Chapter 121
While Do-woon was drinking with Han Jin-hwan, Do-hee and Tae-cheon were drinking together as well.
Tae-cheon speared a piece of boneless chicken with his chopsticks and looked at the TV.
The screen was running a rerun of the 9 o'clock news.
Amid the two anchors’ chatter, a small split-screen image showed the S-class hunters.
Since the sound was muted, he couldn’t hear the anchors’ voices, but the subtitles at the bottom of the screen made the story clear enough.
At last, the S-class hunters gather tomorrow!
The broadcasters kept talking about the S-class hunters without taking a breath.
There was no new information.
They were just replaying footage they had already aired once.
Even so, the ratings were there.
“I didn’t think that whole mess would bring all those people together.”
Tae-cheon said as he ate the chicken.
By “that mess,” he meant the dungeon returning to its original state.
Do-hee, who had also been watching TV, let out a quiet sigh.
“I thought this would happen.”
“Oh? You really did?”
“Yes. That’s why I told you to keep hold of the CCTV footage of my brother being caught on camera.”
“So that was it. I thought it was only going to be a little annoying. You were trying to protect him from that annoyance.”
“No way. Something this unprecedented happened in the whole world. There was no way it would end with just ‘a little annoyance.’”
Do-hee shook her head.
Her expression was serious.
“From that day on... I thought my brother’s life might be in danger.”
“His life might be in danger...?”
Tae-cheon trailed off.
He almost said, Isn’t that a bit over the top? but held it back.
As Do-hee had said, because of that incident, all the S-class hunters who normally wouldn’t move for anything had gathered.
Politics was certainly part of the reason, but the trigger that brought them together in the first place was still that event.
That made one possibility come to Tae-cheon’s mind.
What if they had known an individual could do something like that?
Then the S-class hunters of each country might have quietly come to Korea.
Tae-cheon thought Do-hee’s words about Do-woon’s life being on the line made sense.
“That’s why I had someone tail my brother too.”
“Ah, I see. No wonder you weren’t satisfied with just the hair tie...”
“......”
Do-hee looked away slightly and took a sip of beer.
Tae-cheon snickered, finding his little sister adorable.
“But are you sure that’s fine?”
“About what?”
“Those two already seem like they’ve fallen for Do-woon. They even ate fire boar pork belly together.”
“That’s fine.”
“That’s fine?”
Tae-cheon blurted it out immediately.
He hadn’t expected to hear fine come out of Do-hee’s mouth.
Normally, Do-hee would have said, It’s not fine.
No, she probably wouldn’t have stopped at words.
She should have placed immediate restrictions on Lee Jae-wook and Kim Sang-cheol the moment she heard.
Had Do-hee gone crazy?
Tae-cheon looked at her with that slightly rude thought in mind.
“Yes. It really is fine. I report everything about my brother every single day, after all.”
“Hmm? So that makes it fine? Really? You’re serious?”
Even after hearing the explanation, he still didn’t get it.
His little sister was not the kind of person to let something like this slide just because she filed reports faithfully.
So Tae-cheon kept asking her questions.
“...Honestly, I figured he’d end up going over to your side anyway.”
“What?”
“He was always closer to my brother than he was to me. As long as they weren’t outright refusing to report or trying to bury it with lies, I was willing to let it go.”
“Ah... Well, that figures.”
“What’s with that cold stare?”
“Nothing. I’m just pleased to see my little sister grow up into the kind of boss modern society is so full of: the kind who can’t trust her employees?”
“T-That’s all because of that game...”
Do-hee muttered a defense while sneaking a glance away.
The game she was talking about was Growing the World Tree, the one installed on Do-woon’s smartphone.
Right now, a real World Tree was growing on Do-woon’s phone.
Because of that, his heart had recovered and he was a hunter again.
It had also been why he left Baekwooncheon.
“It is strange, though. A real World Tree growing on a smartphone...”
“......”
“The strangest thing is that it was Do-woon who made it grow.”
Tae-cheon thought of Do-woon and snorted with laughter.
He imagined him stabbing away at the phone screen with his index finger.
For a whole year, Do-woon hadn’t let go of his smartphone once.
Except when he was sleeping, he always had it in his right hand.
He had even reached the point where he didn’t realize he was tapping the screen at all.
“This isn’t funny.”
Unlike Tae-cheon, Do-hee wasn’t laughing.
Her face was serious, just as it had been when she said she thought his life might be on the line.
“Huh? What’s wrong?”
“That game. I looked into the company that made it.”
“Oh? You did?”
“Wasn’t that obvious?”
Was it obvious?
Tae-cheon wasn’t interested enough to say yes.
He felt like he had heard the company name once, but he couldn’t remember it.
The moment he heard it, he’d decided it wasn’t worth remembering and erased it from his head.
Even now, not even a vague trace of the name came to mind.
“What was the company called again?”
“PG Corporation.”
“Hmm. Still don’t remember. So? What do they do?”
“...I don’t know. Nothing came up.”
“What? Nothing?”
“Yes.”
“That is a little strange...”
Do-hee was an A-class hunter.
Not just any A-class hunter, either, but one who held a key position in an A-rank guild.
The range of information she could dig up was on a completely different level from ordinary people’s.
If even she couldn’t find anything, then that company was definitely no ordinary business.
“I couldn’t even find out what the letters PG stood for. So I have to find out...”
“Do you really need to?”
“Huh?”
“Do you absolutely need to figure it out? It’s not like it matters if you don’t know.”
“It doesn’t matter? What are you talking about?”
“Exactly. Because of that, Do-woon’s heart got better. And the World Tree is real too. I don’t know what that company wants, but for us, it’s all been good news so far.”
