“Huff…!”
He thought it was an attack using sound waves, but the pattern was definitely different. At the unfamiliar sensation, Yeo Dowoon’s vision became hazy as if covered in fog. It wasn’t his eardrums that were muffled, but his mind.
“Hallucinations don’t work at all… and auditory hallucinations only slightly. This won’t last long either.”
Unfocused pupils continuously scanned Yeo Dowoon.
Even as the carefully pushed roaring sound deafened his ears, his knees didn’t buckle—it was around the time he felt the urge to increase the intensity and press harder.
Yoon Minoh seemed to sense his sadistic desire and immediately scolded him.
“Don’t get sidetracked, just focus on your assigned work?”
The man who gently rubbed away the moisture pooled in his eyes answered with a “Yeah.”
His bangs fell back down to cover his eyes without gaps. When the wind blew and briefly disheveled his hair, black pupils appeared once in a while.
Yeo Dowoon felt his limbs growing heavy and sinking. It felt as if large hands invisible to the naked eye were pulling him downward.
“Shouldn’t it be time to bind him by now? You only ever play games to death, have you lost your sense too…”
When things seemed to be taking longer than expected, Yoon Minoh jabbed at the man reproachfully.
“I’m disrupting him, so you do your thing too. If you want to bind him completely, the only way is to knock him out.”
“Fuck, if I knock him out I can’t do my job.”
Yeo Dowoon borrowed the moment they were bickering with each other to find another attack point.
Although his vision hadn’t completely returned, in a wide-open space like a rooftop, even if he accidentally threw ice somewhere else, the probability of causing casualties was extremely low.
Moreover, there were only four people standing on the rooftop including himself.
‘First, let’s separate the civilian.’
It was just when Yeo Dowoon had finished sorting out the order.
“You there. You keep saying civilian, civilian…”
The man said as he squatted down tiredly.
“We don’t touch civilians either.”
Yeo Dowoon’s eyes widened. Because he couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. The man who hid his face between his knees poked… poked… Yoon Minoh’s waist weakly and whined.
“My mouth hurts…”
Then Yoon Minoh’s face crumpled. His complexion was also pale blue and not good.
Yoon Minoh, who roughly brushed off the clothing the man’s touch had reached, stared intently at Yeo Dowoon. He opened his mouth to comfort him, who seemed unable to escape the bewilderment of having his inner thoughts read.
He too had been surprised enough to be angry at first.
“It’s not that he wants to read them, they just come through. If the other person’s thoughts are strong, the concept is they get delivered with a ding-dong to his head.”
But that alone was difficult to make Yeo Dowoon understand.
“…Mental-type?”
Yeo Dowoon asked, pointing at the man sitting all crumpled up.
Looking at the state of the rooftop door, he’d thought at least one physical-type would be mixed in, but only a weak-looking mental-type Esper and a physical-type Esper with an unpleasant personality were waiting for him.
When Yoon Minoh withheld his answer, Yeo Dowoon squeezed his blurred eyes shut then opened them and snapped.
“Send the civilian down. You said we’d say our farewells. Was that a lie too?”
“I repeatedly said there was someone hyung needed to meet too, but I guess you didn’t even hear it through one ear.”
Yoon Minoh’s voice had become gloomy at some point. Yeo Dowoon couldn’t grasp his constantly changing atmosphere at all.
“Open your eyes and look clearly.”
Yoon Minoh grabbed the head of the man who couldn’t think straight from fear and whispered.
“I said send the civilian down!”
When Yeo Dowoon shouted anxiously, he laughed cheerfully instead.
“Civilian?”
His questioning manner was full of spirit. For some reason, the man trembled his lips more restlessly than Yoon Minoh. Yoon Minoh pulled his hand away from the man with a tsk as if he understood, but the situation remained unchanged.
Bang, kwaang…!
At the same time, massive ice blades rose from the rooftop floor. If he’d been pierced, he would’ve been sent to the afterlife without becoming either porridge or rice.
“You disobedient bastard. Aren’t you going to say your farewell?”
Unlike his question, Yeo Dowoon even ignited flames behind Yoon Minoh with a whoosh. He’d made a bold move to prevent his escape in advance.
The man who’d been waiting for Yoon Minoh while squatting fell on his backside in shock. Yoon Minoh answered gleefully while watching the fireball that seemed about to surpass his height.
“Of course I should. Though hyung seems desperate to catch me.”
As his body grew hot from the heat, he fanned himself with his hands fluttering. He continued, saying “You know.”
“Does that person really look like a civilian to you?”
It was nonsense that seemed unrelated to the situation. Yeo Dowoon answered without wavering.
“To me, everyone except monster bastards and Esper bastards is a civilian.”
“Whoa, that hurts. Why don’t you count Espers as civilians?”
