WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 150: Hey
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“Really?”
“Yes, on the condition that the Sword Duke helps us.”
“If you need my help, does that mean some Princess suddenly needs a swordsman?”
Drawing on his accumulated experience, Rimon arrived at the most plausible conclusion.
Li Qing-yu was the exception.
If the Seven Dragons Society Princess had reason to borrow the strength of an enemy like him, he could think of no other possibility.
“No. More precisely, what’s needed isn’t the Sword Duke’s strength, but...”
Knock, knock.
Just as Li Qing-yu, looking even more conflicted after hearing Rimon, was about to explain the details.
There came a light knock.
“Princess, forgive the intrusion during your rest, but may I have a moment?”
“...Has something happened again?”
“Nothing especially important. However, there is something the Sword Duke should be told.”
“Me?”
After receiving permission from the puzzled Rimon and Li Qing-yu, Youin entered the reception room and pulled out two photographs.
“Do you know these two?”
“Huh? Why do you have pictures of them?”
“I happened to find out while tracking the traces of that guest named Eugene...”
Rimon looked surprised at the photos Youin had handed over. One was of Manager Jeong from the live café, and the other was of Producer Kim Seung-jun.
He could not understand why Youin was showing him pictures of people he would never meet again now that Eugene was dead.
Watching Rimon’s confusion, Youin spoke with a grave expression.
“It seems that because of the Sword Duke and that guest, these two have found themselves in quite a complicated situation.”
* * *
At the live café where Eugene had worked.
Manager Jeong and Producer Kim were huddled together, their faces dark as death.
“Senior, you still haven’t been able to reach Eugene?”
“If I could reach her, do you think I’d be sitting here like this?”
“That’s exactly my point. How could you not even get her contact information? Isn’t it obvious that you should have your part-timers’ numbers?”
“Hey, you bastard! By that logic, you should have had her number too, since you were the one who introduced Eugene to me!”
“I was planning to get it out of you later.”
“You bastard, was that why you recommended Eugene as our part-timer?!”
Manager Jeong briefly wore such a vicious expression and looked ready to grab Kim by the collar and shake him senseless.
Then Manager Jeong sighed.
“Haa, forget it. Forget it. Beating you up now won’t solve anything.”
Manager Jeong gulped down cold water to settle his churning stomach.
Only then did Kim feel a little guilty and avert his eyes.
It was not directly his fault, but Manager Jeong had ended up in this mess because Kim had introduced Eugene to him.
“What about that young man who was Eugene’s friend? At the very least, we should talk to him.”
“Do you think I would know Mr. Lee’s number when I don’t even know Eugene’s?”
“...What a thing to boast about, idiot.”
Manager Jeong raked a hand roughly through his hair.
Manager Jeong needed to speak with Eugene to somehow resolve this situation, but she had suddenly stopped coming to work without even contacting them.
Having been struck by this disaster out of nowhere, Manager Jeong felt ready to burst.
Perhaps afraid that Manager Jeong’s anger would turn on him, Kim watched him carefully before cautiously voicing a suspicion.
“But Senior, isn’t the timing strange?”
“What timing?”
“Eugene suddenly becoming unreachable at a time like this. Could it really be a coincidence?”
“If it isn’t a coincidence, then what? Are you saying you suspect that bastard kidnapped Eugene?”
“Maybe not kidnapping, but he could have pulled something.”
Manager Jeong snorted at Kim’s conspiracy theory.
“Everything that bastard is doing is because of Eugene. What would he gain by pulling another stunt behind her back?”
“What if, after finally approaching her, Eugene just ignored him and went her own way?”
“Hey, say something that makes sense. Eugene may be an eccentric who only knows music, and that bastard may have a defective personality, but would he really go that far?”
“...Senior, aren’t you getting worried because, after saying it yourself, it suddenly sounds very possible?”
“...Was it that obvious?”
