025 – Meeting an Old Acquaintance Again # 3
Vroooom-.
Motorcycles turned out to be a lot louder than I'd expected.
Had it been deliberately modified to make as much noise as possible?
The driving was reckless, too. Cutting people off came standard, and squeezing between lanes of cars was practically a hobby.
Part of me wondered if this kind of joyride wasn't breaking half a dozen traffic laws, but a bigger part of me was too busy worrying about falling off the bike, so I gripped the delinquent girl's waist firmly and held on.
Thin and slender, yet surprisingly solid—it caught me a little off guard.
But still. Holding a woman's waist without permission, just like that.
This was the first time in my life.
Call it my first waist, if you will—a "first waist," so to speak.
To me, this seemed like an incredibly rude thing to do, but the delinquent girl Lee Jina didn't seem to care in the slightest, focusing only on guiding the bike forward.
Was this just how all bikers were?
Then again, maybe I was the one broadcasting total rookie energy.
While I was mulling that over, we'd somehow arrived at my neighborhood. Near the entrance to the district, I tapped the back of the girl who was slowly decelerating and spoke up.
"You can drop me off around here. Thanks to you, I got home early."
I offered my thanks.
The delinquent girl pulled off her helmet—it looked like something out of a riot squad—glanced around the neighborhood with a sweep of her eyes, and frowned.
"Why do you live in a dump like this? You have a house, don't you? Your mom and dad are worried about you. 'He hasn't been home in six years,' they said."
And with those parting words, she roared off on her bike, vweeeem. What on earth had that been? By "mom and dad" she apparently meant my actual mother and father.
She even knew I hadn't visited my family home in six years.
Was she some friend of my parents' daughter, perhaps?
Or a friend of my little sister? She had the whole delinquent act down, but she looked like she'd just turned twenty—about the same age as my sister, give or take.
No idea.
What mattered right now was the message I'd received: Lee Jeonghun was waiting in front of my house.
If one of only three S-rank awakeners in all of Korea had come looking for me, maybe I should have felt honored.
But lately, thanks to my conversations with Yu Ari and Seo Yerim, I'd developed a distinctly negative impression of Lee Jeonghun and of Ohsa Pharma, the company he ran.
Lee Jeonghun hadn't come on any official business, either.
No—this was surely a covert, hush-hush visit.
And Oinoi was at our house right now.
Worried, I broke into a run, and there in the garden was a man crouching low. He wore a suit, and—to match his face rather poorly—a gas mask.
"Lee Jeonghun?"
Hooooo-.
For a long moment, all I could hear was the strangely distinct sound of breathing through the mask.
Then the man straightened his crouched knees, rose to his feet, and lifted the gas mask slightly to show me his face.
"It's me, *koff*. Ugh, *koff*- Ahh... *koff*."
It was a face I knew well.
We weren't personally close, but I'd seen it plenty online.
"*Koff*! *Koff*, ugh! Uwaak! Huergh! *Koff*!"
Lee Jeonghun's coughing was worse than I'd expected.
He hacked like he was scraping out the bottom of his lungs—so violently that even I started to worry about him.
He hastily clamped the gas mask back on, and only after several steadying breaths did he calm down.
"Lee Jeonghun, what's going on?"
I addressed the third-generation chaebol influencer, who at least appeared to have collected himself. In response, Lee Jeonghun, still working to steady his breathing, pointed at the yard.
"Strange ant. What is this thing? Is it even an ant? It's gold-colored."
A strange ant.
Did he mean the Emperor Ant, Ang-ang-i?
Apparently, while waiting for me in the yard, Lee Jeonghun had watched Ang-ang-i stack firewood and tidy the grounds.
Maybe it was a man thing—he seemed genuinely impressed by the gleaming, armored Emperor Ant. The same thrill you get watching a Gundam, perhaps.
Neither Yu Ari nor Seo Yerim had cared one bit, for what it was worth.
I introduced the ant with no small amount of pride.
"This is Ang-ang-i, the Emperor Ant."
"Ang-ang-i? That's a hot name."
A hot name? Was it?
Now that I thought about it, maybe so.
Anyway, that wasn't the point. What I desperately wanted to know was why Lee Jeonghun had come here. I was wondering how I could get him to talk straight when he extended his hand to me.
"I heard you made the jump from D-rank to C-rank. Congratulations. I brought you a gift—hope you like it. Heard you're a meat guy, so I put together a little something."
Now that I looked, there was a package sitting at Lee Jeonghun's feet, the kind you'd see around the holidays.
Black fabric embroidered with gold thread—very premium-looking. It read: Ohsa Premium Hanwoo Beef Gift Set.
How much was this thing worth?
In any case, I took his outstretched hand and shook it.
"I only just made C-rank, so... you, though, you're doing amazingly. Shooting commercials, developing new drugs—you're on a serious winning streak."
I gave the compliment, but it came out incredibly awkward.
Was this what Yu Ari and Seo Yerim had felt when they shook hands after all those years apart?
Shff-.
Lee Jeonghun released my hand and spoke.
"Not exactly. I've run into a problem."
He circled a finger around his own face.
The gas mask made it pretty clear that something really was wrong. What kind of problem, I couldn't even guess.
Lee Jeonghun let out a long sigh—*haaah*—and spoke.
"Ha Ildo. Ever thought about a part-time job? Real simple work. They draw a little blood, give you a few shots, monitor how it goes. That kind of gig."
"Like a clinical trial for a pharmaceutical company?"
"Exactly, that's it. Fast on the uptake—must be the instructor background. I like people I can talk to. I'll pay you well. Plenty of people have done it. It's safe."
Really safe, though?
I turned the reputation of the Ohsa Group over in my mind, and one thing surfaced immediately: riddled with problems from the brothers' fight over management control.
