Chapter 192: Home Visit (1)

TL: SHW

A lot had happened since I came to the past.

I had also learned many things I hadn't known before. Mostly things Father and Yoo Ji-eun had hidden from me. Or the fact that Ark was even more deeply fucked up and insane than I'd thought.

But right now, I had a more important realization than any of that.

“Hyung!! Hyung!!!!!”

“…What.”

“Look at this!!”

“What is it?”

“Joker threw up!! It's a hairball!”

“Go throw it away.”

“Why?!”

“Throw it away.”

“Ugh….”

Time flew when raising a kid.

I watched Woo I-rok trudge away. A tiny kitten pattered along behind him.

Just looking at them like that, the cat seemed more like a puppy. One of Daseon's Hunters, who had apparently raised cats before, said we should enjoy this stage while it lasted. Once cats grew up, they lost interest in humans and simply became cats, he said.

…It was a suspicious claim, but I wasn't that cat's owner. Woo I-rok listened intently to the advice of someone with experience and ultimately concluded that, in the end, all that remained were photos.

So it couldn't be helped that taking pictures and videos of the kitten had become part of Woo I-rok's daily routine…. The way he wanted to leave evidence of everything certainly resembled me, though.

Still, I had worried that his interest in the cat might die out quickly, but Woo I-rok continued showering it with attention, making that concern seem pointless. Even the name….

Right. The name.

Fortunately, he hadn't named it something like Straight, Flush, or One Pair, but that didn't make Joker sound like a particularly good name either. Wouldn't something like Spade have been less strange? The fact that Han Tae-kyung liked the name in the first place was proof enough that something had gone wrong.

But what could I say when he wanted to name his own cat himself? Even if he regretted it later, I wouldn't be the one regretting it. He'd be the one embarrassed.

That was how everyone grew up.

All I needed was a record that I'd tried to stop him.

“What about Teacher Kim?”

Only after Woo I-rok had gotten far enough away did I ask Lee Mi-seon, who had quietly sidled up behind me.

“I finally managed to reach her, but it sounded like something incredibly urgent came up.”

“Something urgent?”

“She said she'd contact me later, and now I can't even get through to her.”

I trusted that she'd handle herself just fine, but….

“…Then we proceed without Teacher Kim?”

“Hunter Hong will be here too, so Hope won't be able to get any funny ideas.”

Alex Hope was coming tomorrow.

She'd taken it as a blow to her pride that Hope and Sem Bloom had slipped so neatly past her magic, so I had naturally assumed she'd be back by now. Still, from what I'd seen of Kim Chae-min, she wasn't the type to make things up. Whatever it was, it had to be important enough to justify this.

“They even sent an official letter. If he still gets any funny ideas after that, we won't be the only ones in trouble.”

“Hahahaha. That's true.”

Apparently remembering the official letter we had received a little while ago, Lee Mi-seon burst out laughing.

Hope had been telling the truth when he said that this time he intended to visit officially instead of sneaking in.

The official document sent by Hope's Guild contained a painfully detailed account of Hope's personal information. For some reason, the face of the Australian Hunter I had seen at the World Unconquered Dungeons Forum came to mind. I didn't know whether that Hunter belonged to the same Guild, but the way he had treated Hope was telling enough. Apparently Hope was quite the… person to watch over there too, because the letter went out of its way to emphasize that Hope was a harmless, thoroughly law-abiding Hunter.

But no matter how much they stressed it, didn't we know better than anyone what kind of bastard Alex Hope really was?

We already knew Hope's true identity, and even knowing that, we couldn't refuse his visit.

That was only natural. Getting him here and talking to him was urgent for us too.

In any case, Hope had given visiting an acquaintance as his reason. The procedure had only become this complicated because the place where Gamble was staying was currently registered as Hong Seok-young's Guild base. Otherwise… no, even then, they could simply meet outside. We weren't some vicious company that had locked Gamble up and completely cut off her contact with the outside world. If anything, it would have been more of a problem if we monitored every detail of a foreign employee's private life.

