Chapter 175

Fortunately, the rain had stopped.

Cha Si-eon and Kwon Mu-seop, dressed in black suits, dug into the wet earth beneath a small tree with shovels.

That tree was Lee Seop’s grave, prepared two years ago without even a body.

Lee Sol and a woman, both dressed in mourning clothes, approached the tree with a small box.

The two carefully placed Lee Seop’s remains among the roots of the tree.

The agents who had come with them silently watched as the grave that had existed only in name finally became complete.

Perhaps it would have been better if it had rained.

When the burial ended, the woman who had been with Lee Sol bowed her head to Cha Si-eon and Kwon Mu-seop.

Then she came before me as well, together with Lee Sol.

“Mister, this is my mom.”

Lee Sol introduced her from beside me, as if afraid I would not recognize her.

Lee Sol’s mother bowed her head to me too.

“Thank you, Agent Seo Do-un. For saving our child twice, and for finding her father too…….”

The woman, who was also Lee Seop’s wife, spoke with a calm face and a steady voice in which grief and relief had been settled.

“Not at all. You must have suffered greatly. Please accept my deepest condolences.”

At my answer, the woman smiled faintly.

Her smiling face resembled Lee Sol’s a great deal.

“Yesterday, I hung our family photo again.”

Family photo?

“The family photo we took with her father.”

“Ah…….”

At Lee Sol’s mother’s added words, I nodded.

The blinding regarding Lee Seop had not been carried out only within the Bureau.

His family too had been restricted from even grieving for the deceased.

“Only now have we finally been able to live and breathe. Thank you very much, Agent.”

Lee Sol’s mother bowed deeply.

Watching that, I could not help but remember again.

Lee Seop’s, no, 「Giant Siren」’s final form.

As I had expected, Lee Seop had been a good father and a good husband.

Why did such a person have to become a monster and remain bound in that strange space?

We still did not know the reason.

---

All agents deployed in the 「Railway Station」 suppression operation underwent detailed examinations.

“Everyone received findings of no abnormalities.”

Cha Si-eon reported the examination results.

At that, Kwon Mu-seop nodded in relief.

“Right. Since the Director is fine too, you should not have any particular problems either. That is a relief.”

And by tremendous fortune, there did not seem to be any particular aftereffects from the revival.

In fact, because there was the precedent of Director Go, the atmosphere had not been one of great worry.

The problem, however, was me.

“But Do-un’s case is different, they say…….”

Kwon Mu-seop muttered as he flipped through the report in front of him.

“I thought you were an extremely lucky kid, but it was not something to look at that simply.”

Kwon Mu-seop’s voice was bitter.

Because he had learned that I had died and come back to life several times.

“Share this only with Director Kim U-in and Analysis Team 5, and put an information lock on it.”

“Yes.”

“Do-un, do not talk about it anywhere else either. Nothing good will come of more people knowing.”

“Yes.”

At Kwon Mu-seop’s request, I nodded as well.

Just as he said, if it became known that, while other people had single-use lives, only mine had been reusable, there would be bad things but no good ones.

Moreover, the woman who had granted me such special treatment had decided not to watch over me anymore.

In this situation, there was no need to deliberately let the people around me know that my life had been of the regenerating variety.

After silencing us, Kwon Mu-seop looked at the report again.

Then, before long, he sighed again.

“By the way, this thing called 「Big Cat」’s older sister…….”

“It may be the same entity Senior Lee Seop met.”

Cha Si-eon quietly cut into Kwon Mu-seop’s muttering.

“Senior Lee Seop also said he was unsure whether the thing helping him was an angel or a person. And the woman Mr. Seo Do-un described also had an appearance that would generally be considered angelic.”

“Well…… Was the thing Do-un saw not blatantly angel-like? If Lee Seop had seen the same thing, I do not think he would have said he was unsure.”

That was true.

The woman I met had spread the pure-white space behind her like wings.

So I had not been confused at all.

Despite the fact that she had worn a form extremely familiar to me, I had been certain at once that she was not human.

“Moreover, what Lee Seop saw was a young man.”

“A young man?”

This was something I had never heard before.

Because the ban on mentioning Lee Seop had been lifted, Kwon Mu-seop answered without hesitation.

“They said he was a young and slender man. What Do-un saw was the form of a woman he originally knew. Sa-ra, Sol, and the author he was handling, was it?”

“Yes.”

“He is close with Sa-ra, and Sol was the objective of this operation. The author? Is she someone you worked with for a long time?”

“In many ways, yes.”

“Then we should assume 「Big Cat」’s older sister imitated the forms of women impressive to Do-un. Seeing as she called herself an ‘older sister,’ she also seems to clearly recognize herself as female.”

