Chapter 3 (2/2)
During the checkup, I kept running to the toilet to vomit.
“Woo-e-eh-ek!”
The doctor, who patiently completed the procedure, disappeared, and left an ambiguous diagnosis in his trail, that I might survive.
There remained one particular woman in the room who had been with me from the beginning (the doctor called her Secretary Kim).
She was to take me to Seongjin’s father immediately. For a moment, I thought I should stop trying to get well.
“So, Secretary Kim, you heard all the conversations I had with the doctor, did you understand anything?”
Kim’s expression was distorted.
“Oh, do you suspect temporal amnesia due to the concussion?”
Frequently vomiting seems to have had its effect.
“Yes, as I said, the memories are flashing and fading now. I think it will prove a bit difficult to see my father right away.”
She stared at me with a face bare of descriptive expressions
“Secretary Kim Byung-ho. That’s your name, right?” I keenly asked her.
Secretary Kim frowned, touching the rough ring on her index finger. It had a mana pattern on it. Quite a handy artifact.
She asked with suspicious uncertainty, “It’s awkward. Would you like to call me Secretary Kim, or would you like to call me by my full name?”
Tracing Seongjin-wook’s memories was not an easy task. Everything was still jumbled and infused together. It was difficult reliving the memory I sought. This is going to be tedious in the time to come.
“So, what was it originally called?”
Then, Secretary Kim began uttering curses underneath her breath without shifting from her greasy unattended look.
Most of them were simple words, combining the alphabetical figures of the words’ bottle’ and ‘ho’.
I grasped the spirit of being absent and restrained the extinction listed by Secretary Kim.
“Oh, it’s good. I just had to stop.”
“Bob squirrel, bottle beetle, bottle taste squash…. Oh, shall we stop?”
“Yeah.”
I let out a faint sigh.
Listening to the previous call, I opined Seongjin-wook must be 19 soon.
Seongjin’s birth year was 2019. This means he and I possibly had a conversation. The year was 2038.
‘It’s 2038’
It was 40 years ago. 40 years ago, since ChoiSeung-hyun’s final moments. Taking that into account.
‘I must be going crazy’
As ChoiSeung-hyun, I can recall the man called Seongjin-wook, a person out of my sphere of interests in the past. There wasn’t anything overtly explicit that I had encountered.
Therefore, what I know of him are only some momentous events. Before turning 20 in Korea, he used to in-charge of the exploration and support Team 6 of the Cheonryong Guild.
‘Due to his awakening as a hunter and his age, he must have been made Team Leader’
However, we didn’t know what circumstances Seongjin-wook was in.
For example, how was my relationship with my father, the Guild Leader?
Who was searching for me?
Is the position of support six-team leader the father’s favor, test, or punishment for the eldest son?
Moreover, the document was accompanied by a strange evaluation of Seongjin-wook, even though an unconfirmed rumor was associated with it.
It was confusing.
The memory of Seongjin-wook’s brain was not yet organized properly in my mind, so it was difficult to judge how to deal with the current situation.
‘I need more information’
I looked at Secretary Kim.
“Are you busy now?” I asked her.
“Yes, I am busy. You must be aware that the Guild Leader doesn’t like to be kept waiting. We have to make haste.”
“Can we stall a little? You heard the doctor’s diagnosis. I am suffering from memory loss due to a concussion.”
“It isn’t a conclusive diagnosis, just a conjecture.”
The doctor went out to report it. The story must have already been told to the Guild Leader.
It was said that I was lying in bed in the middle of the day because of a massive shock to my head.
“A concussion? What happened?”
Secretary Kim shook her head, sighing, “I can’t believe you really can’t remember.”
“There was disorderly conflict between Seongjin-wook and the Team Leader of Exploration 2. Naturally, the cause of the inevitable conflict is…”
She responded, pointing to me.
“I’ve been struggling? If you are the head of Exploration 2…”
The name came naturally. It wasn’t dependent on memory recall, but pure skill.
“Park Chang-hee?”
“Yeah. You remember that?”
Park Chang-hee Hunter is a class-A hunter who had survived for a long time, and now gained a famous reputation.
Conversely, Seongjin-wook, son of the Guild Leader, was given Support Team Leader, but who was, nevertheless, an awakened man who had not attained a hunter’s qualifications.
That would have been just before I pretended.
‘But you were fighting?’
“If it’s fertilization, How? Why?”
“At the meeting, the head of the team, Seo Chang-hee Park, asked, ‘why do you open your eyes and look at me, and still you don’t like it?’”
I suddenly felt dizzy. It was upsetting.
“Seo Chang-hee, the leader of the team, felt upset for being ignored”
“Did I ever swear?”
“No, you didn’t swear.”
“It’s a good thing.”
“Listen closely. According to eyewitnesses, Chief Seo is enraged. He jumped onto the large rectangular table in the boardroom of the executive boarding board, kicked the documents and plaques on the board, sprinted, and shove them down the chairman, Park Chang-hee, who was seated at the other end of the table.”
‘Non-Awakening to A-Class Hunter?’
I covered my face with both hands.
I came up with an anxious phrase describing Seongjin-wook in a document I read as SeunghyunChoi.
-Rumors of severe borderline personality disorder, impulse control disorder, delirium, and schizophrenia spread among a small number of hunters. Still, none have been confirmed until the time of death.