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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: Chaos
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When you can’t grasp the situation, it’s best to keep your mouth shut until the other person reveals more information.
I remained silent and looked at the Chairman, and he spoke,
“Tell me, Professor Kyo. How much do you remember?”
“Well…”
At my vague answer, the stern-faced Chairman chuckled.
It seemed to mean, ‘Stop playing games and tell me the truth.’
Yoo Hee-won had inherited that characteristic sneer from her father.
“If you didn’t remember anything, you wouldn’t have come here.”
I still couldn’t figure out the Chairman’s intentions.
If I were the one probing, it would be different, but since he was the one asking how much I remembered, I shouldn’t speak carelessly.
“Listen, Professor Kyo. No… Gray Steel.”
“You know my callsign.”
“Of course. How could I not?”
The Chairman slapped his knee with his palm, making a sharp sound, and chuckled.
“It seems you’ve figured out that Han Tae-woo and Seo Ji-ah were on the same team.”
Han Min-ha’s parents’ names…
He was indeed a Secreto member, and so were Han Min-ha’s parents and I.
What I saw in the archives wasn’t a delusion but a real event.
“Tell me, Soo-hyun. How much have you remembered?”
The Chairman had switched to informal speech and changed the way he addressed me.
“Your silence probably means you don’t trust me. A powerful figure from a secret organization keeps pressing you about the past.”
The Chairman accurately pinpointed my thoughts and slowly took a sip of tea.
“But trust me. Only then can I tell you what you want to know.”
“What do I want to know?”
“About that strange dream you keep having.”
I instantly strengthened my Mental Barrier.
Could he be reading my mind?
There were rumors that a very small number of heroes possessed such a rare ability.
It was just a rumor, but since heroes’ abilities manifested in unpredictable ways, it wasn’t entirely impossible.
However, I had the ultimate defense technique, the Mental Barrier.
It could block any mental attack from the outside.
And most importantly, I hadn’t felt any sort of attack.
That meant the Chairman already knew I was having dreams.
But I hadn’t told anyone about them.
How… did the Chairman know?
“You must be surprised that I know that much.”
“Having dreams is common.”
“But it’s not common to regularly have dreams where you scream while watching a falling meteor. Is it?”
So… he knew everything.
Seeing my expression, the Chairman spoke in a low voice,
“I know this much, and I’ve revealed it to you. Now tell me everything, Hyun Kyo.”
“First, let me ask you one thing. Was I a Secreto member?”
“You were.”
“I see…”
The Chairman already knew everything about me.
He was the only one who could tell me about my past.
And I had a lot of questions for him.
To do that, I needed to answer his question first.
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I told him everything.
About how strange fragments of memories started surfacing after I met Han Min-ha.
How my Mental Barrier almost collapsed when I heard Han Min-ha’s parents’ names.
How I started having strange dreams after that.
How I saw that vision in the archives while investigating Han Min-ha’s parents to help her with her problems.
And how I discovered that Han Min-ha’s parents were my former teammates.
The Chairman remained silent, not interrupting, until I finished.
“That’s all.”
“I see.”
The Chairman picked up his teacup, realized it was empty, and stood up.
He instructed the staff to bring more tea through the intercom and sat back down on the sofa.
“How is Han Min-ha doing?”
“Didn’t you hear everything from your daughter?”
“No. She rarely tells me about what happens at the academy. She hasn’t called me since she asked me to pressure the academy into assigning you as her advisor.”
So, as expected. That incident was Yoo Hee-won’s doing.
“So, Han Min-ha can’t use her Aura at all?”
“Yes. I’m not sure what the problem is, but I suspect it’s related to her parents’ disappearance, or perhaps their death.”
“I see. That’s a reasonable assumption. And you intend to make her an S-Rank…”
The Chairman rested his elbow on the armrest and rubbed his temple with his fingertips.
“Now, please tell me what I want to know.”
“I should. But before that, let me ask you something.”
“Yes.”
“Are you satisfied with your life as a professor?”
It was a question with an unclear intention.
There were two appropriate responses to such a question.
Remain silent, or laugh it off.
“Haha. Well…”
“Hmm. I see.”
The Chairman seemed to accept my answer without much suspicion.
“Alright, Hyun Kyo. Since you’re curious about your past and are likely to face various difficulties because of it, I suppose it’s best to tell you everything here.”
Just then, the staff member brought in new tea.
This time, it was iced green tea, not the hot tea from before.
The Chairman took a few sips to wet his throat and began to speak.
