The payment was settled at the tent outside the Gate.
Under the blue tent were a folding desk and a plastic chair. The same man sat in exactly the same place as when I'd entered.
The only difference was that he looked at me twice.
"Mr. Yoon Jae-ha. 150,000 won."
The money wasn't handed over in an envelope. It was transferred directly to my bank account.
My phone vibrated briefly.
Balance: 178,400 won.
Seven years in the future, I'd never seen a number like that in my bank account.
The research institute had provided room and board, while my salary accumulated under the name of 'Research Participation Allowance.' I hadn't even been the one to choose the password for that account.
178,400 won.
Every last win belonged to me.
"Excuse me."
Park Seung-woo had followed me outside.
"Could I get your number?"
"My phone number?"
"About what happened earlier. You know, moving that thing around. If something goes wrong later, I need someone I can ask about it."
I gave him my number.
Seung-woo muttered something as he saved it. He seemed to be wondering what name to put in his contacts.
"Mr. Yoon Jae-ha, can you look at other people's skills, too?"
"Yes."
"For money?"
I didn't answer.
I should charge money. I intended to.
I just didn't know how much to ask yet.
No one in this world had ever assigned a price to [Structure Inspection]. The only person who had placed a value on it was Han Do-gyeong, and the price he'd decided on was a single room in Basement Level 4.
"Give me a call."
That was all I said before turning away.
＊
My room at the gosiwon was barely two steps across.
One desk, one bed, and a ventilation duct instead of a window.
The sound of someone tearing open a packet of instant noodles in the next room passed straight through the wall.
I took a notebook from my bag.
It was a lined notebook I'd bought at a convenience store for 1,000 won.
On the first page, I wrote three names.
Seo Min-a.
Jeong Ha-yoon.
Kang Tae-oh.
I sat there for a long time, holding my ballpoint pen.
I hadn't expected my hand to tremble just from writing their names.
Until yesterday, these three people had been bound to the wall beside me.
Today, all three were somewhere out there, eating dinner.
I wrote numbers beside their names.
Seo Min-a. Twenty-one.
Jeong Ha-yoon. Seventeen.
Kang Tae-oh. Twelve.
＊
This was what faces from seven years ago meant.
On the final day of my previous life, Jeong Ha-yoon had been twenty-four.
Now she was seventeen.
She was probably attending evening self-study somewhere, or perhaps skipping it.
She hadn't Awakened yet.
In my previous life, Ha-yoon had Awakened at nineteen and entered the research institute at twenty.
She had lived there for four years.
Ha-yoon's skill was [Wave Detection].
It allowed her to hear mana fluctuations within a certain radius as though they were sounds.
The research institute had classified it as an 'Original Detection-Type Skill.' They confined Ha-yoon to a sealed chamber and made her keep the skill active for twelve hours a day.
They claimed they needed to determine the limits of its detection range.
In her third year, her lungs were ruined.
Nobody ever explained why her lungs had deteriorated.
But I knew.
[Wave Detection] was a skill whose circuit was linked to the rhythm of the user's breathing.
When someone kept it active for twelve hours a day, they gradually began breathing in time with the skill's rhythm.
After three years, their lungs memorized that rhythm.
I was the one who had written that in the report.
'Respiratory-linked structure confirmed. Prolonged activation is expected to cause cumulative respiratory muscle fatigue.'
I'd written that it was an expected consequence.
But instead of treating it as a warning, the research institute had taken it as another observation point.
I hadn't protested.
Back then, the word 'protest' wasn't even in my vocabulary.
On the final day, Ha-yoon's eyes had been closed.
I couldn't tell whether she'd fainted or given up.
Now she was seventeen.
Her lungs should still be healthy.
＊
Kang Tae-oh had been nineteen.
The boy whose wrists were so thick that the restraints dug into his flesh.
Now he was twelve.
A sixth grader in elementary school.
He wouldn't Awaken for another five years, and he would enter the research institute just two months after his Awakening.
He'd been brought there at seventeen and endured two years.
Tae-oh's skill was [Enhanced Leap].
It was a fairly common type of skill that temporarily multiplied the user's muscular strength.
But Tae-oh's version had an abnormally fast recovery rate.
So the research institute broke him.
That was the exact expression they used.
'Post-Destruction Recovery Curve Measurement.'
Arms, legs, ribs.
They broke his bones, measured how long they took to heal, and broke them again once they had mended.
During his final year, Tae-oh forgot how to smile.
Instead, he developed a habit of scratching the outside of his casts with his fingernails whenever he was in pain.
He kept scratching places he wasn't supposed to scratch.
He said it made him feel a little better.
By the time he turned nineteen, he'd spent seventeen years aboveground and two years underground.
And those two years had completely overshadowed the seventeen that came before them.
Now he was twelve.
I knew where he lived.
I'd even seen his school transfer records.
There were still five years left.
＊
Seo Min-a had been twenty-eight.
She'd Awakened at twenty-two, entered the research institute at twenty-three, and spent five years on the same floor as me.
Min-a's skill was [Sensory Sharing].
D-rank.
It was completely useless in combat, so her rank was low.
Because her rank was low, nobody wanted her.
And because nobody wanted her, Han Do-gyeong had been able to acquire her for next to nothing.
