Chapter 16

I looked at the time. It was past 10 p.m.

I debated whether I should report this now or not. He would have already left work. But waiting until tomorrow to report this felt a bit off, too.

In the end, I picked up my phone.

-Choi Gi-woong? Are you sure you meant to call me?

“Head of department. I’m calling because I have something to report.”

-You punk. What time do you think it is? What kind of report is this? Did you work like this under Han Seung-hoon, too?

When I worked under Han Seung-hoon, 3 a.m. was the standard.

-What, did you give up already? Or did you catch him? If it’s not one of those two, don’t bother.

“It’s one of the two.”

-What?

“Wi Jeong-rak. I’ve caught him.”

Silence flowed from the other end of the line. Flustered, his breathing grew louder.

So I spoke first.

“I’m at the entrance to the underpass. I think I’m going to need some vehicle support.”

-Are you kidding me right now… You wouldn’t be.

“No, sir. I’m not. More importantly, about that vehicle support.”

-Oh, uh. Right. Of course. Wait, wait right there.

Even though I couldn’t see him, I could picture it.

Head of department Kim Yoon-joong, rushing over.

Good thing I reported it.

As soon as I hung up, Wi Jeong-rak raised his hand as if he’d been waiting.

“Could I quickly go inside and grab some medicine?”

“Are you sick?”

“My little one at home has a terrible disease.”

The child, who had been whimpering until just a moment ago, was now quiet. Her complexion didn’t look good either.

These symptoms.

“It’s Mana Disease.”

“You know about this?”

He looked surprised. Well, I’d heard there were less than three hundred people in the country who suffered from this disease.

“My mother suffered from it as well.”

It was a wretched disease that stole even the mana one didn’t have.

A terrible thing that would turn you into a mummy if you didn’t replenish your mana with Potions or Elixirs on time.

The cause was unknown, and there was no proper cure. You just continued the long, drawn-out battle until one day, you just dropped dead.

“Working and caregiving at the same time. It must be tough.”

Wi Jeong-rak looked at me with a pitying gaze, as if seeing a comrade.

I shook my head.

“No. I don’t have to do any caregiving anymore.”

“…Ah. I’m sorry. I asked something I shouldn’t have.”

“It’s alright. More importantly, you should hurry and get the medicine.”

Bowing his head, Wi Jeong-rak scurried to bring back the pills.

But the mana condensed in each and every pill was substantial.

It was puzzling, to think that a wanted man had obtained something like this in a dingy back alley.

I asked, just in case.

“Did you steal anything else from JW?”

“What? No. Ah, this. I made this myself.”

“Yourself? Here?”

“It’s not that hard to make a low-grade Elixir like this if you have similar ingredients. Yu-ja. Time for your medicine.”

If you have similar ingredients, he says.

Even to my untrained eye, making an Elixir was by no means an easy task.

Wi Jeong-rak scratched his head as if embarrassed, then put a handful of pills into the trembling child’s mouth.

“Kurgh. Keurgh.”

The child, who had been shivering violently, grew calm. The image of my mother overlapped with the sight.

Noticing my expression, Wi Jeong-rak spoke with a bitter smile.

“I thought that Elixir would be able to cure Mana Disease. It was a foolish thought.”

Was it because I saw my mother’s image in her? Words I normally wouldn’t have said slipped from my mouth.

“…It had no effect?”

Wi Jeong-rak smiled bleakly, like a man who had lost his last hope.

“No. It didn’t.”

Around that time, I succeeded in recalling the thought that had been nagging at the back of my mind.

I remember Ian fixing this.

But I couldn’t remember how.

I had focused on memorizing the magic formulas and missed the other details.

I was sure he had treated someone.

How did he do it?

“If I can’t remember, I can’t remember.”

“Pardon?”

“I was just talking to myself. A car’s coming over there.”

A sedan hurriedly parked in the alley.

An even more hurried face got out of the car. He must have been in such a rush that he was wearing mismatched shoes.

Head of department Kim Yoon-joong ran toward me.

“…You.”

He looked at me, Wi Jeong-rak, and the other two small-fry with a complicated expression.

