* * *
Yihan, who was checking the pulse of Suhyeon after he had been rushed back to Hajin’s house, let out a light sigh.
It was a sigh of relief.
“Everything is normal. I don’t know if it’s because his Core flared up once, but his wavelength is actually quite stable. It seems he lost consciousness simply due to extreme stress and fatigue. He’s in a state close to a very deep sleep.”
The tension in Hajin’s wide, staring eyes relaxed slightly.
The wrist of the pale, evenly breathing Suhyeon was still swollen and red.
“Go now.”
Hajin, who had been staring at that slender, swollen wrist for a long time, slowly lifted his head toward Yihan.
“Ooh, scary. Don’t you trust your own home security? There are guards crawling all over the place. Just go and come back.”
Though he spoke in his usual light tone, Yihan’s face was also heavily clouded.
He, too, had fully grasped the situation.
“……Just don’t kill him and turn it into a legal disaster.”
Hajin let out a short, cynical laugh at Yihan’s hesitant warning.
He brushed Suhyeon’s cheek one last time and walked out of the mansion.
The night was pitch black; even the moon was hidden behind the clouds.
“Hajin.”
As he crossed the garden and stepped out the main gate, he was met by guards frozen in a stiff attention stance and the Association President standing beside them.
Though the President had played a role similar to a mentor to Hajin, Hajin ignored everyone and simply crooked his finger.
Lee Jeonghyeon, who had to face the wrath of a truly enraged team leader alone, trembled as he stepped out from the crowd.
Hajin, the President, and Lee Jeonghyeon immediately moved back to the medical wing within the Association where Suhyeon had been an hour ago.
“Ugh……”
Lee Jeonghyeon instinctively shook his head.
The medical wing was a complete disaster.
The President stared down the dark hallway with a hardened face.
The corridor was filled with fallen guards. Some hadn’t even regained consciousness yet.
These were elite guards specifically handpicked by the Association to protect Suhyeon, who had awakened unprecedented Guiding abilities.
The fact that they were down meant the intruder had attacked with full intent.
Thinking of the problem at hand—Do Yejun, the Esper who had become a hero after closing the Seoul Gate three years ago—the President massaged his throbbing temples and let out a deep sigh.
Regardless, Hajin stroded forward.
Though there was hardly a spot on the floor not occupied by a fallen guard, Hajin’s boots found the gaps with ghost-like precision.
As they neared the room where Suhyeon had been, the noise—which had been a mere nuisance at first—grew louder.
“……!!!! LET GO!!!!”
“……! Do you know who I am……!!! ……This……?!”
It was obvious who was throwing the tantrum.
Slide, SLAM!
The hospital door, opened too hard with uncontrolled strength, creaked momentarily.
The shouting from outside vanished, replaced by an instant silence.
Hajin’s blue eyes scanned the room coldly.
Perhaps because the target had tried to resist too much, two Espers from Hajin’s own team were pinning Do Yejun to the floor with their entire body weight.
“……Hup! You’ve arrived, Team Leader.”
Sensing that something had gone horribly wrong the moment they saw Hajin, they barely swallowed a hiccup and greeted him.
Hajin gestured toward the door with his chin.
Thwack!
“Ugh!”
The pale-faced team members struck the back of Do Yejun’s neck to knock him out, bowed quickly, and scurried out of the room.
“Hajin-gun,”
It was the Association President who closed the door to the suddenly quiet room and walked in.
The President, who loved the Ability Users under his care as much as he loved showing off his muscles, looked down at Do Yejun with a complicated expression.
“If you kill him, there will be trouble. You know that, right?”
Hajin turned his head to look at the President, who was watching him with serious eyes.
Seeing how the President—who usually stayed quiet no matter what Hajin did—was being so persistent, it seemed Hajin’s eyes really had turned murderous.
“……I won’t kill him.”
“Good. I trust you.”
Only after receiving that confirmation did the President step back.
Finally left alone in the room with Do Yejun—a vermin whose very name made him feel filthy—Hajin lifted his boot.
Without a moment’s hesitation, he trampled on the wrist where traces of his own blue energy still lingered.
Crunch.
“AAAAARGH!”
With the sound of twisting bone, Do Yejun, who had briefly lost consciousness, snapped his eyes open.
“Wha—what,”
As Do Yejun blinked with a pale face, trying to grasp the situation, Hajin looked down at him silently.
To be precise, he was suppressing the auditory hallucinations screaming at him to separate that damn bastard’s head from his body immediately.