“Your eyes are shaking like California during the Spirit Cataclysm.”
“Damn it!”
At Kim’s cool observation, Manager Jeong gave up pretending to be calm.
Then, openly bouncing his leg, he asked anxiously.
“What do we do? Should we call the police?”
“The police would not even make it past WIM’s doorstep.”
“Then, there’s the PAB! That place that specializes in arresting Players.”
“Didn’t you see the news that it was disbanded recently?”
“Then what do you expect me to do?!”
“I’m not telling you what to do. I’m telling you to calm down. It’s not even certain that Manager Moon did anything to Eugene.”
“You bastard! Is that what you say after dumping a drum barrel full of worries on someone?!”
As Manager Jeong raged like a descended Constellation, he finally lost control and grabbed Kim by the collar, shaking him furiously.
The firmly shut café door opened lightly.
“We’re closed today. Please come back another time!”
Perhaps it was the instinct of a shop owner.
Having heard the door open as though he were a ghost, Manager Jeong politely sent the customer away even while shaking Kim.
All the while grumbling inwardly about the impatience of a customer who had ignored the [CLOSE] sign.
“Really? Then should I just leave?”
“...!?”
The moment he heard that customer’s voice, however.
Manager Jeong spun toward the entrance like lightning, making his earlier indifference seem laughable.
It was the voice he and Kim had been desperate to hear, to the point that one of them could die without the other noticing.
“L-Lee, where have you been? What took you so long?!”
Bang!
Perhaps his delight had gone too far.
Watching Manager Jeong greet him after slamming the Kim he had been holding upside down into the floor, Rimon muttered awkwardly.
“...If you were in the middle of a murder, you could’ve at least locked the door. Don’t make an innocent witness feel awkward for seeing that.”
* * *
“I’m reporting this. I’m reporting you for attempted murder...”
“What an exaggeration. How is a little bump on your head attempted murder?”
“Is that something you say after piledriving a perfectly healthy person headfirst into the bare floor?!”
“Ahem. People can do that when they get excited.”
“Would you need to get excited twice to actually kill someone?!”
Watching the two heatedly argue, Yoo Na-gyeong absentmindedly opened her beak.
[...I didn’t realize it before, but now that I see him like this, I feel a strange kinship with Producer Kim.]
“Isn’t it because you both blurt things out without letting them pass through your brains first?”
[Hmm, is that it?]
As Yoo Na-gyeong tilted her head at the bump on Kim’s head, Rimon lightly tapped the table to draw their attention.
“Hey, you two. It’s nice that you’re having such a friendly conversation, but didn’t you have something to ask me?”
“Ah, right!”
“Do you happen to know where Eugene is or what she’s doing? Please?”
Only then seeming to remember why they had waited for Rimon, the two hurriedly asked about Eugene.
Rimon looked at their faces, where worry and hope, anxiety and expectation crossed in perfect balance. After a brief silence, he spoke.
“She went to America.”
“What?”
“Why would she suddenly go to America?!”
“She was always a wanderer. I suppose she simply left because it was time for her to go.”
Rimon answered quietly.
That Eugene had been a criminal.
That he had killed her because of it.
There was no benefit in ordinary people like a café owner and a producer knowing such things.
“Good heavens.”
“How can the timing be this bad...?”
Yet the news Rimon had delivered alone was enough to turn their faces into something like Munch’s The Scream.
Rimon calmly asked the two, who looked as though the world had ended.
“Why? Is it that serious if Eugene is gone?”
“It is less that something will happen if she is gone, and more that it already has.”
Kim was about to explain the situation with a sigh.
That was when another visitor arrived.
“Hahaha! Manager, is business going well?”
A man in sunglasses threw open the café door with a boisterous laugh.
Moon Cheon-yeop of the WIM Guild looked around the empty café with a grin, then pretended to be startled upon seeing Rimon.
“Well, if it isn’t Mr. Lee. I looked everywhere for you, yet I never expected we would run into each other by chance in a place like this.”
