WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ I Returned as a God ◈

Chapter 58: Three in the Morning, Four at Night (1)

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"Oh, you're here?"

Choa wiped her hands with a handkerchief and glanced over.

Park Siyu stepped into the treatment room and locked the door behind him.

"I told you not to be late, not to show up after causing trouble."

"Force of circumstance."

Not a joke, either. It really was.

Yu Jihan showing up had caught even me off guard.

Listening in on our conversation, Choa asked.

"Coffee? Or green tea?"

"Coffee."

"Coffee for me too."

Jeong Choa reached toward the shelf.

Too short to reach the top.

The boxes perched on the edge tipped and fell.

Before I could even move to help, Park Siyu snatched them out of the air first.

Choa, unbothered, pulled three tea bags from the green tea box.

"Coffee's no good this late. Keeps me up at night."

Then why'd you ask in the first place?

She'd been like this from the very first moment we met. Genuinely impossible to read.

Humming to herself, she wandered over to the water dispenser.

The water's overflowing!

Steam rose in a thin haze from how hot the water spilling over the glass cup was.

Unable to just watch, Park Siyu snatched the cup away from her instead.

Watching him pour the hot water into the cup without missing a beat told me this wasn't the first time, not by a long shot.

Nice of her to treat my hand and all, but the woman was such an oddball I couldn't even find the words.

Park Siyu held out a cup with a green tea bag steeping in it. I took it, reluctantly.

"Hey, this is black tea, not green tea."

How was this murky brown color supposed to pass for green tea?

Someone had stuffed black tea bags into the green tea box.

Still, how do you not notice something like that?

"Huh?"

Hearing me mutter, Jeong Choa finally caught on and checked the green tea box.

That's gonna fall too, isn't it.

Sure enough, less than ten seconds after I worried about it, she knocked the box of green tea bags over.

Jeong Choa crouched down and picked the scattered tea bags off the floor one by one.

Park Siyu, meanwhile, sipped his black tea like he'd known it was black tea from the start.

Half ignoring Jeong Choa as she slowly gathered the fallen tea bags.

"What exactly does she do here?"

"Complicated to explain in full. She was the only one I could ask for a quiet treatment at this hour."

Park Siyu glanced down at my arm.

Come to think of it, the way he said it made it sound like getting hurt in the first place was my fault. Had to be my imagination.

"Stay at a hotel until you go into the dungeon. I'll look into an apartment for you once it's over."

"Already called him?"

"Who do you think made me rush out of here?"

Park Siyu's face creased as he drank his tea.

Sounded like he'd just gotten off the phone with Suhyun, so there didn't seem much point explaining the whole story in detail.

Still, word travels fast.

Not that I planned on hiding it, but I'd figured he wouldn't hear until at least tomorrow.

Better to get scolded sooner than later, since I'd have to hear it eventually anyway.

"Heard you got jumped by some thug. You okay?"

"Fine, more or less, aside from a broken arm."

Already healed, so no problem there anymore.

I knew that wasn't what Park Siyu meant, though.

"Word is you didn't kill him. Why not?"

"Didn't need to."

"Went pretty hard on him for someone who didn't need to, didn't you?"

"He had it coming."

Honestly, fair point.

Do you have any idea how hard it was holding back the pain through that whole meeting?

If Yu Jihan hadn't shown up, there'd have been no reason to stay this late in the first place.

"That thug, the one you mentioned before, Kim Yuhan, was it?"

I froze, mouth hanging open for a second.

Not exaggerating, I genuinely hadn't expected him to nail it in one guess.

I glanced past Park Siyu at Jeong Choa, still picking up the fallen black tea bags.

Figured it shouldn't take this long to pick up a few dropped tea bags, but sure enough, she knocked the box over again before long.

At this point I genuinely couldn't tell if she was doing it on purpose or not.

Knocking it over that consistently was a talent all its own.

Whoever she was, that wasn't really the point.

