An Adults-Only Game of Catch, Hidden from the Children
It was 12:10 PM.
Quite a bit of time had slipped by just touring the product development team in the research department.
"Let's start with lunch first, shall we~?"
At Yoo Jinchae's suggestion, we headed for the indoor garden at the very top of the headquarters building.
The elevator chimed to a stop at the top floor, and the moment the doors slid open, a mist thick with humidity billowed in.
"Whoa…."
An awed exhale escaped me before I could stop it. The place was simply that impressive.
Whatever standard of maintenance they were running here, even a complete layman like me could tell it rivaled a famous botanical garden.
Flowers and trees of all four seasons bloomed in defiance of the calendar, arranged with an artful eye, and small fountains tucked here and there lent the air a pleasant white noise.
"Impressive, right? As of this year, they've hired a whole roster of A-rank plant-type Awakeners to manage the indoor garden."
Yoo Jinchae said it with a proud little shrug.
"Does this company just have money to burn?"
Kang Sagwa asked, staring around the garden in genuine astonishment.
Well, fair enough.
Plant-type Awakeners of A-rank or higher weren't especially rare, but the demand for them was so enormous that their price tags ran steep.
Everything from agricultural work to food resource research to even desert restoration projects.
That was already the short list of the big-ticket applications I could name off the top of my head.
"A-rank-and-above plant-types are in particularly high demand overseas. But lately there've been more and more cases of foreign clients stiffing them on payment, so starting this year, BONG— sorry, BOND— appointed itself as a middleman for the contracts. And while they're at it, they have the Awakeners tend the garden whenever they're staying in Korea~"
A middleman role, huh.
They really do dabble in everything.
I'd heard the company chased every last won, but I hadn't realized it went this far.
In any case, thanks to that, I was about to have the rare privilege of eating lunch in a garden personally maintained by A-rank plant-type Awakeners.
We spread out a picnic mat in the picnic zone at the center of the indoor garden.
The mat was ringed by large broad-leafed plants, and the light filtering down through the glass ceiling threaded between the leaves, wrapping the whole spot in something close to a mystical atmosphere.
……Almost too nice a place to be eating lunch in.
"Wow, it's like we stepped into a jungle."
While inwardly agreeing with Park Edeun's stream of admiration, I popped open the lids of the children's lunch boxes one by one.
"Ta-da! My mom packed me and Taejae matching lunch boxes!"
"That's right, my aunt packed me a Hello Teabot lunch box."
When I opened the two identical containers, sure enough, rice and side dishes embossed with that famous transforming-robot character stared back at me.
Noah's mother must have had her hands full with that.
Even as that thought crossed my mind, Seora, who had been quietly eyeing Taejae's and Noah's lunch boxes, held up her own with all the confidence in the world.
"Seoro and I got ours from oppa at his kimbap shop! And it's super tasty, too!"
"Hyung can't cook, so buying it tastes better."
Somehow, that side of the family had its own brand of artisan spirit going on—just in a very different sense.
"My grandma packed mine this morning. Mine's yummy too."
It wasn't a full seven-course table, but that lunch box with its just-heavy-enough decoration had its own artisan behind it as well.
And me? Spam on plain rice.
I'd opened my hastily assembled lunch box from the night before and given myself a small, grudging pat on the back….
Still, I'll just take pride in the fact that I remembered to pack food at all.
Satisfied with that, I was quietly eating alongside the kids when I noticed something being piled, piece by piece, onto the side-dish lid I'd set down on the ground.
……Hmm?
Kimbap. An apple. Steamed potato. Shine muscats…?
As I stared at the items balanced precariously on top of my lid, Noah barked at me like a drill sergeant.
"Teacher! If you eat just a little, you'll get hungry later!"
"Uh…."
"That's right. Grandma says a proper meal matters most."
"Mm…."
"My oppa knows his kimbap is delicious! That's where we bought it! It's delicious!"
By that point, not eating wasn't an option anymore.
In a daze, I picked up one of the shine muscats from the lid and popped it into my mouth.
And the reactions came flooding out.
"My auntie said those were the yummiest ones ever."
"Good, right! Fruit is the best!"
"Teacher, try the potato too."
I was, just a little, on the verge of being moved. They must have noticed how pathetic my lunch looked, and their thoughtfulness warmed me.
Determined to do their kindness justice, I dug into the offerings with gusto, repeating my thanks over and over.
And so, a peaceful lunch hour almost unfolded….
Until an unexpected — though very slight — burst of static intruded.
"Is something going on over there?"
For some reason, the surroundings had suddenly grown noisy. For an indoor garden meant for relaxation, the change was all the more conspicuous.
I watched employees hurrying down the staircase to the floor below.
