A cheap orange light came into view. Because of it, the grotesque vine pattern on the wallpaper seemed to writhe all the more as it pleased.
Belatedly I caught the scent of a cheap air freshener mixed with the musty smell of sweat, and when I turned my head, a blue neon sign outside the window was shining through the flimsy blinds.
It really was a cheap hotel.
My body was wearing the hotel's scratchy robe instead of the procedure gown that had lost its function. I thought he would at least arrange one set of clothes for a mangy boy.
'He left the gold bars alone.'
The reason I openly drew attention to the briefcase was that I wanted him to touch the gold bars. So I could insist the contract had been agreed to by payment of the commission fee.
He had a useless amount of conscience left in him.
Which is presumably why he brought me, collapsed and coughing up blood, all the way to a hotel.
......He has not just dumped me here and left, has he?
'Ah, did he really dump me?'
My sluggishly plodding train of thought turned urgent, and I shot upright.
For a moment my head spun and my stomach churned. And that was not all. My body was as heavy as water-soaked cotton.
Among the side effects of the ability, the representative ones for 99 that I remembered were coughing up blood, headaches, and thirst.
'Ah, I'm craving water.'
While rubbing my dry, cracked lips with the back of my hand, I got a chilling feeling.
That thing wavering in the corner.
"Oh, you're up?"
Partly because the lighting was dim, but also because his position was a blind spot, I had not registered that Seo Mok was in the room with me. My condition must really have been wrecked.
I slowly let out a breath of relief and opened my mouth.
"You could've made some noise. You startled me."
"You'd have to give me the chance. Somebody shot up out of nowhere, and I'm the one who got startled. Honest to god, the sleep I've lost because of a certain someone. Kids these days don't even know how to be grateful."
He has chronic insomnia anyway, and here he was shifting the blame onto me. At my immediate word of thanks, Seo Mok only mouthed at the air. He is quietly rather shy.
"You, do you have a chronic illness or something?"
"Ah, something like that, sure."
"Hoo......, so all that blood was from the illness?"
In truth, I do not remember well. I coughed a few times at the bus stop while waiting for Seo Mok, but was it noticeable enough for that?
"The rainwater just made it look like more than it was. But why do you ask?"
"Then this must have nothing to do with you."
What Seo Mok held out was a black-and-white newspaper. On the front page was a photo of the collapsed laboratory alongside the headline 'Extreme Terror Attack by the Resistance Army.'
It has been wrapped up already?
"I got out before the explosion caught me. There must be plenty of people like me, right?"
"Don't make me laugh. Somebody knew our contact point, came to it, and tried to hijack the job. At least wet your lips before you lie."
I rested my gaze on the ceiling, then smiled harmlessly.
"I told you, I wanted to help. My conscience pricked at me."
"The part about me getting disposed of? Are you saying that with certainty?"
"Ah, I didn't tell you that part? Go check."
I roughly wrote down the address I still remembered and handed it over.
Once I confirmed that Seo Mok was urgently contacting someone, I turned my attention away from him and dragged over the yellow suitcase sitting nearby. The suitcase's owner was, of course, Seo Mok.
The passcode was his birthday, was it?
I briefly called up Seo Mok's profile, easily released the lock, and rummaged around inside.
Since Seo Mok's build was slightly larger than mine, no problem arose of the clothes being too small.
I pulled out something inoffensive and stuck my arms and legs into it.
"Hey, what are you doing? No, and how do you even know the passcode? You're not some ability user who reads minds or anything, are you?"
"It just happened to fit."
"Coin―cidence, you say?"
"Change the code. It's a wonder you haven't been robbed until now."
"It's easy, so you rob the bag right in front of me?"
"If I walk around outside like this, I'll be hauled in for public indecency."
At my words, Seo Mok let out a hollow laugh. The intense scene from our first meeting must have come back to him. Let me say it again, that was not my intention.
Ignoring Seo Mok as he rambled on about his impressions of that moment, a mix of shock and complaint, I went over to the window and parted the blinds.
Considering there were no particularly tall buildings around, it still looked like the outskirts, and I inferred it was the post-contact travel route from the original plan, not far from the laboratory.
No pursuers had latched on, surely.
"Did you get confirmation?"
"I've sent someone."
"Mm, then does my commission carry on after that?"
At my words, Seo Mok's brow furrowed.
Oh-ho. This is a positive reaction.
"Let me say up front, I didn't want in on this."
"Ah, is that so."
"Why the Captain bothers caring about a job like this....... Take it."
Seo Mok held out a sheet of paper he had set down beside him. Judging by how half of it was crumpled, physical force had probably been involved while the person called 'Captain' persuaded Seo Mok.
Setting my small curiosity aside, I quickly skimmed the contract terms written on the paper.
"Nothing objectionable."
"There's a confidentiality clause, so I left out the specific destination and the details."
"That's fine."
"Are you naive? What if we dump you in the middle of nowhere or sell you off in the heart of enemy territory and bolt?"
"Are you going to?"
When I asked with my eyes wide, the corners of Seo Mok's eyes creased further. He has a personality that lays annoyance over everything, but for him, how to handle someone as young as me was probably grating.
Seo Mok's team was favorable toward minors. It reflected the dispositions of the Captain and the rest of the members, and bastards who approached with that in mind popped up now and then.
That is the part Seo Mok was worried about. He felt he had to look after a kid, but I happened to be rather suspicious.
