Tangled Threads (1)

Somewhere above Earth's orbit.

"..."

"Administrator A?"

In the center of a room packed with countless monitors sat a figure whose agitation was plain to see, while the one watching him radiated the unmistakable air of an interrogation.

"...Ugghhh..."

"Listen here, Administrator A. Sitting there in silence won't do you any good. How exactly do you intend to take responsibility for this mess?"

Under Administrator B's grilling — delivered mid-audit — Administrator A flinched all over again.

But his shamelessness was the kind that refused to die even with his back against the wall.

"Uggh...! What?! What mess are you even talking about? What the hell supposedly happened?!"

Haaah... Administrator B actually sighed out loud. The sight of Administrator A playing dumb was so grotesque that even the word "pathetic" felt inadequate.

"Oh, for crying out loud... I'm talking about that survivor you handpicked — 'Jeong Hoon.' The one who got a completely different system from everyone else."

"Hicck?!"

Administrator A recoiled as if he'd taken a critical hit, and Administrator B — having expected exactly that — shook his head in weary disbelief.

"You already know perfectly well, so drop the act... That survivor isn't treating this world like a survival apocalypse. He's tearing through it like some demon-slaughtering action game. Just look at these monitors — you can tell in ten seconds flat. The orcs he's killed by himself already number over a thousand. Goblins in the thousands. Zombies? At this rate, he's closing in on ten thousand. Does that sound remotely reasonable to you? One survivor single-handedly massacring that many monsters and zombies?"

Upper management had gone past mere interest in these staggering numbers and straight into something approaching horror. It had gotten so bad that the Supervisor himself had personally ordered Administrator B to confirm whether Administrator A even grasped the current situation.

Not that Administrator B bothered passing that particular detail along. He figured Administrator A already knew.

"W-well, th-that... h-he didn't do it entirely alone... They formed a p-party..."

This absolute bastard—! Administrator B finally raised his voice.

"Party or no party! Even with his companions helping, his personal kill ratio still accounts for eighty percent of the total! When I first came here to audit, what did you tell me? That the production staff begged you? That he survived either way? That you granted his wish? That the plan was still intact? That everything was fine? You said all that, and then you even bragged about what a genius you were..."

"Th-th-th-that... A-anyway, I did grant the creator's wish, didn't I?! Wh-what exactly did I do so wrong?!"

"Not a shred of remorse. Hoo..."

Just how much more cornered did this creature need to be before he came to his senses? Even among administrators — a profession already stocked with peculiar personalities (and by "peculiar," one mostly meant "complete idiots") — Administrator A ranked at the absolute top. Fellow administrators had given him the glowing review of, "The real mystery is how that one ever got appointed in the first place," which said everything that needed saying.

"So am I free to take that as you admitting, with your own mouth, that no corrective measures are necessary?"

"Urgh! Th-that's not what I—"

"There, you see? You were going to fold the moment I pushed. Enact a balance patch right now. What are you going to do if that survivor Jeong Hoon actually rises to something like humanity's great rebuilder?"

After a brief pause to steady himself, Administrator B delivered the line most likely to rattle Administrator A emotionally.

"What we want isn't humanity reclaiming peace. It's identifying those suited to the plan. Wasn't that the point?"

"..."

Administrator A froze solid in his seat. The words had clearly landed.

But—

"Ugghh...!"

Administrator B had underestimated Administrator A's shamelessness by a catastrophic margin.

"Oh, come on! It's fine, okay?! There's no problem at all! Seriouslyyy! Who do you think you are, sticking your nose into a world someone else is managing and barking orders?! We'll push the dungeon update! We'll roll out the June update! Once we do everything we're supposed to, things will go right back to our projections, okay?! Besides, looking at him now, that survivor Jeong Hoon is already starting to lose his beginner's luck! You saw it yourself while monitoring! He's gradually reverting to his true nature!"

"Hah! If we weren't the same rank, Administrator A, I would have written you up on the spot and made you draft ten thousand apology letters."

Faced with Administrator B's open disgust at his brazenness, Administrator A crossed his arms, whipped his head away, and made zero effort to hide how thoroughly offended he felt. It was enough to make Administrator B wonder, What is this guy banking on to act like this? Does he have some massive connection I don't know about?

"Aaargh, shut up already! Administrator B, as far as I know, your audit period and audit activities ended three whole days ago, okay?! You can give me 'advice' all you want, but interference is absolutely off-limits! However this situation turns out, I'll clean it up my way, so just ease off already, seriously! Do you think being an audit commissioner once makes you an audit commissioner for life? I have to go deliver a public announcement now, so let's just see each other at the next regular meeting, hmm? Hmph hmph!"

At Administrator A's eviction notice, Administrator B nearly pointed out that even though the audit period was over, the report still hadn't been submitted — then simply held his tongue. And as for Administrator A...

