Chapter 168
“…”
Click. The switch turned off. I stood blankly leaning against the wall, plugging my nostrils with a tissue, as they wouldn’t stop bleeding from the aftereffects of the extrasensory perception.
Actually, it wasn’t something to be this shocked about, but I guess you could say I was a bit bewildered.
“Room No. 17 Secret Room. I think I know who was inside. At least one of them was.”
Even though I said that, making it obvious I’d discovered an amazing fact, Sandayu didn’t seem to have a single ounce of interest. He stood in a stiff, upright posture without even glancing in my direction.
He was just carrying out his assigned duty, a loyal samurai who didn’t harbor any unnecessary curiosity - was that it? I clicked my tongue and shrugged my shoulders.
It was truly someone I couldn’t have imagined, but whatever. It’s his loss if he doesn’t know.
Or was it? Was he uninterested because he already knew? With the Chairman’s intelligence network, it might already have acquired that information.
I glared suspiciously at the Cyborg Samurai, but because his face was covered by an exoskeleton mask, it was impossible to figure anything out by looking at his expression.
[Who was it?]
And unexpectedly, someone from a completely different direction was curious about the identity of the woman I had found.
‘You don’t know? We watched it together back then. On the hologram channel.’
There was no way a guy who was an artificial intelligence would have already forgotten that. As I wondered about it, the System Assistant replied.
[Human physical characteristics are difficult to distinguish. Test Subject, can you distinguish individual entities one by one just by looking at the appearance of guinea pigs?]
Ah, so in the eyes of this arrogant artificial intelligence, people just looked like experimental guinea pigs, making them hard to tell apart.
It wasn’t exactly a pleasant thing to hear, so I spoke sourly.
“Still, that person is a special guinea pig, you know? A very special one.”
[Is that so?]
“Yeah.”
If I had to compare her to a guinea pig, she’d be a guinea pig Queen, or maybe a Princess.
An incredibly wealthy person was invited to The Consortium Club, and was a politician on top of that.
She was a young, beautiful, and even famous female politician.
The only person who fit all of those descriptions, at least as far as I knew, was just one.
There was no way I wouldn’t know. Do you know how much ice I carved to look exactly like that face?
Elizabeth “El” Valentine.
The Direct Imperial Family of Megacorp Valentine, World’s No. 1 in Corporate Overall Asset Ranking.
And the leading candidate in this highly popular Dusk City mayoral election.
To explain it in a word… a female Lee Jae-yong running for president? And pretty and beautiful on top of that?
The expression was a bit weird, but anyway, a magnate like that had been passing through this corridor next to me just a moment ago. And I had been spying on that magnate with all my heart and soul.
Once my thoughts reached that point, I suddenly felt a chill. Wasn’t I tangled up in something far more serious than I imagined?
If I had been caught, I might have ended up being chased not only by militia but by Valentine as well.
The price for making a single slip of the tongue to the Chairman was this huge.
“Come to think of it… Ms. Kim said that before she left. That there was a special person she absolutely had to meet here. That she might regret it if she missed that person.”
I had wondered who she was trying to meet to express it like that, but now I knew.
There was no way there were two people Ms. Kim would be that excited and happy about, so she must have known that El Valentine was coming to The Consortium Club.
As my thoughts reached that point, there was something questionable.
“Wait. Did El Valentine… have a younger sister?”
I might have a good memory, but it wasn’t to the point where I could effortlessly recall the family relations of the Dusk version of Lee Jae-yong.
But I felt like I had heard on a political broadcast that El Valentine was the only female member of the Valentine Direct Lineage or something…
Wasn’t it strange? The ones conversing in there were definitely an older sister and a younger sister.
[Net search results, the direct family members of the 3rd Generation Valentine’s are only three: the eldest son Thomas Valentine Jr.., the deceased second son Gilbert Valentine, and the eldest daughter Elizabeth Valentine.]
And my memory was correct. True to the mysterious Royal Family of a Megacorp, they probably had a ton of hidden secrets, but El Valentine did not have a younger sister, at least according to what was known to the public.
‘What is it? Another hidden child? An illegitimate child? The secret of the bloodline of Dusk’s Highest-Ranking Noble House, something like that?’
Curiosity sparked for a moment. And even if it wasn’t for my curiosity, I had to find out as much information as possible anyway because of the mission the Chairman had entrusted to me.
“El Valentine definitely told her younger sister not to follow her out, that it would be troublesome if they got entangled.”
She didn’t seem like the type of good younger sister who listened well, but since it hadn’t been long since El Valentine left the secret room…
‘There’s a high chance the younger sister is still left in the room.’
As soon as my thoughts reached that point, I got permission from Sandayu and stepped out of the room. After opening the door and checking my surroundings, seeing no one, I carefully walked down the chilly corridor.
