Chapter 100

Chapter 100

Chapter 100 Tangled Threads (1)

If the highlight of camping is getting ready to leave, then cleaning up afterward is the cold reality.

It is because of the sense of loss that everything is over, and because you know full well that what remains to be done is not enjoyable in the slightest.

Even for me, who had burned through more than ten million won worth of camping equipment on a two-day, one-night trip, the situation was no different.

Dishes that needed to be roughly wiped down and washed again, a tent and chairs filled with sand, and so on.

All the luggage that had been packed tightly into the car came back out exactly as it was and spread across the second-floor terrace.

“Haah, maybe I should’ve asked how to take care of all this?”

This was the price of my careless judgment.

Weren’t these outdoor specialty products made with the finest cutting-edge science and technology?

I had assumed I could just shake them off roughly and use them again.

But once I actually brought them home and tried to put them away as they were, a faint sense of unease began creeping over me.

If I carelessly crammed them away and mold started growing later, there would be no taking it back.

Once I thought about the price of each item one by one, they stopped looking like belongings and started looking like demanding masters.

-Patter-patter-patter-patter.

While I stood there lost in thought, staring at the camping equipment scattered around, I heard something running up from the first floor.

“Jinseong! I couldn’t see you, so I looked everywhere! Huh? Are we camping again?”

“No... should we?”

“Ooooooh! That sounds good! Sleeping only one night was way too short anyway! Lia! The campground opened here!”

“Really?”

At Sani’s excited shout, Lia, who had been doing homework in her room, opened the window and poked her head out.

“Yeah, Lia, come out too.”

“Yes!”

The tent and chairs were already spread out anyway.

There were plenty of places on the terrace railing to tie down the tent, and since it was on the second floor, the view was quite decent too.

No, wasn’t this already an excellent campground?

And so we set the tent back up and unfolded the chairs we had packed away, then sat down.

“Heh heh, why didn’t you do this from the beginning? There’s no need to go through the trouble of traveling far away. This is nice.”

“I only just thought of it myself. It has quite an atmosphere.”

“It feels like we came back to the sea!”

“But why isn’t Dohyeok coming up? You did call him, right?”

“I definitely called him. But he said he was waiting for someone at the coffeehouse.”

“Ah.”

None of us had to ask who Dohyeok was waiting for. We had laughed until our stomachs hurt over it during the last vacation.

But once we realized his feelings were sincere, we could no longer laugh.

“Tsk, foolish boy. He’s wasting time on something that cannot come true. You go down and talk some sense into him.”

“Do you think he’ll listen just because I talk to him?”

“Ahem, well, perhaps not, but we cannot leave him like that forever, can we?”

Two days had passed since we returned from the sea.

Ever since that day, Dohyeok had been sitting there with Blue Marble laid out, waiting for King Yama.

And since he was the type who rarely gave up, it was impossible to guess how much longer he would keep doing that.

“I’ll warn you in advance out of concern. Do not think of interfering in the affairs of the underworld again. There is a limit to how much the heavenly gods of the Celestial Realm and the judges of the underworld will overlook.”

“Yes, I know.”

In the Celestial Realm, they inflicted divine sickness for the crime of glimpsing even the edge of heavenly secrets, and in the underworld, even minor evil karma could result in eternal suffering without reincarnation.

To those living in the mortal world, those punishments were far too harsh.

But even so, I could not blame or resent them.

Judging beings who had lived through inconceivable ages by human standards was itself a narrow way of looking at things.

To them, I was probably standing at something like the bottom of the ninth inning, two outs, full count.

Judging by how the Elder was already saying this before I even opened my mouth.

But looked at the other way around, they were also viewing me through a narrow lens.

All I had done was make a few changes to the Celestial Realm and underworld. I had not gone against the Confucian Way or the benevolence, righteousness, propriety, and wisdom one ought to uphold.

“It has not even been the span of a moment since I told you not to do anything. Why are you already making that face again?”

“What’s wrong with my face? And I haven’t even said anything yet.”

“You’re thinking it! And it’s written all over your face!”

“...”

Before solving Dohyeok’s problem, I might have to do something about this face of mine first.

Everyone kept panicking like this before I even said anything.

When I came downstairs to the coffeehouse, intending to tell him to come up and get some air, Dohyeok was still waiting for King Yama.

On the table, the thirtieth-anniversary limited edition Blue Marble set he had proudly said he bought for an absurd price at an online auction was neatly arranged.

Unfortunately, the person sitting across from him was not King Yama, whom he had been waiting for, but me.

“Time in the underworld doesn’t pass the same way as it does here. She probably won’t come today.”

“Really? How different is it?”

“Sometimes one day is two days, sometimes three or four days, sometimes more than a month. At the very least, the days she comes tend to be more than a week apart.”

Synchronizing the time between the underworld and the mortal world was simple.

By looking at the videos saved on the tablet and adding the frequency of King Yama’s visits to the number of times she left behind a coffin with my name written on it, I could estimate roughly when she would come next.

But even after hearing that she would not come today, Dohyeok still couldn’t bring himself to get up.

“Hyung.”

“What?”

“Does she really have to live like that? Forever?”

“She only loses her memories of the mortal world.”

“That’s the same thing. Isn’t there some other way, like the tablet you gave her?”

There wasn’t.

Not yet.

As the Elder Nine-Tailed Fox had said, the tablet was merely a choice that went against the order and laws of the underworld as little as possible.

