The Time of Confrontation (1)
In this day and age, ever since dungeons—those otherworldly realms—first appeared, the security firm known as the Council has become one of the most coveted workplaces in South Korea. At first glance, the name might suggest that every employee is a hunter, but the reality is quite different. Aside from the key personnel dispatched to actual sites, most staff are non-hunter office workers. Of course, that also meant they had to possess exceptional skills that set them apart in their respective fields. And while it feels a bit awkward to say it myself, I was one of those elites. It was just… the position I was assigned to had unbelievably terrible luck attached to it.
Park Yoo-han, the dedicated manager of Investigation Team 5, let out a deep sigh of lament over his own situation. Ever since the Council’s rise, hunters had become a new profession that captured the public’s imagination, turning them into something akin to celebrity figures. Hunters now wielded enormous influence across countless sectors of society, which naturally meant they dragged along a constant stream of scandals and issues—just like entertainers had before dungeons ever existed.
To manage that side of things, the Council had created a new role even within its most important departments: the manager. Their job was to handle everything except dungeon raids—scheduling, support work, and cleaning up the messes their hunters left behind. In short, they were the ones standing in the shadows of the shining hunters, mopping up after them.
Managers were only assigned to two divisions that regularly appeared in the public eye: the Subjugation Division and the Investigation Division. Normally, one manager was assigned per team. Naturally, the Subjugation Division’s workload was overwhelmingly heavier because their hunters were far more exposed to the media. Reporters were constantly watching their every move, desperate for a scoop.
In comparison, the Investigation Division’s managers had it much easier. Unlike the Subjugation Division, which actively fought monsters and cleared dungeons, the Investigation Division mainly handled post-incident inquiries. Thanks to confidentiality regulations, they could also legally keep reporters at bay. That alone cut their workload nearly in half.
Based on that common sense, I had been overjoyed when I was first assigned here. Back then, I had been dying under the crushing workload of the Subjugation Division, so this transfer felt like salvation. Not only was I escaping that hell, but I was moving into the Investigation Division—widely regarded as a cushy, dream job—complete with a high salary and excellent benefits from the Council. On top of that, the new team leader assigned to Investigation Team 5 was none other than the legendary veteran from the Subjugation Division, Cheon Hyeok of the Blue Flames.
Although we had never crossed paths due to being in different divisions, Cheon Hyeok’s skill and character were legendary even within the Subjugation Division. Some people wondered why someone at the peak of his career had been transferred to the Investigation Division, but what did that matter? Objectively speaking, becoming the manager of Investigation Team 5 was clearly the best possible position.
With high hopes for the future, I began my work as Team 5’s manager. But at the time, I had no idea that the position I had been given was a cleverly disguised hell far beyond anything I could have imagined…
It wasn’t that the newly appointed team leader had any problems. He was far more fair and competent than any other team leader. The real issue was his innate nature. There are people like that—individuals who somehow attract trouble just by existing, drawing incidents and accidents wherever they go. Cheon Hyeok was exactly that type of person.
Completely unaware of this fact, I started feeling something was off after exactly one week. By the time a month had passed, I finally realized the truth: this position wasn’t heaven at all. It was a trap card disguised as paradise. But by then, it was already too late.
At least when I was a manager in the Subjugation Division, I could freely recruit subordinates to help with the work. In the Investigation Division, however, fairness issues with other managers made that impossible. And while problems caused by certain reporters could be handled by pressuring the media with the company’s influence, every issue Cheon Hyeok brought in was complicated beyond belief.
After removing his glasses and rubbing his bloodshot eyes, Yoo-han let out a heavy sigh. He could no longer remember how many nights he had gone without sleep. His mind felt foggy from drinking too much coffee, and drowsiness crashed over him like a waterfall. But he couldn’t stop now. For the sake of the important schedule ahead, he had to hold on to his wavering focus.
Slapping both cheeks to steady himself, Yoo-han adjusted his glasses and picked up a single document from the desk. The paper, densely covered in text, contained someone’s personal information—name, age, physical details, and basic background. On the surface, it looked like an ordinary, unremarkable profile. But the crucial point was that every single detail on it had been forged by his own hands.
As he read through the convincingly fabricated document, his gaze stopped on the photograph in the upper left corner. There sat a girl with an expressionless face. She was quite cute, appearance-wise. But what stood out most was the color of her hair—a grayish shade, too dark to be called silver. It was a feature no ordinary Korean would naturally possess. The cause was likely a rare physical change that sometimes occurred in awakened individuals.
Staring at the girl’s photograph, he recalled what had happened several weeks ago. Without any explanation, the team leader had simply handed him a photo and a name, asking him to investigate her background. Sensing something ominous, I had demanded an explanation, but all I received was deep silence. That heavily conflicted expression on his face had been more than enough to amplify my anxiety.
Though I wanted to refuse, it was still the team leader’s order. With no choice, I began the background check using the information I had been given. As expected, my ominous feeling proved correct. No matter how thoroughly I searched the Council’s internal database, not a single person matched the girl. Even after considering that her name might be an alias and cross-referencing her appearance and irises, I found no information about her.
