Before entering the Reeducation Center, Chris had inserted a small piece of paper with the expectation that he would be away for a long time. It was a small trap set up to check if someone had invaded his room while he was away.
However, before he could even confirm the piece of paper falling to the floor, an advertisement flyer someone had inserted covered his view and fell to the floor.
Chris pulled his head back slightly and checked the next-door apartment. He could see an advertisement flyer sticking out through that door gap as well. It was promoting a newly opened repair center in flashy letters.
‘I worried for nothing.’
With two team members missing, he seemed to have become sensitive.
Chris bent down, confirmed the piece of paper he had originally inserted in the door under the advertisement flyer, then threw both into the trash.
Just in case, he quickly scanned the interior but couldn’t find any other traces of intrusion.
Chris headed straight to the shower to wash his stiff body. The time didn’t match, so he had to turn on cold water. He did momentarily miss the dormitory’s shower facilities, but instead his mind became clear.
Chris, who came out drying his hair with a towel, briefly organized the information he had learned.
<Abandoned Factory District>
-Sealed off with electric barbed wire fencing
-Two entrances, all guarded by Espers in shifts.
-Cars sent from the Reeducation Center come and go periodically.
-An Esper training facility secured by the mafia? Or a drug laboratory?
<Reeducation Center>
-There’s a section in the dormitory that separately manages only addicts
-To find Espers trying to suppress the side effects of their abilities through drugs
-Presumed to secure Espers and hand them over to the abandoned factory district→
-Guiding drugs?
He drew a large circle around Guiding drugs. Nothing was confirmed yet, but it weighed on his mind. As if his instincts were teaching him this was right.
But without solid evidence, it was difficult to report to his superiors. He planned to investigate Guiding drugs intensively and inform Yont when he judged it to be plausible.
<Northern Abandoned Port>
-Export and import gateway?
-It must be a useful smuggling gateway, but there’s no guarding personnel. Why?
-Aparna and Gillian’s trail ends here.
It seemed they had moved the kidnapped Gillian and Aparna through the port. The means of transport was most likely either a ship or a submarine.
Seeing there was no other word through Yont, it didn’t seem like they had kidnapped Northern Light’s Espers for blackmail. In other words, there was a high probability that Gillian and Aparna had witnessed something they shouldn’t have seen.
‘What exactly was the mafia doing in the north of November Continent?’
Chris, who had put down his pen, fell into thought with his fingers interlaced.
Judging coldly, the two people were probably dead. Yont’s urgent removal of Chris from the Reeducation Center to entrust him with the tracking must have been an expression of desperation to find them as quickly as possible.
Already 24 hours had passed since the kidnapping. The golden time for rescue had ended. It was risky even for the mafia that ruled the Winter Continent to keep alive adult Espers—and trained elite agents of Northern Light at that—not mere children. They wouldn’t have taken them with the intention of detaining uncooperative Espers. Unless they were high-grade mental-type Espers, it would be difficult to place a prohibition, and if they deliberately made their abilities go into Rampage, the confined facility would be destroyed.
But Chris hadn’t smelled blood at the scene. He had only found one shell casing the enemy hadn’t managed to collect.
‘Why did they take them alive to the port? Why did they take the risk and move Gillian and Aparna?’
After organizing the current situation in writing, that kept bothering him.
Chris, who had been agonizing, got up from his seat. He grabbed his coat and went outside.
“Oh. Just getting home now?”
It was the skinny man next door. As if he had just returned home, a paper bag with grease seeping through was in his hand, and a heavy-looking bag was slung over his shoulder.
“Yes.”
“Haven’t seen you for a few days, was something wrong?”
Chris was uncomfortable with the other person taking interest in his personal affairs. During a mission where he needed to move as quietly and inconspicuously as possible, a neighbor’s curiosity or sociability was just burdensome.
Instead of cutting him off sharply, Chris opened his mouth in a neat tone.
“I was asked to take night duty. I couldn’t refuse.”
His voice was calm though he slightly frowned as if troubled, but thanks to his sincere-looking appearance, it felt full of truthfulness.
