Chapter 337

Calming Lee Yu-na down took quite a bit of time — she was shaking and rambling at us, calling us ghosts, begging us to settle down and saying she'd help us let go of whatever was holding us back, and asking if we'd never forgiven her after all and had come to drag her along too.

"Oh… so that's what happened…"

Only after hearing the rough version did Lee Yu-na finally seem to accept it, nodding along.

The truth was, she only really believed we weren't ghosts but living people after she'd alternately poked and prodded at our forearms and shoulders — but I decided not to bring that part up, for the sake of her pride.

"Still — I'm so glad. That you're both okay…"

Watching her let out a sigh that sounded almost like relief itself, I asked her carefully:

"More importantly — has a month gone by since we vanished?"

"Yeah… exactly, more like a month and two days?"

While we ate the food she'd brought, we asked her what had been going on in the meantime.

It tasted better than we'd ever expected, and when Han Su-yeong and I were both visibly surprised, she answered a little sheepishly.

"For a whole month, it's all I've been making. Kimbap, sandwiches, and chicken."

After mumbling that, she cleared her throat and started in on the story.

"First… let me give you the short version of what happened after the two of you disappeared."

Lee Yu-na led in with a hesitant so…

"That day, when the two of you got wrapped up in that light and vanished, everyone fell into a panic. And no wonder — even I could tell that the mana and the energy coming off it then weren't anything ordinary, and on top of me, you had Professor Alice, Miss Evangelline, and Ye-jeong-eonni right there. Above all, that was the first time I'd ever seen Miss Belluna that thrown."

Something in her seemed to be pulling her back to that moment, and a small, shaky breath escaped her.

"Even then, there was a lot of arguing back and forth about what to do — it almost turned into a full-on shouting match… in the end, we decided to leave that place alone, the spot where we'd fought the Seven Calamity. Then someone suggested that maybe the two of you had been thrown somewhere else, and we should comb the area top to bottom. Because Miss Evangelline said that in the light that had swept you and Su-yeong away, she'd definitely felt the signature of spatial-class magic. So everyone's working theory was that the two of you had gotten caught in a mana surge and forced through some kind of spatial transfer."

The World Tree clan.

The Ten Powerhouses.

Belluna.

Even the search-and-tracking guilds they'd hired privately.

Every method anyone could think of, all of them thrown at finding us.

"But… time kept passing, not one clue turned up… and still nobody gave up. Everyone kept at it. Because no one could believe that the two of you would just absurdly… die—"

She swallowed hard, forcing the breath down with effort.

"…that you could just die like that. Nobody could believe it. Then, maybe half a month ago, Professor Alice dug up an old record. A record describing cases almost exactly like what happened to the two of you."

She let out a hollow, bitter laugh.

"Their faces, their voices, their breath, their footprints, every trace of them — could never be found again. That's what it said."

That, she said, was the tipping point. People in the group gradually started giving up, or accepting it.

And once a month had passed, almost everyone had quietly let go.

"And since the whole thing was unofficial, we couldn't even hold a proper fun… funeral for the two of you. On top of which, the people closest to you wouldn't accept it either, so the rest of us — me and Ivan and so on — handled it our own way, separately."

"The people closest to us?"

"Ah, yeah."

Lee Yu-na nodded.

"For you, Ji-hyeok — you're publicly known as part of the World Tree clan, right? So Ye-eun-seonbae said that if it ever did come to a funeral, she'd keep it small and inside the clan's lands. And for Su-yeong… Hyun-woo refused, saying he had to talk it over with his guardian — his master — first."

I gave her a small nod.

The thought that the matter must have reached his master — Nam Hyun-hwa — drew a deep sigh out of Su-yeong.

"…Anyone gone through anything really serious, or anything like that? How's everyone doing right now?"

At the question, Lee Yu-na stalled, then pulled an awkward smile out — somewhere between flustered and hesitant.

"Hm… well, nothing really serious, for starters. Nothing serious — but…"

She let out the umpteenth sigh.

"There's no point in hiding it anyway, so I'll just tell you everything. Everyone's been hit by problems, big and small."

"……"

Honestly, I'd figured as much.

It's a little awkward to admit out loud, but calling what Lee Ye-eun or Jin Ye-seul felt toward me "deep goodwill" was barely scratching the surface.

And Choi Hyun-woo — Han Su-yeong, who was more than family to him, had just vanished in front of his eyes. There was no way he hadn't taken a massive hit.

"For Ye-seul, well… she's gone half to pieces — basically a wreck…"

"……"

Right out of the gate, it was about as ugly as it could be.

