***
In the end, Yoon Minoh’s whereabouts remained completely unknown.
Perhaps taking advantage of being excluded from training, he might have slipped right out. While the team members were soaked in sweat and rolling around on the training ground floor, he might be leisurely wandering around downtown.
“Yoon Minoh, that bastard… He’s not a grasshopper, so where the hell is he roaming around?”
Yeo Dowoon muttered with displeasure.
But it’s not like he could go back to Cha Haseong and interrogate him about Yoon Minoh’s whereabouts.
Go back after having finished the conversation cleanly without any excess and demand an answer? Just imagining it was embarrassing. He didn’t want to create a situation where he’d lose face, at least not in front of him.
‘I’ll see you later.’
He had wrapped up the situation quite cleanly and left the lounge. Cha Haseong had even opened the door for him personally with a quite friendly face, hadn’t he?
While adding a kind greeting of “Be careful on your way in.”
Right. In that case, it might be better to just go find Kwon Jeonghoo.
Since that bastard Yoon Minoh’s whereabouts had become mysterious, he could just be honest and say that a sincere apology and conversation would have to be postponed. But there was one point of concern.
Kwon Jeonghoo was quite a stubborn person.
“The Captain is going to nag like crazy again…”
Yeo Dowoon’s head was as tangled as a ball of thread the entire time he walked through the corridor, wondering how to persuade him, who was almost at the level of a lone wolf. The silence that made footsteps particularly prominent only felt familiar. Looking at the acrylic frames hanging on one wall was the same.
Looking at the dark green landscape paintings made him feel as if his eyes were being naturally purified. Yeo Dowoon, who had been whistling softly, stopped while rolling his eyes this way and that.
“What’s the point of decorating it so flashily…”
Kwon Jeonghoo’s office was stuck in the most remote corner of the Esper base, because it was originally a space that had been a pantry, remodeled to suit his tastes.
There were many questions about why someone who was the son of the Director would be assigned to the most remote corner of corners, and there were many rumors that the Director didn’t trust his own son, but Yeo Dowoon’s speculation was completely different.
‘Kwon Jeonghoo’s tastes are just so plain.’
Because the more he looked at it, the more it matched Kwon Jeonghoo’s preferences.
Presumably, Kwon Jeonghoo must have shown a liking for the desolation where people would rarely visit. He probably didn’t care at all about factors like the actual width of the room.
Mental-type Espers were especially sensitive to changes in their surrounding environment, so they had a stronger tendency than others to prefer quiet atmospheres over noisy ones.
Yeo Dowoon, who had arrived right in front of the office, roughly tidied up his outfit to make it presentable. He also shook out his hair once.
“This is Yeo Dowoon from Delta. May I come in?”
Then he knocked on the door and asked for Kwon Jeonghoo’s permission while simultaneously turning the doorknob with a click.
According to procedure, he couldn’t barge into the office without his superior’s permission, but he went ahead and flung the door wide open anyway.
“I’m here, Captain.”
The way he announced his visit while trudging forward was no different from a loafer. His carefree tone, sullen face, even his sauntering gait—nothing was inferior to a loafer.
“…Director-nim?”
But he had no choice but to crumple his expression at the unexpected scene he encountered.
He had expected Kwon Jeonghoo to be sitting at his desk flipping through a pile of documents, but damn it. It was a complete miscalculation. Yeo Dowoon’s black eyes moved busily.
Sunlight entering from the rectangular south-facing window, half-covered by curtains, faintly illuminated the person standing across from him. Even though the lights weren’t on, it was an intense beam of light strong enough to brighten the dim view.
“Haah.”
Yeo Dowoon let out a sigh filled with irritation. To face the person he least wanted to see in the world—his luck couldn’t be worse even if it tried.
“It’s been a while.”
The voice that followed after a slight pause was thick and profound, as if coming from a cave. To the point where the vibrations contained in each letter echoed unnaturally.
“You should salute, Inseok.”
Yeo Dowoon could immediately notice that all his nerves were starting to heat up. High-ranking mental-type Espers frequently whispered even ordinary sentences as persistently as if injecting commands. No doubt about it. This bastard was definitely using his abilities to mess with him.
The elderly gentleman dressed in a brown suit smiled momentarily with a benevolent atmosphere.
“Sseup… Hurry up.”
“Is the Captain not here?”
But that expression disappeared in an instant. His firmly closed jaw stood out, as if he was clenching his molars hard. Yeo Dowoon stared at him with resentment.
