When Kindness Is Taken as a Right
Having passed the assignment with flying colors, Jeong-Hoon immediately headed to Yeo Tae-Hyeon's office.
As if it were the most natural thing in the world, the Head Maid stood beside the representative's desk with a cart holding a teacup and teapot, and bowed her head.
"Head Maid, why are you here?"
"I am the Head Maid who attends to the Gaju. It is only natural that I be wherever the Gaju is."
"I never saw you once while I was going back and forth to Shine Mall for a whole week."
"I was always there."
At the revelation that not only the Head Butler but the Head Maid had been secretly following him as well, Jeong-Hoon let out a short sigh without realizing it.
"And Gaju, though it may not mean much, I am also one of the 12 Vassals. Even if I have little presence, I would appreciate it if you remembered that."
"That's absolutely not something without meaning."
"It doesn't particularly mean anything."
Unable to simply dismiss something that was by no means meaningless, Jeong-Hoon shook his head and sat down on the sofa in front of the desk.
"Gaju, your seat is over there."
"What? That's Representative Yeo's seat, isn't it?"
"No. Since Gaju has passed the assignment, it is now Gaju's seat."
With a slight smile as he offered the seat, Yeo Tae-Hyeon opened the office safe and took out a single document and a desk nameplate.
"This is the dungeon logistics center supply contract for Shine Mall that Gaju correctly identified, and this one!"
With a solid thud, Yeo Tae-Hyeon removed his own nameplate and set the newly retrieved one in its place.
Chairman Lee Jeong-Hoon
"It's the Chairman's nameplate."
"Why did that come out of the safe?"
"Because we prepared it long ago."
At the clear implication that it had absolutely not been prepared within the week, Jeong-Hoon shook his head.
"There's no chairman's nameplate on a desk at Lumen, yet there's one here."
Whether prepared long ago or recently, seeing the chairman's nameplate left Jeong-Hoon strangely excited, and he spoke with a joking smile—but the Head Butler instead shook his head.
"There is one at Lumen as well."
"What? There is? I've never seen it in the royal suite where I'm staying."
"That's because Gaju has never entered the office, has he?"
"......Well, there's no reason for a desk nameplate to be in a suite room."
Of course, among the grades higher than the royal suite where Jeong-Hoon stayed, places for businesspeople had workspaces with nameplates, but Jeong-Hoon's was thoroughly a space for rest. Moreover, though he stayed at Lumen, Jeong-Hoon was not a guest but the chairman. There was absolutely no reason to conduct business from a guest room.
"But did you come all the way to the office just to show me this?"
"Not at all. Now that you've taken Shine Mall into your hands, shouldn't you sit in the seat at least once?"
When Yeo Tae-Hyeon smiled as he pointed to the desk that had been the representative's—no, now the chairman's—Jeong-Hoon nodded. It wasn't as if there was something to do, but since he had gone to the trouble of acquiring it, he figured it was fine to put on airs at least once.
"......Hmm, does it suit me?"
When Jeong-Hoon sat in the seat and smiled at the three people, all three frowned as if on cue.
"It suits you extremely well, but one thing is missing."
"Is that so?"
"I put it somewhere around here......"
Saying something was missing, Yeo Tae-Hyeon suddenly reached for the pile of documents on the table in front of the sofa, and Jeong-Hoon tried to stand up.
"Gaju, you must take a commemorative photo."
But the Head Butler blocked him and took out his phone from his pocket.
"I-Is that so? But why do I feel uneasy?"
"There's nothing to feel uneasy about. Just read these documents and sign the ones you like!"
Pretending to search, Yeo Tae-Hyeon dumped the entire pile of documents onto the desk with a smile, and Jeong-Hoon made an awkward expression.
"Even if you tell me to pretend to work, I don't know how......"
"Gaju, it's not pretending to work."
"Since you've taken the chairman's seat, you need to know the basic duties."
"The Head Butler, Butler Yeo, and I will help, so please rest assured."
Realizing that this was absolutely not for a photo or commemoration but a trap to teach him the chairman's duties, Jeong-Hoon let out an awkward laugh.
The day after being completely led around by the three vassals, Jeong-Hoon lay sprawled on the sofa with vacant eyes and turned on the TV. The news came on. It wasn't that he particularly liked the news; it simply happened to be the channel that was already set.
"......Did something happen overnight that I don't know about?"
