Chapter 5

Shall we start by greeting each other again?

Thirty minutes after leaving the restaurant, we arrived at the Baek Seorin Memorial Foundation.

It was a foundation established in her name after Baek Seorin had been declared dead.

Beneath the sign covering the entire building entrance hung a photograph of Baek Seorin holding a sword while she was still alive.

I didn’t know how old she had been when the photo was taken, but she definitely looked younger than the person standing beside me now.

I knew that Awakened generally aged more slowly, but Baek Seorin had been missing for a full seven years.

“They chose a good photo.”

“It took forever to get that one. We spent almost half a day taking pictures.”

Baek Seorin took her eyes off the photo and entered the building.

The sheathed sword glided along behind Baek Seorin’s back.

The Association employee who had come with us showed his identification and said they had business inside and would only be entering briefly, but the man sitting at the information desk waved his hand without even checking it.

“I’m sorry. The regular board meeting is currently in session, so outsiders cannot enter.”

Baek Seorin raised her head and looked behind the man.

At the center of the lobby wall, which was packed with the names of executives.

“I think my name is up there.”

Baek Seorin pointed to the name in the center.

“Then wouldn’t that make me an insider instead of an outsider?”

The man flinched and looked back and forth between the sign and Baek Seorin’s face.

Only after doing that a couple of times did his expression begin to stiffen.

“Ba-Baek Seorin...?”

“That’s right. I can go in now, can’t I?”

“Y-Yes?! Ah... Th-That is...”

The man stammered and picked up the internal phone.

But as though he couldn’t even decide who he should notify first, he froze with the receiver in his hand.

Baek Seorin watched him for a moment, then lightly waved her hand.

Slice—.

The security gate was cut clean through.

As though she had no intention of waiting for an answer, Baek Seorin walked past the severed gate toward the elevator.

“Where’s the conference room?”

“F-Fourth floor.”

_____________

The moment we reached the fourth floor, raised voices began coming from the room directly ahead.

“This is not the time to argue over who was responsible. We need to dissolve the foundation first and transfer the remaining projects to a separate corporation—”

“What happens to our contracts if the foundation is dissolved?”

“Just do what the contracts say!”

The electronic display beside the door read, ‘48th Regular Board Meeting of the Baek Seorin Memorial Foundation.’

The forty-eighth board meeting held in the name of someone who had been declared dead.

Beneath it was a brief summary of the agenda for the day.

Dissolution of the foundation.

“Ha... These rats were trying to run.”

Baek Seorin let out a short sigh and approached the door.

At that moment, one of the guards stationed at the entrance hurriedly stepped forward.

“W-Wait, who are you—.”

Baek Seorin turned her gaze toward him.

In that instant, something invisible crushed down on the guard’s body.

Thud—.

The man dropped to one knee.

He gritted his teeth and tried to get up, but he couldn’t move an inch, as though a massive boulder were resting on his shoulders.

“Stay still. If you don’t want to die.”

Baek Seorin paid him no further attention and opened the door.

Around ten people were seated around a long table.

A larger memorial photograph than the one in the lobby hung on the wall, and in the chairperson’s seat opposite it sat a woman who appeared to be Baek Seorin’s mother.

The first person to look toward the door was a foundation employee seated near the entrance.

When the employee stood up, the others’ gazes followed one by one.

“Who are you? We’re in the middle of a meeting—”

His words stopped halfway.

The woman in the chairperson’s seat shoved her chair back and stood.

A teacup fell beneath the table and struck the carpet with a dull sound.

“Se-Seorin?”

The man sitting beside her was Baek Seorin’s older brother, whom I had seen on the board member list.

Instead of immediately standing and approaching like their mother, he first flipped over the tablet on the table.

Then he quickly scanned the entrance.

In the process, our eyes briefly met.

His eyebrows twitched faintly.

“That’s impossible. Seorin was seven years ago...”

“... Missing.”

Baek Seorin clenched her fist tightly and entered the conference room.

“No one actually saw me die, did they? That’s why I came back.”

Her mother staggered toward her and grabbed her daughter’s arm.

As she checked her shoulder and cheek with her fingertips, a few sobbing breaths escaped her.

“Where were you? How, how are you only now...”

“The Association. I heard the people who worked so hard while I was gone were gathered here. So I came right over.”

“My goodness...”

Baek Seorin did not push her mother’s hand away.

Instead, she swept her gaze across the conference table.

The hastily overturned tablet. The open dissolution agreement. A list of vehicles under the foundation’s name that were to be sold.

There were a lot of documents prepared for a touching family reunion.

Her older brother asked the Association employee.

“Has her identity been verified?”

