Awakening Madness (1)
The act of preemptively warding off disaster. It was an ancient Korean custom of converting future catastrophes into minor misfortunes right now. When you stepped on dog shit left behind by some worthless owner who didn’t clean up after their mutt, you could claim it was “warding off” the fate of getting hit by a car and dying that day. A splendid mental victory culture, really.
Yet the kindergarten version of Kang Bukho—who had been ripping the wings off dragonflies just ten minutes earlier—developed a massive question after first learning this awesome-yet-zero-sum way of thinking.
“Teacher, doesn’t warding off happen for good things too?”
Ah… that purity! That cruelty!
Kindergartener Kang Bukho’s words were so pure that they were permitted to utter a truly vicious opinion! A logic that brutally dismantled the adult theory of mental victory!
If warding off truly existed, then conversely, wouldn’t there also be cases where tremendous luck on the level of winning the lottery gets wasted on trivial matters?
The childcare teacher who had been comforting the fallen Vector-Man Eagle (age 7) after he slipped on the slide with that exact warding-off mental victory theory had made an indescribable face when I said that.
Looking back now, it was probably the expression that said, “This kid is acting up again, fuck.”
Dealing with the little brats every day was hard enough, yet here was the kid who had been chasing after dragonflies with their wings in hand, tripping people over, spouting that nonsense. The fact that she didn’t swear at all made her an excellent kindergarten teacher.
So then.
Was the me who had been such an unexcellent kindergartener now paying the price for that moment?
The good luck I’d enjoyed these past few days might have been the result of reverse warding-off, leading directly to today’s misfortune. By wasting my destiny on trivial good fortune, I had invited enormous calamity upon myself.
We humans were nothing but slaves, crushed beneath the giant wheel of fate!
“GyaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!”
—Whoosh whoosh!
—Whoosh whoosh!
After explaining the situation to Franc, I transformed into Arthur Wayne and raced across the rooftops of Sargadis, consumed by frenzied rage! Using the parkour skills I had honed in my youth while watching Spider-Man, I sprinted at full speed toward the Transport Guild!!
All of it was to deliver divine punishment to those thesis-stealing motherfuckers!!
The Transport Guild had its own pride. After an incident like this, they would surely organize a subjugation team and try to plant justice’s lead arrows into the thieves’ skulls!!
Whiriririririck—!!
—Thud!
“Huk!!”
As I spun 720 degrees in the air and landed, a merchant coming out of the Transport Guild jumped in fright. I grabbed his sleeve to stop him from falling.
“My apologies. I’m just passing through—would you mind stepping aside?”
“Hiiiiiiik!!!”
—Patter patter!!
“Fucking hell.”
I spoke politely, so why the hell was he running away? The world was full of things that simply couldn’t be understood. That was exactly why being a scholar was so damn exhausting. A profession dedicated to uncovering the unknown was destined to live a life filled with nothing but pain.
Could humans truly never understand one another for their entire lives?
At the very least, I felt like I would never be able to understand the bastards who stole even their friend’s underwear.
“Huu, huu, huu—”
—Step. Step.
I suppressed the rage that felt like it would burst my skull and calmly entered the guild. The Transport Guild was already in complete chaos thanks to the crowd of victims.
“You can’t find the items again?! What the hell does that even mean?!”
“You damn bastards!! Do you even know how much that mana potion costs?!”
“That bowl was the only thing my mother left me!!”
More than a dozen victims, men and women of all ages! They were screaming like parents chasing after the mascot worker at an amusement park who had taken their child. The Transport Guild had turned into a literal lost-and-found shelter for courier goods—a complete marketplace of pandemonium.
“P-please calm down and listen to us!!”
The balding merchant who seemed to be in charge spoke up. His clothes were made of quite luxurious material. Was he the one responsible for this mess?
The half-bald merchant desperately gathered everyone’s attention and shouted.
“Compensation! We will provide compensation!”
“……What?”
I mulled over the merchant’s words, feeding them to the beast named rage that lived inside my skull as if tossing it raw meat.
Compensation? What kind of compensation?
The only compensation I wanted was to get my thesis back. Pulling out the thieves’ intestines, pumping helium into their stomachs, and flying them like kites to raise the national flag was merely a bonus option.
“This is truly inexcusable, but even the Sargadis city guards are struggling to locate the thieves’ hideout!!”
Sensing the slightly calmed atmosphere, the merchant hurriedly continued.
“Therefore, to everyone whose goods were stolen, our company will provide priority compensation! And once we later exterminate the thieves and recover the items, we promise to return them to you without fail!”
Bullshit. That was absolute, utter bullshit.
I joined the crowd late and shouted loudly.
“Compensation?! What exactly do you plan to compensate us with?! The only way to soothe our rage is to recover the lost items!!”
“That’s right!! That’s right!!”
Those who sympathized with my anger shouted in unison.
“Everyone!! You must not fall for their schemes!! They clearly intend to placate us with pocket change and sweep this whole thing under the rug!!”
“That’s right!! That’s right!!”
“We must form a subjugation team!! They should hire people from the adventurer guild to track down the bandit group and recover our goods!! That is the proper compensation for those who took our belongings after receiving our fees!!”
“Compensate us!! Compensate us!!”
With just a few words, I had seized control of public opinion. An excited mob would run wild with nothing more than a clear direction. They say madness is like gravity. As expected, the words of our predecessors were never wrong.
The bald boss looked like he was about to be pushed back by the rampaging citizens, but he squared his shoulders and bellowed in a booming voice.
1 SILVER!!!!!
It was an insanely loud voice. Fuck, I thought my eardrums were going to burst. The people around me who had the same thought frowned deeply. His voice, trained from years of shouting in the marketplace during his merchant days, instantly silenced the entire guild.
