The Mage's Path (4)
"The twelfth… mage?"
"Well, yes. Oh, and just so you know — the scroll is blocking sound, so you don't need to tense up. I deliberately left my bodyguards behind in case you might not want them overhearing this either."
"I'm sorry…?"
At that remark I immediately scanned our surroundings. He was right. Not a single bodyguard was nearby. They could have been hiding, of course… but there was no real reason for him to lie about something like that.
If he already knows I'm a mage, then yeah — that would make sense…
If he was aware of that fact, this level of consideration was entirely plausible. Mages were among the most critical personnel in the country. Going as far as possible to accommodate a mage's wishes might simply be the natural thing to do.
But I had never asked him not to bring security. This was stirring up trouble for no reason. Even if I was a mage, I wasn't an A-rank or higher in combat ability. Leaving the bodyguards behind was a genuine risk.
…Is he working from some kind of ace up his sleeve, the way that mage-related info suggested?
He probably had a decent amount of personal combat power. That was likely why he'd come out like this. The only real question was whether he could weather the backlash this meeting might create.
Meeting in an open place like a café? That was doable. Even if a scandal flared up between him and someone as pretty as me, he wasn't a celebrity — he was a corporate chairman. Who was going to complain about a man dating a woman his own age? As long as the financials and the stock price held, people would look the other way. Nobody would make a real fuss.
That was why I'd gone for it in the first place. From his perspective, a dating rumor with me barely registered as a problem. He could just deny it, and that would be the end of it. That was the truth.
But meeting a woman with zero security present? Anyone looking would find that suspicious. In a normal official meeting, a chairman would have bodyguards — especially a chaebol chairman, who could very well be targeted by villains. For someone of that stature to show up without protection? The optics alone were fishy.
So let's think it through. When would you dismiss your security?
Usually when the matter was so sensitive you couldn't even tell your closest aides… when something illegal was involved… or when the meeting was intensely private.
Right. Intensely private.
And in that private space sat one woman. Put together like that, it really did look like—
Like he'd snuck out to meet his girlfriend, didn't it?
Yeah. If this went wrong, we might end up with no way to walk it back. What I'd been aiming for wasn't a public announcement that Kim Jian and I were actually dating, or some airtight assumption that we were a couple. I'd just wanted the internet to catch fire on the possibility of a maybe…?
But meeting a woman alone with no bodyguards? Anyone would find that weird…!
Tch. I didn't see this coming…
If people started treating us as a confirmed couple, that would be way outside my projections. Still, it had already happened, so there was no use fretting. It was going to come up eventually anyway. I could prepare for it then. Right now, I needed to focus on the man in front of me.
"A mage… how did you find out?"
Instead of playing dumb, I went straight to the point. He already knew I was a mage. Unless I somehow erased every last shred of suspicion, the fact that I was a mage would be easy enough for him to confirm.
"I don't think I've managed my relationships so poorly that information would just get handed to a chairman of all people."
Bluffing and psychological games only worked when the other side was information-starved. If the chairman of Hermes had started harboring doubts, he would have no trouble digging up the evidence.
"Even my family didn't know… so how did you?"
I ruled out the possibility of a leak through acquaintances. He wouldn't believe any denial along those lines anyway. Had Dad told him? No chance. If he had, he would have put me to work a long time ago.
"I assume you didn't go digging into my personal life just for fun?"
That was a direct question about whether he'd investigated me behind my back. It wasn't rude — not when he was the one who'd openly brought up information I'd been hiding. If the path he'd used wasn't entirely legal, a question of this level was fair game.
"Would you like me to tell you where you slipped up?"
"Yes. I need to know if there's a place where information can leak out."
"Hmm. To put it in a single sentence — just because Baek Sowol has no interest in the world doesn't mean the world has no interest in Baek Sowol."
I already knew that. Even in my past life, Heo Donghyun had felt nothing romantic toward Lee Jihyeon, and yet Lee Jihyeon had been nursing a crush on him.
"The first day we met, Assemblyman Baek Dohan sent me to you. The reason was… well, he simply heard that you were taking up hunter work and contacted me. He asked me to look after you."
"Dad did?"
"Yes. I figured that made sense. You're the youngest daughter he'd put in his eye and not feel a sting, aren't you? When a daughter like that becomes a hunter, of course a parent worries."
That much tracked with my expectations. The problem in the Baek Sowol–Baek Dohan relationship had always been the resentment on Baek Sowol's side. Baek Dohan had been paying attention to his daughter, so when he heard she'd become a hunter, he'd reached out to the chairman.
Why the chairman specifically? No idea. His connections just happened to run that far.
"After that, well… it was pretty obvious, wasn't it? You posted something online, didn't you? Under the handle MagicMagic, I believe? Even the Ironblood Guild Master took an interest. That's how I pieced it together."
"…There shouldn't be a single link between that fixed nickname and me."
