Know the Enemy, Know Yourself (1)
The information Yelena had passed along was simple.
True to form, she'd attached an absurdly long preamble and an even longer string of afterthoughts, but summarizing only the conclusion…
"So you're telling me the people who attacked Yoanna are already in Korea?"
"That's right. I don't know where they are or what they're after."
Among the information Yelena had dug up, one name stood out clearly: Jeff Kaufman.
One of the Liberators, the executives of Liberation… and a genuinely nasty piece of work.
In a word… a lunatic.
His ability was far more effective when used on people than on monsters.
Apparently Kaufman knew that too, because he'd been an unregistered awakener long before Liberation even existed, using his power to commit all manner of crimes.
Lee Jun had never had the chance to see the man in person.
Because he'd died at Kang Tae-san's hands during the course of Liberation's formal declaration of war.
He was supposed to enter Korea anyway… but he's ahead of schedule.
Of course, at this point the timeline had shifted so much that comparing it against his previous life was pointless.
Jeanne was already in Korea, after all.
The broad flow might be roughly similar, so he would use his past life's history as nothing more than a reference.
"Jeff Kaufman…."
"You know him?"
"I remember seeing him in overseas criminal records once. Ask Evrah and she'll probably know."
"Hmm… I should contact Uncle Evrah, then."
Lee Jun let slip only as much information as he could safely afford to share.
Just enough that it wouldn't raise suspicion.
Kaufman's criminal history predated Lee Jun's regression, so there was no reason it would have changed.
{What was it like originally?}
Nothing special.
A petty crook, plain and simple.
Kaufman at this point in time had been a two-bit criminal drifting across America, committing one ability-based crime after another while on the run.
Then, at some point, he vanished without a trace.
Half a year passed with no trail whatsoever to be found, and reappearing after that gap—that was exactly this point in the timeline.
Lee Jun had no idea what kind of backing he'd received or how much he'd grown in the meantime, but when the man resurfaced as a Liberator, he was on an entirely different level from before.
Well… it could have been because of Silhouette.
Lee Jun had never seen Kaufman directly in his previous life.
And yet, oddly enough, this life had produced an indirect point of contact between himself and the Kaufman of his past life.
Because it was presumed that the man had been connected to Silhouette in some way back then.
{…….}
Silhouette seemed to want to say something about that.
But in the end, she had no choice but to keep her mouth firmly shut.
The reason was…
"If the person who attacked me before has entered Korea, then there's a possibility that I'm the target, isn't there."
"That's the most likely scenario. And Yoanna, you don't need to use honorifics with someone like that."
"I see."
Jeanne, chatting with Timothy.
That was the reason.
If idle small talk drifts anywhere near the topic of my regression…
Jeanne was perceptive beyond all expectation.
Maybe it was because she had so few emotional reactions that she judged everything with cold, rational precision.
Her perceptiveness—or rather, her deductive ability—was practically beyond imagination.
Normally she didn't keep her antennae up, so things slid by, but once she started digging into something, she could reach the truth in no time.
Best not to do anything that could get me caught.
That was why, the day before, he'd warned Silhouette in advance while they were in the room.
Not that he could imagine Jeanne pressing her ear to a wall to eavesdrop.
She wasn't the Director of the Technology Bureau, after all.
"What do you think, Oppa?"
"Hm? Me?"
"Yes. You said you knew something about this Kaufman person, so I'm curious what your take is."
"Well… let me think."
Everything Lee Jun knew about Kaufman had come secondhand.
His ability was disguise-related.
What he'd assumed was the man's unique ability, duplication… seemed, if anything, to be connected to Silhouette.
It's possible Kaufman had already been devoured by Silhouette altogether.
The method she was presumed to have used in the previous life.
Picking one person out of everyone visible and becoming that person entirely.
She would have been using that method ever since emerging from the Gate.
Viewed that way, even Kaufman might have been Silhouette in disguise all along.
But then wouldn't that mean she lost to Kang Tae-san in the end?
{Hmph. You think I'd lose to some old geezer like that?}
Hey. Stop.
