There's No Love In the Deathzone (BL)
Chapter 218 - 212. Disturbing Invitation

Chapter 218: Chapter 212. Disturbing Invitation

"Someone asked to meet you, Sir."

Jock, who usually spent his time at the door, came to the dining room of the suite where the rest of the Trinity members had their breakfast in. As he was in charge of security, everyone who wanted to meet the members, especially Zein, had to go through him.

"In this hour?" Bassena frowned disapprovingly. Wasn’t it enough that his lovely morning time was already disrupted by these people who came barging into a couple’s suite to have breakfast? Now he had to let people come to his boyfriend at said breakfast too?

"Who?"

"Someone who’s in charge of the guide conference."

Zein tapped on his fork in contemplation. If it was a committee member looking for him so early in the morning, despite knowing Bassena Vaski was here, the possibility that it was something important was high. That being said, there was no reason he should abide by their calling.

"I can go down and find out what they want, Boss."

Alice, the diligent assistant, readily offered herself as if she knew what Zein was thinking already.

"You’re done with your breakfast?"

"Yes."

"Alright, go down with Jock," Zein decided. "Them them I’m guiding my esper."

Bassena raised his brow, lips curled into a smirk. "You’re not guiding me, though?" he said cheekily, to which Zein responded by intertwining their fingers. "Okay, you’re guiding me."

"Hmm...what do you think they wanted? Didn’t we already say we’ll participate?" Dheera tilted her head.

"Probably..." Nadine tapped on her chin to think of the possibility. "Either tell us we can’t come to reduce chaos, or...perhaps they want Captain to become a panelist?"

Zein, who was resuming his meal while guiding Bassena, paused and looked up from his plate. "What?"

"It’s just a conjecture, but..." Nadine shrugged.

"It actually makes sense," Rina said. "With how the opening went yesterday, they now see the importance of having guides who could stay on the field. Even if they have no plan to go to the Deathzone, it’s still an interesting topic."

Lex suddenly paused and blinked, as if he just remembered a piece of important information. "Ah, that’s right--I forget," he looked at Zein and Bassena then. "Last night, I heard that Celestia will send their guides to the conference."

"For real? They never did before..." Nadine widened her eyes in surprise. "Is it because Captain would be there? Wait--if the committee really wants Captain to be a panelist, Celestia might be behind it."

"What--so they could know more about how our system works?" Dheera responded in disgust.

"Now, now, why don’t we wait for Alice to return first before making further conjecture?" Rina calmed the young guide with a smile, prompting Dheera to grin and resumed her breakfast.

They didn’t have to wait long, however, for Alice came just after they finished their breakfast. Not surprisingly, with the things they had predicted.

"They want you to be one of the speakers for today, Boss," Alice said. "They said one of the presenters couldn’t come today."

She gave the report in a flat tone as usual, but after a few seconds of pause in which none of them looked very surprised, she added her own appraisal. "I smell bullshit."

That was very Alice to say--Zein chuckled, and then proceeded to lean back and think. So it seemed like they were all thinking there was something fishy. "Have you told them we don’t bring any material?"

"Of course," Alice answered readily. "I told them that they couldn’t just shove it at us at the last minute," she huffed in annoyance. Of course, since it was her that would need to do the work of preparing everything. "But they also said it will add a point to our evaluation."

"How so?"

Alice bit her cheek before replying. "They said someone from the World Government will attend the conference."

Bassena clicked his tongue and Zein turned toward his guard. "Jock,"

"I’m on it," the esper said. He had been shadowing Zein so much that he was basically one of the guide’s assistants at this point. Even without Zein needing to spell it out, he knew what the guide wanted.

And he had no qualm about moving Zein’s shadow guards around now, reasoning it as a part of security measure. Zein, despite his reluctance at the start, started to find a way to benefit from the facility that Radia had given him.

"They said they need the confirmation in an hour at least," Alice finished her report.

"The nerve," Bassena hissed in response. But that was all he did because he was in Zein’s soothing vicinity, so his temperament went down a lot. "Well, Radia did say everything regarding the guide’s matter here is up to you, so just do whatever you want."

Because of this unexpected situation, none of them went back to their own room, waiting for Zein’s decision. For quite some time, Zein just closed his eyes while leaning on the backrest, contemplating on his option.

The presentation itself didn’t matter; all he had to do was tell them what he knew. He had enough wit to ignore the possibility of success or failure. But how much he could divulge was another matter.

"Did they tell us what we need to show?" he asked, still with his eyes closed.

"No, the person said you can talk whatever as long as it’s about the strike guide division," Alice said. The duration is normal, about two hours including the Q-and-A session."