"This isn't a courtroom. You don't need airtight physical evidence to reach a guilty verdict. Yes, there's no hard connection between that account and you. But circumstantial evidence? That was more than enough."
He ticked the points off calmly.
"The date that account first appeared, and the date Baek Sowol registered as an Awakened. On top of that, the E-rank gate Baek Sowol visited — and the same E-rank gate that account claimed to have gone to that day."
"…"
"And Han Yaeseo appears to know about the mage, from what we can infer. Around that same time, she suddenly gets close to Baek Sowol! She claims it's because of a pretty face, but… really? The awakening date matches. The gates visited match. And then, finally… that contract killer fails to abduct Baek Sowol? A D-rank hunter holding out that long against an A-rank? Really?"
Listening to Chairman Kim Jian, I could finally see the full shape of how every incident connected.
Ah… so that's how it was.
I'd been thinking about it the wrong way. Tracking the person Baek Sowol from the fixed nickname MagicMagic was nearly impossible. But going the other direction — tracking MagicMagic from the person Baek Sowol? That was entirely possible.
The circumstantial evidence had been pointing at Baek Sowol as a possible mage all along. There simply hadn't been anyone who knew enough about Baek Sowol to put it together.
If I hadn't been a lawmaker's daughter, none of this would have come out. Even as a lawmaker's daughter, if Dad hadn't put in that request, Kim Jian never would have known.
Even if I had no interest in the world, the world might still have an interest in me. It was a perfect analogy.
"Haha."
And once I understood the whole picture, laughter started spilling out of me.
"Hahaha…!"
I couldn't hold it back.
"Bwahahahaha…!"
In the end I laughed out loud right there, one hand pressed to my forehead while the other pounded the table. Thank goodness the sound was blocked from the outside.
To think I'd run into someone like this.
"Finding this interesting, are we?"
"Ah… haha. It's been a long time, you know. Since someone landed a real hit on me."
At least since reincarnating as Baek Sowol, I had always been the one driving things. The one who moved proactively and landed the finishing blow when something happened.
Events hadn't always gone the way I intended, but whenever they blew up, I'd managed to clean them up on my own terms. Even when butterfly effects spun out, they were always the product of choices I'd made — which meant I could handle them.
But today, for the first time, I'd taken a clean, heavy hit. And not even from something unpredictable.
Had I known Kim Jian was watching me? Yes.
Had I known Baek Dohan was a lawmaker and my father? Yes.
Had I been able to infer that Kim Jian approached me with Baek Dohan's intentions — or something equivalent? Yes.
And… if someone investigated Baek Sowol hard enough, could I have predicted that the fact she was a mage would come out? Yes.
Starting from Baek Sowol, it was entirely possible to guess that MagicMagic was me.
What, I hadn't known Baek Sowol was the youngest daughter of such a powerful family? That was just an excuse for incompetence.
I'd known Baek Sowol owned a home at an unusually young age. From that alone, I'd figured out she came from a household that lacked for nothing. Claiming I didn't know the rest of it? That was just complacency.
"All right. So should I just tell you what I want?"
"Of course. For a mage, I can arrange just about anything, anytime, anywhere."
"But I have no intention of joining a guild right away. I'm going to wait for the moment when attention is at its absolute peak."
"Why? With Assemblyman Baek Dohan behind you, wouldn't it be better to join immediately and grow from there?"
"For bigger gains. I don't plan on being only a mage."
I wasn't going to operate solely as a mage. My goal was to make as much money as possible by any means necessary, then use it to learn as many spells as I could. Mage work alone wouldn't be enough for that.
And this body was more than capable of working in the entertainment industry too. For that? Getting famous was the first priority. I would pull in as much renown as possible so that even people who didn't care about hunters would know my name.
"I think I understand roughly. So when do you plan to decide the timing?"
"Wouldn't the chairman know the right timing better than I do? There are two options. Either when there's no major incident in entertainment or politics… or when a political scandal has just exploded."
"Oh?"
Politicians typically detonated entertainment-industry scandals whenever a major corruption case broke, just to bury the story. It wasn't even a secret. Everyone knew. Plenty of people just fell for it anyway.
So if I was going to make a move, it would either be when both politics and entertainment were quiet — stepping out then to seize every eye in the country — or when a political scandal had just erupted and needed covering. With their backing, every broadcaster in the country would be running my story.
That kind of timing wasn't something I could pin down at my level. Not unless I used Dad, or Chairman Jian himself.
"So the rough timing is set. Then is it possible in the near future?"
"No. I have a fixed period in mind."
Even with the timing locked in like that, I couldn't do it right away. I still hadn't hit the target I wanted.
"When I've reached B-rank as Hunter Baek Sowol — not Mage Baek Sowol. Make me an issue after that point. I'll throw you one big signing bonus for it."
The moment I became a B-rank as a hunter — that was when the life of Mage Baek Sowol would truly begin.