Golden Viper and the Gray Molds (4)
I sucked in a sharp breath, tongue lolling out as I wiped the sweat from my brow. The fire-grilled tripe was merciless.
“Are you alright, Professor Kyo?”
Jin Se-yeong placed a hand on my shoulder, her voice laced with concern.
“Yes…”
“You really don’t look alright…”
The fire-grilled tripe was… how should I put it?
Insanely spicy?
It was so viciously hot that I could barely manage a few pieces before desperately chasing them with cold water.
“This… is truly… intense.”
“I’m so sorry… If I’d known you couldn’t handle spice this strong, I would’ve picked somewhere else…”
Jin Se-yeong’s lips and the area around her mouth were flushed bright red. When she began fidgeting in apology, I forced a smile and shook my head.
“It’s fine. Really. Please, eat as much as you like. I’ll just have rice with the side dishes.”
Professor Yu Hyeon-ju, on the other hand, had been silently devouring the tripe, wraps, and soju like a machine since we sat down. She occasionally cracked dry jokes, but she was never particularly talkative to begin with. Now that she was eating, she had grown even more taciturn.
Both Jin Se-yeong and Yu Hyeon-ju taught physical, combat-oriented subjects, so their appetites were impressive. Their alcohol tolerance was equally formidable.
They had already gone through more than ten bottles of soju between the two of them.
They were completely different from someone like me, who spent his days sitting still, cultivating the mind, and raising defensive barriers.
“By the way, how’s Yoo Hee-won doing?” Yu Hyeon-ju asked after downing a shot of soju as a palate cleanser.
“How do you think?”
“Well… I don’t know about anything else, but being grouped with Han Min-ha must have seriously rubbed her the wrong way.”
“Her observational skills certainly aren’t the best.”
“Of course not. She’s already halfway to becoming a finished product. Her father is an S-rank hero from Secreto, after all.”
Secreto? What was that?
The Advisory Chairman came from there?
I quickly combed through my memories of the original story.
But no matter how hard I searched the hazy recollections, the word Secreto never surfaced.
Had I missed it? Or was it a piece of behind-the-scenes lore that was never directly mentioned?
Or perhaps it had been added in the remake?
“What is Secreto?” I asked.
“Eh? Professor Kyo, you don’t know what Secreto is?”
Jin Se-yeong, who had been dipping a piece of tripe in chili oil, widened her eyes in surprise.
“It’s possible he wouldn’t,” Yu Hyeon-ju said, then began explaining the organization to me.
Secreto was a secret black-ops unit operated by the Management Bureau. They carried out classified missions and covert operations. The Bureau had never officially acknowledged its existence, but those who needed to know, knew—through whispers and rumors.
It was a shadowy group whose true intentions were known only to the heroes who belonged to it. It gave off the same vibe as the old Korean Missile Command—something whose existence people could vaguely guess at, but which had never once been officially confirmed.
“But how do you know the Advisory Chairman came from there? Isn’t it a secret organization?”
“That’s just speculation on our part. There are enough hints to form an outline. Truth is… pretty much all the upper-rank heroes know about it.”
I see.
In the original story, Kyo Suhyeon had been a C-rank hero. It wasn’t that he lacked ability, but rather that he specialized in defensive techniques and had never drawn much attention or achieved any standout feats.
In contrast, the two professors sitting before me were both active high-rank heroes.
When you considered that all academy professors were at least B-rank by default, the very fact that I held a teaching position was quite strange.
Was it because of the protagonist’s supporting cast buff? Or perhaps it was simply the author’s setting error.
Forgetting details from one’s own novel was a common occurrence among rookie writers.
In any case, the lie I had told the children had, by pure coincidence, turned out not to be a lie after all.
Still, there was one problem.
If Yoo Hee-won ever told her father what I had said, things could get messy.
“Dad, our advisor said he was in a secret organization.”
“I was in that secret organization, and I’ve never seen that guy in my life.”
Something like that.
Well, that was a problem for later. Worrying about something that hadn’t even happened yet would do me no good.
“What about that Han Min-ha? Is she going to be okay?”
“Han Min-ha… I’ll have to take things slowly and steadily with her from now on.”
“It probably won’t be easy. In all my years teaching, I’ve never seen a student quite like her.”
“Why? What’s she like?”
“She doesn’t seem to have the faintest idea how to use her body.”
Professor Yu Hyeon-ju was currently teaching the students basic hand-to-hand combat. Most of the children had never thrown a single punch in their lives, so she was starting from absolute fundamentals.
“When Min-ha tries to kick, she loses her balance and falls over by herself.”
“Ah… I see.”
“She sprains her wrist just from hitting the sandbag.”
“Yes…”
“I paired her up for sparring with the clumsiest kid in class, and she took a clean glove to the face and got a nosebleed.”
“Mm… I think I get the picture without hearing any more.”
Even though I had only just taken her on as my student, hearing such stories from another professor was incredibly embarrassing.
Jin Se-yeong pouted her lips and asked, “What could be the problem? Is it because of her body type?”
