“An Elder!”
I instinctively stepped back.
It was terrifying enough just to run into one randomly, after all. I had already confronted a different Elder not long ago. Now this Elder popped up out of nowhere, saying, “Found you.”
“I’m dood.”
I glanced around. Was there anyone who could help here? Definitely not. This wasn’t the Academy. It was an ordinary street. No Ma Hakjun who had fended off Kwak Hyuk, no Han Jiyoon who had fought an Elder. I was on my own, so I had to figure out how to escape.
“How, though?”
My Unique Examiner trait hadn’t activated. Even if it did, I knew I could never beat her. I might manage a few attempts at resistance, like with Kwak Hyuk, but that was all.
“So you’re the one that gloomy guy said was entertaining, the so-called Examiner.”
Hyeon Sujin stared at with chilling eyes. I felt an overwhelming urge to turn and bolt.
I held back because my instincts warned that would end in disaster.
“Don’t bother looking around.”
She must have noticed checking the area for help. I sighed, and she said:
“I’m not here to draw blood, so you can stop worrying about anyone else.”
That was a strange thing to say. I’d been searching for potential help, not worrying about random people. It was ridiculous to hear that from the one who attacked the Academy recently and killed dozens of innocents.
She was acting like it was no big deal, saying she didn’t co to spill blood. I wanted to question if she was joking, but:
“If you don’t pay attention, I can start wrecking the area. You probably don’t want to see bodies rolling around. Let’s stand here a mont and pretend nothing is happening.”
She seed to want a conversation, so I decided to go along. If a fight broke out, I’d be finished, and I couldn’t stand the thought of the bystanders getting hurt because of .
“Well?”
“What do you want?”
“I have sothing to ask.”
She took a step closer. It felt like death was slowly approaching.
“Who are you?”
Everyone kept asking sothing along those lines lately, but I only had one reply.
“I’m a rank-nine civil servant. I’m also an examiner dispatched to the Academy.”
She blinked a couple of tis, then smirked. Her smile gave off a bad vibe.
“You have a weird way of saying you don’t want to talk.”
I moved abruptly to the right. I didn’t know why. My body just moved on its own.
Seeing that, she eyed strangely.
“Hey, you…”
She paused mid-sentence and snapped her head around, focusing on a spot in the distance. She clicked her tongue.
“Your senses are annoyingly sharp. That crazy woman is here, obviously.”
She looked back at , sounding more urgent than before.
“Fine. I’ll ask again. Are you going to keep living like this?”
“Pardon?”
“Are you planning to keep bowing your head, submitting, and caving in to everything?”
What in the world was she talking about? She was a villain, and not just any villain but an Elder, standing right in front of . She wanted to know if I was satisfied with my life? This sounded like a recruitnt pitch.
The Elders might indeed have found interesting. I had survived a face-off with Kwak Hyuk, so that made sense.
“I’ll admit that there was a ti I wondered if this life was right for .”
That part was a bit true. Working as a civil servant had been rough.
I still rembered the ti a citizen filed a complaint because I spoke casually to a four-year-old child. I was supposed to use polite speech even with kids. It was so ridiculous that I sotis got nervous speaking informally to anyone.
“You really thought it was wrong? Honestly?”
Her gaze sharpened. She might have thought I was showing interest in a villain’s lifestyle, that I might join her, or that I might be an entertaining subordinate.
I would never beco a villain. It wasn’t only because I believed in justice. I also knew from the novel’s future that villains were a bad bet. They would lose in the end. Why invest in a stock when you knew it would crash? I had no desire to jump into the river.
“Still, I realized that wasn’t for .”
She could go do her villain thing without . She would figure out why I refused in about a year.
She watched silently, giving off the vibe that she had plenty left to say but was holding back. Her lips even parted for a mont.
“Next ti. We’ll talk next ti.”
“Wait, what?”
That was all. She vanished into thin air as if she had only been a shadow swallowed by light, leaving not the slightest trace behind.
I stood there, dazed, thinking, “What the heck was that?”
“Wow. A good-looking guy, but obviously single?”