“One silver! To every customer who suffered damage, we will compensate one silver per person!!! For any item worth more than thirty coppers, we will reimburse you at market price!!!”
The bald merchant, his neck flushed bright red, shouted that and then gasped for breath. I let out a low laugh at the sight.
“Heh heh. One silver.”
One silver. By Nord-style Korean won exchange rate, that was roughly a million won. That amount wasn’t big money at all. Sure, if it was free money it would be insanely sweet and I’d snatch it up in a heartbeat, but there was no way that kind of pocket change could calm down an atmosphere this heated!
“One silver sounds fair.”
“Not only did they buy the mana potion for us, but they’re giving one silver on top? Thank you, dear customer!”
“Actually, my mother ran away from home on my eighth birthday!”
…What the fuck?
The atmosphere had turned strange. Were they really flipping their palms at the mere mention of one silver? Did these people have no backbone at all?
“E-everyone! You must not fall for their trick to cover up their own mistake!”
I shouted before public opinion could completely flip.
“If we let this incident slide, the same thing will keep happening in the future! They will treat our precious belongings not as customer goods but as mere luggage for making petty profit!!”
Even if I received compensation money, my thesis wouldn’t come back. These merchants weren’t going to remember the contents of my paper and rewrite it for me. If it ended this pathetically, I would be the only one taking the loss!
“The merchants of the Transport Guild feel no anger whatsoever toward the bandits who attacked the merchants and stole their goods! This is nothing but a despicable ploy to solve an annoying problem with money!”
“That is absolutely not the case!!”
The bald merchant immediately refuted me. When I glared at him with eyes full of rage, the merchant suddenly burst into tears.
Uh… fuck? He was pulling the sympathy card here?
“We will pay the compensation immediately on the spot! Please accept our sincere apology!”
—Bow.
The merchant finished speaking and bowed deeply at the waist. The surrounding atmosphere grew solemn at the sight of a man of high status offering such a sincere apology. The weakness these otherworlders had toward emotional manipulation was now working in the opposite direction.
“Ahem. If they’re offering proper compensation, criticizing them any further would be…”
“They didn’t want their goods stolen either, right?”
“We should understand them with open hearts. Even if our jobs are different, we’re all citizens living on the same land.”
Rustle rustle—.
While speaking beautifully, the people began leaving to collect their one silver. I was left standing there alone, unable to keep up with the roller-coaster-like shift in public opinion.
‘Is this for real?’
It probably wasn’t real, right? Yeah. There was no way this was real.
Staring blankly up at the ceiling in utter despair, my eyes suddenly rolled back and I began to rampage!
“How the hell can this happen!!!!!”
It was ending just like this? Since we couldn’t do anything about the thieves stealing our stuff, let’s just take the money and call it even! That was the behavior of a wicked mega-corporation steeped in capitalism!!
“Wait! I still have something to say!”
I grabbed the merchant who was wiping his tears and trying to leave. A few other people besides me still seemed dissatisfied and remained in place. So it wasn’t over yet! It wasn’t over!!
“What will you do about items that cannot be compensated with money? My item is an important document, so receiving monetary compensation holds no meaning for me.”
“That is… I’m truly sorry.”
No, fuck, don’t apologize—give me a solution. My blood boiled at the bald man’s attitude, which was exactly like a civil servant saying “That’s not under our jurisdiction.” But I couldn’t argue with what he said next.
“The merchant who was attacked and kidnapped this time is my son.”
“Pardon?”
“My son left home to live independently, and he was kidnapped on the very same day.”
The balding merchant wiped his tears with a handkerchief as he spoke.
“Even when I went to the adventurer guilds, they said, ‘Requests to find a bandit group whose location is difficult to determine are hard to accept.’ Even the Gilpy Guild that finally accepted the request told me it would be better to leave it to the city guards.”
“Tsk…”
No matter how you looked at it, the Transport Guild was ultimately just one branch. He probably didn’t have the status to throw his weight around just because he was the branch manager’s son. That was why his son had decided to become independent. I had a slight suspicion that it might be a lie, but my face wasn’t thick enough to press the matter here. It made me think that perhaps my own parents back home might be going through something similar.
And fuck, if those tears were all acting, I would want to create an Oscar in this other world just to give it to this bald bastard. Of course, I’d swing it with all my might and implant the trophy into that shiny head like a hair transplant.
“Tsk…”
“Haa…”
Whether they were thinking the same thing or had simply given up, the others also looked gloomy and resigned. Whether the story was true or not, the Transport Guild was a victim as well. How pathetic and ridiculous would it be for victims to fight among themselves while the perpetrators lived comfortably?
“Fuck.”
With my momentum completely broken, I turned around, intending to chase after those damned bandit bastards alone if I had to. Other people might not be able to find the thieves’ den—but I had a method that could make it possible.
But at that moment, amid the dispersing crowd, I spotted a familiar head of white hair and my eyes widened.
“Tirsi?”
“—Wayne?”
In my surprise, I accidentally called her by her first name instead of her surname. Fortunately, Tirsi didn’t seem to mind and simply stared at the mask I was wearing. That look in her eyes. It was the look of someone who, after being denied by the entire world and abandoned in a prison, had run into the uncle from the neighborhood corner store.
Through that gaze, I instantly understood the entire situation.
—You too?
—Yeah… me too.
With barely a second of eye contact, we completely understood why the other had come here. They say first-rate ninjas can understand each other’s feelings just by bumping fists. Even if we were third-rate scholars, we could do the same. Because we too were beings tormented by a chain of hatred.
The chain of hatred known as “professor” and “graduate student.”