92. And So the Three of Them Formed One Team
The two of them walked past a café so utterly ordinary it defied description and stepped into a space marked STAFF ONLY.
The inside was a plain break room, but when Maeng Woo-shin operated a switch, a hidden passage revealed itself.
The two entered the passage.
To Rembrary, however, who had traversed any number of dungeons, a straight, trap-free corridor looked almost disappointingly mundane.
"So Daeju is really here?"
"Yeah."
"What does Daeju usually do?"
"No idea. I've never spent much time with him."
"Daeju suddenly handed you an earring and told you to give it to me?"
"Yeah. He said it like he might already know you."
"I see…"
Rembrary walked on, hope kindling in his chest. If the other party also bore a trace of the goddess Redrin—then what would happen then? If Daeju, too, was a believer of Redrin…
"Are you two going to break up?"
"What a horrifying thing to say!"
"Aigo, you scared me. Hey! Why are you suddenly shouting?"
"Because you said something dreadful first, sunbae."
"You're supposedly two-timing, so asking whether you'll break up isn't out of line."
"Who's two-timing? Me?"
"You did. Earlier."
"What? You mean because of what I said when I arrived late?"
"Yeah."
"That was—"
It wasn't that he was two-timing anyone, Rembrary was about to explain—it meant he'd been cast in a two-timing program.
Just then, a commotion erupted somewhere behind them.
"What's that noise?"
Rembrary stopped and turned his head.
"No idea."
Maeng Woo-shin answered with a frown.
The two strained their ears. A repeated banging and scraping echoed down the corridor, joined by the metallic screech of someone wrenching a door handle back and forth.
Maeng Woo-shin's expression darkened.
"Looks like someone's trying to force the door open?"
"What does that sound mean?"
"Someone must have found the secret passage. They're trying to force their way in."
"Then it's not much of a secret passage, is it."
"Damn it. Is now really the time?"
"Sunbae, I'm only asking hypothetically, but—"
"?"
"If being seen coming and going from a place like this ever becomes a problem, you should step up and block them yourself."
"Are you actually Im Seo? No, wait—even Im Seo has a certain charm to him. This is just…"
Maeng Woo-shin raked his hand through his hair, muttered, "For god's sake, who the hell is it?", and picked up the pace, sprinting down the corridor. Rembrary ran after him.
As they ran, the space suddenly opened up into something like a hotel's front desk area.
Three people were already hard at work there, checking small monitors, pressing buttons, and speaking rapidly into telephones pressed to their ears.
One of the women recognized Maeng Woo-shin's face and greeted him with a brief nod.
"Over here."
Maeng Woo-shin told Rembrary to stay put and approached the woman.
"It seems someone's attempting to break in."
"Yes. P2 is already moving to handle it. They're on their way down now."
While the two of them talked, Rembrary walked over to one of the small monitors.
The screen showed the area just before the hidden passage—in other words, the break room with the STAFF ONLY sign.
Inside, three people in pinstripe suits wearing sheep masks were straining to twist open the secret door.
They had, remarkably, guessed the passage's location correctly; they were standing at the very spot where operating the switch would open the door.
But having no idea how to work the switch, they were trying to force it open by brute strength.
Just then, the door connecting to the café swung open, and a person wearing glasses and an apron stepped through—apparently a café employee.
The worker spotted the masked sheep, startled, and said something or other to them.
No sound came through the monitor, but from the way the worker spoke with the door held wide open, they seemed to be asking what on earth they were doing in here.
Perhaps the words had some effect, because the masked sheep obediently filed out of the break room in a neat line.
One sheep. Two sheep. Three sheep…
And at the very moment the third of the three was about to leave—
the last sheep came to an abrupt halt and turned its head toward the CCTV camera.
Then, with a slight tilt of the head, it stared dead into the camera lens.
As though making eye contact with someone on the other side of the CCTV.
Rembrary's eyes went wide.
That person…
"They say it's gone back now."
Maeng Woo-shin called from behind.
Astonishingly, the last sheep beyond the CCTV turned and walked out of the café.
Once all three sheep had been ushered out, the worker—who had looked like an ordinary part-timer—calmly closed the door.
Then they took a phone from their pocket and dialed somewhere, and almost simultaneously, the telephone at the front desk rang.
While the woman answered the call, saying, "Yes. Yes. Confirmed," Rembrary asked Maeng Woo-shin:
"Who were those people in sheep masks just now?"
"Why are you suddenly talking down to me?"
"Who were they, I ask?"
"Who else? Lunatics. You've seen them wandering around in sheep masks—take a guess."
"…"
"What? Nothing worth worrying about."
Rembrary raised an eyebrow.
Nothing worth worrying about? That would certainly be convenient, if it were possible.
But that last sheep on the CCTV. The necklace hanging around that sheep's neck. It had, without question, been the same necklace Woo Yeon-woo's older brother used to wear.
"Let's hurry and go meet Daeju-nim."
Maeng Woo-shin urged Rembrary along.
Rembrary shelved his uneasiness for the moment and followed.
But anticlimactically, the woman at the front desk said he could not meet Daeju.
"We apologize. When that disturbance broke out earlier, Daeju-nim evacuated urgently to another location."
He escaped in that short a window of time?
Rembrary was taken aback, but Maeng Woo-shin simply clicked his tongue as though it were nothing out of the ordinary.