The real question was whether it was fine for her to be hearing any of this.

Catching me glancing her way, Park Siyu spoke up.

"For the record, she's the one I had in mind before I recommended you. Dungeon experience puts her at B-Rank officially, but her actual ability is S-Rank."

"Actual ability is S-Rank? That means..."

Experience alone could stretch someone up to A-Rank.

But the line between A-Rank and S-Rank was an absolute one, not something you closed with experience.

Those who crossed the impossible threshold of S-Rank got called Transcendents.

If Park Siyu was telling the truth, that made her a Transcendent.

Plenty I wanted to ask, but I decided to keep it short.

"So the short version is, she's trustworthy?"

Park Siyu didn't look like he planned on saying more either.

Jeong Choa turned her head and our eyes met.

She just smiled, telling me not to worry about it.

Back to the subject of Kim Yuhan.

"Been bothering me ever since, so I went back through the Giant Ant Cavern roster. Not in the official records, but the name Kim Yuhan turned up."

So that explained why Min Seongtaek and Kang Hyeonseung had been in that meeting in the first place. Some kind of deal must have been struck over the roster for this expedition.

Park Siyu added an apology, said he was sorry for looking into it without asking.

"Forget it. If anyone's to blame, it's me for bringing it up in the first place. But how'd you find out?"

Every trace of Kim Yuhan inside the guild had been wiped clean.

Even if the two of them had told him the story again, hearing a name wasn't the same as putting a face to it.

Park Siyu's call with Choi Suhyun had come after the meeting ended.

Even if by some chance Choi Suhyun had snapped a photo of Jihan and sent it to Park Siyu, the timing still wouldn't line up.

Min Seongtaek and Kang Hyeonseung had stayed in the conference room with me the whole time after that.

No matter how I tried to piece the timeline together, nothing connected the two, and there was no way to link them regardless.

"A reasonable suspicion."

"A reasonable suspicion, huh?"

"Right. Word is the one who attacked you is a Black Hunter, someone HN can't track. And the clincher, every piece of nearby CCTV footage along his route got wiped."

Pulling stunts like that in the middle of fighting me. No doubt someone was backing him from the shadows.

"Finding out guild data got hacked doesn't exactly sit well with me, but I only put two and two together after hearing a similar story. No hard evidence."

Acting like he had it all figured out, when really it just came down to a hunch.

"That's the guy."

"Thought so."

Park Siyu nodded like he'd expected as much.

"What are you planning to do about it?"

"Feels like I should be asking you that."

"I want your take on it. If he's tied to Raon Guild somehow, that'd be a real headache."

"Doubt it. Besides, he's got nothing to do with any of this."

"Why'd he attack you, then?"

"Strictly personal."

Yu Jihan's grudge had nothing to do with Raon Guild, or Park Siyu. It was with the god Soter, and with Kang Hangyeol, the one who served him.

"Nothing to do with Raon Guild, nothing to do with any of this. What's your basis for believing that?"

"Don't have one. But if you start digging into him, you're gonna have a real headache on your hands."

Never expected Yu Jihan to turn out to be a Black Hunter, not even registered with the Hunter Association.

Not sure about his other stats, but his Strength alone had hit Transcendent tier.

Going head to head with Yu Jihan straight on, by Korean Hunter standards, you'd need at least an S-Rank Hunter just to have a shot.

Honestly, I got lucky too.

Him ending up bound to Soter through that absurd Covenant Oath had been a complete surprise, no way I could've predicted it.

Yu Jihan could use skills. I could even pull up his status window.

Marked as ??? on it, sure, but there was no mistaking it: he served the god Soter.

And this guy, of all people, tried to kill Soter?

Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.

"Anyway, I've got a solid way to keep him in check. So just let it go, let him do whatever he wants."

"Won't stand as much of a basis without hearing what this effective method actually is."