"...Maybe I really should have insisted we assign someone other than Administrator A."

"Why on earth did the Supervisor entrust Earth to a lunatic like that..."

May 1st. Morning.

"Mmmnh..."

At the desk in the office, I opened my eyes still sitting in the chair.

I never imagined I'd be the one falling asleep slumped over the office chair myself.

I couldn't believe it. Barely a month ago I'd been enjoying the unemployed life, flashing only the feeblest will to find a job — and now I was sitting in the Lord's office (formerly the National Assembly Speaker's office), exhausted from overwork?

Is this real life? Mom, Dad, I'm working my ass off! Hard to believe, right? I can barely believe it myself!

...Though thanks to my sense of responsibility, I couldn't let any of that show on the outside even while I was complaining on the inside.

"Mmmnh... koooul..."

"Goroong... goroong..."

And I wasn't the only one stuck in this black-company nightmare of sleeping at the workplace.

On the two large sofas installed in the office, two people were fast asleep.

Unlike me, they at least had blankets over them. One had set her glasses on the table in front of the sofa and drifted off on her side. The other had buried her face in the cushions and was snoring rather like a cat.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

Kim Seyeon and Yun Mina. For the past three days, they had been the colleagues who helped me shoulder the workload that had come barreling down on us like a runaway train.

"This brings back memories of working in the teachers' office. Ah — though it's only been a month, really."

Kim Seyeon showing that familiar competence from her teaching days wasn't particularly surprising. What truly astonished me was how skillfully Yun Mina handled this kind of paperwork.

"Aww, Orabeoni, you've never so much as set foot in grad school, have you? Over there, if you don't spend every single day wrestling with documents and documents and more documents on top of documents, you simply don't survive, you know? The whole room ends up wallpapered in paperwork. Hehe — and I was in the sciences, and I still had to battle those endless stacks~"

Ahh... so that's why the guy I knew who finished his master's left me with that bizarre piece of advice: "Don't fall into booze, cigarettes, women — or graduate school."

Weren't academic institutions supposed to be places for studying? How could they grind perfectly ordinary, decent students into the ground like office workers without a shred of mercy?!

"Some people would sell their very souls for a single degree, you know? Of course, I couldn't go that far, so I was planning to be satisfied with just the master's. My professor kept pushing me to try the doctoral track too, and I was honestly torn... but well, now I don't have to worry about it anymore. Is that a good thing?"

Yun Mina had offered that thoroughly ambiguous testimony on the realities of graduate school, then fallen silent.

That was the last bit of small talk the three of us had shared yesterday, as far as I could remember. After that, we'd processed document stacks until we were half-conscious... and fallen asleep. Each in our own way. The fatigue had hit hard enough to blur the memories.

Carefully, I turned on the phone sitting on the office desk.

May 1st. 8:30 a.m.

Goddamn it. I'd slept like a rock, hadn't I?

Normally I'd have been up around six, done a light warm-up, washed up, eaten breakfast, checked on the residents like some kind of military roll call, and then started the day's work!

Huh, weird. We'd overslept by two and a half hours, and we hadn't even gone back to our quarters... so why hadn't anyone come to wake us?

Ah. Don't tell me...!

"Butler. Are you there?"

"You called, Your Excellency."

The moment I summoned him, the butler materialized near the office desk.

Some people might have jumped out of their skin at someone's unannounced appearance, but I was used to it.

Because he wasn't a living creature like us. He was nothing more than a system-based virtual entity given physical form. Same went for Hermit of the Thief Guild down in the castle basement.

"Did you... restrict other people's access in here?"

"Yes, Your Excellency. The three of you were extremely occupied with paperwork until two in the morning. So I took the liberty of informing Miss Han Sora and Miss Park Seeun, as well as various residents who came by in the morning. I instructed them that the Lord and his aides were exhausted from working through the night, and that they should begin the day's duties on their own. Was I overstepping, Your Excellency?"

"Hardly."

Overstepping? Please.

The detailed management of this castle — no, of this entire territory — was entirely the butler's domain. Even if he was a virtual being, I had never once found him presumptuous or rude; if anything, I felt nothing but gratitude for the staggering volume of work he handled alone. Praise was the only thing he deserved.

Right. The paperwork.

We had nearly worked ourselves to death on a truly monstrous pile of documents. Ever since the 27th, the population of my territory had grown considerably, and we were on the verge of hitting Rank D.

The survivors who'd arrived in Yeouido by truck that day numbered eleven, and ten of them became residents of our territory on the spot.

Just like that, our population jumped from twenty-eight to thirty-eight. The next day, the six people who'd stayed behind at the subway station to the bitter end trying to persuade Han Miseon came in along with Jung Yun, and we shot up to forty-five in an instant.

The day after that, Han Miseon showed up looking like her soul had left her body, dropped to her knees, and said she'd do anything — we accepted her, bringing us to forty-six. Only four people short of the fifty required to promote to Rank D.

