No one in the observation room could possibly be as far gone as Hajin.
Hajin watched the glitching screens without even pausing to breathe.
His blue eyes, once clear, had grown dark and murky from the moment he heard the news of Suhyeon’s disappearance.
If Asher Delveron and the Association Chairman hadn’t practically tackled him to hold him back, he would have already been out in the streets, leveling every building in Seoul equipped with radio-shielding technology to find Suhyeon.
In truth, he still couldn’t understand why he had to be here.
The tracking device he’d hidden in the ring was clearly useless.
Wouldn’t moving on foot be more helpful than wasting time here?
At this very second, there was no telling what Shin Seojun was doing to Suhyeon.
His hands shook with a violent sense of helplessness.
His blue eyes were stained black with shadow.
Uncontrolled blue sparks, like those from a looming rampage, flickered randomly in the air around him.
Scorch marks already littered the floor and walls in his vicinity.
Every time a spark hissed, the distant Association employees flinched visibly.
“Hey, Shin Hajin.”
“Hajin-gun.”
Asher and the Chairman called out to him simultaneously, their voices laced with warning.
Hajin slowly tilted his head back, his neck snapping with a dry sound.
“The search.”
His voice came out cracked and raw, sounding like a boiling cauldron of rage, helplessness, and terror.
The Chairman shook his head.
Hajin let out a slow, trembling breath and dropped his gaze.
His phone vibrated.
—Searching. No traces found.
—Searching. No traces found.
—Searching. No traces found.
Even the specialist he had hired long ago to track Shin Seojun was reporting in ten-minute intervals, only to deliver failure.
The monitors continued to show nothing but errors.
Nothing—not a single thing—could find Suhyeon.
Just as Shin Seojun had remained a ghost for seventeen years, he had left no trail.
It hadn’t been long since he almost lost Suhyeon to a Gate, and now Suhyeon had vanished from his grasp again.
And of all people, it was Shin Seojun—that wraith-like man whose throat he hadn’t yet managed to slit—who had stolen his most precious person.
Shin Hajin’s only precious person.
This was his fault. He had been arrogant, thinking that whatever trap Shin Seojun set couldn’t touch him, and he’d walked right into it.
Even though he now had Suhyeon to protect, he had been obsessed with his past.
‘What if I can’t find him? What if something happens to Suhyeon in that man’s hands?’
Trapped in a cycle of horrific guilt and imagination, Hajin felt an impulse to tear his own heart out.
“Search again. Again.”
Watching Chae Yihan, whose face was contorted as he barked orders at the staff, Hajin took a long breath.
The Chairman’s gaze, which had been directing Asher and the search teams, snapped back to Hajin.
Hajin turned away without a word.
“Shin Hajin, where are you going?”
Asher Delveron reached out to grab him, but a wall of blue flame erupted, preventing his hand from touching Hajin’s shoulder.
“Moving on foot would be faster at this point.”
“How? Do you know how many buildings there are in Seoul? Are you going to search them one by one? He might not even be in the city. Even a clairvoyant couldn’t find him if he’s shielded.”
“Then what do you want me to do?”
His words were clipped.
Asher looked anxious as well, but the blinded Hajin didn’t care.
The only thing that mattered was finding Suhyeon even one second sooner.
Rather than wasting time here, he would rather—
“Huh?”
Just as Hajin’s reason was about to snap completely, one of the employees in the vast observation room let out an involuntary sound.
Everyone searching for Suhyeon whipped their heads around so fast it practically made a sound.
Hajin, who was about to storm out, slowly turned his head as well.
“Gate energy…….”
However, that employee wasn’t part of the team searching for Suhyeon.
The ‘Gate Rush’ was still ongoing, and he was part of the unit monitoring Gate energy—a core duty of the Association.
“In the city…….”
The employee murmured, unaware of the lethal gazes boring into his back.
The monitor showed a very faint, almost undetectable trace of Gate energy.
It was small enough to be ignored normally, but the location was the problem.
The heart of Seoul.
The employee squinted at the screen, then jumped at the sound of a ringing phone.
The innocent staff member turned around, saw Hajin and the others, and went deathly pale.
It was Hajin’s phone that was ringing loudly.
He almost hung up without looking, but hesitated.
It was one of the Team 1 Espers he had sent out to search.
—KRAAAAAAAWR!
The moment he answered, a massive, piercing roar filled his ear.
A monster?
