Chapter 90

Chapter 90

Chapter 90 Book Café (2)

NIS Team 1 Office.

“Are these all the contracts the publishers sent?”

“Yes. Myeongho Books, REN Korea, and Lito Book failed to properly transfer their copyrights during the process of shutting down, so I think we'll have to find another solution.”

“REN Korea? That's Conquest of the Martial World! You should've told me sooner if that one was missing!”

“I'm sorry.”

“What? Conquest of the Martial World is missing?”

“Yes, Team Leader. We'll move as quickly as possible...”

“First track down the employees who worked there before it shut down, and the moment you get in contact with them, move!”

‘Why is everyone suddenly working so enthusiastically? It's seriously hard to get used to.’

The rank-and-file employees were having a hard time because their superiors had suddenly become willing not only to work overtime but even to go into the field themselves.

The NIS might have enough clout that other government agencies couldn't even compare, but in the end, its employees were still civil servants.

Separate from the life-threatening nature of the work, it was only natural for one's workload to decrease as one's rank rose. And none of the employees complained about that.

Even without sitting in those positions themselves, they understood well enough that planning major operations and taking responsibility when things went wrong was every bit as difficult as working in the field.

That was why it was accepted as perfectly natural even if senior officials spent working hours taking leisurely naps or watching stock charts all day before going home.

But now, they were moving.

True veterans, each with one or two legendary exploits from their younger days, were about to return to the front lines.

The reason was simple.

They too had spent their school days in an era with relatively little entertainment.

Among the supervisors and team leaders, few had grown up without reading novels or comic books. And they too had been victims of discontinued series.

‘They can make the author of Conquest of the Martial World write volume nine? I thought I'd die without ever seeing it!’

‘I don't care about the others, but I'm catching the author bastard of E-Dragon with my own hands!’

A perfect union of hobby and profession.

The field might have been slightly different, but as long as they used their specialties to find the authors, it would be a success.

The coffeehouse owner who always caused incidents through bizarre methods would somehow handle what came afterward.

And the fruits of that labor would be masterpieces they'd once wondered whether they'd ever live long enough to see completed.

______________

There were a few things I'd learned while running a somewhat unusual coffeehouse as a side business.

One was that nonhuman beings sometimes calmly did things that couldn't be understood through ordinary human common sense.

The Elder Nine-Tailed Fox, whose personality and behavior I'd come to understand fairly well after knowing him for quite a long time, was no exception.

“You had the NIS look for them instead of searching yourself?”

“How many times must I tell you? We're looking for humans, not monsters. Who in all eight provinces of Joseon is better at finding people than those fellows?”

“No, even so. This doesn't have anything to do with monsters, does it?”

“I, a monster, ordered them to do it, did I not?”

“...”

There was no arguing with that logic.

I'd suddenly become the bastard who mobilized the NIS to find authors who had abandoned their novels.

Just hearing it described that way made it sound like an enormous waste of administrative resources.

“Will this really be okay?”

“As the Elder said, this was originally something our department handled. We have plenty of other minor duties too, so you don't need to feel too burdened.”

“Still, I feel kind of bad.”

“The reason we first came to the coffeehouse was because the Elder said he wanted to drink coffee. Compared to that time, we're actually using fewer personnel now.”

“Heh heh, it's fine when it's me or that raccoon dog fellow. But what do you intend to do once you find them? I am still a divine beast in name, so I cannot harm humans.”

“After beating Yongman half to death, is that really something you should be saying?”

“Ahem, I was expelling the turbid energy from him!”

“That's what I intend to do too. As long as they come to our coffeehouse.”

“Hm?”

______________

At the same time, in the examination district of Noryangjin.

Was it because the soaring cost of living had dampened the popularity of civil service jobs?

The alleyways, which should have been bustling with young people carrying books under their arms, were quiet.

And two men in neat suits that looked entirely out of place in a goshiwon were having a serious conversation in front of the shabbiest-looking residence among them.

“Senior, do you really think he's here?”

“This is the address that came up in the identity check.”

“I heard he was an incredibly famous author. Then he must've made a lot of money, so why would he live somewhere like this?”

“It wasn't a profession that made much money compared to its popularity. Things are a little better these days.”

But even the senior who answered didn't look convinced.

They had merely come because this was the registered address. It was difficult to imagine that the author of a popular novel everyone recognized by name was staying in such a shabby goshiwon.

“Let's go up first.”

The two men climbed the stale-smelling, dirty staircase to the third floor where the rooms were located.

“Looking for a room?”

A middle-aged woman who had been scratching her back with a backscratcher at the counter spotted the two men and asked indifferently.

“No. We're looking for someone.”

“Are you police? Oh, my head. If you're going to go around knocking on every room saying you're looking for some criminal again, get out! Go get a warrant or whatever and come back!”

“No, wait! We're from the welfare center!”

“The welfare center?”

The man, who had nearly been shoved down the stairs by her rough hands, hurriedly pulled his civil servant identification card from inside his jacket.

“Why is the welfare center looking for someone?”

Once the affiliation of the two men had been revealed, the middle-aged woman's tone softened considerably.

“This person is supposed to receive support payments, but there's no bank account registered. Do you know if he's staying here?”