‘Of all places, to run into this bastard in Kwon Jeonghoo’s room.’
Then his sharp, inhumanly extended eyes slowly looked Yeo Dowoon up and down.
His irises were narrow just like a snake’s. But because his overall atmosphere resembled a large and sleek bird of prey, he sometimes overlapped with images of large animals like eagles.
You know, those eagles from the Chungcheong region, right? The ones that are easily mistaken for sturdy men wearing tuxedos. When Baek Seonwoo showed him that photo once, Yeo Dowoon had immediately thought of Kwon Hyeokun.
“Dowoon.”
It was when Yeo Dowoon’s silence had lengthened for 1 minute, 2 minutes, 3 minutes.
“I said salute.”
The central figure of the Esper Operations Base, Kwon Hyeokun, was a person who lacked patience and endurance unlike his son.
“Kkeuk…!”
Yeo Dowoon, who hadn’t even given a nod let alone a salute, crashed his back hard against the door with a bang, then slid down. His body that had slid down was collapsed as if crumbling.
Damn it. Strangely, his eyes couldn’t focus properly. Yeo Dowoon raised his hand, which had started to spasm, and rubbed his eyes vigorously.
“The Delta bastards are problematic because their hierarchy is a complete mess.”
That’s when it happened. The tips of his shiny shoes stepped on the patternless floor and approached Yeo Dowoon slowly. The dress pants that loosely wrapped around his calves were visible at a glance.
Yeo Dowoon immediately clamped his mouth shut, caught by nausea. Because otherwise, it felt like he would vomit up foul-smelling bile.
“Uk, uuk…!”
Dry heaves repeated in an unstable rhythm.
“Even if Jeonghoo raised you indulgently, still.”
The old man, who seemed to be wrapped in rusty scrap metal all over his body, stopped his feet.
“Shouldn’t you show manners to adults? What use are you if you don’t even know basic courtesy?”
In Yeo Dowoon’s blurry vision, only Kwon Hyeokun’s knees came into view.
Although he hadn’t directly harmed him, Yeo Dowoon had never felt his influence so strongly as he did now since joining.
Even when he was dragged into the base he first joined and locked in the wave examination room, when Kwon Hyeokun had rummaged through his head and stolen glimpses of his past, it hadn’t been this painful.
“Ah…, uk.”
The inside of his ears was frighteningly hot. As if someone was striking his skull with an axe, the back of his head throbbed severely.
Kwon Hyeokun, who had been injecting high-intensity phantom pain relentlessly, clicked his tongue at an audible volume. Even while dealing with Yeo Dowoon, he hadn’t taken his hands out of his pants pockets and stood there haughtily evaluating him.
“So the talk about your sensitivity decreasing was true.”
“…”
“Your lifeline must have shortened along with it?”
“…”
“But your value must have increased.”
Even though it was the timing when he should have already foamed at the mouth and fainted, Yeo Dowoon was desperately maintaining his consciousness. He glared at him like a tenacious bastard with eyes bloodshot red from burst blood vessels.
Kwon Hyeokun advised in a bland tone.
“Being cheeky and stubborn is only possible when you’re young. Now it’s time you should know to be docile. Haven’t you gotten as old as Jeonghoo was in his prime?”
Yeo Dowoon thought it was ridiculous how the space centered on Kwon Hyeokun had started to crumple and crush. Because his appearance was wobbling like soggy clay.
“…Excuse me, Director-nim.”
Yeo Dowoon, who had wiped away the saliva flowing down his lips, forcibly raised his legs in defiance. He somehow tensed his ankles that kept losing strength and trying to sway, and endured.
“Your… greeting is a bit… tyrannical, isn’t it?”
“…”
“Did you age in vain…”
Perhaps because it was absurd, he kept letting out stupid giggles. He felt like vomiting harsh words right to the face of Kwon Hyeokun, who had no improved aspects despite eating up that age.
“People who see this might think you’re conducting an interrogation.”
So if there was someone who contributed to making the position of Director look old-fashioned, it would be himself.
“You shouldn’t be misunderstood.”
Look at this duplicity where he still hasn’t disposed of his military habits. He selectively follows military culture and uses it only for the purpose of confirming his power, doesn’t he?
The resentment of subordinates was merely a matter to be trampled and ignored for him.
“Or are you doing this because you want to be misunderstood?”
“…”
“They say Director Kwon Hyeokun tightens discipline on Espers under the pretext of education, and that’s exactly right. He grabs them like catching dogs so the screams never stop.”
