The Hour of Confrontation (2)
First, a brief introduction to the location: it was a room somewhere in the underground facility, long abandoned and now used as a storage space. Even after a hasty cleaning, traces of its age lingered everywhere. Compared to the sleek facilities elsewhere in the research wing, the interior felt hopelessly shabby. Of course, that didn’t mean there weren’t proper reception rooms available underground. The choice of this particular spot had been deliberate—security around the girl they were about to meet was simply that strict.
Yoo Han rubbed his itchy nose and frowned. Dust floated visibly through the beams of the old lights; the room hadn’t been used in years. He wanted nothing more than to open a window and air the place out, but being underground left him no choice but to trust the whirring ventilation system. And with security being the stated reason, there was little an outsider like him could do but endure it.
Letting out a quiet sigh at the situation, he recalled the staff member who had been standing with the girl at the door moments earlier. Though the cap had hidden most of her face, identifying her hadn’t been difficult. She was one of Dr. J’s closest aides—the head of the entire research division. Even within the same company, factions existed and power balanced delicately among them. After years in the business, noticing such things had become second nature.
Team 5’s leader, Cheon Hyeok, and that cunning doctor appeared to have little direct overlap, yet they maintained a cordial relationship. The girl was almost certainly tied to both of them. From everything that had happened so far, it seemed they were deliberately keeping information about her from reaching the upper echelons of the Council. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have hidden a child this deep underground and assigned him such a peculiar task.
Two influential figures within the Council were shielding a mysterious girl. He still couldn’t guess why.
Yoo Han swallowed the unease churning in his chest and tried to clear his head. His instincts screamed that something enormous was at play, but for now he had to focus on the task in front of him.
“……”
He squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them and looked straight ahead. The girl seated across from him stared back, every nerve on high alert after the sudden change in surroundings. She looked like a cat with its fur bristling. The sharp, sulky expression on her youthful face only reinforced the impression.
He could understand why she was so wary. According to what he’d been told, she had been essentially locked in this underground facility ever since Cheon Hyeok rescued her from the dungeon. Of course, given the man’s character, he wouldn’t have done anything strange to her, but being trapped in a sunless place at her age was stressful enough. Perhaps that was why the team leader had pushed for this meeting so urgently—while they waited for her to obtain a proper identity, they needed a temporary guardian.
With that thought, the past week’s hardships felt slightly more bearable.
Yoo Han exhaled softly and broke the heavy silence that filled the room.
“…Hello? I understand how confusing it must be to be called to a place like this so suddenly. But I promise this isn’t anything bad for you. There’s no need to be so tense. I just wanted to have a little chat with Seoah.”
He spoke in the friendliest tone he could manage while hiding the fatigue on his face. Using a stiff, businesslike manner now would only make the child withdraw further. If she clammed up when he still had questions to ask, things would become far more troublesome.
The only people in this room were himself and the girl. Since they were meeting for the first time, his immediate priority was to ease the fear and wariness in her heart. That had seemed like simple common sense.
But his assumption contained a fatal flaw: the girl’s wariness wasn’t rooted in fear. Far from being terrified, she was perfectly calm and rational.
His misunderstanding collapsed the moment she opened her mouth.
“What if I don’t want to?”
“…Huh?”
“I don’t really feel like talking to you, mister. I have nothing to say to some suspicious stranger I’ve never met before.”
For a split second, his thoughts froze. He even wondered, absurdly, whether he had dozed off from exhaustion and this was all a dream. Of course it wasn’t, but he couldn’t help thinking it. How many children her age would speak so boldly to an unknown adult in this situation? It was hard to believe, yet reality remained reality.
Years of experience as a manager sharpened his reflexes at moments like this. He pushed aside his confusion, removed the rose-colored glasses he had been wearing, and finally saw what had been hidden before.
There was no fear in the girl’s sunken eyes. He had initially assumed her body had simply gone rigid from tension, but what he now saw was not fear—it was the cold clarity of frost. Even her voice, though youthful, carried not a single tremor.
