[147]
It was a point that needed to be addressed.
If that experiment had succeeded, it would explain why the leader of the Thorns Order had multiple abilities.
“I considered it a success,” the tutor said in a slow voice.
“But afterward, I secretly witnessed Rosenhauser rampaging, calling it only half-done.”
Chris bit his lip as he recalled that Rosenhauser had initiated adoption procedures for a child at the orphanage and then canceled them.
‘Was the adoption canceled because… the experiment failed?’
Meanwhile, Yuri stared at the tutor before pointing out:
“When you say you thought it was successful, does that mean you’ve met the subject of the experiment to grant abilities?”
The old man swallowed hard.
Although he had come to reveal this fact, he hadn’t expected to be caught out so quickly.
“Yes. After I was fired, I taught that child for a while.”
Yuri’s eyes narrowed.
“…It seems you talked about me.”
The tutor flinched. His shoulders visibly stiffened.
Chris frowned.
“Don’t tell me the reason the leader harbors animosity toward Yuri was because of you?”
The oppressive aura from Chris, who spoke for the first time, was at a level difficult for an ordinary person to withstand.
Yuri’s former tutor couldn’t help but be shocked. Despite his handsome appearance, he had assumed the man was merely a bodyguard, standing silently behind Yuri.
But suddenly the air grew heavy. While wanting to avoid the blue eyes staring at him, he instinctively knew it was impossible to escape that gaze.
“P-please spare…”
“Answer.”
Yuri urged the tutor. Surprisingly, with just that word, the weight pressing down on the surroundings disappeared instantly.
The old man gasped for breath, feeling around his neck. What was this pressure when his throat hadn’t even been squeezed?
As irritation gradually mixed into Yuri’s gaze, the tutor hastily opened his mouth.
“I-I had no choice!”
Tears streamed down his haggard cheeks.
“Rosenhauser wanted to dispose of me because I knew too much. But acknowledging my usefulness, he used me as a tool to teach my successor. That boy I met in the Spring Continent.”
The man swallowed hard.
“Gabriel was a violent child.”
Gabriel?
That must be the name of the “leader.”
‘But a name like that of an angel.’
Considering he would later become the head of a terrorist organization, it was truly an ironic naming.
“Rosenhauser wanted that child to be obedient. And he wanted him to grow up like you, young master.”
“A thoroughly disgusting man, as always.”
Yuri uttered a quiet observation.
“I-I don’t know the exact reason, but Gabriel’s capacity was apparently quite large, making him suitable for accommodating other abilities as well. From the day I met him, he used telekinesis and attacked me.”
“…”
“That’s why I started telling stories about you, young master Yuri. He would behave only when listening to those stories.”
“Why?”
Yuri frowned.
He had never seen the face of this ‘Gabriel’ nor heard the name before.
Hadn’t he only recently learned that Rosenhauser had tried to adopt someone?
“It seems Rosenhauser often told him stories about you, young master.”
“Such as?”
“Things like, ‘I have no reason to adopt unless the child is as brilliant as my godson,’ or ‘No matter how hard you try, perhaps because your roots aren’t good, you can’t produce results like Yuri.'”
Words designed to provoke competitiveness and create insecurity.
Rosenhauser, having been rejected by Yuri, seemed to have vented his frustration elsewhere. There was likely also an intention to tame the beast in advance.
“Is that why he attacked Orum City when he should have been methodically consuming the Spring Continent first?”
Yuri muttered as if to himself.
“I’m sorry… I’m truly sorry, young master.”
The man rose from his seat, approached Yuri, and fell to his knees before him.
Tears flowed down the old tutor’s wrinkled cheeks.
“I was too foolish.”
The sight of him bowing his head deeply toward the floor, his shoulders trembling, was truly pitiful.
“Yes. You are foolish.”
Yuri quietly affirmed the man’s words.
“To come looking for me at this time, of all things.”
Click.
With a sneer, Yuri had already drawn his Glock and placed it against the former tutor’s crown.
The man’s face turned pale as he raised his head at the cold sensation.
His wide-eyed look was both terror and shock.
“H-how?”
Chris, who had just realized the man had a hidden purpose, shifted his posture.
Yuri raised one hand to stop Chris, like someone who had anticipated his dog’s intervention.
Then he spoke with an expressionless face.
“Do I really need to explain such things?”
The timing was simply too convenient.
The leader’s identity was completely shrouded in mystery.
