The Dragon and the Futile Spy
Thud.
That man—no, the interviewee—no, the spy—stepped inside, and the door to the interview room swung shut behind him.
From that moment on, no one would be able to enter without my direct order.
Not even Rhea.
"Ah, a-ah, hello!!! I'm candidate number ten, the one who made it all the way to this final interview..."
"Skip the introduction. Have a seat first. And try not to be so nervous."
Here he was.
That son of a—
No. That bastard.
He had no idea he had just walked straight onto the execution ground.
I fixed the man who had entered the interview room with a faintly mocking stare and waited.
"Hehehehe... Got you... Heh..."
"Snap out of it. You're not planning on doing nothing, right?"
"Y-yeah. Right. Of course."
Ha-yan jabbed me sharply in the side while I was still grinning like a maniac, and I snapped back to reality.
Chopping his head off was already a settled matter, but I still needed to find out exactly what he had been thinking when he decided to infiltrate our company.
When the man realized that only Ha-yan and I—two ridiculously young people—were sitting in the interview room, a flicker of confusion crossed his face.
Fair enough. My face had already made the rounds in a few media outlets, but the fact that there was another young executive besides me was something only people inside the company really knew.
How could they not know when the employees had taken so many pictures?
I vaguely remembered someone mentioning it once, but the entire company building was under a magic I had deliberately woven into every wall and floor.
It made anyone who worked here subconsciously feel an intense aversion to talking about Ha-yan to outsiders—roughly the same level of reluctance as confessing their deepest sexual complexes to a stranger.
I had put far more effort into that enchantment than into constructing the building itself.
Anyway, the interviewee—no, the spy—stared at the two of us sitting alone for a moment, looking flustered, then quickly composed himself and sat up straight in the proper interviewee posture.
And yet, for some reason—
"Doesn't he look even more annoying sitting like that? Because he thinks we have no idea?"
"What else would it be? He has no clue we're talking through mana right now. And he's not an actual mage, right?"
"If he were one of them, he'd already be dead the second he walked in. If he could use magic, his mana circuits would have been shredded the moment he crossed the threshold."
I relayed that to Ha-yan through mana, then turned to the man with a perfectly confident smile.
"Well then. First of all, thank you for making it this far through the interviews. The final CEO interview is basically just based on everything you've already covered, so there won't be any new questions."
"Thank you!"
The moment I spoke, the man fixed us with an intensely nervous expression. Next it was Ha-yan's turn.
"Looking over your previous interview records, your résumé is far more impressive than the other candidates. You interned on Wall Street at one point, and you also freelanced as an investor in Japan for a while. Is there a particular reason you chose to focus most of your career overseas rather than in Korea?"
"Ah, for that part I felt it was necessary to first consider the basic structure of our country's stock market. Unlike other nations, our market..."
Ha-yan smoothly continued the interview with thoroughly professional questions, keeping everything perfectly ordinary.
Meanwhile I locked my gaze straight onto the man's pupils and—
Ssssss...
—carefully began wrapping mana around him.
Before the interview started, Ha-yan and I had discussed exactly how to dispose of this spy cleanly while extracting every last scrap of information from his head.
I had grumbled at her at the time.
"You're too soft, Ha-yan. This guy is deliberately trying to force his way into our company. Why are you treating him so gently? And why stop me from using my magic?"
"Oh, come on. If you used the spell you're talking about, he'd end up a complete vegetable. Someone with mana might thrash around a little, but this guy is a pure ordinary human. Do you really need to use something that cruel?"
"Cruel? How is this cruel? I wouldn't even touch his life."
"You'd only leave his life alone! If you used that spell he'd end up living a fate worse than death."
"And how is that our problem—"
"Shut up! That magic is completely off-limits."
"Tch... Then what do you suggest?"
Ha-yan thought for a moment, then slapped her knee and looked at me.
"That one's too much. How about this instead?"
"That experience must have been pretty special, right?"
"Of course. I haven't lived all that long yet, but I still consider it a fresh and valuable experience."
The man answered Ha-yan's questions with growing enthusiasm, as if he were thoroughly enjoying himself.
The atmosphere felt less like a job interview and more like listening to one man's life story.
But the instant my mana sealed every gap around the spy—
Crack!
Sparks flew as if high-voltage current had just shorted out, and the man slumped bonelessly in his chair, completely unconscious.
I took a slow breath and muttered,
"Whew. Haven't used this spell in ages. It's more of a hassle than I remembered."
