Chapter 213

BANG!!!

The classroom door was flung roughly open.

"—Aigoo, elder, stop!! Really, just a moment, stop!!"

It was Cha Do-hyeon, back from smoking a cigarette on the school roof.

"This one isn't a dangerous bastard! He's a native Dokkaebi whose identity is vouched for by Baeksan and the Sensitivity Bureau!"

"A native Dokkaebi?"

"He hasn't been born long, so he doesn't know the world humans live in well. It's just that the nest itself is such a disquieting place. This fellow himself is no problem."

Baeksan's guarantee.

At that worldly and unmistakable binding force, Lee Yeon-ho once again looked carefully over the 'student,' who still stood beside the desk gazing quietly at him.

"……."

Lee Yeon-ho slowly opened his mouth.

"…So it isn't a calamity come to harm humans."

RUSTLE. He silently hitched up the bag of side dishes.

"The power it holds looks off the standard scale. The thick smell of blood I'll grant, but seeing as it even smells of the night sky, it seems to have a connection to Black Magic as well."

"A dog's nose, as expected."

"And even so, Baeksan and the Sensitivity Bureau vouch for its identity?"

"You can see for yourself, can't you."

Cha Do-hyeon took the young Dokkaebi by the shoulders and stood him out in front of himself.

"Look at the face. Unless a man has a nose as good as yours, elder, who would ever think this was a disquieting being? See the watch here? This is a gift Baeksan handed over directly. You think they'd give a thing like this to a wicked Dokkaebi?"

When the man took his wrist and waved it about, the Dokkaebi, who had been doing nothing but blinking, said to Cha Do-hyeon,

"Would you not let go?"

"See, what a well-behaved Dokkaebi."

"Do you require a beating?"

"That one wasn't so well-behaved."

Watching the spectacle, Lee Yeon-ho blinked.

"Seems there's a different bastard here who isn't well-behaved."

"Are you taking the side of a Dokkaebi you've only just met? I did the mediating here, and now I'm hurt?"

"I can see it is making an effort to confine itself within the frame of a 'human.' That much is certainly hard to call a calamity. It means it has the minimum self-restraint not to cause trouble in outside society."

It did not seem to be a bastard who would bring the reek of blood down on this neighborhood.

"I ought to be getting home."

Lee Yeon-ho was too worn out to grow angry over its mere existence. Adjusting his grip on the briefcase and the plastic bag once more, he looked at the young Dokkaebi again.

"Lee Yeon-woo, you said."

"Thank you for remembering."

"If you're going to imitate a human, do it a bit more convincingly."

"Was it very lacking?"

"Most bastards would be fooled, but it's not as though I'm the only bastard with a keen sense for these energies…."

Rolling his eyes dryly, Lee Yeon-ho muttered,

"Then again, if Baeksan or the Sensitivity Bureau are attached to it, no doubt it'll be treated as a protected species well enough."

Lee Yeon-ho rummaged in the bag and held out a pack of buckwheat jelly salad.

"Want to eat this?"

"Thank you for the gift."

"I'm giving it so you'll play nicely and then go on home."

Without a trace of lingering he turned and left the classroom.

"Get along with your friend."

CLACK,

the classroom door closed.

"……."

"…Oh."

Cha Do-hyeon turned to look at Yeon-woo.

"Apparently we're friends."

"I understand the agreement made at the hotel ended when you checked out."

"How about a contract extension."

"Apart from a little convenience, there is nothing good in it."

"Truly cold-hearted."

Sensing that the presence had gone well away, Yeon-woo asked,

"Are you well acquainted with that gentleman?"

"Naturally, Artists living in the same neighborhood tend to know each other by face. Since the way we see things and the world we live in are so peculiar, unless you deliberately avoid each other, you're bound to run into everyone in the end."

Cha Do-hyeon let out an exaggerated sigh of relief and leaned against the window.

"Even in a neighborhood like this with no big incidents or accidents, supernatural Disasters show up."

"'Count Dracula,' for instance…."

"No, that one's too big a size. To begin with, what Korea calls a Dokkaebi usually means 'a Labyrinth with a self,' and there's no way beings like that are lying about in abundance. Your hotel is the exceptional case."

Confirming through the window that Lee Yeon-ho was moving off, Cha Do-hyeon went on.

"Not every Labyrinth is refined like that. Usually they're no more than a phenomenon, or only an emotion is left of them, or they remain in a shape closer to a monster or a ghost."

"Can such things be called 'Labyrinths' as well?"

"From ordinary people's standpoint it doesn't change that they're a serious Disaster, does it?"

Straightening up, Cha Do-hyeon went on.

"For reference, that mister can crack a Labyrinth's skull open with a statute book."

"Oh, that is a fact I did not know."

"You could at least put on a show of being surprised."

"Am I not doing so?"

So this sounds like empty words, does it?

