Chapter 228

Lee Yeon-woo, Seome, Hyeon Si-gyeong.

The three in this hotel who were, relatively speaking, well disposed toward humans and possessed of ordinary common sense had gathered in one place. It was on account of Lee Yeon-ho, of all people.

And Lee Yeon-ho said,

"I'm aware that I'm a lunatic."

Lee Yeon-woo nodded.

"Indeed."

"The young one can keep quiet."

"I am young and therefore cannot read the room. What do you intend to do about it?"

"Thank you for making me say sooner what I was going to say anyway."

Lee Yeon-ho nodded in silence.

"It's the first time I've been under one roof with this overwhelming a majority of bastards less sane than me. So I've no feel for what a man is supposed to do in a situation like this."

"Hooeng."

"And I don't know whether an owl is even allowed to cry like a horned owl."

"Hoo-hoo-hoot."

"There's no getting around it. This Labyrinth runs on madness."

While Hyeon Si-gyeong, the whistle still in his mouth, produced a "Tweeet—," Lee Yeon-woo smiled and asked,

"Then is there a Labyrinth that runs on sanity?"

"That's sarcasm, I take it?"

"You do have some perception, then."

"It isn't for lack of it that I live like this."

"I think the same of you."

"So it was sarcasm after all."

With a face as dry as a cactus about to die of thirst, Lee Yeon-ho asked,

"So what are we doing here?"

Hyeon Si-gyeong cut in as naturally as breathing.

"Please contract with the hotel and become Mr. Lee Yeon-woo's executioner."

"Judging by the fact that the proposal reaching me is not one whit different from the first time I heard it, there's nothing wrong with my eardrums. Then again, my body's fairly sturdy."

"Yes, that is so."

"Then let's hear from the employer this time."

With a rare look of embarrassment, Lee Yeon-woo said,

"I think it is rational."

"Those damned mad tarot bastards."

"I agree with that as well."

Ahem. Lee Yeon-woo cleared his throat.

"Speaking personally,"

"Meaning not officially."

"I am well aware that the very attempt to treat the subject of a death sentence lightly may cause discomfort. Still less is Mr. Lee Yeon-ho the type of person who takes pleasure in striking off another's head… hm."

"I'm not, so don't hesitate."

"My apologies. Yes — you have no such taste, either."

Lee Yeon-woo nodded. It was a trustworthy smile.

"I understand well enough with what intent you came to me again. I looked like a dangerous being, and you have no will to live, so you went through with it. Because it made no difference whether you succeeded or failed."

"I'm sorry about that."

"Lying again."

"Do you have lie detection as a skill, by any chance?"

"But even taking that into account, this hotel has no reason to go on holding you. When I was the 'General Manager,' I attended to you out of your injuries and my own private greed, but…."

Lee Yeon-ho cut off the quietly continuing words.

"Something I've kept wondering about — what on earth do you mean, you want to get along with me?"

"I had not realized that harboring curiosity and goodwill required a verification procedure."

"It isn't the sort of feeling one has for the headsman who cut off one's head, at the very least."

"If I must give a reason, it would be that there was no actual loss."

"Is that because you aren't human?"

Lee Yeon-ho looked steadily at Lee Yeon-woo.

"Though it doesn't especially seem so…."

"……."

In place of Lee Yeon-woo, briefly at a loss for words, Hyeon Si-gyeong explained.

"You have seen it exactly."

"Is that so."

"Mr. Lee Yeon-woo was originally human."

"That's somewhat surprising."

"Most of the traits Mr. Lee Yeon-woo displays are presumed to reflect his properties from his human days."

"Is there evidence?"

"I can see it."

Hyeon Si-gyeong added,

"His Virtuous Karma is abnormally large compared to his Evil Karma."

"By how much."

"The scales have collapsed."

"Isn't the role of 'the Hanged Man' that of an observer?"

"I borrowed from 'Justice.'"

"Mad tarot bastard."

Saying so, Lee Yeon-ho leaned back against the chair and murmured,

"The karma of a Traditional Dokkaebi living in a Labyrinth like this is virtuous?"

Lee Yeon-ho gazed steadily at Lee Yeon-woo. As though doing so would let him look into that young Dokkaebi's time. The look was strangely familiar, and without meaning to, Lee Yeon-woo slipped his eyes away from it.

"What's that reaction."

"It happened without my meaning it."

Lee Yeon-woo did not bother to explain — that the look just now had reminded him of the way the man used to regard the three siblings, whenever they made trouble, as creatures difficult to comprehend.

Smiling as though nothing had happened, Lee Yeon-woo went on.

