WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Dionysus
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ The Newbie Civil Servant Hunts Villains Before Going Home ◈
Chapter 75: Testing the Waters (2)
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* * *
Bang!
The door flew open, and Jeongmin looked at Hyeonyul in surprise.
He looked deeply confused.
“Hyeonyul, are you okay? Did something happen?”
“Doctor…”
“Yes.”
“I don’t understand why the Team Lead defends me, why she wants to know me, or why she tells me she’s grateful and sorry.”
Hyeonyul spoke faster than usual.
He looked as though something inside him had broken down.
Jeongmin watched him carefully.
“Even after taking medicine, these questions won’t settle down. Why is that?”
“Hyeonyul.”
“Didn’t you tell me before to try trusting other people? That you hoped I would expand my world?”
“I did. And I still hope you will.”
Hyeonyul’s world consisted only of Jeongmin.
That was all.
Did that make any sense?
It was not good for Hyeonyul, either.
“So I shared part of what I had been doing alone with the Team Lead.”
It was only one piece among the vast amount of information he possessed.
He had swallowed the Poison King’s faction.
He might have been the new Villain they suspected.
He had revealed just one tiny piece of that immensely heavy truth.
And yet Haeryeon took the bait he had dangled.
“But why doesn’t she suspect me? Why does she grant my requests? I am not doubting what you said, Doctor. I simply cannot understand.”
Haeryeon had said she would not ask anything, no matter what he brought her.
She had only asked him to tell her whether he had killed the other person or left them alive.
Had she not even said she would put it on an official mission?
“She called me, who used to be a Villain, Black Eagle. She told someone who might be darkness or Shadow, I don’t know which, not to hide in the dark.”
Hyeonyul wanted an answer from Jeongmin.
“Doctor. These are all things I cannot understand.”
His face twisted.
He wanted to strike his frozen mind.
The fact that things he should naturally understand were not natural to him tormented him again.
Whenever this happened, he felt as though he was realizing anew that he was a monster.
All he could do was ask Jeongmin again.
Please tell me.
“I heard similar things from the people who recruited me. But I don’t know why they sound different now. Am I wavering?”
“Yes. You’re wavering right now, Hyeonyul.”
“…I cannot do that. I must not waver.”
Hyeonyul frowned.
If he wavered, he might die.
Too many people were after him.
“Hyeonyul. Couldn’t it be all right to waver this time?”
“It cannot be. I must always keep hold of my reason. If I make a mistake, even you could die, Doctor. If even one thing goes wrong, I will be dragged back to the experimental facility. It will all repeat again. This time, I may not be able to escape.”
Hyeonyul’s voice did not waver.
It had returned to its usual state once more.
Jeongmin pressed his lips together, seemingly hurt by that very calmness.
He knew he was special to Hyeonyul, but he could not stop wondering whether he might instead be holding him back.
Still, Jeongmin shook off every thought.
That was not what mattered right now.
“…That’s not what I mean, Hyeonyul.”
“What do you mean?”
“You wanted to try trusting Team Lead Oh Haeryeon, so you did what you could. Is that right?”
“Trust has no meaning to me beyond you, Doctor. I know that very well. What I did was closer to an experiment.”
“Whatever it was, you did something similar. Right?”
“Yes.”
“You thought she would reject you, didn’t you?”
“Statistically, that was the appropriate conclusion. That was what I thought. But I also wanted to make use of Black Eagle’s power.”
“That’s why you’re wavering. Something you never expected happened. Team Lead Oh Haeryeon trusted you.”
Jeongmin could not hold back the smile that rose within him.
Trusting someone. Not trusting someone.
It was important to others as well, but it was especially important to Hyeonyul.
Without Jeongmin realizing it, Hyeonyul had been changing little by little.
Today, he saw it.
“You always said you didn’t want to rely on uncertainty, but now you’ve watched uncertainty turn into certainty. Just as you did when you met me as a child.”
Jeongmin smiled and pointed at himself.
