The old man quietly looked at Tae-soo, then nodded his head.
“Alright. Won is waiting in the next room, so don’t keep him too long.”
“Understood.”
Tae-soo replied brightly, pulling Han-gyeom closer as he spoke.
“Close your eyes for a second.”
“What the…”
Han-gyeom, who was about to be dragged away by a strange man against his will, looked at the old man with bewildered eyes. Tae-soo, standing behind him, couldn’t see it, but Han-gyeom clearly saw the old man’s lips move.
‘Be careful.’
At the same moment he confirmed the short warning, darkness instantly enveloped his vision. It felt as if all the light in the world had been extinguished. Along with that, a profound silence fell, making him feel suddenly scared.
He blinked his eyes several times as he faced the darkness.
Suddenly, his vision changed. He felt as if everything in front of him was spinning rapidly, and at the same time, light and color poured in all at once.
“Ugh!”
Han-gyeom covered his eyes with his hands and slumped down. Experiencing the pouring light and color, and the bizarre phenomenon of everything around him swirling like a vortex all at once, he felt a dizziness that made it impossible for him to stand properly. Nausea was unavoidable as well.
It was the aftermath of a sudden spatial movement ability. Depending on the type of movement, it could vary, but the kind where one crossed space as if being sucked into darkness, like just now, had a significant impact on vision. That’s why normally, one had to close their eyes before moving to avoid side effects.
“I told you to close your eyes.”
Tae-soo clicked his tongue as if to be heard by Han-gyeom, who was still covering his eyes.
‘If you were going to use a movement ability, you should have told me!’
How rude.
Han-gyeom cursed Tae-soo inwardly while quickly turning his thoughts.
The movement ability just now clearly carried the same energy as the ESP wrapped around the old man’s neck. However, the form was so different that it was difficult to be sure what the man’s real ability was.
While Han-gyeom was silently pondering, Tae-soo strongly pulled his arm. Han-gyeom, who had been sitting down, was half-dragged by Tae-soo’s hand and ended up sitting on the sofa.
Han-gyeom sat on the sofa, pressing his eyes firmly before slowly lifting his eyelids. His vision was still a bit blurry, but it seemed he could at least distinguish objects. The dizziness and nausea had also almost subsided.
While he blinked his eyes repeatedly, waiting for his vision to clear.
A cup of warm tea, he didn’t know when it had been brewed, was placed on the table in front of Han-gyeom. It was a pale greenish tea, and surprisingly, it had no scent at all.
“It’s white tea called Silver Needle. It’s made by harvesting and drying only the buds of the tea tree, and it has a very mild and clean taste, so anyone can drink it without any trouble.”
Tae-soo, holding the same tea that had been offered to Han-gyeom, sat facing him and deliberately tilted his teacup as if to show off.
“Drink up. Don’t worry, there’s nothing in it.”
Even though he was facing Tae-soo, who was unhesitatingly savoring his tea, Han-gyeom didn’t touch the tea offered to him. It wasn’t just that he wasn’t particularly thirsty; he simply didn’t want to drink anything offered by a suspicious, unknown Esper.
“How do you know me?”
Han-gyeom spat out the sharp words, lacking any courtesy. Being suddenly kidnapped by some Esper was hardly a pleasant experience.
However, regardless of his mood, the man in front of him was someone he should be wary of. An Esper that Chairman Seo himself had told him to be careful of, despite having numerous Esper subordinates.
Of course, even putting aside the long-winded explanation, it had always been natural for Han-gyeom to speak impolitely to most Espers reflexively.
Tae-soo didn’t show any particular displeasure at Han-gyeom’s bluntness.
“I’ve known about Han-gyeom-ssi for a while now. I was the one who drew up the contract for Seo Won-ssi.”
At first, he couldn’t understand what the man was saying, but a thought soon flashed through his mind, and his eyes widened.
‘Could that contract be…?’
The contract he had signed with Seo Won after being dragged to his mansion came to mind. The strange slave contract with no expiration date and no repercussions written down in case of termination.
The man in front of him didn’t exactly look like a legal consultant or someone from the legal team. Even if he were, there was no reason for Seo Won to ask this man to draw up the contract, leaving aside the people in his own legal team.
