Chapter 5
‘Hey, Connor.’
When he turned his head toward the sound, boys with blue eyes were standing there. Among them was Hailton, who had awakened as an esper a few days earlier. He was so big he did not look his age.
Thick desire flashed in the eyes of Hailton and his group. Like beasts eyeing prey, they slowly closed the distance.
It happened in an instant. The lust of adolescent boys piled up day by day, and his relatively fine-lined, androgynous appearance always became the sacrifice.
Even though he received combat training steadily, he had no way to block several of them rushing him at once. He swung his fists and struggled as much as he could, but in the end he was thrown into a hut piled with supplies.
Baek Jin’s clothes tore more and more and other people’s hands touched his bare skin. When he had fallen to the floor half stripped, the snow he felt against his skin was too cold.
Rough hands roamed over his whole body, but he felt little against his frozen skin. His chest, where a tongue touched, went cold at once, and a penis rubbed roughly against his face only wounded his dry cheek.
He had known something like this would happen someday. There was more than one or two of them who shook their penises while watching him sleep in the dormitory, and he had long since noticed the gazes that had been stealing looks at him turn blatant.
His hand, torn from swinging his fists, stung. More than wanting to escape this situation, he first wanted to melt his frozen skin. The rough breaths mixed with desire melted his skin little by little, but it was not enough to thaw his frozen body. What I want is……
Ah, right. Wouldn’t I need a fire hot enough to melt everything at once?
That was when it happened. His whole body grew hot, and the snow touching his back began to melt. Every time he moved his body, dirt and snow mixed and made a squelching sound.
‘This bastard is turned on, too! His whole body is hot.’
‘Connor, was this your taste? Should we fuck you like this from now on, too?’
‘Haha! You whore bastard! Are we really your first?’
He stared quietly at their snickering faces. Not wanting to see those filthily grinning faces, he pictured in his head Hailton’s face being covered in fire.
Tak, tak. The sound of fire catching on firewood rang by his ears. Had someone else come? When he turned his head to the side, a small flame at the tip of his finger repeatedly flared up and went out, as if announcing its existence.
He knew instinctively. This fire was a part of him, and he had made it. The fire, hot beyond warm, slowly burned his own index finger. Meeting the cold winter wind, the fire grew in an instant and filled his palm.
‘Hailton.’
Hailton, perhaps thinking Baek Jin was calling his name while feeling his touch, ravished his chest even more unrestrainedly, but at the shouts of the two people waiting for their turn, he raised his head.
‘W, what are you doing!’
‘Put the fire out, now!’
In an instant, fire caught on Hailton’s face. Just as he had imagined in his head. He hurriedly buried his face in the piled snow, but far from dying down, the fire only grew bigger and bigger.
‘Hot, it’s hot! Save me! Chris, water, bring water!’
Before long the fire spread over his whole body. To the two people who tried to help Hailton as he crawled on the floor, unable to come to his senses from the heat, the fire spread as well.
‘Ah, ah! Aaaah!’
‘Save me, please save me!’
At the three people’s screams, the surroundings quickly grew noisy. People gathered and put out the fire, but the fire did not go out easily.
Only now did his ice-cold body melt. His body, wearing only underwear, watched the figures burning with a crackling sound, not even feeling the cold.
His head dropped limply. Tears fell plop, plop and wet the floor. He had thought he no longer knew how to cry, but perhaps his tears had been frozen by the harsh cold.
Only after the fire, which had blazed as if to swallow the mountain, went out did complete darkness come to the dormitory.
This day was both the day Baek Jin came to have an ability, and the day he committed his first murder.
***
“Name, Baek Jin. Age 22. He lived in an orphanage from birth, then was adopted overseas to Canada.” He opened by reciting the personal information found through fingerprints and a blood test. On the screen, Baek Jin’s birth registration and overseas adoption registration were placed side by side.
Kim Seong-jae, section chief of Division 4 of the Intelligence and Security Bureau of the Special Power Management Bureau, pushed up his glasses and continued the report.
“In Canada he has been processed as dead, and there is a high probability that the parents who judged he had no possibility of awakening sold him off as a mercenary.”
From the moment the number of awakened became an indicator of a great power, overseas adoption boomed in English-speaking countries. Because of that, the crime of bringing in young children, raising the family if they luckily awakened, and selling them off if they did not awaken, ran rampant. Only now did the pieces fit together one by one. So that was how a Korean had become a foreign mercenary.
