32.
“Oh, Hoyeon. It’s been a while.”
The man in the white coat looked like he had just walked out of memory—apart from some gray hair, he appeared largely unchanged from when Ryu Ho-yeon had last seen him. Researchers in the lab generally treated Ryu Ho-yeon kindly. This was only natural, as he was the only son of the Research Director, their direct superior. Among them, Dr. An, who was a college classmate of the Research Director, acted like a real uncle, always eager to slip candies or chocolates to Ryu Ho-yeon whenever they met.
So when Ryu Ho-yeon first learned how cruelly this seemingly kind and gentle man had treated Kim Jun-young and other ability users… it was completely incomprehensible.
“Jun-young, or should I say, esteemed Team Leader now? Or perhaps, former Director, old man?”
It seems the saying that the victim might sleep peacefully while the attacker can’t stretch out his legs in rest is all false. At Dr. An’s smooth greeting, Ryu Ho-yeon stepped forward, pressing his lips together tightly. His intention was to shield Kim Jun-young, but at barely 170 centimeters tall, there were physical limitations to how well he could cover him. Moreover, Kim Jun-young, now in his mid-thirties, had long since outgrown the teenage boy who trembled in fear of the pain that could come from a single word from the doctor.
“I don’t really care what you call me. It’s not like we’ll be seeing each other again anyway.”
The doctor took a fresh look at the elegant face smiling so casually. Though it wasn’t unexpected to see how the “lamb” had grown, as his appearance often appeared in media, seeing it with his own eyes gave him a peculiar feeling.
“True. I’ll call you whatever is convenient. I heard that Jun-young had an originally imprinted pair. What a shame. If I had known, I would have brought in that Guide too—what was his name, Lee Jung-hyuk? Ack!!”
Kim Jun-young, who had been tolerantly listening to the doctor’s words with a slight smile, could no longer endure when that precious name came from such unworthy lips. He immediately stretched out his hand. The doctor, weighing perhaps 70-80 kilograms, was lifted into the air with one hand gripping his throat, his face quickly turning red as he flailed his legs and moved his lips pathetically. The wrinkled hands scratching at Kim Jun-young’s hand and forearm were an ugly sight.
It would be satisfying to carry out the long-delayed revenge in this moment of anger, but he decided to release him obediently. There was no need to fixate on revenge for the past. The present was satisfying enough.
Like discarding a used object, he threw the doctor to the floor, making the aging body tremble pathetically while repeatedly coughing. Not amusingly at all, Dr. An seemed quite shocked. He apparently hadn’t expected that the young boy whose life could have been ended with just a gesture or word from him would now grab his throat and deliver such humiliation. He probably came out relying on the Research Director’s promise to back him up, though he couldn’t bring himself to tell that to Ryu Ho-yeon.
“Let’s skip the useless talk. There’s no need to waste each other’s time. Just answer our questions.”
Kim Jun-young gave a signal by patting Ryu Ho-yeon’s shoulder. Ryu Ho-yeon straightened his posture with a fairly resolute expression and took a deep breath. Kim Jun-young watched almost contemplatively, standing one step back. If Ryu Ho-yeon had been fifteen instead of twenty-five, he and Lee Jung-hyuk would have arranged things to resolve everything without Ryu Ho-yeon getting hurt, allowing him to pass through smoothly without knowing anything. But just as Kim Jun-young had grown, so had Ryu Ho-yeon. Growth is growth, even if it occurred in a vacuum.
Ryu Ho-yeon deserved the right to know matters that concerned him directly and to be hurt without reservation. As a true “senior” who had walked the winding path before him, the role Kim Jun-young could play was at most to moderate the level of intensity so that Ryu Ho-yeon, caught in a moment of passion, wouldn’t go too far astray.
By now, Lee Jung-hyuk would be meeting and talking with Choi Jae-won. Since Guides could better understand other Guides’ situations, and Espers could better understand other Espers’, they had decided to divide responsibilities this way.
When Kim Jun-young shared the information provided by Nam Su-min, the current chief researcher, Ryu Ho-yeon was indeed quite shocked. Though his outward expression remained impassive, his already pale face turned so blue it looked like he might fall over at any moment, clearly indicating his shock.
