Academy's Silver Gatekeeper

“An Elder!”

I instinctively stepped back.

It was terrifying enough just to run into one randomly, after all. I had already confronted a different Elder not long ago. Now this Elder popped up out of nowhere, saying, “Found you.”

“I’m doomed.”

I glanced around. Was there anyone who could help me here? Definitely not. This wasn’t the Academy. It was an ordinary street. No Ma Hakjun who had fended off Kwak Hyuk, no Han Jiyoon who had fought an Elder. I was on my own, so I had to figure out how to escape.

“How, though?”

My Unique Examiner trait hadn’t activated. Even if it did, I knew I could never beat her. I might manage a few attempts at resistance, like with Kwak Hyuk, but that was all.

“So you’re the one that gloomy guy said was entertaining, the so-called Examiner.”

Hyeon Sujin stared at me with chilling eyes. I felt an overwhelming urge to turn and bolt.

I held back because my instincts warned me that would end in disaster.

“Don’t bother looking around.”

She must have noticed me checking the area for help. I sighed, and she said:

“I’m not here to draw blood, so you can stop worrying about anyone else.”

That was a strange thing to say. I’d been searching for potential help, not worrying about random people. It was ridiculous to hear that from the one who attacked the Academy recently and killed dozens of innocents.

She was acting like it was no big deal, saying she didn’t come to spill blood. I wanted to question if she was joking, but:

“If you don’t pay attention, I can start wrecking the area. You probably don’t want to see bodies rolling around. Let’s stand here a moment and pretend nothing is happening.”

She seemed to want a conversation, so I decided to go along. If a fight broke out, I’d be finished, and I couldn’t stand the thought of the bystanders getting hurt because of me.

“Well?” 

“What do you want?” 

“I have something to ask.”

She took a step closer. It felt like death was slowly approaching.

“Who are you?”

Everyone kept asking me something along those lines lately, but I only had one reply.

“I’m a rank-nine civil servant. I’m also an examiner dispatched to the Academy.”

She blinked a couple of times, then smirked. Her smile gave off a bad vibe.

“You have a weird way of saying you don’t want to talk.”

I moved abruptly to the right. I didn’t know why. My body just moved on its own.

Seeing that, she eyed me strangely.

“Hey, you…”

She paused mid-sentence and snapped her head around, focusing on a spot in the distance. She clicked her tongue.

“Your senses are annoyingly sharp. That crazy woman is here, obviously.”

She looked back at me, sounding more urgent than before.

“Fine. I’ll ask again. Are you going to keep living like this?” 

“Pardon?” 

“Are you planning to keep bowing your head, submitting, and caving in to everything?”

What in the world was she talking about? She was a villain, and not just any villain but an Elder, standing right in front of me. She wanted to know if I was satisfied with my life? This sounded like a recruitment pitch.

The Elders might indeed have found me interesting. I had survived a face-off with Kwak Hyuk, so that made sense.

“I’ll admit that there was a time I wondered if this life was right for me.”

That part was a bit true. Working as a civil servant had been rough.

I still remembered the time a citizen filed a complaint because I spoke casually to a four-year-old child. I was supposed to use polite speech even with kids. It was so ridiculous that I sometimes got nervous speaking informally to anyone.

“You really thought it was wrong? Honestly?”

Her gaze sharpened. She might have thought I was showing interest in a villain’s lifestyle, that I might join her, or that I might be an entertaining subordinate.

I would never become a villain. It wasn’t only because I believed in justice. I also knew from the novel’s future that villains were a bad bet. They would lose in the end. Why invest in a stock when you knew it would crash? I had no desire to jump into the river.

“Still, I realized that wasn’t for me.”

She could go do her villain thing without me. She would figure out why I refused in about a year.

She watched me silently, giving off the vibe that she had plenty left to say but was holding back. Her lips even parted for a moment.

“Next time. We’ll talk next time.” 

“Wait, what?”

That was all. She vanished into thin air as if she had only been a shadow swallowed by light, leaving not the slightest trace behind.

I stood there, dazed, thinking, “What the heck was that?”

“Wow. A good-looking guy, but obviously single?”