'Truly a world gone mad.'

The Lee Yeon-ho in his memory had been a threadbare working man living because he happened to have been born. Quite apart from stamina or muscle, he was a man forever without energy, so these words of Cha Do-hyeon's came as a great surprise.

"Is he strong?"

"Right, from our General Manager's standpoint, who wouldn't look weak."

"That was not the sense in which I asked."

"How should I put it…."

Cha Do-hyeon unwrapped a lollipop into his mouth and went on.

"Most of this neighborhood's public order is handled by that mister."

"A sort of Vigilante Corps?"

It was a thing with no sense of reality to it.

"He did not look it."

"If you ranked him by combat ability I couldn't say how he'd place, but his nose is genuinely good. Whatever else, he can smell a Dokkaebi unbelievably well."

CRUNCH,

the sound of the candy breaking could be heard.

"Though I didn't know that included native Dokkaebi. We call them Dokkaebi with the same word, but practically speaking they're almost entirely different beings, so I never thought there'd be an overlap."

"Could it have been my partner's smell?"

"Could be that too."

"Aha…."

Pretend otherwise as he might, his head was in a tangle.

"……."

Yeon-woo looked down wordlessly at the pack of buckwheat jelly salad.

The retreating back of the father who, even while guarding against him as nothing more than 'a monster fairly good at imitating a human,' had handed over the side dish he used to like, left Yeon-woo's chest a little tight.

Even though I had already known it was a world without me.

'Why should so much have changed just because I alone am gone.'

Or perhaps I alone was the one who never knew, and it stings.

"Let us head back now."

"Shall we?"

"I had better change clothes before Coco takes offense."

"That one is a bit frightening."

Yeon-woo could vaguely guess.

'The blow will be considerable.'

There was a great difference between merely having known a thing and coming to experience it directly.

***

"Excuse me,"

which was why Yeon-woo asked boldly the moment he got into the car.

"So when do we go to the psychiatrist?"

"Do you have some kind of grudge involving hospitals?"

"I have merely been faithful to the purpose of the outing."

But was a psychiatrist not there precisely for times like this?

'And it is not as though the appointment has not been made.'

He could not lay out the whole situation, but it would surely help more than this.

This was no longer the time when he was holed up alone in the hotel, struggling among Monster Guests devoid of human sensibility. Now that there were plenty of people to help, there was not the least speck of reason to eat himself up alone.

'Assuming, of course, that it is a proper psychiatrist….'

He suddenly grows curious.

"……."

What was 'ordinary' in the Gaps?

***

"Regrettably, there is no such thing to be had."

"I see."

"The 'psychiatric hospitals' and 'counseling centers' that exist in the Gaps have no fixed standard. Cases with a related license are exceedingly rare, and even those find it hard to be of practical use in the Gaps."

Baek Mu-jin set down his teacup and added placidly,

"Forgeries are everywhere."

"I came all this long way trusting my Guest."

"Do not look at me with such distrustful eyes."

"I would ask for further explanation."

"First of all, you have two options."

He went on,

"One. Tell Seon-hae it was 'a good experience' and do not actually receive counseling."

"That feels like deceiving Director Lee Seon-hae's goodwill, which I do not welcome."

"Two. Choose one of 'psychiatry' or 'psychology' and receive 'treatment.'"

"Aha."

Yeon-woo, seated on the sofa opposite, curved his eyes in a smile.

"Certainly the two are different concepts, including in how the treatment proceeds."

Psychiatry was strictly 'medicine that treats the brain and the body,' while the psychology applied in counseling was 'a science that studies the mind and behavior.' The former generally used drugs; the latter aided healing through counseling.

"So there is a choice?"

"I arranged the meeting because that child Seon-hae insisted, but if one receives that kind of help in the Gaps, the purpose is one of two. Helping you remain outside altogether, or deciding on a direction to move forward in together with you."

"In the latter case it would be hard to call it wholly the direction Director Lee Seon-hae hoped for."

"And yet you can hardly receive the help of an ordinary psychiatrist, can you."

Baek Mu-jin stroked his chin and added,

"In the Gaps, psychiatry and the counseling center are used as the same concept. In the end they let you govern your reason and your heart, let you decide the world you will live in, and devise the method for it together with you."

He spoke in his characteristic low voice.

"You do not look to me like a subject in need of treatment."

"I can only be grateful that you view me so generously."

Though I am already fairly certain I am not in my right mind.

'I do not know specifically what has gone wrong or how, but since I have lived among crazy bastards without feeling any sense of crisis, I am probably mad, yes.'

Baek Mu-jin, with no way of knowing Yeon-woo's inner thoughts, went on.

"If you insist on taking 'a person' as your standard, I will not stop you. The one I have called is capable enough, so in the course of conversation you may well learn what an 'ordinary person' is."

"You truly do seem to see me as a strong being."