So sending an official document like that to another Guild simply because he wanted to meet one of that Guild's members was absurd in itself. I started feeling sorry for the Guild office worker who must have drafted it. For some inexplicable reason, I had become convinced that Hope's stubbornness had played a part in getting it written and sent. Alex Hope was still impossible to predict, but conversely, that very unpredictability made certain behaviors easy to expect from him.

Only after several more desperate official letters arrived from Hope's Guild did we finally settle on a date.

On the surface, it was an utterly peaceful, simple visit, but beneath the surface, things were more complicated than a hopelessly tangled ball of thread.

Wasn't Michel the reason Hope had deliberately sent those ridiculous documents in the first place? Judging by the way Hope behaved, the dumber and louder he acted, the more utterly sick of him Noah Michel seemed to become.

“Haha. Hahaha….”

I looked at Lee Mi-seon, who still couldn't seem to stop laughing.

Well, from my or Hong Seok-young's perspective, it was an entertaining episode that added a little excitement to boring work life, but things must have looked very different to the staff member who actually had to deal with it.

To tell the truth?

If I were Lee Mi-seon, I would have stabbed Hong Seok-young with a knife ages ago.

Killing Hope would cause an international incident, so Hong Seok-young was the better target. At least with him, she could probably work out a relatively amicable settlement afterward. It wasn't as if he'd even get hurt.

Of course, Lee Mi-seon, being more rational than me, only glared murderously at the back of Hong Seok-young's head and didn't act on it. She merely sighed once and flexed her fingers once, almost regretfully.

Instead….

“Ah. And Teacher Woo.”

“Yes?”

“All the dungeons you cleared have been fully settled.”

She started glaring at the back of my head instead….

Was this really okay?

“The money will be deposited sometime today. Let me know if there are any problems.”

But I had something to say in my defense too. Wasn't it Lee Mi-seon and Guild Daseon that had entered into a partnership with Hong Seok-young? Or was it the parent company, Daeyeon? Then she should complain to them. Hong Seok-young wasn't the one who told her to juggle three jobs on top of her association work.

And technically, that partnership hadn't been signed with Hong Seok-young personally, but with Hong Seok-young's Guild. As the number of Guild members increased, my work and Gamble's had simply ended up on Lee Mi-seon's desk too.

If she didn't like it, she could hire more people, or quit.

Still, as long as Lee Mi-seon kept glaring at the back of my head, there was no harm in being careful. It was also true that the back of my head was an easier target than Hong Seok-young's.

I would keep seeing her and asking her for favors, so maintaining a good relationship was important.

“You should tell Hunter Han too… Ah, where did that guy go again!!”

“Try the garage.”

Kindness, kindness.

Lee Mi-seon stared at my face for a long moment as though she wanted to strangle me, then shook her head and headed toward the garage.

No, how was this my fault?

This was all happening because she was competent. In modern society, work naturally piled up on competent people….

***

“Joker!”

Right.

Going back to the beginning, time flew so fast when raising a kid that it almost felt wrong.

It was a sense of time passing unlike anything I had felt even during the week I'd spent on emergency duty at the Ability Management Agency. Back then, I had been so busy that every time I lifted my head and checked the clock, two or three hours had passed.

Of course, I had far more free time now than I had back then, but even so… time passed at an absurd speed.

Mornings were hectic because I had to get Woo I-rok to school, and afternoons were hectic because I had to pick him up. I made him do his homework, played with him for a while, fed him dinner, and just like that, the day was over.

I hadn't realized it when I was in Woo I-rok's position…. How in the world had Father raised me? Even now, I had plenty of people around who could take care of Woo I-rok and keep an eye on him whenever I had to leave. But Father hadn't. Well, it wasn't as though he'd had absolutely no one, but certainly not anyone close enough to be living in the same building like this.

If I had known, I would have put more thought into his Parents' Day gifts every year instead of just giving him a pot of carnations.