I lifted my head to see a woman in a black uniform perched atop a streetlamp. She had an unpredictable vibe and was even stronger than someone like Lee Hyunwoo. She was a powerhouse.

“Irina?” 

“Yes. That’s me. Tada!”

She hopped down and strode toward me. She scanned the area and clicked her tongue.

“Say, did you see a strange woman around here?” 

“A strange woman?” 

“Yes. Creepy, disturbing, less pretty than me, chubbier than me, weaker than me.”

Irina was an upper-tier S-rank superhuman. She must have sensed Elder Hyeon Sujin’s presence and followed her here. The Elder found me, and Irina found the Elder. I had no idea how to respond.

Being honest was probably best, but what if Irina had seen me chatting quietly with Hyeon Sujin? She might become suspicious. An Elder-level villain showed up and left peacefully after a chat? People would say, “That guy’s fishy.”

If you have any ties to a villain, you get investigated right away. Ties to an Elder? You get dragged in for a lot more than a simple interview. All I had done was reject a recruitment offer, yet I could be suspected of being a villain.

'Nobody in their right mind would just tell her everything.'

If it had been Han Jiyoon in front of me, I might have confessed. This was Irina, though, and she was known to be as fearsome as any villain. I worried she might grin and say, “So you were hanging out with an Elder, handsome oppa?” and then smash my head.

I made my decision. I blended truth and lies.

“A woman? I did bump into someone just a moment ago. She cursed at me when I apologized. That’s it.” 

“Really?” 

“Yes. Hmm... come to think of it, she did have some strange aura about her.”

I admitted it was possible I had encountered her by chance, with no deeper purpose. A random brush on the street.

“Hmm.”

Irina tapped her chin, thinking. That made me anxious, but I pretended to stay calm.

“Handsome oppa.” 

“My name is Baek Seojin.” 

“Sure, Handsome oppa. You do seem to attract weird people. Maybe it’s some main-character pheromone?”

Hey, if you put it that way, that means you’re one of those ‘weird people’ yourself, doesn’t it?

“Yesterday, I went undercover in the nightlife district to hunt down some villain underlings.”

“You must’ve had a rough time.”

“Thanks. Anyway, while I was there, your name suddenly popped up. Something about setting a trap, framing someone for sexual assault, and ruining them socially.”

What was that supposed to mean? A trap? Sexual assault? Social ruin?

“Me?”

“Yeah, Handsome oppa. They were talking about you, Baek Seojin.”

“What in the world…?”

“I was curious too, so I looked into it. How did I do that? Quickly and effectively. I asked those guys in person. Gave them a little ‘pat,’ and they sang like canaries.”

Irina demonstrated by lightly clenching her fist.

“Shake hands with ‘conversation.’ Our ‘conversation’ solves everything quite nicely!”

…So the villains were right. She really was out of her mind.

*

Sss—

Shadows gathered, then scattered, until they formed a human shape.

“Hoo.”

Hyeon Sujin steadied her breathing and dropped down in a random spot.

She almost ran face-to-face into that crazy blonde. Even she found Irina too troublesome to handle.

‘I needed more time to talk.’

Once you headed somewhere, Irina kept an eye on that spot in an almost alarming way. That meant meeting with that man, “Baek Seojin,” again would be very difficult.

‘He really wasn’t ordinary.’

When he gave that seemingly evasive answer earlier, she had unconsciously activated her ability. It was a power that crept in without sound or presence, an extremely stealthy shadow.

Yet Baek Seojin accurately noticed which direction it came from and even began to move away.

He wasn’t just any random guy. He had survived Kwak Hyuk’s spear after all. Hyeon Sujin had no choice but to concede that he hadn’t made it through by luck.

‘There’s a real chance he might be connected to that lab.’

She’d asked if he planned to go on living like that, being tossed aside yet still doing as he was told. He had answered bitterly that there was no other choice.

“Isn’t that how it is, Sujin? This is why I… we… ended up here.”

She breathed out in slow gasps, recalling someone who used to smile like that.

Clench—

Hyeon Sujin bit her lip so hard that blood trickled down.