So This Is Why You Needed Us
Unusual customers.
From a corner of the shop, Yoo Kangseul stole glances at the man and woman putting away pork-belly gimbap, those fat Korean rice rolls packed with grilled pork.
A man whose face refused to stick in the mind, and a foreign woman with blue hair like a melted stretch of the Milky Way. She had seen plenty of foreigners while running the place, but none had left an impression like these two.
The woman—beautiful enough that a hundred people out of a hundred would have said so—ate in silence, her face blank, picking up one roll after another without a word. Foreigner or not, there was nothing awkward in the way she held her chopsticks. She worked through the gimbap and kimchi as deftly as if she had lived in Korea for years.
She eats well. It ought to be a little rich, though.
The pork-belly gimbap had been forced into existence when a wild-looking man, claiming to be her husband's kin, pressed a wad of cash into her hand and would not take no for an answer. A whole frozen slab of pork belly, sliced and rolled in at once—the fat that made the meat what it was split customers clean down the middle.
Guests who liked meat ate it happily. Guests who wanted gimbap to taste like gimbap wanted nothing to do with it. If Yoo Kangseul's rolling had been any less skillful, there would not even have been a difference of opinion.
"One more pork-belly gimbap, please."
"Yes. I'll bring it right over."
The forgettable man raised a hand to order. Yoo Kangseul set a frozen cut of pork belly on the skillet in the kitchen.
"Just a moment, please."
"Of course."
The pan hissed and spat, and the smell of meat burst through the shop. The exhaust fan rattled as it hauled in clean air.
"Ma'am. I'd like to add to the order."
"What can I get you?"
"Eight more pork-belly gimbap, please."
"Eight? Shall I pack them to go?"
"We'll finish them all here."
"……Pardon? Yes. All right."
Are people they know on the way?
Yoo Kangseul rolled up her sleeves. It looked as though things were about to get busy.
But she was wrong.
No other customers came in, and the woman ate every painstakingly made pork-belly gimbap by herself.
"You eat a great deal. You wouldn't happen to be one of those eating-show streamers?"
"……No."
Color rose in the woman's cheeks, as if she were ashamed of how much she had eaten. The guileless reaction pulled a laugh out of Yoo Kangseul before she could stop it.
"Would you wait just a moment? I'll pack one more for you, on the house."
"………"
The woman worried her lip and nodded. Yoo Kangseul went into the kitchen, took chilled pork belly from the refrigerator, and grilled it for her.
"Thank you for the extra. May your business prosper."
"Yes. Take care."
The man and woman left the shop. As if to take their place, Na Wangrang came pounding in, utterly out of breath.
"Wangrang? What are you doing here? Weren't you busy with work?"
"Ah, n-no. Today's fine."
Na Wangrang was gasping. He must have sprinted at full speed from a long way off; the breath he let out smelled of salt and sweat.
"What's going on? Were you out exercising?"
"Th-that's not it……"
Na Wangrang glared out the door. Beyond it lay a quiet street: a narrow road, a tucked-away alley, and nothing but delivery riders heading out.
"Th-those two who just left. They didn't do anything to you, did they, Mom?"
"They were ordinary customers."
Yoo Kangseul's eyes narrowed. A chill she could not name ran through her.
The feeling was familiar. That man had come running like this once, too. It had seemed absurd for him to show up in the middle of a workday, and only afterward had she learned that she had been in danger.
I nearly got into serious trouble just now.
How could the boy be so exactly like his father?
"So Mom was in danger."
"N-no. There was just something I needed to check……"
Even the excuses are the same.
"And where do you think you're standing, up over your mother's head? You think this is the first or second time I've been through something like this?"
"The f-first or second? It's happened more than that?"
Na Wangrang jumped.
"Running away for love is no easy thing, you know."
It was a past that had been bitter, and worthwhile all the same.
"For now, from your mother's experience, there's nothing wrong. Those two only ran up the shop's sales and left."
"I-I see."
Only then, looking at his unhurried mother, did Na Wangrang let himself breathe.
That was the first time. A sense like that.
Na Wangrang, whose intuition had sharpened since he became king of the werewolves, had been in the middle of a counseling session when he lived through the world coming down.
Without warning the sky collapsed, the earth went black, and in a single instant the world fell to ruin. A span closer to a fraction of an instant. Near enough that it might as well have been a dream.
But everything in his body told him it was a reality that could happen at once. And it left behind one deeply ominous command.
Go to Mom.
He did not even doubt it. He ran and ran, and at the end of that running Na Wangrang could confirm that his mother was unharmed.
"Mom's fine, so go on back. If you're hungry, eat something before you go."
"I'm fi—"
His stomach growled.
"Eat some gimbap, then go."
"Yes……"
Na Wangrang sat and leaned his head against the wall.
Hah. Do I tell her?
Breathing in the mouthwatering smell of pork belly, Na Wangrang wrestled with it.
I meant to hide it all the way to the end.