He had been the first uncertainty in Hyeonyul’s life to turn into certainty.
“You’ve seen that there is someone besides me.”
“But the Team Lead is not you, Doctor.”
Hyeonyul’s eyes shook.
His gaze as he looked at Jeongmin deepened.
He owed him a debt that he could never repay, even if he gave everything he had.
Love.
Jeongmin was the person who had shown him what that word, which had once existed only as writing, felt and looked like.
He still could not clearly recognize that emotion, but even that alone made Jeongmin special.
“That’s right. Team Lead Oh Haeryeon is not me. So she’ll be different from me. And because she’s different, the point of reference you rely on will shake, just as it did today.”
“…It is dangerous.”
“It’s not dangerous. That’s what people are. People grow while wavering countless times.”
Jeongmin approached Hyeonyul and embraced him.
He patted his back.
Hyeonyul turned his eyes toward Jeongmin.
“See? You’re a person, not a monster.”
Was that true?
More than anything else Jeongmin said, Hyeonyul could not help doubting that.
“Don’t cry, Doctor.”
“I’m not crying.”
“I can feel it all.”
He did not know why Jeongmin was crying, and he still found his words difficult to understand.
Why did he keep telling him these things?
‘…But it isn’t unpleasant.’
Hyeonyul could not ask any more questions.
He gently leaned against Jeongmin’s shoulder and closed his eyes.
* * *
「*Incident Begins
―A parent recently suspected that after joining a famous study club, their child had begun engaging in strange behavior and activities unrelated to their improved grades.
*Incident Progress
―Secured evidence of strange posts across various online communities claiming that Black Eagle actually creates Villains.
―After questioning the child about the current situation and consulting several organizations, abnormal signs were discovered and the club was reported.
―After investigating the club, police determined that it was an outside organization and that its operators were not educators.
―After locating and investigating other members, police found that they displayed behavior similar to the reporting parent’s child.
―It was determined that the club had a considerable number of members.
―Branches were also found to exist.
―The information was handed over to White Sparrow, and a joint investigation was conducted.
―After locating the headquarters and preparing to approach, the club operators suddenly turned hostile and took the students hostage.
*Points of Caution
―Students must be actively protected as the highest priority.
―The standoff must not be prolonged.
―It has not been determined whether the operators are Villains.」
When Hyeonyul took his eyes off his smartwatch, Jihwan was staring blankly ahead.
“Did you go see Doctor Jeongmin?”
Hyeonyul carefully nudged Jihwan as he asked.
“…What? Ah.”
Jihwan shook his head, then smiled faintly.
“He said he’d make me some medicine.”
“It will be effective.”
“Of course. Doctor Jeongmin is really a good person.”
Hyeonyul nodded at Jihwan’s words.
“Oh, and while you were taking your medicine earlier, I asked the Manager what was missing from the briefing. To add some more information, the club is known as a study club, and it was apparently famous online too.”
“…Is that so?”
“It only had a membership fee, and it wasn’t even expensive. They also provided textbooks and tablets, so it became even more popular.”
“Then why is the standoff continuing?”
Hyeonyul was more doubtful about the current situation than the internal information.
Their shift ran from one in the morning to six in the morning.
That meant the Black Eagle agents who had come before them had failed to resolve it.
It was practically a shift change.
‘Weren’t missions normally resolved quickly?’
Hyeonyul thought quietly.
Ahem.
Jihwan cautiously cleared his throat and looked around.
They were still some distance from the scene, but it was better to be careful.
“Hyeonyul.”
“Yes.”
“This hasn’t been confirmed, but word has quietly gotten around that our team ranks first in mission completion.”
“Does it differ by team?”
“It does. The atmosphere differs, the completion rate differs, and even the assignments are somewhat different.”
“Is that why we’ve continued carrying out missions with three people and no additional personnel? Usually, people avoid that.”
“…That’s part of it. The missions we get assigned are somewhat demanding. When missions are assigned, there’s also an internal completion rating, so Team Three gets priority. This is a real secret, though.”
