A Midnight Stroll
The hour was late, so the Thief Club and Kim Ho's group disbanded the moment they stepped out of the Disciplinary Committee room. Go Hyeon-woo made for the infirmary to have his internal injuries treated, while the Thief Club members, pleading sleepiness, each shuffled off toward their dorms.
Dang Gyu-young, meanwhile, still had things she needed to say to Kim Ho—and things she wanted to ask. So she posed it offhandedly to the junior who was just turning to go.
"Walk with me for a bit?"
"Of course."
Dawn had yet to break, and the sky overhead was still a deep navy verging on black. The two fell into step along the path the streetlamps lit up for them. Even a road you traveled every day took on a different feel at this hour, when it was just the two of you.
Perhaps because of that, neither of them exchanged a single word for a while. Then Dang Gyu-young hemmed and hawed, turned her head aside, and finally started to speak.
"So... my bad. About getting caught."
The infiltration of the Deep Layer dungeon—the very heart of the request—had gone off without a hitch, but the job itself had run all the way to 'making it out of the underground floors without ever being caught.' Instead, they'd let Gwak Seung-jae snatch them by the collar at the last second and walk away with penalty points. A sloppy finish, plain and simple. And doubly sloppy for a job the Thief Club president had joined in person.
Kim Ho let out a long, deep sigh.
"I'm a little disappointed, Senior. No matter how tasty the jerky is, there are limits—you should have stayed focused right to the end."
"I—I was not? I was focused the whole time!"
"For someone so focused, you certainly looked to be enjoying yourself an awful lot. Might the jerky have had the bigger share of your attention?"
"Hey, I really wasn't! Honestly, that was just Gwak Seung-jae making one hell of a move—"
Dang Gyu-young flared up and planted herself squarely in front of Kim Ho—only to spot the impish grin curling the corner of his mouth. So now that they'd gotten a little chummier, he was going to pull stunts like this. Had one of the club's dour old-timers tried it, she'd have launched into a discipline crackdown on the spot; coming from this junior, somehow, it just struck her as cute.
So all she did was give his shoulder a light shove.
"Ugh, quit teasing me."
"There's no need to feel too terrible about it, Senior. A single penalty point isn't something I lose sleep over."
One point or not, it wasn't as though his grades went untouched. And points like that piled up one by one would only grow.
But Kim Ho, apparently not the type to fuss over grades, looked genuinely unbothered. He changed the subject instead, tossing out a question about Gwak Seung-jae.
"Senior Gwak Seung-jae's tracking ability really is monstrous. He was still hard on our heels all the way to the Temporary Confiscation Storage."
"Tell me about it. That kid's been a stone-cold bloodhound since enrollment day. A bloodhound."
Gwak Seung-jae's keen senses and tracking skill were merely the basics; layered on top were deep patience and a knack for hunches that bordered on the uncanny. Even back in his freshman year, he'd already logged arrests of second- and third-years from the Thief Club. In raw ability those upperclassman thieves had him beat—but one or two times out of every ten, he'd still clamp a hand on their collars.
"And he only got nastier once he hit second year."
Back when Gwak Seung-jae was a first-year, they'd slipped his grasp nine times out of ten. Now, in his second, that had crept up to two or three.
"And today happened to be one of those two or three... just so you don't get the wrong idea."
Dang Gyu-young was earnestly campaigning to establish that she wasn't nearly as hopeless as she'd looked. She gave a couple of dry coughs and hauled the conversation, which had briefly detoured down a side alley, back onto the main road.
"Anyway, it's true our after-service was subpar, so I'll pitch in more with the cleanup. That squares the account, right?"
"I'd be much obliged."
"Here, let me see your hand a second."
Truth be told, something had been nagging at her for a while now. Dang Gyu-young took Kim Ho's outstretched hand and turned it over, studying it front and back.
Faint burn marks, mottling the skin—the lingering aftereffects of Inferno Fist.