"At present there is no one in this hotel who can stop me."

"Looks like you're changing the subject, but I'll let it go for now."

"Those who stay in this hotel generally respect me entirely. You, Prosecutor, by contrast, actually struck me once. You are the only personnel with a track record."

Seome, who had only been listening quietly, looked at him with eyes that said 'is that allowed to count as a track record,' but not one of the other three responded to it.

"The switch that changes my state is, with high probability, 'death.' But Velmareth does not die easily."

"Sounds like a subjugation target after all."

"I shall not deny it. Only, I can change from 'Lee Yeon-woo' to the 'General Manager' myself; the reverse is still difficult."

"Then…."

Then why he was 'Lee Yeon-woo' again now. He started to ask.

"……."

And stopped.

'…I've gotten tangled in something tiresome.'

Lee Yeon-ho pressed his temple hard with a fingertip and spoke again.

"So the story was that you need a bastard to cut your head off."

"You have understood well."

"Is that why you said it wasn't a loss."

Because the mere appearance of someone able to press the switch was itself a gain.

"Did I dig my own grave."

"Something like that."

If you turn up square in front of a Lee Yeon-woo who had been missing his family anyway, and attempt suicide by another's hand, then yes, more or less. From Lee Yeon-woo's position, at least.

"But not every severed neck functions as the switch. The reason it worked nonetheless will be that what you handed down was a 'death sentence.'"

"That…."

Drawing out the end of the word, Lee Yeon-ho dragged a hand down his tired face.

"Because my 'name' is 'executioner.'"

"Is it connected to the phrase you recited just before the fight proper?"

"I'm reminded all over again that you're a newborn Dokkaebi…."

Lee Yeon-ho leaned back.

"The prosecutor hands down the judgment; the executioner draws the line. That phrase is the work of reminding myself who I am. A 'name' only runs properly that way."

"The Naming Bureau shapes soul and body and memory into one and gives a 'name.' It becomes a sword sometimes, and a bell sometimes. And…."

Hyeon Si-gyeong's gaze rolled over and landed on Lee Yeon-ho.

"The name Prosecutor Lee Yeon-ho received is 'executioner.'"

"The one who carries out a death sentence."

In some quarters, they call it the headsman.

"Aha."

Lee Yeon-woo nodded.

'Meaning it is something like a magical girl's transformation incantation.'

"Magical girl?"

"Coco, saying it out loud is rude."

"Coco rude."

Coco, which had poked its face out of the shadow, vanished right back into it. An untimely silence settled over the table, left with three darkly dressed grown men and one white owl.

Leaving Lee Yeon-ho, who had covered his face with a hand outright, to it, Hyeon Si-gyeong nodded placidly.

"It is similar."

"Thank you for aiding my understanding."

Taking his hand from his face, Lee Yeon-ho asked,

"How does a newborn Labyrinth living in a mountain valley like this know about magical girls."

"Hooeng."

"Mine, the youngest at my house used to watch it."

And Lee Yeon-ho appeared to have given up on understanding rather quickly. He looked comfortable.

"So."

"I would like you to stay, Prosecutor."

"……."

"That is my own greed, so do not reflect it in your judgment."

Lee Yeon-ho tilted his head slowly.

"Don't reflect it, he says, after saying it out loud."

"If I did not tell you, would it not go into the bill in secret?"

"Whose bill is that?"

"The gains all lie on the hotel's side, and the losses all lie on yours, Prosecutor."

Lee Yeon-woo said with a smile,

"So the correct thing is for Prosecutor Lee Yeon-ho to head home before long."

"If you put it that way, there's no finding the significance of this gathering."

"Could it not be outsourced?"

"Have you lost your mind?"

"And while we are at it, the judgment could also be outsourced…."

"You have lost your mind."

Lee Yeon-woo shrugged and went on.

"Striking off a head, once done, stays inside the person. I consider seating Prosecutor Lee Yeon-ho in such a position to be a loss in itself."

"……."

"So I do not recommend it."

Then he added,

"Besides, you must have a household and a workplace of your own."

"To think I'd hear this from a Dokkaebi."

Lee Yeon-ho sat back down where he had been.

"The children… have already moved out. We don't keep in touch much, either."

"Why?"

"Is there a reason you're suddenly angry?"

"I am not angry."

"As for work, a stand-in would do, but…."

Hyeon Si-gyeong added an explanation.

"There is what is called a 'Master Rat' — an artificial creature in the shape of a rat, hired by Artists living in outside society when they must go and attend to Gaps business. Feed it the Artist's fingernail and it works in their place."

"It must be hired like hotcakes."

"It rather is."

