The Proposal
"Hah."
As the light drew back, a familiar smell jabbed at my nose. Must and stale air, a room without a single window, and those slapdash wooden boards to finish it.
"...I'm back."
I really was. Not the plaza. Not anywhere else. This room, exactly.
My hand found the shoulder strap and confirmed it had come with me, and I turned my head.
"...Huh."
Someone was standing in the doorway. Our eyes met.
Jane.
Why? What was she doing in my room all of a sudden?
"I..."
The unsteady flicker of her gaze was enough. She saw. From right where she stood, she had watched me come back.
"Just now."
It took her a moment to find her voice.
"What was that, just now?"
"......"
A lie occurred to me, briefly. But Jane's eyes had already fixed on the backpack hanging from my shoulders.
"Don't tell me..."
Hah. Is the security in this building seriously that bad?
At Taeyong's request, Jane had come looking for the building where Minsu lived.
She knocked and called his name several times. Nothing answered.
She went down to the landlord, who was sitting on the first floor.
"The man from earlier. Did he go out somewhere?"
"Huh? No. I've been sitting right here the whole time. Never saw him leave."
"Mm."
An ominous thought crossed her mind. She remembered, all at once, the last person to keep this room—someone who had lasted all of three months.
Had he really been that weak?
"Hah."
She climbed back up to Minsu's room. There wasn't even a proper latch on the door. She put her weight into it, and the flimsy bolt on the inside snapped as the door swung open.
"No one here."
He must have slipped out in a moment the landlord stepped away. So she thought, picking up the fallen latch and fitting it back into place, already turning to leave.
Behind her, suddenly, a presence.
"There was no one. I'm certain of it. The door was locked, and the landlord said he never saw you leave..."
Jane trailed off and shook her head, as if she couldn't believe her own account.
"What is the skill?"
I hesitated, then answered.
"It's Return."
"...Return?"
"My skill is Return. It seems I can go back to Earth."
Was there a simpler way to put it? Turn it over as I might, I couldn't see a way out of this. I was a stranger here—the short sword at Jane's hip was proof enough. I didn't even know what her skill was, and mine still had a full twenty-four hours of cooldown left on it.
"...Is that really true?"
Jane's eyes shook, hard.
I swung the bag off my back, set it down in front of me, and opened the zipper. Inside was the haul I'd farmed this trip—if farmed was even the word. Four five-packs of ramen, five power banks, five cans of tuna, five tins of Spam, ten energy bars, instant coffee, and two cartons of cigarettes.
"Hah?"
Jane looked from the things in the pack to me and back again, as if she couldn't quite believe either.
"This is enormous. Do you understand that?"
I did. The ability to walk out of a place no one could leave. I could already guess, in rough outline, what kind of ripple that would send through a place like this.
"Even the appearance of Luna alone, a communication-type..."
Jane stopped and swallowed.
"This cannot get out."
"I don't want it to."
I had no wish to be hounded over it. It wasn't as if I could fight, and I still hadn't even learned, in any real detail, what this ability was.
"Perhaps you should speak with Mr. Taeyong."
I nodded without a long debate. Jane worked for Kim Taeyong. Ask her to keep it from him, and would she? I didn't care to gamble on that.
"Bring the goods as well. I am not taking them. Only..."
"I know."
She meant they were what it would take to make him believe.
"Then."
"Ah—my clothes."
"I'll wait."
I changed back into the leather vest and the coarse trousers and stepped out. Jane was waiting.
The way back to the Nyx Merchant Guild Headquarters felt shorter than it had the first time. Jane said nothing the whole walk, and neither did I. I watched the street instead.
When I had first arrived, everything had been too strange to see properly. Now the details came through one by one. People passing in leather armor. Swords riding at their hips. Merchants who had spread a cloth along the roadside and were selling whatever they had. And even as I moved through all of it, the weight of the bag on my back never let up.
Did I bring too much?
Minutes ago those things had felt like a comfort. Now they only sat wrong. It was hard to shake the sense that the bag held something more than ramen and cans.
"Go on in."
We had reached the Nyx Merchant Guild Headquarters before I noticed. Jane went straight up the stairs.
"It's me."
"Come in."
I opened the door, and Kim Taeyong looked up.
"We meet again already."
The smile was still there.
"What happened?"
The question went to Jane. She glanced at me once, and it felt like a request for permission. I nodded, small.
"He calls it Return."
"Calls what?"
"Mr. Park Minsu's skill."
Taeyong's gaze turned to me.
"Return?"
"Yes."
I answered him.
"I can go back to Earth."
His expression hardly changed. Only the corner of that smile dipped, just a little.
"To Earth?"
"Yes."
"In person?"
"Yes."
A short silence.
"When did you confirm it?"
"After I left here."
"And?"
"I went back."
"To Earth."
"Yes."
Taeyong leaned back in his chair. The reaction was flatter than I'd expected. Did he not believe me?
"This bag."
Jane spoke, and his eyes went, naturally, to my back.
