The Hunting Dog of the Prestigious Family Has Returned Chapter 85

“How is it? The finest taste under heaven?”

“Oh, oh my…….”

The sushi rolled by a wako was far, far more delicious than expected.

No, I’m not joking. Of every Japanese dish I had ever eaten, this was without question the finest.

Aged flounder that melted on the tongue the moment it entered the mouth, sweet shrimp that burst with flavor, eel lightly cured in sweet soy sauce. From the selection of ingredients to the consistency of the rice, the balance of vinegar, the personal touch.

This was clearly not skill learned by watching over someone’s shoulder.

‘So why does a wako have this kind of pointless talent.’

And the eccentricities of this mechanical human didn’t end there.

“Now now, watch carefully. If I put my finger on the cup like this….”

“Huh, what?”

“Wow!”

After setting down a plate of sushi, Mizutani casually rested his finger over a sake cup, and from his fingertip, a clear liquid trickled out.

“This is sake, isn’t it? Sake coming out of his fingertip…!”

“Amazing, right? It’s a product made directly by a Japanese artificial body craftsman.”

“It is amazing, but….”

Mooyoung, who had been watching quietly, asked.

“Aren’t you a full-body prosthetic? You can’t even drink this. Why did you bother having something like this installed?”

Mizutani answered without batting an eye.

“I do a personal broadcast. A sake company offered a sponsorship.”

“What?”

Listening to the conversation between Mooyoung and Mizutani, I felt my mind slipping further away.

Why would a company sponsor a wako.

And what was a personal broadcast.

“Mooyoung. Was he always like this?”

When I quietly asked Mooyoung sitting beside me, Mooyoung shook his head.

“He was nothing like this when we made contact. If anything he had considerable spirit, and I was fairly tense….”

“Right. I remember too.”

I recalled the first time I had seen this man.

The operation to swap out cargo in order to kill Jo Seonghwan.

He had been a mercenary hired at high cost to carry out that diversionary operation, and had delivered results that made every coin spent worth it.

Mechanical precision in execution and merciless handiwork.

Even the thoroughness to cleanly eliminate any evidence.

A truly exemplary wako, I had thought.

So why was a man like that filming some kind of sushi cooking show here.

Hearing the story, the reason he was working here was quite a spectacle in its own right.

“You took a job from Andong Kim, and it turned out to be a trap?”

Chewing through an order of sweet shrimp nigiri I’d added, I asked, and Mizutani, arms folded, nodded.

“I was selected as a disposable tool to be used and thrown away. Thanks to that I ended up rolling around like a hoop dodging their escort warriors, and barely managed to crawl my way to the Busan coastline.”

“So right now you’re disguising yourself as a… part-time worker to hide from any potential pursuit?”

“More precisely, I’m a foreign student studying in Joseon. Working a part-time job at a sushi restaurant to cover the expensive private academy tuition.”

Right. Let’s not think about it any further.

Whether there was anywhere in the eight provinces of Joseon that had a foreign student with their entire body wrapped in military-grade artificial body components and heavy hydraulic systems, whether any part-time worker in this world cut flounder sashimi with a combat-grade monomolecular cutter, pointing any of that out would only tie my own stomach in knots.

Besides, if it was a desperate measure taken for survival, I could understand it.

The sushi had been delicious too.

“So then.”

Around the time I was filling my stomach with the ochazuke served as a dessert course.

Mizutani, his gaze having shifted, looked toward me and asked.

“What brings the Young Master, who should be in Hanseong, to a place like this?”

“I’m planning to take the ship from Busan Port to Japan.”

“To the archipelago. Meaning, heading to Kyushu?”

There was no reason to hide it, so I nodded without hesitation, and his face drew noticeably closer.

“What. What is it?”

“I just find it curious that a Joseon aristocrat, of all people, is going to Japan. Touring the company cities wouldn’t be much to speak of, would it?”

“It’s not tourism, it’s work. Work assigned by the Andong Kim who put you in this state.”

“And the nature of that work?”

“Monster hunting. Going to burn down the monster nests spread across your homeland.”

Since it had already been put out in press coverage, I said it freely.

Of course, the monsters were to be hunted by our elder brother, the family’s successor, and my role was the cleanup afterward.

When I added that, his optical sensors began to gleam even more.

“That is to say, you will be able to meet with the heads of the company cities.”

“Most likely. Whatever I may look like, I hold a fairly senior position within the family.”

“Then I have a proposal.”

“…A proposal?”

He straightened his body.

The frame angular enough to seem on the verge of breaking made cracking sounds as it moved, and his head, which had been touching the shop ceiling, came down to roughly my eye level.

Glancing over, I could see he was looking at me in seiza, as Japanese warriors often do.

“Young Master, will you not hire me!”

“……What?”

A proposal like this at a moment like this.

I sank into thought for a moment, set down my cup, and slowly leaned back before opening my mouth.

“As you can see, I have more than enough escort personnel.”

Taewoong, receiving those words, gave a short nod. His two thick-boned hands remained steady on his knees as ever, and Mooyoung quietly picked up one piece of sushi with an expressionless face.

A holder of Grade 1 artificial body components and a phase-power user.

More than enough force to protect one person.

“If it were simple escort duty, that would be so.”

But Mizutani slowly shook his head and said.

