Suhyeon trembled, staring down at his legs where the pain radiated.
The thin thread wound around his ankle had dug deep into his flesh.
His pant leg had rolled up, revealing white skin now stained with seeping blood.
Tring-ring—.
The sound of the music box pierced his ears.
He felt the fluff-ball squirming restlessly in his hoodie pocket.
To keep it hidden, Suhyeon twisted his body while gasping for breath.
Tring-ring—.
“Ung, ugh!”
But in that instant, a thread coiling around his elbow tightened.
The blade-like string sliced easily through the fabric of his hoodie and bit into the skin beneath.
Another wave of crimson blood flowed along with the distant, numbing pain.
Tring-ring—.
And again, as the sound of the broken toy echoed, Suhyeon—panting through the agony—finally realized.
He understood why the foreign Esper gasping in front of him lost all composure every time the music box played.
It was conditioning.
Like Pavlov’s experiment, Shin Seojun played the music box every time he inflicted pain, eventually ensuring that the mere sound of the melody would trigger a phantom agony.
Tring-ring—
Suhyeon’s body shook uncontrollably.
—As you can see, this is how it is. This is a mark I personally engraved upon my children. Hajin has one as well.
Shin Seojun had said Hajin reacted to this too.
That meant Hajin had been subjected to this at some point.
Likely for a much longer period than Suhyeon could imagine.
It was horrific.
“Hnn, aggh!”
As Suhyeon’s face contorted at the thought of Hajin, red lines were drawn once more across his hands and ankles.
Blood welled up and spilled from the gaps where the threads bit into his skin.
The threads seemed intent on severing his limbs entirely.
It hurt.
Tears flowed down his face from a level of pain he had never experienced before.
“Kyuu…….”
Shaking while bound from head to toe, Suhyeon exerted every ounce of strength to hunch over, hiding the fluff-ball that was trying to surge out of his pocket again.
“Ple… ase…….”
Hearing the voice that barely managed to escape alongside physiological tears, the fluff-ball hesitated for a brief moment.
“Hahaha, does it hurt that much? Well, I suppose you were an ordinary person until recently.”
Shin Seojun seemed to interpret the sound as a plea directed at him.
Watching the trembling Suhyeon with a gentle smile, the man burst into laughter and approached him.
“Just endure it a little longer. A few days will suffice. Once you become my perfect child—and you seem particularly docile—you won’t have to feel this pain anymore. Isn’t this better than falling into a Gate, anyway?”
“Aaaagh!”
Simultaneously with the whisper, Suhyeon’s body jolted again.
This time it was the other ankle.
He could hear the sound of blood dripping steadily onto the floor.
Better than falling into a Gate?
At least then, though he felt a terror that swallowed his whole being, he hadn’t been tortured like this.
The monsters’ attacks had never reached him.
Tring-ring-ring—
The hideous sound echoed once more.
The threads binding his body tightened in sync.
His body jerked violently.
His vision repeatedly bleached white before fading back into a blur.
Suhyeon panted heavily.
He couldn’t think of anything other than the pain.
The agony dyed his mind bright red.
The sound of his own blood hitting the ground rang out with sickening clarity.
Suhyeon bit his lip, trembling.
Tears blurred his sight.
The pain began to slowly eat away at his reason.
In his clouded mind, pushed beyond the limit of endurance, he saw Hajin.
The man who always ran to him whenever he was falling into a pit.
The man who saved him.
He wanted to be saved.
He wanted Hajin to hold him and catch him just like when he emerged from the Gate.
But Hajin said he couldn’t come.
He said nothing could get him out of here.
Tring-ring-ring-ring—.
“……!”
Suhyeon let out a silent scream.
His light brown eyes were brimming with tears.
The thread bit into the exact spot where the skin had already been sliced.
Deep crimson blood oozed from the wound.
His consciousness flickered like a dying light.
“Hm?”
As unbearable pain flooded in, Suhyeon suddenly felt his guiding wavelength spiraling out of his body, independent of his will.
Shin Seojun sensed it as well and tilted his head.
“Did you lose control? How cute. Hmm, the more I feel it, the more I realize your guiding is truly different from the norm. What exactly is—”
“Kyuu.”
Just as Shin Seojun was about to mutter more crazed words, a small cry interrupted him.
“Eh?”
Suhyeon’s eyes, which had been drooping powerlessly, flew open.
The fluff-ball that had been surging in his pocket finally tumbled out onto the floor.
“You were carrying something interesting?”
The moment he spotted it, Shin Seojun’s glass-like eyes sparked.
