The Orphanage Director Fucking Hates Child Abuse
Present day.
As usual, Lee Shin sent the two kids from the orphanage off to school and headed to work.
By now the route into Site 277 had become familiar enough. He'd gotten pretty used to the daily routine, too.
…Not that you can really call it a routine. There's barely anything to do.
The daily duties of SIN-998 and Special Containment Task Force Yshin-ching-ui went as follows:
- Sit and rest
- Give blood to Lael
- Eat lunch with Yu Seoa
- Lie down and rest
- Interrupt Tatiana while she's working
- Go looking for wherever the hell Azazel wandered off to
- Clock out (timed to when the orphanage kids get out of school)
One-line summary: pure downtime.
Naturally, the thought that he was getting paid for this kept bubbling up unbidden.
The task currently in progress: giving blood to Lael.
Seeing her every day like this, it felt like their closeness had gone up quite a bit.
"…Lael. Your position's different from last time."
"Doing it the same way every day gets boring. Come on, lie face-down. Hehe."
Lael climbed on top of Lee Shin and sank her teeth into his shoulder with a soft chomp.
Lai-lai-lai-lai cha-cha-cha…
Lee Shin focused hard, trying to ignore the soft sensation pressing against his back.
It was shaping up to be another peaceful day of pure cushy living.
It would have been, anyway—if a siren loud enough to rupture eardrums hadn't suddenly gone off.
WAAAAAAAH—!!
Time for Lee Shin to earn his keep as a Special Containment operative.
"What now. Things have been a total mess lately. Isn't the Management Bureau getting breached a little too easily?"
"It's an attraction. What do you expect? You've gotta have events or it's no fun."
"Attrac—ah, right, that was the setting. Enjoyed the blood today."
Even from deep inside Lael's containment chamber, faint screams seemed to carry through.
Tatiana, who had been supervising the transfusion procedure, pressed an ear to her radio, then came running over to the two of them.
"SIN-077, Lael. Can you give us some space? Nine-nine-eight, we have to go. Now."
"Containment breach? Or did some school book a group tour of the attractions?"
"The opposite."
Tatiana's expression was grim.
"Intruders. They've already punched through the central corridor."
Someone who never made personal appearances had stormed the site at the head of a small force.
"…Cromwell."
Naturally, the Special Containment Task Force on station couldn't stop him.
"Pardon the intrusion. I was hoping someone could give me directions?"
The gray corridor was painted over in blood. Researchers and security personnel alike thrashed on the floor with their limbs severed.
The dead said nothing. The dying screamed themselves raw.
"Mm. Lovely background music. At any rate—please answer the question."
"…."
"Where might Sir Lee Shin be?"
Wobble, wobble.
Cromwell tapped a severed head with a mechanical tentacle. Naturally, there was no reply.
"Hmm. Never mind. I'll just pop the lid open myself."
The tentacle sheared through the skull and rooted around in the brain with abandon. Nothing resembling a body was left of the victim.
"SIN-998… Good heavens, he originated as an anomalous entity? How fascinating. His current location is—"
"Your Eminence the Cardinal."
"Tch! We didn't come here under Serpent Religion credentials! Get your head on straight!"
"M-my apologies. …Representative."
A man armed in Workshop-issue gear delivered a rapid report.
"The Council's direct-action task force will arrive shortly. Ten minutes."
"Ah, the Incinerator. Well, with me here, they could hardly expect to stop us without pulling out something of that caliber. Shall we hurry along?"
Click. Click.
Elegant footsteps laid themselves over the screams of the limbless.
Every lowered bulkhead was sliced through like soft tofu, and Management Bureau armed personnel dropped before they could even open fire.
"So barbaric. It's like a cavalry charge straight into a machine-gun nest."
Without so much as a scratch on him, Cromwell advanced down the corridor with half a dozen Workshop staff at his side.
The moment he rounded the corner, Cromwell raised a hand. Beyond lay a wide hall.
"Don't shoot. If you shoot, I'll snap your arms and legs into something pretty."
"Y-yes, Representative."
"Lower your weapons and mind your manners. …We have a guest of honor."
Special Containment operatives were deployed on every side, every kind of weapon trained on him. Among them were pieces reverse-engineered from anomalies, capable of dealing lethal damage.
"…Found you. Sir Lee Shin."
In the center of the hall stood a man of particularly imposing bulk.
Beside him, a small-framed Special Containment operative crouched behind cover, radioing out.