Yoon Minoh, who asked back as if joking, whined falsely.
In the meantime, Yeo Dowoon realized his limbs were gradually becoming lighter. As if the mental-type Esper’s concentration had broken, his vision was also definitely becoming clearer. His fingers finally moved.
Kwakwakwang! Ice chunks sculpted like blades flew toward Yoon Minoh. It was an attack Yeo Dowoon had carried out in an instant. He spat out threateningly, as if sick of the shameless brat.
“You should stay quietly stuck in the guild, who told you to crawl into an Esper base?”
Yoon Minoh twisted his core strength to avoid the ice that seemed ready to tear him like paper.
“I didn’t crawl in, I was kidnapped. Did you already forget? You’re the one who brought me here, hyung!”
Kwang! The ice blocked in the middle made a hissing sound as it scattered ice particles. The flames he’d lit to eliminate Yoon Minoh’s escape routes in advance were instead melting the ice.
It was that moment.
“Um, I…”
When a mosquito-like voice came from nearby, Yeo Dowoon steadied his breathing and turned that way. The man he’d hidden behind an ice barrier was gripping his knees as if his legs had lost strength.
Yeo Dowoon groaned as if at a loss. It seemed the mental-type Esper’s restraining force had changed direction. No wonder his limbs had become free without any resistance. Shameless bastards.
“…Aren’t you ashamed of touching civilians?”
He scolded Yoon Minoh fiercely.
Intense flames surged as if about to scorch Yoon Minoh’s entire body. But Yoon Minoh didn’t step back to avoid the approaching fire. He smiled, savoring the heat.
“Since when did researchers get treated as civilians? It’s unfair to the listening Espers.”
“……”
“If you’re going to do that, make Espers civilians too.”
A hostile silence descended. Yoon Minoh watched Yeo Dowoon’s reaction while surrounded by flames.
Seo Jinwoo, Seo Jinwoo, Seo Jinwoo.
He hummed the three-character name he’d seen on the blue placard like a tune.
“Seo Jinwoo-ssi…”
Yoon Minoh finally scratched out his voice.
“…Researcher-nim.”
That tone was very low and rough. The man who’d been protected under Yeo Dowoon made a despairing expression.
Yoon Minoh felt a newly chilling nostalgia. He didn’t know how long it had been since he’d uttered this title.
“You should answer.”
During that time, it was impossible to even try calling out ‘Researcher-nim,’ so he endured entire days in silence.
Unknown drugs were injected, and after enduring pain like his blood vessels flowing backward, he was given the opportunity to open his lips as a reward.
Masked researchers surrounded him and checked his condition. Voice-modulated voices asked him in turn. Yoon Minoh was terribly curious about their faces.
‘Do you have any headaches or stomach aches yet?’
‘You can secure your vision without difficulty?’
‘Are there any other unusual symptoms?’
‘If it hurts.’
The last one wasn’t in the form of a question.
Yoon Minoh looked up at the researcher while trapped in a glass cage like an aquarium. He deeply etched in his eyes the scene of that person caressing the glass wall as if stroking his hair. He murmured.
‘If it hurts, it’s okay to tell me.’
Yoon Minoh burst into laughter each time. He rolled around inside the cage roaring with laughter.
When Yoon Minoh just kept giggling, the researchers immediately moved their steps to another test subject. The test subject who’d been dying while foaming at the mouth wriggled its limbs upon hearing the sound of their shoes.
Yoon Minoh could accurately predict the end of a test subject his own age. Since they couldn’t endure, they would be discarded, and since they were discarded, they would be killed in one stroke.
If it hurts, tell me? That’s okay?
“Chimera, have you heard of it?”
Where are you selling your snake oil, you trash bastards…
There was a time when he lived with an experiment number instead of a name.
Test subjects who complained of pain all disappeared overnight. The new test subjects who came in their place cried that they missed their families, just as he had. Test subjects without families didn’t whine but threw fits. Kicking the cage to their heart’s content until the researchers injected tranquilizers.
“You’ve heard of it, right?”
Yoon Minoh was certain. The firepower of the flames gradually weakened. It was time to bring up the main point.
“I don’t think hyung is a chimera.”
Test subjects were mainly composed of children between the ages of 9 and 14.
Yeo Dowoon said he was an unregistered Esper until he was seventeen, so he probably wasn’t locked in a laboratory and experimented on like him. The timing was way past for that.
But Yoon Minoh stubbornly continued.
“Of course… I don’t think you’re not one either.”
“What the hell are you talking about right now?”
Embarrassingly, Yeo Dowoon couldn’t follow the topic. He understood they were meaningful words, but they just felt like chasing clouds. When only conclusions were thrown at him without much explanation, his confusion increased.
