Why ask when he already knows everything?
The protagonist's uncle guiding the protagonist here had all been the Styx Company's scheme.
The uncle, an officer of the Resistance Army, and the existence of the "that person" Ichi follows were tangled into it in complicated ways, but at any rate, if one simply pointed at the conclusion, that was it.
Even though Seo Mok was the one who first found the protagonist, the one who from behind the scenes kept the protagonist from dying and had him adapt to this world and grow was the Ichi in front of me.
Though that purpose was hardly tender child-rearing.
Filling in the parts omitted from the original work had been an entertaining hobby.
And the thrill when the assembled puzzle clicked into place was even greater.
Even if the original work was thin on plausibility and desperate to pick its own plot seeds back up, I read it with a fair amount of enjoyment; what can be done when my nature is shaped that way.
So my being flustered now was not because he was pressing me, but because of how early Ichi's interrogation had come.
Ha, seriously.
I took hold of the big Yongyongi mascot head and shook it left and right. The head sloshed and swung, drooping shabbily as it swept about.
"Hmm, so you say you have not seen him?"
Nod, nod.
"Look closely. You may have seen him only in passing."
Shake, shake.
"Young Do Hae is quite resolute. I have taken good note of the cruelty that tramples even a sliver of hope."
No, what on earth.
He was spouting such nonsense that the moment I twitched to protest, Ichi took a step back.
The photograph he had held was already gone, as though it had never been taken out. And there he was, holding the flyers and the booklets with perfect composure, beaming away.
This is a kind of warning.
A warning to let me know he was aware the protagonist and I were connected, and not to pull anything foolish.
And along with it, the goodwill of saying he would bury this matter at his own level.
'So he must have learned that little shit's whereabouts.'
Never has a mascot costume been so welcome.
Without needing to strain to hide the twitching corners of my mouth, I was able to keep jabbing at Ichi's temper simply by tilting my head.
After that, I could not take the costume head off until we had cleared half the flyers and eaten a late lunch.
It was Ichi's small revenge.
"By the way, who is he, for you to be searching so desperately?"
I took the head off, aired out the stale dampness, and asked Ichi.
Ichi, who was handing over a simple sandwich boxed lunch flown in from the café across from the Ability Office, curved the corners of his eyes at my question.
"Were you so curious that you waited, stamping your feet, until the very moment you took the head off? Holding it in because you were told Yongyongi must not speak. Young Do Hae is a good child."
"......Are you taking a dig at me?"
"Haha, I am complimenting you."
PSST―. The sound of a cool canned drink opening could not be more cheerful.
I set the boxed lunch aside, took the can with the costume's blunt hand, and gulped down a drink to wet my throat.
My insides are burning, truly burning.
"Hm, it is not that I was searching desperately."
"Ah, is that so."
"If one must define the relationship, it is closer to business."
"Business?"
"It would be a problem if young Do Hae forgot where he took employment."
Ichi pointed at the Ability Office building behind him. Ah.
"It was a commission? Since a man who knows I've barely been here any time at all was asking even me, I thought there was something special about it."
"Special, you say?"
"I wondered whether the man might be a criminal, so I thought I'd keep an eye out and catch him for you."
The sandwich, with cabbage, tomato, and a patty carrying a decent char, suited my taste.
While I soothed my hungry stomach, Ichi seemed to reach a conclusion quietly on his own.
That shamelessness can only be answered with shamelessness.
Haha. Hahaha.
Purposeless laughter carried on in a genial mood.
It felt as though my mental strength were being sucked right out.
I know and you know, and both of us pretending not to lowered the mood more than expected.
"Do we have to hand all of these out today?"
When I looked at the remaining flyers, went pale, and asked, Ichi affirmed it in a tone that asked why I would ask something so obvious.
Above all, he pointed at the Yongyongi head I had taken off and went on about dreams and hope and whatnot, about becoming the brave hero who protects children's happiness, which soured my mood further as a bonus.
***
Late afternoon, the sun sinking. It was around the time the flyer distribution was nearly finished.
My satisfaction at the empty box with only a few loose sheets left lasted a moment before I found myself puzzled by the salaryman rushing toward us.
"H-help me!"
At his urgent shout, the corner of Ichi's mouth rose.
It was the moment the diligent flyer distribution bore fruit.
"Commissions are welcome at any time."
Visibly relieved at Ichi's words, he soon rolled his eyes about anxiously and picked at the flaking skin of his parched lips.
For a man who had come running in a scramble, his hesitation was thick.
I glanced at Ichi and took a step back.
"An employee who worked overtime yesterday hasn't come in."
"Ah......."
Following Ichi's gaze, I raked over the same things.
A tie loosened askew and a wrinkled shirt, hair that had surely been styled that morning now disheveled, deep dark circles and dry, flaking skin, and above all an expression caked with exhaustion, all of it letting one guess at the intensity of his workload.
"Is it an unexcused absence?"
"No! No, it's not that......, ha, where do I even begin explaining this."
The salaryman tore hard at his already greasy hair and screamed internally.
He laid out unorganized words in no order, then, apparently frustrated with himself, beat his chest and sighed heavily.
"Let me correct that. It's not that he didn't come in; he never left."
"So you are saying the employee who worked overtime yesterday evaporated without either coming in or leaving?"
"Ah! Yes, yes. That's right. That's it. Without a trace......, he vanished."
His trembling eyelids swallowed up eyes in which anxiety had been amplified.
