Chapter 18
The day I’d spent wandering from place to place and indulging in a full-blown binge of impulse buying, right down to the weapons for my retainer, had already slipped ten days into the past.
Nothing major had happened in that time, and that in itself meant my daily life had settled into a steady rhythm.
In the morning, I went to school with Lee Seo-ah. While the child was at school, I headed out beyond the Wall with my retainer to hunt.
I returned in time for dismissal, settled the ledger, then enjoyed dinner with Lee Seo-ah and spent a quiet evening with her.
When night fully set in, I swallowed my regret, saw the child back to the orphanage, and went hunting again.
Then I kept hunting until the sun rose, and came back to the city in time for morning school.
For nearly ten days, that had been the pattern of my life.
I didn’t like it, but I couldn’t deny that, ever since the retainer joined us, my relationship with Lee Seo-ah had been growing a little closer.
I’d also stopped trying to force an adoption and focused instead on simply spending time with her.
Fortunately, it had a meaningful effect.
Lee Seo-ah had started talking more often, smiling more, and actually expressing herself.
Every time I saw life returning to that face that had always seemed so shadowed, I found myself grinning without meaning to.
And the fact that she would smile back at me in return meant our relationship had made enormous progress.
At this point, even though she still hesitated, she could properly tell me or my retainer what she was curious about, or what she wanted to say.
Compared to just a few days ago, it was nothing short of remarkable progress.
“You liked my dad, didn’t you?”
“Huh?”
The hamburger I’d just lifted to my mouth slipped from my hand and dropped with a thud.
It was dinner time again, as always.
Since Lee Seo-ah liked fast food for obvious reasons, I’d brought her to a hamburger shop.
I’d only just taken the first bite of my order when the child suddenly dropped that bombshell.
“Grrr.”
Across from me, my retainer, sitting alone at the table, seemed to sense the change in the air and looked back and forth between me and Lee Seo-ah with a french fry hanging from her mouth.
“Uh, um. Seo-ah. What are you talking about all of a sudden?”
I asked, too flustered to even think about picking up the hamburger I’d dropped onto the table.
Lee Seo-ah glanced at me sidelong, then answered.
“I’ve been trying to figure out, in my own way, why you’ve been so kind to me.”
“Have you?”
So why had she landed on that conclusion, huh? I was dying of curiosity.
“When you saved me. The first time we met, on the rooftop. You asked me if my father’s name was really Lee Jin-woo.”
“Th-that’s... right.”
I’d only asked to confirm it. What about that?
“I kept wondering how you knew him, and what kind of relationship you had. But I thought if I asked directly, you might not answer me.”
That was accurate.
Explaining my relationship with that guy was complicated enough, and whether Lee Seo-ah would even accept the truth once she heard it was a separate problem. So yes, I’d planned to skate past it and muddle through somehow.
“Hmm? Don’t tell me the reason you recently asked about that guy... no, your father, was because of that?”
When I stared at her with my eyes wide, Lee Seo-ah gave a small nod.
“I wanted to know how much you knew about my father, and in what way. But you knew far more than I expected. You even told me things that I, as his daughter, didn’t know, so I was a little surprised.”
No, that was because back when I was still a man, my mother never shut up about the guy.
If you hear the same thing so many times your ears practically grow calluses, of course you remember it.
Besides, I’d worked so hard not to forget the voice of the parent I’d cherished.
It was only natural that I remembered the things spoken in that voice I’d repeated to myself every day.
“So I thought about it. How could a foreigner like you know my dad so well?”
“Grrr.”
The retainer’s little sound effects were getting on my nerves.
I felt like the fries were disappearing into her mouth faster and faster.
“You said Dad studied abroad when he was young, right?”
“Uh, y-yeah. He lived overseas for a few years.”
Back then, my family hadn’t been poor.
On the contrary, we’d actually been rather well-off.
So my mother, after hearing news about a cousin who’d gone abroad to study, had spent a while singing the same tune at me: I should go study abroad too.
She kept at it until just before that cousin came back to Korea a few years later.
I’m pretty sure I spent that whole time writhing in agony as I listened to updates about a cousin’s life I hadn’t asked to hear in the first place.
“As you know, Dad was ridiculously handsome. He also had a great personality. Kind, too.”
That much was true.
Aside from being a little soft around the edges, there probably hadn’t been a more perfect man than him.
“I heard he was really popular with women.”
“...Wait.”
Some instinct hit me all at once.
Something about this felt bad.
“So I figured you were maybe Dad’s girlfriend from when he studied abroad...”
“No!”
Without meaning to, I sprang up and shouted.
Lee Seo-ah widened her eyes, startled, then corrected herself.
“Then maybe an unrequited love...”
“That’s not it either!”
“Don’t tell me you were a stalker...”
“Does that sound even remotely plausible to you?”
“But you know more about my father than anyone else. You’ve even been trying to adopt me, his daughter.”
“That’s...!”
Because you were the only meaning left to me.
I was left completely speechless and shut my mouth, taking my seat again.
“Heh-heh-heh-heh.”
My retainer was clearly enjoying herself, barely holding back laughter behind one hand. Should I kill her?
“Dad’s an idiot.”
“Huh?”
What was that, now?
Maybe she thought I wouldn’t hear it, because Lee Seo-ah was dissing her own father in a voice so tiny it was barely louder than an ant crawling.
