Chapter 212

"We've been around most of it by now."

Cha Do-hyeon glanced at Yeon-woo in the passenger seat and tapped the steering wheel.

"Nowhere else you want to go?"

"If, not content with stopping at a uniform shop and buying the uniform of a school I will never attend, we also stopped at a dainty pastel-toned confectionery full of couples and tasted mousse cake and fruit tart besides, then I believe we have been everywhere there is to go."

"I keep telling you, between my sunglasses and your watch, people can't think anything strange of us."

"That is not the important point."

Yeon-woo went on placidly as he fastened his seatbelt.

"The very fact that I went to such places together with you, Mr. Cha Do-hyeon, is a heavy blow in itself."

"You dislike me more than you let on, don't you?"

"Who can say."

If only you had your memories, you would have understood how I feel.

'To think I would end up going to a place like that with a bastard who has seen me at my every worst.'

Ah, come to think of it, it was not as though he had never been.

'We did go once, with that one fellow tagging along.'

Cha Do-hyeon had not liked desserts, and Yeon-woo was the sort not to mind what kind of food it was so long as the quality was good, and that friend had been a fellow who was mad for desserts, which was what had made it possible.

"What exactly do I look like to you?"

"Huh? A Dokkaebi that's good at imitating a person?"

"Is it not rather you who dislikes me?"

"No, what's this all of a sudden."

It seemed that in Cha Do-hyeon's eyes Yeon-woo looked like a 'Dokkaebi' itself, ambiguous in both sex and identity. This from a fellow who would have died before taking an ordinary male high school student of this appearance to such places.

'An internet café at most, probably….'

Yeon-woo's gaze rolled quietly aside.

"……."

A place he wanted to go came to mind.

"I am curious about the neighborhood where you grew up, Mr. Cha Do-hyeon."

"Hm?"

"The area, the school, the buildings. Anything is fine."

Yeon-woo added flatly,

"I have become curious to investigate what sort of environment raised a person as distinctive as you."

"That's quite the grand undertaking."

Cha Do-hyeon huffed a laugh as if dumbfounded.

"So you don't outright hate me after all? Curiosity about the Subject called 'Cha Do-hyeon'?"

"Something like that."

"If you wish to make a pilgrimage to the holy ground where a great actor spent his childhood, then of course I must gladly escort you. It isn't a neighborhood with anything special about it, but, well, it isn't that far from here either."

"Thank you for permitting it."

He did not find Yeon-woo's 'curiosity' strange. Taking an interest in a 'Subject' he had been stuck to all day was a natural thing for a Dokkaebi, and generally a supernatural being's interest,

'must be because it soon leads to analysis.'

He understood, since he too would probably want to investigate the habits, homeland, and preferences of a friendly alien if he ran into one. He had felt much the same when he first encountered the game called Hoone.

"Then shall we get moving~"

Without a shred of suspicion, Cha Do-hyeon cheerfully pressed the accelerator.

"It being evening, there'll be even fewer people around, I'd think."

"In that case it will be all the more comfortable to move about."

Going around while fretting that he might unwittingly harm someone, and perhaps his mental age factoring in on top of that. No matter how perfectly the Core kept his body in top condition, the fatigue ran heavy.

As the sedan left the bustling district and turned onto a somewhat quiet, familiar road on the city's outskirts, Yeon-woo stared steadily at the scenery sweeping past outside the window.

"……."

Yeon-woo, who had been silent a long while, broke the stillness and asked,

"Could you tell me what sort of place it is?"

For this 'Cha Do-hyeon' might have lived through a different span of time than the one he knew.

The reason Yeon-woo had gone out of his way to point at Cha Do-hyeon's hometown was that he was curious about his own family, or his friends, who might remain there. With luck he might at least be able to look for some trace of them.

At those words of Yeon-woo's, Cha Do-hyeon rolled his eyes and said dryly,

"Ordinary, I suppose you'd call it."

"The explanation is vague."

"Well, I don't know whether saying 'ordinary' to you, General Manager, will give you any sense of it~."

Cha Do-hyeon shrugged and added to the explanation.

"It's a quiet residential complex where comfortable middle-class households live, along with people well enough off to keep the family line from petering out."

He turned the wheel smoothly and went on.

"The neighborhood itself is decent to live in. There's a reasonably big supermarket right in front of the complex, and old laundries that regulars go to are tucked into every alley. But the infrastructure's iffy compared to how hot the parents are about education…."

"Is the zeal for education high?"

"Once people can afford to live, lining their own kid up against other people's kids becomes every parent's dearest wish."

In that voice, a faint malice toward the existence called 'parents' could be felt.

"It's a neighborhood off in a corner, where you have to take a car or a bus out toward the busy district to find a cram-school strip or anything decent to do. Calling it a wealthy district is a stretch, but it's got nothing to be ashamed of either… that kind of feel?"

Yeon-woo, his head resting against the window, let out a breath of relief inwardly.

