Retire 447

447 Hong Seokyoung’s Detective Agency (2)

It was exactly two days after that conversation that my father finally spoke up.

San Francisco had stabilized to some extent. There were still monsters roaming the city, and some of those trapped in newly formed dungeons had yet to return. The number of casualties was still only an estimate, and no one knew how many people were missing.

But even so, the end was in sight.

This was only possible because it was America. Just as Isabella and Robert had been attached to the U.S. military, and just as my father had once entered dungeons alongside them, the U.S. still operated hunter units. They mostly patrolled deserts or seas, handling dungeons as they appeared.

What happened in San Francisco was bad enough. But there were many densely populated cities around San Francisco. Their goal was to minimize the damage as much as possible.

I couldn’t help but think of twenty years in the future.

Maybe the last place to hold out would be the U.S. The only place that could, really. Unlike Korea, every city had a guild as a base, and even in towns too small to be called cities, there were hunters acting as sheriffs.

But if I remembered what that clock always said, even America eventually fell.

“Teacher, teacher.”

“…What?”

“This drama is really good.”

“……”

“There’s a novel too, but the translation isn’t great. You can read English, right? Then read it in the original.”

“Sure…”

“It’s about a hunter who used to be CIA, telling stories from his days in the field. I thought it might help you!”

“……”

Sunsunji looked at me with sparkling eyes. There was a silent pressure that made me feel like I had to respond.

Taewoo had said something similar before—that the students had all sorts of theories about what this school really was.

I looked at Sunsunji.

“…Thanks. I’ll keep it in mind.”

That must have been what she wanted to hear, because she broke into a radiant smile. It was the first time I’d seen her smile so brightly in the past year.

Wasn’t it Sunsunji who’d once claimed this was Hong Seokyoung’s crime investigation office? Or was it detective? Something with “detective” in it, anyway.

I understood her confusion, and why she was recommending this to me. Hadn’t Seungyeon said something to me and my father too? Taewoo, the one most involved, had kept quiet, so she hadn’t been able to say anything, but honestly, it had been hard for her to keep pretending not to know.

But I didn’t know where to start correcting her, so I just pretended not to notice. Maybe she’d forget about it eventually. I really hoped she would.

Not that I didn’t have an excuse. I was just a civil servant, at best. I’d never done any of the ridiculous spy stuff these kids—especially Sunsunji—seemed to expect!

Of course, Sunsunji couldn’t know that. I just nodded along, hoping this would end soon.

Someone else came to my rescue.

“Sunjin, hi!”

For once, Lee Miseon wasn’t holed up in the director’s office, and she waved at Sunsunji.

“Mind if I borrow your teacher for a bit?”

Sunsunji, who had been in the middle of a long explanation about secret operations gleaned from dramas, games, and movies, finally let me go.

Lee Miseon watched Sunsunji skip off to her friends, smiling with a look that said she found her unbearably cute.

“If only Seungyeon were half as sweet as her…”

“……”

Seungyeon wasn’t as immature as Lee Miseon seemed to think.

But I didn’t think it was my place to say anything, so I just shrugged.

“What did you need me for?”

“There’s something Hunter Hong asked me to look into.”

I frowned slightly. At this point, what would my father have asked Lee Miseon for…?

“He probably asked Daniel the same thing. But with the situation in the U.S.… you know? It was faster to ask me.”

“Is it related to what happened?”

“I think so. I did some digging, but honestly, well…”

Lee Miseon’s expression was complicated.

“What did he want you to find out?”

“About certain dungeons in cities along the west coast of the U.S.”

Dungeons. Plural.

She put emphasis on that word.

She’d said there were some notable commonalities among the dungeons that collapsed in San Francisco, and that she’d look into it further before telling us.

I looked at Lee Miseon’s face. As Seungyeon and Sunsunji had pointed out, she wasn’t used to covert operations, but she did have some experience dealing with people.

Her vague expression told me that what my father had asked her to look into hadn’t turned up anything pleasant.

---

“I was originally tracking the Ark for a different reason.”

My father, after poring over the materials Lee Miseon had given him, began with a sigh.

Before I joined them, my father and Kim Chaemin hadn’t been able to get a clear grasp of how the organization called the Ark operated. It wasn’t due to any lack of skill or effort on their part.

Even Hope didn’t know the exact timeline, but by then, Noah Michel’s Ark and Henry Lehmann’s Atlas were probably already on completely separate paths.

Even before I was moved to the orphanage, I remembered that the atmosphere inside the research lab wasn’t good. I’d overheard researchers whispering about funding issues. If the Ark’s research funds were being handled by another… well, another “department” of the organization, then maybe the rift between Michel and Lehmann went back further than I thought.

