“Well, everyone worked hard today. Esper Henry says he has something to say, so let’s all listen.”
Henry’s words were as follows.
When Director Ha requested help from Henry, he sent all the materials he’d collected so far. Henry had already reviewed all the materials there, and in the process discovered that it was very similar to incidents that had recently occurred in London.
Henry exchanged a few words with Daehoon beforehand before receiving guiding. And while Henry went in to receive guiding, Daehoon checked today’s accident footage. It was just as Henry said.
“Now, let’s all look at the screen together.”
At Director Ha’s words, everyone focused on the screen.
“Huh?”
Someone exclaimed as if discovering something.
“Shall I show it again?”
“They haven’t crashed into anything yet? Didn’t the fire start first?”
At Minkyung’s words, Daehoon stopped the screen and nodded. It was just as discovered. The freight truck carrying wood didn’t catch fire from crossing the center line and crashing into the tour bus. If you looked carefully, the freight truck caught fire first, and then the burning freight truck charged toward the tour bus.
“There’s another strange point. Normally if a fire breaks out like this, what would you do?”
“Probably step on the brakes?”
This time Lee Seonju answered.
“Right. But the freight truck’s speed doesn’t decrease at all. Rather, doesn’t it seem like it’s speeding up?”
Sighs came from here and there.
“According to Henry, there was an incident similar to this recently in London.”
Daehoon, as the general manager, conveyed the story he’d shared with Henry to the Espers.
“In London too, at first they regarded it as a simple fire incident. Then as accidents became more frequent and the scale grew larger, they discovered that what they thought were fire incidents were actually someone deliberately causing accidents like now.”
“Then is the driver anti-government forces?”
“That needs to be investigated further, but the probability is low. There’s no reason for anti-government forces to sacrifice themselves and jump into accident scenes. Henry, what did they say was the cause of the accidents in London?”
“Remote control.”
At Henry’s words, the Espers frowned as if asking what he meant.
“It’s exactly that. Someone is controlling the cars by remote control.”
“Is that possible?”
To Yoon Bomi’s question, this time Henry answered.
“Yes, it’s possible.”
“The accidents that occurred in London also had remote control before car defects.”
Ha Daehoon added to the explanation.
“We won’t be reviewing closed-circuit footage to hunt down the culprit—that’s what the police will do. Instead, we need to support the police when they’re dispatched. The police can’t handle ability users. No matter how armed the police are, they’ll be helpless if ability users attack. Let’s work on coordinating among our team members a bit more and actively provide support when it’s needed.”
“Yes, understood.”
The scale of accidents was gradually increasing. They had to hunt down the culprits and wrap up the case as soon as possible before more casualties occurred.
* * *
Daehoon and Henry sat at the bar with single malt in front of them. It was a members-only bar Daehoon often went to.
“You accomplished something big as soon as you arrived.”
“Did it help a bit?”
At those words, Daehoon nodded.
“Yeah, thanks. At first I thought it was a simple accident. Then someone said it was sudden acceleration, so I thought maybe that was it. There was a reason they said it was sudden acceleration. The driver must have thought so because no matter how much they stepped on the brakes, it wouldn’t respond.”
“Yeah, right. It was the same in London. How about it? Was it good that I came?”
“Yeah.”
Daehoon smiled and drank.
Daehoon thought it was fortunate he was friends with Henry. Everything matched with Henry except for matching rate, position, and ideal type. So there was nothing to fight about. The matching rate was abysmal so there was nothing to fight about while working, and they were both tops so there was no issue of having sex, becoming lovers, and whether to break up or not. For ideal type too, Henry wanted someone bigger than himself, so there was nothing to fight about over ideal types.
“Who are you seeing these days?”
“Sex partner?”
“I asked who you’re seeing, and what do you mean by sex partner coming up?”
At Henry’s words, Daehoon chuckled. Henry’s words made sense. It was just that dating someone was so long ago that he said it like that.
“I don’t have anything like that.”
“Then a sex partner you meet regularly?”
Just the day before, he had sex, but since they weren’t partners, Daehoon shook his head.
“Did you decide to become a monk?”
“What’s with suddenly bringing up monks? And how do you know about monks?”
Daehoon furrowed his brow wondering what kind of nonsensical talk this was.
“I heard your guiding is all just holding hands? It’s really famous at the Center? So I thought you were dating someone.”
“If I was dating someone, I wouldn’t hold hands at all.”
Henry had the complete opposite personality from Daehoon. Unlike his cat-like appearance, his behavior was completely like a big dog. He was like a friendly large dog that wagged its tail everywhere, raised its paw when asked for it, and ate treats.
Daehoon found people themselves bothersome, and as a result, he didn’t particularly like spending time with someone for long periods. But Henry was different. Henry enjoyed talking about this and that with people and was overflowing with friendliness, so people liked Henry too.
It was unexpected that these two opposites became close. First of all, Daehoon was Henry’s ideal type, but their positions were different, which was how their connection started. From Daehoon’s standpoint, it was something that would make him shudder, but at that time Daehoon had broken up with his lover and wasn’t in very good condition. If it had been any other time, he would have treated Henry, who said let’s sleep together just once, as a crazy bastard, but at that time he didn’t even have the energy for that.
“How can you have no sex partner and no one you’re dating, yet not have any skinship? Are you really trying to become a clergy member?”
At those words, Daehoon raised and lowered one eyebrow and searched for a cigarette to put in his mouth.
“Was I originally promiscuous?”
Daehoon muttered while lighting it.
“Who said that? Rather, it’s the opposite. If I don’t have sex for even 2 weeks, I feel like I’ll go crazy, so how do you live like that? I’m asking because it’s fascinating.”
Daehoon dated someone two years older than him in England. He wasn’t an ability user and was just Daehoon’s school senior. At that time, Daehoon thought it didn’t matter if he wasn’t an ability user. The two of them met for over 3 years. They were both men, but that didn’t matter.
It wasn’t like his grandfather would say something like in Korea, and Daehoon’s mother knew but didn’t say much. Unlike Korea, there was no chance of rumors spreading that the grandson of some corporation was gay, and no chance of stock prices plummeting because of it, so Daehoon rather liked staying in England and freely meeting the person he liked.
It didn’t matter if he wasn’t an ability user. Because that wasn’t a problem between the two of them. No, that was just Daehoon’s solo thought.
As an S-rank Guide, Daehoon could do light Guiding without skinship, but he had that much more work too. And when an Esper was seriously injured, he inevitably had to make light contact.
It wasn’t as if they’d met without him knowing Daehoon was a Guide, and at first the other person tried to understand. No, he did understand. It was easy if you thought of him as an actor. Actors also date and love, but work is separate. Actors also film dramas or movies with skinship, but that’s just work.
But as time passed, people’s hearts were bound to change. Daehoon continued to be a successful Guide, and as a result, even when the two were together he had to leave, and even when they were having sex he was often called out. How many ordinary people could really endure that?
Rather than skinship being the problem, he must have been lonely. At first, Daehoon couldn’t understand his partner’s words to break up. Why didn’t he know the spark between them was gradually dying out? He must have given signals many times. Well, he wasn’t someone whose emotions showed easily. He was mature and very understanding. But even such a person, if they just keep piling things up, eventually cracks form.
If he’d shown even a little sign, they could have talked about something. At that time, both Daehoon and his partner were just inexperienced. Because they only considered each other instead of even showing sulkiness, it became an uncontrollable situation.