Jihwan lowered his voice further.
“Team Three’s pay is a little higher.”
Hyeonyul nodded at that.
If the work was more intense, the pay should be higher.
It was very reasonable.
Black Eagle was very appealing in that regard.
“Anyway, does that mean the previous team failed?”
“It would be more accurate to say they ran out of time…?”
“I consider those to be the same thing.”
Hyeonyul considered it unacceptable.
They had run out of time.
No matter how he looked at it, that meant they had failed.
“…Well, that may be true, but things like this happen more often than you’d think. Black Eagle may be stronger than others, but we’re not invincible, right?”
Jihwan watched Hyeonyul’s expression.
Unlike usual, he was stern.
“It seems they dumped the work on us.”
‘…Ah.’
Jihwan realized what had made Hyeonyul uncomfortable.
It certainly could look that way.
“They said it happened around eleven at night.”
“There was time to resolve it.”
“…Right? There was time to resolve it, wasn’t there?”
Jihwan swallowed dryly.
Was there really time to resolve it?
‘It might have been possible… or it might not have been…’
As Jihwan hesitated, he suddenly came to his senses.
Had he not just realized that Hyeonyul took missions extremely seriously?
‘Stay sharp, Jihwan.’
Jihwan mentally scolded himself.
He generally approached missions with ease.
No matter how strictly he behaved, rushing did not necessarily resolve things faster.
“While you were getting that sedative earlier, I took a look at that building.”
Jihwan spread out his hand.
A building floated in the air.
It could even move from side to side as though it were a 3D model.
“Is that magic?”
“It is magic. Can you see how capable I am?”
Jihwan grinned.
“I can. But you didn’t use a power like that last time. Is there a reason?”
“I didn’t use it because it was a Villain’s building. This time is different. Villains and civilians are mixed together.”
Jihwan tapped it with a finger.
Red dots appeared inside the building.
“Those are people.”
“Is it all right to use this magic?”
“Ah, this much is fine. I’m not actually manipulating space, so it doesn’t consume much mana. Anyway, there are a lot of them, right?”
“There are quite a few.”
The building had five floors in total.
There were at least several dozen people on every floor.
“For now, if I apply the information we received from the previous teams, it looks like this.”
The red dots changed to white dots.
It seemed the previous teams had spent all their time categorizing them.
But they could not call it perfect.
It might be wrong, which made things difficult.
“I will go.”
“…What?”
“If I mark it, how will it appear?”
“Me?”
Jihwan held out his hand.
“Try it here once. I’ll register you.”
Hyeonyul placed his hand over Jihwan’s.
Jihwan blinked.
Why was he just standing there?
‘Ah. I never told him when to do it.’
Jihwan grinned and spoke.
“Use your power.”
“I have.”
“What…?”
Jihwan’s eyes widened.
Hyeonyul raised the hand he had been holding out.
Black smoke rose from it.
He placed it directly on Jihwan’s palm.
“……?”
“That is why I was wondering whether you could detect it.”
Darkness and shadows could not be perceived unless they were seen.
Hyeonyul himself possessed that quality as well.
“…Are you really all right?”
Hyeonyul did not understand Jihwan’s sudden question.
He simply nodded.
“I am all right.”
“Just a moment.”
Jihwan first calmed his startled heart.
‘…Is this really all right?’
His gaze turned to the magic on his palm.
Whether the dots that appeared here were red or white, anything alive automatically showed up.
Registering Hyeonyul’s power was only meant to provide a way to recognize him at a glance.
‘What is Hyeonyul…?’
For the first time, Jihwan felt doubt as he rummaged through his bag.
His fingertips felt as though they might tremble.
He bit down hard on his lips so that a question he had never entertained would not slip out.
‘…Those fucking bastards.’
What had they made a person into?
How had they changed a person?
Jihwan forcibly shook off his complicated thoughts and took a pen-shaped object from his bag.
“Take this, Hyeonyul.”
He held it out while managing his expression.
It was something Hyeonyul needed right now.
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