When he had stepped out to a convenience store and felt Suhyeon’s Guiding—not the usual sweet kind, but something that burst out as if suppressed—when he had leaped and shattered the hospital window, when he had seen that vermin twisting Suhyeon’s wrist…
And finally, the rage he felt when he saw the tears in Suhyeon’s eyes was so immense that Hajin himself had almost lost control.
The fury that boiled up from the depths of his being as both a man and an Esper against the human trying to harm his lover—the one who made him realize the feeling of love and provided him with a dizzying sense of freedom.
“S-Shin Hajin Esper! What do you think you’re doing?!”
Hajin’s blue pupils rolled down to stare at Do Yejun, who was squirming like an insect.
Do Yejun flinched, feeling a chilling dread.
Hajin slowly lifted his foot from the wrist.
And then—
“AAAAAARGH!!!!!”
Snap.
He crushed the wrist once more.
An even more gruesome sound echoed, followed by Do Yejun’s piercing scream.
“Gasp, this is— huff!!!”
Do Yejun looked at his mangled wrist and the boot on top of it, panting heavily with a contorted face.
He grabbed Hajin’s ankle with his other, uncrushed hand.
“YOU—!!!!”
Zap!
Yellow sparks flew as electricity coursed through Do Yejun’s body.
He used enough power to knock out an ordinary person instantly, sending the shock into Hajin’s ankle, but—
Whoosh.
Blue flames swirled around Hajin’s ankle simultaneously.
“Agh! AAAAARGH!!!”
Thud—!
Do Yejun was sent flying with a scream.
CRASH!!!
He hit the wall so hard a dull boom echoed through the room. Dust rained down.
“Pant, pant…… Why are you doing this to me?! What is your relationship with Suhyeon?!”
Was an A-class Esper still an A-class Esper after all?
Perhaps his physical durability was as thick as his shameless skin, because Do Yejun shouted and lunged at Hajin again.
The moment Do Yejun spat Suhyeon’s name out of that filthy mouth, Hajin’s blue eyes sank into a deep, chilling calm—the kind that precedes a typhoon.
Hajin caught the shoulder of the lunging Do Yejun, whose fist was wrapped in stinging electricity, and leaped lightly.
Fwoooosh!
Blue flames, the same color as his eyes, flared up again.
“This— AHH! AAAAAARGH!!!!!!”
The flames wrapped violently around Do Yejun’s body, shimmering relentlessly without going out.
The smell of burning flesh filled the room.
Do Yejun thrashed and rubbed his body against the floor, trying desperately to extinguish the fire, but Hajin’s ability was not something that could be put out like a common flame.
Hajin watched Do Yejun writhing like an earthworm in agony.
He couldn’t understand how such a thing had ever enjoyed the luck of being Suhyeon’s lover.
Hajin slowly bent down and placed one knee on the floor.
His wide blue eyes locked onto Do Yejun.
His hand, covered perfectly in a black glove, clamped shut over Do Yejun’s mouth.
Do Yejun’s face contorted hideously as he looked at Hajin with trembling eyes.
“Mmph!!! Ugh!! Mmmph!!!!”
“It seems you find it quite easy to put Suhyeon-si’s name in your mouth.”
I don’t.
Ignoring all the muffled shouts and screams, Hajin stared at Do Yejun’s mouth, where filthy saliva was dripping.
‘I should probably pull out that tongue, shouldn’t I?’
He was never going to let the man appear before Suhyeon again anyway, but if he pulled out the tongue, even if the man somehow beat the one-in-a-million odds to appear again, Suhyeon wouldn’t have to hear that disgusting voice.
Slide.
“Shin Hajin Esper, stop.”
Hajin tilted his head to the side.
Chae Yihan was now standing in the room.
Being stared at by eyes that looked exactly like Suhyeon’s usually annoyed him, but at this moment, those eyes tethered Hajin’s reason, which was slowly crossing the line.
Hajin glanced sideways at Do Yejun, who had fainted and was foaming at the mouth, and slowly stood up.
He pulled off the glove stained with filth; as it fell, it was consumed by flames, vanishing into nothing before it even hit the ground.
Passing by the other beast waiting for his turn, Hajin didn’t bother to hide his dissatisfaction.
“Pulling out a tongue wouldn’t have been life-threatening.”
“I’ll let you know the location once we have him in detention.”
At the response, which implied he wasn’t actually trying to stop the violence but just the timing, Hajin let out a smirk.
Slide.
Hajin left, and the hospital door closed.
Left behind was Yihan, who had been keeping an eye on Do Yejun for the past three years.
He had done so thinking Do Yejun had also lost a loved one, but he never imagined the truth would be like this.
Unfortunately for Do Yejun, this was the beginning of another hell.
* * *