"Even without me, a great many people looking at your present situation would call it considerably deformed. Anyone seeing one who regards himself as a lowly creature and shaves away his own flesh to look like one would voice that same impression."

"I understand."

Nor did Yeon-woo particularly intend, at this late stage, to explain at tedious length that 'up until five years ago I really was human.' He could not handle so carelessly a matter on which the lives of many people, Cha Do-hyeon among them, hung.

In the end, if I alone keep my mouth shut and live, they all live peacefully of their own accord, do they not.

"……."

"Why are you taking off your glasses?"

"I believe I briefly had an unhealthy thought."

"You need not demonstrate quite that far. I have already called the doctor."

"You misunderstand."

Putting his glasses back on, Yeon-woo thought again.

'That was dangerous.'

He resolved once more. I will most certainly not leave you lot to eat well and live well by yourselves. Thinking so put his heart considerably more at ease. As expected, a person seems healthiest when expressing emotion honestly.

Returning to his original expression, Yeon-woo asked courteously,

"In that case, may I choose 'psychology' over 'psychiatry' after all?"

"So you chose that side after all."

"To speak frankly, I believe my problem is one I can overcome well enough by my own will, given proper advice."

"A client this brimming with confidence is a novelty in itself, but since you do indeed look it, this old man's mind is much eased. I had wondered whether you might truly have an illness of the heart, and whether I ought to summon the Lord of the Mountain from overseas."

"I do not know how a tiger came to enter this conversation, but I thank you all the same for your consideration. That includes my thanks for believing in my steadfastness to the very end."

I tell him I am ill and he will not hear a word of it.

'But I do understand why.'

In Baek Mu-jin's eyes it might well look like the preposterous spectacle of a tiger raised by human hands demanding treatment on the grounds that it looked different and walked on four legs.

'Though I am certainly more dangerous than a tiger.'

Yeon-woo set down his own cup.

"I am well aware of what Director Lee Seon-hae has been worried about. Since I mean to live as a person yet do not behave like one, she must have hit upon the method called a psychiatrist."

"She must have thought it was not a matter to be solved by will, and above all it is the only means she knows."

"Even so, I know I cannot follow Director Lee Seon-hae's way entirely. That would be a separate matter from my wishing to live as a person, would it not."

He curved his eyes in a smile.

"I wished to thank you for having mediated that process in between."

Setting aside whether Baek Mu-jin was a good person or not, from his standpoint neither Lee Seon-hae nor Yeon-woo would make sense. Whatever intent lay behind the favor he extended, the help itself was not to be denied.

"And for finding a compromise in its place."

"Good. If you have understood that this is a trade in a plainly different field from the 'psychiatry' the humans of outside society make use of, then I am simply glad to have been of help."

He took care not to plant 'wrong knowledge' in Yeon-woo, the last young Dokkaebi.

"Go on down now."

"I will see you again later."

Yeon-woo rose from his seat.

'In the end what matters is that I define myself.'

So long as he knew that, Yeon-woo could get better at any time.

***

"Young Yeon-woo, you've come!"

SLAM—!!

He closed it.

"……."

Adjusting his glasses, Yeon-woo opened the door again.

"Excuse me for a moment there."

"What talk is that, between us."

"At the risk of excusing myself once more to someone I may in fact be meeting for the first time,"

Yeon-woo's mouth twisted.

"Do you know me?"

"How could I not know my beloved pupil!!"

A tall, striking beauty rose with a broad smile.

"In truth it is correct that you are 'not in my memory.'"

Those eyes curved, drawing a vivid arc.

"But even so, would it do to 'not know' a person like young Yeon-woo?"

While she was at it she might as well have gone on not knowing him to the end. For Yeon-woo it was a deeply regrettable thing.

"Was there really not one pure civilian around me?"

"I had braced myself for this, but it is fascinating already. Shall we not discuss that part in detail?"

"You are revolting, so please do not approach within a three-meter radius of me."

Everyone but me was an Artist, then, is that it?

"……."

"Why have you gone quiet?"

"In truth, if someone had to be an Artist, I did think it would be you."

"To receive such an assessment from young Yeon-woo is a tremendous honor!"

"You seem to mean it, which makes it more revolting…."

It rather seemed the wrong doctor had come.

"Your specialty would not be this field, Teacher."

Her name was Eleanor Hale. A British-American surgical specialist, and Yeon-woo's science teacher from his childhood.

Throughout his entire school days, at that.

***

"Yeon-woo."

A frog with its belly laid wide open.

Lying still.

It cannot move.

"Finished already?"

"…Yes, Teacher."

"You are good with your hands after all. You will make a fine doctor."

"I'm not sure."

"That's all right. A dream is something you build slowly."

"Yes."

"But your talent really is exceptional."

You called this a talent.

"I hope you will not waste your talent."

You did.