"Bad timing, that's all. Well, thank goodness he made it out safely."
After leaving the secret hideout, the two sat side by side in the very café that concealed it, while Maeng Woo-shin explained the situation over text messages.
Everyone was remarkably calm about it, apparently—this sort of thing, he said, was hardly a first. Because Daeju's power was so extraordinary, those lunatics periodically came charging in after him.
Listening to this, Rembrary found himself recalling what Yeomra had told him.
Could they be connected?
Was Maeng Woo-shin's Daeju truly a Saint?
Was that group—the one that supposedly forces sacrifice upon Saints—therefore after Maeng Woo-shin's Daeju?
And was Maeng Woo-shin's Daeju fleeing and hiding from them?
In the end, Rembrary agreed to a second appointment with Daeju, the man who had unilaterally canceled their first.
Under normal circumstances, wounded pride alone would have kept him from making another appointment at all. But given the situation, he couldn't help himself—he desperately wanted to know whether the man truly served a god as a genuine Saint, or whether, even if he worshipped a different god, he was at least connected to the same world.
By coincidence or otherwise, the so-called dissociative growth specialist he was due to meet the next day also canceled, claiming urgent business had come up, and Rembrary ended up simply shuttling back and forth to the office, practicing as usual, all the way until Tuesday.
And before either of those promised meetings could arrive, the meeting for the dating variety show Rembrary had agreed to join came first.
"If you get any sign that your personality is about to change—any signal, any omen, or at the very least some kind of feeling—call me. Or Gam-jae. Or just stretch your arms like you're waking up, anything."
"Understood."
"Make a good impression on the director. That director's famous for having eyes like a hawk—supposedly draws out charms you never even knew you had."
"I understand."
"I don't know who your two-timing partner will be, but you'll be filming together for a while, so there's no harm in getting along. Be friendly, no matter what."
"That, at least, I happen to be good at."
"They call it a dating show, but just think of it as acting in another form. Acting with the stage set in the real world."
"Your nagging list just keeps growing, Jong-woo."
While Jong-woo's ceaseless lecture poured on, the car came to a stop near the meeting venue.
While Sa Gam-jae parked the car, Rembrary got out first with Jong-woo and headed inside the building. A short while later, Sa Gam-jae finished parking and joined them, and the three rode up to the third floor, where the meeting was to take place.
Jong-woo stayed on high alert the whole ride in the elevator, terrified of running into a familiar face, but he encountered no one—not even as they reached the meeting room door.
The same held true when they arrived.
"Huh? Why is nobody here?"
The sign by the door clearly read MEETING ROOM, yet not a single staff member was present.
Jong-woo looked left and right in a fluster.
Sa Gam-jae, sharp-eyed as ever, pointed a finger somewhere.
"There's an arrow pointing that way over there."
"What? Huh? So there is?"
A camera was mounted beside the arrow.
"Looks like they're filming scenes already?"
Jong-woo said, flustered, then shook Rembrary's arm and gestured at the wall with the arrow.
"Head that way. I think they're capturing your first reaction to finding out about your partner, something like that."
"Understood."
"Watch your speech. You're on camera."
"Off I go, hyung."
Rembrary still found the whole two-timing concept distasteful, but he walked toward the arrow all the same.
The moment he did, several photographs of people's faces suddenly floated up on the wall.
One of them was Woo Yeon-woo's face.
Are these the photos of this show's participants?
As he was thinking, light suddenly bloomed around Woo Yeon-woo's photo, and words appeared above it: Two-Timing Victim No. 1.
Just as he'd thought. Photos of the show's participants, then. They were revealing everyone's roles this way, for entertainment's sake.
Rembrary smiled gently, conscious of the camera beside him.
He resolved that no matter who his partner turned out to be, he would not be surprised.
What else would a High Priest be, if not composed, calm, and refined?
Rembrary's eyes swept quickly over the participants' photographs.
They were all strangers anyway, so honestly it wouldn't have mattered which of them became his partner—
Hm?
Rembrary's brow creased automatically.
Hadn't Jong-woo said there would be six pairs of participants on this show?
Two of those pairs were doing the two-timing and the swap concepts, which meant the total participant count should have been fourteen.
Yet there were not fourteen photos.
Why is the number short?
There were only eight photos.
As he pondered this, light bloomed around the photo of the busty beauty beside him, and text appeared: Wealthy Romance — Female.
Then light bloomed around the photo of the haughty handsome man next to her: Wealthy Romance — Male.
So that arrogant pretty face was the boss whom Jong-woo had marveled over—the one the entertainment executives supposedly favored even more.
Which would make the busty beauty a self-made heiress, then…
Rembrary tilted his head. He still couldn't see why there were only eight photos.
Meanwhile, the words Wealthy Romance — Male vanished, and the light died around the haughty man's photo.
Oh?
But the light did not move on to the fourth photo.
Instead, it bloomed once more around the Wealthy Romance — Female photo.
And then, beneath it, another line of text appeared.
"!"
Before he could even wonder what this meant—
light bloomed once more around the Wealthy Romance — Male photo, and another line of text appeared beneath it.
Then the photos of Rembrary, the self-made heiress, and the popular boss flickered all at once, and the three images linked together into a single cluster as new text appeared above them.
— The End of < 92. And So, Three of Them Made One Team > —