“Right now your body isn’t escaping. It’s resisting.”
Damn wordplay! Damn Odin Quaid! Doyun glared at him with bloodshot eyes.
Before he knew it, knees came into view instead of combat boots. Lowering his stance, Odin carefully pressed down on the back of Doyun’s neck.
“Hnngh?”
Doyun’s eyes wavered. Aside from the ticklish sensation, when that cool hand touched the nape of his neck, scorched repeatedly by electric current, his sensitized skin tensed up.
A sharp click of the tongue followed.
“Relax.”
Odin pressed lightly on the back of Doyun’s neck again.
“If your whole body tenses up, your breathing breaks. And once your breathing breaks, your judgment clouds too.”
Meanwhile, the timer counted down further.
[Warning! 01:18 until energy depletion]
The inside of the gag grew steadily damper. His tongue was going numb, and the feeling in his fingertips was dulling.
“…Mmph.”
When Doyun looked at him in a way that clearly said he was at his limit, Odin tapped his fingers against Doyun’s forehead, where sweat-soaked hair clung to his skin. As if telling him to stay conscious.
“Restraint devices like this are usually designed to respond to force applied in a consistent direction.”
Odin’s voice was so composed that Doyun stopped being distracted by the blinking timer in front of him.
“In war, when taking prisoners, they use esper restraint devices like this one. It’s not meant to suppress resistance. It’s meant to completely neutralize an esper’s abilities so they can’t use their powers at all.”
“Mmmnn…”
“They slap these on people without even checking whether they’re a Guide or an Esper, so keep that in mind.”
Odin pressed down on Doyun’s shoulder again.
“So relax.”
Odin’s voice dropped lower.
“Completely.”
Doyun’s face twisted in confusion at the paradox of being told to relax while fully restrained. Drool was already dripping down past his chin, and blisters had risen on the skin where the current had passed through.
Doyun had never once relaxed in his life, even when he wasn’t restrained like this.
“You have no idea what that means at all, do you?”
When Doyun nodded, Odin didn’t get angry. He simply looked at the new recruit, red-eyed and struggling to breathe.
With drool streaming from his chin and his eyes glazed and glistening, he looked exactly like a rabid dog. Doyun’s gaze burned hot enough to sting, no doubt from having mentally cursed out the superior officer in front of him more times than he could count throughout the training. What a temper. Odin quietly concluded his assessment.
[Warning! 00:47 until energy depletion]
Even with the remaining time dropping below a minute, Odin stayed calm.
“Imagine you’re lying in bed. Trick your brain.”
“Mmph?”
“Breathe in slowly and comfortably, hold for about 4 seconds. Then release the tension bit by bit, starting from your forehead, then your eyebrows, nose, and jaw.”
Doyun closed his eyes and focused, doing as Odin instructed.
“Shoulders. Arms. Hands. And all the way down to your ankles. Let the tension go, like a balloon deflating.”
As Doyun released more tension, following Odin’s guidance, the pressure of the chest restraint band loosened by one notch. The crackling sound of the electric current lessened. Doyun opened his eyes and looked at Odin in surprise.
“Wait until a gap forms in the device restraining you.”
Doyun took a short, shallow breath. His right shoulder. The place where the sensation had dulled from the current passing through it, but where the fear of pain had dulled along with it too.
Doyun pressed his head to the floor and gritted his teeth. He had to act fast while the device was weakened. Being told not to apply force didn’t mean not to use his joints. So he didn’t twist or pull his arm. Instead, he folded his shoulder inward.
Crack
With a dull sound, the shoulder joint popped out of place.
“Haaaahh…”
Hot breath burst out through the gag. For a moment his vision went white, and pain shooting up his spine made his fingertips go numb. But with his right arm bent at an unnatural angle, slack opened up inside the wrist restraint.
Doyun didn’t wait any longer. Using his dislocated arm, he twisted his upper body and pulled it free. The sound of flesh scraping against metal overlapped, but freedom came at the same time.
Click!
With the resisting force gone, the restraint device released. The electric current cut off completely too.
Doyun rolled onto his side and stared up at the ceiling. Tears welled up at the corners of his eyes from the pain radiating from his dislocated shoulder. The sensation was cut off, as if one whole arm had vanished.
“Haa, ha, ugh…”
Odin removed the gag from Doyun’s mouth. He frowned mercilessly at the sight of the pooled saliva spilling out.
