Chapter 77 - Stab (2)

* * *

Hyeon-yul did not allow himself to be swept up in the atmosphere. Instead, he quickly assessed what had happened. The wound was not particularly deep. Looking down, he could see three fingers that had pierced his glove. It was protective equipment reinforced enough to withstand an explosion. The fact that those fingers had penetrated it meant the student's nails were extraordinarily hard.

‘About half a finger joint deep?’

It seemed to be an ability that sharpened the fingernails, but there was no smell of drugs on the student. How had the nails pierced his glove? He did not know the reason, but the fact that they had done so was what mattered. As the student charged toward him, Hyeon-yul retreated into the wall.

‘Ah.’

Boom!

Watching the students hammer at the wall indiscriminately, Hyeon-yul finally understood.

‘They were planning to use the students to kill the Black Eagles.’

Students. In other words, people the Black Eagles were required to protect. When students had been taken hostage, who would naturally suspect that those same students might be villains? Their status as hostages was meant to make the rescuers lower their guard. It was an excellent tactic. Without that nagging sense of unease, even Hyeon-yul might have been caught off guard. No, if he had failed to hear the sound of the air being cut, he might already have turned his back on them.

There were limits to what he could do to students. How was that different from fighting with his hands tied?

“Should we just smash the wall?”

The student on the other side of the wall kept laughing.

Ha ha ha!

The laughter continued without any sign of stopping.

“Should we?”

“Let's do it!”

“Yeah, great! Come on!”

“Break it! Smash it! Let's tear it apart!”

Their behavior looked almost insane. Was it brainwashing? Something about it was different, however. There was no drug involved and no discernible supernatural power. If neither of those explained it, then what was happening? The emotion in their eyes was extraordinarily intense. It looked almost like a desire for revenge.

Hyeon-yul watched them mercilessly beat the wall for a moment, then moved toward Jihwan. He had never encountered anything quite like this before. Normally, he could have taken every one of them into his darkness. Right now, however, he was wearing a Black Eagle's uniform.

* * *

Hyeon-yul appeared silently beside Jihwan. Blood dripped steadily from his hand. He removed his glove, took out a syringe, and injected himself. The injection would not stop the bleeding immediately, but it was better than doing nothing.

“There are no students in that room. Only villains.”

“...”

Jihwan went rigid as he looked at Hyeon-yul's hand.

“I don't know whether I should call it brainwashing. They're clearly responding to certain words, but something about it is strange.”

“...H-hyung.”

“Yes?”

“Are you... all right? What happened? What is all this?”

Something was terribly wrong with Hyeon-yul's palm.

“A student stabbed me. If you look at the wound...”

“Manager!”

Jihwan called out to the White Sparrows. Seeing how pale Jihwan had become, Hyeon-yul immediately spoke.

“I'm fine.”

“...You're obviously not fine.”

Jihwan struggled desperately to keep his voice from rising.

—There's something all of you need to know. It's about Hyeon-yul's physical condition.

Haeryeon had once gathered everyone together while Hyeon-yul was attending a theory lesson.

—One of the side effects of the experiments is that his blood doesn't clot properly. Even a small wound can be dangerous. If Hyeon-yul starts bleeding, I want you to remove him from the mission immediately.

How could anything like that be possible? Jihwan had thought the same thing when he first heard it. Transfusions were essential during experiments, and surely experimenters would try to give their subjects bodies that healed quickly. For Hyeon-yul's blood not to stop flowing seemed terribly contradictory. His body was covered in scars, so many that Jihwan could scarcely imagine how thoroughly the researchers had cut him apart.

“I've already performed emergency treatment.”

Hyeon-yul looked at his own palm and drew his eyebrows together slightly.

“That's not the point, hyung. You're still dripping blood.”

Jihwan hurriedly took medicine from a first-aid kit provided by the White Sparrows, applied it to the injury, and wrapped the hand tightly in bandages.

“That's normal for me.”

Hyeon-yul answered indifferently. The bleeding would not stop until the wound itself healed. His wounds did not heal gradually or continuously. Instead, they recovered all at once at unpredictable times, so even he could not say when healing would occur. Most urgent injuries tended to heal within a day, which was the simplest way to think of it.

“Hyung, there's nothing normal about that.”

“This isn't important right now...”

“It is important! It's extremely important!”

Jihwan finally raised his voice, his eyes widening with intensity.

“Hyung, your body is more important. Nothing in the world is worth your life. So please stop working on this mission. Manager, take him back to the Nest.”

Hyeon-yul's expression hardened rapidly at Jihwan's order.

Removal from the mission. There were few things he hated hearing more. How was it any different from being told that he was useless?

“I can't do that.”

“Hyung! You're still bleeding!”

It had barely been a moment since Jihwan wrapped the wound, yet the entire bandage was already stained red. He worried Hyeon-yul might go into shock.