Leaving the two of them to their conversation and only rolling his dry eyes, Lee Yeon-ho presently spoke.

"A tarot member doesn't do meaningless things."

The one who had blocked Lee Yeon-ho on his way out and made this bizarre proposal was Hyeon Si-gyeong.

"Is this a great cause?"

"It is a great cause."

"Is it."

Silent a moment, he answered at last.

"I see."

"Prosecutor Lee Yeon-ho."

Lee Yeon-woo smiled and met his eyes.

"You may withdraw even now."

Or later, for that matter.

"Once again, I apologize for having made you lodge at our hotel without your consent."

"That won't get me apologizing for cutting your head off."

"That is a separate matter."

"Aha…."

Blinking slowly, Lee Yeon-ho went on.

"It's fine."

A short assent, at a lukewarm temperature.

In the end, Lee Yeon-ho decided to stay at the hotel.

***

It came very suddenly.

Lee Yeon-woo recalled a day long ago, standing in line under a blazing sun with that man. It had been for a limited-edition magical girl compact, a birthday present for the youngest.

It sparkled, but it had no practical use.

'Did we wait two hours that day to buy it.'

Thanks to it the birthday celebration finished in fine style, but Lee Yeon-woo still remembered that Lee Yeon-ho had complained the whole time they stood in line that it was a bother. And for all that, he had stood there to the end.

You are indolent but soft, and you respected a great many things without meaning anything by it.

"……."

I was glad that you, being that way, stayed.

***

"Boss."

"Yeaaah."

"We've confirmed who the old man's been meeting."

"Faster than I expected."

Cha Do-hyeon stubbed his cigarette out on his palm and asked,

"And?"

"They're not Bureau people."

"So they went around, then?"

"We've secured circumstantial evidence that their movements overlap."

"And where's the source."

"In the end, the Sensitivity Bureau again."

The Chief of Staff handed over a file in a respectful posture.

"And it seems it's true that the Bureau put one person into the 'Fox Den.'"

"Well, well. Would you look at this."

Cha Do-hyeon stuck the butt somewhere convenient and looked the documents over.

"From head office, is he? Fine-looking fellow, good marks too."

The contents were very clean.

"……."

Ordinary, smooth, clean personal details.

"The sort of bastard the Bureau would like."

"…Yeah. Right."

He nodded and asked,

"Think the hardliners raised him?"

"Wouldn't it have to be, given the leanings there."

"But isn't this a bit funny."

Turning a page, Cha Do-hyeon smirked.

"The information came out of bastards who aren't the Sensitivity Bureau, and it went round and round and back into the Bureau. And right after our side prodded Section Chief Seo, the Bureau put one person into the Fox Den."

"Yes, that's right."

"Those people aren't normally this fast with paperwork~"

The Sensitivity Bureau really is a strange thing. There is no board anywhere in the world with a perfect system, but the Gaps run by rule of thumb to begin with. Precisely because it is a lawless place, what the Sensitivity Bureau does is 'prevent the worst.'

Which means that unless it is a matter they are interested in among themselves, they leave it alone for a very long time.

"A place where one sheet of paper takes a fortnight, and how long had it been since I poked Section Chief Seo in the ribs before a man went in. Which is to say what~"

Cha Do-hyeon fluttered the documents.

"It means they'd seated the man in advance."

"Do you mean they had personnel placed in the Gyeonggi Sensitivity Bureau?"

"Yeah. But if things have been running this way…."

Rolling his eyes, Cha Do-hyeon stroked his chin and spoke.

"Section Chief Seo, right."

"The debtor, you mean?"

"Yeah. When I let the Fox Den story slip, he didn't ask where it came from."

"Might he not have been frightened?"

"Still, when you let something like that slip, a man'd normally ask once where you heard it. That's human habit. A fellow scrabbling to get out from under me ought to be curious about something."

He isn't a man stupid enough to fail that much arithmetic, nor one with no will to live. Debtors' psychology runs that way. Mad with their own greed, they borrow the money themselves, and then they see the lender as a son of a bitch.

So they try to bite. And to bite you need information — and he hadn't even tried.

"And he isn't a man with enough slack for it to have been pacing~…."

"If he already knew, he wouldn't have asked."

"Same as what I think, eh?"

Cha Do-hyeon grinned.

"Those able-bodied men said to be stirring up the Fox Den. Looks like the Sensitivity Bureau put them in, doesn't it?"

That the Sensitivity Bureau's hardliners shuddered at the name of the Foundation was something anyone knew. Nor was there any chance the Bureau did not know the Fox Den had once been used as the Foundation's Korean branch.