“After awakening in Canada, he lived as a Russian mercenary?”
“That is correct. After administering a truth serum we tried to induce conversation, but there were no signs he came for a terrorist purpose. Since coming to his senses, he seems to be in great shock at the fact that he was abandoned, and he is refusing conversation.” Seo Young-woo stared at the photograph of the child that came with the document. He was scrawny, then and now, to the point that it actually made him easier to recognize.
The child in the photograph had a face so pretty he could be mistaken for a girl. Perhaps he had liked having his picture taken, for light sparkled in his large eyes. What on earth had he gone through after the adoption, that his now empty eyes were no different from a living corpse.
At the continuing meeting, Seo Young-woo rubbed his tired face. He had been attending meetings for days, from having stopped Baek Jin’s rampage to being the only one whose guiding worked on him. Even if he was S-rank, fatigue had built up because recently he had not rested properly for a single day.
Right at that moment, a scream and an explosion sounded. When he raised his head, a video of Baek Jin was playing on the screen. The number of variants he had faced alone was enormous. Judged on skill alone, he could produce good results if he were only put into the field right away.
Among them, what stood out by far was his ability to handle fire. Usually, even when using an ability, it is mainly used for attack and defense, but Baek Jin used the difficult technique of changing the shape of fire, and he also moved freely through space.
“Not only his ability, his close-combat skill is also excellent. He devises new tactics according to the form of the variant, but he does not seem to have the concept that civilians must be protected first. The next video is from right before Baek Jin’s rampage.”
The meeting room lights went out and the video played on the screen that filled the wall. Everyone turned their gazes to the battle scene.
The variant in the form of a lizard ran around here and there in the building and threatened civilians.
Baek Jin created fire at his fingertips. The small ember filled his palm in an instant, and poured straight down over the lizard. But an ember that fell behind caught on the building and led to a fire.
In the video, an explosion sounded again and sirens wailed noisily. With children’s screams, below the shopping center, the lizard’s mother was running fast toward her own young, burned pitch black.
They often watched videos related to the field, but when children were in danger, everyone frowned and sighed. Children who, not knowing there was a variant below, opened a window and stuck their hands outside. At the sight of the children bursting into tears until their faces turned bright red, some turned their heads away.
Baek Jin stepped back a few steps, then quickly threw his body forward. When his worn military boots touched the wall, he used the rebound to leap in again and raised flames. As he left the children behind and began attacking the variant, the soldiers who had arrived after receiving the rescue call also began firing.
The bullets lodged in the lizard’s body lodged one by one in Baek Jin’s body, too. Flesh burst and blood spurted, but he made fire sharp like a spear and aimed at the lizard’s face and vital points. The situation ended in a moment, and then fire covered his whole body.
“After that, there was testimony that, whether he lost consciousness, there was an attack on allies. That is all.” The screen went off, and the lights in the meeting room came back on. The Director, perhaps lost in thought, tapped the wooden desk with his fingertips.
“What does Team Leader Seo Young-woo think?”
Perhaps not expecting a question to come to him, Seo Young-woo straightened his posture and answered.
“I think he is good power. At the time, even an A-rank esper said it was tricky to deal with Baek Jin. However, there seem to be some risk factors, so correction looks necessary.” Seo Young-woo calmly said what he had felt.
“Then send him to Team Leader Seo’s team and manage him.”
“……Did I hear wrong?”
“Remove the risk factors after correction. Get the mercenary completely out of him and put him straight into the field.” As if the decision was over, Director Gwak tore the mercenary documents horizontally. Everyone added a word, saying it was too dangerous, but the Director glared at them with a ferocious look in his eyes.
“Do you want to make this into an international problem over one mere young kid? What is the problem. You said Team Leader Seo’s guiding works on him. Take charge of him exclusively and do it, and from now on Division 4 of the Intelligence and Security Bureau will monitor Baek Jin thoroughly.
“If he does anything suspicious, detain him at once. If he attacks allies, killing him is also permitted. That is all.” Gwak Heon-jae, who before gates appeared had been so influential he was mentioned for Minister of National Defense, was in a state where his pride was completely trampled by the National Assembly members who ran wild every other day. To the point that he chose to take a risk rather than give them prey. In other countries the Special Power Management Bureau was kept as a separate agency and could not even be touched, but in the Republic of Korea in particular it was an agency that could not exert power, so what could he do.
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