“That may be true, but—”
Do-hee started with that may be true, but added a but because she still couldn’t accept it.
Tae-cheon raised a hand to stop her next words.
“You said you couldn’t figure out what kind of company it was.”
“...Yes. I couldn’t get any information at all. It was as if it was something not of this world.”
“Then just ignore it.”
Tae-cheon waved his arm like he was tossing trash into a bin.
The motion made it look as though he had just deleted the name PG Corporation from the world.
He was the sort of man who would undoubtedly answer “I don’t remember” if anyone asked him the name of the game company after tonight.
“Trying to dig up information you can’t possibly obtain will only waste your time and drain your energy.”
“What if that company’s goal was to make something like this happen?”
“Something like this?”
“Yes. Creating an existence capable of restoring dungeons to their original ground. What if they spread that game because they needed such a being...?”
“Then what?”
“What?”
Do-hee’s expression twisted.
She seemed angry at Tae-cheon, who kept brushing everything off like it was no big deal.
But Tae-cheon’s face remained calm and optimistic.
“So what if they did? What’s the problem? Aren’t you worried about your brother?”
“Worried? Do I have to be? It’s not a big deal.”
“Not a big deal? When my brother might be in danger—”
“Yeah. Not a big deal.”
Tae-cheon picked up a piece of boneless chicken with his wooden chopsticks and ate it.
Then he waved his other hand.
“Compared to Do-woon’s heart getting better, I mean.”
“......!”
“The whole lot of S-class hunters gathering, or some bastards trying to create something that can turn dungeons back into their original land, or whatever else. All of that is nothing more than small-time nonsense.”
“......”
“The real big deal is that Do-woon became a hunter again. That’s what matters. Because it means we can be together again. Right?”
Tae-cheon looked at Do-hee steadily.
Meeting that gaze, Do-hee soon gave a snort of laughter.
She shook her head, but she agreed with him.
“Well, you’re right about that, brother...”
“Right? So what if Do-woon might be in danger? You and I are there with him. We’ll protect him. That’s what we’ve been working for all this time.”
“Brother...”
“So stop worrying so much. You’re going to put wrinkles between your brows.”
With that, Tae-cheon reached for another piece of boneless chicken and ate it.
Do-hee agreed with part of what he said.
She could waste time worrying about something unnecessary.
Compared with Do-woon’s heart recovering, it was nothing at all.
And if danger came, all they had to do was protect him.
All of that was true.
Even so, Do-hee still hadn’t given up on looking into PG Corporation.
It was curiosity.
What kind of company had the ability to make a real World Tree grow on a smartphone?
She was too curious for her own good.
The download count for Growing the World Tree had also caught her attention.
When she checked, the recorded downloads were fewer than 100.
Which meant, on the other hand, that nearly 100 people had installed the game.
Among nearly 100 people, hadn’t there been anyone else who caused a World Tree to grow like Do-woon did...?
Was Do-woon really the only one?
Do-hee wanted to know.
So she planned to dig deeper into PG Corporation.
“You’re really overthinking this.”
“...Huh?”
Snapped out of her thoughts, Do-hee looked at Tae-cheon.
He nodded toward the TV.
“That.”
Following his chin, Do-hee’s gaze moved to the screen.
The news was still running.
The content had changed a little.
It was now showing a remote interview with the S-class hunters.
The interview had Aladin Miller saying she wanted to meet Do-hee, while Maksim Smirnov said he wanted to meet Tae-cheon.
Another subtitle said that this interview was what had led Do-hee and Tae-cheon to join the welcoming delegation.
Reading it, Tae-cheon let out a low chuckle.
“Ah...”
A tired groan escaped Do-hee’s lips.
Then she shook her head.
Tae-cheon said in a mocking tone, “Miller? Smirnov? Hah. Do they seriously think we moved because of those guys?”
“Well, objectively speaking, it might look that way.”
“What a joke. If Do-woon hadn’t been in the welcoming delegation, we wouldn’t have even glanced at it.”
“Exactly.”
Do-hee smiled faintly.
Tae-cheon was right.
Just like he had said that such things were nothing compared to Do-woon’s heart recovering.
If Do-woon hadn’t been in the welcoming delegation, the two of them would never have accepted it, no matter what benefits the government and the association offered.
In other words, Miller and Smirnov’s interviews hadn’t influenced their decision to join the welcoming delegation at all.
To the two of them, that sort of thing was trivial.
“Still...”
Tae-cheon lifted his beer can.
He meant to toast.
“I think this is a pretty good place to start our new beginning as the three of us.”
“I agree.”
Do-hee raised her own beer can and tapped it against the one in Tae-cheon’s hand.
That was right.
Their drinking session was meant to celebrate the new beginning of the three of them.
In that case, there should have been one more person there, of course, but Do-hee hadn’t called Do-woon separately.
She had already been told by Lee Jae-wook and Kim Sang-cheol that Do-woon was currently drinking at a high-end bar.
With the number-one hunter in the country.
She decided she couldn’t interfere with him drinking alone with someone like that.
Of course, Tae-cheon had wanted to call him, saying, “He’s not even drinking with a woman, so what’s the big deal?”
He had even taken out his smartphone and was about to make the call when Do-hee stopped him.
“Wait. Right now, my brother is alone, not with Baekwooncheon.”
“So?”
“Having Han Jin-hwan in his network is important to him. You’re not planning to get in his way, are you?”
After that, he had to accept it and put his phone back down.
And because of that decision, tonight Do-woon would end up receiving a strange request from Han Jin-hwan.
Along with an ominous prediction concerning Han Jin-hwan.