"Hmm…."
Jeanne's eyes narrowed.
It seemed she was listening in real time.
No—not that she was making any effort to listen.
In cases like this, it would be more accurate to say the words simply reached her.
Either way, he'd better steer the conversation elsewhere, and quickly.
Give her no more time to grow suspicious.
"My take is… he probably has some kind of objective."
"An objective?"
"Isn't that obvious, Yoanna?"
"Hmm, I think Hyung sees it differently."
In order: Jeanne, Siara, then Timothy.
Having all three of them in his line of sight at once made it look like a little girl playing with dolls.
So this was the feeling called fondness…. Anyway.
Lee Jun laid out the hypothesis he'd built.
"It's not that I completely disagree."
"You don't completely disagree?"
"Right. Jeanne is one of the objectives."
To be precise, the reason Kaufman came at all was Jeanne.
They'd been planning to send an executive anyway, and as it happened, Jeanne was in Korea.
Once a fight broke out, the odds of Jeanne joining it were extremely high—so they'd sent Kaufman, the one opponent she'd already faced before.
"You think it's an organization, then?"
"Personally, I don't think anyone would be crazy enough to poke an S-Class."
"But Jun, an unregistered awakener who commits ability-based crimes is exactly the kind of crazy you're talking about, no?"
"That's fair too… but let's think about this rationally for now. We're just building a hypothesis at this stage."
God, it's killing me to pretend I don't know what I obviously know.
"Besides, there's other evidence. Among the intel Yelena sent me earlier, there were traces that these people were operating as an organized group."
"You found some kind of communication network?"
"Something like that."
The evidence Yelena had uncovered was a bit more immaterial.
When they raided the group's hideout, she'd overheard what the Liberation grunts were saying.
—Their boss this, their leader that. They were boasting about it right to my face. Hehe, did they really think they stood a chance against this genius-beautiful-girl-magician? I suppose they never intended to let me leave alive?
Well, what can you do.
They were the ones who got annihilated.
Be that as it may, thanks to that, the information Yelena had hauled back was considerable.
This was why you never put blabbermouths in sensitive positions.
Not that hers had been a sensitive position…. And having heard the hypothesis up to this point, Jeanne raised another objection.
"Hm… but that man has never faced me directly."
Jeanne had indeed wiped out every last one of the terrorists who attacked her.
The engagement had been so sudden that she hadn't been able to hold back her strength.
Which meant that Kaufman, alive and walking around today, had not been at that scene.
Lee Jun, however, thought a little differently.
It was a conclusion he'd reached precisely because he knew Kaufman's tendencies.
"He wouldn't step in personally—he'd have been watching from somewhere nearby. For instance…."
The first people to arrive at the scene after Jeanne was attacked.
The staff of the French Hunter Association.
"There's a high probability he was disguised as one of them."
"……."
A moment of silence fell over the room.
If that were true… it would mean a criminal was strolling around inside the French Association even now.
But Lee Jun dismissed the concern.
"I know what you're thinking. You don't need to worry about that."
Lee Jun was thorough.
Hypotheses like these were things he'd already worked through in advance, and as an extension of that, he'd quietly extracted information on the French Hunter Association through the Director of the Technology Bureau.
And after checking the results: no problem.
He hadn't found a single employee whose circumstances had abruptly changed.
Kaufman had entered Korea now, which meant he couldn't maintain his disguise indefinitely—and that necessarily had to leave a gap in the personnel.
Unless he'd actually killed someone and taken their place.
The man's disguise ability was limited to himself alone, so he couldn't have planted someone else either.
"So you're saying… he disguised himself as a staff member, was substituted into duty in some fashion, and no one found out—not anyone, not even the person whose identity he stole?"
"Exactly. He slipped in, slipped out, and confirmed Jeanne's condition. That's all."
Still, Timothy didn't look entirely convinced.
Fair enough.
Lee Jun was only seeing it this way because he already knew the outcome, and the logic had plenty of holes in it.
But every piece of evidence Lee Jun had presented so far was true.