He turned his head and looked behind him. Unlike usual, the Head Butler, the Head Maid, and Yeo Tae-Hyeon were all standing there.
"The only thing at Lumen that Gaju could possibly be unaware of is the color of a guest's underwear."
The Head Butler offered the reassurance in a strangely ominous way, yet Jeong-Hoon still looked puzzled as to why Lumen had become the top news story.
Hearing details he already knew far too well pour out of the television, Jeong-Hoon quickly turned his head toward the three of them.
"You leaked this to the press?!"
He had been so exhausted the day before that he had let it slide, but looking back, he should have been suspicious the moment Yeo Tae-Hyeon was here.
"We didn't leak it. It was leaked."
"I'm truly sorry. But Gaju, Shine Mall is a fairly large company, isn't it? There are naturally reporters who mark my every move, so there was nothing I could do."
Yeo Tae-Hyeon's tone was dripping with swagger, but it was only the tone—he wasn't actually arguing.
"We judged that if we couldn't make any major moves until we gathered all the businesses, we would simply be forgotten, so we chose not to stop what was flowing out. Didn't Gaju make a similar judgment?"
"......I did think something like that, but this still feels a bit much."
On the surface, Jeong-Hoon had imagined it looking as though contracts had been exchanged and something formal had been concluded. He had never imagined it would be leaked this subtly.
"I understand how you feel, but after the three of us put our heads together yesterday, this was the judgment we reached—even accounting for the possibility of other members of the 12 Vassals joining."
At the Head Butler's words, Jeong-Hoon thought of the 12 Vassals and the other vassals. It wasn't only the remaining five companies; well-known figures from society were mixed in here and there. For all of those people to gather around Lumen as a single center of gravity, the current method was the smoothest when looking ahead to the future.
"Well, it's your judgment, so there shouldn't be a problem."
He had no intention of holding anyone accountable, so Jeong-Hoon accepted it and pushed himself up from his sprawled position into a sitting one.
"Gaju, would you like a cup of tea?"
While he savored the tea the Head Maid had poured to help him wake up, the first news story finished and the second began.
"Pffft!"
He had been holding a mouthful of the fragrant tea and spat it out with force. He accepted a handkerchief from the Head Maid and wiped his mouth.
"No, by any measure that story should have been first!"
Fortunately the raid had only been postponed rather than canceled, so the monsters that emerged from the dungeon were quickly subjugated by the hunters standing guard. There were no casualties either. That was why it might not have been considered a scoop—but it was still an incident in which monsters had escaped from a dungeon.
The principle was not yet fully understood, but when a dungeon appeared, monsters were continuously generated from its center. Once the dungeon's capacity was exceeded, the monsters spilled out. In other words, the monsters of a dungeon large enough for a guild alliance led by AP Guild to form a raid party had reached saturation. And that story had been pushed to second place.
"No, even if that dungeon only produces low-rank monsters and the danger is lower, to leave it until it reaches that state......"
"Dungeons do not produce monsters."
"What? No—wait, I don't need to understand that right this second."
When the Head Butler casually tried to drop an unrevealed truth of the world into the conversation, Jeong-Hoon waved a hand.
"More importantly, a situation where monsters are pouring out of that dungeon is dangerous."
"Does it concern you?"
"......How could it not concern me? When I was only ten years old, a dungeon like that appeared and the world changed."
He emphasized the transformation of the world ten years earlier, yet Jeong-Hoon had only ever been an indirect victim. Even in those days when it had seemed the world might end, he had never seen a monster with his own eyes. That did not mean he was ignorant of their danger. After his parents died in a dungeon, he had realized that monsters—no matter how low-rank—were dangerous beasts.
"That said, I don't have any resolve to burn this single body of mine to protect the world or wipe out every monster. I just feel a little uneasy because I contributed a small part of the cause to the current situation."
He did not believe the core cause lay with him. If he had not socially buried the AP Guild Master earlier, other victims would have appeared instead. Even so, as long as he bore even a little responsibility, it still left him frustrated.
"Then we shall resolve it."
"......Companies are forbidden from owning guilds. Don't tell me the family has a hidden guild stashed away?"
He had seen the family's list of businesses through the Head Butler, and there was absolutely no guild. Yet the man spoke as if it could be resolved at once, so Jeong-Hoon sent him a puzzled look. Even for an organization that was practically an independent nation, this felt like crossing a line.
"We will simply make a request to a guild that has ties with Lumen."