“I’ll turn myself in.”

“Me, too.”

The small-fry spat out their prepared lines.

Kim Yoon-joong’s face became even more dumbfounded.

“Let’s go and talk first.”

“So.”

Even when I’d caused a huge stir at Ilseong with my Buff Magic, his expression hadn’t been like this.

“How did you find him?”

He looked quite serious now.

“I was just looking for a place he might hide, and it happened to be the underpass. So I went to check it out.”

“And you checked it out.”

“And there he was.”

As I spoke nonchalantly, Head of department Kim Yoon-joong stared at me intently.

Was this really something to be so surprised about?

“The job itself wasn’t a big deal. Though it was a C-Rank mission.”

That was strange, too. To think that finding a single F-Rank Awakener was a C-Rank mission.

“The mission difficulty was upgraded after everyone else failed. But for you to just wrap it up in a single day like this. It’s a little surprising. No, a lot.”

“……”

“When you said you were coming here out of the blue, I thought you were crazy, but I guess you had something to back it up, huh?”

I kept my mouth shut at his subtle attempt to fish for information.

I couldn’t tell him that.

I was grateful for his concern for me lately, but he was still the one who had sent me to my death.

The reason I was working so conspicuously despite that was because I didn’t want to seem like a pushover.

If he tried to push me to my death again, or if I saw any sign of it.

Then…

“Alright. I made a promise, so I’ll keep it. You’re part of our unit from now on. Know that this isn’t a place you can just leave because you want to.”

“Understood.”

“And I’m sorry to be a wet blanket at a time like this, but.”

Head of department Kim Yoon-joong, who had been scrutinizing me seriously until now, shifted his posture to one of unease.

“It looks like there’s going to be a stain on your career.”

“?”

“You going to Ilseong. That’s scheduled to be processed as a mission failure.”

Head of department Kim Yoon-joong scratched his cheek.

“I asked them to just make it like it never happened rather than processing it as a failure, but they said no. That’s just how S-Rank missions are. You do know the mission you took was S-Rank, right?”

“I just found out.”

“Anyway, the mission deadline is the day they stamp the papers with Ilseong. I think there’s about half a month left. Those crazy bastards. Is that supposed to make any sense?”

Kim Yoon-joong grumbled, sneaking glances at me.

“You’ve had a perfect evaluation score until now, right? You haven’t failed to raid a single dungeon you were assigned. Even that Im Seong-joon thing was a successful raid.”

“That’s right.”

“A perfect test paper is about to get one wrong because of me. Tsk, this one’s my fault. I shouldn’t have sent you like that. I’m sorry.”

Many words swirled in my mouth, but thankfully, none of them came out.

Instead, I carefully chose my words and tested the waters.

“If, by any chance, I had succeeded in that mission…”

“All hell would have broken loose. It’d be like an F-Rank nobody expected anything from landing a big fish. You’d probably start with a special promotion.”

Then, Kim Yoon-joong let out a chuckle.

“No, wait. Succeeding in the current climate would have brought an even bigger reward. The situation is perfect. We didn’t know things with Ilseong would get this crazy. The Association President would have given you a decent gift, too. Tsk. What’s the point of talking about this? It’s all in the past.”

No. It’s not over yet.

I only said it to myself. My mind was racing. What my reward would be after finishing this job.

Putting aside the Association President’s gift.

If I get a special promotion here, I’ll become a 4th-grade. Once I’m a 4th-grade, I can create my own team.

My heart pounded.

I felt like the barber who cut the king’s hair. I never knew a secret only I knew could be this hard to bear.

If someone hadn’t knocked on the Head of department’s door, I might have blurted out my plan.

The door flew open without anyone even saying to come in.

I wondered who it was, and it was Im Han-na.

“Head of department. I heard you caught Wi Jeong-rak.”

“Hey, you, knock…”

“Ah, should I go out and come back in?”

“Be my guest.”

Letting the Head of department’s words go in one ear and out the other, she approached.

“Choi Gi-woong-ssi, you’re here too.”

“Hello, Im Han-na-ssi.”

Accepting my greeting perfunctorily, Im Han-na urged him on, her face a mask of dying curiosity.

