By Zephyria 
For a while, the only sound was the rhythmic sipping of a single person drinking tea.
The thoughts swirling in his head gradually subsided, dampened by the sound of languid, admiring sighs.
Mu-hae finally twitched an eyebrow and pulled himself out of the deep dive of his thoughts. He still felt as if he were dreaming, but at least the sense of dissociation—as if only his body were sitting there—had stopped.
“Do you like it that much?”
“It’s been a while.”
Despite having tea every time he visited Director Gil’s house, Joo-oh gave an answer that made it sound as if he had been starving for years.
Come to think of it, while Joo-oh didn’t drink water often, whenever he had the chance to drink something other than plain water, he would gulp it down without hesitation.
Since he drank it with such gusto, Mu-hae’s hand eventually reached for a cup as well. The sip of tea tasted of strong grass and astringency.
Dammit. He chewed on a tea leaf. From then on, in a manner completely unbecoming of the atmosphere, he blew the tea leaves away and poured the warm water down into his stomach.
“I did think it was strange.”
After chewing another tea leaf, he frowned and locked eyes with Director Gil. Mu-hae tossed out another comment.
“For a kid rescued from such a dangerous place, he seems a bit too well-kept. I found my father’s pad, and there was absolutely no mention of me there either.”
“……He was always that kind of guy.”
“If he was just a tool picked up to be used, it makes sense he wouldn’t be interested.”
“No. It’s not that. It’s just…….”
Still drenched in an uncomfortable emotion, Director Gil shook his head. For this to be empty consolation or a brazen defense, his expression looked far too sincere.
“I don’t know if I’m in any position to say this, but your father wasn’t completely uninterested. He was just the busiest bastard when it came to his own work. He was always like that.”
There was no pretense in the words he let slip hesitantly. It had been nearly twenty years since he had known the man. At this point, Mu-hae could roughly understand Director Gil’s intention in saying such a thing.
At least he didn’t hate me, then. The words, which were neither a question nor a sarcasm, couldn’t pass his throat.
It seemed to be because of the tea Joo-oh had brewed in abundance. Unfortunately, humans only have one mouth, so whether it’s full of tea or anything else, proper communication becomes difficult. Probably.
“Just speak comfortably. Since when did you start weighing your words?”
Director Gil’s mug was still brimming with tea. The foolish Joo-oh, who couldn’t even take care of his own meals, had scrambled and worked hard to prepare this.
After Mu-hae glanced at the cup a few times, Director Gil finally looked down at his own hand. The cup he had been holding exactly as it was received finally moved.
He rolled his eyes awkwardly and took a sip of tea. The way his brow furrowed slightly showed he wasn’t particularly fond of it.
If it weren’t for the current situation, he would have complained, asking if this was tea or a soup. He would have made a fuss about how much the leaves cost, and Joo-oh would have definitely replied with a blank, innocent face, “I don’t know.”
Having imagined that far, Mu-hae felt like letting out a hollow laugh. He chewed the remaining tea dregs in his mouth and swallowed them silently.
“It’s drinkable.”
“Right?”
Director Gil did not agree. Though he didn’t exactly deny it either…….
In truth, no matter what he said, Mu-hae had no intention of arguing. He was dissatisfied that a fact he should have known long ago was only being leaked now.
Still, Director Gil was the only one who had gone out of his way to call him and tell him. The guilt, which even his deceased father had never shown, was deeply embedded in every change of the man’s expression.
“Even if he had no memories, did I never look for my mother?”
“……I don’t know. Not as far as I know.”
Was it because of the affection he had received? Or was he simply too dry in these matters?
Mu-hae couldn’t harbor any particular resentment or anger toward him. Instead, he felt a strange sensation.
An intuition that even if Director Gil had stepped forward to oppose it when he first arrived at Starlight Road, he would have eventually reached this moment.
A conviction that regardless of anyone’s will, he would have grown up as a mercenary in the slums and eventually discovered the records his father left behind.
As if it were fate. He felt as though he had walked a life that was already predetermined.
Glance. He locked eyes with Joo-oh. Joo-oh unconsciously licked his lips. Mu-hae roughly picked up the four remaining pieces of pie and stuffed them into Joo-oh’s mouth.
“Zing Mu-hae’s’t it?”
“No. It’s not mine.”
Director Gil, who had been watching their reactions, sighed and gestured with his hand. The gesture, telling him to eat as much as he wanted as if it didn’t matter whose it was because he had no intention of eating it anyway, was quite funny.
“Was this something I was allowed to tell?”
“You already know as much as you need to, so I have no intention of hiding things that only benefit me.”
“If my father knew, he would have scolded you for not keeping your mouth shut.”
“He’s a finished man anyway. Who’s going to tell me to die?”
After a joke with a bit of a sting, Director Gil managed a forced smile. It seemed it would be better for him not to wear fake smiles. It didn’t suit him at all.
