Woo-chan followed Han-gyeom’s gaze and glared at Seo Won. Despite the fact that other Espers were likely stationed outside, Seo Won’s appearance was neat and unscathed—not a single scratch on him.
Did they fail to even stall him?
They had always prided themselves on being advanced Espers with diverse abilities, yet it seemed they couldn’t even properly slow down an S-rank Esper.
This situation was turning for the worse.
They did have a black cube on hand for occasions that required a group evacuation. However, in order to use it for teleportation, each person needed to willingly think, “I agree to move.” If even one person didn’t consent—or if their consent couldn’t be verified—then only those who agreed would be teleported.
Judging by the current situation, it was clear that Cha Han-gyeom would never agree to move.
“Han-gyeom, how about we move to another place and talk this over?”
“No. So let go already. That hurts.”
As expected, the answer came without hesitation. Han-gyeom even twisted his arm and scowled, trying to wrench free from Woo-chan’s firm grip.
Woo-chan let out a troubled sigh.
Even if they used the cube to escape, Han-gyeom would be left behind in this place.
Guess I have no choice.
There was no way he could just hand over Cha Han-gyeom—who had finally left the mansion—to Seo Won. If that was the case, then he would have to make him agree to move, even if it meant forcing his hand.
Still in place, Woo-chan gently tapped his heel on the ground—twice—using the back of his shoe.
Suddenly, from the far back of the room where old, long benches were lined up—near where Song Jae-woo was sitting—a cracking noise began to echo.
“Gah!”
Startled by the noise coming from all around him, Song Jae-woo sharply inhaled. He leapt to his feet, panic-stricken, just as something suddenly burst forth from the floor beneath him.
“Uwaaah!”
Thick tree roots shot out in a wide circle, surrounding Song Jae-woo and writhing toward him with a serpentine grace, like tentacles. In an instant, the sturdy, sinewy roots coiled around his legs and arms, binding him in place.
“Wh-What the hell is this?! Woo-chan hyung!”
Jae-woo squirmed and thrashed against the unmoving grip, shouting for Woo-chan. But Kang Woo-chan didn’t even glance in his direction—instead, his eyes remained fixed solely on Han-gyeom’s.
“You really have a thing for hostage-taking, don’t you? You’d think you’d be tired of it by now.”
Though he spoke with sarcastic nonchalance, there was a flicker of unease in Han-gyeom’s eyes.
Woo-chan didn’t care if he looked utterly despicable to Han-gyeom.
All that mattered was getting Cha Han-gyeom out of here.
To free him completely from Seo Won’s grasp—that was the only way they could even begin to console themselves for failing to save everyone at the Fourth Ability Analysis Research Facility.
So he could never give up.
Not for Han-gyeom’s sake—but for their own.
“If you just come with me, I won’t lay a finger on Song Jae-woo.”
“Don’t act like some third-rate kidnapper. You’ll just use Jae-woo as leverage again the moment I don’t do what you want, won’t you?”
“What I want is a real conversation.”
“Then what were we doing just now? Wasn’t that enough talking already?”
Han-gyeom fired back without backing down, his hostility toward Woo-chan unmistakably genuine.
“Why won’t you try to understand?”
Woo-chan pressed him, his voice thick with frustration.
“Do you know how happy we were when we found out you’d survived the Fourth Research Facility—the place we thought was completely wiped out? It felt like we’d finally gotten a lost brother back.”
He clenched Han-gyeom’s arm so tightly it seemed like it might snap, grinding his teeth.
“I know better than anyone how much pain you must’ve been in. You had to watch an Imprinted go berserk and slaughter the other children—kids who were just like you. How could that not have broken you? In the middle of all that chaos, you must have cried your heart out.”
The overwhelming traces of the rampage left behind at the Fourth Ability Analysis Research Facility were still seared into Woo-chan’s memory. It was the moment everything crumbled—his vow to rescue every test subject after escaping the First Research Facility had been shattered.
That was why, at the very least, he had resolved to eliminate the true culprits responsible for that incident and for pushing things to the brink—so that the dead children wouldn’t have died in vain. It was the only way to ease the festering guilt lodged deep inside him.
Woo-chan had believed Han-gyeom felt the same.
That’s why, as someone who now led a group of Ability Users from the research facility, he had decided to step forward—so Han-gyeom wouldn’t have to. All he wanted was for Han-gyeom to live freely.
“You have to live for their sake. For the children who never got to experience freedom—you should be the one to have it. Who else is going to, if not you? We’re trying to set you free, Han-gyeom. For that, I’ll do anything—”
“I think you’re misunderstanding something.”