What was his name, what abilities did he use, and so on.
A prohibition had been placed on the minds of the orphanage personnel. Even though Fortuna had found a way to bypass the prohibition while interrogating the Thorns Order attackers, she had been unable to discover the leader’s name.
But right now, the former tutor comes with tears of remorse?
He even knew the leader’s name. And also why he harbored resentment toward Baekyah.
It was truly valuable information for Yuri, who had been groping like a blind man trying to identify an elephant.
But to think one could deliver such information at face value without being suspected.
‘He seems to have gotten even more foolish than before.’
Yuri, dismissively judging his former teacher, pulled the trigger instead of explaining his reasoning.
Bang!
The sound of the hammer falling was loud. But the man’s body didn’t collapse.
That’s because Yuri’s Glock wasn’t loaded with bullets.
Having thought he was going to die, the stiffened tutor belatedly gasped for breath.
“Hah, hah, haaah…”
His pants were visibly becoming wet. The old man, slipping from his chair, sobbed with shame.
Yuri clicked his tongue. There was no reason to be considerate.
Although there was a time when he saw such disgusting sights every other day, that was during the days of resistance.
“Tell him I’ve received his declaration of war well.”
The tutor’s temple was flushed red as if burned when he raised his head.
He looked at Yuri with a face that couldn’t even feel pain.
“A-are you letting me live?”
His voice was filled with desperation to somehow survive.
He saw a thread of hope in the order to go back and relay the message to the leader.
“Am I?”
Yuri asked back. His voice conveyed genuine puzzlement.
“Even without me lifting a finger, Gabriel will kill you if I send you back like this.”
It was a cold truth.
Messengers who travel between two hostile factions often end up killed.
Yuri found this man annoying.
He wasn’t even worth the effort of revenge as part of a past left behind. Yuri was someone who had already exhausted much of that kind of emotion.
It was enough to watch the man walk to his death.
“You can’t do this. I was once your teacher.”
The man writhed in anger at the end of despair. Despite his limply hanging limbs, his bloodshot eyes were fierce.
‘Teacher. It’s been a while.’
The former student who had arrived with the cold dawn called out to him.
‘You begged me to spare you, saying you could be useful, right? I think I’ve found that usefulness now. What do you say? Will you help?’
Gabriel had grinned while using respectful speech he never used during his student days.
What he wanted was to contact “Yuri Sobolev” through Northern Light.
‘You’ll do it, won’t you?’
His former student’s request was a request, but he had no right of refusal.
In the end, the teacher headed to Northern Light’s temporary branch after getting his affairs in order.
To meet another of his students.
Of course, he had hesitated on his way here.
Rumors about “Yuri Sobolev” had spread even in the Spring Continent.
‘But it should be fine.’
There was an element of underestimating Yuri.
No matter how much of a mafia boss controlling the Winter Continent he had become, the tutor knew Yuri’s childhood.
A small child who would stand on tiptoe to look out the window, waiting for his parents.
He wasn’t weak or kind, but he kept to proper bounds. Though more mature and composed than his peers, he also knew how to cry.
The boy who drank cocoa as a reward, who stood with a pale face before his parents’ grave on the day of their funeral.
Pretending to quietly comply with Rosenhauser’s pressure before running away, the young master was caught soaking wet in the rain. The tutor thought that day that he might die.
Knowing all these soft and weak aspects of someone he was meeting naturally led to carelessness.
‘I was still his teacher after all.’
He thought that no matter how much Yuri Sobolev had transformed into a ruthless mafia, he would show leniency to someone connected to his childhood.
No, he hoped so.
‘Let’s just bow deeply and enter.’
He reassured himself that Yuri might be somewhat understanding of his circumstances.
Since Gabriel wanted it, he was destined to deliver his message. What choice did he have when fleeing would lead to death more quickly?
And all the judgments the tutor made based on Yuri’s childhood were completely wrong.
‘What a grand delusion I had.’
What stood before him was not the little child who had been swaying about like a wandering weed after losing his happy family and protective fence.
He was a human who had left all his past behind, survived against all odds, and a stubborn man who had achieved revenge that everyone said was impossible.
“Really, you want me to just go and die like this? Just to deliver a few words?”
A desperate gaze looked at Yuri.
It felt like clutching at straws.
“Maybe you should have quit until the end?”
Yuri said in a remarkably gentle tone.
“If you were still the innocent student who feared failing geometry most of all, I might have felt sorry for you.”
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