But I'd never once heard of an industrial accident there, or of a new drug's clinical trials causing side effects and the company getting sued by a victims' association.
Well, Ohsa Pharma's competence was the real deal, so maybe they did have genuine confidence in their safety standards.
"Just give me two days. I'll pay you ten million won. You made C-rank, right? You need a new fitted suit, an Entropy Counter—you need to buy all of it. Ohsa will cover the support. How about it?"
Ten million won for two days?
What on earth did they want to do to me?
While I was tense in every possible way, the gas-masked Lee Jeonghun added, "Fine, fine! Twenty million, then!"
I could roughly tell this wasn't Lee Jeonghun's first rodeo when it came to recruiting people for experiments.
How many people had he paid off and funneled into one trial or another?
It was the moment the reason behind Ohsa Pharma's stellar performance since the age of rifts suddenly clicked into place.
I answered calmly.
"No, money's not the issue right now. I need to know what exactly you want to do to me. You look pretty serious, so I'll decide after I hear you out."
"Hah..."
Lee Jeonghun sighed.
Then he glanced around, and having confirmed no one was there, he pointed at his gas mask.
"See this? It just came on out of nowhere. They say it's some kind of allergy—coughing, runny nose, hard to breathe. It's no joke. And this is a secret, but my internal mana grade got downgraded too."
Downgraded?
That was a very serious matter.
A person's total internal mana capacity could actually drop? Meaning the C-rank I'd barely clawed my way to could fall back to D?
The mere thought made the world swim before my eyes.
"That's serious."
And Lee Jeonghun was an S-rank awakener.
Considering that S-rank awakeners were, for all intents and purposes, the ultimate weapons defending the 21st century, Lee Jeonghun's drop in rank was a genuine loss for the nation and for human history.
How should I put it?
It was like one of three nuclear missiles held for national defense breaking down.
The news hadn't said anything about this, had it?
Well, naturally—they'd been keeping it secret.
A rank downgrade.
Panic would break out among awakeners, guaranteed. And if awakeners panicked, ordinary citizens would waver right along with them, and who knew—the old chaos might come creeping back.
"Lee Jeonghun, so that's why you met with Yu Ari. You couldn't let the test results leak, so you had someone you knew run them in secret."
"Right! Yu Ari's a bit sketchy, but her skills are legit! Did she not contact you about meeting me today?"
Not at all, actually.
When I failed to answer, Lee Jeonghun exhaled a long breath through the mask and muttered under it, low enough I could barely hear: "Yu Ari, that son of a—"
"Anyway! Help me out here! You're one of only a handful of people who knows my situation. I came here in secret too. You just got promoted from D to C, right? After eight years! If I can figure out how you did it, then maybe I can—"
Lee Jeonghun looked genuinely desperate.
Well, of course he did.
When someone who stood higher than anyone else came falling down, they fell the hardest.
"How I made it to C-rank, huh."
Viewed one way, it had been pure coincidence.
I'd met the nymph Oinoi, and lifted a curse. That was all.
A curse.
The keyword floated up in my mind out of nowhere.
Hadn't they said that the curse I broke would return to someone else?
Could it be...
"Lee Jeonghun, do you know anything about curses?"
I asked.
Lee Jeonghun blinked his eyes beneath the gas mask.
"Curses? What curse?"
He reacted like he'd never heard of any such thing.
An act?
Did he genuinely not know?
Either way, I decided it was best to hold off on cooperating with him too readily.
"I'll think it over."
"Think it over? My life is being destroyed in real time! Why won't anybody listen to me!"
*Bwaang-.*
Lee Jeonghun suddenly screamed, making me jump. He panted raggedly through the gas mask, then pulled something from his waistband.
It was a cylindrical object. Just as I was thinking it looked like a flashlight, it went *zzeeeeng*—and spat out light.
"Is that... a Beam Saber?"
I was truly stunned.
The Beam Saber—the primary weapon of Lee Jeonghun, S-rank awakener.
I never thought I'd see one up close.
And for me, it meant misfortune of every conceivable kind.
"Come along quietly. I'm telling you I'll pay you! Or are you disrespecting me because I'm the fourth son's kid? You still think you're my senior? Do I look like the loser you used to scrape your tray over, huh!?"
Lee Jeonghun looked half out of his mind. Well, when it's your turn to lose every glory you ever had, no wonder you can't hold your reason together.
I understood his situation—and yet I couldn't help tensing up.
They said a Beam Saber could slice through thick steel plate like paper.
Still, corrections had to be made where corrections were due.
"Lee Jeonghun, I think you've got me mixed up with someone else. I never once told you to scrape my tray. I scraped my own tray and dumped it myself, every time. Now calm down. Deep breaths. Haaah—."
I stalled for as much time as I could while reaching behind my back—the case hanging there like a backpack. The instant I thumbed the lock open with a *click*, a chill ran down my neck.
*Vwoooong-!*
The Beam Saber, famous for cutting through anything, sliced through the air and came screaming at my head. I managed to roll my body out of the way just in time—had I been a second slower, I'd have been badly hurt.
"Haaah, fine, if that's how it is, I'm dragging you there by force. You'll get your compensation later, so don't blame me."
You've got to be kidding me.
I had to fight an S-rank awakener?
Fighting a human instead of a monster—it had been so long that I felt utterly at a loss.
*Pwaaang-!*
A massive impact thundered out, and Lee Jeonghun's body lurched violently.
━Keng-keng...!
It was Keongkeongi, leaping out of the case.
Keongkeongi, standing between me and Lee Jeonghun.
━Grrrr...!
Watching the dog-squirrel puff up its fur, Lee Jeonghun readjusted his gas mask and let out a flustered, high-pitched noise.
"What is THIS now...!? *Koff*. *Koff*."