“Head of department. Who was it?”

“Who was what?”

“The person who caught Wi Jeong-rak. Who on earth managed it when even So-hyeon failed? Was there someone like that among us? There’s a bet on this, so tell me quickly.”

“I believe I’ve told you several times not to bet on missions.”

“I’ll be careful next time. So who was it?”

“…Next to you.”

Kim Yoon-joong said, almost like a sigh.

Im Han-na tilted her head with a dubious look.

“Did you go yourself, Head of department?”

“Not in front, next to.”

“Next to?”

Im Han-na glanced at me, then looked to the other side.

“Who?”

This was a bit of a shock.

No matter how much of an F-Rank I was, to be ignored to this extent.

Unable to watch any longer, Kim Yoon-joong gestured at me a couple of times with his chin.

Only then did Im Han-na look back at me. A moment later, a question mark appeared above her head.

“Oh, come on, stop joking.”

“I’m being serious.”

Im Han-na changed her target and asked me.

“…Is it true?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Well, I was just looking for a place he might hide, and it happened to be the underpass. So I went to check it out.”

“And you checked it out.”

“And there he was.”

I repeated the same words as before. Im Han-na’s expression became identical to Kim Yoon-joong’s from a moment ago.

After a long while, Im Han-na gave up on trying to understand and changed the subject.

“Anyway, Wi Jeong-rak is in big trouble. The Chairman of JW won’t let him off easy.”

“He’s a dead man.”

“Was her name Lee Ji-won? The Chairman’s daughter. She has Mana Disease, right?”

New information. I had only heard vaguely that he had stolen an Elixir, but to think the person it was for was also a Mana Disease patient. Now I understood why Wi Jeong-rak stole the Elixir, and why that person was so angry.

“The Chairman adores his daughter so much, he spent hundreds of billions trying to create a cure. He was ready to offer up his own heart if someone could just cure her, and that guy stole it.”

Im Han-na clicked her tongue.

“He’s not going to die a pretty death.”

Having said that, Im Han-na suddenly extended her hand to me.

“There are 200.”

“?”

“People in our Division 1. I’m saying there are 200.”

The number of special agents should be a top secret, but she said it as casually as if she were showing me her shopping list.

“I heard you officially joined. That’s why I’m telling you.”

“I see.”

At that, I shook her hand.

“I guess we’ll have to do introductions later. Oh, right.”

Im Han-na added with a meaningful smile.

“Call me Seonbae. You’re my junior for real now.”

Maybe it was because I’d been through so much in one day. It felt like several days had passed.

The 100 million won on the dining table was still untouched. It felt unsettling every time I looked at it.

As if Head of department Han Seung-hoon was watching me, checking if I was doing well.

I shoved the check into a drawer and lay down on the bed.

The moment I lay down, all sorts of stray thoughts came to mind.

Plans for what to do from now on, magic, and Wi Jeong-rak’s coughing daughter…

I shook my head.

But the scene that had surfaced wouldn’t disappear so easily.

Come to think of it, at my mother’s funeral, Han Seung-hoon had acted as the chief mourner in my place while I was out of my mind.

Ah, damn it.

In the end, I took the check I’d shoved in the drawer and put it back on the dining table.

“Go ahead and stare until you’re sick of it.”

Only then did the stray thoughts disappear, so I guess it really was effective.

Damn it, this wasn’t even Mental Magic.

Once the stray thoughts passed, I suddenly remembered what Head of department Kim Yoon-joong had said.

-Let’s re-examine your Status Window tomorrow.

I told him to go right ahead. He could search all day long, but he wouldn’t find anything.

It was a little funny to think of it as something to be proud of, but my Status Window was a colorless, odorless nothing…

“?”

I shot up from my seat.

“What the.”

The Status Window had changed.

No. To be precise, something had been added.

Past Life Lucid Dream: When you sleep, memories of your past life will randomly surface. The higher the Rank, the clearer the memories become.

Rewind: You can re-watch a specific moment from a desired past life. However, Rewind can only be used on scenes you have already seen.

Charge Count: 1

Charge Rate: 62%