Chapter 65 - Did You Think I Wouldn’t Know? (3)
13 min read ·
* * *
“As you know, many New Stars who come here are suffering from wounded hearts.”
The man put on an apologetic expression.
“Among them are people who enjoy secretly watching others. The person responsible was too ashamed to come forward, so I will apologize in their place.”
He even bowed his head as he admitted that there had been a listening device. If someone openly admitted that, the obvious response should have been outrage. Any ordinary person would have called them insane.
“I was surprised, but things like that can happen.”
Jihwan gave the most unnatural response imaginable.
The air freshener in their room, the water they washed with, and even the water they drank had all been laced with hallucinogens. The enemy had practically drowned them in drugs, so failing to act affected would have been more suspicious.
Jihwan smiled while holding the “gold” that now looked like trash in his palm. It was almost funny to think about how nervous he had been over it.
“Mr. Donghoon, why did you do that? Why did you accuse them and make them apologize when they hadn’t done anything?”
Nayun criticized Jihwan instead, and he immediately lowered his gaze.
“...Ah, you’re right. It was my fault. So many strange things kept happening that I must have gotten overly sensitive.”
Jihwan lowered his head and picked up the knife placed in front of him.
“...All my money disappeared overnight. Who do you think took it?”
“New Star, I understand how you feel. But holding that seems dangerous. Why don’t we think through this slowly together?”
The moment the man spoke, Jihwan reacted as though he might burst into tears.
“You’d really... do that for me?”
“Of course.”
At that answer, Jihwan put the knife down.
“...You aren’t going to refuse to look at my little brother because I argued with you earlier, are you?”
Shinwoo asked cautiously and glanced at Hyeon-yul with an anxious expression.
“New Star, that would never happen. If anything, wasn’t this incident caused because we failed to care for our New Stars properly?”
After finishing his sentence, the man suddenly dropped to his knees.
“N-No, please don’t do this.”
Shinwoo jumped to his feet in alarm.
Thud.
When the man struck his head against the floor, Shinwoo immediately ran over and tried to stop him.
“I was wrong for accusing you. Please don’t do this.”
Despite how bizarre the scene was, the people praying around them had not stopped moving their lips even once.
Hyeon-yul stared blankly at the situation. He had seen similar scenes before, but belief really was strange. Plenty of people could become this thoroughly indoctrinated even without drugs.
Hyeon-yul was genuinely curious about how someone ended up like that.
“New Star, your younger brother will definitely recover. The Saint is on his way here now.”
The moment the man finished speaking, countless voices erupted in ecstatic cheers.
Even the White Sparrows who had infiltrated the organization did not know the Saint’s true identity. Under normal circumstances, the operation would have continued for several more days, but everything had changed now that the internal compromise had been exposed.
They had no choice but to move quickly. Before dinner, the team had split over whether they should act before seeing the Saint or wait until afterward.
One side valued speed, while the other valued caution.
—They may put forward a fake. If we act without confirming the target, the real one could already be escaping.
That small dispute had ended with Hyeon-yul’s argument winning: they would act only after seeing the Saint.
This mission was about protecting the civilians, but capturing the person responsible for the entire incident was just as important.
The White Sparrows had spent enormous effort locating this branch, exposing it, tracking other branches, and tracing the organization. None of them wanted all that work to become meaningless.
That was the conclusion they all shared.
“Is that true? Is the Saint really coming here?”
Shinwoo asked with obvious joy, looking as though he might grab the man’s hands at any moment.
“Yes. After hearing every one of our New Stars’ stories, the Saint said the situation was so heartbreaking that they would come running immediately.”
The man smiled along with him. It was the smile of a snake.
“New Star, please sit over there. Today is a day for all of you. Can’t you see the countless flowers before you?”
The man pointed toward the same people who were still kneeling and praying.
Shinwoo, however, smiled in wonder as though he were looking at something beautiful.
“When did all these flowers appear? They’re among the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.”
“We prepared them for our New Stars.”
The man mocked Shinwoo with his eyes as he helped him back up.
“Please return to your seat, New Star.”
“Of course. I’ll go right back.”
Once Shinwoo returned to his seat, the man walked forward and looked down at Hyeon-yul, casting a shadow over him.
Hyeon-yul wanted to twist the man’s neck immediately.
“New Star, how long have you suffered? Some people say silence is a way to atone for one’s sins, but I do not believe that.”
The man slowly poured sweet words over Hyeon-yul.
At the same time, Hyeon-yul felt the power radiating from him and caught a peculiar scent.
“You must have struggled through five whole years of pain. If someone calls that a way to atone, how cruel is that? It would be no different from saying your sins were so great they could hardly be imagined.”