“Yet the Young Master has no ‘guide’ who knows the geography of the archipelago and can read the habits of its people.”

At those words, what flashed through my mind in that instant was the list of guides that the Japanese company city side would assign to me.

‘Officially they cited reasons like reception support, interpretation, local coordination, but…. in reality, those people’s purpose was surveillance. I would have to think of them as something like listening devices planted beside me by the company city side.’

The ‘real reason’ Kim Jungheon had sent me to Japan.

And thinking about what I was to do there…. there was no reason to keep a Japanese-side watchdog near me.

If I said I had secured a guide in advance on our side, the company city side would have no grounds to attach any unnecessary informant either.

Thinking about it this way, the offer was more tempting than expected.

“I may not look it, but I’ve been rolling around as a wako for over ten years.”

While I hesitated, Mizutani continued.

“I’ve carried out countless jobs going back and forth between Joseon and the archipelago. I can say with confidence I’ll be far better than whatever hangers-on the company people attach to you.”

“Hmm.”

“And above all else, I have contacts throughout Kyushu. Contacts who work outside the company cities’ surveillance networks.”

His words had weight.

A route for navigating grey areas that could never be secured through official channels.

I had spent a great deal of money until now trying to establish such pathways, but a Joseon aristocrat laying down an intelligence network in Japan was no easy matter.

Using the Royal Investigative Bureau would be simple enough, but doing so would leave me unable to work behind the scenes.

I had looked into Hahoe’s database, but the information they handled was entirely for domestic use.

In that situation, being able to use the intelligence networks the wako employed was a more tempting proposition than expected.

‘Then the question is the price….’

Let’s first confirm what terms this man wanted for the deal.

“Cooperate for the entire duration in Japan, and in exchange, have the warrant Andong Kim placed lifted. That’s what you’re saying?”

“Exactly.”

It was an awkward request, but not an impossible one.

Of course I couldn’t formally intervene in the family’s matters, but quietly erasing a single name from the family’s packed kill list was within my reach.

I looked at him quietly.

‘He’s not simply begging for his life. There’s something else behind this.’

He had been acting like a deranged clown, and precisely because of that, I couldn’t afford to let my guard down.

On top of that, that particular air about him.

The machinery-covered face was hard to read emotions from, but beyond the red glow of the facial sensors, something that resembled a human’s tenacity was unmistakably still there.

Spite. Grudge.

Something that had to be repaid.

“All right.”

If I gained one more variable I could make use of, there was no reason to turn it down.

After brief deliberation, I nodded.

“Let’s make a deal.”

“A wise choice, Young Master.”

At that moment, with a click, something shot out from Mizutani’s elbow.

I picked it up wondering what it was, and it turned out to be a built-in pad capable of electronic signatures.

‘No really, why does something keep popping out of your body. Are you a wako or Doraemon?’

With a dumbfounded expression, I began writing out the various contract terms.

Base compensation: 0 won. Completion bonus: 0 won. Request for warrant removal. All information provision during the Kyushu stay to be….

An grossly unfair contract amounting to outright robbery, but what could be done.

The other party was in a position of begging for their life.

“……Oh, come to think of it. I didn’t ask about that.”

In the middle of grinning to myself at the thought of making good use of a free wako, a question that had suddenly surfaced came out of my mouth.

“What had you so desperate for money that you took work from Andong Kim? Given the payment from the Pungyang Jo job before, even with extravagant spending you could have lived comfortably for about five years.”

At that, Mizutani made a sound as though sighing from within the machinery. His optical sensors flickered faintly, tracing a subtle angle.

“That matter….”

He tilted his head back heavily, then finally spoke.

“There was a newly opened casino in Hanseong, and I went in just to have a look.”

“……A casino? In Hanseong?”

When I asked again, half-disbelieving, Mizutani nodded grimly and continued.

“I had planned to enjoy it briefly and leave, but when I came to my senses, that wasn’t how things had gone. The laughter of the courtesans, the cheers of the people fawning over me, that sensation….! By the time I came to my senses, every coin of my payment was…. all of it……!”

Mizutani shuddered at the memory, as though even now recalling that sensation made him shake.

I asked again, with a feeling of oh no. Oh no, oh no.

“What was that casino called?”

“Right. They’re no ordinary vicious people, Young Master should also know the name.”

As though picking at an old wound, Mizutani twitched his facial sensors painfully and slowly opened his mouth.

“Pyeongwoon Casino.”

“…Oh.”

“Oh.”

“Oh no….”

Taewoong made that inexplicable, subtle expression.

Mooyoung wordlessly directed his full attention to the udon broth set before him.

And Father, who knew nothing of any of it, comforted the pitiful wako with the gaze of one looking upon a foolish soul.

“You made an unwise choice. But it is all right. If you repent and feel remorse, the Lord will grant forgiveness of your sins….”

“Ah, you are a priest? For me to receive confession in a place like this…….”

And so you were a Catholic too.

When Father Jeong Suhan took his hand and began to pray, Mizutani began trembling all over with guilt and regret.

Looking at that miserable sight, I had no choice but to quietly add the words ‘statutory minimum wage’ to the compensation entry of the contract that had been set at zero.

That, well.

I feel it anew.

Our proprietress really does know how to run a business.

Doesn’t she?