The research institute used Min-a for surveillance.
Her job was to relay the test subjects' senses to the administrators in real time.
They had turned a human being into an instrument panel.
Through Min-a's nervous system, they monitored how much pain a subject could endure and the precise point at which they lost consciousness.
In her third year, there was an experiment to increase the number of connected targets to six.
That was the day the skin above Min-a's left eyebrow split open.
I learned two months later, from someone else, that she'd injured herself by slamming her head against a wall.
The scar remained until the very end.
On the final day, Min-a had looked at me.
She hadn't cried.
She'd looked as though she expected me to come up with something.
I hadn't been able to do anything.
＊
I wrote one final line in the notebook.
004.
My number.
It had been printed on my nameplate.
The real classification hidden behind my researcher ID.
Below it, I wrote three more numbers.
19.
Min-a, Ha-yoon, and Tae-oh's numbers.
They were assigned according to the order in which people entered the institute.
There had been fourteen people between 004 and 019.
I didn't know a single one of their names.
I'd never exchanged a word with any of them.
All I knew were their numbers and the points at which those numbers had disappeared from the records.
I put down my pen.
If I summarized what I'd done over those seven years, it came down to this.
I'd opened hundreds of skills and drawn their blueprints.
Using those blueprints, the research institute had created a product called the 'Skill Enhancement Procedure.'
Thirty million won per session.
High-ranking Hunters lined up for it.
And the bodies used to verify the accuracy of those blueprints had belonged to 019, 026, and 041.
Because I'd accurately mapped Ha-yoon's respiratory structure, she'd been locked inside a sealed chamber for twelve hours at a time.
Because I'd accurately mapped Tae-oh's recovery circuit, his bones had been broken.
Because I'd accurately calculated the maximum number of Min-a's connections, she'd been linked to six people.
For seven years, I'd diligently carried out work in which greater accuracy meant greater suffering.
Han Do-gyeong had called me raw material.
He hadn't been wrong.
But the raw material he'd extracted wasn't my body.
It was my eyes.
And I was the one who had used those eyes to cut people apart.
＊
I closed the notebook and went outside.
Two subway stops and a ten-minute walk.
That brought me to Min-a's university.
In my previous life, I'd seen the university's name in her records.
It had appeared above a line that read, '019, Highest Education Level: University Dropout.'
She'd apparently dropped out during the process of receiving her Awakening assessment and registering with the Association.
I sat on a bench at the bus stop across from the main gate.
I wasn't waiting for her.
I had no intention of running into her, either.
I simply knew she'd pass this way around this time.
In my previous life, Min-a had once mentioned it in passing.
She'd said her first-semester schedule in her fourth year had been terrible.
Every Tuesday, after her nine o'clock class ended, she had nothing else until six in the evening.
Today was Tuesday.
Yesterday, I'd decided that staying away from her was the best thing I could do.
That resolution hadn't even lasted a day.
I liked to think I was someone who could protect her.
But what I was doing now wasn't protecting her.
I was checking.
Checking whether she was alive. Whether she was still unharmed.
Not because she needed me to, but because I needed to see it to endure.
I knew this wasn't a good thing.
Even so, I didn't get up from the bench.
Min-a came out at 6:10 p.m.
She was carrying the same bag as yesterday.
Her left shoelace was untied again.
She stopped walking, crouched down, and tied it.
Then, as she stood up, she tucked her bangs behind her ear.
I couldn't take my eyes off that movement.
Living people made so many unnecessary little movements.
The Min-a in Basement Level 4 had barely moved at all.
She did only what was necessary.
Breathed, ate, and established connections when ordered to.
My throat grew hot.
Yesterday, I'd told myself I couldn't fall apart here.
But that resolution was doing me no good.
＊
Min-a looked in my direction.
Our eyes met directly.
I had time to look away.
I didn't.
Min-a stood there for a moment, then crossed the street when the traffic signal changed.
She stopped in front of the bus stop and looked down at me.
"You're the person from the assessment center yesterday."
"Yes."
"And today, you're here."
"……Yes."
"Are you stalking me?"
There was no fear in her voice.
It was a crowded bus stop, the sun was still up, and she'd always been the kind of person who asked questions first in situations like this.
"No, I'm not."
"Then what are you doing?"
"There was something I needed to check."
"What?"
I looked at Min-a's face.
Above her left eyebrow.
There was nothing there.
Her skin was smooth and unbroken.
"I wanted to see if you had a scar above your eyebrow."
Min-a's eyes widened.
"I don't."
"Right."
I exhaled.
"You don't."
Min-a opened her mouth to reply, then stopped.
She was looking at me as though I were a strange person, but there was no irritation in her eyes.
She simply looked confused.
"You came all the way here just to check that?"
"That's how it turned out."
"So, are you relieved I don't have one?"
I couldn't find an answer.
The word 'relieved' wasn't nearly enough.
That scar wouldn't appear three years from now.
Nor would it appear five years from now.
Because I would make sure it didn't.
Min-a sighed and adjusted the strap of her bag.
"What's your name?"
"Yoon Jae-ha."
"Mr. Yoon Jae-ha."
Min-a pointed toward the bus stop sign.
"Only four buses come here a day. The last one was at 5:40. Do you realize you've been sitting here for an hour?"