The sound was slightly strange, but he had sent that Esper to find Suhyeon, not to a Gate site.
‘I don’t have time for this—’
—Team Leader! We found Guide Chae Suhyeon!
Hajin’s finger, which had been about to hit the end call button, froze and trembled.
“……You found him?”
“Oh—over here!”
“It’s working!”
“Location, Gangbuk-gu—”
As Hajin whispered the question in a daze, over a dozen employees who had been tirelessly tracking the signal shouted in unison.
Hajin’s eyes widened.
His phone was tossed aside instantly.
“Team Leader.”
Lee Jeonghyeon hurried to stand before Hajin.
Ignoring any sense of personal space, Hajin grabbed his hand.
—But… he’s with a monster…….
The voice of the Esper on the phone echoed faintly from the discarded device, left behind in the room.
—……AWRRR!
A strange, ear-piercing sound.
Sharp wind whipping against his face.
A body completely drained of energy.
Something soft, warm, and fluttering like fur beneath his back.
Suhyeon’s hazy mind slowly cleared.
He opened his eyes.
What he saw was a brilliant blue sky.
Massive, peaceful clouds drifted by.
The sky?
Suhyeon blinked blankly.
Tring-ring—
—As expected…… Suhyeon, you truly are…… sufficient to be my child.
Memories came rushing back the moment the music box’s melody echoed in his mind.
—Kyuu, kyu!
The agony that had flooded his body.
The fluff-ball being caught in Shin Seojun’s hand at the end.
Suhyeon’s eyes widened in terror.
The blue sky still filled his vision.
This wasn’t the interrogation room, and the threads that had bound and sliced him were gone.
He was outside.
“……!”
Snapping to full awareness, Suhyeon tried to sit up, but a sudden, dizzying sensation of his internal organs dropping hit him as his body lurched upward.
Reflexively, he sprawled back down and gripped the fur beneath him as sharp wind whistled past.
The wounds all over his body throbbed.
‘Wait, fur?’
“KRAAAAAAAWR!”
Before Suhyeon could figure out what he was holding onto, a terrifying roar erupted in his ears.
Trembling, Suhyeon looked down, and then—.
“KRAAWR!”
A massive, white monster carrying Suhyeon roared as it snapped the threads coiling around it one by one.
Suhyeon’s eyes shook.
He was riding on the back of a monster.
“What is… this—”
As Suhyeon murmured in a daze, familiar threads coiled around the thrashing monster.
Suhyeon’s eyes nearly bulged out of his head.
“Ha, haha! You really were keeping something fascinating!”
Finally, landing on the back of the monster by pulling on those threads were Shin Seojun and an Esper.
The booming laughter jolted Suhyeon’s remaining consciousness into sharp focus.
His face turned bone-white.
He scrambled backward, huddled on the monster’s back.
“KRAAAAAAAWR!”
The monster, noticing Shin Seojun had landed on its back, began to thrash violently.
Suhyeon gripped the white fur desperately to avoid falling.
His arms, covered in scabs and fresh blood, throbbed with pain.
“To think you had a monster with you! My goodness, Suhyeon!”
In that moment, Shin Seojun created even more threads, winding them tightly around the monster’s body.
No matter how much the creature shook, Shin Seojun and the Esper remained stable, approaching Suhyeon step by slow step.
Suhyeon watched, frozen.
His body ached.
He was outside that room—he had to run.
With trembling arms, he managed to scoot back bit by bit.
Shin Seojun laughed as if find the sight pathetic.
“Haha, Suhyeon. You shouldn’t be outside. We have to go back quickly.”
Swish—
A sharp thread tied around his forearm.
Suhyeon couldn’t move back any further and shivered.
The monster was bound so tightly it could no longer move.
“Krrrrrr…….”
The monster let out a suppressed whimper.
They were now simply on a giant, furry floor located high in the air.
Shin Seojun’s face was full of composure as he walked slowly toward Suhyeon, reeling him in with the thread.
“I’ll have to take that thing back and dissect it. It’s stimulating every bit of my curiosity.”
His eyes held an even more intense heat than before.
Suhyeon trembled.
Shin Seojun gestured to the Esper beside him, who opened his palms.
Threads instantly coiled around both hands, manifesting a small, transparent chip.
“I didn’t expect to use an emergency measure here, but… come now, my child. Shall we head back?”
The Esper attached it to Shin Seojun’s neck, and Shin Seojun gave a broad, chilling grin.