Seo Mok scrubbed roughly at his hair, sighed, and pointed at the special provision at the end of the contract.
"Are you answering with an understanding of this?"
"Provide all information known. It's not a difficult sentence to understand."
I had thrown out the line about being in the laboratory's information management team with exactly this in mind. Seo Mok's team had handled fairly important and discreet work even among Black Zone mercenaries, and the information I held would be useful for that work.
It would be almost like carrying a spare game coin around.
And if I had worked at a government-side institution? It would look like an outright gold mine.
In terms of the information I had absorbed from the original work, there was no bastard in this world who knew this damn place better than I did.
I was confident.
"That bit about being in the information management team had better not be a lie."
"Wow, that's a lousy threat."
"You— live in the world like that and you'll take a bullet to the head."
"You'll protect me until the commission is over, won't you?"
In any case, releasing even one or two of the things I knew would keep the 'Captain' from letting me go. Seo Mok had no decision-making authority, and the person I needed to impress was the Captain, not Seo Mok.
"Troubled times really are troubled times. How do kids like you end up this way."
Seo Mok let his imagination run as though I were some pitiful child who had lost his parents, been kidnapped, gone through all manner of things, and barely managed to escape. It was not a misunderstanding worth correcting, so I waited quietly and scrawled my signature on the contract.
For the name, I used neither 99 nor X but my own original name.
It was an identity that had dropped straight out of the sky, so nothing would turn up even if they investigated.
"Do Hae? You don't have a surname either, like me?"
"Do is the surname and Hae is the given name."
"......I'm Seo Mok."
Seo Mok introduced himself awkwardly, then took the contract and stamped it.
The seal, pressed in red ink, clearly read 'Ability Office.'
I grinned and took those letters in.
By rights, it was a name the protagonist would have claimed.
The one who got tangled up with Seo Mok was supposed to be the protagonist, not me, and the people of the Ability Office carried on their bond with the protagonist and later became his closest confidants.
They were a dependable team you could trust to watch your back, and they were also the ones who gave the protagonist the greatest help in eliminating 99 the villain.
Which means that in the current situation, the ones most likely to stop my life on borrowed time were precisely the Ability Office.
'I have to make a living too, Mister Protagonist.'
Death is beckoning with a tick, tick the moment I catch my breath, so am I in any position to care about the original work?
"Where am I delivering you to?"
"11 Rushiang Street."
"......What?"
11 Rushiang Street is an address that belongs to the Black Zone.
This needs a bit of explanation. In this world, because of supernatural abilities that had cropped up out of nowhere, a confrontation between the government and the Resistance Army, a radical group of ability users, had been running for quite a long time. While those two bit at each other, swallowed each other, and spat each other back out, various problems tangled together and a dangerous area was created that becomes considerably troublesome if touched.
That place was the Black Zone.
Perhaps because of the bizarre phenomena, the land was stained black, and rough things still leapt out here and there, making it dangerous, yet there were people who huddled together and lived there all the same.
And so it was also a self-governing district that had become a kind of neutral territory.
"You're saying you'll go there of all places?"
Excluding those born in the Black Zone, there were three types who willingly wanted the Black label stuck on them.
Criminals with pursuers on their tail, spies for the government and the Resistance Army, and―
"And how do you even know Rushiang Street? Is someone you know from the Black Zone?"
"Who knows."
―madmen soaked in the dopamine that comes from ruining their own lives.
Anyone in their right mind would normally throw a Black label away even if they were paid to keep it.
Seo Mok widened the distance a notch further and raked his eyes over me.
Starting from putting on someone else's clothes without permission. No, starting from calmly talking about a delivery from inside a puddle of blood before that, I must have looked like a madman.
On top of that, 11 Rushiang Street was the address of a place just across the road from the Ability Office.
It felt as if Seo Mok's guard had gone back up, but I did not bring it up first. That would make it far too obvious that I intend to latch onto you people.
"The original commission was the Royal Tier. You know it?"
It refers to the safe zone where supernatural abilities do not manifest, inhabited by high-ranking government officials and wealthy corporate owners.
"I know it."
"The Black Zone sends the difficulty of a commission straight up, so the price jumps above what you'd originally owe. Can you cover it?"
He is being stingy when it is just one more piece of luggage on his way home. Of course, I did not let that show on the outside.
I manufactured a troubled look and rolled up my baggy sleeves. Since I had no intention of demanding free delivery anyway, I obediently opened the briefcase set beside the yellow suitcase.
"You didn't check the bag, I noticed."
"What?"
"I think I said there was something usable inside."
I patted the shoulder of Seo Mok, who was fumbling because he could not properly process what I meant, and smiled harmlessly. Belatedly, Seo Mok's face went bright red and then past it into a blanched blue, and he made a fuss and shook my hand off his shoulder.
"Do we look like criminals to you?"
"You've misunderstood. I meant that I have sufficient ability to pay. Will this much do?"
Seo Mok caught the gold bar I tossed by reflex and lifted his half-closed eyes wide. It was obviously not plated, and with no serial number, it was properly stolen goods.
"You......, you didn't steal this, did you?"
"Mm, is there a problem?"
"Are you in your right mind?"
"It's the Black Zone anyway."
A criminal's status works fine there, you know.
That's what you get. You should stamp contracts more carefully.
"Is it not enough? There was more back there, so let's go rob it now."
"No! Not going! Wow, you really have lost it."
It took no time at all for Seo Mok's face to go past blue and turn pitch-black.