With the population growing in earnest, we threw ourselves into establishing systems for governing the territory. More precisely, Kim Seyeon insisted on it.

Fortunately, we had the library (formerly the National Assembly Library) packed with materials on every kind of law and institution, so the foundation was solid. The unfortunate part was that not a single resident possessed any outstanding legal knowledge. How was it possible we didn't have a single lawyer?! Had they all died and gone to hell, like that old North American joke?

I really hoped the next survivors to join as residents would be lawyers or judges. Prosecutors would be fine too. Politicians... given that not a single one had shown their face even after coming to Yeouido, they were probably all dead.

Anyway, I agreed to Kim Seyeon's proposal without thinking it through... and paid the price in blood. Still paying it, actually.

Fuck, there was a disgusting amount of material. Maybe it was because this was the library of the very institution that made the laws, but the reference materials for establishing a legal system were piled up like a goddamn mountain. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Kim Seyeon had culled and culled again to get us down to the essentials... and even that still came to over a hundred books. Ugh...!

Just extracting the most basic laws — crime, conflicts between residents, residency, taxes, and so on — had already cost us an all-nighter. Obviously three people couldn't organize all of that in a single night... so we'd greeted the morning with less than half of it done.

Hoo... now that I'd finished venting internally, it was time to wake the other two.

"Wake up, Teacher Kim Seyeon... no..."

I approached our Kim Seyeon first — beautiful even in sleep, practically radiating sensuality without trying.

Looking at her sleeping so soundly, something warm tightened in my chest. So I played a little lovers' prank.

"Seyeon. Wake up."

"Mmnhh..."

I leaned down and whispered softly by her ear in a gentle voice. As I murmured to her and lightly rested my hand on her shoulder, a faintly pleased breath answered me. She seemed to be responding unconsciously.

Hehehe... that reaction was ridiculously good too. In that case—

"Seyeon, if you don't get up soon, I'm going to keep going until you—"

I was about to whisper that I'd start getting naughty when—

"Honestly. If you two want to be all lovey-dovey, at least check your surroundings first, Orabeoniii?"

Oh crap crap crap!

I froze mid-whisper. Slowly straightening my carefully bent back, I turned my head toward the neighboring sofa.

At some point Yun Mina had woken up, and she was watching us with an expression that was equal parts fascinated and thoroughly fed up.

"I know you two had a really steamy night a few days ago and have been overflowing with newlywed energy ever since... but unfortunately, you two aren't the only ones in this room. Yours truly, Yun Mina, is right here sleeping in plain sight... and the butler is over there too, you know? Isn't that right, Butler?"

"Please pay me no mind."

"Oh, come on. You're supposed to play along. Where's your sense of tact!"

Tact, my ass! Mina had gotten ridiculously good at ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠wrecking other people's moods lately.

Over the past few days, Yun Mina had grown considerably prickly. I understood why. She'd been unhappy about us accepting Han Miseon as a resident of the territory.

On top of that... some of the residents — especially certain people who'd once followed Han Daegeon — were looking at Yun Mina with extremely negative eyes.

Having that many people blasting negative attention her way would make anyone prickly. The fact that she still treated us warmly despite that stress was honestly impressive. She barely even got angry, aside from the sniping. And she'd even volunteered for this work, which said it all.

"Wake up, Teacher Kim Seyeon."

"Mmmnh... wh-wha... did I... fall asleep here?"

"Indeed. You, myself, and Mina as well."

"Good morning, Seyeon unnie~"

"Oh my... Mina too?"

The moment Kim Seyeon ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠woke and realized she'd fallen asleep on the sofa, she looked thoroughly flustered. She'd been so absorbed in the work that she hadn't even had a moment to notice how she'd drifted off.

"How embarrassing. For the Interior Administrator to fall asleep in such an undignified state..."

"It's fine. We've had quite a lot of work these past few days, have we not?"

"That's true, but still..."

Yeah. There really had been a lot of work.

In truth, beyond establishing the legal system... we'd also had the added burden of organizing the rewards obtained through the quest system over the past few days, which made things even more grueling.

Because the quest system was producing results that were considerably more disappointing than the future we'd imagined.

"The quest rewards... still feel underwhelming, don't they?"

"Right, unnie. Being able to turn every single task in the territory into a quest is amazing... but hoo, the experience and gold rewards are so stingy!"

"The quality of the reward items is the problem. As expected, I'll need to raise the rank further, or raise my own level—"

After straightening up the space and fixing our clothes, we were about to step out of the office to at least grab a simple breakfast.

But someone had the gall to slam the brakes on our momentum without a shred of consideration—

"Kyaa!"

"Good heavens!"

"Kh...!"

Just as he'd promised, the moment May arrived, that goddamn Administrator bastard was back.