"Did it take properly?"
"Of course it did. I milked this spell for all it was worth back in the day."
With the collapsed spy sitting right in front of us, I briefly let old memories surface.
"I think the first time I ever used this magic was... the day they first dragged me into a police station?"
"The first time? Ah! That day. The day you ran out while your mom was giving you your first real-world lesson."
"Yeah. That day. Exactly. Back then I simply couldn't understand why Mother insisted I had to respect other humans besides you and her—and at the very least not kill them."
"When you think about how much our Siu has changed since then, it's like heaven and earth. You can even hold normal conversations with other friends now."
"Q-quit it. That's a little embarrassing."
"Ehehe."
Ha-yan gently stroked my cheek as I turned my head away from the shameful memories.
Just a brief flash of the past.
The day I first used this spell, the day they hauled me into the police station.
I had been ready to slice the throats of the officers dragging me inside in a single stroke—until Ha-yan's mother's words echoed through my mind.
If I actually did something like that, she said, I would never be allowed to hold Ha-yan's hand again. If I made an even bigger mistake, I might never see her face for the rest of my life.
So I endured. And endured. And endured some more.
But those officers' endless lectures that weren't quite lectures had been pure torture.
That was when I first conceived of this spell and used it.
"So what exactly does this magic do?"
"Hmm. Since no one else can see us here, I just knocked him out completely. Normally it doesn't force unconsciousness."
"Then what?"
"If you don't put them under, the person inside the mana space can't hear a single sound. They can only see people's shapes. Meanwhile the person trapped inside gets all excited and starts rambling to themselves, and you have to sit there and watch the whole show. Back when I used it on those police officers, at least there was some entertainment value. Now I really don't feel like watching that."
"Yeah... same here."
Ha-yan and I both looked with mildly pitying eyes at the spy, who had crumpled into a bizarre yoga-like pose inside the mana sphere.
Then I pulled myself together and spoke to her again.
"All right. Shall we check just how much of what's in his heart he's spilling inside there?"
With that, I spread a thin layer of mana like a projection screen and began replaying the spy's endless chatter.
"Ahaha. I see. That must have been a wonderful experience."
"Thank you for thinking so highly of it."
"That, and... ah, right. Looking here, it says you once asked another interviewer how our company managed to grow so suddenly. Could you walk us through that situation as well?"
"Ahahaha. Of course. Even then it wasn't a particularly special day. I was just a jobless college student scraping by on part-time work day after day. Then out of nowhere I got a call from a company where I'd interned just once. They said they had a job they wanted to entrust to me and asked if I was interested."
"Oho~ You must have left quite a good impression during the internship."
"A good impression... Well, if they'd truly thought that highly of me, it would have been nicer if they hadn't rejected me for the full-time conversion."
"Ohoho. I see. So what did you do after receiving that call?"
"First they asked to meet, so I met them. And the content of the meeting... how should I put it. For someone like me who was broke and behind on rent, it was an offer I simply couldn't refuse. They wanted me to infiltrate a certain company undercover, settle in nicely, and then extract confidential information—a request that wasn't quite a request."
"Hmm? That sounds... a little problematic, doesn't it?"
"As I just said, I had no choice. Money left me without options. And the financial terms they offered were enough to make my eyes spin."
"Aha. Understood. And after that?"
"After that, well, they handled most of the work themselves. Application for the interview, interview prep classes, everything. And they gave me one assignment."
"An assignment?"
"Almost everything written in my self-introduction was information they had deliberately fabricated, so whenever questions came up about that information I had to be able to answer, right? They forced me to memorize another person's entire life story as if it were my own. At this point I honestly feel like someone who successfully completed internships at major overseas firms."
"If you managed to memorize that much volume, I can see how that would happen." ......
"It's over?"
"You got the recording too, right?"
"Hehe. Of course. Should I call Rhea?"
"No need for Rhea. Just contact the information desk outside. Those kids are good at their jobs."
"Got it!"
Ha-yan immediately picked up the receiver and relayed the news to the homunculi outside. Moments later the homunculi entered, followed Cha Siu's instructions, and dragged the unconscious spy's body out from inside the mana barrier.
And between them, supposedly, this conversation took place:
"No complaints if we get completely wasted tonight, right? Wallets are nice and thick?"
"Hey! Tomorrow you're supposed to come to—ah. Right. Tomorrow's a day off. Damn... that sucks."
"Yesss!! Chicken and beer, here I come!!!"