Retire 457

457 The World Is Peaceful (4)

In the wake of the recent string of incidents and accidents, there was a single magical word that could explain all mysteries.

San Francisco.

Henry Lehmann.

Now that it was suspected Henry Lehmann had some means of triggering dungeon breaks, pinning the Boston dungeon break on him was no challenge at all. All it took was a few suggestive words, and that was that.

And strictly speaking, was it even a false accusation?

Hadn’t people already suspected the Boston dungeon break was artificial? Just like the Myeong-dong break. In fact, the idea that someone had deliberately triggered a single dungeon in Boston sounded more plausible than what happened in San Francisco.

No, even saying that was ridiculous. But after investigating dozens of dungeons that had appeared and burst simultaneously, it was only natural to start thinking, isn’t it possible? It couldn’t be helped.

Daniel thought so, too.

“Then… how does Hunter Hong fit into this?”

“Oh, I met him once when I was in Australia, and he struck me as a decent hunter. Last year… it was last year, right?”

I chimed in to support my father.

“Yes, last year. You know the Unconquered Dungeon Forum was held in Korea.”

Daniel nodded blankly.

“There was a dungeon even then…”

Ah. So it could be connected like this.

This had nothing to do with Henry Lehmann—or maybe it did. Wasn’t that when Lehmann was working with Michel? Then it did matter.

Instead of answering directly, I just shrugged.

My father shrugged as well, and Hope, lounging nonchalantly, did the same.

It was the kind of farce that would normally elicit a comment, but Daniel chose to keep his mouth shut.

“That’s where our connection began…”

My father said it playfully.

“Who would turn down a scouting offer from the famous Hong Seokyoung?”

Hope jumped in, too.

“We’ve worked together since then.”

I added my own bit.

If Kim Chaemin had been here, she would have burst out laughing, calling us all con artists. And she would have joined in herself.

“Wait, so you knew Boston was Lehmann’s doing? From the forum onward?”

“That’s not it.”

My father shook his head.

“You started to suspect around Boston?”

Hope tilted his head.

“Hope was tracking Lehmann’s trail at the time,” I said, nodding to offer certainty.

“Honestly, we still can’t say for sure it was Lehmann…”

“But he’s the most likely.”

“We can guess what he was doing in that cult village.”

“Maybe developing a way to trigger dungeon breaks…”

“We almost caught Lehmann, but the dungeon broke open right then!”

“Hope was discovered, so we decided to keep him missing for his own protection.”

“I never thought he’d actually die there, though.”

“I really almost did die!”

“But we couldn’t keep things like that forever…”

“…I understand! I get it now!!”

Daniel, finally absorbing the information volleyed back and forth, shouted in exasperation.

We fell silent.

“This… is beyond my authority.”

“Is that so?”

“I’ll need to… I’ll need to report this.”

As if he’d just cleared a dungeon, Daniel steadied his ragged breathing and, with a face on the verge of tears, pleaded with us.

---

Daniel was a smart man. A smart man working for a secretive government agency.

He’d been swept up in our conversation, but once he regained his composure, he’d fill in the blanks himself. Whether his conclusions were right or wrong.

I left it at that. I didn’t want to say that a good outcome made everything else irrelevant, but anything related to Daniel was a minor detail for now.

What mattered was this:

“We’re going to America.”

The master of Guild Mimi made the declaration.

Whatever happened behind the scenes, I didn’t know. We’d done what we could, prepared for what was to come, and planned to try to prevent whatever would happen next.

America had generously provided a private jet. To be precise, it was a military plane. There were too many people who would recognize Hope’s face, so it was just as well we could avoid attention. The Boston dungeon break, for all its chaos, hadn’t caused much damage. The bizarre-looking monsters had drawn attention, and Hope’s strange disappearance had spawned conspiracy theories. His looks didn’t help. Seeing a fandom form around a dead hunter made me shake my head at the oddities of modern society.

Isn’t it a problem that the world keeps going like this? If Noah Michel’s goal had been to cleanse or revolutionize human society, rather than unleashing monsters, I might have joined her….

Anyway, thanks to all this, Hope was heavily disguised. Hat, sunglasses, even a mask. But that distinctive aura of his never faded. Anyone who knew Alex Hope would recognize him instantly. That was exactly what we were hoping for.

We were waiting for either the now-silent Noah Michel or Henry Lehmann to make a move.

“I always swore that the next time I set foot in America, it’d be because of a copyright contract for Chasey…”

Surprisingly, Han Taekyung followed along without protest. He grumbled about cats, but that was just for show.

See? No one was paying him any mind.

Perhaps feeling neglected, Han Taekyung let out a series of exaggerated sighs.

“But shouldn’t someone stay behind at the school?”

“……”

“Can’t I get a little attention here?”

“Why?”

Kim Chaemin seemed to be considering what he meant by that, and Han Taekyung, uncharacteristically hesitant, finally answered.

“…The school will be empty.”

He’d skipped out on every guild meeting, claiming his eyes would fall out from all the staring, but he always hit the core issues.

