How to Survive as an Extra

Chapter 87

A familiar ceiling came into view.

A white ceiling that calmed my heart just by looking at it.

It was the infirmary of the Hero Preparatory School.

“…….”

What in the world had happened?

I was certain I had lost consciousness after fighting Yun Jeongseop……

When I checked the smartwatch on my wrist, it was Sunday night.

Since I had passed out on Saturday, it meant I had been transported here and had spent a full day lying down.

There was one other person in the infirmary besides me.

Yun Jeongseop—leaning his back against the infirmary wall without so much as asking whether I was all right, despite having clearly been watching me wake up.

He was observing me with a duller gaze than usual, and he said nothing at all until I spoke first.

“What are you doing?”

“Visiting.”

“Whom?”

“You.”

It was a conversation that sounded like a comedy routine.

Yun Jeongseop must have lost consciousness from the fight as well, yet he looked perfectly fine.

Well, even in human form, his abnormal regenerative ability under the full moon remained the same, so it was not exactly strange.

I sat up and met his eyes for a moment, but when he still did not speak, I raised my wrist and checked my smartwatch again.

Only then did Yun Jeongseop finally talk.

“Cadet Cha Yeri saved you. Thank her later.”

I had expected it would be Cha Yeri.

Even in the original work, Cha Yeri had watched the fight between Lee Eunho and Yun Jeongseop.

“According to her, you were unconscious by yourself far from the lodge. Were you attacked by a monster?”

“Well, yes…….”

I was unconscious by myself?

He would not have lied while even bringing up Cha Yeri’s name.

There was no reason to say something that would be exposed immediately, and in the first place, Yun Jeongseop, after transforming into a werewolf, could not remember anything.

So that meant Cha Yeri had deliberately fabricated the story……

She must have seen me dressed like a Phantom Thief and decided that I did not want Yun Jeongseop to learn my identity.

That was why she made up such a story.

……But why did it feel like something was missing?

“And earlier, Cadet Do Minyeong came to visit.”

“What? Her?”

Yun Jeongseop gestured with his chin toward a lunch box placed on the table beside the bed.

“She told me to have you eat it when you woke up.”

Just as he said, a lunch box bearing the symbol of Grand Pistachio was there.

Along with it was a can of carbonated coffee, beads of condensation clinging to the surface.

Why would Do Minyeong, who had nothing to do with this incident, bring me a meal?

I had not even visited her during Hong Dahee’s case.

Well, I would ask her later.

For now, I asked what I wanted to know most.

“Where is Lee Eunho?”

Our protagonist—who had made contact with Gen and could appear anywhere at any time.

“He came. More precisely, he came up to the door.”

“So he made it back to Hero Prep.”

“Until you were transported by helicopter, he carried you on his back and moved you. You should thank him as well.”

“I will handle that myself……. More importantly, what happened to you, Instructor? When we arrived at the lodge, it did not look like you were there.”

Yun Jeongseop lazily blinked and answered.

“I chased down and dealt with a monster that left the lodge area. I collapsed from exhaustion afterward.”

“……I see.”

It was a fabricated story.

He had run away, fearing the werewolf transformation, but in the end he transformed after losing his memory.

Of course, he had been tearing into a monster and eating it, but still……

My eyes drifted to the small table by his side, where I spotted two empty cup ramen containers.

Judging by the product, Yun Jeongseop had clearly eaten here.

At first glance, it might have looked like the hard work of a responsible instructor nursing his disciple, but I could not understand why he, rather than a medical instructor, was the one taking care of me.

“Were there any other casualties in the expedition team?”

“No. Thankfully.”

“I am worried this might affect the Hunter Association club.”

“Everyone considers it an unfortunate accident. You cannot predict a rift that appears without any omen in the first place.”

“I see…….”

“More importantly, I am glad you do not seem to have any serious injuries.”

“I was lucky.”

“By the way, how many monsters did you face?”

How many……

The moment I heard that, I understood Yun Jeongseop’s intent.

“Why are you asking that?”

“Because it was an abnormal rift, the Bureau is collecting related information.”

He had asked how many people, not how many monsters.

It was difficult to dismiss it as a simple slip of the tongue.

Because the phrasing came from the suspicion that he might have transformed into a werewolf and attacked Cadet Ji Seokhyeon.

That was why he had volunteered to stay and “take care” of me.

Before I met anyone else, he wanted to confirm why I had supposedly been found alone.

