I swallowed and looked to the side.
The wolf team leader, still completely matter-of-fact, was looking with me at the back of the worn paper envelope in my hand, at the burned letters blazing there.
And just now—
“Agent.”
…It seemed he had realized my identity from the fact that the goblin fire had willingly revealed the hidden sentence to me.
“How did something so illogical happen? A civil servant getting hired by a private company. A secret-agency agent, no less.”
“……I resigned.”
“Did you?”
A chill ran down my spine.
Judging from past experience, the reaction an elite-team leader of Baekilmong would show after realizing I had once been an agent of the Disaster Management Agency would be….
I looked at the eyeholes in the wolf mask.
Instead of a hostile or piercing stare, there was something in his gaze that seemed almost thoughtful….
And then—
“It looks like your circumstances run pretty deep.”
“…!”
“That happens.”
The wolf team leader lowered his head with a smile.
In an instant, the atmosphere softened.
“…Doesn’t that strike you as suspicious?”
“What? Hahaha….”
A small laugh passed silently from behind the wolf mask.
“It’s so suspicious that it loops around into being strange. Which makes it fine. If this were a Ghost Story trying to lure me in, it wouldn’t bother inventing such an absurd backstory.”
“…!”
“And the fact that the goblin fire recognized you is more than enough proof that you really were an agent.”
I realized it then.
The pressure he had been pressing down on me with all along, hidden beneath that gentle tone of voice, had eased slightly from his manner of speaking itself.
“…Do you hold any resentment toward agents?”
“Resentment? Why would I? They’re good people doing…