As though he could not even hear the ringing from his jacket pocket, he believed that only the Ichi in front of him could pull him out of this terror.
The Other Sides of the Black Zone are the sort of thing that pops out and swallows people, so ordinary people often complain of anxiety symptoms, and the salaryman in front of us showed exactly those typical symptoms.
Just then Ichi unfolded one of the remaining flyers, held it up, and said brightly.
"Do not worry. The Ability Office will find him for you."
I had the illusion of a halo shining behind Ichi's back with the title line I had seen in the original work stamped over it.
What was it again?
"Tutorial," was it?
***
After the original work's protagonist arrived in the Black Zone and was picked up by Seo Mok, the first thing forced on him was grasping reality.
It also served to pitch the setting to first-time readers, but to shake the values of a protagonist brainwashed by the government, they had to come out strong from the start.
Because only after experiencing "firsthand" how wretched and hideous the Other Side of the world the government hid was would the protagonist change his mind.
At any rate, there was nothing bad in it for the protagonist.
As with everything that befalls a fresh newbie, it was no different from a game telling you to go out into the field and catch some rabbits.
There is a world of the Other Side, this is what sort of place it is, get knocked around a bit and be rescued right before dying, and done.
The Other Side that fit that exactly was the commission the salaryman had brought, "the case of the missing overtime employee."
I had been uncertain, but once I knew the office building the salaryman led us to and the detailed information about the missing employee, I was certain.
This is the case tied to the protagonist's tutorial Other Side.
"Is this the point of occurrence?"
"Yes, yes. I got a shock checking the CCTV....... Ah, see for yourself."
His workplace was an advertising agency.
It was kept quiet, but the Styx Company's influence reached it, so it had standing within the Black Zone. It was also a substantial company that outside firms were said to pass through at least once when entering the Black Zone.
In the spacious office, desks packed close together were divided by partitions, and the missing employee's seat was suitably tucked into a corner, in the sort of spot no one would pay attention to.
A small potted cactus for decorating the desk caught my eye.
The five or six memo notes stuck to the monitor, and the schedule and checklists written on the calendar, made it look even at a glance as though he handled an excessive workload.
After the X mark on the date two days earlier, the calendar was clean.
"Have you been to his home?"
At Ichi's question, the client nodded and sighed.
"He was absent without leave and hadn't finished the work I assigned, so naturally I tried to contact him and then went over. At that point......, ha."
The emotion of that moment seemed to well up in him; he caught his breath for a while before continuing.
The house was cool, without a trace of warmth.
Only then did he consider that something was wrong and request the clock-out records.
Naturally there was no clock-out on record, and the CCTV he hurriedly checked had captured a grotesque scene.
Anyone could see it was a matter involving an Other Side, so he had rushed to the Ability Office and grabbed the hand of me in the Yongyongi costume; that was what he had done up to now.
"You can check it here. Play that footage again."
He gave the security employee instructions with practiced ease and quickly pointed out the spot in the footage, and a screen came up showing someone sitting alone in the office.
The time stamped was eleven at night exactly.
The employee, wearing horn-rimmed glasses, was staring at his monitor alone and diligently carrying out his work.
He probably had no idea of the time passing.
Then the entire office's lights went out, and startled, he quickly raised his head and checked the office entrance.
Just as I was thinking how much bleaker it looked with the bluish monitor light on his face, the bright monitor light could be seen flickering a few times.
Blink, blink, bli―nk, blink.
Then, just when it seemed the monitor light had failed to return for a fairly long while, the lights came on brightly throughout the office.
"He's not there."
At my words the salaryman's shoulders flinched and shrank.
Nowhere the brightly lit lamps reached could the overtime employee be seen.
It had not been such a long stretch of time.
Roughly four or five seconds. A short span, about the length of one breath out and in.
He could not have hidden under the desk, since he was not seen at all afterward either, and the employee who came in first that morning testified to not having seen the overtime worker.
Whether he shot up into the sky or sank into the ground, the overtime employee had escaped the company. Into the world of the Other Side, of all places.
"You can find him, can't you? I've heard well of the Ability Office's prowess, but I'm a little uneasy."
And the agitation of the remaining employees is no small matter, either. The words he added looked like his real purpose.
On top of that, he was the very person who had assigned the excessive workload.
If the man were not found, disciplinary action would surely be unavoidable.
"You came to the Ability Office at just the right time."
"Ah......! S-so you can find him easily enough, then?"
Ichi checked the client's hope-filled expression, curved his eyes, and showed just how pleased he had become.
This is worrying.
In the original work this Other Side had been handled by the protagonist and Seo Mok as a pair.
The protagonist and Seo Mok......, Seo Mok......, is not here right now?
Before he took leave and did the laboratory commission, Seo Mok had been handling a long-term project.
It was a matter revealed a little later along the original work's progression, and Seo Mok had left the office now to go back to that work after his return.
It was my intervention that removed the need for Seo Mok to manage the protagonist's mental state, so he had returned to work early; but this is how it comes back around?
Ichi pulled at the shoulder of me, who had withdrawn my foot and was standing blankly back, and sent the client a refreshing smile.
"Our young Do Hae is exactly the right man for this job. Your timing was perfect."
"No, wait......."
"You know about it, do you not? The missing persons at the hotel at 11 Rushiang Street returning. That was all resolved by our young Do Hae."
"......"
I had been thoroughly had.