Ep. 8 — What Do You See? (3)
The architect of the Special Zones.
That single, unadorned sentence struck me hard across the head.
Did that mean some being had actually built those monstrous spaces?
"That is not the Bureau's official position."
Cha Si-eon cut in at my stunned expression.
And at that, Oh Tae-oh's face scrunched up in an immediate scowl.
Almost the expression of someone chewing on a bug.
Excuse me — who makes that kind of contempt this obvious in front of another person?
Yet Cha Si-eon, apparently used to it, simply ignored the top-shelf disdain being aimed his way.
Caught up in the sheer antisocial atmosphere of it, I found myself staring back and forth between the two, my shock forgotten.
After stewing in silence for a moment, Oh Tae-oh picked the thread back up.
"Agent Seo Do-woon said it, didn't he? That the Special Zones are oddly reasonable — like games designed to be cleared. I agree. Officially, the Bureau defines a Special Zone as 'a space hostile to humanity,' but if it were nothing but hostility and malice, would there be any way out at all? The fact that there's a hole to escape through means it was designed that way…."
Oh Tae-oh pushed his glasses up with unmistakable significance.
"And if the architect made such arrangements, there must be a special purpose behind it. Humanity's evolution, perhaps…."
"Again, that is not the Bureau's official position."
Cha Si-eon cut in once more.
And once more, Oh Tae-oh scowled.
…What exactly are these two doing right now? It was like watching a comedy sketch.
"You don't have to butt in like that every single time. I'm just stating a hypothesis…."
Having clearly been irritated for a while, Oh Tae-oh finally rounded on Cha Si-eon.
But naturally, Cha Si-eon didn't so much as blink.
"Do not transmit reckless hypotheses to people who lack even the basic concepts."
"This is why field people are so… hopelessly rigid…."
Unable to muster a rebuttal, Oh Tae-oh grumbled with his face all screwed up.
The muttering was barely more than a swallowed mumble, but I heard it.
So, of course, did Cha Si-eon.
Instead of protesting, however, Cha Si-eon turned to me and said flatly:
"Until early this year, Acting Leader Oh Tae-oh maintained that Special Zones were an invasion route for aliens, and that humanity would be replaced by them. Nothing happened on the day Acting Leader Oh Tae-oh declared would be the end of the world."
Before I knew it, I was looking over at Oh Tae-oh.
And Oh Tae-oh met my gaze head-on, looking positively bursting with things to say.
"So what about it? It's not like I was talking out of thin air. It was a perfectly reasonable guess, both deductively and inductively."
"Aliens?"
The word slipped out of me before I could stop it.
Oh Tae-oh turned and gave me a chill-inducing stare, like a man doused in cold water.
"What's wrong with aliens…? In the Silla era, the Saeckmok-in — foreign traders from Central Asia — would have counted as aliens. If you talk about a fire-breathing dragon, it sounds like nonsense, right? But what about an electric eel? They're both cold-blooded animals launching elemental attacks, yet one gets dismissed as mystical fantasy and the other as a matter of course. Doesn't it strike you as strange to judge them that differently? Aliens are the same. I wasn't spouting drivel — I was simply considering possibilities that lie outside our common sense."
Under the barrage of Oh Tae-oh's rapid-fire logic, I very nearly got persuaded.
But Cha Si-eon cut in again.
"There is no need to lend him your ear. In addition to this, Acting Leader Oh Tae-oh has spread any number of groundless rumors and been formally warned on multiple occasions."
"What did you just say? Groundless…?"
"To elaborate: four years ago, a dangerous rumor spread through the Bureau and an investigation was conducted."
"That was…."
"The rumor held that the Special Zones were the apocalypse described in the Book of Revelation. Agents with related beliefs fell into collective panic, an internal investigation was launched, and the producer of that rumor was none other than Acting Leader Oh Tae-oh. When the executives demanded an explanation, Acting Leader Oh replied, 'Come to think of it, that's probably not it. Why, do you have a problem with that?' — and nearly got assaulted by the Head of Research."
"W-we agreed never to talk about that…!"
"Nevertheless, rumors and confusion originating from Acting Leader Oh have been steadily generated ever since, and while Acting Leader Oh received warnings and disciplinary action each time, as you can see, nothing has improved. Therefore, it is advisable to take anything Acting Leader Oh says with a generous grain of salt."
No, seriously — if you're going to say that kind of thing, say it before the man walks in. Not right in front of him.
And sure enough, with his faults laid out one by one, Oh Tae-oh's face flushed bright red.
Oh dear. Anyone walking in would think he was about to cry.
…No, wait. He actually is crying.
Astonishingly, Oh Tae-oh was gritting his teeth, the rims of his eyes gone red.
Straining with everything he had not to let the welling tears fall.
Is this for real? And yet Gwak Jae-gyeom beside me was watching with a perfectly glazed, unbothered expression.
Judging by how practiced that reaction was, I suppose it really was for real.
More importantly — Team Leader Cha, you seeing this? You made him cry.
Then why are you looking at me, you psychopath.
Baffled, I resigned myself to stepping in as mediator.
"Yes, I'll listen with good judgment. The world holds all kinds of perspectives, and, well… exchanging opinions is, you know, generally a good thing."
At my Grand Chancellor Hwang Ji-style diplomatic non-answer, Cha Si-eon gave a dismissive nod. Oh Tae-oh, meanwhile, wiped his tears under the pretense of cleaning his glasses, and the sight was oddly pitiful.