“This isn't a problem. We're wasting time doing this. I already told you that my physical condition doesn't interfere with my ability to carry out a mission.”

“That's not what I mean, hyung. I'm trying to protect you. I want to keep you safe.”

“I don't need that.”

Hyeon-yul regarded Jihwan coldly. Once someone was removed from one mission, removing them from another became far too easy. He could never accept that.

“I'll increase my pace and complete the mission.”

Jihwan almost sighed at the absolute determination in his voice. Why did being told to take care of himself make Hyeon-yul react so sharply? No matter what Jihwan said, it did not look as though the young man would stop working. Frustration finally escaped his lips.

“...Hyung, you're unbelievably stubborn.”

“Am I?”

“It's not a question. You are.”

“While we're arguing, the situation inside the building may be changing. It's entirely possible that all the students we classified as hostages are actually villains.”

“Hyung, if you keep going like this, Dr. Jeongmin is going to scold you.”

“...He probably will.”

Hyeon-yul hesitated before answering. His palm had been pierced, and the blood was still flowing. If Jeongmin saw it, he might slap his own forehead in dismay.

“Maybe he will. But the mission has to continue. That's why I'm here.”

He needed to demonstrate how useful he was to earn his salary and keep everything he now enjoyed. Being removed from a mission because of one wounded hand would be tantamount to admitting that he had no value.

“Isn't that why all of us are here?”

Even after that appeal, Jihwan's expression remained grim. What on earth was he imagining? Hyeon-yul could not read his thoughts, so he reluctantly removed the bandage. Seeing the blood still running made the lines between Jihwan's eyebrows deepen further.

Hyeon-yul opened his own medical kit, took out an oversized adhesive dressing, applied it with practiced ease, then bandaged the hand again.

“This is a special dressing made for me. See? The blood isn't seeping through anymore.”

He held out his wrapped hand and waved it from side to side. With luck, the dressing would keep this amount of blood contained for fifteen minutes or so.

“Have you calmed down now?”

Hyeon-yul actually asked Jihwan. To him, the injury was serious, but to an ordinary person it would not have been. People would normally think of it as something a hospital could treat without much trouble.

‘...Ah. The team leader must have told him.’

Only then did Hyeon-yul realize what was happening. He glanced around. Everyone was looking at him with strange expressions, ones he was not used to seeing and found difficult to interpret.

“I'll explain the situation inside again.”

The best thing he could do now was help them understand what was happening.

“I was about to free the students I believed were hostages and lead them out when one of them stabbed my palm.”

“...You didn't notice the attack coming?”

A White Sparrow asked with great caution. The attacker had been a student. Abilities usually matured in adulthood, so minors were generally weaker than adults. There were exceptions, but the fact that a Black Eagle had been injured naturally raised questions.

“That's correct. No drugs were used, and I couldn't detect any power being activated. The student simply changed without warning. They approached smiling and stabbed me in a way that could have caught anyone off guard.”

“Brainwashing?”

Jihwan's expression was still troubled, but he knew he needed to listen to the report despite his feelings.

“I don't know. It felt different from ordinary brainwashing. Revenge. That's the emotion I saw in those students' eyes.”

“Revenge...?”

Jihwan could not understand. Why would students want revenge against the Black Eagles?

“What matters is that those students are no longer merely hostages. They can turn on us and attack at any moment. At the same time, they're clearly hostile to the organization that took them captive.”

The police officers and White Sparrows looked horrified. What kind of twisted relationship was this?

“To summarize, the students and the Black Eagles are enemies. The villains and the students are enemies. And the villains are also enemies of the Black Eagles.”

Students versus Black Eagles.

Villains versus students.

Villains versus Black Eagles.

It was a peculiar three-way conflict. Hyeon-yul turned toward Jihwan.

“The villains can kill the students they're using as hostages whenever they like. The Black Eagles have to rescue those same students, even though the students may attack us in the process.”

“...That's a difficult situation.”

Jihwan finally found his voice. They were supposed to save the students, but the students themselves might attack them.

“Then should we classify a student who attacks a Black Eagle as a villain?”

Hyeon-yul raised the most important question. If a student attacked the Black Eagles, there were grounds to argue that they no longer deserved the usual protections.

“It's too early to decide that. So don't kill them.”

Jihwan assessed the situation quickly and reached his conclusion.

“Understood. First we'll confiscate the bombs the students are carrying, then deal with the villains.”

Hyeon-yul agreed immediately. Their priorities had not changed, but the order of operations had.

“Let's go in together, hyung.”

Jihwan knew that speed was crucial. This time, they could not simply repeat what they had done earlier. They would need close cooperation.

“Very well. We should probably subdue the students on the first floor first. Do you have a method?”

Taking students into his darkness was dangerous. Perhaps knocking them all unconscious at once would work instead.

