[91]
“Lighten up your expression, Chris. It’s been a while since we’ve met face to face.”
Despite the playful remark, Chris’s face remained expressionless.
“Why did it have to be me?”
Separated from Yuri, his tone was more gruff than usual.
“Because you’re the easiest to make contact with.”
Anong shrugged.
“There are still records of you completing Esper training at Northern Light a few years ago. And thanks to the identity you’ve been using lately, you’re known in certain circles as a Northern Light agent.”
Chris knew about this convenience.
But how could he not be anxious about leaving Yuri alone?
Peter, who could take him and flee if necessary, was also absent.
Yuri had said if Chris wasn’t around, he would go to the safest place in the Spring Continent.
It wasn’t hard to guess that place was Susanna’s pub.
‘…I know he’s courageous, but.’
Chris was extremely anxious about the fact that Yuri would be alone with someone who had once kidnapped and tortured him.
They had returned to a ‘relatively’ friendly relationship, but that was it.
Susanna was the kind of person who could kill Yuri without hesitation even if she knew Chris would come to burst her heart.
If she had a reason to, that is.
“Are you anxious about being separated from Yuri Sobolev?”
“It’s not comfortable.”
Chris answered honestly.
“Oh my. I should get to the point quickly so I don’t earn your hatred.”
Anong winked and beckoned to Chris.
He silently leaned in.
“About the leader of the Thorns Order.”
Anong lowered her voice significantly.
“Obviously, I don’t know their identity yet. But… quite a while ago, Rosenhauser tried to adopt a child.”
She handed him an envelope.
It contained adoption papers.
On the first page was a photo, but everything above the neck had been neatly cut off.
Personal information like name and age had all been punched out and was unreadable.
“A…?”
Chris muttered, guessing just the first letter.
“It’s rather scant information.”
Anong shrugged.
“But… since we have no clues, isn’t this worth looking into?”
Chris nodded.
“Then the adoption agency…”
Chris found the agency name from the seal on the document.
Neulbom Orphanage.
Quite a Spring Continent-like naming.
Noticing the strange look in Chris’s eyes, Anong said:
“Yes. It was here on the Spring Continent.”
“There’s also the name of the person in charge.”
Herbert Raine.
“Well, yes, but.”
Anong wrinkled her nose. The triumphant expression on her face seemed to fade a little.
“That old man. He’s so tight-lipped he won’t budge an inch.”
“Have you met him?”
“I wouldn’t come personally just to deliver some documents.”
Currently, Anong was secretly investigating what kind of person the Thorns Order leader was.
Although they had purged as many Thorns Order subordinates as possible, they couldn’t rule out the possibility of spies remaining in Northern Light.
So it would be troublesome if she sent her subordinates and got backstabbed.
‘Like an important witness dying… or information leaking and innocent Espers getting killed.’
The Thorns Order had already committed a bombing.
Those who have already crossed the line tend to become more extreme.
“The first thing I did after sneaking into the Spring Continent was to find that old man.”
“Did you secure him?”
“I’m keeping him for now.”
Anong shrugged.
She was walking a fine line between legal and illegal.
“Then there’s a way.”
Chris smiled faintly.
“As it happens, Fortuna is here.”
***
“It’s been erased.”
Peter dropped his head.
He had successfully found a middleman through Joaquin, whom he had caught.
Peter had snatched him and brought him straight here, to the interrogation room.
Fortuna, who had extracted meaningful testimony from Joaquin, was just in the process of interrogating this middleman.
Peter was waiting to hear about the mastermind behind the flea market terrorist attack first.
But what did she mean by “erased”?
“It seems they also have a mental Esper on their side.”
Fortuna’s complexion was clouded as she began her explanation.
Rather than distress at not being able to do her job properly, she looked exhausted.
From the beginning, her strength had greatly waned due to her past, where she had been overworked for years while pushing her powers to the limit. Compared to other Espers, her power depleted faster and recovered much more slowly.
“A mental Esper, huh.”
Peter frowned.
He was quite surprised when Fortuna appeared.
Mental Espers were originally few in number. It was surprising enough that Northern Light had a mental Esper, but the enemy had an Esper with similar abilities too?
It felt like expecting scissors in a game of rock-paper-scissors but getting punched instead.
“This is troublesome.”
Peter slumped into a chair, dejected.
“I wondered why these bastards running around causing trouble were so hard to catch… Could it be that the Esper the Thorns Order has is higher-ranked than you?”
“Judging by what they’ve done, that seems unlikely.”
Fortuna shook her head.
“The reason I can’t do anything… is because when I try to look at forbidden information, the subject’s mind breaks down.”
“I see.”
They were dealing with people who would readily sacrifice human lives rather than let secrets leak.