"Fire."
The crack of gunfire erupted.
Cromwell kept smiling as he closed the distance toward Lee Shin one step at a time.
Let's see. Pedestrian lead rounds. Tired old blessed rounds. Oh my, you've even developed particle lances?
Meaningless.
The technology was simply too inferior.
The bullets slowed and slowed until their velocity converged endlessly on zero. The particle weapons were no different.
Temporal singularities were Cromwell's specialty.
And of all things, it was a field in which the Management Bureau was weak—they had no proper countermeasures at all.
Tick. T-tick.
Cromwell swatted aside a few frozen lead rounds and came to a stop in front of Lee Shin.
Lee Shin was busy shaking the small-framed operative.
"Tatiana. Tatiana? Why are you just standing there. You doing mime? Whoa, that's flawless."
"…Ahem."
"Huh? Wait. Is that a bullet right in front of the muzzle? It—it stopped?!"
"Ahem-hem!!"
Cromwell finally managed to snag Lee Shin's attention.
In this entire wide hall, only two people remained unbound by stopped time. Now, if he could just offer a thoroughly polite and elegant greeting—
"How'd you do that?"
Lee Shin beat him to the punch with supreme flippancy!
"…Pardon?"
"You hang 'em on strings or something? No? Magnets?? How'd you do it!!"
"…Another riddle, is it. Goodness me."
Ultra-low intelligence + ultra-high intelligence = ultra-ultra-low intelligence.
Each of them simply said whatever they wanted, and no actual conversation took place—a pity neither of them realized.
Cromwell cleared his throat and pressed on.
"Sir Lee Shin, I've prepared the answer to the riddle you set last time. I thought I might deliver the solution somewhere worthy of you."
"What riddle."
"…You do jest. You were alluding to this young lady here, were you not?"
Cromwell gently tipped Tatiana's upper body back. Time was crawling so slowly she didn't even blink.
"I deconstructed and reinterpreted this person's past and crafted a masterpiece of the highest order. My own disciple will have the honor of presenting the answer to you."
"No, what the fuck are you even talking about. …Forget it. I heard you're a child abuser?"
Lee Shin's tone turned ugly in an instant.
"I heard your company or whatever it is kidnapped Tatiana when she was little."
"Pardon? No, no. That is something that happened in the past, but also something I will cause to happen in the future by dispatching Selector Agatha, and within this exquisite harmony you will find my answer—"
Ah-cha-cha!
Mid-sentence, Cromwell smacked his own forehead.
He was teasing me with ultra-high intelligence, wasn't he? Oh, Sir Lee Shin.
I nearly fell for it like some provincial. Truly, the more you talk with him, the more he reels you in.
Cromwell covered his mouth and laughed elegantly.
"I'll spare you the tedious, pedantic explanation. Now then—allow me to escort you to the past. Do enjoy the trip!"
Chrrr-rrr-rrr-rrr-click—
With the precision-meshing sound of gears, a doorframe materialized behind Lee Shin. Cromwell gave his chest the gentlest of pushes.
"Farew—"
"Ah, for fuck's sake!! Men don't put their hands on other men!!"
"Hhk."
Thunk.
The door opened, and Lee Shin was shoved through to the other side.
Ten years into the past.
Left standing alone, Cromwell was briefly stunned.
"Th-that raw vulgarity just now, what on earth…"
T-t-t-tick— ding!
But Cromwell was the Representative of the Transcendence Workshop and a Cardinal of the Serpent Religion. A master of time-related technology.
With that extraordinary mind of his, he grasped Lee Shin's true intent.
"I see! A non-binary homosexual masquerading as a cisgender heterosexual masquerading as—no!! Wait. Is Sir Lee Shin simply a heterosexual!?"
Cardinal Cromwell. Confronted with yet another vexing puzzle.
"…Very well. Next time, I shall present myself in a female chassis."
So I do hope you'll treat me a little more carefully.
This son of a bitch! This goddamn shitty gay homo bastard!!
I cursed up a storm, throwing punches at empty air.
Ah—no, wait! Having that kind of outdated mindset in this day and age!
Time to reflect.
There can be good people among homosexuals too. It's just that this Cromwell asshole in particular is a bad guy.
Me, Lee Shin. Twenty-two-year-old middle school dropout and orphanage director.
Nothing particularly suspicious about me—I just love kids way too much. Watching them grow up happy and unhurt is the joy of my life.
