Dragon and the Line
"I'll put this matter aside for now. If they come back, I can just throw up a mana-blocking barrier around the area. The fact that they have mana at all means that without it, they'd be nothing more than ordinary humans — or whatever else they might be."
"That's strange. Siu really couldn't find anything?"
"What can you do? Even monkeys fall from trees sometimes."
After even the massive mana-detection apparatus in the company basement failed to turn up a single trace, we decided to set the whole business aside for the time being.
Dwelling on it now wasn't going to produce any answers, and a rather important schedule had begun creeping up on us.
Not that it was much of a burden for me, of course.
"I really can't study at home. Studying here is the best, honestly."
"Doesn't the constant traffic of secretaries bother you?"
"Actually, it feels like someone's watching me, so I concentrate even better. At home I just keep wanting to collapse onto the bed."
Ha-yan answered my questions without missing a beat, steadily working through a workbook covering the midterm exam range.
It was a weekend afternoon. With midterms just around the corner, the two of us sat at our respective desks in my office on the top floor of the company, each absorbed in our own work.
Since I still had to attend school, most of the company's business got packed into the weekends. During exam periods, though, Ha-yan almost always came along, citing how good the place was for studying.
Naturally she never walked in through the front entrance. She teleported home with me first, then came down to the office from there.
So at the moment Ha-yan was buried in midterm prep, while I… well.
A dragon who couldn't solve high-school-level problems would be a blow to the pride.
Proving the Riemann hypothesis might be another matter entirely.
Which was why we currently occupied our seats, studying or handling company affairs and trading banter as we went.
"Ugh… why is the math range so wide this time?"
"Why do you think? Once you're a senior, you stop covering new material and throw everything at the college entrance exam. They have to finish all of the third-year content in second year."
"Even so, an entire textbook for one midterm is just cruel."
"We think it's cruel, sure. Don't you remember first year? When the math teacher asked who hadn't done any advanced prep and the only two hands that stayed down were ours?"
"Well, yes, but…"
"Besides, it's not like we need to grind as hard as those kids. You and I just need to keep sharpening our magic. And you, Ha-yan — I'll take care of you for the rest of your life, so you only have to do what you want. If you're ever short on things to do, want me to open a café for you in the corner of the first-floor lobby? I've been deliberately leaving that space empty."
"Oh, come on. I still have to go to college. I refuse to stop at high school! And getting into a university near home means I need slightly better grades than I have right now."
"That part I'll cheer for, of course."
"Just cheer? You're not going to study with me?"
"I don't need to study. I'm already first in the entire school."
"…Unbelievable. You absolute pain."
After our half-banter, half-conversation, Ha-yan finally stuck out her lower lip and returned her focus to her books.
I wasn't without the urge to keep teasing her, but I knew perfectly well how sincerely she wanted to get into that top-tier university near home — the one she'd briefly eyed last time — so I decided to leave it there.
I had been holding first place schoolwide for so long that early admissions were never going to be a problem for me. Ha-yan, however, had slipped once on a previous exam, which meant that if she wanted to apply early alongside me, she needed excellent scores on every remaining test.
I had asked her once if she wanted magical help. She had shaken her head with absolute firmness.
Accepting my help even for something like this, she said, was more than her pride would allow.
That being the case, I turned my attention back to company business.
There were matters that needed handling outside the office, and a meeting was scheduled soon, so I left Ha-yan to her concentration and slipped out.
"You've come out, Master. And the young lady?"
Rhea, who had been handling her own work in the secretarial space outside the office, looked up as I appeared.
"She's studying. Station a few of the others by the door and tell them not to disturb her."
"Hmm. Still being rather stubborn, I see. When a single spell would solve everything."
"Stubborn? She's always been like that."
Rhea spoke as though she already knew the whole story, her tone making it clear she simply could not understand Ha-yan's reasoning.
I shrugged and stepped into the elevator.
Rhea phoned the secretarial office on the floor below to relay the situation, then followed me in.
I scrolled through the company tablet I'd brought with me and asked her,
"How are the executives behaving?"
"Still complete idiots— ah, my apologies. They continue to do nothing but absurd things. I genuinely cannot fathom how they survived more than twenty years at other investment firms. I also fail to understand why I am required to speak to such people with honorifics."
"What can you do? They're still veterans in this industry, so they carry a certain social weight. Even if they never bring us actual money, we can use them for image. There are government headaches to manage, too."
"We have confirmed that every achievement they claim from their previous companies was stolen from subordinates. And you still intend to keep them on under those circumstances?"