“You’re taking even the juniors. Is that okay? Someone could attack the school, you know?”

Of course, we were well aware of the risk Han Taekyung pointed out.

Hope’s parents were famous hunters who ran their own guild. Instead of attacking them, Michel or Lehmann could target the now-vacant school, left behind by ‘Hong Seokyoung’ and his crew.

“You think I did nothing?”

Kim Chaemin snorted, looking offended.

Han Taekyung nodded, “Ah, so that’s why the school’s like that?”

“…What do you mean by that?”

“It’s been getting shinier and shinier, so I thought maybe Ms. Kim had finally decided to bring down the school.”

“If you thought that, shouldn’t you have told the principal?”

“I’ll do that next time!”

My father realized that any further conversation would only frustrate him, so he wisely kept quiet.

Han Taekyung, grinning slyly, pushed up his sunglasses. I glanced from him to Hope. Those sunglasses were Han Taekyung’s, not Gamble’s as I’d thought.

“Come on, I could tell Ms. Kim cast a spell. I’ve got eyes, you know. I can recognize her magic after all this time.”

“Oh, thanks for noticing,” Kim Chaemin replied, her tone dry.

“But you said we might go into a dungeon. Even for you, Ms. Kim, it’s hard to respond from inside a dungeon, isn’t it?”

“The school isn’t completely empty. There’s this hunter, too… Anyway, if you were that worried, you should’ve checked before we left.”

“I mean, I didn’t think everyone would actually go!”

Han Taekyung protested, for once with genuine feeling.

I watched him quietly.

Closed my eyes.

Opened them again.

I looked around.

“Who told Mr. Han about our decision at the meeting?”

“……”

No one raised their hand.

Everyone stared at the ceiling, the floor, or their own hands, pretending to be distracted. I nodded at Han Taekyung.

“Guild Mimi is going to America, all of us.”

“That’s too late, senior!!”

“Well, you should have come to the meetings. Not that it matters now, you probably already know all the important stuff.”

“It’s different, you know. There’s a difference between knowing something vaguely and being told officially.”

“What’s the difference?”

“The workload.”

“…Mr. Han. You’re not hoping Mr. Wu will give you less work just because of that, are you?”

There was a strange undertone to Kim Chaemin’s voice.

I hadn’t been insulted, but somehow I felt insulted anyway.

Han Taekyung must have felt the same, because he opened and closed his mouth like a goldfish before finally squawking,

“Anyway, the school!”

“Besides my magic…”

“My mother- and father-in-law have agreed to stay.”

My father, enjoying this ridiculous farce, spoke up.

“So don’t worry about Eunyoung. Did you really think I’d leave the kids with no backup?”

“Of course not! I totally trusted you! Hahaha!”

He really is an unfathomable person.

I watched Han Taekyung start to make a fuss, then turned to look out the window. For ages, all I’d seen was endless ocean, but now land and the bustle of a city came into view.

America.

There was no grand plan. I’d gone over the information Daniel had dug up in America, but…

Well. If we could have figured anything out in that short time, we wouldn’t be struggling like this.

If they’re going to fight among themselves, I wish they’d hurry up and destroy each other.

In the future—in other words, before I came to this timeline—none of this had happened. Maybe Noah Michel and Henry Lehmann fought in that time, too, but not with such open chaos. What had changed? Alex Hope’s death?

The balance of three has always held true in history. When one dies, the other two are destined to fight.

Since I first woke up in the past in Myeong-dong, so much had changed. Looking back, I don’t think I ever did anything with grand intent.

Mostly, I was just scrambling to handle whatever was right in front of me.

And yet, here we were.

It all started with saving a handful of children.

How absurd, how unbelievable.

Changing twenty years of history hadn’t been hard. All it took was a single, small flap of a butterfly’s wings that hadn’t existed before. I’d done it thinking of my sister, who always grew sharp in the spring, and my father, who grew melancholy.

But if you look at it another way, the apocalypse twenty years from now hinged on the lives of just a few children.

Even living through time in such a strange way, there were still so many things in the world I didn’t know.

Slowly, the altitude of the military plane dropped. What would happen down there? What were Noah Michel and Henry Lehmann doing right now?

As my thoughts tangled in confusion about what lay ahead—

We arrived in America.

Would this be the land of opportunity, or…?

Bzzzzzz.

The moment we landed, my phone rang. A call. From Gamble, who’d stayed behind in Korea.

“What is it?”

Surely no one had already tried to attack Hope’s parents or the school?

No, if that were the case, the call would have come from Lee Miseon, not Gamble.

—…Since the San Francisco incident, I gave up on everything else and focused on that watch.

I looked at my bare wrist.

“Yes. And?”

—The thing in question… I’ll send it, so check it.

“You cracked it?”

—…Just.

“Just?”

—Check for yourself…

He could have boasted about his skills or asked for a bonus, but Gamble spoke in a low, subdued voice, without a hint of a joke.

—Be careful.