So That Was It (5)
The voice on the other end of the line was calm and professional, but the words hit like a slap.
"No. They were never registered as heroes in the first place. There has never been a hero with those names."
What the hell was that supposed to mean? Han Min-ha had been admitted through the hero descendant extra points system. How could her parents have never been heroes? Maybe I needed to search by their callsigns instead of their real names. But Han Min-ha didn’t know her parents’ callsigns.
"Understood. Thank you."
I hung up and immediately pulled up a search on my phone. As expected, looking up Han Tae-woo and Seo Ji-ah by their real names turned up nothing. Not a single relevant result.
How was this possible? There were only two explanations. Either Han Min-ha had her parents’ names wrong, or the Management Bureau truly had no records. Both were impossible. She wouldn’t misremember her own parents’ names, and there was no such thing as a hero with zero records in the Bureau. The idea that her parents weren’t heroes at all was even more absurd.
The hero descendant bonus. The survivors’ pension. Those two facts alone were ironclad proof that her parents had been heroes.
Which left one extremely slim possibility… the Management Bureau was actively denying the existence of specific heroes.
I knew the Bureau’s laws and regulations inside and out. There was nothing like that on the books. The original story I remembered had been the same. But then a conversation I’d had while eating bulmakchang with the other professors suddenly came back to me.
Secreto.
The secret black-ops division of the Management Bureau that Yoo Hee-won’s father had once belonged to. If Han Min-ha’s parents had been part of Secreto, everything clicked into place. The blank family relations column. The fact that a survivors’ pension was paid out despite them being listed as missing. The Management Bureau personally arranging her academy admission. The records clerk claiming no such heroes had ever been registered. Han Min-ha not knowing even basic details like her parents’ callsigns. It all fit perfectly if they had been heroes in a shadow organization.
Hmm… so that really was it.
In that case, their “disappearance” had probably been a cover for dying during some highly sensitive mission. What kind of mission could have required that level of secrecy? More importantly, did this mean there was no longer any way to look into her parents?
Roughly estimating the timeline, their activity period would have overlapped with Yoo Hee-won’s father’s time in Secreto. Maybe I should casually bring it up with her. Of course, only after confirming the assumption that her parents really had been Secreto agents. I had to be extremely careful. Poking the Advisory Chairman about something like this could provoke an unpredictable reaction.
Secreto… I ran an internet search. Zero results. Not even similar words or tangential hits. The screen simply showed a blank white page. It looked like the term had been deliberately scrubbed from every database.
Who the hell was I supposed to ask about this?
During upper-class lecture hour, Yoo Hee-won kept avoiding my eyes. She looked angry. It was probably because of her earlier slip about Han Min-ha’s parents. People with her personality hated making mistakes. Even when the fault was their own, they tended to lash out at others. She might even be quietly resenting me for not warning her ahead of time.
Still, I couldn’t bring myself to dislike her for it. At least it proved she had a conscience.
Toward the end of class, a student suddenly raised their hand.
“Professor. I have a question.”
“Go ahead.”
“Are you an active-duty hero too, sir?”
“No. I retired before becoming a professor. I’m not active anymore.”
“Then what was your rank? What was your callsign?”
“I was C-class. My callsign was Gray Steel.”
A straightforward, rather tacky name that suited a stubborn, defense-specialized supporter. At the words “C-class,” several students began whispering among themselves.
“Why did you retire? All the other professors are still active.”
“Health reasons.”
“But Professor, there aren’t any videos of your past activities at all. Why is that?”
Of course they’d checked. For academy students, investigating their professors was basic due diligence. Unfortunately for them, I had no public combat footage. That was what happened when you were the most niche of niche heroes—a pure defense specialist.
While other heroes fought flashy battles that drew the media’s eye, I stayed in the backlines quietly maintaining barriers. That was all. When I explained as much, the students whispered again. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I doubted it was complimentary.
Most of these upper-class kids were either golden spoons like Yoo Hee-won or talented children who had inherited their parents’ gifts, like Han Min-ha. Right after the entrance ceremony they might have respected me simply for being a former hero turned professor. But now that they had settled into academy life, how must a retired C-class instructor with no notable achievements look to them?
Still, their opinion of me didn’t matter much. These students would master basic defense whether I taught them with full effort or not. And whether I won their hearts or not had zero impact on my own life.
Yoo Hee-won, however, clearly felt differently.
“Shut your mouths! Stop gossiping behind his back like a bunch of rats!”
Her sharp rebuke made the whispering students flinch and scatter apart. The classroom fell into an awkward silence.
“All right. Time’s up. That’s it for today’s lecture. Good work, everyone.”
The moment I finished speaking, Yoo Hee-won snatched up her bag, shot to her feet, and stormed out of the classroom. The other students hurried after her in the heavy quiet.
Sure, right now a C-class hero who wasn’t even active probably looked pathetic to them. But after graduation they would learn just how difficult it was to retire from C-class with all your limbs intact. The graveyards were full of heroes who had million-view battle compilations and still ended up as corpses that were never recovered.
Then it hit me—who I should ask about Secreto. There was one professor at this academy who held the record for the most media-exposed combat videos in history.
“Professor Yu. Do you have a moment?”
“Professor Kyo? What’s this about? You came all the way to my lecture hall?”