When disasters caused by dungeons occurred, the Council maintained identity records for nearly every citizen in South Korea to quickly locate missing persons. The complete absence of any registered information was anything but ordinary. As a last resort, I used my connections to secretly request her fingerprints from a government agency, but the result was nothing. In other words, the girl in the photo the team leader had suddenly asked me to investigate was a complete ghost with no identity records whatsoever.
Realizing that this was no ordinary matter, I fell into deep despair. To make matters worse, when I later learned that the team leader was personally protecting the girl in the photo, my fear turned into outright terror.
Ah… Team Leader. Why do you keep dragging in these ridiculous situations? Of course, investigating things like this is part of the Investigation Division’s job, but… We had only just resolved a major incident a few days ago, and now another huge case had rolled in. For someone whose job was to clean up after them, it was truly hellish. On top of that, in this day and age, the complete lack of identity records only fueled the worst possible suspicions.
The possible explanations were that her parents had never reported her birth to the authorities, or that she had been involved in something bad—meaning a crime. From what I had overheard from the team members, the girl was an orphan. That made the latter possibility far more likely.
Though my heart was burning black with dread, I couldn’t simply not report it. In the end, after gathering information for several days, I delivered my conclusion: [No result found.] At least within South Korea, the girl was officially a person who “did not exist.”
Upon receiving the report, the team leader nodded calmly, as if he had somehow expected this outcome. I had been anxiously wondering if he would order me to investigate again, so I finally felt some relief. But then his muttered words made my face turn deathly pale in an instant.
“I see… As expected. Then there’s no helping it. Since it’s come to this, I’ll just have to make a new one.”
What? Make what? There’s no way you could do that yourself, so who’s going to… The voice in my heart that I couldn’t voice aloud slowly faded away. A moment later, my eyes met the man’s directly. Ah. That look in his eyes. I knew it all too well by now—the silent gaze he gave when he wanted something done.
Leaving me frozen like ice with my mouth slightly open and my face drained of color, he stood up. Then he walked toward me, placed a hand on my shoulder, and spoke.
“Do it.”
“……”
After leaving behind that short but powerful command, he immediately left the room. Standing there with my soul seemingly departed, I couldn’t move for a long time. That had been exactly… one week ago.
From that moment on, I had been thrown into the so-called “person-making” operation, beginning the most difficult task I had ever been assigned. The phrasing felt a bit strange, but it wasn’t wrong. What I was about to do was no different from creating an entirely new human being from scratch.
The traces a person left behind in life were another form of proof of their existence. In that regard, it was fortunate that the girl was still young. Thanks to that, there were fewer areas I needed to fabricate.
First, since the girl herself didn’t know her biological parents, I set her background as an orphan with unclear parentage. Next, I searched for orphanages near Seoul that would appear on official documents as having taken her in. I couldn’t choose someone loose-lipped, so I personally visited several places to assess the directors’ characters. After selecting a trustworthy one, I began secret negotiations—asking them to create records stating that the girl in the photo had been at their orphanage.
As expected, the director showed reluctance since this wasn’t through normal channels. But with smooth persuasion and the promise of ongoing investment in the orphanage, I gradually won him over. When he reached the point of hesitation, I played my trump card: the name of the massive corporation, the Council. There wasn’t a single person in Seoul who didn’t know the Council, and it had a very positive public image through the media. From that point on, the negotiations went smoothly. Unconsciously, I had also planted the idea that what we were doing wasn’t connected to any crime or wrongdoing.
Finally, I set the girl’s departure from the orphanage as several years ago. To add concrete details, I filled in the name of her adoptive guardian with an appropriate alias and an unused phone number. This completed a plausible backstory: the girl, who had been at the orphanage, was unfortunately adopted by a bad adult without knowing anything, endured years of misfortune, and was eventually rescued during a tragic dungeon incident.
While the media had reported that the party involved in the tragedy had been wiped out, strictly speaking, it was ambiguous whether the girl had actually been part of that party, so it didn’t matter much. Besides, the company had already thoroughly silenced that matter, so information about the girl rescued from there wouldn’t leak to the media.
After finishing the basic setup, I secretly inserted the girl’s identity information into both the Council’s and the government’s databases. As expected, this process was extremely difficult. Since handling it alone was too risky given the scale, I needed to mobilize various connections for careful work. To make things worse, the team leader kept pressing me to finish quickly. As a result, I was thrown into a hellish week of work with almost no sleep.
At first, success had seemed uncertain, but somehow things worked out, and I finally completed the task just this morning. Now that the basic framework was nearly finished, it was time for the final verification to check for any errors.
Encouraging myself that the end was truly near, Yoo-han sipped his coffee with trembling hands. The reason he had come all the way to this underground research facility—difficult to access and inconvenient to reach—was simple: to speak with the girl in the photograph.
Just then, the door opened with a soft hum, and two figures entered his view. One was a female staff member from the research division in uniform, and standing beside her was a small girl. Her face was an exact match for the person in the photo he had just been looking at.