A residential zone steeped in upper-middle-class ease, the modest alley shops that had handled household appliances and daily necessities, and even the coordinates of the main road where he had had to wait for a bus every single day to get to the cram-school strip.

'A description that lines up with the neighborhood of the family home in my memory.'

Fortunately, the world this Cha Do-hyeon had lived in seemed to be turning in the same orbit as the world before the human Lee Yeon-woo was taxidermied and vanished.

'With luck,'

if only the very smallest bit of luck were with him.

'Might I not be able to confirm, even from a distance, that Father is living an ordinary life? Perhaps my older brothers, or the youngest, too… five whole years have passed from the time I knew, so I cannot be certain.'

They might have moved, but he did not think his father would have sold that house. He was a man with an attachment to a place, so perhaps even now he was still staying there.

"What."

Cha Do-hyeon asked bluntly.

"Something in there catching your interest?"

"It sounds peaceful."

There would have been disturbances, and accidents too.

"It would not have been a bad place to live among others."

"……."

Cha Do-hyeon answered a beat late.

"It was that sort of place."

Then he asked,

"Nothing more specific you especially want to see?"

"Is the school you attended there as well, Mr. Cha Do-hyeon?"

"Of course it is, that's right near the residential complex."

"I am curious about that school."

"Is there a reason?"

"No."

He was simply curious about Cha Do-hyeon's school days without 'Lee Yeon-woo' in them.

"……."

"……."

"Then don't you want to try the uniform on."

"Have you lost your mind?"

"Ah, come on, just once."

***

Buried under statute books and stacks of written statements, another day drew to its close.

A briefcase in one hand, in the other a plastic bag holding modest packaged side dishes. It was a heavy walk home from work, no different from any other. Ever since the children had moved out, his hours seemed to keep getting later.

'How are they all getting on.'

He thought about calling, then presently gave it up.

"……."

He simply did not have the energy for it.

He turned into the alley, and it was the moment he was passing near the peaceful residential complex where my children had grown up, and where many people were living even now. The man's stride halted dead.

SSSHHHH—….

"……."

A disquieting energy could be felt.

'…In this neighborhood?'

It was not on the level of a simple vengeful spirit or small fry.

An immense caliber capable of twisting the very providence of the world, and the smell of a bloody Labyrinth. It had been wrapped and hidden under a layer of something still more immense and solid, but not enough to deceive the man's sense for such energies.

For he was especially sensitive to 'disquieting beings.'

"…Where…."

That immense calamity was wavering in a third-floor classroom of the nearby school, sunk in darkness.

***

The man set foot inside the school gate.

The campus after sundown had been robbed of warmth and looked like a tomb built of concrete. Perhaps because the streetlights cut off abruptly at the entrance to the field, the school building looked in its entirety like a mass of shadow.

Amid the smell of an ordinary school, another scent could be caught.

'Upward….'

He climbed the stairs.

'Growing thicker.'

A disquiet of arrogant, overwhelming mass filled the corridor.

It was not a rough power. If anything it was quiet, careful, as though feeling its way one thing at a time. It was a touch so faint that a man not unusually sensitive to disquieting beings would not have detected it.

Setting foot at last in the third-floor corridor, the man slowly tilted his head.

"……."

He moved his feet and opened the door of the one classroom his instinct pointed to. Presently the man's gaze came to rest at the center of that classroom.

There sat a single youth in a school uniform.

"……?"

Hair settled neatly. Not a mote of dust on his clothes. Eyes fixed on the blackboard without a hint of disarray. By appearance alone he looked like nothing more than a model student who had stayed late into the night.

'Is it human?'

That was the first question that came to mind.

The being before him wore a perfectly human form. But from the moment that question arose, he could tell that in fact it was not. The jet-black shadow wavering at the student's feet came into view.

'Not human.'

It was a 'something' that imitated a human so extremely well it could deceive even him.

"Child."

In a dry voice the man called to the 'student.'

"What are you doing, staying at school until this hour."

"……."

Their gazes met.

"……."

The insides of the 'student's' eyes, with the moonlight at his back, were bright as the sun.

What was it thinking? Or was it merely staring? Holding its gaze fixed on him and keeping silent for a while, the thing answered with a mouth that softly drew an arc.

"My self-study ran a little long."

It was a neat, softly measured way of speaking.

The thing rose from its seat. In a stillness where not even the sound of a chair scraping back arose, the 'student' gave the man a light silent bow in correct posture.

"I didn't know anyone else would come at this hour."

"That happens."

The thing's voice was transparent, and its enunciation was precise as an announcer's, without a hair's breadth of error.

'It doesn't breathe.'

Its chest rose and fell minutely, but that did not look like a respiratory process demanding oxygen. It was likewise doubtful whether that perfectly processed voice came from 'vocal cords' at all.

"But isn't it rather too late?"

