Chapter 45: How to Return (1)

In the commercial district of downtown Omega Detroit, stood Union Solutions, an energy corporation.

It was a reasonably sized mid-tier company responsible for the manufacturing, distribution, and supply chain construction and operation of natural gas, as well as the refinement and sale of various byproducts.

From a corner of the upper floors of its headquarters building, someone’s shout erupted.

“Hey, you clueless bastard! If you don’t handle the aftermath of this properly, you’d better be prepared for your performance review, got it!”

Only after receiving a mouthful of curses did the middle-aged man cautiously close the director’s office door.

‘Damn condescending prick.’

His name was Michael, an employee in charge of facility operation and maintenance management at Union Solutions.

To put it in a more familiar job title, yes, he was perhaps around the level of a facilities team manager.

In fact, a manager in a mid-tier company was treated as an elite in this city.

But now, he was just an ordinary office worker being kicked in the shins along with a barrage of insults from his superior.

“Hoo… f*ck.”

Michael nervously adjusted his disheveled clothes and let out a deep sigh.

A subordinate, who had been waiting anxiously outside the office, observed his expression and cautiously asked.

“Um… Manager, are you alright?”

“Do I look alright?”

“……”

“What are you doing, not following me?!”

“Yes, sir!”

The two of them walked past the office corridor and began to wait for the elevator going down.

The subordinate, anxious about his superior’s seemingly bad mood, cautiously broached the subject again.

“Um… Did the director give any special instructions regarding this incident?”

Michael sighed again.

His face was clearly filled with fatigue and irritation.

“How many years have you been with the company and you still ask that?”

“The accident site is on the outskirts of the city anyway, so he told me to handle it as usual.”

“Still, with that much leaked, shouldn’t we at least conduct a minimal damage assessment….”

When the subordinate hesitantly tried to offer a counterargument, Michael shot him a look as if he were pathetic.

“Hey, who doesn’t know that?”

“Do you think I don’t know that some beggars around there might have inhaled gas and died?”

“But the higher-ups told us to treat it as if nothing happened.”

“Stop being so frustrating and just do as you’re told.”

“Remember, if no one makes an issue of it, it’s not a problem.”

Nevertheless, when the subordinate still showed hesitation, Michael impatiently slapped the back of his head with his palm.

“Get a grip.”

“Who’s going to do that damn investigation?”

“Are you going to go yourself?”

“Think for a moment.”

“What do you think the atmosphere in that neighborhood is like right now?”

“It’s already a crime-ridden area, and now a major accident like that has happened.”

“Where do you think that anger will be directed?”

“If an outsider snoops around at a time like this, they’ll most likely get shot first.”

At those words, the subordinate finally showed a frightened expression.

Hearing it, it made sense.

It was a suburban area with already unstable public safety, and on top of that, these were residents who might have lost their homes or families overnight.

Their anger might not reach the headquarters of a large corporation located in the city center, but it could certainly be directed at an investigator carelessly poking around the scene.

Michael patted his subordinate’s shoulder and gave a final warning.

“So… delete all the maintenance team’s dispatch records and related management data, and thoroughly silence the rest of the staff.”

“The CCTV footage from that area… I’ll ask a hacker I know later to delete it.”

“Tell everyone not to worry about unnecessary things.”

“All we need to do is not attract unnecessary attention.”

“If you don’t want to be dragged into the security team’s audit office, I trust you’ll behave yourself.”

The subordinate, with a frightened expression, merely nodded his head several times.

Thus, a single word of instruction from above was sufficient.

Even if hundreds had died, it could be passed over without a single investigation.

That is why everyone in this city feared the name ‘corporation’.

This incident was no different.

An event unfavorable to the corporation simply became a non-event.

However, sometimes that thoroughness led to unintended consequences.

Because any investigation or clarification of the incident scene was skipped, the eyewitness accounts of the ‘miracle’ also remained merely as rumors circulating only among the back-alley residents.

For someone, it must have been an unexpected stroke of luck.

Whether that was a fortunate coincidence or an inevitability… perhaps only God in heaven knew.

=========

The company in question completely ignored the gas leak incident.

Despite it being a disaster caused by their own mismanagement, they consistently refused to take any responsibility.

After all, they knew that the poor in the suburban areas lacked even the power to protest.

In this city, the weak are not even given the minimum opportunity to protest injustice.

And our Church, too… was still merely one of the weak.

Let’s consider some realistic figures for a moment.

The difference in gross domestic product per unit area between the city center and the suburban areas reached several tens of times.

This was literally a gap greater than that between developed and developing countries.

The mega-corporations that had almost completely dominated the entire urban area economically, politically, and socially were in a weight class that made comparison with mere back-alley gangsters or mafia organizations meaningless.

Wielding all power, including capital, connections, legal authority, and military force, they were no different from the rulers of this society.

So, they were still an opponent we couldn’t recklessly challenge, nor should we.

However, this incident made me keenly realize one thing.

‘We need… a bigger and stronger fence than we have now.’

I realized that if we were treated so insignificantly that we could be unilaterally trampled upon and have it dismissed as a ‘non-event’, we couldn’t properly protect anyone or anything.