Lehmann wasn’t that old himself, but maybe he just didn’t like taking orders from someone younger. Or maybe he just resented having his money taken.

Whatever the reason, the two of them were at odds.

And my father was tracking the Ark—or, as he called it, Atlas, Henry Lehmann’s organization—in search of his missing brother-in-law’s body.

I didn’t know exactly when that brother-in-law—who would have been my uncle—died. But after all this time, the chances of finding him were nil. My father, Isabella, and Robert knew that, too.

I didn’t know what they’d done with the bodies of the dead hunters. I didn’t want to know. But as long as there was a clear target for his anger, my father would have pursued Lehmann, even if the fate of the world wasn’t at stake. To prevent more victims.

“The history of dungeon raids in America is a bit complicated. Do you know why awakened people are attached to the military there?”

“I do!”

Gamble, whose nationality was American, shot her hand up.

“Because of war!”

“Because of their long tradition of fighting for freedom.”

Hong Seokyoung nodded.

“I’m not trying to downplay the U.S. military’s contribution to dungeon raids. But the military’s main defense wasn’t the homeland. Even now, the main force in American dungeon raids isn’t the army—it’s the city guilds.”

My father asked another question.

“Then what do you think the predecessor of these guilds was?”

“…Oh.”

Gamble pursed her lips and let out a short sound of surprise, then hunched her shoulders.

I frowned as well. The idea of guilds protecting cities had a certain romantic appeal, but…

It was, after all, the history of another country, and one they’d rather keep hidden. That’s why it wasn’t well known in Korea, but if you looked into it, it wasn’t hard to find.

“Gangs.”

My father put the materials from Lee Miseon up on the big screen.

“I’m not saying all of them. But quite a few guilds had close ties to local gangs. Some still do.”

“It’s a pretty serious social issue…”

The screen was filled with a list of dungeons. I could see the serial numbers used for dungeons in the U.S. I didn’t know the details, but I could tell they were in Washington, Oregon, and California—states along the West Coast.

Gamble explained hesitantly.

“It’s less of a problem in big cities, but… not every city in America is like that. In smaller towns, where law enforcement is weak, those gangs act as a kind of vigilante force. They’re treated like heroes by the locals and become really popular.”

The screen changed again. This time, it was a map. The locations of dungeons were marked. Several dungeons sparkled along the coast.

The screen changed once more.

About half of the blue dots turned red. The red dots clustered around San Francisco, and the rest…

“These are the dungeons that have broken in the past week.”

“A week… since the chaos in San Francisco?”

It was a staggering number for just one week.

Even more so, given that they were concentrated along the West Coast.

“There’s already talk that dungeons, like earthquakes, are influenced by geography.”

“Like earthquakes?”

“The U.S. West Coast is part of the Ring of Fire.”

Ah. That part.

America wasn’t stupid—if so many dungeon collapses were clustered like this, they’d have noticed. Dungeons were still unexplained, so you couldn’t ignore the possibility of geographical influence. In fact, it made sense to believe there was a close connection. The terrain inside dungeons often resembled the outside.

“But that’s not it, is it?”

If it were that simple, my father wouldn’t look like that.

He nodded silently.

“It’s not a perfect match.”

He sighed.

“I said the origins of American guilds were gangs, right?”

“Yes.”

“Gang crime is closely tied to dungeons. I’m not talking about illegal awakenings. I mean dungeon byproducts and things like that.”

“…You mean the black market?”

“Exactly. And if you just block the gate, no one can get in. The guild name was a great cover. If you said you were managing the gate, no one questioned it.”

And now we were tracking the infighting of some of the world’s most notorious gangs.

My father changed the screen again. Next to the collapsed dungeons, small check marks appeared.

“These are the dungeons that have been used for illegal activities. I recognized a few of the ones that broke, so I checked.”

He shrugged.

Just recognizing a few familiar dungeons had been enough to make him look into it this far? All those years my father spent working with law enforcement in different countries hadn’t been for nothing, it seemed.

Maybe Sunsunji’s excitement about “detective work” wasn’t so far off after all…

“They go all the way to Mexico… Do you think Lehmann used these dungeons for illegal activities?”

Kim Chaemin pointed to a few dungeons stretching below California and asked. My father nodded.

“We’ve seen it ourselves, haven’t we?”

“Huh?”

“In Busan. That dungeon. What was in there?”

“That dungeon…”

Kim Chaemin and I both widened our eyes.

The dungeon under the warehouse in Busan. Noah Michel’s magic. It could cause an explosion powerful enough to destroy the core.