“Fingerprints and DNA. We also compared her mana waveform with the one registered at the time. She is indeed Hunter Baek Seorin.”

The moment those words fell, chairs were pushed back all around the room.

The man seated at the far right hurriedly covered the documents spread out in front of him, then lowered his phone beneath the table.

From where I stood near the entrance, I caught a glimpse of the lit screen.

Without saying anything, I pointed toward him with my chin.

The Association employee checked the man’s phone and the covered documents in turn, then slowly looked around the conference room.

“From this moment on, we will preserve the evidence at this location. No one is to leave their seat. Association audit personnel are on their way.”

The woman who had been picking up her bag quietly sat back down.

The Association employee immediately took out his phone.

“Preserve the foundation server access logs first. Freeze every account that received Association subsidies and secure the recent transaction records as well.”

There was another sound of chairs moving, but this time no one managed to stand.

Meanwhile, Baek Seorin, with one arm still being held by her mother, accepted a tablet from the Association employee.

Then she placed it in the center of the conference table.

The screen displayed the memorial foundation’s subsidy execution records and expense list secured by the Association.

Baek Seorin enlarged one of the corporate card transactions with her finger.

Lodging expenses at a casino resort in Macau.

And on the same day. Records of large cash advances from a nearby ATM appeared for three days in a row.

“You held the overseas exchange event here? At this hotel with the casino?”

Her mother wiped the reddened corners of her eyes.

“Seorin. Let’s talk about things like that later. First, let’s go home... We should talk about how grateful we are that you came back—”

“It was a meeting with important overseas contacts.”

Her older brother cut in.

“It was an event meant to keep your name from being forgotten overseas as well.”

Then the man sitting around the middle of the table hurriedly added.

“It was an exchange event with officials from an international relief organization. We had scheduled meetings with local representatives, and those were the expenses incurred in the process.”

The nameplate around his neck read ‘Foundation Advisor.’

The sheath behind Baek Seorin trembled faintly, and the blade slid out by about the length of one finger joint.

At that moment, the advisor stopped speaking, and the trembling of the sword ceased as well.

Baek Seorin swiped the screen upward once.

This time, a list of vehicles registered to the foundation appeared.

“Fine... Let’s say that’s true.”

Baek Seorin tapped one item on the list.

“This is the secretary-general’s business vehicle. It sure went to a lot of places, hotels and motels alike, even on weekends.”

Her finger slowly moved down the screen.

“The user was... my brother?”

“We couldn’t just abandon the foundation while you were gone.”

Her brother immediately shot back.

“Someone had to keep running the scholarship and support programs we had been doing in your name. I traveled all over the country meeting people in need and worked nonstop even on weekends.”

Baek Seorin nodded.

“Right.”

Then, without taking her eyes off the tablet, she added.

“You worked so hard that there used to be sixty billion won, and now there isn’t even twenty million left.”

The Association employee accompanying us subtly lowered his gaze.

The blade of the sword in Baek Seorin’s hand was now exposed.

The employee hesitated for a moment, then quietly took one step to the side.

Precisely in a direction that moved him out from between Baek Seorin and her older brother.

Her brother shut his mouth.

As the conference room fell silent, even the sound of the corner of the dissolution agreement fluttering in the air-conditioning could be heard.

Baek Seorin silently flipped through the screen.

Checking the names of the users listed for each vehicle one by one.

Watching her, her older brother let out a hollow laugh.

“You come back and immediately treat your family like thieves? Do you have any idea how hard we worked while you were gone to make sure people didn’t forget you—”

“...Enough.”

Baek Seorin turned off the screen.

She placed the tablet on the table and looked at her older brother.

“You already did it.”

The sword came free from behind her back.

“Then you should pay the price.”

Slice—.

“Uh, uh...?! Aaaaaagh—!!”

Her brother’s arm was severed below the elbow and fell onto the table.

Her mother, face drained of color, rushed toward her son.

“N-No! Seorin. How could you...!”

Baek Seorin did not answer.

Blood dripped from the sword circling in the air.

She walked all the way to the chairperson’s seat and looked down once at the nameplate attached to the backrest.

Chairperson of the Baek Seorin Memorial Foundation.

Beneath it was her mother’s name.

Baek Seorin placed a hand on the chair back.

As she pulled the chair out, I saw her fingertips tremble ever so slightly.

‘...’

And so Baek Seorin slowly sat down, the bloodstained sword standing beside her.

She rested one arm on the armrest and looked in turn at the people frozen in place.

“I’m back.”

Baek Seorin smiled.

As if nothing had happened just now.

“Shall we start by greeting each other again?”