Chapter 223 - If (1)

1

Looking back, Viscountess Ja Sujeong had clearly warned me.

["Do not try to stop me. This is a warning."]

Just before I opened her lock, she had already known that I held it in my hands.

Had she been a scoundrel, she would have made the key unusable. She would not have answered my questions or supplied the correct answers to my probing interrogation.

Viscountess Ja Sujeong could easily have done that.

She did not.

She had merely told me, calmly, what would come: the lock I opened would lead to a secret room, and the person hurt there would be none other than myself.

["You see, I have a habit of carelessly breaking lovable children."]

I opened the lock.

And paid the price the god had warned me of.

2

"Mr. Yoo Suha."

A familiar bar.

A dark, murky atmosphere.

There were plenty of expensive bars on the Tower's first floor. The ones run as serious establishments decorated themselves just like bars in the outside world, imported heaps of liquor considered premium even out there, and sold it at eye-popping prices.

A rip-off.

But everywhere in the world, there are customers who welcome being fleeced as readily as a shoulder massage. People lined up to buy, no matter the price.

The homeland they could never return to. The outside world.

The illusion of briefly stopping by an ordinary bar outside and enjoying an ordinary day was worth savoring, however many gold coins it cost.

"Mr. Yoo Suha."

"Huuuh...?"

The bar where Yoo Suha woke was a beer pub.

A Korean-style beer pub, to be precise.

Even in sprawling Babylon, only one establishment recreated that particular style. A huge refrigerator stood inside, its shelves lined with beer cans bearing familiar brands.

Cans flaunting a cheap silver sheen and brand names in blue letters in a gratuitous attempt to look cool. Cans with tacky gold borders, showing off their supposed sophistication just because they had some gold on them. And so on.

Funnily enough, not one brand had Korean on its label. They were all in English.

"Ah, what is it now...?"

To Yoo Suha, those beer cans were proof of home.

The country he had lived in and fled was a place where people had to proclaim loudly that they loved their own alphabet. In other words, the letters of his homeland were not loved very much.

Nothing born there was loved.

Citizens hated citizens. People hated people. They hated the children they had brought into the world and the parents who had brought them into it. People who hated one another gathered and erected buildings called schools. There, they hated some more.

"Why're you waking me up? Whyyy...?"

The only doctrine Yoo Suha had learned in that country was how to hate people.

He had been born among people who hated one another and grown up alongside people who hated one another. What else could he have learned? Math? Language? As useless as ethics class. Fundamentally, all Yoo Suha had learned there was hatred.

Of the parents who had conceived and given birth to them, how many could possibly proclaim:

["I like human beings."]

How many parents could say, without any falsehood, that they loved humanity?

It was not just parents. Teachers were no different. Six years, three years, three years—a full twelve years of his life had been occupied by countless teachers. Yoo Suha had received the breath they exhaled as a transplant into his own lungs.

He wanted to ask:

["Do you truly like human beings, teacher?"]

Probably not.

But the response to the opposite question was easy to predict.

["Do you all hate human beings?"]

Then his own parents would be the first to raise their hands. "Yes." The parent standing behind the classmate beside him would raise a hand too. "Yes." Finally, with every parent and student raising a hand, the teacher at the lectern would nod last of all.

"Of course I hate human beings too."

So.

Fuck you.

"Mr. Yoo Suha, you're completely drunk."

Someone tapped his shoulder.

It was a small hand.

"This isn't a classroom, Mr. Yoo Suha. Can you see me?"

"Ah, fuuuck... This is bullshit, shiiit... What... What is it? Where am I...?"

"Yes, actually, this is a school. Yes, it's the classroom at your high school, Mr. Yoo Suha."

"Didn't you just saaay it wasn't a school...?"

"What school in the world serves canned beer for lunch?"

THUNK.

Someone set two enormous beer cans on the table.

The drunken Yoo Suha flinched. Then, through alcohol-soaked eyes, he gazed at the two enormous columns planted right before his nose and sniffed.

"Uhbuhbuh...?"

"It's beer. The Korean beer you're always singing about how you'll die without. Personally, if I had to pick the worst beer in the world, I suspect it would be these beers that have just descended upon us. But people from a certain island nation love their home cooking too, so I suppose there must be one or two specimens who think Korean beer is the tastiest shit to guzzle. Here. Drink the damn stuff."