Hm. Some urgent business, maybe?
"Ugh, did something else happen in the basement?"
"Honestly, I've never understood what criteria they use to judge a gate 'safe' enough to install under the company."
"Well, presumably they only bring in gates like that one last time, where there's no visible boss inside the dungeon, or ones with comparatively low danger ratings."
"That's exactly what I don't trust. If you can't find the boss, isn't that more dangerous? And whose standards are they measuring danger by anyway? Ridiculous."
I could just barely eavesdrop on the conversation of the employees still lounging on the bench behind me, coffee in hand.
Though between the babble of the fountains, even that came through only in fragments.
"What's going on down there?"
At Park Edeun's question — he was busily picking at the kimbap — I took a sip of water and relayed roughly what I'd gathered.
"Sounds like there's some problem in the basement."
No need to dig into the details. Really, what did it matter to me? Whether or not something went wrong in the basement had nothing to do with me.
"The basement? What's even down there?"
"Beats me. Big corporation and all, maybe they've got some gigantic data center under there."
I answered offhandedly, rolled up the mat, and got to my feet. The next item on the schedule was waiting.
"Teacher, I need to go potty."
And since little hiccups like this cropped up regularly, I'd learned to handle them briskly if I wanted the itinerary to survive.
Come to think of it, hadn't we skipped the bathroom stop before we set out this morning?
"Anyone else who needs to go?"
It was about that time anyway.
"Me!!"
"Me too."
"Me! Me too!"
"If everyone's going, then I'll go too."
Verdict reached.
Every single hand in the Dolphin Class went up.
Sensing my fate, I entrusted Seora to Yoo Jinchae.
"Could you take Seora to the restroom? And sorry to ask, but Teacher Kwon Haeseong, could you accompany us for the boys' trip?"
Leaving the rest of the children with Park Edeun and Kang Sagwa, Kwon Haeseong and I set off with the boys of the Dolphin Class in tow — a journey that involved taking the emergency stairs down a floor.
How does an indoor garden get away with not having a men's room?
Apparently the machine that draws up water for the plants had been installed exactly where the men's restroom was supposed to be.
I called out warnings to the children marching ahead and followed behind, with Kwon Haeseong trailing after me.
"They've…… got dolls hanging off all of them."
I glanced at the dolls dangling from the children's yellow backpacks and belatedly understood what he meant.
"Ah, yes. Cheonji handed them out as travel souvenirs. I got one too."
I hitched up the backpack on my shoulder to show him the doll, and Kwon Haeseong, who had been quietly studying it, said something strange.
"It looks like you, Teacher…."
"……Pardon? Does it?"
What had it looked like again? I'd only glimpsed it this morning, so I couldn't quite recall….
Ah, right. I remember now.
It looked like…… a white country mutt.
Was he serious? Did I really look that fierce?
"It's cute…. Should we get matching ones for the Seal Class?"
Why was he asking me? If he wanted to, he should just do it?
"Sure, why not. Teacher Kwon, what about yours — a bear? A brown bear."
"A brown bear…. I like that."
At the joke I'd tossed out to tease him, Kwon Haeseong lit up and asked happily — he even smiled softly, so apparently he genuinely liked the idea.
……Fine, sure. Go wild.
Come to think of it, the man did possess one peculiar talent or another.
Draining a person's will to fight is a talent too, I suppose.
The moment we stepped out of the corridor connected to the emergency staircase, the restroom came into view.
"There it is."
As we walked toward it, a faint murmur of voices caught my ear — people talking at the far end of the corridor.
What now — did the underground server room actually blow?
"We have to catch it! You really don't know where it went?"
"But I checked, I swear…."
Chasing down whoever crashed the servers, were they? Sounded like a bigger mess than I'd guessed.
I lost interest right about there.
My focus wasn't on basements or servers or any of it.
Let's just handle the bathroom and get moving.
The restroom was spotless, befitting a major corporation — so polished and spacious you could lie down on the floor without a second thought.
Oh — someone's in here.
The moment we entered, my eyes met a man standing at the sink.
His clothes were shabby and unkempt, but nothing about that struck me as particularly odd.
After all, in the days I'd been coming in and out of this building, I'd seen remarkably few people who actually looked put-together.
……One of the plant-type Awakeners Yoo Jinchae mentioned, probably. Looked like he'd been rolling around in a field somewhere.
Scan complete. I moved quickly, before the man could get flustered, and made the opening play.
"Ah, I see someone's here. My apologies — the children from Bada Kindergarten are here on a field trip today, and we'll only be using the restroom for a moment before heading out. Thank you for your understanding!"
At my earnest plea, the man — who had frozen mid-motion — silently gave a rough nod.
"Thank you."
