Chapter 224

A market had been set up.

"Anything good come in lately?"

"The Den's been touchy. It's murder getting so much as one thing brought in."

"Hey now, I'm practically giving these away! Buy them up, quick!"

Half of what lay spread on the stalls was vegetables, and half was strange goods.

Hardened lumps of sap, dried horns, glass jars with labels on them. Behind one stall a couple of beasts were tethered to a stake, and they had four eyes, or six legs.

Cha Do-hyeon passed among them at his leisure.

"Well, look who it is!"

"Aigo, sir, you have come?"

"We see a great deal of you these days."

People recognized him and bent at the waist over and over. Cha Do-hyeon fluttered a hand and smiled for them.

"Business going well?"

"Thanks to you we eat!"

"That's how it should be. That's how I eat too."

When he rolled his eyes sideways, he saw a man minding one of the stalls. He took in, for a moment, the sleeve that hung empty. The one remaining hand moved the scale weights with what looked like a good deal of practice.

The Chief of Staff whispered quietly from behind him.

"One of the four who made the 16th list."

"I thought the face looked familiar."

"You won't have seen his face."

"Who told you to speak the plain truth in front of me."

"My apologies."

And about then, behind one of the stalls, someone gave a child a light push on the back. The child, who had been hanging back inside, came trotting out and held up a candy.

Cha Do-hyeon took it and tousled the child's hair.

"How kind of you. How old are you?"

"Uh, um, twelve."

"Yeah? A baby."

"Hehe…."

"Get home safe."

He put the candy in his mouth. About five paces on, he asked around it,

"That one on the list too?"

"Probably will be."

"You know well enough — do not send that one down."

"Not yet, I should think."

"Right."

The tone was flat, nothing special about it.

"That's just how this world goes~…."

I was in that world too.

Very much so.

***

Inside the Cooperative office it was chilly.

A worn sofa, a table with glass laid over it, a calendar on the wall three years out of date. A paper cup of instant coffee mix was set on the table. Dingy light came in through the window.

The landowner was a man who looked about sixty.

His back was thick and his knuckles were heavy. The villagers called him Chairman, but in front of Cha Do-hyeon he did not dare call himself that.

"You have honored us with your visit, sir."

"Honored, nothing. As if this fellow does anything grand. You sit comfortably, old man."

"Aigo, what a thing to say."

"Sit down, I said."

"Yes, yes."

The landowner sat awkwardly. Cha Do-hyeon lifted the paper cup.

"The 17th coming along all right?"

"Yes, yes, we have twenty-two lined up."

"Did you not say twenty-five last time?"

"…Th-that is."

The landowner rubbed his sweat-damp palms on his knees.

"Three ran off."

"Where to."

"That is, they say they bolted for the inside of the Fox Den…."

Cha Do-hyeon took a sip of coffee. It was far too sweet.

"Don't you die if you go in there?"

"You die. Offered up, that's what. They wouldn't last a day."

The landowner let out a hollow laugh.

"They go knowing they will be Offered. Seems they reckon it beats being hauled to market."

"Aha. So the rumors about the Golden Grotto spread wide off the returnees' mouths, did they?"

"Kids these days have too much fear in them."

"If they hate the Golden Grotto enough to walk into the Fox Den, I'd say they've rather too little."

"Bastards are starting to turn up who think everyone who goes dies."

"But there are ones who stayed and made a place for themselves, right."

"Naturally."

Even as he said it, the landowner wore the face of a man not sure whether he believed his own words. Cha Do-hyeon looked quietly into that, and turned the paper cup around.

"Then shall we try this."

He went on,

"The list of the kids still up there — let us post that. I will even go take photographs if you want."

"Sorry?"

"They run because they don't know how good it is to come with me. I'll send you the specific list separately, so write those bastards all out and put it up somewhere it can be seen."

"Write them all out?"

"Get the bastard with the pretty handwriting to do it nice and big. Something that jumps at the eye."

Having said that much, Cha Do-hyeon set the cup down and leaned back into the sofa.

"But, old man."

"Yes."

