Chapter 16 - The Practice (1) (1/2)

The Practice (1)

“Hey…!” Kim Byung-cheol and Kwon Se-hyeong called out to Il-hyun.

“I’m sorry, I need to go.” Il-hyun replied.

Leaving his friends, Il-hyun followed Lee Soo-yeon, who was already opening the door.

He left the building and his newly-acquired coat started swaying in the wind. The sword swung loosely on his waist. It would take a while to get used to that.

Il-hyun felt stern eyes pressing into his neck as he boarded the plane.

The inside of the aeroplane, quite unlike its exterior, was cleaner and less sparse than expected.

It was like something out of a war movie. It seemed to be full of messy and weird equipment. There was a seat at the back and a monitor on the side of the door.

The plane soon rose. The take-off was almost silent.

As a vertical launch and landing aircraft, it soared up rapidly without the need for a runway.

Il-hyun looked out through the open hatch and could see the world from above.

He had had a fantastic experience on the back of the falcon before, but the feeling here was quite different.

While he was staring blankly, the door hatch automatically descended from above and closed.

Lee Soo-yeon, sitting a couple of meters away, called out to Il-hyun:

“Hey, I know I told you this before, but now that I’m a team member, it’s gonna be a lot easier. Here’s Ghost.”

“Good to see you again. Ha.”

Ghost, held out his hand for the handshake, and took off his mask, much to Il-hyun’s surprise.

There was a secret lying behind Ghost’s mask. Anyone was likely to think that, but Il-hyun knew it for certain.

Now the secret was revealed. Il-hyun looked bashfully at Ghost’s face while the latter took off his mask.

Contrary to the rumors, there were no colossal burn marks or scars on his face. Il-hyun looked intensely at Ghost’s face and considered it neither ugly nor handsome. The secret after all was that there was no secret.

It was the face of a very ordinary young man.

“Oh… It’s very different from the face I imagined.”

“I hear that often.”

“Do the rumors not get to you?” Il-hyun asked. “Why are you even covering your face? If you didn’t cover it, people wouldn’t be trying to guess what’s behind the mask.”

“I can’t tell you. It’s a very complicated situation.”

“What’s complicated about it?”

Lee Soo-yeon, sitting on a seat with her arms folded, started laughing. The hilarity of Ghost’s concept of “complicated situation” had really tickled her.

Ghost took no notice, or at least pretended not to notice. He decided to change the topic.

“Il-hyun, do you mind if I call you brother?”

“Huh? Ah… sure.”

Il-hyun wasn’t quite sure how to reply to this request.

The tone of Ghost’s voice wasn’t exactly earnest when he had asked the question. Ghost came off as pretty smug.

“How did you manage to break the core again?” Ghost asked.

“Oh, that.” Il-hyun looked incredibly satisfied with himself.

The revelation of Ghost’s face was something of a miracle, and at first Il-hyun had considered it a very pleasant surprise. Now though, he was finding his personality unbearable. Il-hyun couldn’t help but think that Ghost would’ve been more likeable with a ravaged face and an agreeable easy-going personality.

Before, Ghost had been the masked man with the low booming voice, and there had been a gravity about his person whenever he had been wearing the mask.

Now though, Il-hyun felt the urge to remark how wrong he had been with these first impressions. He suppressed the urge to speak.

Meanwhile, Lee Soo-yeon looked at her watch, looked up, and decided to put a stop to what she saw as a possible argument in the making.

“Look, it’s all well and good to get along well, but we can talk about this later. We’ll arrive soon. I need to explain the operation to you before we get there.”

“But how did you know where I was?” Il-hyun asked, his curiosity burning inside him.

“You said you were using location information during the operation” she said, pointing at a cell phone sticking out of her pocket.

He remembered that he had signed a contract and had been told to plug something into his cell phone. Of course, this was the tracking device.

Using that device was standard procedure, designed to prevent hacking, look up location information, and prove an individual’s identity.

“Maybe you’re just a little surprised because I’m monitoring you, no? Privacy is a

bit of a false construct.” Lee Soo-yeon saw no reason to beat around the bush.

Team members, as well as team leaders, including her, all went through the same vetting process.

A small company comprised of unimportant individuals wouldn’t know anything about monitoring. But the end result was, if anyone tried anything in Aegis, the meeting place of the senior Awakened, they certainly wouldn’t last very long.

“Where did the other two go?” Ghost, once again wearing the mask, asked with a flutter.

He saw only three people, including himself, and other team members.

Jeong Jin-sung, famous for teaming up with Lee Soo-yeon, and Seok Pil-jun, had already been and gone.

He remembered that his first impressions of Seok Pil-jun had not been very good.

“They applied to another team. What would you have done if you were playing here?”

“Yeah, but now the foreign side is busy again.”

“Only because the cycle is coming.”

Lee Soo-yeon sighed.

He had heard from the awakenings that the cycle of active gate generation was an ongoing nightmare.

Many ordinary people thought that it was not right to increase their income to take advantage of the situation.

“Do you know how to use the equipment?”

Lee Soo-yeon turned and asked. Il-hyun nodded.

He had memorized his guidebook two days ago.

He had learned how to use the equipment for his mission. He knew how the coats with their various functions worked. He knew how to use them to purify contaminated air, carry out temporary hemostasis to stop blood loss; and thermostasis, maintaining body temperature.

Lee Soo-yeon passed him the white transceiver.