Chapter 65
Once the area was secure, I safely got the instructor and the students onto the train.
Even those who had initially been frightened by the train's menacing exterior gasped in admiration the moment they stepped into the soft sofa seats and the safe interior of the cabin.
"It's cleaner inside than I expected."
With a line I'd heard somewhere before, the train carried the boarded students out of Daechi-dong and sped along.
Before long, we arrived at Singil Station near the Yeouido Safe Zone.
People from the chairman's side, who had been contacted in advance, were waiting at the station.
They warmly welcomed the students and draped blankets over them.
Unfortunately, there was no one there to drape a blanket over the instructor.
...The children come first, after all.
The instructor kept bowing deeply to me in thanks, and the students also waved at me.
"Thank you for your hard work. The chairman is busy right now, so I came in his place."
"Busy?"
"Yes... the chairman is currently posing as a model for a banner illustration with Candidate Lee Hanyeon."
"Oh..."
So that kind of trouble existed too.
A representative from the chairman's side came over, talked with me, and then left with the survivors.
I had completed the rescue mission and, feeling relieved, was leaning against the train and taking a short breather.
"Uh, are you perhaps the engineer?"
I turned toward the polite voice from behind me.
There stood a man in a perfectly pressed suit, a sight utterly out of place in the apocalypse.
With even his shoes gleaming, he looked like someone who had just stepped out of Yeouido's pre-apocalypse financial district.
I could roughly guess which organization he was with, but pretending not to know anything, I asked.
"Yes, but who...?"
"Yes. I'm an agent from the Administration Bureau. If you have a moment, I'd like to treat you to some coffee."
The man politely extended a hand and pointed in one direction.
He led me to a café on the first floor of a shopping building not far from the station.
Just a few days ago, I thought they were loading and unloading something there.
Could they really be brewing coffee again, as if this were still a café?
"...Uh, if it's just for a moment."
I had been thinking of refusing, but he was so polite, and since it wasn't far from the train, I decided to head to the café with the golem in tow.
Honestly, I was curious.
More than what this man said, I was curious about a café opening again after the apocalypse.
Who could possibly refuse that?
I couldn't help but startle the moment I opened the café door and stepped inside.
Warm yellow lights lit the interior, and with the hiss of steam, a bitter coffee aroma drifted through the air.
'It's a real café.'
Of course there was no reason for it to be fake, but that thought still crossed my mind.
There were quite a few people inside.
Inside this café, it really felt like the cafés of the past had come back.
It felt like only the laptop crowd had vanished.
Maybe because of that feeling, the place was packed with people.
'Even a café...'
It was a moment that made me realize once again just how different the Yeouido Safe Zone really was.
The man led me to a corner seat by the window, set two iced Americanos on the table, and sat down across from me.
"Thanks to you, I'm finishing my coffee. So why did you bring me to a café...?"
As I fiddled with the coffee cup and asked bluntly, the man took a neat business card from his inner pocket and smoothly slid it across the table.
Even the business card was a bit surprising.
So there were people who made business cards and carried them around even when there was no way to make calls.
The card bore a three-character name stamped in gold.
"I am a special agent assisting Candidate No. 1, Lee Gwang-yong, who is running in the Yeouido Administration Bureau minister election."
"...Candidate No. 1."
I picked up the card and narrowed my eyes.
Lee Gwang-yong.
He was the politician who had created the Yeouido Administration Bureau.
I had just finished handling a request from the chairman, who supported Candidate No. 4, and now Candidate No. 1's side was trying to contact me.
"The candidate holds your overwhelming combat power and your influence within the Gallery in very high regard."
"...Is that so?"
Were they trying to contact me, the assistant manager, now that they couldn't find Haseon?
In a way, that was the proper order of things.
The man in the suit sipped his coffee and, in a calm voice, got to the point.
"I'll say it plainly. We want to bring you over to our side, Engineer."
The suit-clad agent interlaced his fingers on the table, his eyes shining with utter seriousness.
"Please tell us what conditions you want. We'll do our best to accommodate you as much as we can."
It was a bold recruitment offer, practically no different from a blank check.
But I toyed with my coffee cup and put on a rather troubled expression.
To be honest, the actions of the politicians originally affiliated with the existing Administration Bureau hadn't really sat well with me to begin with.
Just from reading the Gallery, or even listening in directly through reconnaissance drones, their selfish behavior had earned them scathing criticism.
"...Well, to be honest, I don't really lack anything right now."
I rested my chin on my hand and asked,
"Why do you want me so badly?"