“You did something insane.”
“Wasn’t that, ugh, what you meant for me to do?”
Before Doyun could even catch his breath, Odin pulled his body toward him.
“AAAAAAH!”
Before Doyun’s scream had even faded, Odin swiftly set the bone back. The dislocated shoulder snapped precisely back into place.
“Such a baby.”
Still dazed in Odin’s arms as he caught his breath, Doyun looked up at the colonel with an indignant expression.
“How is this me being a baby about it?”
The resentment from the past two hours of torment surged up all at once. Doyun’s voice had gone completely hoarse.
“It hurts. It seriously hurts like hell.”
“…..”
Odin was struck once again by the realization that this new recruit, snapping at him so bluntly, was only twenty two years old. Seeing him get this honest just from a slight increase in training intensity, he really was nothing but a brat. If anything, hearing him whine about how much his body hurt finally made him seem like he was actually that age.
“A restraint device like that loses its power once you fully lower your guard. Because you’re not an esper. There was no need to go so far as to dislocate your shoulder.”
“…..”
“But you did well.”
Doyun lifted his head at the unexpected praise. For the first time in this training session, Odin was smiling, just slightly.
“Better to come out with a dislocated shoulder than to get captured as a prisoner and used for human experimentation.”
Odin picked up the restraint device and tossed it aside.
“As long as you somehow make it back alive to your squad, we will keep you alive no matter what it takes and bring you back to Varnas. Don’t forget that.”
At the sudden seriousness in Odin’s voice, Doyun forced his drooping eyelids open. All the strength was draining out of his body.
Without hesitation, Odin then slung Doyun over his shoulder.
“Aaagh!”
Despite Doyun’s pained scream, Odin’s stride only grew longer. He practically threw the new recruit into the bio capsule.
Once the capsule closed and the anesthetic began to release, Doyun, as if already used to it by now, drew in a deep breath.
“Even if you end up half crippled by some chance, I’ll get you regenerated somehow. Like this.”
Well, that’s real comforting. Doyun’s lips twitched, but no sound came out. His mind was already growing hazy. A faint groan still slipped from his mouth.
Outside the capsule, the colonel’s voice echoed like a reverberation.
“Such a baby, right to the end.”
Dazed from the anesthetic and his judgment clouded, Doyun shot the colonel a resentful glare. He struggled to slowly lift his uninjured arm. But his fingers wouldn’t cooperate, and unable to make any kind of gesture, his arm dropped back into the capsule.
“Was that supposed to be a greeting?”
Doyun didn’t answer and closed his eyes. Watching Doyun’s middle finger twitch, Odin let out a hollow laugh.
What an insolent little brat.
》 Message received
▸ Inbox
[Ding-dong♬] Congratulations on reaching 30 days overdue!
Notice of ownership transfer under Earth Repayment Law ⁀‿⁀
This house will soon be ours♥ what will our customer do♥
Of course, there’s still a chance:
☛ Deposit before today ends and a miracle will happen!
☛ Get through today with a revolving loan!
☛ Apply for a same day high paying part time job!
from. Bone Marrow Capital Co., Ltd., lending you our sincerity
The moment Doyun opened his eyes that morning and checked the message, he flung the transmitter onto his desk. At least it was some relief that his younger sibling was currently in the recovery room after surgery. The problem was that there might be nowhere left to go once they were discharged.
“Damn it, if only I hadn’t gotten that pay cut…!”
That house was the only trace left of his parents in District 4. Doyun closed his eyes and calmed himself down for a moment. Then, for the first time, he clicked the link included in the collection notice text.
》 Message received
☛ Deposit before today ends and a miracle will happen!
The time Doyun had left was ticking down like a countdown to a bomb.
[28:12:43]
“Huh?”
But the time he actually saw remaining was far more than he’d expected.
Since Varnas Space Station’s rotation cycle differed from Earth’s, one day here equaled two Earth days. Only then did Doyun, realizing that hope wasn’t completely lost after all, belatedly check the transmitter’s status.
If he could somehow deposit the 700 Silang in interest within 28 hours, he could at least prevent the worst case scenario of losing the house.
“What do I do.”
Doyun began pacing aimlessly around his dormitory room for a moment. He had to come up with some kind of answer, somehow, so that his sibling, just back from surgery, wouldn’t end up out on the street.