"They said that, but if we did it inadequately, they might twist it to us being incompetent," Rina said. "I mean, ’you’."

"That might be the objective, no?" Nadine smiled. "To make Captain look silly in an unprepared presentation."

Dheera chuckled at that. "Thank Gods they didn’t know the Captain well."

Zein might get confused when he was surrounded by people outside of a convenience store for the first time, but he had been trained in PR now, and had never felt nervous about talking in public, since he didn’t really care about public opinion. Hell--he did that one interview for the television without any preparation.

"We have that one file we prepared for the public, don’t we?" Zein opened his eyes finally, to look at Alice.

She nodded and immediately went for her tablet to look for the said file. It was the one they prepared as a curriculum for those who seek to establish a similar division in their guild. They hadn’t planned on releasing it until later, and it was meant to be given to those who ask personally, but...

"I’ll ask Radia if we can use it," Zein said while typing on his commlink. Meanwhile, Jock seemed to already find some information.

"There’s a representative from the main headquarter, but she came posed as a regular guide to hide," Jock reported. "Her name is Hami Lee, and upon short investigation, there’s no point of contact with Celestia."

"So she’s clean?"

"We could hope so," Jock nodded. "And it seemed like Celestia did pressure one of the organizers. There’s a possibility that the previous panelist’s inability to attend was caused by them, but this might be the committee’s way to help us in return."

"By that ’adding’ point thing?"

"Yes."

Again, they fell into silent contemplation. But the moment Zein’s commlink beeped, the guide smirked as he read the message. "Alright," he said, smiling deeply as he shifted his gaze to Alice. "Let’s do this."

* * *

The second day of the conference was filled with more segmented events; conferences catered to each specialized profession. After a general conference where the researchers gave an update on their observation of the activity of the Deathzone in accordance with the increasing gates and anomalies, the participants were divided into their own groups of interest.

Zein, Nadine, and Dheera climbed to the third floor for the guide’s conference. It wasn’t a big room, since the guides who came to this annual were not many. Not every guild came bringing their guide, and since most of the event catered for the espers anyway, even the guides working for the Guide Center didn’t usually come.

The ones who were always there, unsurprisingly, were those involved in the Guide Movement--those who said to fight for the Guide’s equality. Because of that, the guide conference basically turned out to be their event, since most of the participants were part of the same community. Zein could see it the moment he came inside the room; they were mostly the members of medium size guilds, and dominated by those in C-class.

In other words, they were what people called ’middle-class’ guides.

And in Zein’s book, those people were the worst.

Of course, he didn’t mean every middle-class guide was the worst, but most of them who joined this ’movement’ were the worst.

In the first place, the guide rights movement was supposed to be an effort to levy the status of the guides who suffered from exploitation, like what happened to Zein and Xue Ren. The idea was, with equal status, the guides would receive better treatment. The more important someone’s status was, the less they would receive harassment. Or at least, that was how it was supposed to be.

But the society perceived guide’s status differently. For civilians, guides were still a part of the privileged; they had a fixed job from the start, and still receive better wages than regular civilians laborer--even those with low class. And as they saw the elite guides--those who came from the Temple--they refused to acknowledge that a lot of guides were still in peril and suffered from inequality.

But the inequality happened in the dark place, and time and time again, those problems had never seen light. The elites were too sheltered from the problems, but the middle class, who were closer to these problems, refused to do anything about it while capitalizing on the fact that the movement would garner them better income.

So what they had been shouting was better salary, better facility, better treatment for people who weren’t suffering in the first place. While those trapped in slave contracts, getting trafficked, and assaulted were left in the dust. Their voice and attempt were silenced for politics. Why? Because advocating for the safety of the guides was much too complicated and troublesome, so they focus on the easier approach; advocating for money.

This was why Trinity had never agreed to be involved in their plight, and rather gave donations to the organization directly dealing with preventing and recovering guides getting trafficked--including sponsoring the project that ended up rescuing Ren from the brothel.

Zein had learned not to expect the worse from people ever since he came to the green-zone. But after doing his own research on those movements, he couldn’t help but be disappointed by their actions of the past decade or so, including how the segregation of status between guides itself was becoming even more prevalent in Eastern Federation.

Well, it didn’t mean things would always stay the same, so for now, he was willing to see how the gathering went as he entered the conference room.

The moment Zein entered the room, the focus gravitated toward him. Curiosity, astonishment, wonder...almost like how Ren looked at him the first time--although the young guide wasn’t there, for the obvious reason.

Walking to the stage as the moderator called his name, Zein smiled inwardly, catching the nervous gaze of the guides from Celestia.

Alright, let us see how this goes.

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