"To be honest, she tried to… do something not great, even… but then Ye-jeong-eonni and Ye-eun-seonbae sat down with her and talked it through, and thankfully there's no sign of her trying anything like that anymore. Instead, she's holed up in her room, totally shut off, and she's cut off all contact too… Ye-jeong-eonni's taken her somewhere else and is looking after her, I think."

Jin Ye-jeong had been the one staying with her and looking after her, apparently.

She, too, had been deeply pained by what had happened to us, but the moment she saw her younger sister Jin Ye-seul falling apart completely, she'd pulled herself together and started taking care of her.

"Ye-eun-seonbae filed for a leave of absence and went back to the clan's lands. And she's been searching for any trace of you and Su-yeong nonstop… I hear that aside from Mr. Shin Woo-seok and a handful of close aides, no one can even get near her."

That was as bad as it could get on that end, too.

To Lee Yu-na, who'd stopped and was carefully reading our reactions, I asked quietly:

"What about the others? Ivan — how's Ivan doing? His arm was —"

"Ah, Ivan's okay. Miss Evangelline, Professor Alice, Ye-jeong-eonni, and Miss Laura all pitched in to help him. Ye-jeong-eonni in particular checks in on him regularly and gives him medicine."

But still —

"Ivan's not really doing well either. His arm healed up properly, sure, but his bow work is… not what it used to be at all. He's been getting exempted from all the practical classes. He says it's just because he hasn't readjusted yet, but from where I'm sitting…"

She trailed off for a moment, looking sorry for him, then went on telling us how everyone who'd been there that day or otherwise involved was doing now.

"That Ahn Do-hoon kid is actually doing pretty okay. After you disappeared he turned violent again and got reprimanded by the academy more than once, but…"

"Senior Kath Ryle and Professor Alice left the academy completely. I hear they're staying at Mr. Lee Myung-jun's guild — Thunderbolt's Hammer — but I don't know much beyond that."

"All the Ten Powerhouses stepped up to look for you, but especially Mr. Lee Myung-jun, Miss Evangelline, and Miss Laura — they really threw themselves into it."

"Miss Evangelline in particular seemed completely devastated. She publicly announced she'd be halting all activity for a while and going into something like a half-retirement."

"H— hang on. Hang on, Yu-na."

In the middle of all this, Su-yeong asked her carefully:

"What about Hyun-woo? How's Hyun-woo doing?"

"Ah…"

Lee Yu-na was thrown badly by the question, then bit down hard on her lip, as if she'd made up her mind.

"Well, for starters, Hyun-woo filed for a leave of absence. Originally he was going to drop out completely — it was all his advising professor and the rest of us could do to barely talk him out of it…"

"D — drop out?!"

The word drop out hit her like a slap, and Han Su-yeong's face twisted as she boiled over.

"Hold on, who the hell does that little brat think he is, throwing around words like drop out?! Huh?! If something like that had happened to me, he should be the one pulling himself together and working twice as hard! Isn't he embarrassed to face Master? No — if anything, he should be working harder out of guilt toward Master! I swear, that little — !"

Unable to hold back the anger surging up in her, Han Su-yeong let loose in that rough voice of hers, and I held up a hand to tell her to settle down first.

The problem was that even watching Su-yeong like that, Lee Yu-na had just kept reading our reactions.

In that moment, my instincts told me there was something more.

The problem was that Su-yeong had picked up on it too.

"…What is it, Yu-na? Don't tell me… there's more?"

At her cold question, Lee Yu-na swallowed.

Then she rustled around for something, pulled it out, and started carefully spreading it out on the floor.

"This… that's a list of criminals."

What she'd started spreading out on the floor was a registry — a list of hunters, heroes, and ability-users with criminal records and warrants out on them.

People on this list had effectively had a chunk of their rights stripped away, and anyone who'd officially earned the status of hunter or hero was granted the right to arrest or, when necessary, kill them on sight at any time.

…In the original story, Lee Hye-rin and Horie Yuzuki were the ones who expanded that right.

In the original, Lee Hye-rin and Horie Yuzuki — both partly turned dark by Lee Myung-jun's death — became hardliners against criminals, not only reinforcing the existing rights but extending the same authority to ordinary citizens.

But why on earth was she pulling out a list of criminals right now —

"Hold on."

A don't tell me thought was circling in my head.

Han Su-yeong was clearly thinking the same thing — her face had gone bone-white.

"Look, I might be wrong. I really might. But — this is…"

When Lee Yu-na finally stopped on a single page, she pushed it toward us so we could see it properly.