The being before him had observed humans for a very long time, learned them, and was outputting a thoroughly 'correct human form.' Which was precisely why its inhumanity stood out all the more.

"What were you studying so hard?"

"I found Korean language difficult."

"So did I."

SLIDE,

letting the object within slip down, the man stepped into the classroom.

"I find it hard to understand what people say. The words of dead people especially."

RUSTLE. The plastic bag swayed minutely, but the man's right hand already gripped the knife handle hidden in his sleeve. Above the uniform's collar, the nape of the 'student's' neck lay exposed, pale in the moonlight.

'About four paces….'

If that monster had taken on so elaborate a Mimicry in order to hunt humans, the man was prepared to carve that smooth neck out cleanly in an instant.

And it seemed the 'student' had probably noticed as much.

"So do I."

No, the two of them had known each other's inner minds from long before. Neither had deceived the other in anything.

"I was reviewing things that have passed."

The 'student' answered with a glance at the blackboard.

In a fleeting moment, as the angle of the light shifted, a golden glow wavered behind the 'student's' black eyes. At the same time the jet-black shadow that began at its feet writhed like a living creature and climbed the legs of the desk.

'…Inside the eyes, still the sun….'

Was it connected to Black Magic, perhaps? A suffocating pressure filled the classroom.

"Is that so?"

The man went on unruffled.

"But the world these days is a fearsome place, you know."

Even as the air on every side hardened and the educational posters on the walls faded in the disquieting energy, a courteous smile still hung on the 'student's' face.

"Why don't you pack up quickly and go home."

"I came out to see a friend for the first time in a long while."

"Your parents will worry."

"Sir."

A perfect smile, measured as if with a ruler, without the slightest tremor or fluster.

"You mean to harm me."

"Who's to say."

"Why?"

"That too, who's to say…."

The man tilted the blade in his hand at an angle.

"The world's a fearsome place."

He merely repeated what he had said before.

"Sometimes those without malice harm people too."

"Which is why one learns."

Presently the 'student' curved his eyes thin as a fox's and smiled.

"In order not to harm."

In that instant the pressure vanished like a lie.

"……."

"So please do not guard against me, and do not harm me, merely for the reason that I am dangerous."

The pale face came a step closer.

"Do people not kill far too many things on the mere possibility of danger? Livestock that have fallen ill, wild dogs that have not been tamed, even unknown creatures they have never once held a conversation with, people set about killing them all. Merely for human convenience."

To the man, those words sounded truly strange.

"Did you learn that at school?"

"Have you no thought of holding a conversation with me?"

"I'm afraid you might harm me if I did."

"So you are a coward."

The thing laughed low.

"To trample a possibility underfoot, what a shallow and cowardly evasion that is."

"You've quite the gift of speech."

"How do you do."

The youthful face whispers.

"My name is 'Lee Yeon-woo.'"

It speaks its own name,

"Prosecutor Lee Yeon-ho."

and calls mine.

"Aren't our names rather similar?"

"So they are. Who gave you yours?"

Who had given a human name to this disquieting being?

"……."

"……."

For a while the thing said nothing.

***

For a while Yeon-woo could say nothing.

"……."

Who had given it to him?

"…I am not sure."

The one who took me in without even changing the name given by birth parents whose faces I never knew, settling only its meaning anew, was you. A poor excuse for a father by the name of Lee Yeon-ho.

"Someone who wanted to define the existence that is me must have given it."

"And you're not curious who that person is?"

"What I am curious about right now is something else."

It was nothing much, but,

"Did you have a good day?"

At that, Lee Yeon-ho shut his mouth tight.

"You cannot answer."

"I'm not sure myself, son."

"That is unfortunate."

But there was nothing else he wanted to ask.

'Now that things have already come to this, what would change by asking?'

Yeon-woo simply wanted to know whether, in a world without me, everyone really was living just fine. And whether that left me any corner in which to grieve and to resent.

"Then let us go through them one by one."

"Through what."

"Did you sleep soundly and wake rested?"

"Today, probably."

"It rained. Did you have an umbrella with you?"

"I was lucky."

"Was the side dish you like still left at the shop you stopped by?"

Because the you I knew often woke in the middle of the night, was quietly unlucky and never packed things to suit the weather, and, getting off work late, missed the side dish he liked time after time on the way home.

Even so, there was a reason he had gone out of his way to ask like this.

"A good smell is coming from the bag you are holding."

"Seems your taste is similar to mine…."

"It's good, buckwheat jelly salad."

If he resented him, could they become family again?

"So I hope that today, too, was a good day."

And if he could call you 'Father' once more because of it, he would truly be glad.

***

'…Setting that aside, the fact that even this gentleman is an Artist is something of a shock.'

[Hello?]

'It would have been convenient to have someone who could tell me about the situation I am in.'

He wished someone would lay it out for him in a clear, orderly list: the concrete changes between when he was there and when he was not, and the truths that had existed all along and that he alone had not known.