"Growing the company further with magic is a hassle. I don't particularly want it any bigger anyway."
"True enough… The liquid assets the company currently holds already exceed the scale of the Republic of Korea."
"Exactly. No need to force anything."
I stepped out of the elevator and surveyed the vast first-floor lobby as I spoke.
It was the weekend, so every person moving through the building — aside from Ha-yan and me — was a Homunculus.
They paused briefly at the sight of us, offered their greetings, and then vanished again to their respective tasks.
I glanced at the large empty corner I had mentioned to Ha-yan and said to Rhea,
"That corner over there — the construction for putting a café in is finished, right?"
"Of course. The preliminary work was completed some time ago, but you told us to wait, so we have been waiting… Have you changed your mind?"
"Post a notice and start recruiting a company. Let's give the other employees a little welfare."
At my curt instruction, Rhea fixed me with a sharp look for a moment, then let out a long sigh.
"Welfare, my word. You've been trying to talk her into it, and only now that Miss Ha-yan has shown zero interest in a café are you finally posting the notice — is that it?"
"…"
"You are aware that Miss Ha-yan and I converse quite a great deal as well, are you not, Master?"
"…Tch."
I had nothing to say to that, so I simply quickened my pace toward the next destination.
Right. Dumping all that verbal firepower into her hadn't been a free gift after all.
Regret was far too late by now.
Once a company grows this large, the situations that demand a great deal of my personal labor become rare.
The person at the absolute top of a company this size is somehow vastly busier than every other employee, drowning in work?
Hmm… well. That would be a situation that warrants a close look at the company's management philosophy and actual conditions.
The larger the company, the better it is when the employees handle nearly everything themselves.
"Which is why, Master, there is another matter I must report to you."
"…No human executives in the room, so this is the magical side of things. Something happen?"
I followed Rhea into a conference room tucked into a corner of the building and found a considerable number of women already seated.
The moment I took the seat at the head of the table, Rhea began the meeting as naturally as breathing.
"Then we shall begin the formal report. The Homunculus representative stationed at the company — please proceed."
At Rhea's cue, a short-haired woman wearing red horn-rimmed glasses rose and began.
"Yes. Reporting now. There are no major issues with company operations themselves; however, recently — whether due to a flaw in the magic or some form of developed immunity — a handful of employees have started muttering things like, 'A high-school student… is she?' whenever they see Miss Ha-yan."
"Submit the names and department assignments of those individuals immediately. And authorize the use of magic against them. Determine whether it is immunity or something else, and see that they are thoroughly handled."
"Next is the mana-detection apparatus division… Currently…"
Yes.
The meeting I was attending was related to company affairs, but only Homunculi of my own creation were permitted to take part.
Homunculi made up more than half the company's total workforce, so holding the meeting on a weekend had been unavoidable.
I had originally considered filling the entire company with Homunculi,
but Rhea had immediately and vehemently opposed the idea, unleashing a rapid-fire stream of objections.
'Please do not take the Republic of Korea's Resident Registration Act lightly. You would have to insert the personal data of every Homunculus into government servers by magic. Mana expenditure may mean nothing to you, Master, but the sheer hassle would be enormous. And decisively — try imagining a company this large filled entirely with women. Do you intend to cast magic every single time a civil servant raises an objection? Kindly abandon the idea before it generates ever more and more and more trouble.'
Thanks to that advice-that-wasn't-advice, I had dropped the notion at once.
The compromise that emerged was to fill only this many positions with Homunculi and hire ordinary people for the rest.
Of course, Ha-yan's and my rather special relationship still made the use of magic necessary — but the overall nuisance was far less than stuffing every single employee into a Homunculus shell would have been.
"Nothing too serious, then. Those assigned to the executives — if you judge that any of them has crossed the line, report it at once. However much we overlook their minor failings for social reasons, there is no reason to sit idle once they go too far. That will be all for today's meeting."
The moment Rhea declared the meeting adjourned, every Homunculus except Rhea and me hurried back to their posts.
My role in these meetings was essentially just to sit there, so I used the tablet to skim through the reports the Homunculi had compiled while surveilling the rest of the staff.
Once everyone else had left and only Rhea and I remained, I sharpened my gaze, letting my long-slitted golden pupils flare open for the first time in a while, and said,
"Rhea."
"Yes, Master."
"…That one. Drag him in. He crossed the line."
"Understood."
One name in the reports had leaped out at me — someone who had crossed the line in a rather spectacular fashion.
Accessing the central server, are we?
Looks like I'll get to stretch a little for the first time in a while.