"Looks like they made a move after seeing Sister Dan-cheong's 'report' this time?"

"It was a document apt to provoke the hardline bastards."

"The Foundation's name came up, so their pride couldn't sit still. So the moment the report went up, they used one of the young personnel they'd already scattered about — the Gyeonggi-region bastard — and put him into the 'Fox Den.'"

"Then is the objective not the 'Fox Den' but 'Our Hotel'?"

"Working on both at once, maybe~?"

The picture roughly drew itself.

"It's true the 'Fox Den' was the Foundation's Korean branch. Their conscience died long ago, but their technology was worth something. They've been drooling over whether anything got left behind for ages…."

Even inside the hardline faction there are lunatics mad with conviction, and there are bastards who work the calculator. The head-office Director-General is understood to be of the conviction sort, but she is quick at arithmetic, so she had not gone out of her way to touch the 'Fox Den.'

'Because what there is to gain is vague and what there is to lose is a great deal.'

But.

"Maybe the scheme was to take Sister Dan-cheong's 'Our Hotel' report as the occasion and catch two rabbits. And when it's nothing less than the death throes of the Foundation's head office, well, there you are."

"In that case the bastard working the calculator would be the traitor instead."

"My point exactly."

Who in that world isn't, but the hardliners are old fogeys drunk on 'righteous us.' Or else they like the crumbs that fall from the hardline faction. But even those bastards would have found it hard to say no.

"So there was already a hardline cartel. The 'Our Hotel' report went up. And the provoked hardline upper levels, not content with committing personnel, committed a usable Gyeonggi-region talent. That's where we are."

"What do you suppose became of those personnel by now?"

"They'll be dead."

Cha Do-hyeon shrugged.

"No — is 'Offered' the right way to put it?"

"The information would be the price of that."

"Anyway, if they urgently committed their own boy planted in Gyeonggi, they'd made the judgment that an ordinary talent wouldn't do. Right?"

"The grounds for that judgment would have been the deaths of the earlier personnel."

"So the source of the information the old man heard is, in the end, the Sensitivity Bureau. Trace it back and it'll be personnel they hired. Only, that leaves the question of with what intent they let the bait slip."

They scattered it themselves and played dumb themselves.

"What was it our head-office people wanted me to do so badly?"

"Then… were they trying to use us?"

"Use, my foot."

He rolled his eyes.

"They'll have scattered it anywhere in Gapyeong. With something like this it doesn't matter who bites — thug bastard or trader. I'd guess they told the old man in the manner of 'keep this to yourself.'"

The more you tell people to keep a secret, the wider it spreads, and it would reach only the genuine article — those capable of stirring up the 'Fox Den.' Besides, whoever bit, the 'make the Fox Den touchy' operation would succeed in the end.

"So they'll have thought the wider it spread the better."

"And of all people the old man bit that bait, and it came all the way to you, Boss."

"Meaning it wasn't aimed at me. Which is to say it's sloppy. They let the information spread without even knowing who the head of our organization is."

What they wanted was roughly visible.

"Looks like they want the 'Fox Den' and 'Our Hotel' to fight."

"They are Labyrinths of considerable weight class."

"That's exactly why. Get thug bastards to stir it up and make it good and touchy, and the 'Fox Den' at least is a bastard that doesn't know how to endure… so in the end it'll lay hands on the villages it farms."

Cha Do-hyeon added,

"The old man said as much. That some villages have gone missing in the 'Fox Den' lately."

"It'll already be well on its way to touchy."

"And in the middle of that, 'Our Hotel' has gone and done up a village of nothing but babies in some fairy-tale style. If we joined in and scratched at its nerves some more, the Fox Den would end up laying hands on that storybook village, and then…."

"……."

"Well?"

Hesitating at the question, the Chief of Staff answered.

"'Our Hotel' would put down the 'Fox Den.'"

"That's it."

"From what I've heard from you, Boss, its master is a Dokkaebi with a particular fondness for the young and the weak. In that case a Labyrinth that is also the stronger wouldn't leave the 'Fox Den' alone after it laid hands on what is his."

"That's exactly it."

Nodding with satisfaction, Cha Do-hyeon set down the documents in his hand.

"Then the answer comes out. In the end 'Our Hotel' will beat the 'Fox Den,' and having had a proper fight its strength will be down, and in the fallout the village residents inside the 'Fox Den' will all be dead, won't they."

Then.

"In that case, who's the criminal the Sensitivity Bureau has to condemn?"

"It wouldn't be the 'Fox Den.'"

"Right. 'Our Hotel.' That was what the whole operation was for from the start."

Cha Do-hyeon recalled Dan-cheong's report, which he had seen before.

