Ulterior Motives
"So what you're saying is... there's a boss monster called the Plant Queen, and her minions are hiding her?"
"Yes, ma'am. Valhalla's Gate. The drug trafficking ring."
"And the whole lot of them are addicted to her pollen."
"That's right."
"...This is a mess. Magical beasts and criminals all tangled together. Look, while I deal with that, I'm going to listen to the recording."
The Hunter Administration was collecting the bodies.
Men in black came in through the living room window, zipped the corpses into body bags, and started scrubbing bloodstains off the floor.
They're being awfully casual about stuffing those in, though.
Photographing the "crime scene," processing the drugs, securing evidence — the workload was a mountain either way. Sure, I'd seen this kind of thing on TV dramas, but it was never the sort of job that wrapped up this fast.
I sidled up to the agents.
"Um. Aren't you going to ask me any questions?"
"......"
"You must be curious about a lot of things!"
"......"
"......"
Talking to civilians was apparently forbidden.
Still — the home of a branch deputy director had just been attacked, and their reaction was remarkably lukewarm.
...Then again, Auntie hadn't exactly greeted them either.
They could at least answer me, though.
I was a person who lived at the scene, offering to give a statement out of pure goodwill. A short "we're fine, thanks" would have spared me this whole sulk.
Suddenly petty, I picked a random target and decided to be spiteful.
Hypnosis
Right now, show a dramatic reaction to the crime scene.
One of the men stopped bagging a body and shuddered all over.
Target is resisting Hypnosis.
Command failed.
The man raised both hands and started groping the empty air.
"Heehee. Titties."
The other agents stopped working and stared at him in unison.
A cold silence coiled through the room in an instant.
Come to think of it — when someone resisted a mind-control skill, their instinct regulation tended to slip.
"Deputy Director Kang's chest... uh."
The hypnotized agent snapped his eyes wide open and whipped his head left and right. His gaze collided with a middle-aged man radiating seasoned competence — and he froze solid.
Murderous intent was written all over the older man's eyes.
......
Feeling like I'd made the atmosphere unnecessarily awkward, I quietly left.
Hmm....
No answers to the end, and then that weird outburst — they must have been thoroughly trained. Nothing I could do about it. Push any harder and someone might actually get hurt.
I spoke to the man inspecting the teddy bears in the living room.
"Oh, you don't need to wash those bears."
He'd been staring a hole through the titties agent and nearly jumped out of his skin.
"Pardon? Ah, understood... wait, no — not 'pardon.' Sigh."
"Here, give them to me. I'll clean them myself."
Those little guys were already worked up. Even a purification spell could set them off if you weren't careful.
"......"
The agent left without another word. Before long, the middle-aged man was fixing him with that same icy glare.
"They're just being careful. On a scene like this, mixing casual conversation into the work tends to create headaches later."
It was only afterward that Kang Jiye, tidying the wrecked house, answered my unspoken question.
Inside the Hunter Administration itself was one thing, but at a major incident site like this, there were too many ears listening — that was the problem. Of course we'd handled things quietly on our end... but from their perspective, I was still an outsider.
"They might come by later for a formal interview. Just answer honestly when they do, all right? They weren't ignoring you on purpose."
"I see."
"Feeling a little less hurt now?"
"Come on. Hurt? Me?"
Naturally those people had their own hardships to deal with. Being snubbed had stung a little, sure, but I wasn't that petty. Of course I should be understanding.
And right now, the important thing is the boss reward anyway.
I said, as casually as I could manage:
"So what can I do to help?"
"Hm……?"
Kang Jiye tilted her head.
"Help with what?"
"I could neutralize the Plant Queen's mind control."
"Ah—."
A look of understanding. But then she shook her head.
"...No. To get involved in an operation at that level, you'd have to go through the Hunter Administration."
"Then I'll go through them."
"Huh?"
The era of fretting over inspections was over. I could just rewrite their perceptions with Hypnosis. Fortunately, Kim Hanna — the International Cooperation Division chief, or whatever her title was — had already proven that perception manipulation worked on her... and if someone with a higher-tier skill like Pecia was doing it, there was nothing to worry about.
Oh, and for the record: Kim Hanna had nothing to do with this incident. The Plant Queen was a pure addiction-focused mind-control type. What happened to Kim Hanna was more complicated — it rewrote the perceptions of everyone around the target, too. That part would need a separate investigation. Kang Jiye's job, not mine.
Under my continued persuasion, Kang Jiye let out a long sigh.
"......You've already dug up all the critical intel. The rest should be handled from here. Of course, if you really could break the mind control, that would be a huge help."
"So I'll break it. What's the problem?"
"I feel bad asking. It's just too dangerous for you."
I answered flatly.
"It's not dangerous. Anything else you want to know?"
Kang Jiye stared at me with a dazed expression, then smiled as if she had no choice.
"All right, just one confirmation. How many people can that mind-control skill affect at once?"
"Well, it's less about headcount and more about range. Within a fifty-meter radius, no problem."
"Got it. I'll discuss the details with the Director and get back to you."
"Understood. Please make sure to tell them I have to get close to the boss. Put me on the freighter."
".......Close?"
"Yes. I need to use the skill."
"......"
Then Kang Jiye suddenly frowned and cocked her head.
"By the way, Pecia."
"Yes?"
"....I've been wondering about this for a while."
"Wondering about what?"
"How did you know all of this?"
"Pardon?"