"Snk… hoo…. The digression ran long, so to get to the point: I believe what Agent Seo Do-woon experienced this time is also connected to the architect…. During the 144 seconds you were missing, Agent Seo met someone. And right now, you remember nothing of it."
Finally calmed down, Oh Tae-oh returned to the matter at hand.
"So yesterday, I played the audio recorded through Agent Seo for a Contaminated Person who can read the Special Zone script…."
A Contaminated Person who reads the zone script.
Don't tell me — is it that person? The one who supposedly figured out the stadium rules just by looking at the jumbotron in the Sports Complex?
I brightened and asked back.
"Did they understand the recording?"
"No… they started screaming the moment they heard it."
They screamed?
"They were so terrified I had no choice but to cut the recording partway through. I tried again, but their aversion was too violent to manage. When I ask why, they won't answer — I'm still working on persuading them…."
"…."
They saw nothing. They only listened. And they fell into a panic?
Why on earth? What in that recording could be so terrible?
"So right now you haven't learned anything about the recording itself?"
"Not yet. But it's a crucial lead, so I intend to try every avenue available…."
It was a relief that he'd put in the effort.
Though I did wonder whether it was truly wise to trust someone who looked this… eccentric.
While I was silently doubting him, Oh Tae-oh spoke up again.
"So, first of all, we've decided to try hypnotherapy."
"On that Contaminated Person?"
"No. On Agent Seo Do-woon."
…?
So — hypnotherapy.
On whom? Me.
When? Right now.
I take it these people genuinely do not have concepts like "advance notice" or "mental preparation."
Once the hypnotherapy had been announced, Cha Si-eon and Oh Tae-oh left to prepare something.
Left alone, I quietly turned to Gwak Jae-gyeom.
"Jae-gyeom, is that guy actually all right?"
"He looks like a weirdo, right? And you'd be seeing him exactly right, hyung."
Hey — this is supposedly the man in charge of my analysis.
When I turned back with a serious face, Jae-gyeom snickered and went on.
"He's a total oddball, obviously. Acting Leader Oh doesn't get along with our Team Leader either. The only reason he's holding back right now is the difference in rank — if they were even close, a few punches would already have been thrown."
"So which one of them is holding back?"
"Hmm. Both of them?"
In that case, they were both impressive.
Cha Si-eon, who tolerated Oh Tae-oh — a man he considered a speck beneath him.
And Oh Tae-oh, who squared off against Cha Si-eon on the strength of his faith in civilized decorum alone.
"Those two are complete natural enemies. Acting Leader Oh is kind of emotional, while the Team Leader is ice-cold. The Team Leader works with the precision of a protractor, but Acting Leader Oh is so loose and sloppy he makes a lot of little mistakes."
"So basically one of them just can't do his job."
"Uh, that's fair, yeah. But Acting Leader Oh is also an irreplaceable genius in his own field. So in truth he does the work of more than one person, and that's how the whole thing keeps rolling along, one way or another."
Come to think of it, that did track.
The eccentricities Cha Si-eon had listed were pretty serious.
He repeated the same problem, over and over?
And yet he still held his position, completely unscathed?
That left exactly two possibilities.
Either he was an heir to absolute power, or he really was an irreplaceable genius.
And for my sake, I hoped it was the latter. Spare my life, and please do your job properly.
"Also, what was that 'architect' thing you mentioned earlier? Is that just something Acting Leader Oh made up on his own?"
"Oh, that? It's not a completely baseless idea. There are a few theories about how Special Zones come into being, and that's one of them."
Theories about Special Zone manifestation, huh….
"I've heard of the Vengeful Earth Spirit theory."
"Ah, that one was originally Acting Leader Oh's idea too."
Of course it was. Not even slightly surprised.
"Our Team Leader absolutely hates that one. It's treated as pure nonsense now, but back when the Team Leader was newly appointed, it was the mainstream theory. Apparently he got stuck doing all sorts of ridiculous assignments because of it."
Figures. Knowing that pride of his, he must have been dragged all over the place chasing that nonsense.
Whether it was Cha Si-eon or Oh Tae-oh, the reasons they couldn't stand each other were crystal clear.
"But that's ancient history. The two accepted, textbook theories of Special Zone manifestation these days are the 'Spatial Crevasse theory' and the 'Architect Operations theory.'"
"Crevasse — you mean a crack in a glacier?"
"Exactly. A perfectly solid glacier splitting open down the line — that's a crevasse. So this theory says a Special Zone is 'a quantum-scale fissure that happened to open up in Seoul.' In other words, spontaneous generation of Special Zones."
Oh, I knew this one.
It was the intro setup of a Korean-style hunter novel.
"But there are simply too many meaningful coincidences to write it off as pure chance. That's where the 'Architect Operations theory' came from. Whether the architect is an alien, a time traveler, a neighboring country, or a mega-corporation, nobody knows — the theory is that 'a Special Zone is a structure deliberately built by an intelligent being called the architect.'"
Both of them sounded plausible.
To think a man capable of such sound reasoning had once faithfully believed in a "Vengeful Earth Spirit" theory.
Well — Special Zones themselves defied common sense, so as Oh Tae-oh said, maybe you did have to step outside of it.
"We're ready…."
While we'd been chatting, Oh Tae-oh had come back.
"Agent Seo Do-woon, please follow me…."
I followed Oh Tae-oh into a different room inside the Medical Center.
The place we arrived at looked like a counseling room — quiet, with a reclining chair.
And there, I ran into a genuinely unexpected face.
"Well, this is a rare—"
"Rare, my foot. I'm the one doing it. The hypnotherapy."
The person who said that was none other than Kim Woo-in.