Chapter 81
***
Mao Ziwen returned to China.
Not long after, a news report about him came on while I was watching the news.
[Party Secretary Mao Ziwen has managed to mend the long-standing conflict in Sichuan Province and...]
[Along with orphanages, he is expanding nursing homes and facilities for the people...]
[In cooperation with Korea, he is constructing a large-scale industrial complex and forming a group of affiliated partner companies...]
It seemed that Madam and Hong Si-yeon's work on the Chinese side was going well.
Judging by how the conglomerate that had received their investment had properly settled in Sichuan.
I opened a canned coffee while watching the news.
I took a sip, and just as I was about to watch the newly updated Dunsa boss strategy video, another news report caught my eye.
It was an interview.
[I received great help from Teacher Kang Noah of Korea in finding my long-lost older brother. If it weren't for him, I would still be wasting my time searching fruitlessly for my brother.]
An interview like this all of a sudden?
Looks like I'll be busy from now on.
The future had changed in the mirror I casually glanced at.
.
.
.
Ever since Mao Ziwen's interview, more people had been looking for me.
More than half of them were looking for a lost family member or friend.
"Please find my son... I lost him when he went to Japan three years ago... Sob...!!"
Fortunately, he was in a small orphanage in Japan.
So I gave her the orphanage's address and phone number, and she was able to find her child right away.
"I have a friend I lost touch with when we moved away a long time ago... I want to meet that friend again."
A man looking for a friend he had parted with thirty years ago.
Amazingly, the friend lived near the neighborhood where the man himself lived.
Of course, that wasn't all.
"Thank you! Thank you so much, Taoist master!"
"I'm not a Taoist master..."
"That fucking bitch! When I catch her, I'll tear her limb from limb!!"
Whew. You're awfully angry.
It was even scarier coming from a butcher shop owner.
After the furious people finally left, the manager set a café latte in front of me and clicked his tongue sympathetically.
He had seen them sobbing their eyes out before they left.
"Why are there so many people who run off with rotating savings club money...?"
The people who had just left were looking for the woman nicknamed Pig Mom, who had run off with their savings ten years ago.
Running off with a rotating savings club's money.
It was an unforgivable thing, but the future of the first woman who came looking for me didn't include her finding the organizer who had run off with the money.
That was why I had told her last time to bring more people who had lost money in the club.
And one of those who came looking had a future in which they caught the organizer.
That person was in Vietnam now.
They had taken money soaked in other people's blood, built themselves a mansion in Vietnam, and were living in luxury.
When I told them, they were furious, and I kindly introduced them to Prosecutor Gu Nam-cheol. As a result, the future changed.
It changed into a future where they caught the fugitive organizer and recovered at least some, if not all, of their money.
"By the way, you're really amazing too, Teacher. You don't only deal with important people, do you?"
"Haha. What's wrong with that? I don't have much to do these days."
It was true.
Surprisingly, things had been quite peaceful lately.
Other than Dunsa, working out, and broadcasting, I didn't have much to do.
"I just do it to pass the time."
"I know how much that pastime of yours helps people. I hear the internet is in an uproar these days?"
"Hahaha..."
That was right.
Recently, people who had received my help had been posting their experiences online.
Whenever someone posted about finding a lost person after consulting me, more people came looking for me.
"The café business is doing well thanks to you, too. Hahaha. The owner even asked me recently whether we should expand the café."
It had originally been a small café in Jongno-gu, but it was always crowded with customers, so it seemed they were even considering expanding.
The manager, who received a steady salary and incentives, had been positively glowing lately.
That was how many customers there were.
"Did you know other cafés are trying everything they can to bring you in, Teacher?"
"I know. I've heard it several times."
Some café owners had even come to me in person and pleaded, "Please come to our café too."
Of course, I wasn't going.
But the coffee here tasted the best.
They should come back after learning how to make drinks at least as good as our manager's.
"What?! Really?! Those guys don't even know basic business ethics...!!"
"This café, which has a strategic weapon like me, may look like it doesn't know business ethics, but..."
The manager, drunk on the sweetness of his incentives, couldn't hear my voice.
He merely snorted angrily, returned to his station, and began making cakes of fury.
Anyway, today's customers were finished. Should I head out soon?
I should buy a hamburger for dinner.
After saying goodbye to the manager, I went outside with Cheolhon.
"I'm going to have a Big Mac for dinner. What will you have, Cheolhon?"
"I'll have a Big Mac too."
We entered McDonald's together.
While we were eating our hamburgers after ordering and taking our seats, a middle-aged man approached us.
Cheolhon, who had recently been working almost like my manager rather than a bodyguard, was just getting up to do his actual job and stop the man when he spoke seriously.
"Teacher Kang Noah."
"Yes."
"Do you have a moment?"
"After I finish all this."
"I understand."
He obediently went and sat in the seat beside us.
He was holding a McDonald's coffee.
But he hadn't even taken a sip.
