Chapter 70 - Welcome Party (2)

* * *

Hyeon-yul stared at his computer screen, going through the information on the experimental subjects that he had obtained from Asan. Their names were missing, but photographs taken before the experiments remained.

There had been 2,084 subjects when the first experiment began. By the final experiment, only two remained. The experiments had lasted two years. That could be considered either a short time or a long one, but in a mere two years, the number of survivors had fallen to two. The amount of money poured into the project was also staggering.

He searched through the records, but nowhere did they explain why Asan's child had died. What he could confirm was that their goal had been the child's 'resurrection' from the beginning, just as it was now.

‘Judging by the records, some of the drugs they used overlap with the ones I remember.’

He had encountered such overlaps countless times. The documents told him little beyond the effects and side effects of the drugs. What he remembered, however, was how those drugs smelled, what they did, and the damage they caused. He had been using those memories to search for a match, but whenever he found something and examined it closely, it turned out to be different. The smell was wrong. At times, he even felt as though someone had tried to imitate the drugs that had been used on him.

‘At least they recorded where they obtained the drugs.’

These documents had not been prepared for distribution outside the organization. They were designed to make things convenient for the researchers themselves, so they specified where the drugs had been purchased and how they had been combined. It also helped the researchers correct a formula quickly if something went wrong. Unfortunately, records like these were always the first to be destroyed, and even reaching an experimental facility did not guarantee he would find them.

‘Still, I managed to get something this time.’

Today was his day off, so Hyeon-yul was in no hurry. He opened a message board devoted to missing persons and began comparing its photographs with those in the experiment records. He had done this enough times to write a program for the task, and he started it up again.

There were 2,084 people to check. Whenever he found someone on the missing-persons list, he removed them from his own list of possibilities. In the past, he had sometimes informed their families that the missing person was dead, but the replies had always been predictable. They would insist it was impossible or threaten to sue him. Once he understood that they could not accept the deaths, he stopped contacting them. If that was how they wanted to handle it, he would leave them alone.

What Hyeon-yul was really looking for was a family that might still be searching for him.

‘...What is the point of all this?’

He asked himself that every time and could never find a satisfactory answer. Even if he found his family, what was he supposed to say? Why should he go and meet them at all? But surely it would be right to let them know he was alive, at the very least.

Bzzzz.

[Senior Baek Shinwoo: Hyeon-yul, what are you doing?]

Hyeon-yul frowned the moment he looked at his phone.

[Senior Choo Nayun: Are you out of your mind? It's his day off.]

[Senior Baek Shinwoo: And you grumbled when I said I'd contact Hyeon-yul separately.]

[Senior Baek Shinwoo: Should I message him separately?]

[Senior Baek Shinwoo: Want me to contact him directly?]

[Senior Ye Jihwan: No! Do it here!]

[Senior Ye Jihwan: You absolutely have to do it here!!!]

Hyeon-yul almost turned his phone facedown but restrained himself. He glanced around the house. The sight of its spacious interior made him feel a little calmer.

‘I've been tricked.’

Only now did he understand why Jeongmin had laughed when Hyeon-yul told him that he had joined a group chat. Every time anyone said a single thing, more and more messages poured in. If he failed to check his phone for even a little while, he would find over two hundred unread messages waiting. He could not simply leave the chat, either. Every teammate, including the team leader, was in it.

[Team Leader Oh Haeryeon: All the team members are here, so why would you contact him separately?]

[Team Leader Oh Haeryeon: Shinwoo, you must be feeling pretty relaxed these days?]

[Senior Baek Shinwoo: No, Team Leader! Absolutely not!]

Seeing that Haeryeon had joined in too, Hyeon-yul let out a long breath and started typing.

[I'm looking for something.]

[Would it be all right if I told you what I'm looking for?]

He knew that saying it would probably spoil the mood, so he thought he should ask first.

[Team Leader Oh Haeryeon: Of course, of course.]

[Senior Choo Nayun: I'll help you look. Tell us.]

[Senior Baek Shinwoo: Nayun's good at finding things. She's got sharp eyes.]

[Senior Ye Jihwan: I'll try looking with magic, too.]

[Senior Ye Jihwan: There's bound to be something I can do.]

Was it really all right? Hyeon-yul hesitated before moving his fingers again.

[I'm looking for my family.]

[The drugs made me lose my memories, so finding them has been difficult.]

After sending the messages, Hyeon-yul waited a moment, then turned his head away. He thought he could already predict how they would respond. They would pretend not to know what to say. Perhaps they would simply tell him to stay strong.

‘Then why did I even ask?’

He returned his attention to the computer. He had crossed off so many names that the remaining list had become considerably shorter, although there were still plenty more he needed to eliminate.

Bzzzz.

His phone started vibrating repeatedly as new messages poured in.

[Senior Ye Jihwan: Oh no...]

[Team Leader Oh Haeryeon: Is that what happened?]

[Team Leader Oh Haeryeon: So that's what you've been doing?]

[Team Leader Oh Haeryeon: I'll help too.]

[Senior Ye Jihwan: We'll definitely find them!]

Jihwan sent a sticker of a fox crying tears of sympathy.

