Treasure tales

Short 21: No regrets

"I don't understand. Exactly what did you see?" I argued. "Junghwan's words just sounds like some horror anime film that nobody can understand."

"You can see it that way," Junghwan said with a small smile on his face. He seemed amused. "To people of our age at that time, though, it was a very traumatic thing to see. And what makes it even more horrifying is their promise that it will come true."

"Fair enough," I agreed. "So let me summarise. When you were kids, a bright light appeared, you discovered you had powers, and you met these four mysterious men. Then somehow all twelve of you decided to forget about it, but then Hyunsuk shows up one day and gathers all twelve. Correct?"

"Yup," Jihoon confirmed.

"Honestly if it was the old me I would never believe you, but since I saw your powers with my own eyes I am more inclined to think it's true," I surmised.

"It's a real problem, though," Hyunsuk said solemnly, returning to sit with the rest.

"How's Kyu?" Jihoon asked immediately.

"He's fine. The visions have stopped. He's just resting for a while. Worry not, the other two are there for him," Hyunsuk assured him.

"It's a real problem," Hyunsuk repeated, turning to stare at me in the eyes. His face contorted with grief as he paused for a bit, as if he remembered something terrible. "We have to stop the tragedy, no matter what."

"Suk-ah, are you ready to let us on in the secret?" Yedam asked politely.

"Yes, I'm sorry for working all this time in secret. I didn't want to worry you all further," Hyunsuk responded. "All this time I've been trying to figure out the exact date of their return. Also I have been doing information collecting in hopes that we can find a way around the 'hell' they refer to."

"We've been mostly unsuccessful though, since we know next to nothing about them. They're the ones with the advantage, and they know that," Jeongwoo continued. "But previously our main method was to track the level of magic use in the city using a special algorithm. We noticed that whenever we use our powers, there is usually a very special wave pattern emitted from us. We have been using it as a basis, very much similar to scientific experiments."

"That's physics!" I exclaimed. "Whoever is this smart?"

"You forget that my power includes mastery," Jeongwoo said sheepishly. "Yoshi proposed we find something that could correlate with magic use because we technically don't know how to track magic itself, so I summoned a bunch of things until I found it. Hyunsuk and Yoshi had to do some deep reading to give me ideas to try, though."

"The idea was that high magic activity could indicate incoming of magic or superpower users," Jeongwoo continued. "But I reckon they have their own way around it, which is why the only magic activity we detected is our own and Asahi's."

"Our second strategy makes use of my Spy powers," Yoshi continued. "It's unlikely, but we suspected high ranking people involved in handling the country's secrets may know of another world with magic. So I infiltrated many places, and whenever I failed Hyunsuk would turn back time and give me instructions of what to do and what to avoid. Of course, I still have to be very careful or else Hyunsuk overuses his powers. I don't know what is their limit, but we won't take any risks. Jeongwoo himself did some hacking to help."

"Rin, that day you saw me holding files," Hyunsuk addressed me. "They were from Yoshi who had been undercover at that time. His life would have been in danger if he was caught with those, so I posed as a friend bringing him food and quickly left."

I wondered who the man who knew Hyunsuk from that day was, but I decided not to ask.

"We have to pull some mad strings everytime Yoshi has no choice but to go undercover instead of his usual invisibility stunt because otherwise he can't probe for information directly," Jeongwoo complained. "How tiring."