For two days, nobody came.
More precisely, there was no line. Two or three people visited each day, and if their problems were resolved through consultation or I asked them to return another time, they left without complaint.
Park Seung-woo found that strange.
"There were twenty-six people here just a few days ago."
"Now that the rumors have spread, I suppose it's about time things settled down."
"That's not what I mean."
Seung-woo held out his phone.
It was a Guild Chat Room. The same one where he'd first posted about me.
He scrolled up to a conversation from three days earlier. There were around forty replies beneath it.
Then, starting yesterday, the conversation had abruptly stopped.
「Is that guy still offering consultations?」
「He shut down.」
「Why?」
「Heard he didn't have a license. Apparently, the Association caught wind of it.」
"Who posted this?"
"Someone I don't know. They're not even in our Guild."
I stared at the screen for a long time.
The claim that I'd shut down was a lie. I hadn't stopped operating.
But once a lie like that started circulating, people wouldn't bother checking. After all, this was just an unlicensed consulting service run by an F-rank Hunter.
If someone said it was gone, then it was gone.
There was something more important than who had posted the message.
Why now?
＊
I opened my notebook.
On the third page, I began drawing the Hunter Association's organizational chart.
I was drawing it from memory, so it took some time.
For seven years, I'd had plenty of opportunities to study this chart. I needed to know which department received my reports, where they stopped in the approval process, and where the documents disappeared after their approval was stalled.
At the very top was the Association President.
Beneath that were four divisions.
The Administration Headquarters. Hunter registration and rank assessments. The assessment centers fell under its jurisdiction.
The Operations Headquarters. Gate response and coordination with Guilds. It had the largest budget.
The Audit Office. Answered directly to the Association President. Twelve employees.
And finally, the affiliated institutions.
There was only one name written in the affiliated institutions section.
The Skill Research Institute.
I knew why there was only one.
Originally, there had been three. Ten years ago, two of them had been consolidated into the remaining institution, with "research efficiency" cited as the justification.
The person who spearheaded that consolidation had been the deputy director at the time.
Han Do-gyeong.
I was about to draw a line between the Audit Office and the Skill Research Institute when my pen stopped.
There was no line connecting them.
The Audit Office audited the Association's internal organizations. But affiliated institutions were separate legal entities, which placed them outside its normal jurisdiction.
For an audit to take place, the Association President had to issue a special directive.
And that directive required approval from the board of directors.
If someone on the board had undergone an enhancement procedure, that approval would never be granted.
That was what the eight-percent figure looked like in practice.
"Mr. Yoon Jae-ha."
Seung-woo was peering into my notebook.
"What's this?"
"An organizational chart."
"Why do you have something like that memorized?"
I closed the notebook.
"So I'll know where to run."
＊
Cha Yu-gyeong arrived that evening.
Team Leader Kim accompanied her this time, though he stayed in the car.
"Have you heard the rumor?"
Cha Yu-gyeong asked.
"The one saying I've shut down?"
"I started it."
For a moment, I was speechless.
"……Why?"
"Yesterday, the Association's Administration Headquarters sent an official notice to Black Wolf. They said they were investigating whether our affiliated Hunters had used an unlicensed skill consulting service. There were no names in the notice, but it listed the Gate's location and the date."
Only one streetlight was on in the parking lot.
"Half a day after receiving the notice, I spread the rumor that you'd shut down. That way, there'd be nothing left for them to investigate."
"……."
"Another A-rank Hunter who's undergone two enhancement procedures called me, too. Said some strange fellow had been making the rounds lately and asked if I'd met him."
"What did you tell them?"
"That I'd never met you."
Cha Yu-gyeong took out a cigarette, then put it away again.
It seemed to be a habit of hers.
"Mr. Yoon Jae-ha, I spent all of yesterday thinking about what you told me."
"Yes?"
"If you're right, then I'm evidence now."
"My arm is evidence."
Cha Yu-gyeong touched her right sleeve.
"You said there were three layers attached to it. So wouldn't anyone who opened it up be able to see them?"
"There's no one who can."
"But you saw them."
"Which means I'm the only one."
I hated saying that.
I hated it even more because it was true.
"Do you know what would happen if I went to the Association and told them? I'm F-rank, my Combat Aptitude Index is 0.00, and I've been accepting money for unlicensed consultations. What I say wouldn't be treated as testimony. It would be treated as circumstantial evidence. And the authority to examine that evidence belongs to the Skill Research Institute."
"You're saying they'd be the ones conducting the examination?"
"They're the only ones authorized to access skill data belonging to Awakened Individuals."
Cha Yu-gyeong smiled without making a sound.
"So they'd be investigating their own crimes."
"That's how it was designed."
I chose that word deliberately.
"This arrangement didn't happen by accident. It was deliberately built this way, starting ten years ago when the three affiliated institutions were consolidated into one."
"……You know about that too?"
"I do."
"Mr. Yoon Jae-ha."
Cha Yu-gyeong looked directly at me.
"What exactly are you?"
Before I could decide how to answer, she continued.
"Never mind. I won't ask."
"……."