At my question, the agent smiled.
"Engineer, you could become the key that decides this election."
"Me?"
"From what I understand, you've rescued quite a few people so far. Who do you think those survivors will vote for? Naturally, won't they vote for the candidate working with their savior, the Engineer?"
I nodded.
'Shouldn't people be choosing based on the pledges or the candidates themselves?'
A perfectly ordinary common-sense thought flashed through my mind, but if they voted for the person I supported just because I'd saved them from danger, that might happen too.
"...I suppose that's possible."
He also filled me in on a bunch of other flattering remarks, telling me how important I was.
Honestly, the compliments felt nice, but not enough for me to fall for such obvious flattery.
I gave a perfunctory nod and asked,
"Then how does Candidate No. 1 plan to appeal to people going forward?"
At that, the agent's eyes changed.
"Our campaign promise will be that we won't expand the safe zone any further."
"Not expand it?"
"That's right. We'll stop the reckless expansion and focus on maximizing the infrastructure and internal stability of the Yeouido Safe Zone we've already secured."
The man swept his gaze around the café.
Then he launched into criticism of the other candidates as well.
"The Awakened Alliance is blindly stretching the safe zone outward, saying they want to save people. But that's not a good thing. The wider the area we have to defend, the more our forces are dispersed, and in the end it only destabilizes the entire safe zone."
His criticism didn't stop with the Awakened Alliance; it moved on to the other candidates as well.
"Candidate No. 4, Lee Han-yeon, has his problems too. He's too old to lead Yeouido. And besides, he's never once answered any concrete questions about the safe zone's future. Honestly, he's not what he used to be..."
I nodded at criticism that flowed out naturally, as if he'd rehearsed it.
It seemed like he'd been waiting for questions like this.
And I thought his answer wasn't entirely wrong either.
"Then what about Candidate No. 2?"
At my sudden question, the agent who had been casually trashing others shut his mouth.
Candidate No. 2, like Candidate No. 1, had also originally been one of the Administration Bureau's own.
"...He's of course a good and admirable person too. But from my standpoint, I still have no choice but to support Candidate No. 1."
I snickered inwardly at that evasive answer.
As the saying goes, people tend to favor their own side, so he seemed reluctant to badmouth them outright.
"I'll think it over for now."
Honestly, I had no intention of accepting, but I didn't need to make an enemy here, so I left myself some room and stood up.
"I'll be waiting for your positive answer, Engineer."
With the agent seeing me off politely, I stepped out of the café.
Maybe because it had been a while since I'd had an iced Americano, I felt wide awake.
And just as I was thinking of buying one or two more and offering some to Haseon as well—
Whiiing-!
"Huh?"
A reconnaissance drone I'd definitely left on standby by the train came flying straight at me and started circling in front of my face.
Whirr!
Like a puppy tugging at its owner's sleeve, the drone stretched out its mechanical arm, carefully tugged at my collar, and led me toward the train.
"What's wrong?"
A frantic signal telling me to hurry over to the train.
Something had definitely happened.
I quickened my pace and went back to the train.
The moment I opened the door to Car No. 1 and stepped inside, Haseon, who had been pacing anxiously near the cockpit, rushed toward me.
"Sowon! This is bad!"
The usual calm expression was gone, and Haseon's face was deathly pale.
"Why? What happened?"
"A little while ago, a few men in suits were loitering around the train."
The place Haseon pointed to was the side window of Car No. 1.
The train's windows were tinted so darkly that no one outside could see in, but from inside, the view out was perfectly clear.
"They were pressed right up against the window, chatting about what this train's interior might look like."
It was soundproofed, but if they were talking in front of a relatively thin window, their voices would still carry through.
"Men in suits... so they must be Administration Bureau agents. But what about it?"
People who went around in suits were easy enough to identify.
"I overheard them talking, and it sounds like all the capable Awakened are flocking to the Awakened Alliance, so the Administration Bureau is in a state of emergency. That's why, they said, orders came down from above."
Haseon swallowed dryly and said the one sentence he had heard.
"The order was to somehow capture a nonhuman and bring it back alive."
"What?"
My eyebrows twitched.
Capturing a nonhuman alive.
To capture one, they'd first have to know where the nonhuman was.
If there was only one nonhuman whose current location could be pinpointed fairly accurately, it was...
A chatty elf living on the rooftop of an abandoned building and collecting human odds and ends.
"They said that if you use some kind of necklace item, you'll be able to handle nonhumans..."
"A necklace item..."
I had a bad feeling about this.