I lifted my head to see a woman in a black uniform perched atop a streetlamp. She had an unpredictable vibe and was even stronger than soone like Lee Hyunwoo. She was a powerhouse.
“Irina?”
“Yes. That’s . Tada!”
She hopped down and strode toward . She scanned the area and clicked her tongue.
“Say, did you see a strange woman around here?”
“A strange woman?”
“Yes. Creepy, disturbing, less pretty than , chubbier than , weaker than .”
Irina was an upper-tier S-rank superhuman. She must have sensed Elder Hyeon Sujin’s presence and followed her here. The Elder found , and Irina found the Elder. I had no idea how to respond.
Being honest was probably best, but what if Irina had seen chatting quietly with Hyeon Sujin? She might beco suspicious. An Elder-level villain showed up and left peacefully after a chat? People would say, “That guy’s fishy.”
If you have any ties to a villain, you get investigated right away. Ties to an Elder? You get dragged in for a lot more than a simple interview. All I had done was reject a recruitnt offer, yet I could be suspected of being a villain.
'Nobody in their right mind would just tell her everything.'
If it had been Han Jiyoon in front of , I might have confessed. This was Irina, though, and she was known to be as fearso as any villain. I worried she might grin and say, “So you were hanging out with an Elder, handso oppa?” and then smash my head.
I made my decision. I blended truth and lies.
“A woman? I did bump into soone just a mont ago. She cursed at when I apologized. That’s it.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Hmm... co to think of it, she did have so strange aura about her.”
I admitted it was possible I had encountered her by chance, with no deeper purpose. A random brush on the street.
“Hmm.”
Irina tapped her chin, thinking. That made anxious, but I pretended to stay calm.
“Handso oppa.”
“My na is Baek Seojin.”
“Sure, Handso oppa. You do seem to attract weird people. Maybe it’s so main-character pheromone?”
Hey, if you put it that way, that ans you’re one of those ‘weird people’ yourself, doesn’t it?
“Yesterday, I went undercover in the nightlife district to hunt down so villain underlings.”
“You must’ve had a rough ti.”
“Thanks. Anyway, while I was there, your na suddenly popped up. Sothing about setting a trap, framing soone for sexual assault, and ruining them socially.”
What was that supposed to an? A trap? Sexual assault? Social ruin?
“?”
“Yeah, Handso oppa. They were talking about you, Baek Seojin.”
“What in the world…?”
“I was curious too, so I looked into it. How did I do that? Quickly and effectively. I asked those guys in person. Gave them a little ‘pat,’ and they sang like canaries.”
Irina demonstrated by lightly clenching her fist.
“Shake hands with ‘conversation.’ Our ‘conversation’ solves everything quite nicely!”
…So the villains were right. She really was out of her mind.
*
Sss—
Shadows gathered, then scattered, until they ford a human shape.
“Hoo.”
Hyeon Sujin steadied her breathing and dropped down in a random spot.
She almost ran face-to-face into that crazy blonde. Even she found Irina too troubleso to handle.
‘I needed more ti to talk.’
Once you headed sowhere, Irina kept an eye on that spot in an almost alarming way. That ant eting with that man, “Baek Seojin,” again would be very difficult.
‘He really wasn’t ordinary.’
When he gave that seemingly evasive answer earlier, she had unconsciously activated her ability. It was a power that crept in without sound or presence, an extrely stealthy shadow.
Yet Baek Seojin accurately noticed which direction it ca from and even began to move away.
He wasn’t just any random guy. He had survived Kwak Hyuk’s spear after all. Hyeon Sujin had no choice but to concede that he hadn’t made it through by luck.
‘There’s a real chance he might be connected to that lab.’
She’d asked if he planned to go on living like that, being tossed aside yet still doing as he was told. He had answered bitterly that there was no other choice.
“Isn’t that how it is, Sujin? This is why I… we… ended up here.”
She breathed out in slow gasps, recalling soone who used to smile like that.
Clench—
Hyeon Sujin bit her lip so hard that blood trickled down.
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