I put on a faint smile and replied.

“I think it was a rhinoceros-like monster. It was so huge that I got taken out. Ha.”

“Is that so…….”

As always, Yun Jeongseop nodded without much change in expression.

Then, as naturally as if it had always been his plan, he left the infirmary and added,

“I will bring the medical instructor. Do not go anywhere. Stay quiet.”

He could have just called through the smartwatch.

He probably wanted to take a deep breath and steady himself.

After Yun Jeongseop left, I twisted open the ring pull on the can of carbonated coffee.

And as I held the sharp taste in my mouth, one forgotten fact suddenly surfaced.

The whereabouts of the Phantom Thief’s item, the Cloak of the Alluring Hermit.

I had definitely been wearing it right up until I lost consciousness, and yet, chillingly, it was gone.

“……I am screwed.”

After leaving the infirmary, Yun Jeongseop headed toward the emergency staircase, then suddenly stopped.

He looked lost in deep thought.

Considering how little expression he usually had, he was clearly troubled.

‘A rhinoceros?’

Ji Seokhyeon had lied that he had encountered a rhinoceros-shaped monster.

Without realizing that Yun Jeongseop remembered yesterday’s events clearly.

The moment Yun Jeongseop became a werewolf, he lost his reason, but the memory remained even after he returned to human form.

So he also remembered Ji Seokhyeon moving to stop him.

Not only that, he had seen that Ji Seokhyeon was the Phantom Thief who was becoming a major issue.

‘Ji Seokhyeon was the Phantom Thief…….’

To those who had lived in the world of investigations, the Phantom Thief was a name that inevitably put them on guard.

Yet Yun Jeongseop felt no sharp hostility.

With Ji Seokhyeon belonging to the Special Affairs Division, reporting the Phantom Thief outright would have been absurd, and rather, it explained the abilities Ji Seokhyeon had shown so far.

‘It is still true that his behavior irritates me sometimes.’

More than anything, Ji Seokhyeon was the only person who had returned him to a human under the full moon.

Yun Jeongseop did not know what ability had been used, but it was clearly comparable to the nullification of superpowers he had only heard of in rumors.

‘So it was not empty posturing when he mentioned an Elixir.’

He began to hope that Ji Seokhyeon might be able to solve the incident from five years ago.

Even further, he began to hope that Ji Seokhyeon might free him from this hellish curse.

It was only a vague expectation, but Yun Jeongseop sensed that he was fated to remain near Ji Seokhyeon.

If he stayed with Ji Seokhyeon, he would not create unjust sacrifices like that time, at the very least.

“……Ha, this is truly damnable.”

***

The next day, Monday.

News of the Mystery Club’s expedition incident had already spread among the cadets.

The story that they had joined forces with students from other academies to defeat the rift’s monsters was more than enough to turn into a heroic tale, and naturally, the cadets gossiped about the exploits of Lee Eunho and Cha Yeri.

In the classroom, in the training ground—everywhere, all day long.

The problem was that within the story I had heard so often my ears could develop calluses, I was the one who fainted with my back turned to the crisis.

Testimony that I had been found collapsed alone while everyone else fought the monsters for their lives had become twisted.

It was a familiar sort of routine.

Still, after it became known that I belonged to the Special Affairs Division, the number of cadets who openly insulted me decreased significantly.

Of course, the glances stealing toward me still contained a hint of disdain……

“It is because they cannot stand that a social care beneficiary is doing well.”

After all of Monday’s lectures ended, I headed to the unmanned convenience store near the main gate.

Part of me wanted to eat dinner quietly somewhere peaceful, but the real reason was that I had arranged to meet Park Chaeshin here.

Normally, Park Chaeshin should have been sweating away at White Bottle in Seoul’s District 2, but after hearing about the expedition incident, he had shown a willingness to make contact with me.

How a “dead” person wearing a human skin mask could enter the 4th Scholastic District and Hero Prep was another matter, but Park Chaeshin had claimed he would pose as the stock manager for White Bottle and slip in with a supply truck to enter the 4th Scholastic District branch.

“He is sharp enough to hack Hero Prep’s server, so he will manage on his own.”

Only after I had finished chewing down a sandwich filled with the meat of some unknown monster, then rinsed my mouth with carbonated coffee, did Park Chaeshin finally appear in the convenience store.

“Oh, Ji Seokhyeon! You were eating just now?”

