turned his head as though something had just occurred to him.
“What's your dream?”
“My dream?”
“Yes.”
“Why do you ask?”
“Can a professor not even ask a cadet about her dream?”
She hesitated a moment, eyes moving.
She did have a dream.
To restore the body of a younger sister who had been sickly from birth.
But it was not a thing to bring out carelessly in front of someone she was meeting for the first time.
“I don't have anything so grand as a dream, really.”
“Was ‘dream’ too grand a word? Your path, I mean, your path. What did you intend to do after graduating?”
It was a question about where she would go, now that she had not signed the contract.
Catching the meaning, Baek Yu-yeon answered.
“In all likelihood I'll end up working under Professor Hwang Ye-rim.”
“Why?”
“Well......”
After a brief pause she answered.
“Because she's the foremost authority in martial medicine in this country? There's the most to learn from her.”
“No other reason?”
“Another reason?”
“I mean, for instance, that the professor's character is admirable to the point of moving you, or that there's some particular history that makes it have to be her and nobody else.”
“No, there's nothing like that.”
“Is that so?”
Kang Hyeon turned his head away again.
‘She'll be easier to bring over than I thought.’
So all he had to do was teach her martial medicine well?
‘I should tell the chick.’
To buy him some materials for making a secret manual.
The corner of Kang Hyeon's mouth curled faintly.
‘Shall I start with the Muscle-Tendon Change Classic? Or the Heavenly Medicine Mirror?’
Murim's legendary medical texts were still stored intact inside his head.
***
The top floor of the Taewang Guild's headquarters.
“So...... you lost the footage of Baek Yu-yeon being threatened to some contract professor and simply came back?”
Deep lines creased the forehead of Hwang Tae-gwang, Guild Master of Taewang and Hwang Min-woo's father.
“The thing is, brother. It'll sound like an excuse, but that professor was no ordinary man.”
Song Cheol-ho wiped away cold sweat and went on.
“Setting aside that he appeared behind me without a trace of a sign, the presence pouring off him was no joke, I'm telling you.”
“Shall I read it out?”
Hwang Tae-gwang shook the document the intelligence department had sent up, irritably.
“Professor Kang Hyeon. An alcoholic who always carries a whiskey bottle. Known among the cadets as a drunk and a parachute hire. This is your formidable man?”
“The drunk part seems accurate, but the parachute part is not. Absolutely not.”
“Haa.”
He was already dying of stress over his son, and now even his usually dependable brother-in-law was spouting nonsense; it made his insides churn.
“Wait. I'll check it myself.”
Taking out his phone, he pressed a speed dial with practised ease.
A short ring tone sounded and a mellow voice came through.
- Mr. Hwang? What brings you to call at this hour of the night?
“Director Choi. Sorry for the late hour. It's nothing much — I'd like a background check on one rat.”
Taewang had connections into the senior police intelligence line as well.
- Haha, who has offended Taewang this time? Who is it?
“The name is Kang Hyeon. He recently came in as a contract professor. What sort of man is he?”
- A contract professor? Well, it'll come up in no time. One moment.
From the other end came the sound of typing, tack, tacka-tack.
And then.
- Hm?
Suddenly the typing stopped.
- Hold on, Mr. Hwang.
“Yes.”
- This is very strange indeed.
“What is?”
- I've run checks on all sorts of people, but this is the first time I've seen the screen turn over entirely red like this...... hold on, what the — what is this!
“......Director?”
- Damn it! I'm screwed. A trace-back warning just came in from the Bureau's Special Division. What? A Bureau Security Grade Zero subject?
“Security Grade Zero?”
It was a type of code Hwang Tae-gwang had never once heard of in his life.
- Christ, I'm going to sweat blood explaining this. Mr. Hwang, what on earth have you touched? Don't tell me you set out to get me stripped of my post?
“Th-There's no chance of that, surely?”
- Hah, honestly. The call's coming through already. Mr. Hwang. Don't contact me for a while.
Click.
The call was cut off unilaterally.
Sensing that the atmosphere was serious, Song Cheol-ho asked cautiously.
“Brother? What happened?”
“Hm.”
He had merely run a background check, and a top-secret Bureau code appeared and the Special Division came back at him with a trace immediately?
Goosebumps rose the length of his spine.
“It rather seems we've touched the wrong man.”