What Only I Know
Despite the incidents that had flared up midway, the mission itself wrapped up without a hitch. Just as Robin had said, it was nothing more than a simple delivery — there had been a little noise along the way, but in the end it was really no big deal.
If anything, it was that earlier noise that had left the sharper impression. I was doing my best to erase it from my memory.
'Leaving? And where exactly would you be going?'
'If you're that curious, why not come along?'
She vanished quickly once the mission was over. By her own account, she had somewhere to visit, and since I had no particular desire to get deeply involved, I didn't press her for details.
But that strangely buoyant air of hers had lodged itself in my mind. Something different from how she'd been leaving on the mission — a movement brimming with raw emotion.
Anticipation and excitement, mixed in exactly equal halves.
So I decided, just as quickly, to forget about it. It was time to do my own work.
"...And yet here I am, wondering why I'm doing this."
In an instant, something that had existed only inside my head slipped out of my mouth. I stretched my senses to their absolute limit at the thought that someone might have overheard and come looking for me, but thankfully, nothing of the sort happened.
"...Whew."
I looked up at the sky, and it was still pitch black. This was the Underground City — the most dangerous, the filthiest place imaginable, a place where you could hurl every ugly epithet in the dictionary and still not run out.
Which also made it the perfect space for an underworld syndicate like Shatrira to build its nest.
'Oh, right — apparently word is going around that the Leader is finally planning a full assembly. What do you think about that?'
Robin had mentioned the assembly before, but I hadn't expected it to come this soon.
No — to be precise, it stung to realize that those in the know had already known, while people lagging behind in the information game got their notification a single day in advance, like this.
I heaved a sigh at that, but it didn't last long. While I'd been swimming through my sea of emotions, I had somehow already arrived.
I approached the man standing before the dark building, watching me through haze-laden eyes. He looked like someone who had lost something long ago.
"Zeo Frizian Ernest. Enter."
After a brief exchange of glances, the man graciously recited my name. His voice, too, had an empty quality to it.
The command-like tone went without saying. Not wanting to waste any more words, I passed by him in silence and stepped inside.
And there I was. The sight that greeted me inside consisted of exactly two staircases. Without hesitation, I descended the one on the left.
After a long, irritating climb down, an open space unfolded before me all at once — and far more people than I'd expected were there to greet me.
I was a little surprised. Unless you were a special case like that man at the entrance, ordinary members had no idea how many people the organization even contained.
Of course, the faces I didn't recognize were none of my concern. I looked around slowly, searching for a familiar face, just in case.
But no matter how far my gaze wandered, Robin was nowhere to be seen. Before I knew it, I let out a slow breath.
That gentleman who forcibly shoved his face into situations I'd rather not see — with him absent, I felt somewhat relieved.
"..."
Though honestly, a faint trace of disappointment followed it in. But whatever.
I glanced back and checked the time. A full thirty minutes remained.
With nothing better to do, I sank into the nearest chair, let my body slump comfortably, and began sorting through my thoughts.
This was my first full assembly. What possible agenda could require gathering this many people so completely?
And why hadn't Robin come? Judging by the hint she'd dropped, she had clearly known in advance.
I racked my brain for a while, but no particular answer emerged.
I still hadn't fully read through this body's memories — how much could I possibly know?
"Looks like everyone who's coming is here."
After all that grinding of thought, a heavy voice rang out, bleak and cutting. My attention snapped toward it without my consent.
It carried a weight that silenced everyone in the room and, at the same time, drew every eye into focus.
Following the others' gaze, I looked at him too. Sharp. That was the single most fitting word to describe him.
His name was, if I remembered correctly, Levi Droza.
"The Leader speaks. Everyone, focus."
The sharp-featured Levi had already mounted a podium I hadn't even noticed appear, and was speaking in the tone of a decree. No one voiced complaint.
He was, so to speak, the Leader's proxy — the one tasked with relaying the orders of a Leader who never showed his face.
"That said, quite a few haven't shown up, haven't they? Do they intend to defy the Leader's orders? Well, whatever comes of it, they can deal with the consequences themselves."
It was no one else's business, but the fact that Robin still wasn't there even at the very end grated on me a little.