Her expression darkened a little as she stared at the hamburger in her hand, and a heavy thread of displeasure passed through her eyes.
“Leaving someone like you behind and choosing some other woman...”
Her voice shrank until it was almost no more than breath, and the rest of the sentence never quite made it out.
Something about her state looked off, so I called to her.
“Seo-ah?”
“But, sis.”
Lee Seo-ah snapped back to normal almost at once.
Had I misseen it?
Just as I was puzzling over it, she asked me another of her usual questions.
“If you met my father when he was young, how old are you now, sis?”
I almost answered casually, then stopped.
“Even as an ability user, you look way too young. I’m curious, so please tell me.”
Damn. Hold on. What was I supposed to say to that?
Should I just say thirty, the age I’d casually written on my ID?
No. That’s probably not good.
Lee Seo-ah currently thought I was some insane woman who, as a young girl, had become so obsessively infatuated with her father that I’d even changed my nationality in order to adopt his daughter.
And if I said I was thirty here, that would create a temporal contradiction.
My cousin would be a minor. Worse, this could push him into the realm of a pedophile.
He was already dead, so it didn’t exactly matter, but I still couldn’t just shatter Lee Seo-ah’s fantasy of her father, could I?
After a split-second of mental whiplash, I finally decided to use my trump card.
Hoo...
I mechanically moved the muscles in my face.
I lowered the corners of my eyes slightly, lifted the corners of my mouth a little, and arranged a gentle smile.
With my back straight and my posture suddenly neat, I extended a hand in an elegant line.
The atmosphere changed in an instant.
My hand, touching Lee Seo-ah’s cheek, slid down with a smooth, deliberate grace until it reached the point of her chin.
When my thumb brushed over those small, soft lips, I felt the faintest tremor.
“Seo-ah.”
“Ye-yes...”
Her cheeks flushed pink, and her half-lidded eyes stared up at me in a daze.
“You must never ask a beauty her age. Do you understand?”
Lee Seo-ah slowly nodded without a word.
I smiled to myself in triumph.
Good. I’d gotten through it somehow.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
On the way back after dropping Lee Seo-ah at the orphanage, where for some reason she kept avoiding my eyes whenever we met, my retainer let out a long sigh beside me under the streetlights.
“Master.”
“What.”
“What are you planning to do by seducing a child you intend to make your daughter?”
“What? Hey, how is that seduction? I just charmed her for a second so I could steer the conversation.”
Besides, I hadn’t even used actual enchantment.
I’d only shown off the poise of a noblewoman honed at social balls.
“Grrr. I see. So that’s it. I heard you were popular, and this whole time you were always running around batting your tail like that.”
“Do I look insane? I never did that, you bastard.”
It was a perfectly legitimate branch of aristocratic etiquette.
“You might not know this, being a goblin and all, but that’s how you deal with awkward questions in polite society.”
You fan your hand open right in front of them, then give them a little eye smile, like, oh, what ever could you mean?
That’s what my teacher taught me, damn it.
Do you have any idea how many times I got beaten up by my teacher while learning noble etiquette?
“Hm?”
“What is it?”
Just as I was about to step on my retainer for mocking my efforts, I turned my head.
A smell I’d caught once before was approaching fast.
Click.
At the end of the alley, where it opened onto the main road, a black sedan that looked expensive at a glance came to a stop.
The door opened, and someone got out.
“Long time no see, Cynthia.”
“Glasses?”
“Kim Su-hyun.”
The person walking toward me through the streetlight was none other than Kim Su-hyun.
“Grrr. Who’s that?”
“You know. The guy I told you about before.”
“Ah. That sucker.”
“Yeah. That sucker is him.”
“Ahem.”
Looking displeased, Kim Su-hyun pushed his glasses up again.
Well, he was a sucker. Was I wrong?
“Huh? Did you fix your eye?”
Now that I looked closely, the left eye he’d been missing before was perfectly intact.
“It’s a prosthetic eye.”
So he hadn’t actually fixed it.
When I loosened the constraints on my perception a little and looked again, his movements around that eye were clearly awkward compared to the right.
Modern technology, fused with the civilization of the other world, really was something.
It was so convincing I’d thought it was real.
“So what do you want?”
“Before that, let me say this clearly: I no longer want to be entangled with you.”
Because I’d loosened my limits, a thin thread of fear seeped into my nose.
I quickly pulled myself back together and looked at Kim Su-hyun, who went on after steadying his breath.
“I have no intention of harming you, and I don’t want anything from you. But as one of this city’s responsible officials, I came here to do what I had to do. I have information I absolutely needed to tell you.”
“I hate long preambles. Did you already forget that?”
I stuck out my tongue, and Kim Su-hyun flinched and stepped back.
So I really was that unbearable to him.
And yet he still came looking for me, which made me a little curious.
“T-then I’ll get straight to the point.”
Kim Su-hyun drew another breath and said, “There’s a villain currently wanted internationally. His alias is Eraser. He disappeared years ago, but recently resurfaced.”
“So?”
“He’s currently heading to Korea.”
“And what does that have to do with me?”
Whether he was an internationally wanted villain or coming to Korea, why the hell should I care?
“His primary target is a fourteen-year-old girl.”
“Huh, what?”
“He’s a madman who indiscriminately kills any children around that age group that he finds.”
...That was a piece of shit I absolutely had to care about, damn it.
“Hey, tell me more. What was that bastard’s name again?”