[Senior Choo Nayun: Hyeon-yul, I don't know if I've told you before, but I have a lot of connections.]

[Senior Choo Nayun: Give me even a small clue and I'll look into it. I'm sure we can find them quickly.]

[Senior Baek Shinwoo: Oh, I know a few places we could ask, too.]

[Senior Baek Shinwoo: And I understand how you feel.]

[Senior Baek Shinwoo: I searched everywhere for my younger sibling after they died, too.]

‘...?’

Hyeon-yul was startled for a moment. Was it really all right for Shinwoo to mention the death of his younger sibling so casually?

[Senior Ye Jihwan: I don't know how much manpower we'll need or where to search, but I'll look with you! I'll give up all my vacation days if I have to!]

Jihwan attached another fox sticker, this one expressing fierce determination. Hyeon-yul blinked as he watched the messages continue to arrive.

They said they would help him look. They did not brush him off or pretend they had not heard. What he had told them must have been difficult to respond to, yet instead of avoiding it, they were already discussing ways to find his family.

‘...How strange.’

It felt strange to him. Very strange indeed.

[...Let's have that welcome party.]

That was all Hyeon-yul could think of to say. The vibrations from his phone grew even more frantic, and he immediately regretted his message. He slapped himself across the mouth.

Smack.

* * *

“Before we head out on our mission, there's something I want to tell you.”

Haeryeon looked around at everyone seated before her.

“Recently, we've received reports of several groups believed to be villains clashing near the boundary between the capital region and the areas outside it. We verified the information again and concluded that it's reliable, so I'm informing you right away.”

“Team Leader, if this started because the Poison King's faction has been left without its leader, didn't that faction demonstrate its strength just a short while ago? Why do we think this is happening?”

Nayun raised a hand as she asked. Not long ago, the Poison King had activated poison that he had planted in advance, the same kind that had been discovered during the festival. Hadn't that been an unmistakable declaration that he was still alive?

“That's a good question, Nayun.”

Haeryeon welcomed the question because she had expected it.

“We believe the incident was meant to demonstrate that the Poison King was still going strong even though he had disappeared. The team leaders paid particular attention to that at our meeting. The prevailing theory is that the faction he led is fighting other factions approaching the capital to show that it's still powerful, even without the Poison King present.”

“That makes sense. After all, the Poison King sent the signal first. His people can't be so oblivious that they fail to take advantage of it.”

Shinwoo nodded several times. Just when those people must have thought everything was over, the Poison King had seemingly sent them a signal. They must have been delighted.

“We investigated whether they're genuinely fighting or merely putting on a show,” Haeryeon continued. “Frankly, it was suspicious, wasn't it? But several factions really have disappeared. One of them belonged to someone we've been keeping a close eye on: the Red Witch. That revelation was one reason our meeting ran so long.”

Without any ceremony, Haeryeon disclosed information that had been classified. The Poison King's faction had defeated the Red Witch's forces.

“...What?”

Jihwan swallowed hard in astonishment as he listened.

“Team Leader, are you saying the Red Witch's faction is really gone?”

He asked again because he could hardly believe it. Who was the Red Witch? She was a gravity mage, and the implications of controlling gravity were enormous.

“It's true. That was the shocking, classified incident I mentioned last time.”

“...Hah.”

Shinwoo let out a hollow laugh. The Poison King should not even be there anymore, so how was such a thing possible? Were his followers really that powerful? If they were, then just how extraordinary was Hyeon-yul, who had captured the Poison King himself?

“So you're saying the Poison King's faction fought the Red Witch's faction, and the Poison King's side won?”

Nayun shook her head in disbelief, but asked anyway.

“That's right. The Poison King's side won the battle. As things stand, we believe the Red Witch is dead.”

‘Did Asan's people attack the Poison King's faction after I killed her? Or was it the other way around?’

Hyeon-yul simply listened. He had killed Asan, the Red Witch, but he had no idea what had happened to her faction afterward. Whatever the circumstances, the collapse of one villain faction was good news.

“We're continuing to monitor the situation. I want you all to understand that we might be deployed there at any time. It's extremely unusual for so many villain factions to converge like this.”

“But, Team Leader...”

A question occurred to Jihwan as he listened, and he raised his hand. Haeryeon nodded at him.

“If the Red Witch is dead, doesn't that mean a new figure has appeared within the Poison King's faction?”

“I think so too. My guess is that it's the person you and Nayun saw.”

At her answer, Hyeon-yul tilted his head.

“Who would that be?”

Was there someone other than him? They could certainly speculate, but they would have no way of knowing that the person was Hyeon-yul himself.

“We don't know yet. Whoever it is tried to detonate a new weapon in the city and is currently in possession of that weapon. If they're the same person, we could be dealing with someone extremely dangerous.”

‘...Wait, isn't that supposed to be me? There shouldn't be anyone else.’

Hyeon-yul was confused. He was the one who had taken control of the Poison King's faction. But he had never intended to detonate any new weapon. If anything, he would have destroyed it, and he did not possess such a weapon either.

‘Is someone spreading false rumors? Or is there really someone else?’