It wasn't as though she could have missed the news. In a way, it was an entirely Robin-like thing to do.
It was true that I worried, if only faintly. Since this assembly had been ordered by the Leader himself, there was no telling what consequences might follow for the absent.
But if it was her, I believed she had something up her sleeve that would let her get away with it.
Even if she'd made some kind of mistake, she'd handle it somehow. That was a woman who could look after herself better than anyone.
"Setting all that aside — I will now deliver the Leader's words."
Ahem. With a voice that split through thought itself, he cleared his throat.
The fact that he scrupulously used honorifics for the Leader even in his absence said a great deal about how Levi regarded the man.
Whether that deference welled up from genuine respect, or was worship pressed into shape by fear — honestly, I couldn't say.
"As our Shatrira grows larger by the day, so too do its negative aspects grow alongside it. The ones who doubt the Leader — that is what I speak of."
How could anyone spout such contradictory nonsense with a straight face?
We were an underworld syndicate to begin with — for our "negative aspects" to be growing? Did he not realize that this gathering itself was impure, that the whole enterprise was a negative act?
"An utterly foolish, ignorant course of action. The Leader's power is absolute. No one alive can stand against him. Surely none of you have forgotten this fact?"
That part, at least, I could agree with. Standing alone against the organization with no one to rely on was an act of consummate stupidity. Precedents were abundantly plentiful.
Say, for instance, the true owner of this body, who had bashed his head against that wall solo all the way to his own grave.
"For my part, the situation is enough to make my blood boil. But the Leader's magnanimity is as boundless as the sea, and for the sake of those ignorant fools, he has prepared something special."
More empty blathering, probably, I thought.
After all, what people like him said was nothing but grandiose posturing — the Leader's greatness, the syndicate's bright future — not worth a moment's ear.
But then came the single sentence that followed.
"He has decided to appear before you. In person. The Leader himself."
My eyes snapped open. A physical reflex to a situation I had never once anticipated. And it wasn't just me.
The entire hall was surging like a wave. That reclusive, sealed-off man, showing his face of his own accord? Had he lately sensed some kind of crisis?
Countless questions hammered at my skull. Distracting thoughts had long since evaporated without a trace.
"Exactly two months from now, at Post Four. Anyone who fails to appear can expect nothing pleasant. Prepare yourselves accordingly."
'That concludes the announcement. You are dismissed.' He clearly added those words, short and curt, but they never reached my ears.
The information I'd just received was so staggering that I couldn't even blink. And this was no personal reaction — everyone in attendance looked the same.
Every voice drifting around me carried the same shade of shock I felt myself.
He wasn't appearing before us just yet — it was only an announcement — and still, that alone had changed the very current of the air.
The murmuring had become a storm now, rolling outward, sucking in every breath of wind around it and sweeping this entire space away.
"The Leader? Actually showing himself?"
"They say not one person has ever seen his face. And now he finally lets us get a look at that mug?"
"...Honestly, I'm kind of scared."
What an ordinary member knew came down to exactly three things. First, the Leader possessed absolute physical power.
Second, his ears were sharp enough that he knew every piece of information moving through the underworld, and his connections ran deep and wide.
Which led directly to a third: standing against him in the Underground was tantamount to suicide. His influence was simply that immense.
And so, with only a handful of exceptions, the vast majority feared him. That was how deeply the Leader's existence had been carved into this organization.
But right now, I was burning. At the thought of facing him, imagining the Leader's face I would see two months from now, I couldn't hide a trembling split precisely down the middle — half tension, half thrill.
As I said, what an ordinary member knew about the Leader totaled three things. His strength. His information network. His connections.
But unfortunately for that rule, I was no ordinary case.
Yes. This was my chance. A chance to use the information Zeo had paid for with his very death — written in blood.
Crunch. A sound I couldn't tell came from my teeth or from the fist I was clenching hard enough to hurt. It was mine — a measure of just how enormous the emotions I was holding in had grown.
I turned the memories over. Zeo's journal, the one he read every day at the hideout — and the thing written at its very furthest edge.
The information inscribed there concerned the Leader's fourth trait. One single fact, sharper than a dagger hidden against the chest, more lethal than a serpent's fang.
In this entire world, I was the only one who knew the Leader's weakness.