By “body type,” she clearly meant that eye-catching chest of hers.
Having to carry around something that heavy would certainly affect one’s balance.
However, Basic Defense had absolutely nothing to do with physical build.
Han Min-ha simply couldn’t use her aura at all.
When I explained as much, Yu Hyeon-ju nodded in understanding.
“That could be it. If she hasn’t awakened the ability to manipulate her aura, nothing else will work.”
“But aura has to move on its own. Right now, Han Min-ha can’t even cross that threshold.”
“The basics of aura manipulation is feeling the flow of your own aura… Don’t you do meditation in Basic Defense class?”
“We do. She even managed to create a barrier strong enough to block rubber bullets.”
“Rubber bullets… honestly, that’s nothing. The aura naturally surrounding your body would block most of that anyway.”
“Yes… that’s true.”
Han Min-ha… Just what was the author thinking when he made a girl like her one of the heroines…?
“By the way, Professor Kyo, you haven’t been coughing lately. Have you gotten a lot better?”
“She’s right. At the entrance ceremony, I honestly thought you were going to drop dead.”
When Jin Se-yeong asked, Yu Hyeon-ju chimed in as well.
“It has improved. I don’t really know why, though.”
“Maybe it was one of those mystery illnesses that just disappears on its own for no reason.”
“I hope so.”
My lungs had undergone every test imaginable, yet nothing abnormal had been found. Still, I would cough, and even the slightest overexertion left me short of breath.
I had suspected a neurological issue, but that possibility had been deemed low as well.
In that case, it really might have simply healed itself, just as Jin Se-yeong suggested.
Still, the fact that the coughing had stopped at the exact moment the quest appeared left me uneasy.
What if failing the quest caused all the suppressed coughing to burst out at once and kill me?
Death…
What did death mean for someone who had been possessed in this world?
In all the web novels I had read, I had never once seen a possessed character actually die.
Because the possessed character was always the protagonist.
So did that mean I was truly the protagonist of this remake?
A completely colorless protagonist and a sweet-potato heroine.
Congratulations, author. This work has also failed spectacularly.
The second round was at a coin karaoke bar.
It was perhaps a slightly inappropriate place for three professors from the world’s top hero training academy to visit, but the other two didn’t seem to care in the slightest.
I was exhausted and wanted to return to the dormitory, but there was no convenient transportation back, so I had no choice but to be dragged along into the cramped karaoke room.
Jin Se-yeong was usually a cheerful, energetic person, and that trait shone brightly in the karaoke room. She sat right next to me, draped her arm around my shoulders, and bounced along while singing at the top of her lungs. I ended up pressed flat against the wall like a crushed can.
Muscle weighs more than fat, and since Jin Se-yeong’s entire body was packed with solid muscle, she was incredibly heavy. If I hadn’t raised a barrier to lean against, I might have been knocked over and smothered.
Yu Hyeon-ju was usually quiet, but she wasn’t the type to sit out on an occasion like this. So I awkwardly clapped along and tried to keep the rhythm.
Aigoo, well done, dear professors.
After two hours of enthusiastically singing, the professors finally decided it was time to head back and pulled me to my feet.
A glance at my watch showed it was nearly nine o’clock.
The main gate closed at nine.
Professors could enter after hours, but the process was complicated, so it was better to get back before then.
“We could just fly back. It’d only take a minute,” Jin Se-yeong said, smacking her lips with clear regret. The smell of alcohol wafted from her with every word.
“Why don’t you give it a try? I’m curious how many seconds it would take.”
“Should I? Then I could pack my bags first thing tomorrow morning and head straight to the Management Bureau’s disciplinary committee. That would be perfect.”
“Fly there too.”
Yu Hyeon-ju and Jin Se-yeong burst into loud laughter, as if they had just told the funniest joke in the world. They both seemed pleasantly buzzed and in excellent spirits.
Heroes were not allowed to fly freely without the Management Bureau’s permission—except when deploying for official missions. The shockwaves generated by high-speed flight were powerful enough to cause serious damage to civilians.
If Jin Se-yeong flew at full speed back to the academy from here, every window in the surrounding buildings would probably shatter.
“Let’s go, professors. I’ll drive.”
Since I hadn’t drunk, I took the wheel.
The two professors climbed into the back seat and continued singing loudly all the way back to the academy. The song was some bizarre tune about protecting justice and common sense, with lyrics so absurdly detached from reality that they felt like pure fantasy.
My body felt as heavy as if it had been soaked in water. I barely managed to finish showering.
When I looked in the mirror, the dark circles under my eyes seemed even deeper than they had been that morning.
I had been completely drained.
Someone as gloomy as me inevitably grew exhausted just by being around outgoing people, even if I did nothing at all.
“Ugh…”
The moment I collapsed onto the bed, a groan escaped me involuntarily.
I checked my phone to see if any messages had arrived and discovered that the group chat for my advisory students had changed its name.
After reading it, I let out a low, incredulous chuckle.