The more the man spoke and the closer he came, the clearer that smell became.
“It’s all right. Everything is all right now. We can help you recover the voice you lost, so you no longer need to worry.”
‘...Wait.’
Hyeon-yul smiled slightly as certainty settled in. He suppressed his killing intent and kept his claws hidden.
‘This man isn’t the prey.’
He was not the real one.
He was merely someone who had been injected with the drug that turned an abilityless person into an ability user.
Hyeon-yul finally understood the origin of the thick smell of blood clinging to him. Among the countless people injected with that drug, this man had regained consciousness in a pit of corpses. The blood might have come from that place.
Unaware that death was already approaching, he was moving around like a puppet suspended from strings.
[Thank you.]
[I don’t know what to say.]
Hyeon-yul showed the messages on his phone and waited for the Saint.
The enemy already knew their identities. Under circumstances like these, it would not have been strange if the food being prepared was intended as their last supper.
The villains were probably just as delighted by the situation. If everything went well for them, they might capture Black Eagles.
Hyeon-yul’s thoughts abruptly stopped as something occurred to him.
‘...Wait.’
During a previous mission he had joined at Nayun’s request, he had seen an absurd document proposing that Black Eagles be turned into experimental subjects. He had also encountered an unidentified person at a secret facility there.
Hyeon-yul silently considered whether that possibility was real.
‘Could these incidents be connected...?’
“...The Saint is coming.”
The words came from behind them, and the atmosphere changed in an instant. As if they had rehearsed it, everyone turned toward the entrance.
Nayun spoke first, her gaze fixed ahead.
“...I can see light.”
Hyeon-yul saw nothing despite Nayun’s claim.
‘Light?’
While the man turned toward the entrance, Hyeon-yul glanced to both sides. Shinwoo and Jihwan were also staring as if they could see something.
‘They really are seeing something.’
Yet Hyeon-yul smelled nothing and sensed no unusual force. That silence bothered him because it felt like the moment before something happened.
Jingle.
Only when the bell rang did Hyeon-yul feel the air itself tremble.
‘That’s it.’
Power was entwined with the bell. The sound was being manipulated to push other people into a hallucinatory state.
The crowd suddenly began sobbing all around him.
“Saint!”
“Ahhh! Ahhh, our Saint!”
“All light and all creation, praise the Saint!”
“Walk the path of light! Guide us all toward the radiant road!”
The cries bordered on screams and spread in every direction, making Hyeon-yul feel almost physically pained.
‘Is this what people mean by insane?’
Apart from the noise, he watched with interest. Understanding a word properly often required seeing its meaning for yourself, and today he had finally established a clear definition of “insane.”
‘Do I have to act like that too?’
Hyeon-yul was uncertain. First, he could not tell whether the Saint’s power had actually reached him or how strongly he was supposed to react. Second, he had no idea whether the Saint approaching them was truly the leader.
He could not tell whether this was the real mastermind or what the other team members were doing.
Question after question rose inside him. When he had been a villain, he never needed to think this much. He could simply kill everyone and be done with it, and only now did he realize how convenient that had been.
Was this the difference between doing good and doing evil?
Jingle.
The bell rang again as a person dressed entirely in white came walking from beyond the crowd, wrapped in something resembling a veil to create a mysterious atmosphere.
Some people might have thought the figure looked like an immortal descending from heaven, but Hyeon-yul felt only suspicion.
‘Something’s strange.’
He sensed nothing from the person at all. They seemed so ordinary that he wondered whether the Saint might be a normal civilian.
Hyeon-yul sharpened his senses. The rest of his team did not seem to be in good condition, so if necessary, he would have to identify the true central figure himself.
The Saint walked directly toward Hyeon-yul, and Hyeon-yul watched as the distance between them steadily narrowed.
“...Wandering one.”
A woman’s voice emerged, clean and clear.
“Are you grieving over something you lost?”
She lifted the veil and looked directly at Hyeon-yul. Her eyes were strange, like an unreachable sky.
“Are you wandering because you don’t even know what you lost?”
The Saint continued questioning him without breaking eye contact.
“Or are you searching for someone you cannot find?”
She spoke about him as though she could read his innermost thoughts.
“I can help you find the person you’re looking for. I can tell you what you lost.”
Some people would have trusted those words. When a complete stranger mentioned things only they should know, it was natural to believe there had to be something supernatural behind it.
Hyeon-yul only felt disgust. He was so repulsed that he wanted to put a blade through her throat immediately.
‘...Ah.’
While suppressing his killing intent, Hyeon-yul finally saw the situation clearly.