Han-gyeom looked up, swallowing the pain in his arm. His gaze turned dark.
“Those test subject Ability Users you think so fondly of—I’m the one who killed them.”
A hollow smirk twisted on Han-gyeom’s lips as a murky shadow clouded his eyes.
“I made Yeon-woo hyung go berserk. I made him kill them all.”
A soft giggle slipped from him—sharp and devilish.
“When Yeon-woo hyung tore everyone to shreds in that frenzy… I laughed. For the first time in my life, I laughed so hard I lost my voice.”
As Han-gyeom chuckled faintly, the strength in Woo-chan’s grip began to drain away. His eyes trembled, filled with disbelief.
“Why…? They were just like you.”
“That’s where you got it all wrong.”
Han-gyeom violently yanked his arm free from Woo-chan’s weakening grasp, his face contorted with rage, eyes blazing.
“Shared pain? Don’t make me laugh. Sure, we were all thrown into experiments like cattle. But it’s not like we all went through the same experiments, is it?”
Breathing hard, Han-gyeom gripped his chest as if he wanted to tear it apart.
“Do you have any idea what I went through in there? Every Esper—except for Yeon-woo hyung—treated me like a toy they could break whenever they felt like it. Every. Single. Day.”
It felt like his heart was going to burst. Once the hellish memories started surfacing, they ravaged his entire body and tore through his mind like a storm.
“If you know about my seizures, then you probably know the cause too. My internal organs—they’re rotting away. But do you really think the researchers were the ones who did that? I was the only Guide in that entire facility. Would they really do something that reckless to their one and only Guide?”
“Then…”
Woo-chan’s eyes trembled endlessly in the face of the overwhelming fury radiating from Han-gyeom.
There were no records left that described the exact nature of the experiments conducted on Cha Han-gyeom and the other test subject Ability Users in the Fourth Ability Analysis Research Facility.
The facility had operated under an extremely secretive system. Aside from a select few among the upper echelons of the Esper Association, most didn’t even know it existed. And even those who did know seemed to have only vague knowledge of the experiments carried out there.
Naturally, he had assumed the experiments were no different from those conducted at Facilities One through Three—harsh, inhumane trials that followed the same cruel template. Even if the details varied, surely the methods were the same.
But he’d been wrong from the very beginning.
“The Espers were always the victims, weren’t they? To them, I was just a toy—something to make them feel better.”
Espers, used mercilessly by researchers, would cry out in pain and run to Han-gyeom. There were experiments done in the name of developing Guiding, but none of them ever tried to understand what he was going through. They didn’t want to.
Only their pain mattered.
Their suffering, their wounds, their sorrow—that’s all that mattered.
And in that place, the only one who could take all that pain away was Cha Han-gyeom.
So they treated his cries of agony as if they were a sweet lullaby. His desperate thrashing was nothing more than a game. The more his face twisted in pain, the more joy the Espers found. They laughed, endlessly, delighted by their own relief at the cost of his torment.
They were both victims—and perpetrators.
And that facility was filled with bystanders.
“To me, the researchers were nothing more than repairmen. Just some technicians who patched me up so the toy could keep working a little longer.”
It took him a long time to realize it.
The experiments they conducted on him weren’t meant to enhance him into a high-performance S-rank Guide.
They just wanted a toy they could break and fix over and over again.
“And now you’re telling me… to live for those Espers…”
Urgh…
The suffocating darkness engulfing his entire body began to gnaw away at Han-gyeom’s mind. Laughter—countless voices of Espers—echoed inside his skull, surrounding him. It felt like a thousand eyes were watching him from every direction. His heart pounded like it would explode, and he could feel grotesque hands crawling all over his insides, clinging to his organs.
“Huh… hrrk…”
Something was wrong.
Unlike his usual seizures, there was no stabbing pain in his guts, no tickle in his throat that made him want to cough.
His mind was a complete wreck—so scrambled he couldn’t form a single coherent thought. It was like he had forgotten how to breathe, and his lungs refused to function.
And then, what filled his head was the scene from five years ago—the day of the rampage.
—Fi…nally… you… laughed…
In the storm that shredded countless bodies, Han-gyeom, at some point, had begun to laugh—so hard his voice went hoarse.
The curve of Song Yeon-woo’s mouth—transformed into a blackened monster—had arched into the same twisted smile Han-gyeom wore that day.
—Just like I promised… I’ll kill them all… every last one… not a single one left…
In the midst of those agonized screams, the monster’s voice wrapped around Han-gyeom, as if to embrace him.