“Don't worry, hyung. Just follow my lead.”

Jihwan gave him a proud smile and led him away. After they vanished, the White Sparrows looked at one another. The Black Eagles and White Sparrows existed to work together on missions, yet the White Sparrows' own past behavior had made it difficult for them to get along with Team Three. Strangely, Hyeon-yul's earlier words had warmed their hearts. Despite everything, he had spoken as though he acknowledged them as partners. Their view of Team Three was beginning to change.

* * *

Jihwan opened a door and Hyeon-yul stepped through. As soon as it closed, the doorway in the wall disappeared. Jihwan had connected the entrance directly to the floor.

“Is your mana all right?”

“...”

“Ye Jihwan?”

“...Huh?”

Jihwan snapped out of his daze and looked up in surprise.

“Is your mana all right?”

“It's fine. Thanks for worrying about me.”

Jihwan smiled. He could manage this much without trouble.

“I've heard that running out of mana is extremely painful.”

“It does hurt, but I have a lot of mana. What scares me most isn't running out, though. It's those sudden moments when my mind goes blank. They leave me wide open for an instant.”

“Does that only happen when you're using magic?”

“That's when it happens most often.”

“...Ah. Just a moment.”

Hyeon-yul checked the time, then took out a syringe and his medication.

“Take your time, hyung.”

Jihwan opened his hand and displayed the three-dimensional map. With his other hand, he traced a square around the room where the students had gathered.

“I learned a spell like this for situations just like this one. Nobody will be able to get out.”

He did not stop there. That isolated space was now under his control. He began removing the air from it. People could lose consciousness when the oxygen level around them suddenly dropped.

Hyeon-yul was in the middle of injecting himself in the abdomen when he heard bodies hitting the floor. The sound was unmistakable.

“That's right. It was me, hyung.”

Jihwan's smile widened as the students collapsed.

“I didn't lay a finger on them. Now, even if their parents complain, there shouldn't be a problem.”

“Do people complain?”

“They do. We're civil servants, after all. We have to at least pretend to listen to the public.”

“That's not what I meant. Do they complain even in situations like this?”

They had just saved students who could have died. In other words, they had saved someone's children.

“They do, but those complaints don't reach us directly.”

“Why not?”

“This was a long time ago, but there was a Black Eagle who killed themselves after being subjected to intense complaints and public criticism. Since then, the complaints haven't been passed on to us.”

“So you really do only pretend to listen?”

“That's right. Anyway, I hate people who complain like that. It isn't reasonable to complain about the obvious. If they'd stop to think just once before complaining, they'd understand. Why can't they do that? Their own child isn't the only person in the world, you know.”

“Aren't those people generally called unreasonable troublemakers? I've seen videos about them.”

“It's worse for us. Some people act as though we're their sworn enemies and genuinely try to kill us. For example, when a company run by villains disappears, they blame us.”

“I don't understand.”

“Sometimes I don't either. The ones they should really be blaming are the villains.”

Jihwan chuckled in agreement. Perhaps people thought the Black Eagles were easier to intimidate, while the villains themselves were too frightening to confront.

“Then I'll go to the second floor and collect the bombs first.”

“I'll wait here for a moment.”

Jihwan decided to remain on the first floor until Hyeon-yul had finished marking the targets. It would be disastrous if the two of them wandered onto the second floor together and were discovered.

“Oh, one more thing. I spoke to the villains earlier, and they insist they aren't villains. Anyone looking at the documents the managers gave us would clearly say otherwise, though.”

Hyeon-yul considered that for a moment but could not reach a conclusion.

“I'll investigate.”

With that, he melted into the wall.

‘...How is he going to investigate?’

Jihwan stared at the wall where Hyeon-yul had vanished.

* * *

Second floor.

Hyeon-yul found students holding bombs just as they had on the first floor. He could see little difference between the two groups. The moment he sent Jihwan the villains' locations, he felt magic being activated. Symbols formed along the wall, and a door suddenly opened.

“Everyone, freeze where you are.”

Jihwan drew the heat away from the villains Hyeon-yul had marked.

Whoooosh.

The cold spread rapidly upward from their feet, covering their bodies. Jihwan grinned as he watched them stiffen, then noticed one man rushing toward him.

“...!”

Before Jihwan could cast another spell, a loud noise rang out.

Boom!

Hyeon-yul grabbed the villain by the back of his neck and slammed him into the wall.

“I deliberately left him unmarked.”

“What?”

“Don't we need someone to question? I thought we'd need one alive.”

After answering, Hyeon-yul lifted the man and slammed his head against the wall again.

Bang!

He caught the man by the back of the neck as he slid down and asked a simple question.

“Why do you keep insisting you're not villains? Give me a straightforward answer.”

“...!”

Jihwan's eyes widened in astonishment at the scene before him.