Chapter 8
Just then, the lights came on completely and a red siren lit the interior. Park Jin-wook, who had belatedly checked inside, seemed to have requested emergency support. Baek Jin could not hide his bewilderment. Fear seeped into his trembling eyes.
But Seo Young-woo lifted Baek Jin just as he was and slung him over his shoulder. He set the struggling man down on the bed and pulled hard on the arm of him as he tried to flee.
“Ooh!”
“Stay still. Who told you to cut loose at sleeping time instead of sleeping, huh?”
Blood still dripped from Baek Jin’s hand, which was gripping his fist. Seo Young-woo forcibly spread his fingers and checked the time on his watch. If soldiers rushed in within five minutes, there was a high chance he would be subdued without his wound being treated.
Seo Young-woo brought Baek Jin’s wounded palm to his own lips. As if he could not understand this situation, Baek Jin’s stiffened body, unlike a moment ago when he had struggled and caused a disturbance, no longer moved.
Not missing the moment, he pressed his lips closer. The smell of blood rushed in. Perhaps because he had not smelled it in a while, the smell of blood felt even stronger.
“Wha, what……”
Baek Jin, who came to his senses belatedly, tried hurriedly to pull his hand away, but the grip holding his wrist was so strong it did not budge.
Baek Jin could not take his eyes off the face half covered by his own hand. His thick eyebrows were crumpled and his sharp eyes were staring straight through him.
Soon, the pain he had felt in his palm gradually subsided. It was guiding. The man was guiding him while licking his wound.
The strong force he had felt at his wrist gradually loosened, and the palm that had been touching the lips also fell away. The deeply cut wound was now almost healed, to the point that only a scratch remained. The wound had healed. At the fact that he had received guiding in an instant, his head went white.
He slowly raised his gaze, which had stayed on his palm, and looked at the man. The man’s face was a mess with the blood smeared on his lips and the corners of his mouth, but as if he did not care, he wiped it away with his thumb.
“You are always being carried in, it is a big problem.”
The man shook his head and raised his hand. Even knowing the rising hand would come down over his face, his body did not avoid it.
But the hand rose lightly, not to his cheek, but on top of his head. Then the large hand mussed Baek Jin’s hair. The glass he had driven in was still stuck in that arm, and blood dripped from it.
Looking at the young man who had frozen at some point, Seo Young-woo raised the corners of his mouth and smiled.
Just then, the closed door opened and soldiers poured in. Even in the moment he was subdued, Baek Jin could not take his eyes off him.
***
“You are a guide, not an esper! It is not like when you receive guiding your body just gets all healed, and such!”
Park Jin-wook’s irritation-mixed nagging was heard from behind.
“What can I do. If I make a mistake, he could die.” Looking in a mirror and raising his neck, Seo Young-woo answered indifferently while putting a band on his neck.
“Still! Are you guiding in a situation like that?”
“I have to do it anyway. Whether I do it now, or do it later.” He talked back well in a calm voice. Earnestly fighting a young kid was funny, too. A wound of this degree was something he lived with, so he treated his torn forearm as if it were nothing.
“He is a kid.”
“What do you mean, a kid.”
He is the same age as Ji-hun. He is a kid, right.
If Baek Jin had rushed him with the intention of killing him from the start, he would have subdued him at once. But there had been no killing intent could be felt from him, and besides, abandoned by his homeland and left with nowhere to go, it was only natural that he was not in his right mind.
“You are too soft on kids.”
Treating the nagging that followed like a radio playing in the background, Seo Young-woo only lifted his head after he had even put a wound-closure bandage on the skin, which had torn longer than he had expected.
“If anything, I was relieved he came at me like that. The psychological exam showed he is lacking a lot emotionally. I wondered if he might be, what, a psychopath or something.”
Watching Jin-wook shake his head, Young-woo shrugged. If Jin-wook had seen Baek Jin’s precarious face, he would probably have felt differently. Baek Jin quickly hid the fear that flashed across his face moment by moment, as if he were deliberately suppressing his emotions.
“Other than that, I do not know, but one thing I do know. Seo Young-woo, that Baek Jin bastard is really tenacious. How did he pick out only the sleeping pills and not take them?”
“Well, his life as a mercenary probably was not short.” Seo Young-woo tapped the table with his fingertips, looking into empty space as if lost in thought.