And the things I hate most in this world are, hands down, two things.
1) Murderers.
2) Child abusers.
For the record, number two is something I am fully prepared to tear apart with my own hands.
Case in point: Representative Cromwell.
I hadn't pressed Tatiana for details—it felt like dredging up painful memories—but the second hard evidence of child abuse turned up, that guy was dead.
I brushed off my clothes and stood up.
"…Where the hell is this."
Rain was falling from the sky. Judging by the four-lane road and the buildings, it looked like somewhere in Seoul.
How did I get here from the Management Bureau?
Had Cromwell swapped out the set when he shoved me?
It made zero sense, so I decided not to understand it. Guess the attraction tech was just that stacked.
Having no idea why I'd been sent here, I walked without much purpose.
Passersby muttered as they looked at me.
"…Is that a cop? Never seen a uniform like that."
"Cosplay, maybe? Look at the build on him."
Click.
A few people pulled out their phones to take pictures.
?
People's phones looked like older models somehow. Come to think of it, their clothes were all out of fashion too.
I took out my smartphone and checked the date.
"What the hell is this."
It said ten years ago.
More precisely, about nine years and six months ago.
So the setting is that I time-traveled?
I tried calling people, but nobody picked up. Seoa, Tatiana, Eunseong. Yulha and Arin didn't answer either.
One contact left.
Yeah, no. Not calling that.
Something about that woman was impossible to read, and she was my boss besides.
Just then, an unidentified string of numbers appeared on my phone screen.
[20:23:48]
A minute later, the number dropped.
[20:23:47]
The last bit is minutes. …So the front is days?
Three weeks, then.
What happens when it hits zero.
"Oh!"
I smacked my forehead. In your average time-travel story, when a timer like that runs out…
"You go back to the original time!"
That's me for you. The graduate student of middle school dropouts! A thoroughly sound deduction!
I was basking in self-congratulation and wandering wherever my feet took me when—
Thump.
Something small shoved past me and kept going.
A little girl in a baseball cap pulled low.
"…."
She bolted down an alley and tossed my wallet onto the ground as she ran.
Wait—when did she even take my wallet?
Damn good hands on her.
It was like looking at little Yulha all over again.
Back then I'd chased her down on the spot too… and brought her to the orphanage.
I kicked off the ground and ran.
No matter how fast her feet were or how well she knew the side streets, she was still a little kid.
Naturally, I had her in under thirty seconds.
"Let—let go!! I'll scream! I-I'll call the cops!"
"Easy now. Let's talk this through slowly. Ah-ah, don't try to bite the mister's arm. I'll show you my face, so try not to be scared."
I went to take off my gas mask.
Huh.
It wouldn't come off at all. While I was straining at it, the kid started thrashing again.
"Let gooo! …Please let go. It hurts."
"Sorry about that. You okay?"
I eased up on her arm a little. Just enough that she couldn't run, and if I could meet her eyes first so she wouldn't be scared…
"…."
"…I-I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. I won't do it again. I won't, I won't run away again."
In an instant the child shrank into herself, her whole body shaking. As if it had been drilled into her.
I tipped up the cap mashed down over her head, and only then got a proper look at her face.
"Ah…!"
"…."
My mood plummeted in a heartbeat.
Blonde hair. Green eyes.
Bruises on her face and neck. Swelling even in places you don't bang into during ordinary life.
Her hair was matted, her clothes filthy.
It was pretty muggy out, but she was in long sleeves. The backs of her hands sticking out were cut up. Meaning she'd been trying to hide the injuries on her body.
Whatever she'd been eating, her arms and legs were stick-thin and bony.
"…Hoo. Hnngh."
And she kept glancing toward the mouth of the alley, reading the room.
It wasn't me she was afraid of. She was trembling like someone was about to come snatch her any second.
Only one conclusion.
This was child abuse.
I took her hand gently so I wouldn't startle her.
"What's your name?"
"…She said not to say."
"Who did?"
"…Th-the Selector lady."
Selector?
The child's breathing grew more and more ragged, and cold sweat started beading on her skin.
So this Selector bastard was a child abuser.
"The Selector lady's coming. I-I have to go! If I tell you my name, will you let me go?"
"Sure."
For the first time, the child met my eyes.
Empty eyes with no dreams, no hope, not even a spark of life left in them.
"…Tatiana. That's my name. Please let me go now. If they catch me, I'll die."
That wasn't going to happen.
Because I was going to kill the child abuser.