“Aha, as a newcomer everyone must have dumped work on you.”
As if feeling kinship, the man cursed a few times in a low voice, then smiled amicably at Chris.
“Let’s have a drink next time when you have time. To celebrate moving to this shitty neighborhood and to curse out our bosses.”
Chris smiled affably and nodded his head.
“I’ll make time.”
That day would never come.
The neighbor tilted his head looking at the advertisement flyer, then opened the door and went inside. Chris also moved his steps outside the apartment.
He had learned that rather than refusing such light suggestions with a stern face, it was more appropriate to let indefinite promises flow by with a smile and gently deflecting, so he responded this way.
Chris’s sociability was stagnant at exactly that level. He had rarely shown curiosity in others to begin with. Since there was no great difficulty in cooperating with team members during missions, he didn’t feel the need to develop his sociability.
He didn’t think the lack of memory led to an absence of emotion. He had never thought he was afraid of forming new relationships because he couldn’t know his past at all. So Chris was certain he had originally been this kind of person.
Just…
His steps, which had been moving forward aimlessly while lost in thought, led Chris in front of the bookshop.
Beyond the transparent window under Magnolia’s sign, Yuri was visible.
The moment that figure filled his vision, Chris finally felt like he could breathe.
Chris didn’t hesitate and opened Magnolia’s door and entered. Yuri, who had been reading something, glanced toward the door at the bell sound and discovered Chris.
He tilted his head slightly and turned his gaze back to the paper.
Before he could even feel resentful of that subtly indifferent man, the atmosphere Magnolia held thoroughly soaked Chris. The somehow heavy smell of books and old paper, the slow melody flowing from the gramophone Yuri had turned on, the sound of pages turning.
And.
Colder than night, the scent of some winter.
‘…… .’
A slight headache struck Chris for a moment. An image of Yuri standing alone in an entirely white world seemed to flash by. On his pale face, blood was smeared like flower petals. In a space filled entirely with snow like the northern region he had visited today, only the trajectory Yuri drew was full.
The violet eyes of prey that had looked up to face him as if waiting for him in a snowy field with nowhere to escape…
‘Now even delusions.’
Chris pressed his throbbing temples firmly and shook off the illusion that had flitted across his vision. He had lost his memories of the past, but if he really had a connection with Yuri, he would have acknowledged it first.
To Yuri, Chris was a stranger. He couldn’t be swayed by momentary optical illusions shown by a brain that wanted to somehow create a connection with him, amid the impatience and peace that surged simultaneously whenever he was in the same space as Yuri.
‘Even if I suddenly ask if we knew each other before… it will just be awkward.’
He wanted to return to this bookshop. To the space where Yuri was.
Chris newly realized that he quite liked Magnolia.
The amplitude of emotions that had only been dull since he woke up having lost his memory was speaking out loud. Rather than reason, instinct had read his true feelings and brought him to Magnolia.
“Could you recommend a book?”
At Chris’s words, Yuri raised his head. Questions like whether he had finished reading the book he bought last time didn’t flow from those lips.
Instead, as if he had been waiting for Chris’s request, he took out a book from a drawer and placed it on the counter.
Chris, who had stridden up to Yuri while swallowing the strangely ticklish feeling, received the book and checked the title.
<A Farewell to Arms>
A Farewell to Arms?
“It’s a masterpiece. I don’t know if it’s your taste, though.”
“I haven’t read many books, so I don’t really have a taste.”
At those words, Yuri, who had scanned Chris briefly, paused for a moment then brought one more book.
<Northanger Abbey>
“Hemingway’s writing is somewhat dry, but Jane Austen, who wrote this Northanger Abbey, describes characters’ emotions with delicate yet elegant expressions. It will be interesting to read them in order. Both writers tell very human stories, but they have different textures.”
Chris gathered both books Yuri recommended without hesitation.
“Then please ring up Northanger Abbey as well.”
While wrapping up Northanger Abbey too, Yuri muttered.
“How interesting.”