"Why does the Fox Den keep coming up?"

The landowner's face stiffened a little.

"That… would you happen to know something about it too, sir?"

"I only came for the coffee."

"……."

"Speak up. I am leaving when I finish this."

The landowner read his expression, then leaned forward.

"Things inside there have been strange lately."

"Strange? Strange how."

"We never touch the Fox Den to begin with. In exchange for not touching it, that side kept roughly to the line as well. We parked a few villages on it and left them to run themselves."

"Elegant way to make an Offering."

"Well, does not everybody do it that way?"

Cha Do-hyeon listened without answering.

"But these last few days there has been talk going around that the villages inside are disappearing, whole, one at a time."

"Disappearing?"

"Some of them, it is not that they disappeared… well, that Fox Den bastard is a sly thing, so nothing is certain."

The landowner chose his words.

"They say new ones have appeared."

"……."

"Roofs laid all new, walls that were falling to pieces going back up, a road cut through. They say the little brats are walking around with their bellies full."

Cha Do-hyeon's finger slid slowly around the rim of the paper cup.

"That village. Was it on the list?"

"Yes. It sits so deep in that we could not reach it, so we never used it. It was a spot for a few years down the road, once we had secured a few decent Pathfinders."

"How many kids are we talking?"

"Last confirmed count was under thirty, I believe."

"If you put it like that, the information must be fairly old — so it was not a small village, then?"

"It was not."

Cha Do-hyeon smiled. His eyes curved into round crescents.

"Did you put anyone on it?"

"Come now, where would we find that kind of talent? It's all hearsay."

"Is it."

He gave a light shrug.

"Your stock's gone up in smoke, old man."

"…Yes, hence the trouble."

"You must be upset."

"Upset does not begin to cover it."

"So then."

Cha Do-hyeon asked,

"Who is it that goes in and out of the 'Fox Den' these days?"

"Th-that is…."

The landowner scratched the nape of his neck.

"Fifteen-odd able-bodied men, moving in an organized way. They are nothing to do with us, but they seem to have a skilled Pathfinder of their own."

"Fifteen-odd."

"Yes. Not our people, and not from here either. They carry equipment, and that is… a bit."

"A bit what. What about it."

"That thing that used to be inside there."

A beat late, the landowner went on.

"…They seem to be looking for it."

"……."

Cha Do-hyeon said nothing.

That thing that used to be inside there. It meant that among what the Fox Den had swallowed, there was an object made by human hands. And it meant that there existed bastards who had come looking for it.

'The Foundation.'

He drained what was left in the paper cup.

"That is funny."

"Sir, then what are we to…?"

"Old man."

Cha Do-hyeon rose from his seat and straightened his clothes.

"Fifteen-odd. Can you put your boys on them and push them out?"

"…Wouldn't that be difficult? That side doesn't look like ordinary bastards."

"Right. It would be difficult."

"……."

"Which is why it isn't our job to step in."

Cha Do-hyeon grinned.

"That sort of thing's for the state to handle."

"…Ah, sorry?"

"Catching bastards who dig up land as they please is a civil servant's work. Isn't it?"

The landowner looked up at him with a bewildered face.

"I'll have to put a word in with the civil servant bastards."

"That, do you mean the Sensitivity Bureau?"

"Only the side that talks sense."

"Forgive the presumption, but would that… be all right for you?"

"There's going to be a racket, so in the meantime you keep your boys in line, old man."

He crumpled the candy wrapper he had been holding all this while and flicked it away with a fingertip. The wrapper, balled up round, dropped to the floor with a small tap.

"Look forward to it."

Cha Do-hyeon grinned.

"I'm very good to my own family, you see."

***

Out under a sky that imitated sunlight, Cha Do-hyeon spoke without looking at the Chief of Staff, who had been waiting and now fell in behind him.

"Shall we watch who that fellow has been meeting."

"I will put five of the boys on him."

"Put ten of the bastards on him. The way he talks is off."

Cha Do-hyeon stroked his chin.

"How does a man know a 'village' he has never once been to that well, I ask myself."