"Really? Not a guild that only pretends to have ties and turns out to be under our command?"
"Gaju, no matter how powerful the family may be, we still obey the law."
Coming from the mouth of the man who had once handed him a grenade under the name of self-defense and claimed that anything not discovered wasn't illegal, the statement was hard to believe. Jeong-Hoon let out an incredulous laugh.
Choi Jae-Yeon—Guild Master of Saturn Guild, one of the top ten guilds, and an S-class hunter. When he first awakened, poor control of his ability had earned him an A-class evaluation, but one day he suddenly grew rapidly, received an S-class evaluation, founded Saturn Guild, and raised it into one of the top ten. He was a self-made legend.
"So what you're saying is that you want our guild to form an alliance with two other guilds and clear the dungeon that AP Guild was going to clear?"
In the reception room of the highest-grade suite Lumen had provided, Choi Jae-Yeon's gaze as he received Jeong-Hoon was sharp and piercing.
"Yes. There isn't much profit in it, but leaving a dungeon that could explode at any moment alone is dangerous, isn't it?"
"That's true, but is the chairman's current action truly for the purpose of such volunteer work?"
When Choi Jae-Yeon raised his aura and threw the question, Jeong-Hoon instead made a face that said he had no idea what the man was talking about.
"Then what else would there be?"
Even as he spoke, he tried to think of any concrete benefit Lumen could gain and came up empty. On top of that, he had only proposed volunteer work—he had never expected to be pressured by a raised aura. If Yeo Tae-Hyeon had not been beside him, he would have been crushed by the pressure and unable to breathe. The other party was an S-class hunter, after all.
The reason an S-class hunter like Choi Jae-Yeon and Jeong-Hoon were meeting and talking like this was that when the request was first made, Choi Jae-Yeon had said he wanted to meet Jeong-Hoon. If a single meeting could secure cooperation, it was a net gain. Following Jeong-Hoon's instructions, the three vassals had approached three guilds with ties to Lumen—all of them top-ten guilds. Among them, only Saturn's Choi Jae-Yeon had requested a meeting with Jeong-Hoon.
"Our chairman is a Non-Awakened. As the Master of Saturn, what do you think you're doing?"
"......My apologies. I only wanted to know the chairman's true intentions. I wondered whether it might not be simple volunteer work but some kind of process for the declaration made last time."
Even as he apologized politely, he raked his gaze over Jeong-Hoon and then directed a sly smile at Yeo Tae-Hyeon, who was keeping him in check. When Yeo Tae-Hyeon looked ready to flare up at that smile, Jeong-Hoon raised a hand to restrain him and instead offered a gentle smile of his own.
"If I had that kind of intention, I would have moved flashily, not worked under the surface."
Emphasizing that it was purely volunteer work, Jeong-Hoon once again thought that the official announcement he had made last week was the problem. Because of that announcement, people kept misunderstanding him.
"Hmm. If you truly say it's volunteer work, then I can only call it remarkable."
"No. The AP Guild Master was a guest of Lumen in any case, so I simply thought Lumen should mediate to some degree."
Even as he spoke politely, Jeong-Hoon kept checking whether his current manner of speaking matched the chairman's speech style that the Head Butler and Jeong I-Yeong had taught him, and he hoped Choi Jae-Yeon would reach a decision soon. If the conversation dragged on, his lack of depth might be exposed.
"I have never forgotten the grace that turned me—someone who might have remained A-class—into an S-class. You always move for the sake of the world, so of course words of admiration come out."
At the sudden confession, Jeong-Hoon glanced sideways at Yeo Tae-Hyeon. It was a story he himself had never heard. He had only been told there were ties with Lumen. He had not known that those ties consisted of raising an A-class to S-class.
"Guild Master Choi Jae-Yeon, I apologize, but I would like you to give us a decision on acceptance or refusal. The chairman is a busy man."
Yeo Tae-Hyeon cut in—it was a detail that had not been conveyed in the rush. Jeong-Hoon was publicly known as the man who had built Lumen from the beginning. As such, he could not afford to be ignorant of it.
"My apologies. Calling a busy man was already rude, and I've taken too much time. Then I'll get to the point."
With that, Choi Jae-Yeon raised his aura once more. It was not to pressure Jeong-Hoon but to emphasize that this was truly the main issue he wanted to address.
"The technique that made me S-class. I want you to pass that on to Saturn. Then we will participate."