At this point, denial was impossible. The girl sitting before him was no ordinary child.
The sight of such rational composure in someone so young was almost chilling, yet it also made sense. The child who had caught the personal attention of Cheon Hyeok, the strongest hunter known as the Blue Flame, could never be ordinary.
Yoo Han convinced himself of this and completely revised his initial approach. He cast aside any preconceptions based on her appearance and shifted into a serious negotiating stance. One might wonder why he was being so cautious with a child, but this was an instinct honed by long experience.
“Hmm… Then what do I need to do so that Seoah will talk with me?”
“If you give something, you should get something in return, right? Answer my questions first, and I’ll answer yours. Otherwise, I have no intention of opening my mouth again.”
The girl rested her chin on her hands and stared at him with a sly smile, her eyes curving in a teasing arc. The sheer audacity of it was so ridiculous that Yoo Han nearly laughed out loud. Was this really a twelve-year-old? At this point, it seemed far more plausible that some cunning fox spirit had taken human form.
Then a realization struck him. There was only one reason a child could stand so confidently before an unknown adult: she already knew the person in front of her could not possibly harm her. On top of that, instead of outright refusing, she was subtly offering a trade while gauging his reaction. Calculating to the point of being chilling, the girl knew exactly which cards she held.
As Yoo Han quickly weighed her proposal, he realized the initiative in the conversation had already slipped into her hands. Yet he had no immediate way to reclaim it. The situation had veered far beyond anything he had anticipated. He had expected her to simply refuse and stay silent, not to negotiate with him on equal terms.
While he was still searching for a response, the girl’s expression changed. She suddenly drooped her shoulders and covered her face with both hands, looking utterly forlorn.
“So… it really won’t work? I’m so scared… I’ve been locked in this room the whole time, unable to go outside, and they even did those… those strange experiments on me… *sniff*!”
She curled her small body inward, her voice trembling with tears. Even after witnessing her extraordinary composure moments earlier, the sight of such a tiny child saying those words tugged at his heart.
But the final part of her sentence sent his mind into chaos.
Strange experiments? Had they actually conducted something like that on a child this young? He had heard nothing of the sort, so his imagination ran wild. The upright team leader would never allow it, which meant the fox-like female doctor must have been behind it. He had known she was obsessed with research, but there had to be a line… How could anyone do something like that to a little girl?!
In his mind, the “experiments” had already ballooned into something monstrous. His existing distrust of the doctor only fueled the flames of suspicion.
Faced with this horrifying possibility, Yoo Han’s anger surfaced—followed immediately by a crushing sense of powerlessness and guilt. What good would his anger do here? As a mere manager, he was nothing more than a candle in the wind before the head of the research division.
While he wallowed in guilt, he failed to notice one crucial detail: one of the delicate hands covering the girl’s face had parted just enough for a single eye to peek through. The cold, clear gaze that met his own vanished the instant he looked back up. All that remained was a fragile girl doing her best to hide her sorrow.
After a long silence, Yoo Han finally spoke, his expression grave.
“The adults really are sorry… You’re right. You’re the one this is all happening to, so you deserve to know what’s going on. I’ll answer everything I can.”
With the situation having reached this point, he had no choice but to grant the request he had never planned on fulfilling. His decision came from genuine pity and guilt toward the girl before him. Besides, none of the information he possessed would cause serious problems if revealed. Easing the curiosity of a child who had been kept in the dark seemed harmless enough.
The moment he agreed, the girl lowered her hands and beamed with pure delight, as if nothing had happened. Seeing that innocent smile, Yoo Han thought to himself that no matter how mature she sometimes seemed, she was still just a child.
He never noticed that the flawless, radiant smile was nothing more than a carefully crafted mask.
Deep inside, the girl smiled with wicked satisfaction as events unfolded exactly according to her plan.