"He says they are things brought from Earth."
His gaze changed. I set the bag down beside the table and drew the zipper, and the packet of ramen on top came into view. Taeyong sat forward. He didn't dig through the bag himself. He only looked in through the opened gap for a long while.
Ramen. Cans. Power banks. Cigarettes.
Of all of it, his eyes caught on the cigarettes and held.
"Ha. So it's real."
A few short breaths escaped him, one after another. I couldn't tell whether he was laughing or sighing.
"Well, now."
He tapped the desk with a fingertip, two or three times.
"You're a far more interesting man than I thought."
Something in his expression shifted, subtly, out of true.
"Who knows about this ability?"
"Only me, and Jane."
"You're certain?"
"Yes."
"And on Earth?"
It felt like an interrogation. My brow pulled tight.
"If that offended you, I apologize. This is, I'm afraid, a serious matter."
Quick to apologize.
"No one saw, with their own eyes, that I'd gone back."
My manager knew only that I'd been summoned to the Tower. For now, at least. Taeyong nodded.
"For the time being, it would be best not to add to the number of people who know."
I'd expected that. I still wanted the reason.
"Why?"
"It's dangerous. Enormously."
The answer came at once.
"Mr. Minsu, I don't believe you understand precisely what you are holding."
"I have the general idea."
"No."
He shook his head.
"You don't."
He was certain.
"Six years ago, for the first time, someone appeared who could communicate with Earth."
Luna. A name I'd already heard from Jane.
"Until then, everyone who entered this place was a missing person in the most literal sense. Their families could not even know whether they were alive or dead."
His hand moved toward the fountain pen on the desk.
"Then one day, that person appeared. Someone who could send word from the Tower to Earth."
"I know."
After that person appeared, the Tower Newsletter had come into being.
"Once it existed, a great many things changed."
Taeyong let out a thin laugh.
"I imagine that was the first time my father learned I was alive."
The pen he'd been turning in his fingers went still.
"But you, Mr. Minsu, are not merely carrying a message."
His eyes returned to the bag.
"Because you can go there yourself."
Silence settled.
"And you can bring objects back in your own hands, besides. The repercussions will be enormous."
He went on.
"Carrying information over goes without saying."
I'd thought of that much myself.
"But that is not the whole of it."
"Then what is?"
Taeyong looked at me for a moment.
"Everyone here left something behind."
Family. Friends. A lover. Perhaps something else I had no name for.
"Twenty years."
His voice dropped a little.
"In twenty years, not a single person has gone back."
The words landed with a strange weight.
"And now there is one."
Our eyes met.
"Mr. Minsu."
Cold sweat slid down my back. This could grow far larger than anything I had pictured.
"The moment this becomes known, there will be no way left for you to live quietly."
I was tired just imagining it.
"And they will not be gentle about it, the way I am. Someone will reach for methods other than a request."
The danger he described was real.
"So you will have to keep the secret, by whatever means you can. At least until you have the strength to protect yourself."
I liked that answer. It meant, for now at least, that he intended to stand on my side.
"And we will help you build that strength."
"In exchange for what?"
This time, Taeyong smiled.
"There is no shortage of things I want."
Of course.
"Even speaking only for myself, quite a lot."
He raised one finger.
"I'm curious about my father."
A second.
"Curious about my mother."
A third finger rose.
"Curious whether my older brother is running the company properly."
"......"
"And, if it were possible."
The raised fingers came slowly back down.
"I would like to see their faces. Just once."
For the first time, his smile looked faintly bitter. It returned, soon enough, to the expression he usually wore.
"But that is my own affair."
He rose from the chair.
"I have no intention of asking it of you now."
"Why not?"
"Because if I were you, I don't think I would have liked it."
I hadn't expected that.
"A man you'd only just met, asking you to go see his family the moment he learned what you could do."
He gave a short laugh.
"Rather unpleasant, isn't it?"
He wasn't wrong. And the one doing the asking would be the head of a conglomerate, besides.
"So let us begin with a deal."
"A deal?"
"Yes."
He held out his hand.
"For the time being, you keep the ability hidden. Nyx will help see to it that the secret stays kept."
I looked down at the offered hand.
"Is that all?"
"Trust takes time as well."
His eyes drew into a long, crescent curve.
"Even so, I would be glad if you left the purchasing of goods to us."
I liked the sound of that. At least I no longer had to wonder where I would unload what I'd brought.
"All right. So long as you price them fairly."
"Ha ha. Of course."
I thought for a moment, then took his hand.
"I'll be counting on you."
"No—I on you."
Strength settled into the clasp.
"Ah."
As if something had just occurred to him, Taeyong looked at the bag.
"One thing."
"Yes?"
"Do you mean to sell all of it?"
"......"
The gravity of a moment ago broke all at once. His gaze had fixed, precisely, on the backpack I'd brought.
"I'll pay well."
"How well?"
"Sit down first."
Once more his eyes bent like crescent moons. It was a guild master's face.
Thank you.