Chapter 380: A Clue (7)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 380: A Clue (7)
The day after the club entrance exam.
The two people who were the only ones to pass my test out of two hundred showed up at the club room.
And early in the morning, at that.
“Good morning, Seniors!”
“Hello.”
“…”
Why does it feel like there’s no middle ground with these two?
I had certainly told them to come to the club room today, but…
“You’re here awfully early.”
I didn’t mean for them to come this early.
The man, Yoon Si-hoo, who had bowed so low it was almost burdensome, answered with a cheerful smile.
“We came early to make up for being late yesterday!”
“Ah…”
I get it.
You’re a very passionate guy.
That one sentence was enough for me to get a rough grasp of his personality.
Jin Ha-rin, standing demurely beside him, poked Yoon Si-hoo in the side with her elbow.
“I told you to go easy on the training…”
“Haha, sorry.”
After chiding her childhood friend, she immediately bowed her head to me with an apologetic expression.
“I’m sorry, Senior. He was so determined to pass that he was completely absorbed in training even on the day of the exam…”
Even their reason for being late is incredibly passionate.
“Well… you weren’t that late, so you don’t have to be so sorry.”
If anything, I was grateful they had shown up at all, even if they were late.
If they had given up and not appeared, the atmosphere in the auditorium would have been several times more hostile than it was yesterday, with the unprecedented announcement of zero successful candidates.
“Anyway, the reason I called you here is to go over a few things.”
“Yes, sir!”
“Yes.”
Hmm.
Looking at the two of them and their contrasting temperatures, I felt like I was watching living fire and ice.
“I’m sure you knew this when you applied, but the test you took yesterday was only a club entrance exam in name. In reality, it was no different from a guild admission test.”
“Yes, we were aware!”
“Me too.”
It’s a relief they knew.
I took out two documents I had prepared beforehand and placed one in front of each of them.
“These are your contracts. Take your time, read them carefully, and ask me anything you don’t understand. Once all your questions are answered and you fully understand the terms, you can sign.”
It was a contract drafted with industry standards in mind.
A signing bonus of 50 million won.
An annual salary of 50 million won, frozen until they passed the Hunter license exam.
After that, their salary would be adjusted based on their Hunter rank, with profit sharing based on their contributions to dungeon raids, and so on.
Since I was essentially picking up overlooked talent by taking advantage of their student status, I made sure the contract contained no poison pills or anything that could cause ill feelings between us.
In fact, even if that weren't the case, avoiding such clauses is always more advantageous in the long run.
A Hunter guild is, after all, a people business.
Poor treatment inevitably leads to dissatisfaction, and the end of that dissatisfaction is always parting ways.
The two sat close together on the club room sofa, examining their contracts.
To be precise, Jin Ha-rin was the one who properly understood the contents, while Yoon Si-hoo had placed his complete trust in her.
“…He must be weak on theory.”
He seemed to be the same type as Shin Yu-jeong—strong in practice, but not so much with the books.
After a good while of meticulously reading the contract, Jin Ha-rin raised her hand.
“Um… I have a question.”
“What is it?”
“I heard that you frequently go on dungeon raids to hone your practical skills.”
“That’s right.”
“Then… will we be joining the dungeon raids as well?”
Hmm.
Her expression was tense and stiff, making it difficult to read her emotions.
What was her intention in asking that?
Was it because she didn’t want to participate in dungeon raids?
“Well… I was planning for you to focus on training during the break and start joining raids next year, but if you think it’s too soon, you don’t have to…”
As I started to leave room for her to opt out of immediate participation, Jin Ha-rin quickly shook her head.
“Oh, no. I’ll participate in the raids.”
“…Alright.”
It seemed my assumption was the opposite of the truth.
The reason for her question was that she wanted to start raiding dungeons as soon as possible.
Her curiosity satisfied, Jin Ha-rin, along with Yoon Si-hoo, wrote her name on the contract.
“Signed, Senior!”
“Here you go.”
I took the contracts to check if they were filled out correctly when I noticed something odd.
“Hmm… the address you both wrote is the same. Is that a mistake? Or…”
I couldn’t bring myself to ask if they were living together, so I let my sentence trail off. Yoon Si-hoo and Jin Ha-rin shook their heads in unison.
“N-No, it’s not like that!”
“It’s true that Si-hoo and I live together… but it’s not what you’re thinking.”
“That’s right! It’s not just Ha-rin and me; my parents live with us too… so, uh, um… how should I put this?”
“Calm down.”
Seeing their starkly different reactions, it didn't seem like they were cohabiting in that sense.
Given that Yoon Si-hoo’s parents also lived there… was Jin Ha-rin staying at his house?
I spoke in a calming tone to Yoon Si-hoo, who was still struggling for words.
“I think I get the picture, so you don’t have to explain any further.”
“Ah… okay.”
My eyes met Jin Ha-rin’s for a moment, and she gave a slight nod, expressing her gratitude.
“…Thank you, Senior.”
She seemed grateful that I understood her difficult situation and was willing to overlook it.
After we each took a copy of the two contracts, I offered a word of welcome to the two who had finally become new guild members.
