“Your skills are definitely the real deal. Let’s get out of here before things settle down upstairs.”
At Yihyun’s urging, the three of them leisurely made their way through the collapsed rebar and chunks of concrete and climbed back aboveground. Smoke was still rising from the outer wall of the detention wing, and the agents were so preoccupied with dealing with the fire that they failed to notice the three people emerging from underground.
After slipping into a dark alley on the outskirts of the Ability Bureau, Yihyun turned to Juwon and casually said,
“Juwon, you take care of this kid for a while.”
“……What?! Me? Hyung, I really don’t want to!”
Juwon’s face twisted horribly, as if he had just bitten into a rotten orange. He already hated being crammed together with other big men, and that crazy bastard was practically the worst possible roommate for him.
“I can’t take him into my place because of Baek Seungho. If you don’t like it, then you can hack the control room yourself and unlock all the Guides’ collars. Just keep him until that’s done. Your place is the safest in terms of security.”
Faced with Yihyun’s firm attitude, Juwon clamped his mouth shut and glared at the back of Ghost’s head as though looking at something revolting. Yihyun then turned a cold gaze on Ghost.
“Same goes for you. Use your ability and help hack the Guides’ chokers. Once that’s taken care of cleanly, I’ll send you wherever you wanted to go, whether that’s DUST or somewhere else. Not a bad offer, right?”
Ghost swept his tangled hair back and snorted. But his eyes were already showing intense curiosity toward Yihyun.
“Hmph. I set out to meet the leader of DUST and ended up rotting away for three years. A few hacks are nothing. Fine, deal. Pretty boy.”
“Watch your mouth.”
Yihyun lightly smacked the back of Ghost’s head.
On the night the three of them began working together, the massive glass walls of the Ability Bureau gleamed coldly beneath the moonlight beyond the cracked detention wing.
***
Beep―!
The moment Yihyun opened the door and stepped into the entryway, the brightly lit interior flashed before his eyes. He staggered and braced himself against the wall, and drops of blood from his nose splattered onto the marble floor.
He tried to raise a hand to wipe it away, but every muscle in his body screamed so violently that even moving a single fingertip was difficult. The thread he had forced himself to cling to through sheer willpower from his previous life snapped the instant he entered the safety of home.
“Young Master……? Your nose is bleeding……!”
The nanny, who had been waiting anxiously in the living room because Yihyun had not returned even though it was so late, sprang to her feet in shock and rushed over.
Without even having the energy to answer her, Yihyun let himself be guided into his room as she pulled out a handkerchief and pressed it to his nose.
“Young Master, are you all right? Should I call your attending physician?”
“No. I’m just tired. I’ll be fine after I sleep.”
After sending out the nanny, who looked as though the world were collapsing around her, Yihyun washed up roughly and collapsed straight onto the bed.
His consciousness cut out almost immediately, as though he had been dragged into a violent whirlpool.
“Ugh, ngh…….”
He couldn’t even tell how much time had passed.
Even as he drifted in and out of sleep, his head hurt as though thousands of red-hot needles were stabbing mercilessly into his skull. At one moment, chills wracked his body so badly that he trembled uncontrollably, only for a burning fever to sweep over him the next.
Every time he faintly managed to lift his eyelids, the nanny was still by his side.
“Young Master……. Are you awake?”
With trembling hands, the nanny replaced the towel resting on Yihyun’s forehead with a fresh one. Then she wiped away the cold sweat soaking through his clothes and helped him sit up.
“……Please swallow just one sip of this. All right?”
Bitter medicine was forced down his burning throat. Through his hazy consciousness, Yihyun instinctively managed to swallow the fever reducer the nanny held to his lips.
“……Just what did those horrible people at the Ability Bureau do to you to leave a person like this?”
The nanny’s voice seemed to buzz from somewhere far beneath the water.
Yihyun’s lips trembled as he tried to tell her that he was fine, that she shouldn’t worry, that she shouldn’t cry.
But all that escaped was a dry rush of air without even the rasp of a voice.
His consciousness seemed to sink toward the bottom of an abyss, and the ceiling rippled as though it were collapsing.
At some point, a familiar gray sky was superimposed over his vision.
The foul, bloody stench of monsters stabbed at his nose.
And the desperate screams of rookie Espers battered his ears.
Seunghyun clicked his tongue unconsciously.
‘Damn, they’re fucking noisy.’
It was the day of a field exercise inside an intermediate Gate of relatively low difficulty, intended to give rookie Espers practical experience.
As the senior officer in charge, Seunghyun had taken responsibility for them and entered the Gate.