"Uhhh... S'where...?"

Yoo Suha grasped a can with a limp hand. It must have been terribly cold, fresh out of the refrigerator, but he did not care. He quickly popped it open, then poured the beer down his throat in great gulps.

"Phaaaah!"

"Enjoying yourself?"

"Whew. Ooh, that's good. Good. Ah! Good. Where are we?"

"There are two possibilities."

"Let's hear 'em! My dear manager!"

"First, you've skipped evening study hall. Then you and your friends rode scooters all the way to the bar district in Samcheong-dong. You weren't in the mood for soju, so you decided on beer, went into a pub that looked vaguely decent, and drank your ass off until you were shit-faced."

"Shit-faced! Shit—faced! Shiiit-faced!"

Feeling like an ancient barbarian warrior, Yoo Suha shook his beer can.

The can vomited up the liquid in its belly, and Yoo Suha gladly received the holy water bestowed by Dionysus all over his head.

He did not care. Neither did the bar owner, nor the someone speaking to him.

"The second possibility is that you're no longer a high school student, this isn't Samcheong-dong's cheap bar district, and we're not even in Korea. You're already an S-rank hunter, but you pointlessly charged into a beer pub to get a taste of home and guzzled away until you were shit-faced."

"Hmm."

"Which scenario do you prefer, Mr. Yoo Suha?"

"What's... the weather outside like right now...?"

"The weather on the Korean Peninsula can currently be summed up in two words: monsoon season. Yesterday's rain is falling today, and today's rain falls twice today. Clammy moisture ripens all over the neighborhood and rises in clouds. Just walking down the street would deal damage over time to your stress meter: -1, -1, -1."

"Did I bring an umbrella...?"

"No. Neither did I."

"Fuck. Then let's go with the second possibility! Fuck!"

Yoo Suha drained another can and spun around.

"Boss! Khurp, ahem. Check, please!"

"Never mind the damn check. First, please learn to walk on two legs properly."

A girl snatched Yoo Suha's wallet. It was stuffed with folded banknotes issued by the Bank of Korea. After counting them, she asked:

"How much is it, boss?"

"Your fellow had quite a lot. Including the food, it's sixty thousand won."

"Good heavens."

The girl turned around and glared at Yoo Suha.

"You stuffed that much down your throat?"

"Sorry. I think I'm gonna burp..."

"Why not spit the alcohol back out instead of burping? Maybe we'd get a discount. You ordered five dishes and eleven cans of beer all by yourself. Does all that actually fit inside that gut?"

"Ooh, uhh... urp, hup, hooph... Ghk! Bleeuurgh! Gweeeuurgh!"

"Jesus Christ."

The girl's expression soured.

"I'll clean that up, proprietor."

"No, no, it's quite all right. That's part of the service too. Anyway, that'll be sixty thousand won."

The girl took Korean banknotes from the wallet and handed them over.

And that was where the trick creating [the illusion of a bar] began.

"One gold coin for every hundred thousand won in banknotes, correct?"

"The rate's temporarily gone up lately. Korean money isn't easy to get."

The bar owner whispered.

"Chinese and Japanese money are easy to bring in, but Korean money really has no purpose in the Tower of Babel except as a collectible..."

"I'll give you two extra gold coins. Stock up on plenty of bills. That way, even when customers spend a lot, they can pay in Korean money and receive Korean money in change."

"Oh, just what I'd expect from Mr. Yoo Suha's manager. How can you be so clever and look after our business so shrewdly too?"

The owner bowed repeatedly to the little girl.

Indeed.

In the Tower of Babel, a bar was a space of [magic].

This place was Korea. It accepted only Korean money and paid out only Korean money. Thus customers could sample the beers commonly stocked in Korean pubs: domestic beer, Belgian-style beer, bottled Chinese beer. They could also enjoy the chef's own boneless fried chicken, seasoned fried chicken, and pizza of questionable flavor.

"With military provocations in the Korea Strait intensifying day by day recently..."

Even the bar's television broadcast news from the outside world—Korean news, at that.

