Retire 466
by Cristae466 Cactus Flower (2)
Right after the conquest of the Desert Mole Dungeon.
One hour before Daniel’s in-depth interview with Guild Mimi.
“So.”
“Hm?”
“What exactly did you talk about?”
“Ummm, well…”
Arms folded, I tilted my head from side to side. The longer I hesitated, the narrower the man’s eyes grew. It was a familiar look—the face of someone debating whether or not to smack me. The kind of face you often saw when talking with a childhood friend.
“It’s not that I don’t want to talk about it!” I answered quickly.
“To be honest, I didn’t understand most of it myself!”
“…What?”
“All the important stuff, it just said in human language. It asked who I was, things like that, but that was about it.”
Woo Heejae scrutinized my face, as if trying to judge whether I was lying.
But there was no reason to lie, and even less reason to hide what I’d heard.
Alex Hope met his eyes squarely.
“I just kept doing this.” Alex moved to the side, demonstrating.
A half-healed wound twinged a little. Nothing to worry about. It wasn’t going to start bleeding again. The sensation of absent wings twitching was just a fleeting illusion.
“When I moved, it figured out what I was. That’s all it was checking.”
“Hmm.”
“It asked about the method I used, but—no, not even that. It just confirmed it.”
“So, it used that method…”
“No, it can’t. Different species. There are similarities, but it’s not the same. Like a dog not being able to fly like a bird.”
Alex hesitated for a moment.
“Didn’t I mention this before?”
“You did.”
“Then let’s move on.”
Alex considered what else he needed to explain. Either way, that picky human would just go to Sunbae and get the story out of him, too.
It wasn’t that he didn’t trust me, but more that he couldn’t let things go without checking every detail.
Though, honestly, maybe it was a bit of both.
‘Am I really that untrustworthy?’
I could almost hear Sandra’s voice somewhere…
‘Of course you’re not trustworthy!’
What a faithless world.
“And… oh! That fairy must have been really old.”
“One that came back?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
Alex recalled what the fairy had said.
“No, it didn’t come back.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. It didn’t recognize the Master right away.”
“……”
“It only realized after I told it.”
“But it reacted to the word ‘Savior.’”
“It must have known about him.”
Woo Heejae frowned.
Alex frowned, too.
“So… look, even our great one is called the Savior, right?”
“…Savior.”
“Yeah. From our side, he’s a bastard who should be killed, but think about it from the monster’s perspective.”
Alex puffed out his chest. All that drama-watching had paid off. Sandra would have praised him for it.
Finding the right words still wasn’t easy, but he could tell he was getting better than before.
“To them, he’s a pioneer, someone who finds them new land to live.”
“So there are those who protect him, too?”
“Exactly.”
Alex nodded emphatically.
“It depends on when they returned, but… even if it didn’t know the Master, it wouldn’t have just given up on stopping us. Would you give up on changing a future you wanted to rewrite so badly that you came back from the past?”
“…No. I couldn’t.”
“Right. But it gave up. Cleanly. Even gave us a hint.”
“The brand?”
“Yeah. But I have no idea what that means. The wings… it showed us its wings, so it must be related.”
But that was as far as Alex could follow, and Woo Heejae surely knew it.
Woo Heejae’s frown didn’t relax, but he didn’t contradict him either.
“The brand, huh…”
“That’s the thing,”
Han Taekyung, who’d been flipping through the menu for room service, suddenly chimed in.
Both Woo Heejae and Alex stopped speaking and looked at him. Kim Chaemin, who’d been looking at the menu with Han Taekyung, also looked up, and Hong Seokyeong, munching on snacks he’d brought from somewhere, widened his eyes.
“What… why are you all looking at me like that?”
“Nothing. Mr. Han, you pretend not to listen, but you hear everything, don’t you?”
“I’m in the same room, Sunbae.”
“Should’ve been more careful, then.”
“That’s not something I want to hear from you!”
“Why not? I’m always careful.”
Han Taekyung frowned lightly and glared at Alex, who stuck out his tongue in response.
He wasn’t the one who skipped meetings all the time. Even if he’d been stuck in Sandra’s lab, he’d still attended.
“You’re in no position to talk.”
“Why!”
“Mr. Han, does anything come to mind?”
Annoyingly, Woo Heejae didn’t acknowledge Alex’s efforts. Alex pouted but quieted down.
He had enough sense to realize this much. Woo Heejae would have appreciated it if he’d noticed.
Han Taekyung, too, shot Alex a look, lips pursed. The colored sunglasses hid his eyes, but the flash of gold was hard to miss. If you knew what you were looking for, it was easy to spot.
To Alex Hope, Han Taekyung was a curious human. It was a wonder he was even alive. If Alex had still been more fairy than human, he might have tried to kill him on sight.
But unlike the rotten stench of blood that clung to people like Seminar Henry, Han Taekyung radiated a gentle warmth. It must have been because someone had truly wished for his survival.
“It’s nothing special…”
“Say it anyway. Did that guy leave anything out? Anything the fairy said?”
“I told you everything!”
“No, not really? There was something about you, but I don’t know what it means. But Sunbae or the principal would know, so I’ll leave it at that!”
“Ah, okay…”
Woo Heejae looked at Han Taekyung with a rather cold gaze. Kim Chaemin, on the other hand, burst out laughing beside him.