Since El Valentine’s younger sister could come out at any moment, I approached the Room No. 17 Secret Room while staying tense. Fortunately, even by the time I stood right next to the door, there was no sign of anyone coming out from inside.
I took a deep breath and hurriedly focused my mind.
Because I had overused the microchip, my head was ringing and hot, but I was confident I could somehow endure it for just one more time.
The switch turned on, and the world I perceived expanded. My sharpened senses pierced through the microscopic holes of the thick sound-absorbing walls.
“…”
When my gaze finally reached the inside of the secret room, I blinked my eyes.
There was no one inside.
* * *
The spy mission was over. Now, all that was left was to report the information I had discovered to the Chairman.
Honestly, I was very worried. Was the information I discovered enough to satisfy the Iron Blood Chairman? It was ambiguous. Missing a bit of the conversation in the middle also weighed on my mind.
As a result, Karin Isiho’s reaction was somewhat expected.
She didn’t even react to the fact that the user of the secret room was El Valentine, as if she already knew, and she merely nodded at the contents of the conversation she had with her younger sister.
After the report was finished, there was just one short word of evaluation.
“There is no useful information. What a shame.”
The word 'shame' sounded so terrifying. I was trembling, afraid that my head would fly off at any moment.
But the words that followed were much more shocking.
“Still, I will overlook your slip of the tongue. Just this once.”
My god. Overlook it. To think that the Chairman, who didn’t have a drop of blood or tears in her, would just overlook a slip of the tongue like “F***ing Isiho”, even when my work handling wasn’t perfect.
A sense of crisis hit me before the thought of relief. Why was she suddenly acting like that? She wasn’t the generous type at all. Was she really doing this to kill me?
And then, an unexpected remark.
“I will praise you for not falling for the coaxing. A scout, the Lutes kid… it must have been quite a seduction. Then again, considering your past, is it not surprising?”
Lutes? Ah, Ms. Kim’s name was Kimberly Louise Lutes. It seemed she was talking about my receiving a recruitment offer from Ms. Kim.
I had thought that Ms. Kim might be a more incredible person than I thought, but was it to the extent that the Chairman would talk about it like that?
Or was the Lutes Family that incredible? Was she letting it slide because of that? Was it because it was commendable that I refused when a great family coaxed me?
And what was that mention of my past?
I was puzzled, but I wasn’t given time to ponder.
Isiho’s Chairman, as if her business was done with that, only said what she wanted to say as always and then ordered me to leave.
“You may go now. By the way… Eugene Schneider invited you here, right?”
A meaningful remark was added with a slight raise of the corners of her mouth.
“He will probably make you a proposal.”
* * *
My mind was complicated. Did El Valentine really have a hidden younger sister?
Why was there no one when I looked? Did the younger sister also leave the secret room in that short time? That was a bit strange.
What did it mean that Eugene Schneider was going to make me a proposal? Since it was something Isiho’s Iron Blood Chairman said, it was definitely true.
Then why wasn’t he contacting me? The Consortium Club’s banquet was also slowly coming to an end.
I didn’t know. It felt like everything in the world was wrapped in a fog of secrets where you couldn’t see an inch ahead.
Maybe I felt that way because I saw another mysterious figure right over there.
As for who it was, it was the Shaolin Monk, the Machine Monk who brought me here.
And as for what was happening to him right now… he was getting slapped in the face with a beautiful coral decoration.
SMACK! SMACK! SMACK! The tentacles of the modified giant coral, engineered to survive outside of water, whipped against the Machine Monk’s steel skin, creating a sharp, slapping noise.
[Ugh! Ack! Urgh! Someone, please help me!]
The sight of the monk asking for help while getting beaten up was quite comical.
…Why was that Yangban in this kind of situation every time I saw him? For example, he was screaming for help with his arm bitten by Bobby.
Coincidentally, he was being attacked by a female robot - an Ever - this time as well.
For some reason, an Ever who was extremely angry at the Shaolin Monk had ripped out a giant coral decoration whole and was taking out her anger by diligently beating him with it.
[The Consortium is a complete mess too! To think a filthy cult monk like you would set foot in here! Hmph!]
After thrashing him to her heart’s content until she was exhausted, she said that, threw the coral away, and left.
I approached the Machine Monk, who was sprawled out on the floor as if he had fainted, and tapped his shiny Metallic Forehead.
“Um, please get up.”
There was no reaction the first few times, but after I shook him several times, he finally cracked his eyes open slightly and looked around.
[…Has she left? Patron?]
The way he was reading the room, he looked genuinely worried that she might come back and hit him again.
A Shaolin Monk pretending to faint. I was so dumbfounded that I muttered.
“I think you really are a cult monk…”