____________

And so, without any particularly good solution, a month passed.

Perhaps murky currents that had lost their way were contagious, because unresolved matters kept piling up.

“You know that AI project? Looks like the higher-ups are going to drop it. Even though Sales Team 2 keeps going to see them, the executives apparently aren’t interested.”

“The stock price shot up after it hit the news once. I guess everyone’s satisfied with that.”

“That’s rough. Sales Team 2 has practically no results besides that project right now. I wonder if Department Head Kang is going to be in serious trouble. By the way, Manager Kim, aren’t you still supporting the documents related to that?”

“Yes. There’s basically nothing left to hand over, so at this point I’m just reviewing things.”

“You suffered through it together, so you must feel deflated too. Maybe we should all have a drink to cheer them up.”

“Why would we pour drinks at a funeral? If they give up and move on to another project, we should hurry and help with that instead.”

In the end, this was how things turned out.

A few low-ranking employees lending a hand to a project involving astronomical amounts of money wasn’t going to change the result.

If there was one fortunate thing, it was that SL Software had returned as a first-tier vendor and secured several major projects once the previous AI project became a serious issue.

But Sales Team 2, which had practically gone all-in on the project, was now in danger of being dissolved.

They were people I had become very close to.

From the department head who had never forgotten the help I gave them long ago and personally delivered coffee and snacks every month, to the friendly-looking team members under him.

It was obvious that all of them would either leave the company or be demoted to departments where performance evaluations were practically nonexistent.

Companies used resources more efficiently than any other organization.

And people were no exception among those resources.

But once again, there was nothing I could do.

At times like this, I felt especially like a tiny screw.

A screw that failed to mesh properly with anything and simply spun uselessly in place.

“Dohyeok—no, Assistant Manager Joo. Check the ordering company again on the document you just sent me.”

“Huh? What did I do wrong?”

“Ah, Assistant Manager Joo messed up again, did he?”

“No. It’s nothing major. Just a few simple corrections.”

“Go easy on him, go easy. What are you going to do when Assistant Manager Joo becomes chairman later, Manager Kim? Your life is going to get hard, very hard.”

“Sometimes I genuinely can’t tell whether what you say is a joke or serious, Department Head.”

“Wahaha! Really?”

“Just let half of it go in one ear and out the other. Like I do.”

“Huh? Well, I’m retiring soon anyway, but you two will still be in your prime when Assistant Manager Joo becomes chairman.”

“Yes, yes. When that happens, I’ll serve him with utmost devotion. For now, not a chance. Got it?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“That’s it.”

“Hm? What is?”

As I stared at Dohyeok casually flipping through the papers while answering halfheartedly, one idea suddenly flashed through my mind.

Maybe it was a way to make the murky current that had been circling endlessly flow away all at once.

In my urgency, I grabbed Dohyeok by the back of the neck and dragged him into the meeting room.

“You, come out for a second.”

“H-Hey? Why?”

“I told you not to scold him too much!”

____________

“You’re transferring to Sales Team 2. Talk to the department head and make it happen.”

“What? Why all of a sudden? I’m getting pretty good at the work here now!”

“Yeah. At your level, you’re an ace.”

Surprisingly, Dohyeok’s work ability had improved by leaps and bounds.

Maybe it was because his head had been completely empty to begin with, but at least when it came to business documents, his understanding was now nearly on par with mine.

That was exactly why I had to send him.

“Listen carefully. What do you think will happen if the chairman’s son joins Sales Team 2 right now?”

“The higher-ups will get headaches, I guess.”

“That would be under normal circumstances. But the AI project is about to collapse when you’re joining.”

“If they don’t want to spit in my father’s face, they’ll all keep quiet.”

“Exactly. And you have to make that project succeed no matter what. Once it gets moving, it’ll be difficult to pull back the kind of funding that’ll go into it.”

“M-Me?”

“Not confident?”

“Uh...”

This bastard was excessively honest only at times like this.

“Department Head Kang of Sales Team 2 has been in this industry for seventeen years. He wouldn’t have made the bet unless he thought it was worth taking. You know what I mean, right?”

“No, I get that, but there’s no reason I specifically have to go. I don’t know anything about that field.”

“You said you want to restore King Yama’s memories, right? Then stop complaining and go learn. Handle the department transfer yourself with the kind of chaos you’re good at causing.”

“Don’t tell me you found a way?”

“Yeah.”

I showed Dohyeok an article I had searched up on my phone.

【Exclusive】 U.S. Federal Court Accelerates Development of AI ‘Trial Support Platform’

Washington, July 2025 – The U.S. federal courts have recently begun moving forward in earnest with the development of an AI-based trial support system.

...

It was simple, but it was also the surest method.

If it succeeded, it would establish Dohyeok’s position inside the company, save Sales Team 2, and preserve the memories of King Yama that Dohyeok and all of us wanted so badly to protect.

If the problem was that she had to view sins through the Mirror of Karma, then why not have AI view those sins instead?

It did not even matter if the AI could not issue judgments.

The goal was simply to avoid looking into sins through the Mirror of Karma.

“Hyung!”

“Hey, damn it, don’t hug me! People outside are staring! Let go, will you?”

In the first place, trying to attach all sorts of conditions while chasing something you wanted had been the wrong idea.

There was only one thing a pitcher could do with two outs and a full count in the bottom of the ninth.

Throw a fastball straight down the middle with everything he had.

And my fastball was none other than the junior employee I had raised well.