"Just tell me one thing instead. What are you trying to accomplish? Are you doing this to make money, or are you trying to bring those people down?"
I genuinely considered the question.
I needed money.
I had to pay for my gosiwon room, buy equipment, and have something that would persuade people to stay with me.
But that wasn't everything.
"Both."
"Both?"
"There's an order to it. Right now, making money comes first."
Cha Yu-gyeong nodded.
"I appreciate your honesty."
"It's the only thing I can do at the moment."
That wasn't a lie.
But it wasn't the whole truth either.
I didn't tell her the real reason I needed money.
Five years from now, one spring, a seventeen-year-old child would awaken. Two months later, someone wearing a neatly pressed shirt would ring that family's doorbell.
If I wanted to be standing outside that house before that person arrived, I needed to have something better to offer.
What was I supposed to say if I went to see a twelve-year-old child now?
That five years from now, someone would break them?
"Then how about this?"
Cha Yu-gyeong took a folded sheet of paper from her pocket.
"Black Wolf has 112 affiliated Hunters. Nine of them have undergone enhancement procedures. I have access to that list."
She unfolded the paper.
There were no names on it.
Only ranks and the years in which the procedures had been performed.
"I can't give you their names. But if you want, I can bring them here one at a time. With their consent, of course."
"……Why would you go that far?"
"Yesterday, you told me to count how many times I used my right arm."
Cha Yu-gyeong opened and closed her right hand.
"So I counted. Twenty-four times in a day. Even on a day when I didn't enter a Gate, I used it twenty-four times."
She fell silent for a moment.
"What bothers me is that I never knew. I haven't been able to stop thinking about that since yesterday."
I didn't take the list.
"I can't accept this right now."
"Why not?"
"I can perform two inspections a day. Nine people would take five days. If nine Black Wolf Hunters came to see me over five days, it would be impossible not to attract attention."
"……."
"And there's nothing I can do for them. I can't remove those three layers. I'd only be repeating to nine people what I told you, without being able to do anything more for them."
Cha Yu-gyeong folded the paper again.
"Then when will you accept it?"
"When I can remove those layers."
"Is that even possible?"
"Not right now."
I made sure to be precise.
"At the moment, I can't reach inside a skill and manipulate its structure directly. I can only show someone where the components are, and they have to move them themselves. But those three layers are something they can't move, because their Mana doesn't recognize them as their own."
"Then they'll never……"
"Things might change if I can inspect the structure more deeply."
This wasn't wishful thinking.
In my previous life, I'd been able to descend to the fourth layer, the Signature Layer, in 0.3 seconds.
Even at that depth, I'd never fully explored how much of another person's circuit I could manipulate.
Because I'd only ever done what Han Do-gyeong ordered me to do.
This time, I intended to find out what I'd failed to discover because I'd spent those seven years following orders.
"How long will that take?"
"I don't know."
"That answer again."
Cha Yu-gyeong stood up.
"But somehow, it sounds better today than it did yesterday."
＊
After Cha Yu-gyeong left, Seung-woo and I remained behind.
"Mr. Yoon Jae-ha, there's something I've been meaning to ask you."
"Go ahead."
"Earlier, when I saw that organizational chart……"
Seung-woo fiddled with his canned coffee.
"There was something else written in the Skill Research Institute section. It looked like a name."
I opened my notebook.
The third page.
Under the affiliated institutions section.
I'd forgotten what I'd written there myself.
Han Do-gyeong.
There were traces of my pen having gone over the name twice.
Perhaps I'd written it slowly because I hadn't wanted to write it at all, or perhaps my hand had stopped halfway through.
"Is he someone you know?"
"No."
"Then why……"
"He's someone I need to know."
Seung-woo didn't ask anything further.
He had that quality about him. He was the kind of person who instinctively knew when to ask questions and when to leave things alone.
That was probably why he'd survived three years with his party.
"Then can I ask you something else?"
"Yes."
"Are you coming out here again tomorrow?"
"I am."
"What if nobody comes because of the rumor?"
"Then I suppose I'll sit here alone."
Seung-woo laughed.
"Then I'll come too."
"You're not even a customer."
"If there aren't any customers, I can be one."
Seung-woo crushed his empty can.
"I still haven't gotten my three hundred thousand won's worth. You only looked at one thing that day."
＊
That night, a document was processed on the third floor of the Association's Administration Headquarters.
Investigation into Unlicensed Skill Consulting Activities. According to responses received from affiliated Guilds, no relevant cases were confirmed. Case closed.
In accordance with regulations, a copy of that document was forwarded to the affiliated institution.
The following morning, it arrived on the desk in the Director's office at the Skill Research Institute.
It took roughly ten seconds to read.
「Subject: F-rank. Combat Aptitude Index: 0.00. Unlicensed consulting activities. Case closed.」
Han Do-gyeong didn't look at the words "Case closed."
He looked only at the two details near the beginning.
F-rank.
0.00.
Then, instead of closing the file, he pushed it aside.
"Which Gate did you say this was?"
＊
Unaware of any of this, I went out to the parking lot again the next morning.
Seung-woo was already there.
There were now two chairs.