Either he had the talent or the technology to fetch information himself and was playing dumb about it. Or else there were bastards deliberately sprinkling sources on the old man.

"From the way he talks, that old man didn't lay this board."

"He must have spoken like an idiot."

"High odds the purpose is to move me, I would think."

"Have you any guesses?"

"The civil servants are the ones most worth suspecting, as things stand."

"How do you read the intent?"

"Who knows~"

Nothing was certain yet.

"Let us find out a little more and then think. Okay?"

"Yes, Boss."

"More to the point, Chief of Staff."

Cha Do-hyeon asked as he passed between the run-down buildings,

"Where was your hometown, again?"

"Sector B."

"Was it like this there too?"

"There it was…."

The Chief of Staff traced back through his memory and went on without falling behind.

"There was no Cooperative at all. They simply dragged you off."

"Is that right?"

"Here they at least post a list."

"What number were you?"

"Our side did not count the rounds."

"Then how many went?"

"My apologies. I never counted."

A beat late, the Chief of Staff added,

"I was in the Golden Grotto for over four years."

"You were in there a long time~"

"I'm still grateful you pulled me out."

"I'm very good to my family, aren't I."

As they trudged along, the loudspeaker struck his ears again.

―The 17th labor call-up will be at six in the morning, the day after tomorrow.

When Cha Do-hyeon put a cigarette in his mouth, the Chief of Staff lit it for him.

"Ugh, hot."

"My apologies, Boss."

"Never mind, get it away."

"Yes, Boss."

"Now let us see…."

Roofs laid all new, walls that were falling to pieces going back up, a road cut through. Some thirty little brats walking around with their bellies full.

'It has cut down the land I get to eat, thanks very much.'

How very convenient. If there was a bastard capable of pulling something that bold off inside the Fox Den, then exactly one Dokkaebi came to mind.

Lee Yeon-woo, that is.

'The Sensitivity Bureau… if it really is the hardliners among them who leaked the source, then they want me to have a go at that friend of mine. They expect the ignorant thugs who took the loss to step up and drain his strength.'

The one thing the hardline bastards did not know was that Cha Do-hyeon was already acquainted with 'Our Hotel.' His name would have gone into Dan-cheong's report, so that much figured.

They meant to set up a fight without knowing that the head of those 'thugs' was Cha Do-hyeon.

"…Hooooo…."

He let the smoke out long.

'Why does a bastard who is Velmareth, no less, go treading in the mud, damn it.'

If he had done that without taking a price, it was not business. And if it was not business, what was it? A hobby? In that case, who on earth was covering the overhead?

'It was the same when he was running that hotel. A bastard who lives in a Labyrinth does the strangest things.'

The arithmetic would not come out.

"I really can't work out what sort of bastard that friend of mine is."

A laugh escaped him without his meaning it.

"So tempting…."

His insides felt clammy.

As though he might, at any moment, be sick.

***

The village was well ordered.

Roofs laid on, the well sealed, a pond set down. He had done it by the list decided in advance and had put his hand to nothing beyond it. He had hung the termination conditions on it ahead of time as well.

The General Manager touched the paper in his inside pocket once and walked the corridor.

"……."

The guest room was as quiet as ever.

Lee Yeon-ho was sitting at the table by the window, but there was nothing outside it that particularly drew the eye. In place of rain there was only thick fog.

He tossed a remark at the General Manager.

"You've come."

"Yes."

"Brought more buckwheat jelly salad, have you?"

"Today I came empty-handed."

"I see."

"I came after finishing work."

"Is that so."

Standing at the door, the General Manager thought.

'First, you are a user.'

'Second, you are a guest.'

'Third….'

His thinking stopped there. He approached with his usual supple smile.

"I trust you have been well?"

The way a Labyrinth holds on to a person is much the same in every case.

Not eating them, but absorbing them. Sinking a hook into the other party's resentment or their wish, and dragging them into this side's Narrative. That was how the Fox Den swallowed villages, and how it had draped the role of Fox God over him.