"But the records could have been tampered with. Or he could have staged an accident, quietly thinned the roster so nothing felt off."
"From a month before Jeanne's attack until today, there hasn't been a single death on record. And there were no traces of the database being manipulated. It doesn't look like anyone touched it."
"Couldn't he have infiltrated even earlier than that?"
"Then he couldn't have been operating in Russia."
"What about the possibility that his ability grew in the meantime?"
"Growth of a unique ability… that's an interesting hypothesis, but there are no known cases."
"Hmmmm…."
Timothy still seemed to find something off about it all.
But he had nothing concrete to poke at.
Lee Jun had sealed off even the tiniest crack for doubt.
And right at that moment—
"Uuuugh… I can't tell what's what anymore…."
Siara gave up thinking and flopped over.
Well, thinking had never been her department to begin with.
The fact that she'd kept up this far was growth enough in itself.
"Right, good. I have no further questions. Ah—to be precise, I have no further evidence with which to continue questioning."
"I agree. It seems airtight."
Jeanne and Timothy both accepted Lee Jun's hypothesis.
Through sheer informational asymmetry, Lee Jun ascended to the throne of master detective!
…Should I be happy about this?
Either way, the situation review had reached a conclusion.
Lee Jun then turned his attention to Seo Yoon and Choi Jeong-hyeon.
Neither of them had known about the information Yelena had passed along either, so this was bound to be entirely new to them.
"So that's what happened."
Seo Yoon, as expected, didn't seem particularly shocked.
She rarely wavered over matters like this.
Though… having once seen her waver enormously over something, watching her now gave him an entirely new feeling.
And Choi Jeong-hyeon.
She appeared to have let all the complicated parts wash right over her.
With so little information to go on, she'd likely understood even less than Siara had.
Which was the normal reaction, after all.
Besides, her attention had already drifted elsewhere partway through.
"Um, Boss…? Doesn't that mean they raided the French Association…? Is it really all right to say that in front of the French hunters…?"
Choi Jeong-hyeon asked with the utmost caution.
She seemed worried that the three of them might be hurt by it.
Lee Jun already knew the answer to that worry, so he asked the three of them directly instead.
"Are you going to report it?"
"Hmm, no."
"I have no intention of that either."
"Nor do I, particularly…."
The three answered as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Yes. That's the kind of relationship we have.
Even if the situation had been reversed, Lee Jun would only have told Ar to run her security checks a little more often.
Well… the Director of the Technology Bureau's firewalls were hardly supposed to be breached, so it was probably her who'd let herself get breached.
This was what Arcana was: each of them came first, before anything else.
The survivors looked after each other, even if only each other.
Lee Jun… avoided contact with them as much as he could, but if it were ever necessary, he would help them with all his heart.
The reason he wanted to build a safer world, too… was the simple wish that there would be no more danger for anyone.
He was in the middle of that thought when—
Lee Jun looked at the three of them chattering boisterously right in front of him.
"You really did do a thorough investigation, Oppa."
"Of course he did. When something comes up, Jun always starts with the research."
"Haha, Siara really does idolize him, doesn't she."
"Wha—! Who does! Who idolizes him!"
"It's true, Siara. He's always been that way, hasn't he, Oppa."
Jeanne, Siara, Timothy.
Watching the three of them trade banter, Lee Jun thought.
Investigation.
It was only natural.
Responding to anything on pure improvisation, with nothing prepared—that was a privilege reserved for those strong enough to crush any problem through raw force.
Know the enemy and know yourself, and in a hundred battles you will never be in peril.
But Lee Jun had no intention of letting it get to a hundred battles.
I'll end it in one strike. There's no way in hell I'm letting that bastard slip away.
Know the enemy and know yourself, and a single battle will decide it—or better yet, the kill.
Capture at the ideal; kill if capture proves impossible.
His life wasn't leisurely enough to extend mercy to terrorists and criminals.
For now… the moment the odds of trouble are highest….
Three weeks from now. October 6th. Chuseok.
The streets would be packed with holiday events and festivals… that was the moment.