“Is it true? Doctor, did my Guide, Jae-won, really request the ability enhancement experiment from you first?”
This was after most of the facts had already been confirmed through Nam Su-min. As they say, even a stone bridge should be tested before crossing, so this visit to Dr. An was nothing more than a final verification before taking the last stepping stone.
Dr. An, still crouched on the floor catching his breath, let out a strange laugh, “Keuheuheu, heuheu.” As if he found it unbearably amusing that the reason these two S-class Espers—who could be called the entire power of the country in Park Woo-jun’s absence—had come to find him was merely to ask such a trivial question.
“Yes, kheuh, that’s right. Choi Jae-won requested it, and I accepted.”
“Why did you accept? I heard you moved between other research institutes just fine after leaving the Center. Someone of your caliber wouldn’t need money. So why bother?”
A lost resentment shot toward the doctor. It was true that Dr. An was a human of exceedingly low moral caliber by ethical standards, and the pain experienced by those who participated in his experiments was indeed tremendous. But if Choi Jae-won had requested the experiment first, the responsibility for this matter, if one had to assign it, lay with Choi Jae-won rather than Dr. An.
But if one were to trace the cause and effect further, the root cause that drove Choi Jae-won to make such a decision was…
“There was no particular reason to refuse. And I wouldn’t get another opportunity to return to the Center without any hindrance.”
“But…”
“But Hoyeon. Do you really not know, or are you pretending not to know? No matter how much Choi Jae-won and I might want it, nothing could happen without your mother’s permission.”
It had always been Ryu Ho-yeon himself.
“Have you really never wondered? You’re both S-class Espers, but you’re the rarer case, you’ve been in this Center longer… Why was Kim Jun-young my research subject instead of you?”
“!!”
“Originally, the one I really wanted to put on my examination table was you. Not Kim Jun-young, not Choi Jae-won, but you. The materialization S-class Ryu Ho-yeon, the only one on the entire planet!”
Even Kim Jun-young, who had stepped back to observe the situation, seemed shocked by this.
Previously, Lee Jung-hyuk had separately asked the Research Director about this. He had asked if the Director knew about Dr. An’s actions and had turned a blind eye to them, but he heard the Director had emphatically denied this, jumping up in protest.
“When you were the only S-class, the higher-ups would never allow you to be an experimental subject no matter how much I wanted it. They said, ‘We only have one precious S-class, what if it breaks before we can properly use it?’ But then Kim Jun-young came in. The higher-ups didn’t explicitly refuse my repeated requests. It was an implicit approval.”
According to what Lee Jung-hyuk had relayed, the Research Director had strongly denied the allegations, saying that she would never have just stood by and allowed such illegal experiments on Espers, especially when it was clear who the next target would be after Kim Jun-young, given they were both S-class.
But if what the doctor was saying now was true, her denial was nothing more than an excuse to save face.
“Deciding which of you to put on my examination table was quite thrilling and enjoyable, even looking back now. At that time, Kim Jun-young was not yet officially admitted, and you were staying in the research lab. I decided to explore the body of the closer, rarer, and stronger Esper! With that in mind, I first collected your blood and hair samples, but goodness, I had never seen Director Ryu have such a fit before.”
Dr. An chuckled emptily, saying he’d never seen the Director raise her voice so much in the nearly thirty years he’d known her since their freshman year in college. The two Espers, Kim Jun-young and Ryu Ho-yeon, held their breath deeply, catching every word the doctor continued to say. It felt like their insides were dropping in a way that seemed to embody the phrase “mixed emotions.”
“Director Ryu immediately handed Kim Jun-young over to me. She said she didn’t know anything about it, to do as I pleased while drawing a line. Whether I killed that Esper or not, I could do as I wished, but under no circumstances was I to harm even a single hair on her precious son!”
“Ha…”
“That’s all I can tell you. Now then… don’t you have someone else to visit?”
Dr. An, who had inherited the wisdom of a serpent and a cunning tongue, sneered with an exaggerated tone. The discarded old man still looked terrible, but now there was no one left in this research lab who could look down on him.
