Biting down on the tender flesh inside his mouth until it bled, Yihyun struggled to keep himself conscious.
“Cough… ngh! …I don’t know…. Everyone suddenly collapsed….”
Yihyun’s bloodless lips moved slowly.
“Then I’ll change the question. Why did you come here?”
“…The anti-terrorism training alarm went off, so I was trying to evacuate somewhere safe, but… …the power went out and I got lost……. I was scared, so I just came to the Director’s office because my father was here.”
Baek Seungho’s razor-sharp gaze scrutinized Yihyun’s expression.
His unfocused eyes wandered aimlessly through empty space, and his voice was filled with a mixture of indignation and fear. He looked exactly like Baek Yihyun, the incompetent, frail illegitimate son everyone knew. After studying Yihyun’s pale, tear-streaked face, Baek Seungho snapped coldly.
“Since when were you so close to Lee Juwon that there are rumors about the two of you constantly hanging around together? Why would that arrogant S-Rank bother looking after a fucking reject like you?”
Yihyun’s chin trembled as he breathed in short, ragged gasps.
“W-We became close while I was guiding him……. He nearly went into overload once, and I guided him. Ever since then, he’s said he was grateful and occasionally looked out for me at the training wing. That’s all…….”
Baek Seungho’s brow furrowed even more viciously at Yihyun’s answer. The explanation that the unruly Lee Juwon had opened up to the Guide who had saved him and started acting as his bodyguard sounded fairly plausible to Baek Seungho, who knew exactly how things worked inside the Ability Bureau.
Moreover, even Baek Seungho’s powerful mental scan could detect no ‘tremor of deceit’ in Yihyun’s mind. A flicker of certainty crossed Baek Seungho’s eyes. There was no way this fucking reject would dare deceive him.
Baek Seungho altered the flow of his mana and began brainwashing Yihyun.
“Yes, this was my mistake. I should have imprinted the rules you need to follow into you again. All you have to do is guide the Espers I designate. You don’t need any contact, judgment, or kindness that I haven’t authorized.”
Baek Seungho continued deliberately, speaking slowly and clearly as though hammering every syllable into Yihyun’s head like a nail.
“Listen carefully, Yihyun. You’re a failed product. If you hadn’t been a failure, I could have made that bastard Han Taeyun kneel at my feet long ago. The world ended up like this because of you.”
“……?!”
Yihyun’s heart plummeted.
His head throbbed as the forcibly implanted guilt churned inside it, until it truly began to feel as though everything were his fault.
“The higher an Esper’s rank, the more sensitive they are to guiding energy.”
Baek Seungho continued, lightly slapping Yihyun’s cheek.
“You have one role. Make Han Taeyun unable to live without your guiding. That’s all. Remember it.”
As though swatting away an annoying fly, Baek Seungho roughly released his grip on Yihyun’s hair.
Yihyun collapsed onto the cold marble floor, his fingertips brushing the inside of Baek Seungho’s uniform as he fell. A golden tag that had been sticking halfway out of the inner pocket slipped neatly into his palm. Curling up against the pain flooding through his body, Yihyun slipped it straight into his own pocket.
Yihyun coughed weakly.
“Let’s go. They should have reached the shelter by now.”
“Yes, Director.”
Baek Seungho cast him an icy glance before leaving the Director’s office with Jung Yura. It seemed they were heading elsewhere to oversee the training exercise.
The heavy door slammed shut with a bang, but Yihyun remained alone and motionless in the now-quiet corridor outside the Director’s office. Traces of the mana that had been rummaging through his head moments ago were still scraping against his nerves.
Yihyun drew a deep breath.
Even that didn’t work properly.
‘It sure is easy to break a person.’
A hollow laugh escaped Yihyun as blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. The inside of his mouth was already a mess. Tasting the metallic tang of blood, he tried to clear his head.
Only after forcing his hand into a fist did some sensation finally return. Yihyun braced a hand against the floor and pushed himself upright. His shins and entire body hurt as though they were about to burst, but he gritted his teeth, endured it, and barely managed to lean against the wall. Even as he tried to steady his breathing, the trembling refused to subside. With difficulty, he raised a hand and opened his inventory.
Yihyun let out a bitter chuckle as he took out the Emergency Recovery Potion and removed the cap. Normally, it was medicine intended for Espers bleeding out on the battlefield.
“……So this wasn’t meant for an injured Esper. It was meant for you?”
Yihyun murmured as though speaking to himself, then downed the potion in one gulp. Its bitter taste slid down his throat, and a lukewarm energy surged frighteningly fast toward his injuries. The tearing pain turned into a cool numbness, while the dark, purplish bruises covering his skin gradually returned to their original color.
Still, he had gained something from all this.
Yihyun pulled Baek Seungho’s golden access tag from his pocket and gripped it in his hand.