"Sister Dan-cheong's argument is sound. If it's that docile a Labyrinth there's no reason to touch it rashly. There'll be plenty grinding their teeth at the Foundation, but with as many old fogeys as the Sensitivity Bureau has, would they play so bold a move?"

"So they're manufacturing the justification for putting 'Our Hotel' down."

"They'll say it like this."

He waved a hand about grandly, like an orator.

"Look — two Labyrinths had a bit of a fight and now the people are all dead. We understand 'Our Hotel's' intentions and disposition, but it has no self-restraint to match the power it holds. Being a Labyrinth after all, it clearly does not know how frail a thing a person is. We must 'guide' it properly."

Cha Do-hyeon's fingertip, stirring the air, turned toward the Chief of Staff.

"So the Sensitivity Bureau?"

"They gain the justification to intervene in 'Our Hotel,' and since it will have expended at least some strength in the fight with the 'Fox Den,' they gain the room to intervene as well."

"And since the 'Fox Den' will already have been put down by 'Our Hotel,' eating 'Our Hotel' means eating the 'Fox Den' at the same time. Then whatever Foundation legacy might remain in the 'Fox Den' becomes all theirs."

"In addition…."

The Chief of Staff calculated a moment and added,

"Since nearly every resident living in the 'Fox Den' will be dead, they can also reduce the personnel and resources being spent to observe them."

"Ugh, that's too wicked."

"Am I wrong?"

"It's because you're too accurate~"

And then Cha Do-hyeon laughed uproariously. He swept his hair back.

"Ah, this is genuinely funny."

"They'll be seeing you, Boss, as simply a private Artist who dipped a foot into 'Our Hotel' and came out. Since you work as an actor in outside society, they won't even have realized they've touched you."

"Right. And when I've no intention of stirring anything up for them, what are they going to do?"

Utter nonsense.

"Why would I send the family I raised so carefully in there?"

Cha Do-hyeon had no interest in such things. Not in the Foundation's legacy, not in planting a flag inside a Labyrinth. He had not been going to see the landowner's face merely to play at grabbing Gapyeong land.

"I'm in the middle of working my brain damn hard to get close to that Dokkaebi friend of mine, and I'd send people in there? If my family gets marked by that friend, who's going to take responsibility?"

"I agree."

"I'm busy enough running the capital-region worksites~"

The reason he kept up dealings with the landowner in the Gapyeong Gaps district was that he saw that young Dokkaebi's growth potential and meant to build 'his own seat' there in advance. It was not that he meant to fight 'Our Hotel.'

"Well, this isn't a scheme that friend would like either, but…."

He shrugged.

"This is like a vaccination."

"A vaccination, you say."

"There ought to be one adult around to teach him how filthy the world is, don't you think."

"Given the nature of Labyrinths, that Dokkaebi may well be older…."

"The one who knows more is the adult. That's how it works."

"Yes, Boss."

"Anyway."

Cha Do-hyeon leaned deep into the chair back and took out a fresh cigarette.

"Latching on to one kid. What kind of business is this."

Only after the words were out did Cha Do-hyeon feel strange for a moment.

"……."

He had taken a loss.

'Because a village inside the Fox Den went and got done up new, the land I have to eat has shrunk.'

It was a plain loss, and the young Dokkaebi who had inflicted it was now in a position to be harried by the Sensitivity Bureau bastards. By the arithmetic, gloating was the normal response.

'So why am I not taking those people's side?'

"Boss?"

"……."

"What shall we do about the boys we've planted? Lay another bridge to the Sensitivity Bureau side, or the old man's line—"

"Never mind."

"Sorry?"

"Don't touch it any further. Let that side run itself as it likes."

Investing more resources in a board that was already certain was inefficient.

"They'll sort it out among themselves anyway, so why should we play along."

"Yes, understood. I'll pull the boys out."

"What time does today's commercial shoot run to?"

"I understand it's eight."

"Set aside some time after it's done."

"Where shall I take you?"

"Who knows~"

Cha Do-hyeon grinned, stuck the cigarette back into the pack, and stood.

"I thought I might go and play with our Manager a bit."

"…Is that not dangerous…."

"It gets my back up, doesn't it."

He opened the door and added as he went,

"They keep telling me to go up against him. I'm not much for doing what other people tell me."

***

"……."

Soft color was reflected inside the man's pupils.

Looking at a village that might have come out of a fairy tale, the new investigator could not open his mouth. The Pathfinder, who had followed behind him, saw the sight with him and said this.

"…There's no other word for it. Paradise."

"…Yes."

It was exactly like Paradise.