The moment Han Su-yeong saw it, a ragged breath tore out of her.

The figure on the page wore a strange mask that hid the face, draped in rags so thoroughly that even the body's shape was lost.

But in his hand was, without a doubt, Choi Hyun-woo's sword.

I was certain.

There was no mistaking it.

His sword was a one-of-a-kind blade in this entire world — forged from my own scales by the Smith of Yado.

Beneath the chilling figure in the photograph, a brief note laid out exactly what crimes the warrant had been issued for.

[Unauthorized entry into a state-critical facility / theft of military assets with intent to incite insurrection and disturb the national order.]

"Ah…"

"Hey — hey! Su-yeong!"

"Su, Su-yeong!"

Han Su-yeong let out a thin, broken sound and crumpled to the floor on the spot, and Lee Yu-na and I startled forward to catch her.

Beneath us, Choi Hyun-woo's warrant — appended with the note [DEAD OR ALIVE] — fluttered against the floor.

For the time being, we'd put off finding Hyun-woo until last.

For obvious reasons — with a warrant on his head and him on the run, there was no way we'd be able to pin him down right away.

On top of that, we had to let everyone know we were alive, and most of all, we needed to find Rauné and Sbeungali, who had been waiting on me for over three hundred years up to this very moment.

"Um… we'd probably have to go in person and show them our faces before they'd actually believe it."

When I suggested we could just call ahead, Lee Yu-na gave me a small, knowing smile.

Even agreeing with her, I asked to borrow her phone.

A short ringtone played, and then the person on the other end picked up.

— Yes.

A flat, strictly businesslike voice — nothing like how he sounded when he was talking with me.

— Is something wrong, Miss Yu-na? You don't usually call out of the blue like this.

I took a breath and quietly spoke.

"Mr. Woo-seok. It's me."

— ……

Shin Woo-seok — Lee Ye-eun's right hand, and effectively Lee Yu-na's senior — went silent.

A beat later, he answered in a voice carrying faint contempt and anger.

— …Miss Yu-na. I wouldn't have thought you of all people would pull a stunt this petty and ill-considered. It seems I misjudged you.

"Mr. Woo-seok, it really is me. Yu Ji-hyeok."

In case he was about to hang up, I quickly threw in something only he and I would have known.

"I still remember what you told me that day. My noona — the head of the clan, I mean — that spot where she hit you, is it all right now?"

— What — wait, don't tell me — !

A loud clatter came through after that.

A moment later, he asked back in a shaken, disbelieving voice.

— You — don't tell me… are you really the young master?

"Yes."

I gave the short answer and went straight into a request.

"I'd like to see the head of the clan. I can't really move from where I am right now, so… I'll send the location right away, but if it's possible, could you send someone here?"

— I, I'll come there myself right now! Just send me the location and I'll — hey!

He started barking orders at someone else off to the side — prep a helicopter and a car, now.

— Is there anything else you need, anything you'd like to tell me?

"Ah, nothing else right now. I do need a phone, though…"

— I'll have all of that prepared, that included.

"What about the clan head? Shouldn't we start by telling her first…"

— That, well… the young miss doesn't allow anyone near her right now, not even me or any of her closest aides.

Shin Woo-seok went on in an extremely careful voice.

— And she only accepts one call from us per day, on top of that. The line only goes one way — we can't reach her from our end.

"I see…"

In the end, it meant going in person.

Faced with the equally bad state Lee Ye-eun was in, I gave a small nod.

"For now I'll wait. And — if you can — could you put out word separately to the people we're about to list out?"

— Yes. Go ahead.

I asked him to pass the news to the Ten Powerhouses and to Professor Alice Blesbuck — that Han Su-yeong and I had made it back alive.

When I hung up and handed the phone back to Lee Yu-na, she stared at me for a moment, then asked:

"…You're going to see Ye-eun-seonbae first? What about Ye-seul?"

"Ye-seul too. I'll go to her right away."

I said it while watching her mood shift in a strange, subdued way, and explained myself almost like making excuses.

"…I'm not putting Ye-seul on the back burner because I want to. There are reasons."

For one — the people with the kind of influence we'd need to quickly spread the word that we were alive without setting off all kinds of misunderstandings were Lee Ye-eun and the rest of the World Tree clan.

For two — Jin Ye-seul was the furthest away, and on top of that she'd cut off contact entirely, so there was no easy way to reach her right this moment.

And finally —

Of all things, the trace I'd picked up inside the clan's territory right after we beat Sbeungali — to think it was actually this…

Rauné and Sbeungali.

It was because the place I could feel their energy coming from was, of all places, World Tree territory.