It was a strange sight.

There was very little Korean alcohol on the menu of this Korean-style beer pub. Even the few Korean drinks all had English brand names. The food was chicken or pizza, neither of which had originated in Korea.

Bills were settled in Korean money here. Only out front, that is. Behind the scenes, they calculated exchange values between gold coins and won, working to ensure they never ran out of the [casino chips] called Korean money.

The people over there clinking beer glasses and shouting "Cheers!" were not Korean. Not a single one of them.

Everyone who abandoned their country and entered the Tower, whatever their reasons, was stripped of their nationality.

In a place without a nation, customers shouted their patriotism for one country or another. Customers without a country argued heatedly about politics, sometimes even coming to blows.

"Mr. Yoo Suha."

A city of people displaced from their homelands.

"Have you sobered up a little now?"

"Uh, well. More or less... Wow, normally I'd just circulate my aura once, wash away the hangover, and be done! But I can't today because of that promise... Thought I was gonna fucking drink myself to death."

"Because you promised me."

Someone with a girl's voice spoke calmly.

"You agreed not to use aura at all today."

"Yeah, well... Hey. Shit. How'd I end up making a promise like that? I don't remember."

"We bet on whether the Black Dragon leader would bring assassins to attack us on our way back from clearing this stage. You bet she would. I bet she wouldn't."

"Ahhh, ah."

Yoo Suha knitted his brows.

"I remember. Fucking Black Dragon leader. Fucking bitch. Bitch of a fucking bitch. Hey, Sujeong. You know what? If you look closely at the Korean word for [son of a bitch], it actually looks like a drawing of a puppy. Wow. The first syllable is its head and front paws. The second's its body and hind legs. The third's its ass and tail. Look. Son of a bitch. Wow. I'm a genius. Isn't [son of a bitch] really a son of a bitch?"

"It is. And Yoo Suha the bastard really is Yoo Suha the bastard."

"Hmmm...?"

"You may have regained some of your senses, but that 'some' leaves me uneasy. Surely you haven't forgotten tomorrow's interview, Mr. Yoo Suha?"

"Tomorrow's... intervieeew...?"

"Yes."

The girl.

The hunter in Ja Sujeong's form gave a brief answer.

"The interview to hire a new manager."

Yoo Suha abruptly seized Ja Sujeong's small shoulders.

"I told you I don't need a new manager!"

"That hurts."

"Hey, Sujeong! You upset with me about something? Tell me if you are. Just say the word, and your big guy here will do anything. Salary too stingy? Want me to pour in cash till you can taste salt in your mouth? Someone bothering you? Which bastard is it? These little fucking shits... Huh? Bastards who won't know their place till I cut off their limbs and toss 'em somewhere remote in the second-floor hunting grounds... Huh? Sujeong! I'm a generous man. Tell me!"

"I..."

"Yeah! What is it? What? I'll do anything!"

"I'm weak, so moving things is difficult."

"..."

"I'm short, so even handling the steering wheel is an ordeal. Every time I drive with you sitting behind me, my bottom, back, and neck hurt."

"Uhhh..."

"We need to bring in a new manager, Mr. Yoo Suha. A star hunter like you inevitably needs staff."

"Can't I just carry the stuff for you?"

"And do the driving yourself too?"

"Yeah."

"Would you be all right with that?"

"I'd look fucking lame. Sorry. Can't do it... Your big guy here can do anything else, but looking lame is the one thing I can't accept..."

"Without a new manager, I'm practically going to die of overwork. Hire one. Otherwise, I'll resign."

"Ah! Ah! What! Why're you considering resigning, Assistant Manager Ja Sujeong!"

"Since when did we have an assistant manager position?"

"Just now. It's my guild, so I'm the boss and I'm the king. You're Assistant Manager Ja Sujeong from now on."

"Haah..."

Ja Sujeong sighed.

"Then I'll proceed with the manager interviews tomorrow as scheduled."

"I'm doing that too, right? Huh?"

"Of course. We're choosing your manager, after all."

When they returned to the guild building, an extravagant banner was already hanging there.

[Recruiting a manager for Yoo Suha: World's No. 1, S-Rank Hunter, Tyrant of the Tower of Babel.]