He reached out toward the tiny fluff-ball rolling on the ground.
Through his tear-blurred vision, Suhyeon saw the fluff-ball rolling fearlessly toward Shin Seojun.
Suhyeon’s wet eyes widened.
He didn’t know what that insane man would do to such a small, fragile creature.
He saw the corners of Shin Seojun’s mouth curl up as he said it was “interesting.”
Suhyeon thrashed desperately despite the pain consuming him.
He had grown fond of the fluff-ball, which acted blindly devoted to him as if it had been tamed by his hand.
A wave of energy surged out of his body once more.
The room was filled with a scent so sweet that even the Esper trembling in the corner flinched.
“As expected…… Suhyeon, you truly are…… sufficient to be my child.”
Shin Seojun hesitated for a moment, but soon his cheeks flushed a faint pink as he picked up the fluff-ball.
“Kyuu, kyu!”
The fluff-ball, which Suhyeon expected to struggle like it did when Hajin caught it, allowed itself to be held by Shin Seojun while let out high-pitched cries.
Suhyeon’s eyes widened.
The wavelength spread further and further.
It was then that the anomaly occurred.
“Hm?”
The fur of the fluff-ball in Shin Seojun’s hand began to glow white.
In Shin Seojun’s glass-like eyes, the shimmering white fluff-ball was reflected clearly.
Suhyeon, watching while gasping from the pain gnawing at his body, felt his guiding energy being sucked out of him as if his control had been completely bypassed, despite nothing touching him.
His pale pupils momentarily turned pure white before trembling.
Shin Seojun blinked.
“Wait, this—”
His body was already tattered.
Unable to withstand his energy being drained at such an impossible speed, Suhyeon’s head slumped like a doll with cut strings.
He panted heavily as his consciousness crumbled.
In the midst of his fading awareness, his chest felt as if it were breaking.
Cough.
It felt like blood was trickling from his mouth.
‘When I open my eyes, I hope all of this was a dream. I want to wake up by Hajin’s side.’
With that vacant thought, Suhyeon lost consciousness entirely.
Almost simultaneously, the fluff-ball, having absorbed enough of its master’s energy, erupted in a brilliant white light.
Born in the abyss of the Gate, it had become a beast that knew only its master from the moment it met Suhyeon and encountered that familiar energy.
Having wanted to go on a rampage ever since its master started hurting, the fluff-ball greedily gulped down the energy its master had released into the space while being shaken in the hands of the loathsome human.
The only ones allowed to hold it so roughly were its master and that one human who hung around the master—the one it didn’t like, but had forgiven because he cherished its master.
But this human currently staring at it blankly had tormented its master.
Had made its master hurt.
“KRAAAAAAAWR!”
To kill the human holding it with such a strange gaze, the fluff-ball returned to its original form for the first time in a long while.
A state of emergency was declared at the Korean Association.
Regardless of whether the executives liked him or not, Chae Suhyeon—Korea’s only S-rank Guide—had vanished.
Guards had been protecting Hajin’s mansion, but it had been useless.
It was presumed an Esper with unknown teleportation abilities had kidnapped him, and since Suhyeon had no electronic devices on him at the time, tracking his location was nearly impossible.
Search parties were dispatched immediately, but hours passed without a single lead or trace.
Suhyeon’s image appeared on none of the domestic CCTV feeds.
Even searching based on Shin Seojun—the man who had been missing for over a decade and was the prime suspect according to Hajin and the Chairman—yielded nothing.
It was as if Suhyeon had vanished off the face of the earth.
Over a dozen members of the Association’s observation team were deployed to find the missing Guide.
In the Association’s observation room, which operated twenty-four hours a day with countless monitors, an employee dripped with cold sweat while staring at a screen that refused to lock on a location.
The signal from the tracking device Shin Hajin had personally installed kept flickering unnaturally across the map before disappearing.
It was an error.
The observation room was shrouded in a suffocating silence, save for the sounds of work from other sections.
Gathered there were the heavyweights: Esper Shin Hajin, Esper Asher Delveron, Director Chae Yihan, and the Association Chairman.
Feeling their gazes piercing his back, the employee finally spoke through a bone-dry mouth.
“It seems he is in a location where all radio waves are completely blocked…… we can’t catch a signal.”
Thump!
The employee’s shoulders jumped.
Yihan slammed a cup down so hard it nearly shattered.
“Find him again. Keep looking until you find him…….”
Yihan pleaded in a trembling voice.
He was on the verge of losing his sanity, facing the possibility of losing his brother for the second time.
His hands shook violently as he leaned against the desk, his face deathly pale.