‘Now that the trail has gone cold, what do we do?’
The executives of Barrel Society were gathering because of the flea market incident.
Peter wanted to present the head of the perpetrator at that meeting.
‘At the very least, I need more information to mention the Thorns Order.’
He gnawed at his lips.
“Ah.”
Suddenly exclaiming, Fortuna rose from her seat. She stared at the door and said:
“Perhaps we might find an unexpected breakthrough.”
Peter looked at Fortuna with a skeptical face.
It was a widespread notion that mental Espers acted somewhat oddly. Their way of perceiving the world differed from ordinary people, so he understood this.
But he didn’t expect to witness it right before his eyes.
“So you were here.”
The door swung open and Yuri Sobolev appeared.
“Boss.”
Fortuna rose quietly from her seat to greet him.
“…How impressive.”
“What?”
“Nothing, nothing.”
Waving his hand dismissively, Peter asked:
“How did you find this place?”
The answer came from Fortuna.
“I maintain a mental connection with the boss when we’re in the same area.”
The emotion underlying Fortuna’s face as she added “due to special circumstances” was so faint it was barely there.
“…You’ve been maintaining that the whole time?”
Peter was shocked.
A mental Esper’s connection puts quite a burden on the recipient.
It’s different from regular conversation. It’s not just about relaying organized information and ending it; all the information the Esper receives also flows to the recipient of the connection.
Not just the emotions felt in the moment, but even sensations perceived through intuition.
Anyone with slightly weaker mental fortitude would easily mistake themselves as suffering from auditory, olfactory, or visual hallucinations.
“It’s for safety reasons.”
Peter made a sour face at Fortuna’s response.
If safety was the concern, wouldn’t it be better to maintain a connection with Chris rather than Yuri?
“Chris has a separate task, so that’s not possible.”
“Huh?”
Peter thought this sounded quite like an excuse.
Regardless of what Chris was doing elsewhere, Yuri surely wasn’t just sitting around either.
Saying it wasn’t possible because of a “separate task”…
“The boss has a strong sense of self, so it’s fine.”
Fortuna said calmly.
“Why do you do such an absurd thing? There’s no one safer than a mental Esper without a control device.”
In response to Peter’s question, the pale woman smiled faintly.
“Well… how should I put it? My intuition is extremely developed, but my other senses have atrophied.”
“…Excuse me?”
Peter flinched at those words.
He had intended to dissuade them moderately out of concern for Yuri, but somehow felt like he’d made a mistake.
“The colors and contours of what enters my eyes aren’t very clear. The content of what I hear is always mixed up. What touches my body sometimes turns into pain, sometimes into numbness.”
Fortuna continued, almost singing.
“Without someone to act as my guide, I cannot function properly.”
“How on earth did you end up like that?”
“Shamefully… the long time I spent in confinement became a trauma. If I go too long without a connection, isolated… I start using my ability indiscriminately on people around me, unable to distinguish friend from foe.”
It was a side effect of Rosenhauser using mental Espers to build an intercontinental communication network.
Fortuna had seen and heard too much through the transmission system she created with her ability.
So even after escaping from there, she couldn’t distinguish what was reality and what was a fantasy she had created.
“To check if what I see is not a hallucination. To confirm that what I hear is not an auditory illusion.”
In other words, the “safety” issue Fortuna mentioned wasn’t for herself, but for those around her.
“Still, my prognosis is better than my old colleagues.”
Her face was terrifyingly calm as she placed a hand on her chest and added, “Please be assured.”
Peter suddenly realized he had never witnessed Fortuna’s madness.
Until this moment, they had conversed normally, with him knowing nothing.
‘Am I dull? Or are these people just too intense?’
“I serve as a kind of filter.”
Yuri shrugged.
“Won’t you get overloaded doing that?”
“I’m just acting as a filter. If I tell her what’s real, Fortuna takes care of the rest.”
Fortuna bowed her head.
“It’s not as difficult as you might think.”
He says it’s “not difficult,” but isn’t Yuri seeing not only the reality Fortuna perceives but also her hallucinations, all while being sober?
A normal person would go mad before long.
Now he understood why mental Espers were feared.
“So… you found this place through your mental connection with Ms. Fortuna.”
Peter muttered.
He had wondered how Yuri found this place without being told.
“Since you’ve disclosed it to a member of Northern Light, I thought it wouldn’t matter if I knew too, but is that wrong?”
“That’s… yes, that’s right.”
From the beginning, Fortuna was an outsider. Even though this matter was significant, they hadn’t brought her to Barrel Society’s ‘real’ safe house.
“Let’s end this conversation here.”
Yuri gestured as if to say “handle your shock on your own” and spoke:
“You need a solution, don’t you?”
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