'As it happens, I have grown used to handling Mods through the fox village's children….'

He need only do the same this time.

[Coco challenge!]

[Role assignment attempt: One Who Wishes to Live]

[Designating target…]

"……."

[Cannot find the target's Wish.]

The General Manager's fingertips went stiff. He put the system through it a second time.

[Cannot find the target's Resentment.]

Once more.

[Cannot find the target's Wish.]

Once more.

[Cannot find the target's Resentment.]

[Cannot find the target's Wish.]

[Cannot find the target's Resentment.]

Just once. Once more….

[Cannot find it.]

There was nothing. Not one ring anywhere to hang a hook on. Only a flat and enormous wall.

"What are you doing?"

"……."

"You're doing something to me right now, aren't you."

"……."

"Ha…."

Lee Yeon-ho turned around. For a man who had noticed something out of the ordinary, he showed no sign of surprise, nor did he look angry. He simply looked like a man to whom everything was a nuisance.

"Do it."

"Sorry?"

"I said do it."

"……."

"If it works, that wouldn't be so bad either."

The General Manager could not answer.

Force is a word that only holds if the other party refuses. The same goes for domination. Lee Yeon-ho had just voided the premise of both words at once.

"Not doing it?"

"It is difficult."

"I see."

Lee Yeon-ho did not seem particularly curious either.

"But."

"Yes."

"Why do you go that far."

"……."

The General Manager slowly opened his mouth.

"First, you are a user."

"Right. A user."

"Second, you are a guest."

"Are a user and a guest different concepts. Fine. And after that."

"Third…."

"There's another reason before that, isn't there."

It looked like a perfectly pure question.

"What's my living or dying got to do with you."

"……."

"Isn't that what a Labyrinth's role is, to begin with. To kill people, to make them suffer, to wring them out as a resource. To live forever off them as Offerings."

The General Manager's thinking stopped where it stood. The guest room's lighting flickered and broke up. Lee Yeon-ho asked,

"What reason is there to choose that reversal in front of me, of all people. Least of all for the headsman who took your neck off."

"Yes. You did take my neck off."

"Because you are dangerous."

"I understand."

The first and the second reasons were qualifications. And the third was not a matter of qualification.

'Because you are my father.'

In the village there had been no qualification, so he had written six lines and put them in his inside pocket. In this room there were three qualifications, so he had written not a single line.

And so, naturally, I. Because you are my guest….

"Let me ask one thing."

"Please do."

"You used stars that time."

"Yes."

"That's Black Magic, isn't it."

"It is a similar branch."

Into Lee Yeon-ho's silence, the General Manager asked. It was a question that had jumped out of him unbidden, his chest heavy.

"Why did you ask that?"

"No, no reason."

Lee Yeon-ho turned his head toward the window.

"I've never seen a good end come to the bastards who use it."

"An end."

"The bastards who use blood grind themselves down, so I can take that as it comes; but the bastards who handle stars grind other people. On a very large scale, at that."

"Aha."

"Well. You're still young…."

Without needing to hear another word of explanation, the General Manager understood.

"……."

So he thought I was dangerous.

'He decided the General Manager who uses Black Magic is more dangerous than the Lee Yeon-woo who uses Blood Magic.'

But.

'I chose it so that you would be hurt less.'

The General Manager's Blood Magic is worked through his own blood as the medium, and that leaves something of his in the other party. In this world, to share blood was to mark Lee Yeon-ho as his.

'That would be far too rude.'

And above all, everything about this hotel is in that blood. It was not only the matter of No. 14. All the vast evil karma the Foundation piled up is in there.

"…I see."

And because you were strong at close quarters.

If I had taken that head-on, one of the two of us would have died, and I would not have died, but you really would have. So I went up into the sky, meaning to press you down from there.

That was all of it, truly. I….

"I understand."

What he had chosen to make him less hurt had become the reason he had to die.

"I have confirmed you are well, so I shall take my leave."

"Diligent, aren't you."

"Rest well."

"I shall."

"……."

The door closed without a sound.

***

The corridor was quiet.