“Congratulations on becoming members of the Twilight Guild.”
“Thank you!”
“Thank you.”
For this moment, at least, both of them showed their joy with unfiltered smiles, with no difference in temperature between them.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
After finalizing the contracts with the two in the morning, I trained for a bit until the afternoon and was on my way back.
A familiar face was walking toward me from the opposite end of the hallway.
Click, clack.
It was Professor Baek Hyeon-a, once again showing off her figure in a form-fitting two-piece suit and high heels.
“Oh my, fancy meeting you here.”
Her greeting, though friendly, felt exaggerated.
“Hello, Professor. Are your classes over for the day?”
“Yes. I just finished and am on my way ‘home’.”
She said, putting a slight accent on the word ‘home’.
I had a feeling.
The time we had agreed upon was finally here.
To be certain, I asked her.
“You’re heading home early today, aren’t you?”
“Yes, that’s right. I’m meeting an old ‘friend’ for the first time in a while.”
“Ah… I see.”
That confirmed it.
“Have a good time with your friends.”
“Yes, thank you.”
We passed each other after a conversation that, on the surface, seemed perfectly normal.
It looked like tonight was going to be a long one.
* * *
As the sun began to set, Baek Hyeon-a drove her car out of the university gates.
Checking her rearview mirror, she realized something.
A familiar car, one she had seen a few times before, was following her.
“…”
She turned her gaze back to the front, pretending not to have noticed, and headed for the address she had been given.
The car moved further and further away from the center of Seoul.
After a little over an hour’s drive, she arrived at a massive warehouse located in Gyeonggi Province.
It was a remote area, with nothing in sight but nameless mountains and fields overgrown with weeds.
She parked nearby, got out, and slipped through a gap in the door that was just wide enough for one person to enter.
The moment she stepped inside, she was hit by the acrid smell of dust, and mixed within it, a foul odor.
A voice came from the deep shadows.
“Welcome, Professor Baek.”
Baek Hyeon-a flinched at the familiar voice.
The owner of the voice was the man who had ordered Kim Do-jin’s elimination.
“Team Leader, what are you doing here…”
From beyond the thick darkness, the man, the Team Leader, emerged with an incredibly lighthearted smile.
“What do you mean? It’s not like I can’t be here, right?”
“Well, that’s true.”
He approached her and continued speaking.
“I was originally going to send a few men with you, but… I suddenly got curious.”
It was curiosity, nothing more, that had brought him here.
Kim Do-jin.
Just how powerful was this promising talent, recognized not just in Korea but around the world?
If he was too good to kill, perhaps it wouldn’t be a bad idea to forcibly tie him to the organization.
“Well… that’s only if he meets my standards, of course.”
As he colored the surroundings with his endlessly casual demeanor…
KUU-GU-GUNG…!
Kim Do-jin entered, noisily throwing open the massive door, which was as large as the warehouse itself.
He pinched his nose at the smell—a mixture of various things centered around dust—and glared.
A man and a woman stood side by side in the darkness.
The man among them curled one side of his lip and opened the conversation.
“You’re finally here.”
“…”
His tone suggested he knew he would come.
With that one phrase, Kim Do-jin quickly grasped the situation.
“It’s a trap.”
The man nodded, looking pleased.
“I like how quick you are on the uptake.”
“…”
Kim Do-jin’s eyes met not the man walking forward, but Baek Hyeon-a, who stood behind him with an expressionless gaze.
“So you chose their side in the end.”
A bitter taste filled his mouth.
He had hoped, if at all possible, that she wouldn’t betray him.
Reading the disappointment on his face, Baek Hyeon-a frowned and opened her mouth.
“Only a fool would board a sinking ship.”
“A sinking ship…”
So that’s all he looked like to her.
“Then I have no choice.”
Shaking off the lingering attachments that clung to him, Kim Do-jin looked at the Team Leader with a much sharper gaze.
“So, are you the only one who came to catch me?”
“Of course not.”
The Team Leader shook his head with a cheerful expression.
As if to show what he had prepared, he stretched his hand toward the right. The door of a massive container there slowly opened with an unpleasant screech.
SCREEEEEECH—!
After confirming the contents of the wide-open container, Kim Do-jin couldn’t help but frown.
“…Are those your subordinates?”
The container was filled to the brim with people.
Swords, axes, spears, bows, staves, and more.
They were all holding various weapons, their bodies pressed tightly against one another without a single gap.
A sigh escaped him.
“Even if they’re your subordinates, treating them like that is a bit… huh?”
As he was about to criticize the unfair treatment of the subordinates, he belatedly felt a sense of strangeness.
‘There are no signs of life.’
From the people packed so tightly they should have been screaming about the lack of space, he couldn’t feel the biological signals that a human should have.
No heartbeat, no breath, no presence.
As he watched them step out one by one from the front, he realized.
They were all corpses that had no need to breathe, no heart that could beat.
The foul odor hidden by the acrid smell of dust was the stench of their decay.
Kim Do-jin’s face crumpled into a scowl, his gaze turning to the Team Leader.
“You… you’re a Corpse-mancer, aren’t you?”