Like hell it was a coincidence.
Kim muttered inwardly.
Over the past few days, Moon Cheon-yeop had come to the café dozens of times looking for Rimon and Eugene.
Whether he knew that or not.
Rimon merely looked at Moon Cheon-yeop with an indifferent expression.
“You were looking for me? Why?”
“Ah, it is nothing much. I have something to deliver.”
As if he had been waiting for that question, Moon Cheon-yeop took an envelope from his briefcase and held it out.
“This is a complaint.”
“...”
“The court is still processing it, but it will pass anyway. I am giving it to you early so that you may find a lawyer.”
Moon Cheon-yeop held out the complaint as lightly as if it were a wedding invitation.
Yet Rimon was neither shocked nor flustered by the unexpected gift.
He only asked coldly.
“I don’t recall doing anything worth being sued over.”
It was not wrong.
Rimon Aspelder was the only one who had committed treason and taken the president hostage.
As Lee, all he had done was play guitar alongside a murderous maniac from the Liberation Brigade.
“Unfortunately, we received a report that the original song used by Mr. Lee and Eugene in their performance bears a strong resemblance to a song registered by one of WIM’s exclusive composers.”
“You’re saying we plagiarized your song?”
“Now, now, you should not casually say such dangerous things. A musician’s livelihood is at stake here.”
Songs could happen to sound similar.
Without explicitly stating whose song had been made to sound like whose, Moon Cheon-yeop glanced at Manager Jeong.
“Of course, even if there was plagiarism, we could overlook it if it had not been used commercially. However, Eugene performed here and was paid.”
“I told you, that was just ordinary part-time pay, not a performance fee!”
“Now, you should make a claim that can stand up. Does it make sense to say you made her perform and paid her, but that it was not a performance fee?”
“Ugh...”
Faced with an entirely reasonable argument, Manager Jeong groaned.
Eugene had hated making money from singing so much that they had made such a twisted contract, but viewed objectively, it really sounded like complete nonsense.
“Of course, Manager Jeong, you may not have known, but if you do not wish to be suspected of tax evasion, please cooperate with the investigation.”
You bastard! You are the one who already pinned the tax evasion suspicion on me!
Manager Jeong swallowed the words that had risen to his throat.
“Producer Kim should also be careful. It would not look good if rumors spread that you had intended to cast a musician who plagiarized someone else’s song as the lead of a new program.”
You [censored] [censored] [censored]!
Kim, whose rumors had already spread as far as they could, likewise cursed him inwardly.
But although Manager Jeong and Kim gritted their teeth, neither could confront Moon Cheon-yeop.
If they did, Moon Cheon-yeop would only feign innocence as he always had, while the pressure on them would surely grow worse.
Moon Cheon-yeop had that much power, backed by WIM and, beyond it, the massive guild Midas.
To begin with, high-level Players were beings above the sky, whom ordinary Players found difficult to resist.
Moon Cheon-yeop seemed satisfied after crushing the pair and wore a pleased expression.
Then he turned back to Rimon with a suggestive smile.
“It is unfortunate. If Eugene and Mr. Lee had signed with our guild, you would not have become embroiled in this plagiarism dispute.”
Rimon had silently watched Moon Cheon-yeop with his arms folded. At last, he spoke in a languid voice.
“...So that’s what you mean? If I don’t want to see worse, I should get on my knees and beg even now?”
“Now, why would I mean that? I am simply suggesting that we find a way to resolve this amicably.”
That “good way” was already decided. Rimon and Eugene merely had to shut up and sign the contract.
And if they chose another, “bad way,” not only they but the innocent Manager Jeong and Kim would find themselves in difficult positions in many ways.
Moon Cheon-yeop looked utterly triumphant, as if refusal had never even crossed his mind.
After watching him quietly for a moment, Rimon spoke softly.
“Hey.”
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