"Fine. That guy's Strength stat is Transcendent C. Black Hunters are the ones who reject the whole existing Hunter power structure, right? What do you think happens if word gets out that a Transcendent's been running around undetected as a Black Hunter this whole time? Or are you confident you can bring him in quietly?"

Park Siyu flinched at the mention of Yu Jihan being a Transcendent.

Guess even Transcendents are a lot to handle after all.

"This really is strictly personal, right?"

"If not, I'll take responsibility. Won't say another word whether you dig around behind the scenes or not."

"Fine. I'll drop it."

We came to something close to an agreement, drawing a line around the whole Yu Jihan matter.

I'd thought that wrapped things up, but Park Siyu wasn't budging an inch.

"What, something else?"

"What's an incursion entity?"

"You... how do you know that term?"

I'd told Choi Suhyun about the Giant Ant Cavern incident, sure, but I'd never once said the words incursion entity out loud.

"Judging by that reaction, you actually know what it is."

I'd been about to get up, but I sat back down instead.

Jeong Choa, having half given up on picking up the black tea bags, dragged a chair over and sat down across from me.

Park Siyu turned to her.

"Mind giving us ten minutes?"

Oh, now hold on.

His voice had been stiff enough to put a bureaucrat to shame talking to me, and now this?

Wait, is that it?

Weak to women?

No, if Park Siyu were actually weak to women, there was no way he'd have gone toe to toe with Ju Seohye like that earlier.

Didn't seem the type in the first place.

He just knew how to handle people, that was all.

"Ten minutes, tops."

"Do I bother you too, Hangyeol-ssi?"

Choa turned toward me, half treating Park Siyu like he wasn't even in the room.

"Not bothered, exactly..."

Awkward to answer honestly, that's the truth.

Reading something off my face, she turned her chair back toward Park Siyu.

"The amusement park."

Huh? Out of nowhere?

Jeong Choa kept going, eyes on Park Siyu.

"You said you'd take me to the amusement park after Hangyeol-ssi finishes the dungeon he's going into instead of me."

She pouted and left it at that.

Whether it was a complaint about missing the amusement park because I was taking her place in the dungeon, or some kind of proposal, was up to whoever was listening to decide.

"When?"

"I'll make time."

"When."

"The original deal was after the expedition wraps up. So obviously, after that."

Fair enough.

Choa nodded at Park Siyu's reasonably solid answer and got up from her chair.

"Exactly ten minutes?"

"If the hallway's not your thing, there's an empty office in the back you can wait in."

"Guess I'll do that, then."

She turned, waved goodbye, and headed into the empty office.

"Hey, are you two dating?"

Remembering all the reckless things I'd said to Ju Seohye back in the conference room, there was no walking this one back now.

"Ten minutes left."

Park Siyu genuinely seemed to think Jeong Choa would walk back out in exactly ten minutes.

"Let me ask you one thing. Where'd you hear that term?"

"From the god I serve."

"Then ask him. He's a god, he should know that much."

Remembering how Park Siyu had once told me his god took interest in me, it seemed like he and his god were on pretty close terms.

Park Siyu shook his head.

"He said even saying the word out loud was a strain. Told me you might know the details better than he does."

"What exactly does your god see in me to say something like that?"

I hadn't done anything for Park Siyu's god, and I didn't even know who was behind him in the first place.

Felt like an awful lot of goodwill toward me, considering.

"That makes two of us wondering."

Park Siyu glanced at the door Choa had disappeared through, checking the time.

He tilted his wrist slightly, turning the watch face toward me. First time I'd ever seen Park Siyu look this on edge.

"An incursion entity is what you call a being that's broken a taboo."

Explained it, sure, but did he even know what a taboo was?

Still working out where to even start explaining, when an unexpected line came out of Park Siyu's mouth.

"First I'm hearing that breaking a taboo turns you into an incursion entity."

"Then what did you think happens when someone breaks a taboo?"

"Never broken one myself, so I couldn't say for sure. But I always heard you just die."

Footnotes:

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