Whatever trait had let him walk away from Inferno Fist spotless last time, this time traces remained. He must have had a rough go of it in the Black Snake Gang. What exactly had happened in there could wait for another chat—right now, a more urgent matter needed handling.
"Seung-jae will have seen this, won't he?"
"I'd say so too."
Gwak Seung-jae had handed every bit of the actual handling to Oh Se-hun and withdrawn a step to observe their every move. And amid all that, his eyes had snagged on Kim Ho far more often than on anyone else—there was no way he'd missed the burn marks.
"This could end up being the tail they catch us by. Did you use Inferno Fist a lot? In the Black Snake Gang?"
"Honestly, I left the place in quite a state before I came out."
Putting it that way, he'd clearly used it plenty. Fires everywhere, structures blowing apart—utter bedlam, no doubt. When the Swordsmanship Club cleared the Black Snake Gang, every frame of that scene would be preserved whole in the replay. Meaningful evidence, archived for posterity.
Of course, even with evidence like that in hand, it wouldn't leap straight to the conclusion that Kim Ho had learned Inferno Fist and wielded it in the Black Snake Gang. Fire magic hardly came in ones and twos.
But the more such circumstances piled up, the thicker the Disciplinary Committee's suspicions would grow—and the higher the odds that the academy would grant permission for a [Magnifier] item. The moment a magnifier confirmed that Kim Ho had learned Inferno Fist, everything would become a colossal headache from there on out.
Which was exactly why the groundwork had to be laid in advance, to keep that investigation from going anywhere.
"So it comes down to whether the Black Snake Gang replay can be set to private or not."
"That's where I'd like you to bring your influence to bear."
"Deal. If you go down, it's nothing but bad news for our side too."
If Kim Ho were caught, the companions who'd each taken a single penalty point today risked being reeled in one after another—on charges of conspiring in the Deep Layer infiltration. So quite apart from the after-service, seeing that replay erased was in everyone's interest.
How the Swordsmanship Club would play its hand remained an open question, but Dang Gyu-young intended to flex every ounce of the influence she had.
Then, carefully, she tacked on a suggestion.
"While I'm at it... how about I also lend a hand with the whole ignoring-the-bid-and-going-right-in thing?"
Kim Ho shut it down, flat and absolute.
"No. That one's mine to settle. Anything connected to it, toss it all my way."
Dang Gyu-young's lips pushed into a pout.
This kid really is quietly stubborn under it all. One word—'help me'—and she'd have helped.
"I know you're something special, but it still worries me. Think you can really handle it?"
"Yes. If I couldn't handle it, I'd never have started in the first place."
"...Fine. I hear you."
To doubt him any further after an answer that unequivocal would amount to looking down on him, so Dang Gyu-young nodded, however grudgingly. The flat refusal left the air between them a touch awkward, and they walked on in silence for a stretch.
Dang Gyu-young kept her eyes on her feet as she walked, then opened her mouth again, more carefully still.
"...Kim Ho, there's something I've been wondering about."
"Ask away."
"You... what is it you want so badly that you'd go this far?"
It had been barely a month since Kim Ho enrolled at Dragon Slayer Academy. In that span he'd already broken any number of academy rules, big and small, and collided with the Emerald Magic Tower, a solidly mid-tier club. And now he was angling for friction with the Swordsmanship Club—one of the single greatest powers within the academy.
What could he possibly be chasing that was worth going this far? And just how staggering a stunt was he planning to pull next?
To be sure, Dang Gyu-young knew perfectly well that her own proper trade was thieving. She was in no position to stand over anyone wagging a finger.
Even so, Kim Ho was a junior she'd taken a rare shine to. She didn't want to watch him cross a line he could never uncross and meet a miserable end. It was with that worry sitting in her chest that she'd asked after his goal, and—
"World peace."
"There you go, joking again."
Dang Gyu-young's face soured. She'd asked out of honest concern, and he'd handed her an absurd non-answer. Last time it had been some tale about graduating two hundred times.