"The boss's location and everything else. What you told me was way more detailed than the recording."
".....!"
"To put it more precisely — from the start, it felt like you were asking questions as if you already knew the answers. Am I right?"
"......."
For an ordinary person like me, keeping secrets was hard. Especially in front of someone who did detective work for a living, like Kang Jiye.
I should have been more careful.
It was the chronic disease of a game addict. When you already know the right answers, you skip every useless dialogue branch and extract only the responses you want. Of course that would look strange from Kang Jiye's point of view.
But it wasn't as if I had no contingency plan. I'd prepared for exactly this kind of situation.
"Isn't it because I'm logical?"
"Huh?"
"As you know, I approach everything objectively. So most things are easy enough to deduce."
"......."
"It's obvious to me, but to an ordinary person like you, Auntie, it might seem a little uncanny. Ah, how do I even explain this—"
Kang Jiye grabbed both of my cheeks and stretched them out.
"That's enough, you little brat. I was wondering why you'd gone so quiet for a while."
"Yuh don' eeben beliebe me."
"Ugh, I was just asking. I'm grateful enough that you're helping — if you don't want to answer, you don't have to."
"......Weally?"
"Really."
I nodded.
"Then leddo my cheegs. I' hurds."
But Kang Jiye did not let go. With glittering eyes she stretched my cheeks out, squished them into a goldfish face, and kept kneading them for no reason at all before finally releasing me.
She said it was fine....
A blatant contradiction between words and actions, was it not? See? People of this world really are petty! A magnanimous soul like me simply has to be the bigger person.
"Come to think of it, what about Yena? If I leave, she'll be alone."
"Don't worry about that. The Hunter Administration will look after her. And your cooperation isn't even confirmed yet."
The Plant Queen had been systematically assassinating hunters — or hunters' families — one by one. We'd weathered one storm, but we were nowhere near safe. In the end, it was decided that Yena would be temporarily placed in the Administration's care.
"How is Yena doing? She must have been terrified."
"She's fine. Surprisingly put-together, actually."
"...Put-together?"
A stranger had charged at her with a knife. There was no way a seven-year-old would be fine after that.
But Kang Jiye gave a short laugh — a hollow little smile.
"She really is fine. She even got into a fight with her friend, if you can believe it."
"Huh...? What friend?"
"The first one you gave her — Firstie, was it? She said they fought. Even slapped each other."
My eyes went round.
"What are you talking about? They were just playing, right?"
"Nope. Real fight. Firstie was sulking about it, too."
"That doesn't make any sense."
"Well... ah, let's just bring the party involved and hear it from them."
Kang Jiye went into the master bedroom and came back out carrying a Party Bear. Stroking its head, she told me the story.
The man who had been "Auntie Haram" one moment and then suddenly changed form. At first, Yena thought Pecia Unnie was playing a prank — she was always pulling off magic-trick-style stunts, after all.
But then the man charged with a kitchen knife, and the Party Bears all rose to meet him. The blade aimed at Yena bounced off a steel needle, and the brawl began.
From the start, neither numbers nor raw power had been on the intruder's side. He'd put up a fierce fight, but in the end he was thoroughly beaten and dragged into a room. From behind the locked door came an incredible racket — the crack of something breaking, the wet sound of stabbing, and the man's grotesque screams.
Little Yena had been so shocked she couldn't speak. It was the first time she'd ever seen her gentle little bears turn that violent.
But then she got worried the Party Bears might kill the man, and she tried to go into the room. Firstie, who had been protecting her, blocked the way.
"She kept grabbing her and Yena kept trying to push past. That's how the two of them ended up scuffling."
No matter how much Firstie tried to stop her, Yena wouldn't listen — so Firstie recalled something humans did in dramas.
Smack! Right across Yena's face. A slap on the cheek.
Indignant Yena hit right back, and just like that, the two of them had their first-ever fight between friends.
Having heard the whole story, I was speechless.
"What even is this."
Firstie refused to meet my eyes and whipped its head away, broadcasting with its entire body that it had zero intention of reflecting even if scolded.
My mouth fell open on its own.
Wow — this kid is actually sulking?
Kang Jiye gave the little thing a thorough cuddle.
"Don't scold it too hard. It was only doing its job. Honestly, if they'd had a real fight, would Yena even still be alive?"
I knew that, of course.
What I couldn't wrap my head around was the fact that a magical beast — of all things — had gotten its pride wounded from a fight with a seven-year-old.
I crossed my arms and called out to it.
"Hey."
{…….}
"Hey, you."
{…….}
I sighed.
"You did good."
{……?}
"I said you did good. When your protectee is about to run straight into danger, you block them with your whole body. Keep doing that from now on. I wasn't going to scold you — why are you so pouty?"
Firstie stared at me blankly. It blinked once, then went completely limp and melted into Kang Jiye's arms.
It had been tense this whole time, bracing for a scolding.
Kang Jiye adjusted her hold on the jellyfish-limp creature and burst out laughing.
"Aww — poor baby. I wish I could feed it something tasty."
I could, actually — but I wasn't about to mention that. Those things ate human flesh, too. Not for the nutrition. Just for fun.
Beep—
".....?"
Kang Jiye's smartwatch suddenly chimed. She fiddled with it, then furrowed her brow in confusion.
"HR....? What now?"
"What is it?"
Kang Jiye tilted her head.
"HR just logged a sexual harassment report. Apparently someone harassed me?"