The rookie Espers from another team were already drenched in sweat, fighting desperately against a horde of monsters. Each individual monster was weak, but there were so many of them that the battle drained stamina at an extreme rate.
Then, at some point, Han Taeyun stopped participating in the Gate raid and simply started following quietly behind him.
His attitude made it look as though he had come out for a stroll in the park outside his house.
“Hey, Han Taeyun. What the hell are you doing here?”
Seunghyun asked in disbelief.
Taeyun answered briefly with an indifferent expression.
“Clearing the Gate.”
‘Every damn time I talk to this bastard, it goes nowhere.’
Seunghyun clicked his tongue inwardly at the answer.
The entire area was covered in clouds of dirt and dust, yet Taeyun alone stood there perfectly clean, and Seunghyun felt a strange sense of distance from him.
For no real reason, irritation surged up inside him, and Seunghyun barked at the rookies.
“Hey, you bastards! Why are you moving so damn slow?! How long are you planning to keep struggling with them?!”
The instant his shout rang out, the flow of air behind Seunghyun suddenly turned cold.
Hummm—.
A vibration rolled through his entire body as a massive gravitational field spread outward like a tidal wave from beneath Taeyun’s feet.
In an instant, a dense field of gravity covered the entire floor of the Gate, and the rampaging monsters were slammed into the ground as though crushed beneath an enormous invisible foot.
“……!”
Unable to withstand the pressure of the gravity, the monsters were pinned to the ground and writhed without even managing to scream.
The rookies who had been fighting desperately only a moment ago froze in dumbfounded shock.
Seunghyun also turned toward Taeyun at the sudden development.
Taeyun looked back at Seunghyun, who was glaring at him with a blank face.
His eyes genuinely seemed to ask what the problem was.
“You bastard. I told you not to use your ability in here! What the hell did you hear outside?”
Unable to hold himself back any longer, Seunghyun grabbed Han Taeyun by the collar and shook him back and forth.
Crunch―!
The monsters around them were crushed and burst apart.
At the same time, his vision was dyed red.
With the dizzying sensation of falling helplessly into darkness, Yihyun opened his eyes.
‘…Why did that memory have to end like such an ominous dream?’
The terrible heat had subsided considerably.
As Yihyun shifted on the bed, a familiar massive figure entered his field of vision.
And beside him stood a woman he had never seen before.
When the woman extended her hand, soft, warm golden waves of mana flowed from her fingertips and gently wrapped around Yihyun’s entire body.
Every time the waves flowed through his circuits, the headache crushing his skull seemed to wash away. The heat burning his throat also subsided.
She was a recovery-type Esper.
“……The overload caused by the high fever is completely under control now. The guiding waves that were excessively depleted have also stabilized. This is as much as I can do. You absolutely must rest for the time being.”
The woman bowed politely, then quietly left the room with Juwon showing her out.
Once Yihyun’s mind had cleared somewhat, he leaned back against the headboard.
When Juwon returned to the room, Yihyun asked in a hoarse voice that still had not fully recovered,
“……How did you know to come here?”
The instant the question left his mouth, Juwon’s brow twisted sharply.
The man who normally watched Yihyun’s every expression and practically wagged his tail at him wore a complicated look as he raised both hands and roughly scrubbed his face.
Then, for the first time, he became genuinely furious.
“What do you mean, how did I know to come here?! Do you have any idea how worried I was?! After we split up that night, I couldn’t reach you at all! I called you dozens of times and you wouldn’t answer, so all kinds of thoughts started going through my head……. I thought I’d never….”
Juwon couldn’t finish the sentence.
He dropped his head as though trying to hide his reddened eyes.
“…I was scared I’d never see you again.”
Yihyun had no idea how to answer that trembling voice, so he awkwardly apologized.
“…Sorry. I didn’t know this would happen either.”
“I kept calling, and then a woman who said she was your nanny answered in tears and told me you were practically dying…….”
Breathing roughly, Juwon glared at Yihyun with reddened eyes.
“I knew you looked terrible! If you weren’t feeling well, you should’ve rested! You went and raided the detention wing in that condition, so how the hell was your body supposed to hold up?! Hyung……, it’s been three whole days. Three days! You were unconscious the entire time and didn’t wake up even once! I thought I was going to have to hold your funeral before I even got the chance to bury that bastard Baek Seungho, and I……!”
The huge man’s voice trembled faintly with frustration and fear.
The terror of nearly losing the superior who had returned alive after five years was written plainly across Juwon’s face.
While Juwon roughly swept a hand through his hair, unable to control his emotions, Yihyun stared blankly down at his own palm.