"Teacher, who is that man?"
"Haha. I wonder."
I knew who he was.
But I couldn't reveal it yet.
After finishing my Big Mac set, I called him over, and the man who had been sitting beside Cheolhon took out a business card.
"You're Executive Director Lee Baek-gon of Haechun Trading, I presume."
"Yes. It's a trading company."
"Then would you like to turn this over?"
The hwatu card I held out to him.
He was silent for a moment, then looked at me seriously.
"Teacher. This is actually my concealed identity."
I knew.
"I... work for the country."
He was the NIS's second deputy director.
.
.
.
Cheolhon seemed slightly tense at the mention of the NIS, but the man hadn't come to eliminate me.
So I took him back to the café.
"So? Why would the NIS's deputy director come looking for an ordinary civilian...?"
"Isn't it a bit much to dismiss Teacher as an ordinary civilian?"
"Thank you for thinking so highly of me. Then let's get to the point. Why did you come?"
"....Sigh."
He let out a heavy sigh.
Then he looked at me seriously and got to the point.
"I'm looking for someone."
"Who?"
I already knew, but I asked anyway.
He was looking for a traitor to the NIS.
Someone who had sold out local black agents and HUMINT assets in North Korea and China before fleeing overseas.
"...A traitor to the nation."
"I see."
"I'm looking for Kim Cheol-gwan, a traitor who sold the identities of agents working for their country and destroyed more than half of our HUMINT network."
Kim Cheol-gwan.
He had been a section-chief-level officer in the NIS, but had betrayed his country for money and personal advancement.
The NIS had been searching for him.
Perhaps because Kim Cheol-gwan had also spent years working in the field, he was exceptionally good at hiding, and the NIS still hadn't found him.
The NIS deputy director in front of me, Jumin Tae, began calmly explaining the information he knew instead of turning over the card.
"Would this be enough to find him?"
"I'm not a detective. I only tell you what I see by looking into the future."
"I see..."
"Then, here."
I held out the deck of cards.
He hesitated.
After all, a deputy director of the NIS would know more than one or two classified secrets.
It was only natural that he would worry, since I might see them.
"Don't worry. I'm not stupid enough to go around blabbing useless things."
"If that's the case..."
In the end, he turned over the card.
"...What's this?"
His card was the upright Tower card.
"Kim Cheol-gwan is in Japan."
"...That's closer than I expected."
"There would be no reason for him to go somewhere that would reveal him as an East Asian."
"If he went anywhere, I thought it would be China. The trail led there, and the last place he was found was Hubei... But after that, we lost his trail completely."
"He went to China at first. From there, he passed through Taiwan, Vietnam, and Indonesia before arriving in Tokyo."
"A major city... Ha."
He frowned and shook his head.
It seemed to sting that the NIS had failed to discover this.
But Kim Cheol-gwan had spent years working for the NIS himself.
Because he knew the NIS's methods, he had been able to evade them all the more easily.
"I'll write down the address."
"...Thank you."
There was a scene in Lee Baek-gon's future where he saw information about the place where Kim Cheol-gwan had been hiding.
Using that, I wrote down Kim Cheol-gwan's current location on a piece of paper and held it out. Lee Baek-gon stared at it.
"...We should send agents there right away."
"You should."
The future changed in that instant.
It changed from a future in which he was caught by an agent thirty years later and cursed the man out to a future in which Kim Cheol-gwan was caught a month later.
"Whew. Thank you."
"Don't mention it. Aren't you people working for the country? I was an orphan too, and I practically grew up with the nation's help. Just consider this a way of repaying that debt, so don't feel burdened."
"Haha. Even so, I received your help, so I can't leave empty-handed. Hmm..."
He hesitated for a moment.
"Are you aware that more and more people have recently taken an interest in you?"
"Yes. I'm aware."
I had even received phone calls recently.
They asked whether I wanted to do business with them or meet them discreetly.
"A few days ago, a woman deliberately approached me while I was having coffee."
"Oh... What happened?"
"She said she was receiving death threats and asked me to help her. But there were some young gangsters behind her. They were trying to kidnap me by using her."
"Those pieces of trash...?! Who were they?"
"Don't worry. I've taken care of it."
I could tell what was going on the moment I saw her, so I evaded them appropriately and immediately notified Prosecutor Gu Nam-cheol.
Naturally, those gangsters were arrested.
"I see... This gentleman here would make adequate protection, but just in case, we'll provide assistance from our side as well."
He would use NIS agents to prevent anyone trying to exploit or threaten me from approaching.
I smiled and nodded at his offer.
"Thank you."
"I should be thanking you more. I... And, well..."
Embarrassment appeared on his serious face.
"...My son is taking another year to retake the college entrance exam..."
"Hahaha. He'll get into the university he wants. Still, tell him not to let his guard down and to keep studying diligently. If he doesn't work hard after hearing my prediction, the future will change."
"Thank you!!"
Joy appeared on the NIS deputy director's face.