“You joined Secreto immediately after graduating from Graford. We recruited you because we thought a hero specializing in defense techniques, which no one pays attention to, would be highly useful.”
“So I was a supporter.”
“Yes. Your role was to protect your teammates from behind. And as you know, you worked with Han Tae-woo and Seo Ji-ah for quite a long time.”
I had roughly guessed that much, and there was nothing surprising.
I waited silently for the Chairman to continue.
“The three of you were unusually close, unlike other teams. Close enough that strangers would mistake you for siblings. But for some unknown reason, Han Tae-woo and Seo Ji-ah died, and the team was disbanded.”
“So Han Min-ha’s parents… weren’t missing, but dead.”
“Of course. Otherwise, why would she be receiving survivor’s benefits?”
“But… you said ‘unknown reason’. Is there something even the Administration doesn’t know?”
“Isn’t that obvious? If we knew everything, we would have already wiped out all the villains’ hideouts.”
That was disappointing.
I had hoped to find out what happened to Han Min-ha’s parents, how they died, while looking into my past.
“The Administration still hasn’t figured out what your team was up against. But since you’ve regained some of your memories, there’s something I want to check.”
“You want me to tell you about the situation back then. I’m sorry, but I don’t remember.”
“Perhaps you’ll remember something if you watch the bodycam footage.”
Right, that’s right.
Heroes wore bodycams on their suits.
To record their missions, to determine responsibility in case of civilian casualties, to analyze villains’ combat patterns and devise countermeasures, and for various other purposes.
The videos I showed the freshmen during the basic evaluation were all bodycam footage from deceased heroes.
Han Min-ha fainted after watching them.
She must have been shocked, realizing that her parents probably died in a similar way.
The footage of Han Min-ha’s parents’ last moments would be valuable.
Of course, my bodycam footage would be there too.
There was no harm in watching it.
“I’ll watch it.”
The Chairman brought a laptop and placed it on the table.
He inserted an encryption module into the USB port, scanned his fingerprint, and went through several security procedures to access a system I had never seen before.
It seemed to be a secret system used by Secreto.
The Chairman navigated through a complex path, entering multiple passwords and authentication keys, and finally reached a folder.
A folder containing video files.
Bodycam footage recording Secreto’s secret activities.
“Is it okay to store such important information… as files?”
“Should we go back to the old days and make videotapes and write charts by hand and store them in an underground bunker? It’s the 21st century.”
“Ah, yes.”
The Chairman opened a subfolder, scrolled down, and stopped at a file.
The filename only contained the date, and nothing else.
The thumbnail was just a black screen with “TOP SECRET” written on it, giving no clue about the content.
“There are three videos in total. Watch them carefully and try to recall your memories.”
The Chairman opened the first file.
A rugged, snow-covered mountain range appeared on the laptop screen.
It was an aerial view.
The peaks and ridges moved quickly from the top to the bottom of the screen, as if someone was flying.
Then, I heard a static-filled voice, like a radio transmission.
[Report each team member’s current status.]
Hearing that voice, I remembered the vision from the archives.
It was Han Tae-woo’s voice, Han Min-ha’s father.
[Velvet Virtue. Altitude good. Azimuth good. Vital signs good.]
That was Seo Ji-ah, her mother.
[Gray Steel. All clear.]
And that was my voice.
It sounded a bit unfamiliar hearing my own voice, but the callsign and everything confirmed it was me.
[Hey, you punk. Aren’t you going to give a proper report? Who said you could give a brief one?]
Han Tae-woo’s voice was playful.
[Are you trying to pull rank on me, senior?]
That was me, retorting.
Hmm… My past self… was a bit brighter than I am now.
[Both of you, be quiet. I’m detecting life signs behind that peak.]
Seo Ji-ah cut in, silencing us.
[We’ll be exposed if we continue like this. How about we land here and proceed on foot?]
[Alright. Everyone, land.]
The camera angle shifted, showing both the mountain range and the sky.
As they descended, the mountains gradually grew closer, and soon, the screen shook slightly and stopped, accompanied by the sound of crunching snow.
“See that mountain? It’s behind there.”
Seo Ji-ah’s arm, clad in a suit, appeared on the left side of the screen, pointing towards a steep, rocky mountain.
“Let’s go on foot. We’ll assess the situation when we get there and then move in.”
Han Tae-woo, also in a suit, appeared on the right and walked forward.
“Let’s take it easy. It’s a rare easy mission.”
“When were you ever diligent?”
“Look at this punk talking back to his senior.”
We walked through the knee-deep perennial snow towards our target mountain.
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