The General Manager walked about three paces, slowed, and at the fifth stopped altogether. Then, slowly, he opened his mouth and made a sound.

"Perhaps, you know."

"Yes."

"I may have been arrogant."

He said it to Coco. That he had needed someone to listen was a thing he did not know.

"I had just come back from handling a job well, had I not?"

He had just come from working twenty village children exactly as he pleased.

He had turned over a village at his own discretion, and when he told a child to get into the water, she got in. So perhaps he had assumed his method would work on this person too.

"That is right."

"Hello?"

"It must be so."

"Hello."

Framing it that way was easier.

Arrogance can be folded away, and a misjudgment can be corrected. Nothing had been lost, and the relationship had not gone crooked. He could try again next time.

The tidying-up was finished.

"That is…."

And yet his throat tightened.

"……."

His fingertips prickled. His back was hot. His back teeth met of their own accord.

'Anger?'

No.

'Grief.'

That did not seem right either. A laugh came out, but the sound of it was strange.

'Joy, obviously not….'

The cause analysis was finished, but the symptoms would not stop. The manual had no case like that. What Lee Yeon-ho had just said, looking at him, circled his ears like an auditory hallucination.

'I've never seen a good end come to the bastards who use it.'

"……."

'The bastards who use blood grind themselves down, so I can take that as it comes.'

"Haha…."

So the man had been dividing the two of them, thoroughly. And he had already finished making his choice, inwardly. Into the side worth leaving alive, and the side to be cut off in advance.

"…Ha…."

His breath stopped short and then thinned away.

This was a fact he had known for a long time. Lee Yeon-ho — his father — does not know me. That was information, and information had not bothered him at all. And just now it had stopped being information.

The hotel corridor's lighting flickered, and the hotel's adorable pranksters showed themselves.

"…Indeed."

So this was what it was.

"How regrettable."

"Hello."

"Truly regrettable."

In the middle of a hotel corridor turned to chaos, the General Manager laughed.

Was it because this body was shaped from blood? He tried to steady his breathing, but though the method for steadying it existed in the memories in his head, it did not exist in the body. Even knowing the procedure for governing an emotion….

He did not, in fact, know what 'thing' those procedures had been for governing.

"……."

His breath jammed at the very top of his throat.

Deep inside his throat, the thing he could not govern only grew larger and larger. It swelled until it plugged his windpipe entirely. The General Manager wanted out of this sensation.

'This cannot be borne.'

In this state he could not attend to guests.

His judgment would go astray, and astray judgment is dangerous in this hotel. So it was rational to hand it over to the side that could be controlled.

He decided to consider it rational.

"……."

SPLAT.

His upper body burst.

***

When Lee Yeon-woo opened his eyes, he was face down on the corridor floor.

"……."

Perhaps because the regeneration was incomplete, half his head was missing. Red was flung across the wall where the lighting had come back, and the carpet was still soaking it up.

Lee Yeon-woo looked down at it for a moment.

"…Ah…."

He sighed low.

"Dear me."

He did not have to ask what had happened. In the end, the 'General Manager' was simply another of Lee Yeon-woo's states. There was no reason to go asking about memories they shared.

And Lee Yeon-woo had experienced the sensation the 'General Manager' had felt.

"It seems it hurt."

"Coco, help."

"Yes. Thank you for keeping watch over me."

"Coco help too…."

"You already helped. More than enough."

Holding Coco, Lee Yeon-woo planted a hand on the floor and raised himself. The remaining parts regenerated very slowly, the sensation of flesh filling in climbing up from the nape of his neck.

He checked his inside pocket. The paper was soaked with blood, but the sentences written on it were unharmed.

"……."

When he folded it away again, the black cat mumbled inside his coat.

"Coco confirms."

"…Yes."

"Coco friend."

"……."

"Friend forever."

For a moment Lee Yeon-woo said nothing.

"Thank you."

He wiped the blood from his face once with a sleeve, and then thought that he would have to replace the carpet. And to the empty corridor he left one remark.

"……."

"…Thank you for your hard work."

Said by me, to myself.