I had finally gotten my driver's license not long ago. I'd started driving as soon as I became an adult anyway. The 2021 driving test had been so easy that it made me wonder whether it was really okay, so I had passed on my first try.

For the car, I borrowed one of Daseon's cars that was sitting around the Villa. Whenever I went to pick up Woo I-rok, he liked it, saying it reminded him of the old days. That made me sentimental too for no real reason.

Of course, the moment the car stopped, Woo I-rok jumped straight out and ran to the cat. I picked up the schoolbag he'd flung into the back seat and trudged after him. So this was how Father had felt.

I really should have gotten him something besides a pot of carnations.

“Joker! Were you good?”

“Meow.”

“But why did you name him Joker?”

Gamble was hovering beside Woo I-rok, who had immediately attached himself to the cat.

Woo I-rok had been wary of Gamble at first, but the moment Gamble showed interest in the cat, they quickly grew close. The fact that Gamble spoke Korean well helped too. To the point that I sometimes wondered if she spoke it better than Woo I-rok.

For a more objective reason, Gamble and Han Tae-kyung were also the only people at this Villa with any free time.

“Because it's cool.”

“Is it?”

“It's cool.”

Woo I-rok said it firmly. His face clearly showed that no matter what anyone else said, that was what he thought.

Gamble looked at Woo I-rok as though she found him adorable. It was a very different reaction from when she had avoided him at first after learning he had come from the lab. Gamble was no exception when it came to having nothing to do. Without any experimental equipment here, the only thing Gamble could really do was… get dragged into morning exercise by Hong Seok-young? She was an Awakened, so she managed to keep up well enough, but she made it abundantly clear that she hated doing it. Of course, Hong Seok-young showed absolutely no sympathy for Gamble's suffering.

Anyway, for those reasons, the two bored souls had crossed the barriers of race and nationality and become friends. I had been letting it happen, figuring that if Gamble and Woo I-rok grew close, Hope would have an even harder time messing with her.

I couldn't express how grateful I was that she was taking some of Woo I-rok's attention off me…. Now that Woo I-rok had fully adjusted to school, his demands were increasing by the day, and every single one was extremely specific.

‘Hyung, I want that.’

It started out with simple toys.

‘Hyung, I want to buy a laptop.’

Then the difficulty suddenly shot up.

‘Hyung, I want to learn taekwondo.’

That one, at least, was the sort of thing a boy his age might ask for.

Watching Woo I-rok openly say what he wanted and what he wanted to do often left me with a strange feeling. It wasn't as though there were no similarities between us, but whenever he asked for something I had never been interested in at all… it made me realize just how much people were shaped by their environment.

Seeing Woo I-rok playing with the cat like that, I became certain that he wouldn't grow up to become me.

“Woo I-rok! You said you're sleeping over at your friend's place today. Hurry up and pack. Hyung will drive you over.”

“I packed everything yesterday!”

“Didn't forget anything? Pajamas? Did you pack your homework too?”

“Yeah!”

Woo I-rok came back out of his room carrying a bag. The weather had started getting chilly, so after making sure he had put on a jacket too, Woo I-rok looked up at me and said,

“Hyung.”

“Mm.”

“Make sure you feed Joker properly. Got it?”

“…Got it.”

It was lucky that Woo I-rok had asked whether he could spend one night at a friend's house over the weekend. Otherwise, I would have gotten a headache trying to make up a suitable excuse.

No matter how close Woo I-rok had gotten to Gamble, I still didn't want to keep him in the same place as Hope if I could avoid it.

“I-rok, have fun.”

My eyes met Gamble's as she waved Woo I-rok goodbye.

As though she had read my thoughts, Gamble smiled casually.

***

For more chapters, you can check out my Patreon here --> https://patreon.com/SHWTL

If you enjoy this novel, please review and rate it at Novelupdates. Thanks! 😊

To receive the latest update notifications or report mistakes, join our Discord server linked below.