But hadn't he just lived through it? His mother in danger. Today had only been luck. Contrary to the warning, the two of them had done nothing to her.
Would it be the same next time?
It would not. Even if it was not those two, some unnamed person could come looking for his mother at any moment.
It might look like an excess of self-importance, but Na Wangrang's place was that of a representative and king of an entire people.
For now the truth was known only to the werewolves and a few acquaintances, but given time, everyone who was meant to know would know.
In every age and every country, family was the most effective and convenient weakness there was. Na Wangrang could not afford to overlook that possibility.
"Gimbap's out."
Yoo Kangseul set it down. Not the roll she made for the shop, but her special homemade pork-belly gimbap.
Na Wangrang swallowed, his mouth watering.
He prided himself on outcooking his mother at nearly everything, but gimbap alone he felt he would never surpass.
He felt a gaze fixed steadily on him. Warm, and full of a mother's love.
"Eat, before the gimbap gets cold."
"M-Mom."
Na Wangrang forced open a mouth that did not want to move.
"There's something I need to tell you……"
"I know."
"……What?"
She knew? Knew what?
"Y-you already knew?"
Cold sweat broke on Na Wangrang. Since when? Had someone come and told her?
"It isn't what you're thinking, so don't worry. Mom doesn't know what you've been doing, either."
"What? Then……"
"I do know that my son has thrown himself into something dangerous."
Yoo Kangseul shrugged.
"It's only a guess. Nothing but a mother's feeling."
"Did it…… show that much?"
"Yes. Your father wore a similar face when he was about to tell me his secret."
"Ah……"
Na Wangrang dragged his hands down his dry face. All that agonizing suddenly felt foolish.
"……May I tell you? It may come as a shock."
"Ever since I learned your father wasn't human, your mother doesn't startle easily at most things."
"Even if I've killed people……?"
"…………"
The back of Yoo Kangseul's neck went tight.
"Wangrang."
"Yes."
"Close the shop."
"……Yes."
Yoo Kangseul sighed.
"My fate……"
When it came to driving nails through her heart, father and son were a matched pair of champions.
"Ah. You've arrived."
Shrine Priest Tsukumi rose from the car.
"I did not expect to have the honor of seeing you so soon."
"Nor did I."
While I shook the priest's hand, guests stepped out of another car. Elder Wildflower and Na Wangrang, arrived by chance at the same moment.
Wildflower flinched when he saw me.
"Ahem."
He turned his gaze aside with the cough and, without another word, took Na Wangrang inside.
That old man does that every time he lays eyes on me.
Does he hate me?
"Phantom, has everyone gathered inside?"
Dan Miryu, who had driven all the way to the airport to escort the priest, came over.
"Yes. The two of you are the last."
I went into the house with them.
It had been a long time. Not since the Heavenly Punishment.
Our living room had become a council chamber.
The once-spacious room was packed until there was nowhere left to set a foot. Those who could not find a chair stood in droves. If it had been up to me I would have rented an auditorium, but I wanted to avoid public exposure as much as I could.
And there was a romance to crowding in together like this, too.
Companions gathered in a phantom thief's hideout. I couldn't even stand how perfect it was.
While I was lost in the daydream, Hong Yumin snapped at me.
"Cease your idle thoughts and take up the secretary's place. Do they not wait?"
"Yes, ma'am."
I threaded through the crowd like water and stood before the TV.
Every eye gathered on me. Being the center of that attention sent a shiver up my spine.
"Well, then."
I clapped once.
"As you all know, we have gathered in this room for a single purpose. To beat one man within an inch of his life."
I snapped my fingers.
The TV hissed with static, and a man appeared in a research coat, his face sly and unpleasant.
It was Scientist, just as he had been in the comic.
"This outsider is our target. Many of you are likely seeing him for the first time, so I ask that you learn the face. We absolutely cannot let him slip."
A few gazes sharpened. Killing intent leaked out, impossible to hold in.
"This man's name is Scientist. A genius villain who works in science. The most dangerous science villain on Earth."
His body was no better than an ordinary person's.
He was an intelligence-type villain, the sort who made up for that body with a singularly brilliant mind, or laid his crimes out with it.
"To catch this villain, we have to storm his own inner room. The bastard hardly ever sets foot outside."
Unless it was an order from Another One, or his own research, Scientist spent every day of the year shut inside his laboratory. He had no choice. That was the kind of place it was.
"So mark this well. Scientist is no ordinary madman. His laboratory will be a demonic realm beyond anything you are imagining."
The Devil's Research Institute.
True to its name, the place was a hellscape past the edge of the human world.
In the original, the fruits of the research there had been built around the Demon Tree.
Now that the direction of that research had changed, even I did not know what would be waiting inside.
"The laboratory is here."
The TV brought up a globe.
A red dot marked itself upon it.
"So this is why you needed us."
Captain Kid let the words out on a low breath.
The red dot was pressed to the crown of the Earth.
The Arctic.
Scientist was in the Arctic.