Nevertheless, if Seo Won had made the contract through this man, there must be a reason. The reason why clauses regarding the expiration date or contract termination didn’t need to be included.
Han-gyeom felt the puzzle pieces in his head clicking into place one by one.
Tae-soo sipped the scentless tea and smiled at Han-gyeom.
“You’re not asking again, so I guess you figured it out. You really are smart.”
Tae-soo put down his teacup and faced Han-gyeom with an intrigued expression. Han-gyeom’s eyes, which had already settled into a guarded calmness, were quite serious.
Tae-soo looked at those eyes as if savoring them before speaking.
“Aren’t you going to ask? What I did to Chairman Seo?”
“You must have made a contract. That’s your ability, isn’t it?”
“That’s correct, but aren’t you curious about what kind of contract it was?”
“Not particularly interested in knowing.”
“But Han-gyeom-ssi’s eyes are already telling me you know everything.”
Tae-soo, wearing a strangely eerie smile, said in a cheerful voice.
“The ability Chairman Seo wanted was the ‘right to hear the truth.’ As Han-gyeom-ssi also experienced, Chairman Seo has the ability to discern the truth from lies. If the other person lies, he also gains the powerful authority to demand the truth.”
As expected, what Chairman Seo used was a powerful mental ability.
However, there was no way that a non-Esper, not even an Ability User, could use such a powerful ability so casually.
“What do you think Chairman Seo agreed to pay me in exchange for that ability?”
Han-gyeom stared at Ha Tae-soo without saying a word.
Ha Tae-soo’s ability was to make deals with others using contracts.
Chairman Seo had obtained the ability he wanted through a contract. Because he was using the ability in the form of ‘lending’ it through a contract, he didn’t seem to need guiding at all, as there was no particular ESP pathway.
Not only the ability itself, but he was also different from Espers who constantly needed a guide’s care. He had no need to be careful about using ESP. Because of that, he was in a state of constantly exerting his ability, as in their conversation earlier, without having to activate it each time.
With that much merit, he must have offered something significant in return.
If it took the form of a contract, a somewhat reasonable equivalent exchange would be essential.
At first, he had thought of money, power, fame as the price of the contract, but none of those seemed to apply to Ha Tae-soo. If he had money, he probably wouldn’t be staying in this mansion like a butler and acting like a servant, and he had never seen his face in any media, so it was unlikely he had received power or fame.
Just as he was eliminating the obvious candidates one by one, something peculiar to this family came to mind.
The curse.
The terrible threat that was said to inevitably befall all of Chairman Seo’s bloodline, except for himself, came to mind.
On their 32nd birthday, Chairman Seo’s blood relatives inevitably met their deaths. They didn’t all die in the same way, but they all died unconditionally on their 32nd birthday. The world even named this tragedy of the Kangsan Group the ‘Curse of 32.’
However, rumors about this curse on the Kangsan Group had been rapidly fading for about a year and a half.
This was because there were two people who had survived their 32nd birthday perfectly fine.
Seo Won and Yoon Jeong-ho.
Although Seo Won was in a state where he could die at any moment due to an incurable heart condition, he was still alive and well thanks to a heart transplant.
Yoon Jeong-ho showed no signs of the curse affecting him at all. Rumor had it that he even rented a bar and threw a party on his 32nd birthday, the very day he should have been cautious, so he might not have believed in the curse at all.
In this way, two young members of the Kangsan Group’s bloodline survived. Seo Won, who had been mentioned as the heir since he was young, was now confidently preparing to succeed Chairman Seo, and there were even articles saying that Yoon Jeong-ho was planning to assist him.
It seemed clear that Seo Won and Yoon Jeong-ho had broken the mold of the curse, but Han-gyeom didn’t think it was just superstition. It was never normal for people in one family to die one after another on their 32nd birthday.
‘What could be gained by killing those people? Something other than material things…’
It was a truly absurd thought, but since this was an Esper who could create a contract that allowed a regular person to use abilities at all times, perhaps it was possible.
“You created the curse in this family, didn’t you?”
He said, probing, and watched Ha Tae-soo’s face.
“You took the lifespans of the dead people as your price, didn’t you?”
As expected, his smile deepened.
