“How old am I?”
“Twenty. A total baby.”
Speaking in a playful tone, Yoon Seoho lightly tapped my cheek.
Since Yoon Seoho was twenty-seven, that meant there was a seven-year age gap between him and this body.
Finding out this body was even younger than I thought made my head spin.
Of course, I didn’t actually believe a word he said, but for now, I had to pretend to accept it.
“I’m not a baby…”
“You are a baby. You literally just turned twenty. But, Yuan.”
Yoon Seoho, who had been joking just a second ago, suddenly let his gaze turn incredibly cold.
“You shouldn’t call me ‘you,’ you should call me Seoho Hyung. Understand?”
“Ah, yeah. Seoho Hyung.”
The moment I immediately called him ‘Hyung,’ his freezing gaze dissolved back into a gentle look as if it had never happened.
In that brief split second, his volatile, two-faced nature had revealed itself and vanished.
The gentle, superficial front he was showing me right now was far from his true nature.
Yoon Seoho’s natural way of speaking was incredibly vulgar, and he viewed everyone besides himself as an inferior organism.
His already twisted personality had only worsened after manifesting as an S-rank Esper.
Handed an immensely powerful ability only to be given a literal time-bomb of a lifespan, he must have found the entire situation completely infuriating.
I didn’t know what Yoon Seoho wanted from the current me, but I could deduce at least one thing for certain: what he was doing right now was a textbook form of gaslighting.
It was glaringly obvious that he intended to constantly interfere with and control me from here on out to mold me into a compliant tool for his own convenience.
The behavior he had displayed just now gave me absolute certainty.
‘But why?’
There was absolutely no reason for Yoon Seoho to go through such a tedious, manual process.
He could easily just use his mental ability to place me under hypnosis.
Controlling and playing with human brains was as natural as breathing to him.
My tangled thoughts scattered wildly before snapping into place in an instant.
If that was the case, there was only one logical conclusion to draw: Yoon Seoho’s ability didn’t work on me.
‘Does this body possess some kind of secret?’
My brain felt like it was operating at an insanely fast speed, faster than ever before.
When I had first opened my eyes here and witnessed Yoon Seoho, I had been completely paralyzed by confusion, but that was no longer the case.
In this world where enemies were scattered in every direction, losing my focus for even a second meant certain death.
Dying a miserable death before I could even try to survive was something I absolutely refused to accept.
“You must have a lot of questions. Why don’t you take a look at this first?”
Pulling a document envelope out from his coat jacket—though I hadn’t noticed when he prepared it—Yoon Seoho handed it over to me.
I accepted it, pulled out the papers inside, and unfolded them.
The documents clearly stated the name ‘Seo Yuan’ with detailed personal background information written below it.
According to the files, Seo Yuan had been left at an orphanage at the age of one, spent his entire childhood there, and had his life completely turn around after luckily encountering a wealthy benefactor.
Thanks to this sponsor, he had studied abroad during his high school years before suddenly returning to South Korea midway through.
Normally, he would have returned after graduating from high school, but it appeared his return was pushed forward due to the eruption of the ‘First Gate Incident.’
“Just like it’s written there, that sponsor is my father. You and I have known each other since around that time.”
It lined up exactly with Yoon Seoho’s words.
The person who sponsored Seo Yuan was Yoon Seoho’s father, and due to that connection, it seemed Yoon Seoho and I had known each other for a long time—essentially living like close brothers.
‘But what if every single bit of this is a lie?’
The information Yoon Seoho was feeding me was merely coming from his own mouth.
Fabricating documents of this level was incredibly easy.
With the sheer wealth Yoon Seoho possessed, there was nothing he couldn’t achieve.
He had enough money to easily end someone’s life without ever dirtying his own hands, so forging a basic background file would be child’s play to him.
“Normally, you would have come back after graduating, Yuan, but it’s a real shame that terrible incident had to break out.”
As Yoon Seoho spoke, he led me back toward the living room from earlier.
He then picked up the remote control and pulled up a specific video on the massive TV screen.
The footage showed the very center of Seoul.
It displayed a normal urban landscape and citizens moving around, looking no different from the reality I originally belonged to.
However, in the middle of the broadcast, the large central fountain in the distance began to violently shudder before the ground suddenly collapsed completely inward.
Simultaneously, the earth began to cave in across multiple areas, triggering a massive earthquake.
While that alone was catastrophic, a massive black hole radiating an ominous, dark energy suddenly materialized out of thin air in the middle of the sky.
Immediately after, an overwhelming horde of bizarre, monstrous creatures began to pour out from the black hole, turning the entire region into an absolute living hell in an instant.
“A phenomenon you’d only ever see in a drama or a movie manifested right into reality. Unluckily enough.”
A flicker of irritation passed through Yoon Seoho’s eyes as he explained, only to vanish a split second later.
“What happened after that is exactly what you’d expect, Yuan. Monsters like that were pouring out everywhere—do you think mere humans could hold them off?”
“But they did hold them off, didn’t they? I noticed the buildings outside looked perfectly fine earlier…”
At my response, one corner of Yoon Seoho’s mouth hooked up crookedly.
“Right. They did manage to hold them off eventually. That’s because superhumans started popping up left and right.”
“Superhumans?”
“Yeah. People like you and me.”
Taking a step closer, Yoon Seoho peered into my eyes from a breath away. He stared as if confirming something, then straightened his posture with a satisfied hum.
“I’m… a superhuman?”
“Exactly.”
To think this body was an Esper. It was still entirely unbelievable.
Seeing the sheer disbelief written all over my face, Yoon Seoho gave a gentle smile.
“I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s the truth. I’ll prove it to you later, so why don’t you get some rest for today? I still have more to explain, but your head must be spinning right now. Isn’t that right?”
He placed his hand on my shoulder, applying a firm, deliberate downward pressure.
It didn’t hurt in the slightest, but the silent coercion behind it was loud and clear.
Following his script, I meekly nodded my head.
“Good. What a good boy.”
Isn’t this exactly how gaslighting always begins?
Yoon Seoho was acting precisely as I had anticipated.