“Let me see. That face is definitely Mr. Seo. Name's Seo Hanrim too. Try room 311 over there. By the way, how much support money is he getting?”

“We're not sure about that either...”

“Anyway, when that money comes in, make sure you tell him to pay his overdue rent first. He doesn't even have a deposit, and he keeps falling three months behind. He's so frail too. At this rate, I might end up having to dispose of a corpse.”

Whether it was muttering to herself or deliberately speaking loudly enough for them to hear, it was unexpected information for the two men.

(He really must be struggling financially.)

(Yeah. This might be easier than we thought.)

-Knock, knock.

“We're from the Noryangjin 1-dong Administrative Welfare Center. Is Mr. Seo Hanrim there?”

-Creeeeak.

The door opened, and the old hinges let out a scream-like grinding sound.

The man who opened it looked so gaunt that saying he was nothing but skin and bones would hardly have been an exaggeration.

“Cough, cough. Who are you?”

“Ah, we're from the welfare division of the Administrative Welfare Center. You've been selected for support payments, but your bank account information was missing.”

The junior agent took a document they'd prepared in advance from his briefcase.

【Emergency Living Expense Support Application】

The man's eyes widened at the official document, complete with a government certification mark.

“If I apply for this, you'll really give me money?”

“You've already passed the first round of screening, so payment can be made immediately. Would you like to receive it in cash?”

“Ah, yes!”

Once the man wrote his name and signed the application, the agent immediately handed him an envelope of cash along with several documents.

“If you need any further assistance, please contact this number. Then we'll be on our way.”

As though their only business truly had been to give him money, the two welfare center employees stood up almost immediately after the signature was completed.

After the two men left, the man collapsed onto the bed that doubled as a chair and opened the envelope of money he'd received.

‘One, two, three, four... Good heavens, this is a million won? Wait, this was only the first round?’

He was certain that was what they'd said.

Only then did the man unfold the documents he'd received along with the money.

【Second Emergency Living Expense Support Application】

『You have been selected as a 「2025 Second Emergency Living Expense Support Recipient」, and we hereby provide the following information regarding payment.

1. Eligible Recipient

2. Method of Receipt

-On-site collection

-Payment Location:...』

‘I have to go pick this one up in person?’

This was the simplest and most reliable method of getting him to voluntarily visit an NIS front office instead of using the suspicious phrase, ‘Please come with us for a moment.’

Even an internet search showed the address as a welfare center, and a separately created cover blog contained reviews from people claiming to have received the support payment.

On top of that, he'd already received the large sum of one million won in advance, leaving even less room for suspicion.

_____________

“As you said, Mr. Jinseong, every author whose identity we confirmed was in fairly poor circumstances. How did you know?”

“I wasn't certain. I was hoping that wouldn't be the case, but unfortunately, it was.”

“So how did you know? Stop keeping us in suspense and tell us.”

“A monster.”

“Hm?”

“Didn't you once tell me, Elder, that when accumulated thoughts gather, they can develop intelligence?”

“I did. Lia was born that way as well.”

“Thoughts accumulated around stories too. The obsessive desire to reveal what happened next gained intelligence, so I doubt it's a benevolent monster by nature.”

I showed the two of them a photograph I'd printed out beforehand.

『Long ago, in a certain village, there lived a child who wrote down every story he heard so that he would not forget it, then placed the writings inside a pouch. Once a story entered, he rarely took it out again, until the pouch became filled with stories. As the years passed and the child became a young man, the trapped stories could no longer endure their confinement and transformed into wicked energy, seeking to harm the young master.

...』

“The Story Pouch.”

“Yes.”

It was something I'd investigated when searching for a soul for Lia's body, a somewhat eerie folktale about a child who imprisoned stories inside a pouch and then forgot about them, causing them to become a monster.

An interpretation had been attached saying the lesson was not to misuse things that had a proper purpose, but to someone like me who actually lived alongside monsters, it read like a vivid firsthand account written by some nameless young master of that era.

And that account still applied even now, in the twenty-first century.

The nonexistent books I'd seen in the rental shop twenty years ago hadn't simply been future books shown to me by the Divine Eyes.

They had been monsters revealed through accumulated thoughts.

With a wicked monster attached to them, all kinds of misfortune must have followed.

“Still, this is fortunate. I was worried someone might actually have died because of it.”

“Indeed. We almost lost the next volume forever.”

“No.”

“Hm?”

“I was worried that asking Gangnim Doryeong for help would make things troublesome again.”

“You were planning to drag back even authors who had gone to the underworld?”

“There's a saying that you'd bring a left-handed fireball pitcher back even from hell, isn't there?”

“...”

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Ah, no reason.”

“No reason.”

“Anyway, once you've gathered the authors at the office, I'll go and handle it.”

“I can go as well.”

“I need to go. Simply driving away the monster won't solve the problem.”

The stories from the novels becoming monsters were the result of a cause.

If the novels had simply been written, the problem wouldn't have appeared in the first place.

And the only person who could restore the will to write in those authors, whose bodies and minds had now both grown frail, was me.

People lose their will when faced with an uncertain future.

But I could show them a future that was certain.