Keeping a smile plastered across my face, I gave the man a mental thumbs-up.
A good sort, that one.
……But it would take less than an hour for that thumbs-up to rotate one hundred and eighty degrees into a middle finger.
Tap-tap-tap.
Rapid footsteps rang out one after another through the corridor.
People in field uniforms, people with caps pulled low over their eyes — they scattered in an instant, urgency written across every face.
And then, the corridor they'd left behind.
A chill hung in the air as a woman with a perfectly blank face finally opened her mouth.
"Now, whose blunder might this be?"
It was Moon Chaeyoung, Team Leader of Field Team Na.
The question, of course, carried a razor's edge. It meant that whichever team had been caught red-handed shouldn't expect to be let off easy.
And here I was, enjoying a rare slow day, taking it easy.
Granted, she was the sort who got her dopamine from work — but a sudden summons was never welcome.
And when the reason for the summons was pure horseshit? Even less so.
"Field Team Ma. Apparently they lost him right before they were going to hand him over to the police."
A man leaning against the opposite wall helpfully supplied the answer.
Ah, so it was Team Ma.
A little of her irritation drained away. At least now she knew exactly who was on the hook.
The scolding can wait.
Feeling marginally better, Moon Chaeyoung tilted her foot back and forth and asked again.
"And which genius was it who managed to lose a criminal while handing him over to the police, may I ask?"
"Park Hyeongdu of Team Ma. Apparently he never properly fastened the binding cuffs."
And to top it off, he hadn't even put on a control collar.
The man had escaped using his ability, so of course. Predictable.
Forgot the control collar, couldn't even secure the restraints properly….
Hm. At this level, a routine disciplinary review wasn't going to cut it.
Sure enough, the man before her gave a slow nod, his eyes glinting cold as frost.
"If that's how they handle their work, they'd have been better off never finding him at all. Now they've gone and handed the director's office a pretext on a silver platter."
Watching the man spew words even more venomous than her own, Moon Chaeyoung let out a short snort of laughter.
He really is rotten to the core.
Still, she wasn't quite at his level.
However neatly this incident got resolved, the people of Team Ma would not come out of it unscathed.
She could see, plain as day, exactly how that man intended to treat Team Ma once the dust settled.
After a brief moment of thought, Moon Chaeyoung changed her mind.
I'll sit this one out.
Ordinarily she played the 'whip' in the carrot-and-stick routine — but there was a bigger monster on the prowl today, so there was no need for her to pile on.
Dedicating herself instead to making sense of the current situation, she recalled the details that had come rushing in.
The C-rank dungeon that Team Ma had entered this morning.
The very dungeon the company had purchased just days ago, paying a premium on top.
Today was the last day of testing, wasn't it.
Once today's tests wrapped up, the dungeon would be assigned its official safety grade and relocated to the basement levels of the company building.
And the team assigned to that final round of testing had been Field Team Ma.
The problem: they had chanced upon a criminal with a D-rank spatial teleportation ability inside that dungeon.
And once they'd caught him — well, what do you know. This one had over ten priors for theft and assorted petty crimes.
It's not easy to end up on a wanted list for theft, fraud, and pickpocketing alone, you know.
But the real problem was that, despite all the trouble of dragging him in, they'd lost the little crook right before handing him to the police.
Inside the company building, no less.
"D-rank spatial teleportation means even if he runs, he can't leave this building. And his destination's random, so comb through the place enough times and he'll turn up. Guaranteed."
Still, there was nothing to worry about.
Just as that man said, there was nowhere for the criminal to run.
With the police posted at the main entrance, the field teams mobilized, and the security team's people on the hunt, he'd be caught within the hour at the latest.
Moon Chaeyoung nodded at the man's flat assurance.
Which meant that now, she….
Time to move. And find him first.
Before that man — his eyes already rolling with bloodlust — got to the crook first and 'accidentally' killed him.
"Might want to unclench those eyes. You're scaring me to death~"
Moon Chaeyoung turned away, feigning perfect indifference.
Then she rounded the corner swiftly, activated her watch, and connected a call to her team members.
"Hey. Hey. Geun is absolutely livid. We have to catch that guy before he does."
That was the only way she'd defend her quitting time, after all.
"If Geun catches him first, overtime for us is locked in."
Whenever that man's eyes started spinning like that, the entire field team's evening plans went up in flames.
Because the lunatic would raze everything to the ground over a single mistake.
Moon Chaeyoung ran like her shoes were on fire — for the first time in ages. It was faintly nerve-wracking, and yet, oddly thrilling.
And so, on the very day the children of Bada Kindergarten arrived for their field trip, a chase began through the company building — a game of cat and mouse played exclusively by adults, hidden from every child's eyes.