So now, I planned to no longer remain complacent in the present, but to steadily and surely increase the Church’s stature.

Naturally, my personal daily life would also become busier.

I would no longer have the leisure to comfortably work part-time as before.

Therefore… to say my final goodbyes, I had just arrived at the pizza shop.

“……..”

As I opened the familiar shop door and stepped inside, I felt the familiar presence of someone bustling about near the counter.

Ding-a-ling—

“Welcome!”

Jenny, who had greeted me energetically, belatedly noticed me and her eyes widened.

Her gaze flickered between my face and somewhere in the air for a moment, and then her pupils seemed to dilate as her eyes started to spin.

“Uh, uhh… Ub, th-th-that is… E-Eve… Ah, no, S-Saintess-nim?”

Jenny seemed torn between treating me as the part-timer she had always cherished or revering me as the Saintess who performed unrealistic miracles and was worshipped by countless people.

Watching her, I thought to myself.

‘Actually, Jenny was kind of oblivious.’

Even when the shop’s sales inexplicably boomed one day, or when the troublesome customers who occasionally came to cause trouble were cleanly eradicated, Jenny just smiled innocently and was happy.

Sometimes I wondered if she was deliberately pretending not to know, but seeing her reaction now, it seemed she really hadn’t known anything until now.

Look.

Even now, she couldn’t even make proper eye contact with me and was creaking like a broken robot.

If I left her like this, she seemed like she would keep fidgeting for hours, so I let out a light sigh and reached out my hand.

I took her frozen hand and guided it to my face.

Jenny had always liked to touch my cheek, saying its texture was nice.

As she was thus led to lightly touch my cheek with a familiar hand, she suddenly seemed to come to her senses and called my name.

“Eve…?”

“Yes, Jenny.”

“It’s me.”

“Please treat me comfortably like before.”

When I answered softly, she finally seemed to regain some of her senses.

But still, in a bewildered voice, she muttered as if she couldn’t believe everything.

“Our cute Eve… was really the Saintess… Goodness gracious….”

Although I didn’t know, Jenny was also one of the people who had collapsed in the church during the gas leak incident a while ago.

She said she had seen me perform a miracle then, and because of that, she had been very confused for the past few days, wondering if it was a dream or reality.

“Are you feeling okay?”

“Yes, thanks to you, Eve.”

“Thank you so much.”

After exchanging light greetings like old times, I cautiously brought up the main subject.

“Jenny, actually… I came to say goodbye.”

“I also wanted to tell you how grateful I’ve been.”

In fact, I had already informed her via text message that I would be quitting my part-time job, so she wasn’t particularly surprised.

She just smiled a little sadly.

“Yes, I was grateful too.”

“Thanks to Eve, a lot of customers came by.”

Jenny confessed that she had actually expected me to quit soon after I first started working part-time.

“But I thought you’d debut as a model or celebrity, or leave for some similar reason.”

“What is all this….”

Still shaking her head as if she couldn’t believe everything, Jenny looked at me with warm eyes and said.

“Even if you’re busy with church work, come visit often.”

“I’ll bake you pizza for free.”

“Our cute Saintess is always welcome.”

No matter what name I was called, or what kind of being I had become, Jenny’s unchanging warm heart brought a bright smile to my face as well.

“Yes! I definitely will! I’ll contact you as much as I can!”

==========

The pizza shop part-time job wasn’t the only personal matter I needed to sort out before the full-scale expansion of the Church.

There was still one more important thing left.

Knock, knock—

A light knock on the church office door was heard.

I stopped what I was doing and answered.

“Come in.”

The person who appeared beyond the slowly opening door was Kyla, the fixer I had first formed a bond with when I initially fell into this unfamiliar world, and whom I was meeting again after a very long time.

“Eve, long time no see.”

“How have you been?”

“I hear you pulled off something big this time?”

Kyla said with her characteristic straightforward manner as she strode into my office.

“Ahaha… It just kind of happened that way.”

I laughed awkwardly and exchanged simple greetings.

Presently, Kyla leaned back comfortably on the sofa and got straight to the point.

“As requested, I’ve searched all the academic database servers, and not only did I check every closed library that might have related records, but I also personally visited graduate schools downtown and finished interviewing professors in relevant fields.”

The reason she had come to the church in person was precisely because I had entrusted her with an important request earlier.

And now, it seemed the results were in.

Kyla placed a small data chip on the table and said.

“I never imagined I’d ever set foot in such a stuffy place.”

“Thanks to you, I had a very refreshing experience.”

In other words, she was a fixer.

Meaning she was an investigator skilled at digging up necessary information in the course of carrying out missions.

If there was information she couldn’t find after being commissioned, I would never have been able to find it on my own.

‘That’s why I trusted her with this task.’

As I unconsciously gulped down dry saliva from nervousness, Kyla continued.

“So, about the investigation you requested, [Analysis of the Practical Technological Possibility of Otherworldly Existence and Dimensional Travel]… The opinion of most professors I met, stripping away all the complicated theories and just stating the conclusion, boiled down to one thing.”

That’s right.

The content I had previously requested from her was…

About the possibility of whether I could truly return home, to my original world.

“……..”

Now, facing that result, my heart began to pound fiercely.