Park Chaeshin greeted me warmly, lifting his arm as if we were close acquaintances.

He placed the laptop he had brought in his bag on the counter, checked that the internal CCTV did not record audio, and only then approached me.

“Then shall we start with what you found in the bunker?”

Since we had already spoken on the phone yesterday, there was no need for any particular small talk.

I took out the research journal I had brought from the bunker and showed it to him.

“It is explicit content. It will be evidence that can clearly prove the identities of the victims related to this case.”

“Mm, it is, but it is a shame there is no information on the alchemists who participated. And there is no information about the backer we were looking for either.”

Perhaps because he had been involved in the second stage of the research, Park Chaeshin studied the journal with steady focus.

Just moments ago, he had looked relaxed like an older neighborhood friend, but at times like this, the alchemist in him stood out.

“By the way, how is Investigator Yun?”

“Not much different from usual. As always, he is in a low mood.”

“Then that is a relief…….”

The “Investigator Yun” Park Chaeshin referred to was Yun Jeongseop.

As a victim of the incident from five years ago, Yun Jeongseop had continued investigating forced awakening even after being hired by Hero Prep, and in that process he had met Park Chaeshin.

The two had maintained a kind of secret cooperation, but after Park Chaeshin was officially processed as dead, that cooperation had collapsed.

Because Park Chaeshin, after working with the Special Affairs Division, could no longer reveal his survival to outsiders.

In the end, I was the only one stuck in an awkward position between them.

Yun Jeongseop was someone trustworthy enough that linking the two and drawing out synergy in the investigation would not have been a bad idea, but……

With Lee Eunho being someone who could bolt in any direction at any time, I did not have the spare capacity to meddle.

Unless Park Chaeshin strongly insisted that he wanted to meet Yun Jeongseop, that was.

“Anyway, I see a few angles worth digging into. Good work. If it were not for your Demonic Eye, who would have thought to examine the crack in the floor?”

“I just got lucky.”

“I will take these documents, review them closely, and contact you as soon as I find a clue.”

“Ah, all right.”

I already knew the clue mentioned in the original work, but saying it now would only drag the episode forward.

Park Chaeshin gathered the papers, then talked nonstop for about ten minutes about everything that had happened before he finally left the convenience store.

“Is he lonely or something? The way he talks is like a bomber.”

Left alone, I cleaned up the table where I had eaten, then wrote a message on my smartwatch.

The recipient was none other than Cha Yeri.

The content was a request to meet at the unmanned convenience store.

The message was sent, and Cha Yeri arrived faster than I expected.

About twenty minutes.

“So, what is it?”

Cha Yeri briefly scanned the inside of the convenience store, then walked over to my table.

“There is something I need to get back from you.”

“Something?”

“Yes. The cloak I was wearing when I collapsed.”

“…….”

The missing Cloak of the Alluring Hermit.

Since Cha Yeri had found me, she had obviously collected it.

Even now, she did not react strongly, only narrowing her eyes as if gauging my expression, which meant my guess was correct.

“Instead of saying thank you to your lifesaver, you demand an item right away. Well, I do happen to be keeping one pitch-black rag…….”

“And?”

Cha Yeri cleared her throat and continued.

“Ahem. If you meet my demand, I am willing to return it without questioning you.”

“Is that a threat?”

“Would threatening you even work? Sorry, but I am a businesswoman. I prioritize exchanging value. No matter what the other party does, no matter what past they have, I do not break my promises.”

I was not in a position to refuse Cha Yeri’s demand.

The fact that she had not exposed the Phantom Thief’s identity so far was already consideration on her part.

“Let me hear the terms first.”

“Before the terms, there is something I need to confirm. Are you…… the Phantom Thief?”

She asked even though she already knew.

She wanted me to admit it in my own words.

Truly the posture of a businesswoman.

In a way, it was perfect timing.

I had been wondering why she had kept the secret in the first place, so it was better to lay everything out plainly.

“Yes. But just in case, if you are thinking of threatening to report me to Dispel, you should give up now.”

“Forget it. That alone is enough.”

“Then tell me the terms.”

Cha Yeri parted her lips at once, but then closed them again without speaking.

For once, she looked hesitant.

She seemed to be thinking hard, and judging by how she drew quick breaths, it looked as though she were trying to calm herself.

At last, an unexpected sentence slipped from Cha Yeri’s mouth.

“It is simple. From now on, you just have to date me.”

“…….”

“…….”