Deal Breaker

The junkie’s childish antics didn’t last many days. Somehow, he obtained illegal inhibitors and tried to forcibly administer large amounts to Kanghyeon. He was trying to ruin his abilities through inhibitor overdose. Of course, the bastard was caught by the armed group members and nearly beheaded.

From time to time afterward, he would hurl vulgar insults at Kanghyeon via telepathy, so it seemed he had managed to escape alive.

[ While you’re jerking off rubbing your bean sized d**k, I’ll be fucking your Guide. ]

“Well, you’re fucked anyway. Enjoy prison. Won’t be long now.”

[ You homo monkey bastard! ]

It seemed he hadn’t understood the slip of the tongue Kanghyeon made during that day’s suggestion, since it was in Korean. Yeah, that had been a slip of the tongue.

It had been twenty six days since that day. Nearly a full month had passed since he’d been captured.

Kanghyeon was thinking of trying the methods hostages commonly used. Getting friendly, or pretending to be brainwashed, earning trust and then freedom.

But there had to be an opportunity to get friendly in the first place. And to pretend to be brainwashed, they would have to actually attempt to brainwash him. Yet they didn’t even show their faces, let alone try. They were so afraid of his abilities that they kept his eyes covered at all times and didn’t even approach him.

Then what are you even planning to use me for?

They were like fools who had captured a lion to use in a circus, only to be too scared to figure out how to tame it, so they just locked it in a cage and trembled far away.

Kanghyeon lay on an old, filthy sleeping bag and stared at the gray ceiling. Whether it was a side effect of the drugs or not, the ceiling spun. He squeezed his eyes shut and covered his forehead, slick with cold sweat, with his hand, when clink, the sound of chains colliding echoed from below his neck.

In the end, a leash was fastened around his neck. He’d only ever thought he would encounter something like this as an ‘unfortunate incident of handing the leash to a Guide’, never that it would be put on by terrorists on the other side of the world.

This had happened because he tried to escape early this morning and got caught.

At first, it went smoothly. At a time when everyone was asleep, it was easy to catch the lone guard watching him off guard and make eye contact. He put him under hypnosis, obtained one loaded AK 47, and read his memories to grasp the number and positions of enemies inside the building, as well as the surrounding terrain.

He tried to escape the building using the man as a shield. If only the leader hadn’t woken up in a place different from what was in the man’s memories, he would have made it smoothly to the truck hidden behind the building.

He shot about three of the men who poured out, and hypnotized two others and controlled them. The crazed bastards had apparently been holding other hostages too. They dragged out a young woman he’d never seen before, put a gun to her head, and threatened Kanghyeon. When he tried to incapacitate them with his mental abilities, he was pushed to the brink of a rampage and passed out.

Sometime during that, they must have moved their hideout. When he came to, Kanghyeon was in another unfamiliar place again. Was it a relief that his head was still attached. His hand trembled as it groped at the chain below.

This was a side effect of the drugs. They had forcibly made him take sedatives. They were probably cheap stuff from the black market. They had little effect and plenty of side effects.

“How pointless…”

After going all the way to the threshold of death, you end up looking back on life. Thinking that he might die miserably on foreign soil like this made him ask himself whether he had lived a life that made such a miserable death not pointless.

The life of Esper Han Kanghyeon might have been meaningful in that it contributed to global security and the well being of humanity, but the life of Han Kanghyeon as an individual human being had achieved nothing, and left nothing behind.

He had amassed enough money to spend extravagantly for a lifetime, but it meant nothing to the dead. If only he at least had a wife and children who could live happily with that money, then it would feel worthwhile.

My assets, who do they go to if I die?

A regret he hadn’t known he had surfaced. Did I ever have greed for money? Since it doesn’t feel like a waste to die without using it myself, it doesn’t seem to be greed for money.

He now regretted not having written a will. His original thought had been to let things be handled by the law no matter how he died. His parents would donate it somewhere, or set up a foundation, or do whatever they saw fit. That was what he had thought. There was no one he particularly wanted to give it to, yet one face kept flickering before his eyes.

Hyeji.

He wanted to give it all to Hyeji. Since she worked as a Guide purely for money, if she had money, she wouldn’t need to seek out another Esper and do guiding she didn’t want after he died.

Should I talk to her about it.

The decision was quick, but Kanghyeon hesitated when it came to putting it into action. Not because the money was a waste, but because it was awkward.

Since blurting out that he loved her to the fake Hyeji during that suggestion, he hadn’t spoken to Hyeji for nearly a month. During that time, he’d only sent daily survival reports to the Center and his company’s emergency response team contacts.

Still, my inheritance, that’s something I need to talk about before it’s too late.

Kanghyeon took a deep breath and closed his eyes. With a head throbbing as if it might burst in time with his heartbeat, he focused his mind. Even after the telepathy channel opened, he wasted a long time choosing his first words. In the past, it wouldn’t have been something worth worrying about.

‘Secretary Noh, what are you doing?’