“But Manager, according to the information we have so far, the ones ruling the Special Zones are the ‘four living creatures.’ If the cards were split between the ‘three creatures’ and 「Big Cat」’s older sister, then among them, the only one favorable toward humans is 「Big Cat」’s older sister. So the being that gave Senior Lee Seop a hint should also be 「Big Cat」’s older sister for the framework to fit.”

The sound recorded when I escaped from 「Sports Complex」.

The performance seen in 「National Theater」.

And the message Lee Seop left at 「Hotel」.

When all those were combined, Cha Si-eon’s words had a point.

But Kwon Mu-seop shook his head again.

“Lee Seop said that man was kind. But is this woman kind? To me, she seems closer to ferocious.”

“…….”

“And is what we have to understand necessarily the ‘four creatures’? If 「Crow」 is also separate, that framework may not be everything.”

Kwon Mu-seop’s words were right too.

It was still difficult to stitch together the situation with only the information we had secured.

As he flipped through the report again, Kwon Mu-seop suddenly asked me,

“But Do-un. This transcript, did you write it from memory?”

“Pardon?”

“I mean the conversation you had with 「Big Cat」’s older sister. There is quite a lot of it, so how did you write it this specifically?”

“No, I wrote it while listening to the recording on my smartwatch.”

I answered Kwon Mu-seop’s question, puzzled.

As he said, the time I had spent conversing with that woman was quite long.

There was no way I could hear an unrefined spoken conversation once and write it all from memory.

Besides, with the recording perfectly intact, why would I need to do that?

“You wrote it while listening to the recording?”

But Manager Kwon Mu-seop sounded as if he did not understand my words at all.

When I stared blankly at Manager Kwon Mu-seop, Kwon Mu-seop added in a stiff voice,

“In the recording, I could not hear anything except your voice.”

“Pardon?”

“I also could not hear anything except Mr. Seo Do-un’s voice.”

“…….”

Even Cha Si-eon, beside him, supported those words.

What does this mean?

I had listened to the recording for hours in order to write that transcript.

In the recording I heard, the woman’s voice, the voice identical to Author Na Bit’s, was clearly captured.

“Wait a moment.”

I immediately turned on my tablet.

Then I played the recording file saved inside it.

-Are you trying to act like an editor even here?

-I have an occupational disease.

-How wonderful.

Author Na Bit’s voice, heard alternating with my own.

As expected, the woman’s voice could be heard perfectly.

“There must have been an error in the shared file.”

After letting Cha Si-eon and Kwon Mu-seop hear the recording, I spoke.

But the expressions of the two people looking at me became even stranger.

“……?”

When I instead grew puzzled at their reaction, Kwon Mu-seop, who had been silently looking at me, opened his mouth again.

“There is only your voice.”

“Pardon?”

“I can only hear your voice. Is that not the case for you?”

“……You are not joking right now, are you?”

I smiled awkwardly and turned back to Cha Si-eon.

But Team Leader Cha too shook his head with a stiff face.

What is this? It is a joke, right?

I know the two of you can be severe with jokes, but is this not a bit much right now?

“You really cannot hear this?”

I moved the playback bar of the recording file, found only the woman’s voice, and played it again.

-Mm, but among the authors you handled, there was no one like that, was there?

-I wondered what was holding on to something that naturally should have fallen into my hands…….

-For you to make it out of here alive would have plausibility…….

“You really cannot hear this?”

Thinking I might get a little angry if they said this too was a joke, I asked back with a serious face.

Then Cha Si-eon answered with a stiff expression.

“I cannot hear it. There is only faint static, and other than Mr. Seo Do-un’s voice, there is no comprehensible sound.”

“…….”

At Cha Si-eon’s assertion, I felt a strange chill.

Apparently, it was not a joke.

Then what on earth is this?

They cannot hear something I am hearing in real time?

As I sat there, frozen and at a loss for words, Cha Si-eon suddenly took out his own tablet.

“Mr. Seo Do-un, can you perhaps hear this sound too?”

Cha Si-eon played another recording file.

-What is going on here……?

What suddenly came through was none other than my voice.

This was the audio recorded when I came out of 「Sports Complex」.

-Why until now…… could not…….

-……what exactly is …… entity…….

My voice continued intermittently.

Amid confusion, I listened to that sound.

A recording in which, when I had listened to it before, I had heard nothing but my own voice.

But the next moment.

-Would it not be God to you? Since it made you and revived you again and again.

The woman’s laughter-mixed voice could be heard exactly.

At that soft voice, goosebumps rose all over me.