It was past midnight.
Waiting for Juwon near the Ability Bureau detention wing, Yihyun looked up at the sky. Thousands of stars were scattered across the deep darkness, black as spilled ink, each shining with its own light.
Even before that magnificent sight, Yihyun’s expression refused to soften.
The memories of Baek Yihyun he had seen earlier remained painfully vivid.
The blinding surgical lights of the laboratory and its frigid air. The sensation of his blood vessels burning from the inside and the horrific agony that had felt as though his entire body were being taken apart and rebuilt.
All that time he must have endured alone, with no one he could rely on.
Perhaps the fact that Lee Seunghyun had ended up in this particular body was, in a way, Baek Yihyun’s wish.
Asking him to take revenge in his place.
Han Taeyun’s face suddenly came to mind. Just thinking about him sent a dull ache through one side of Yihyun’s chest.
From the old man who had been the previous Ability Bureau Director all the way to the current Baek Seungho.
Even though it had nothing to do with him personally, Yihyun felt suffocated by the obsession the Ability Bureau’s most powerful men had shown toward Han Taeyun.
‘Should’ve treated him better while you had him.’
Footsteps sounded from the thick darkness.
Hearing someone approaching while deliberately keeping quiet, Yihyun turned his head. Lee Juwon emerged from the shadows.
“Hyung!”
Dressed in a black tracksuit with a cap and mask covering his face, he looked exactly like a criminal. Yihyun nodded approvingly at how thoroughly he had covered himself up, then pulled an identical mask and cap from his pocket and put them on.
“Hyung……. Were you crying? You don’t look so good….”
“Shut up. I’m just tired from today’s training.”
“Then let’s rest today and go tomorrow. Or I can go by myself.”
Juwon tried to stop him, clearly worried by Yihyun’s deathly pale complexion. Yihyun lightly shoved Lee Juwon’s shoulder and took the lead.
“I’m fine. Come on. Let’s go see that kid.”
“……Yes.”
Juwon’s gaze settled on Yihyun’s small shoulders.
“Juwon, show me what you can do. Control it properly so the building doesn’t collapse.”
“……Yes, hyung.”
Yihyun gave Juwon a brief look.
Frowning with obvious displeasure, Juwon placed both hands against the outer wall of the detention building. Lee Juwon’s mana flowed through the wall, seizing hold of the enormous steel reinforcing bars buried inside the massive concrete structure.
Creeeeak—!
The eardrum-splitting shriek of metal tore through the entire detention wing. The ground shook as though an earthquake had struck, and spiderweb cracks began spreading across the reinforced outer wall that towered dozens of meters high.
“W-What the hell?! Is this an air raid?!”
“The wall is cracking! Evacuate!”
The steel reinforcement twisted, chunks of concrete broke loose and crashed down, and the electrical wiring inside warped as sparks erupted everywhere. A moment later, the fire alarm began screaming shrilly as red warning lights flashed.
“Fire! There’s a fire! Everyone, run!”
Yihyun blended into the crowd rushing outside and shouted in a terrified voice. At the cry of fire, the personnel remaining on night duty panicked and scrambled to escape the building. Taking advantage of the chaos, Yihyun and Juwon darted into the emergency stairwell they had scouted beforehand.
The farther they descended from the commotion aboveground, the damper and more metallic the air became.
“Hyung, should I carry you on my back?”
“Shut up. Just keep moving.”
He was already exhausted from the anti-terrorism training, and after being beaten and having his mind torn apart by Baek Seungho, his body kept staggering. He had drunk a recovery potion, but his strength still hadn’t returned.
Yihyun refused out of pride, but Lee Juwon grabbed his slender arm.
“At this rate, the emergency response team will get here before we do.”
In the end, Yihyun climbed onto Juwon’s back, and Juwon carried him down the stairs.
The lowest level of the underground detention wing.
At the bottom of the staircase, what awaited them was a massive reinforced bulkhead covering the entire wall ahead, with the red lights of a state-of-the-art security gate blinking at its center.
A door made from a special alloy produced from Gate materials, difficult to break even with the brute strength of an S-Rank Esper.
“……Tsk, just as I thought. Security really is different on the lowest floor. Hyung, I’ll overload the entire outer-wall circuit and blow it. But we’ll have to put up with the alarm…….”
Juwon carefully lowered Yihyun to the floor and wrapped his fist in mana.
Tap.
At that moment, something Yihyun had taken from his pocket landed lightly on the security gate’s scanner.
A golden master key that only Ability Bureau Director Baek Seungho was authorized to possess.
Ding―.
[Access confirmed: Director Baek Seungho. Activating Free-Pass Mode.]
With the mechanical announcement, the fiercely glowing red lights instantly changed to a placid green.
Then, with the deep hum of hydraulic machinery, the enormous reinforced bulkhead slowly slid open to either side.