“Secretary Park. How long has it been since those bastards went inside the gate?”
“It has been about a day now.”
Inside the black-curtained sedan, Koo Hyukjun rubbed his chin as he stared past the window at the gate entrance radiating light.
Secretary Park glanced sideways at him, reading the mood, and spoke in a cautious voice.
“Since it is an S-rank gate, it will still take a few more days for them to come out. Why don’t we head back and get some rest?”
“Ah-ah, it’s fine. Besides, it feels like it’s about time for them to come out anyway.”
“…Already?”
As Secretary Park sent him a look full of doubt, Koo Hyukjun slowly curved the corners of his lips.
Unlike his oily smile, an intensely sharp gaze stared at the gate entrance.
“My intuition is shouting that at me once more. Isn’t that why I came here early in the first place?”
Murmuring his reply, Koo Hyukjun leaned back in his seat with a relaxed attitude.
After waiting a brief moment, Secretary Park pulled out an electronic pad to report the progress so far.
“Right. What is that rat bastard Lee Hyeonjae doing right now?”
“You were right, sir. He was conducting a background check on Go Yeonwoo.”
“As expected, the moment you loosen the leash even a little, the rats run rampant. Failing to recognize even the basics of who holds their leash.”
“Since the investigation wasn’t progressing as well as he thought, he apparently reached out to the family first to borrow their influence. He is currently in the middle of some kind of transaction with people from the family.”
At Secretary Park’s words, Koo Hyukjun’s brow twitched faintly.
“…The rat that barely managed to shake me off and run away went right back in of its own accord?”
“Yes. That is correct.”
“Are you certain, Secretary Park?”
“Without a doubt.”
At Secretary Park’s firm reply, Koo Hyukjun’s eyes narrowed in an instant.
He knew that Lee Hyeonjae must have seen some clue, grown suspicious, and started digging into the background.
However, what bothered him a bit was the fact that Lee Hyeonjae, who used to despise his own family like the plague, had willingly walked back in himself.
He wondered if Lee Hyeonjae really had a necessity strong enough to do all that.
The bastard who had struggled tooth and nail just to escape his family now walked in with his own two feet…
Koo Hyukjun spent even longer rubbing his chin.
A faint noise arose in Koo Hyukjun’s ears as he sank into thought. If the noise from outside could be heard this much inside a sedan with a defensive barrier set up, there was only one reason.
When he raised his gaze, the color of the light flowing from the gate entrance began to change.
It meant the gate had been completely cleared.
Seeing the gate entrance switch to a cleared state just as Koo Hyukjun had predicted, Secretary Park’s eyes widened.
He felt this every time, but his superior’s intuition was truly precise.
Sometimes enough to give him goosebumps.
“Look. They’re coming out now, aren’t they?”
“…So it seems.”
Just as Koo Hyukjun said, espers were emerging from the gate one by one.
Most of them looked rather disheveled.
Still, considering they had just gone in and out of a gate where property estimation was impossible, they looked remarkably neat.
The fact that the clearance time had been shortened this much implied there must have been some variable on the inside.
As Secretary Park came to that conclusion in his mind, Team 1’s espers coming out of the entrance entered his field of vision.
Even at a glance, their dispositions looked deeply displeased.
Thinking it was only natural for them to be in a bad mood since they had been forcibly drafted into an S-rank gate, Secretary Park glanced at Park Jaerim and Seok Kiwoo following behind Team 1.
Unlike Team 1 up front, their expressions looked quite decent.
However, he couldn’t find anything strange about them other than their expressions.
Just as Secretary Park was about to withdraw his interest and look at the gate entrance with a meaningless gaze:
Among the very last group to come out, he spotted Kim Sungchan, the healing esper.
And right along with him, cradled in his arms and hanging limply, was a man with a plain appearance who looked to be a guide.
Since he didn’t recognize his face, it seemed he was a guide belonging to a civilian organization.
Naturally, given that it was an S-rank gate, having injured people was only expected.
Just as Secretary Park was about to look away without much thought this time too:
“Secretary Park. Is that man Kim Sungchan is carrying a guide from a civilian organization?”
“Yes. I believe so.”
Koo Hyukjun, who had fallen silent for a moment, slowly tilted his head.
Just as Secretary Park was wondering at the strange attitude, Koo Hyukjun gestured to the driver sitting in the front.
The driver tactfully rolled down the rear window a bit.
As the window lowered, the appearance of the guide nestled in Kim Sungchan’s arms became even clearer.
He was a man who looked utterly and completely ordinary wherever you looked, completely devoid of any distinctive traits.
Koo Hyukjun stared intently at such a man.
And with an intensity that bordered on obsessive.
“Is something wrong?”
Koo Hyukjun, who stared at the man in silence despite Secretary Park’s question, soon slowly let out his words.
“No, I just smell a very familiar bitch scent. And a terribly vulgar, erotic whore scent at that.”
Muttering thus, Koo Hyukjun’s eyes gleamed dangerously.
“…A scent, you say?”
At the raw, vulgar phrasing, Secretary Park trailed off. Secretary Park already knew that his superior, who put on a refined facade on the outside, had a filthy private life.
Since he was none other than the one doing all the cleanup behind the scenes every time, there was no way he wouldn’t know.
Koo Hyukjun played around in ways that were filthily extreme enough to make one shudder, especially when it came to his sex life.
He would bring in unregistered guides or average-looking commoners to play with, and then, once he grew tired of them, throw them to monsters or starving espers as food.
In truth, even that fell on the relatively mild side.
At worst, he would cut off their limbs to turn them into living dogs, playing with them like toys or using them as flesh-toilets.
And when they died because their lifespans ran out, in the case of guides, he would even extract the guide energy still remaining within their bodies.
He stubbornly wrung out and used everything he needed right up until death.
No matter how much he was his superior, it was an utterly malicious level of cruelty.
Secretary Park feigned an air of calm with difficulty and waited for his superior’s words.
“Yes. It’s faint, but I smell it.”
Koo Hyukjun’s eyes shone with interest more than ever before.
His muscular upper body slowly rose and fell repeatedly.
“Secretary Park. Can you investigate that guide’s identity right now?”
“I will look into it immediately.”
Answering thus, Secretary Park picked up his phone and made a call somewhere.