He recalled what Haeryeon had said at the special criminal detention facility.

—No, Hyeon-yul. We can't be certain yet, but a new villain has appeared. Poison might not even work on them.

‘Has another villain actually appeared?’

It was hardly impossible for some villain to exploit the situation and pass off Hyeon-yul's accomplishments as their own. In fact, why wouldn't somebody try? But this was something he had heard from neither Yujong nor Seungyu, the figurehead president.

‘Still, this is the Black Eagles we're talking about.’

They were not an organization likely to make a simple mistake like that. The quality of their information was on an entirely different level.

‘I'll watch and see what happens.’

Hyeon-yul decided that it was not yet time to draw a conclusion.

“If that's really the case, then the person is certainly dangerous,” he said, choosing to remain neutral.

“But don't worry. I finished developing an antidote for the poison in the new weapon created by the Poison King today.”

Haeryeon looked exhausted rather than pleased as she raised a finger and pointed firmly at herself, as though to make it clear that she had done the work.

Clap, clap, clap.

Nayun was the first to applaud, and the others followed her lead.

“I knew you'd pull it off, Team Leader! Who else could've done it?”

“As expected of you, Team Leader.”

“I bet we'll see an academic paper about it soon.”

Nayun, Shinwoo, and Jihwan piled on the praise and gave her enthusiastic thumbs-up. Seeing all three speaking with one voice, Hyeon-yul glanced around uncertainly and joined in the applause.

“...That's very impressive.”

Pfft.

Haeryeon burst out laughing. The other three always behaved like this, but it was obvious that Hyeon-yul was forcing himself to fit in. There was not a trace of genuine enthusiasm in his voice.

“You don't have to force yourself to join in. The others do that even when I tell them not to, so I've just learned to let them.”

“...Ah.”

Hyeon-yul immediately lowered both of his raised hands.

“More importantly, this is part of my job apart from leading the team.”

She was not the only alchemist in the Black Eagles, but she could confidently say that her skills were quite good.

“Getting back to the subject, we confirmed that the drug found during yesterday's operation, the one Hyeon-yul assisted with, is the same as the drug recovered during the mission we carried out. Team Seven Leader Ye Juhyeon has agreed to handle the transaction records and everything related to both cases.”

Juhyeon handled almost all investigations of that kind. No one in the Black Eagles could surpass her in that field. Everyone had their strengths.

‘If it's Team Leader Ye Juhyeon, we can leave it to her.’

Hyeon-yul nodded in satisfaction. He knew she did not particularly like him, but that had nothing to do with her ability. He had seen her skills more than once.

‘I'll be receiving information from both sides, then?’

All that remained was to see where the information overlapped and where it differed.

“Team Leader.”

Hyeon-yul raised a hand slightly to request the floor.

“Go ahead, Hyeon-yul.”

“I'm curious about the plan we discovered to turn Black Eagles into experimental subjects. How is that investigation going?”

He hoped the Black Eagles were looking into it as well. He still remembered the unidentified man he had met at the secret base, the one who had used that peculiar power.

“That's still under investigation. First we need to establish who owned that secret base, but it was destroyed, apparently to eliminate the evidence.”

Haeryeon let out a long breath.

‘There was nothing left there anyway.’

Hyeon-yul watched her. He had destroyed the place so that it could never be used again. Besides, hadn't the man who used that portal-like power told him he could do whatever he liked?

—What a shame. You came all this way for nothing. Do you think destroying this place will bother me? I have plenty of money. I can build as many of these as I want.

If Hyeon-yul found any more places like it, he intended to destroy every last one of them. He was also curious how much money the man really had.

“We've uncovered the plan, but there's no evidence that it has actually been carried out. That doesn't mean we're lowering our guard. We'll investigate that possibility carefully at the experimental sites we've already discovered and at every site we find from now on.”

“People like that would really do it, wouldn't they...? I honestly think they would.”

Jihwan spoke hesitantly, unable to bring himself to look at Hyeon-yul. If the idea frightened him this much, how must Hyeon-yul feel?

“They absolutely would. That's the kind of people they are.”

Hyeon-yul's answer briefly made the atmosphere heavy. After all, the words came from someone who had himself been an experimental subject.

“...I wish they wouldn't. I wish they'd just abandon that kind of thing.”

Jihwan finally found the words. He wanted to say the villains would never do something so terrible, but he simply could not.

“We can prevent this by paying attention to whether any Black Eagles go missing,” Hyeon-yul said, offering a practical assessment rather than empty hope.

It was impossible to stop every ordinary citizen from being abducted for experiments because monitoring every person in the world was simply not feasible. The Black Eagles, however, were organized so that a team leader would know if one of their members vanished.

“I agree. So let's work hard again today.”

Haeryeon began bringing the discussion to a close. Dragging it out any longer would do no one any good.

“And you remember what today is, right?”

She changed the subject in an effort to brighten the mood. Starting this week, their shift had changed from a one-in-the-morning start to a six-in-the-morning start. Haeryeon gave Hyeon-yul a broad grin.

Today was the day of his welcome party, and the entire team had been granted tomorrow off for the occasion.