Yu Hyeon-ju, professor of General Combat, looked mildly surprised as she greeted me. True to her subject, she wore a well-fitted black martial arts uniform instead of a drab suit like mine. A thick belt was tied around her waist, but what had once been black was now worn so thin it was nearly white.
The General Combat classroom wasn’t really a classroom at all. It looked more like a mixed martial arts dojo. A hexagonal ring dominated the center of the wide space, surrounded by sandbags and every kind of training equipment imaginable. Freshmen learned basic hand-to-hand combat here. Once they advanced, they moved to the outdoor training grounds to master lethal aura-based attack techniques.
“Did you come to ask about Han Min-ha?”
“Among other things. How is she doing?”
“Same as always. Today her belt came undone and it was chaos.”
“What happened?”
“When the belt slipped, the front of her uniform opened up. I don’t need to spell out the rest, do I?”
I see. So Han Min-ha’s impressive figure, visible even under just a thin cotton t-shirt, had been put on full display. For the male students it must have been a soul-shaking experience.
“Other than that, nothing unusual. She spent the whole session pounding the sandbag again before leaving.”
“I see… Actually, Professor Yu, I came to ask you about something else.”
“Figured as much. Sit down.”
She dragged over two backless plastic chairs.
“What’s on your mind?”
“That thing you mentioned while we were eating bulmakchang last time—Secreto. Could you tell me exactly what it is? I don’t really have anyone else I can ask.”
Professor Yu Hyeon-ju, an A-class hero before she became a professor, had been incredibly famous in her active days. Even now, a quick search would pull up her combat videos, each with well over a million views.
“Secreto? I already told you. Nobody actually knows. We’re all just guessing.”
“Among the people doing the guessing, you’re the only one I know, Professor Yu.”
“Hmm…”
She crossed her arms and studied me for a moment.
“There must be a special reason. I’ve never seen you take this much interest in anything outside your own business.”
“There’s something I absolutely need to confirm.”
I had bypassed all the other B-class and higher professors to come to Yu Hyeon-ju for a reason. She was favorably disposed toward me, kept her mouth shut, and could be trusted. She also wasn’t the type to ignore a homeroom teacher’s sincere efforts to guide a struggling student.
Heo Tae-hyeon, the Information Acquisition and Operations professor, would have been the ideal person for gathering intelligence, but I couldn’t trust him. Spies lied to their own side as easily as they breathed.
“You know that Han Min-ha was admitted through the hero descendant extra points system, right?”
“I do. Her aura is on a completely different level from the others.”
“Both of Han Min-ha’s parents are dead.”
“Both heroes, I assume? Shame. It’s a profession where dying young isn’t exactly surprising.”
“It wasn’t a normal death at a villain’s hands.”
Professor Yu tilted her head slightly. “Then?”
“They were listed as missing. Han Min-ha receives a survivors’ pension and was admitted to the academy through direct arrangement by the Management Bureau.”
“Hmm…”
“Yet the family relations section on her records is completely blank. When I called the Bureau, they told me no heroes by those names had ever been registered.”
“What were the names?”
“Han Tae-woo and Seo Ji-ah.”
“Never heard of them… So you’re saying you think her parents were part of Secreto?”
“Yes.”
Professor Yu stroked her chin and nodded slowly.
“If it’s Secreto, then everything you’ve uncovered lines up perfectly.”
“That’s why I reached that conclusion. But I can’t get any further on my own.”
“What does any of this have to do with you? Do you think there’s a connection between Han Min-ha’s poor performance and her parents’ disappearance? That if you learn the truth, you might find a way to help her?”
“Exactly. I believe the trauma from her parents’ disappearance is the root cause. She fainted watching a video of a hero being killed by a villain during the basic evaluation. She possesses incredibly pure and powerful aura but can’t use it at all. It seems like she’s rejecting the idea of becoming a hero.”
“Then why enroll in the academy and stay this long? If she didn’t want to be a hero she could have just gone to a regular high school.”
“She told me herself that she had nothing else to do. On top of that, right after losing her parents and feeling completely lost, the Management Bureau offered to enroll her. She probably accepted without thinking. As for why she hasn’t dropped out, part of it is because I persuaded her, and part of it is because she’s afraid of being left completely alone if she leaves. That’s my guess.”
“Hmm…”
Professor Yu nodded to herself for a long time before speaking again.
“Your theory about trauma from her parents’ disappearance makes sense. And since she’s receiving the survivors’ pension, she probably doesn’t believe they simply went missing. Yeah. I think you’re right.”
“That’s why I’m looking into it.”
“If her parents were definitely heroes but aren’t registered with the Management Bureau, then Secreto is the only explanation. From what I’ve heard, Secreto agents are treated as if they never existed from the start. And if they operated unregistered, there wouldn’t have been a pension at all.”
“Is there any way to find out more?”
“Honestly? It’s impossible for an ordinary professor to dig into something the Management Bureau is determined to hide. They might even take measures to make you give up. Of course, everything I’m saying is based on the assumption that Secreto actually exists and that Han Min-ha’s parents really were part of it.”
Professor Yu fell silent again. Thanks to my Mental Barrier I didn’t feel anxious, but I still sensed that quite a long time had passed. Then, abruptly, she spoke.
“But it’s not completely impossible.”