Mu-hae quietly sipped his tea and let out a long, repeated sigh.
“By the way, there was actually something else I was curious about.”
“……What?”
“I was curious about that too, but it’s not particularly necessary.”
“…….”
A hint of bewilderment and tension flickered in Director Gil’s eyes as he stared intently.
When Mu-hae held out his now-empty cup to Joo-oh, the latter took the empty cup without a word and headed toward the kitchen.
Today, Director Gil’s precious tea leaves would run dry. Feeling a strange sense of satisfaction, Mu-hae gazed at the round back of Joo-oh’s head and continued.
“I heard there is a ‘big shot’.”
“A big shot?”
“I found information regarding the Star Path.”
“Star Path……!”
“It seems they encouraged me to find that information. I’m trying to get a clue to see if there’s anyone who comes to mind.”
“Star Path…….”
At the single word ‘Star Path,’ Director Gil’s thought process came to a halt. Whether he had completely forgotten about the existence of the ‘big shot’ or not, his face was filled with nothing but confusion regarding the Star Path.
When he had learned of that substance, where and how he had found it, and what the current state of that research was.
There were endless things he wanted to ask, but he seemed to be barely holding back. Vitality rushed back into his shadowed face, as if a breath of air had been blown into it.
“It’s been a while since I got the information. I met a survivor from Solar City. However, what’s important to me right now isn’t that, but advice regarding a big shot inside Goryeo City who knows about the Return flight and is aware of the research in Solar City.”
It was strange. When he first heard it from Cheong, the existence had felt vaguely like a fog, but now, in his mind where the shock had been processed, the entity began to take a concrete shape.
“One. As I said, they know about the Return flight and Solar City. Two. They must be someone that even people with significant unofficial power struggle to get close to. They would also have the opportunity or qualification to access classified information through some route. Three. They know my situation, but they are someone who intends to use me rather than harm me immediately.”
“I…… haven’t paid any attention to the central side since I came here. Even if I were to name someone suspected, it would be based on information from over 20 years ago. I can give some advice, but it’s hard to trust it.”
“That’s why I want to hear it. Someone else probably knows more about the current situation. I can get that from other people, so I’m asking about the faded stories.”
At Mu-hae’s question, which was calmer and heavier than usual, Director Gil’s excitement soon subsided.
He stared at the ceiling for a long time, as if tracing through lost memories, before finally muttering in an uncertain voice.
“First…… we should exclude anyone who has absolutely no connection to this side. You said they know about you and Solar City. They wouldn’t be some random person jumping in with a story they heard late.”
“That’s likely. It seems they are still in contact with a survivor from Solar City.”
“This brat…… shouldn’t you have said that first?”
“It’s mostly a guess. There’s no evidence that the two are the same person.”
“Haaa. A few Councilors. And there are a few wealthy bastards deeply involved in the central side. That, by any chance, when you took my pad, that person…… how did they seem?”
“The pad? You mean the family member?”
“Ahem.”
“They didn’t seem particularly interested in me. They seemed interested in entering politics, but they appeared to have concluded it would be impossible.”
“Then the Gil side is still unlikely. Since the information isn’t certain, just try crossing off the people who have become insignificant from the list I give you.”
He spilled some of the barely-touched tea onto the tea table. As he dragged a droplet with his fingertip, a dark brown conceptual map was drawn on the dry table.
“It’s not just one or two people controlling the city. You probably know that the Mayor and a few Councilors are in conflict. The political bastards must have told you, judging by their nuance.”
“Roughly.”
“They’re called Mayor and Councilors, but it’s no different from the relationship between a figurehead king without a private army in a small kingdom and wealthy nobles. If it were the Middle Ages, someone would have cut the king’s throat long ago, but as you know, modern cities aren’t conquered that way.”
Screech, several branches extended below a circular shape. The first straight line he drew was already drying up and disappearing.
“The Mayor is a ceremonial position by system. They cannot own any corporate entity. The system of checks and balances is so well-structured that it’s hard to reach even through loopholes, so those who have already expanded their businesses extensively or have a family business to inherit don’t necessarily covet that title. This is something they don’t even teach at the academy.”
“The people who need to know, know.”
“That doesn’t mean the Mayor is a pauper. Since they are the final decision-maker of the city, if you squeeze them, money and authority will come out from anywhere.”
In a society where knowledge is not distributed, information is money and power. Based solely on the facts he realized during his strange journey, Mu-hae could easily guess the rights granted to the Mayor.
“At that time, that wom— haa. What West Wind attempted was to use this conflict to insert the control experiments of Crystal Blue as an official agenda item. Of course, it didn’t feel nearly as radical as the Return flight, and even that eventually failed. Still, it’s likely they didn’t fail to get any attention at all.”
“Then…….”
“Considering that, if we pick people who were involved with the Return flight on a large or small scale, or those who would dig into that project alone, it would probably be this person. And this person. This one too. If we assume a wide age range, even that bastard would be possible.”