His gaze moved past the Saint and settled on a man in the crowd.
‘Found you.’
“Please take my hand.”
The Saint extended a hand, and Hyeon-yul reached out as well.
Just before their hands touched, however, Hyeon-yul grabbed the bell instead.
He dragged it into the darkness through his palm, and every sound stopped.
“...”
Only then did everyone who had been swayed by the bell inhale sharply.
“Wake up.”
Hyeon-yul shook every member of Team 3 through the darkness and launched himself forward.
The man using the mental power reached out to seize him, but Hyeon-yul’s body only wrapped itself in black smoke and vanished.
Hyeon-yul appeared among the crowd and clamped a hand over the mastermind’s head.
Their startled eyes met, but Hyeon-yul did not stop. He began forcing the man into his shadow, only to freeze midway.
‘...It changed.’
He did not know whether the man had switched bodies or whether this person had been a fake from the beginning. Hyeon-yul pulled the body back out of his shadow and turned his head toward the surrounding crowd.
Hyeon-yul searched for the real target, wondering where the man had hidden. Everyone remained frozen by the sudden turn of events until the sound of someone collapsing broke the silence.
The person called the Saint fell like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
“The... the Saint...”
“The Saint collapsed!”
“We have to save the Saint!”
The crowd surged to its feet amid shouts and cries, confusion written across every face.
Pop!
Something burst with a sharp sound, and everyone looked toward it. Colored paper fluttered through the air like a birthday party popper, leaving the crowd staring blankly.
“Everyone, calm down.”
Jihwan smiled as he finally pulled out what he had kept hidden the entire time.
A black civil-service identification card bearing the Black Eagle emblem.
“We’re Black Eagles.”
The instant Jihwan spoke, Nayun kicked off the desk and shot forward.
Hyeon-yul had disappeared. More precisely, he had already gone outside.
Nayun produced a small gun from her hand. Before anyone noticed what she was doing, she aimed and fired with such precision that there was almost no sound.
Three marks began sparkling above three people’s heads.
Earlier, Nayun had toured the compound with the White Sparrow and memorized exactly who the villains were.
“You can catch them, right?”
Nayun looked toward Jihwan while running forward.
“Of course.”
Jihwan snapped his fingers, and exactly three people were crushed downward as though enormous gravity had suddenly pressed on them, slamming their heads into the floor.
Thud.
Startled by the impact, the civilians recoiled as several more people entered the room, each raising an official identification card.
The newcomers were White Sparrows, and the sight made Shinwoo rush forward as well, and Jihwan immediately felt impatient to follow. He had to wait, though, because his assigned role was different.
Whether by choice or coercion, people who suddenly lost the mental figure they had relied upon could fall into confusion and turn violent. Before greater chaos erupted, Jihwan had to spread sedatives through the room and seal the area.
The White Sparrows swiftly carried away the people who had been subdued.
Someone asked hesitantly, “...What are you doing?”
“We’re saving you.”
A White Sparrow gave the simple answer.
It was an ambiguous explanation, yet the civilians became strangely calmer. Every gaze shifted toward the fallen Saint.
A realization spread through the crowd: they thought the White Sparrows were saving the Saint.
Nayun and Shinwoo ran past the White Sparrows toward the exit.
“Keep your communications open.”
Before leaving, Shinwoo reminded the White Sparrows.
* * *
The thought seemed impossible to him.
‘...The hallucinogens didn’t work?’
Once they heard Black Eagles were coming, they had poured out so much of the drug that failure should have been unthinkable.
That possibility made no sense either.
‘Then was the information about the internal traitor false?’
No matter how much mental resistance someone possessed, all he had to do was cover it with a stronger power. He had done exactly that countless times.
Yet this time, something had gone wrong.
The same question hammered through his mind again and again.
‘...How did he see me? How had Hyeon-yul known?’
He possessed the power to control people and had repeatedly switched bodies while making each one act as if it were truly him.
The man ran and kept running with questions filling his mind. He had never imagined he would one day sprint through this place whose layout he could navigate with his eyes closed.
Ring, ring, ring.
He called his subordinates again and again, but everything was unnaturally quiet.
“Isn’t it strange?”
The instant a voice reached him, someone hooked his foot. His body lifted briefly into the air before his face scraped hard across the ground.
“Argh.”
Groaning in pain, the man turned his head and saw someone standing over him.
As the surrounding shadows deepened, a hand reached out.
Grip.
Hyeon-yul closed one hand around the man’s throat.
“...Kgh!”
“Did you really think I wouldn’t know you were playing with puppets?”
Hyeon-yul had finally found him, the bastard behind the entire incident.