Where his gaze was directed was the bed where Baek Jin had been lying a dozen minutes earlier. Where had he gotten the glass, and how had he been able to filter out only the sleeping pills from the medicine he was taking…
Judging by Baek Jin’s actions alone, with a single word from Seo Young-woo, he could have him put straight into the awakened-only prison inside the Bureau. Not only that. An S-rank guide was an asset not only of the Bureau but of the country, so attacking one brought great calamity down on the attacker. It was a situation where punishment was possible right now.
“Anyway, I cannot let this slide, Young-woo.”
At the firm voice, Seo Young-woo rose from his seat and headed to Jin-wook’s seat. One of the six monitors was the CCTV watching the inside of the room. He moved the mouse once to find the cursor and soon found the CCTV program. Finding the automatically saved file, Seo Young-woo dragged diagonally across the video stamped with the date and time.
“Hey, hey! What are you doing!”
Jin-wook, who belatedly caught the suspicious action, hurried over to the monitor. But Seo Young-woo, already in front of the computer, moved even faster. Knowing better than anyone that, for security reasons, a file deleted on a research lab computer could never be recovered, he pressed the delete button with his long fingers and emptied the trash completely as well.
“This crazy…”
Jin-wook, who arrived one step late, tore at his own hair. Blinking stupidly, he turned his head and glared at Young-woo.
But Seo Young-woo only smiled calmly, as if nothing had happened.
“Hey, you crazy bastard.”
Park Jin-wook hurriedly grabbed the mouse and searched for the file. Even if Seo Young-woo got past it, he himself had now deliberately deleted a video in his own research lab, so he had become an accomplice.
“Baek Jin should be confined. Even if he is young, this is not right, Young-woo. Did you not see how dangerous he was just today? He tried to kill you. Russia must have had good reason to abandon him.”
“So should I abandon him too?”
At the irritable voice, Seo Young-woo raised only his eyes to look at Jin-wook. When he erased his smile, his sharp impression was revealed.
“At the last gate, Baek Jin faced nearly half the variants alone. And with a body that even has guiding rejection syndrome! They received help from a kid who fought knowing he could go on a rampage, and without thinking of that, without even giving him a chance, is locking him straight up the right thing to do?”
“No matter what, it would be better if a kid like that did not exist!”
“Think about it. He risked his life working, and his homeland abandoned him. On top of that, he was tortured on suspicion of being a spy. If it were you, sunbae, could you bear it without going crazy?”
Judging by emotion alone, was Baek Jin not on the quiet side? If it had been him, he would have gone crazy long ago and smashed everything to pieces and more.
Ordinary people were too much. Sometimes it seemed they thought awakened were disposable items. “…”
“Even though when they need them, they try to use them somehow.”
At the sharp point, Jin-wook clamped his mouth shut and turned his head away.
“I know Baek Jin is dangerous. But we can give him a small chance at least. If he is rehabilitated, that would be fortunate.”
Knock, knock.
Just then, a knock sounded on the research lab door. It was probably the soldiers who had come to check the circumstances of the incident. Seo Young-woo, who rose from his seat, looked at Jin-wook, still stiff, and patted his shoulder.
“If it does not work out, you can kill him then.”
***
“Stop here.”
The blindfold he had been wearing the whole time he was moved was roughly taken off. At the light that suddenly came in, Baek Jin squinted and looked around.
It was not the place he had been staying until now. In the corridor-like place, the beige-painted walls were the first thing that caught his eye. Then, when he turned his gaze toward where a clanking sound was coming from, a man was opening the bolts installed on a door one by one.
Locking devices had been installed so that he could not get out unless they were opened from outside. There were three iron bolts alone, and instead of a common door lock, a large padlock hung there.
Baek Jin stared without agitation at the place he had to enter. If there was anything he hoped for, it was only that he hoped the bathroom was inside. When he had lived as a mercenary in Russia, the quarters had been so poor that he had often gotten skin diseases, so it had been better, in a way, when he was wearing a straitjacket.
Even the last locking device was opened. The security bureau staffer shoved Baek Jin hard in the back and sent him inside.
At the words of the security bureau staffer standing behind him, he held out his two handcuffed hands.
“First is quiet, second is also quiet. Know that if you make a fuss, you will be cuffed again.” “…”
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