“Mr. Han is more stubborn than he looks, you know.”
“More stubborn than he looks? He’s exactly as stubborn as he looks.”
Even Hong Seokyeong couldn’t resist chiming in. Han Taekyung shrugged and spoke up.
“I’ve been thinking about this for a while.”
“Yes?”
“You all know there are fairies that look pretty similar, right? Sunbae, everyone?”
“Yeah.”
“Which ones do you see most often?”
“The ones that look like the one we just fought.”
Hong Seokyeong, who had the most experience hunting fairies, answered without hesitation.
“The ones that look like moths or butterflies. The ones with wings.”
“Right. But those wings have patterns, don’t they?”
“The brand?”
“In the past, I just thought that was how they looked… but, Sunbae—”
Han Taekyung looked at Woo Heejae.
“Watching you teach at school…”
“…My classes?”
“That pattern.”
Han Taekyung scratched his head, sounding uncertain.
“Doesn’t it look kind of like a rune?”
Three days later.
Las Vegas.
“Ahem, ah, hello.”
The Cactus Mirage guild office was right in the heart of Las Vegas.
As befitted a guild that owned a dungeon full of expensive plants, the office was nothing short of extravagant. I exchanged greetings with the guild master, who’d just come running out, sweating bullets, after staring at the paintings hanging on the wall as if to show off.
“I-I’m Joseph Grimes, master of Cactus Mirage.”
He was a white man whose body type resembled—well, not the old Oh Hyunwook, but what he might become if he neglected vegetables in favor of meat and alcohol. He looked pitiful, sweating so much, but not enough to actually feel sorry for him.
“I-I’m so sorry. Our guild members failed to manage the dungeon properly and caused you trouble.”
The guild was currently under investigation for corruption related to dungeon management.
The fact that Hong Seokyeong was the victim would be headache enough, and it hadn’t been long since the Okinawa incident. That involved several countries and had become a hot topic even outside the hunter world.
On top of that, America was still on edge after San Francisco. An unreported monster in a frequently visited dungeon—especially a fairy—had been discovered, and Cactus Mirage was in hot water. Those expensive paintings might not be hanging on the wall much longer.
“I’m Hong Seokyeong. Have we met before?”
“Yes, we… we once raided a dungeon together.”
“Really? Which dungeon?”
“The Grand Canyon Deer Dungeon… in 2017…”
“Ah, yes. I think I remember.”
Father smiled brightly, clapping Grimes on the back. Thud. It sounded like someone had punched him.
“Guh!”
“Were you in charge of the mole dungeon back then, too?”
“The m-mole dungeon appeared in 2018…”
“Really? You were pretty thorough in the deer dungeon. Why not in your own dungeon?”
“Haha…”
Grimes forced a smile.
“Well, our guild does manage the Cactus Mirage dungeon, but as you know, hunters aren’t very good at delicate work like harvesting dungeon plants.”
“So?”
“Well, that’s the specialty of mages…”
“And?”
“The mages we contract with enter the dungeon…”
“But the managing guild should go in with them, right?”
“Mages are so picky. They say we get in the way and kick us out… Our guild members only accompany them through the gate, then leave everything to the mages.”
Grimes rubbed his hands together, smiling awkwardly.
Whether that was true or not, he seemed determined to stick to the story that it was the mages’ fault for neglecting dungeon management. Well, it was better than admitting he’d known about the fairies and kept quiet.
Father slung an arm around Grimes’s shoulders. Grimes was broader, but shorter, so he looked half-crushed under Father’s arm.
“Can you really call yourself a hunter, then?”
“Ha… yes… I’m reflecting on it.”
“Daniel! Did you find out who the mages contracted with Cactus Mirage are?”
“Yes. We’ve summoned them all for questioning.”
“None refused?”
“Not yet.”
“Hm. What are they saying?”
“They all claim they’ve never seen a fairy, know nothing about it.”
“They all say that.”
Father turned his gaze back to Grimes. Grimes twisted, trying to escape Father’s grip, but every attempt failed.
Father gripped his shoulder even tighter. I could hear the bones creak.
“What about the dungeon manager?”
“They’re… being questioned.”
“What was their name again?”
“Hailey Lawton… She’s very talented.”
“What good is talent if you can’t manage your own dungeon?”
“I’m sorry!”
“Hm.”
Daniel, too, looked nervous as he spoke.
“We’re investigating Lawton as well. You said you wanted to talk to her, so I brought her in…”
“She’s inside?”
“Yes.”
“Joseph, would you show us the way?”
“Th-this way, please!”
It was different from when he worked at the management office. Back then, at least, he wore a suit. Now, Father looked like a street thug out of an old movie. Or maybe a gangster, since we were in America.
Either way, it worked on Joseph Grimes. Who knew how it would go with Hailey Lawton. According to Daniel, though, Lawton was a veteran hunter, responsible for liaising with the mages. According to Grimes, she hadn’t done a very good job of it.
“Hailey Lawton?”
Father called to the woman standing awkwardly in the guild master’s office. She had brown hair tied back tightly. She held her head high, but the tension in her eyes was obvious.
“……?”
I turned at the tug on my sleeve.
It was Kim Chaemin. He looked me straight in the eye and shook his head slightly, as if to quietly convey something.