Maybe those off-the-wall answers were simply his roundabout way of declining to answer. That was the feeling she'd gotten before, which was why she'd shaken her head and let the matter slide when this exact exchange had played out last time. But this once, she wanted to hear a proper answer and keep it.
Just once more. One more question.
Dang Gyu-young drew Kim Ho gently toward her, locked her gaze squarely onto his, and asked again.
"I'm asking you seriously. Won't you tell me?"
"..."
Dang Gyu-young looked up; Kim Ho looked down.
For a while, the two of them simply held that pose, neither saying a word.
Perhaps a little of her earnestness had reached him. Kim Ho slowly drew his gaze away from her and, staring out at something far beyond, began to speak.
"I believe I mentioned graduating more than two hundred times."
Dang Gyu-young, halfway to that line again?, shut her mouth when she caught his expression. He was dead serious. True or not, she would hear him out first.
"It wasn't all good times across those two hundred runs. Especially back when the number still had one digit—I was green and clumsy, and the bad outweighed the good by far."
"Such as?"
"Such as people dying. People getting hurt. That kind of thing."
"..."
Kim Ho spoke the way one mentions the weather—lightly, in passing—but the heart of the woman listening sank heavy. The two hundred graduations was surely a lie. But if it was, then this was what lay hidden behind that lie: a painful past carved deep into his chest.
"I'm sorry. Seems I poked at something I shouldn't have."
"It's fine. All of it is long past. But there is one thing I settled on for certain back then."
"...And what would that be?"
Kim Ho went on gazing at that far horizon as he answered, his voice perfectly level.
"That what's mine would never again be taken from me. That not one of my people would ever die."
That not one of his people would ever die... Dang Gyu-young murmured the words under her breath.
"Is that what you want?"
"Yes."
"That's a hard one."
"It is."
Every hero-in-training at Dragon Slayer Academy lived out an uncertain future, never knowing when they might be thrown into the thick of a kill zone, into a fight where life and death swung on a knife's edge. In places like that, clutching one's own single life and holding on was hard enough—yet he meant to look after his people on top of it all.
Kim Ho added, "Which is exactly why I have to keep getting stronger, until it stops being hard."
Stronger. Faster. Overwhelmingly so.
Dang Gyu-young felt like she finally understood a little. So that's why he pushes himself this hard.
Treading carefully and minding everyone's gaze would certainly be easier for now—but later it would mean harder fights, and perhaps, at the end of them, the loss of someone dear. Whereas scrapping with the other clubs now, bending a few rules, wading through every kind of trouble—messy as it got, that road ended with him holding exactly what he wanted. Kim Ho had simply judged the second path the one that left fewer regrets.
What a relief. This, I can live with. Hearing it all, she felt a weight lift off her shoulders.
If protecting someone was Kim Ho's goal, then keeping harm from ever reaching them was part of that goal too. Which meant he would hold himself in check, of his own accord, rather than ever cross the line he mustn't cross.
The corners of Dang Gyu-young's mouth curved, soft.
"I like it."
If the side of him Kim Ho had just shown her was truly his honest heart, then she would gladly stay his accomplice from here on out.
Before she knew it, the dorms had come into view. She'd deliberately taken the long way around, and still the moment to part had arrived—Dang Gyu-young found that a touch disappointing. In her heart she wanted one more lap, another round of idle chatter about nothing in particular, but she decided tonight would end here.
Today wasn't the only day they'd have.
"It's late. Let's head in and get some rest."
"You rest well too, Senior."
"Yep! See you Monday!"
"?"
Kim Ho cocked his head, as if retracing whether the two of them had any business scheduled for Monday. But nothing seemed to surface, so he asked.
"What about Monday?"
Dang Gyu-young beamed, all mischief.
Oh, so teasing's your exclusive privilege? My turn too.
"Not telling."
[77] The Support Ate It All