Chapter 7: Out of Place, Out of Time

The squad members moved swiftly.

With their bodies feeling noticeably lighter after receiving Radiation Guiding, they searched the Gate and came to a single conclusion.

There were absolutely no lifeforms inside the facility.

When the result showed that there had been only this one man inside, his importance to them increased all the more.

Wasn’t he practically a gift sent down by God.

Private Jason cradled the “Guide” carefully in his arms and headed for Ghost Company.

Ghost Company was made up of only three platoons, but it was a unit composed solely of the strongest Espers among all Espers.

Now that Gate activity and dimensional ruptures had nearly disappeared, Espers who could go berserk at any moment were shunned by most countries.

This company was a rare exception, belonging only to the Central Esper Command Headquarters, which made it easy to conceal things within the base.

In any case, the squad members laid the “Guide” down on a bed with expressions that said they had no idea whether they should lock him in a prison cell or treat him like royalty.

The unit that had returned from the Gate was resting, and the remaining units were still unaware of the Guide’s existence.

Lee Juju opened his eyes the next morning.

He opened them while fervently wishing that he would see either the headquarters dormitory or the floor of the facility.

Instead, an entirely unfamiliar ceiling greeted him.

“Ah.”

His voice cracked terribly, as if he really had gone through hell the night before.

Lee Juju rubbed his rough cheek and sat up in bed.

There was no one around.

Letting out a sigh, he got up and opened a door he assumed led to the bathroom, revealing a sink and a simple shower.

After roughly washing his face and stepping out, he found the ash-gray–haired man from the previous night standing stiffly in a black uniform, though he had no idea when the man had come in.

Lee Juju rolled his eyes briefly.

“……Um, good morning?”

“Good day. I am Captain Russell.”

“Yes, Captain.”

When Lee Juju answered without resistance, Captain Russell’s eyebrows lifted in mild surprise.

“My name is Lee Juju.”

“Yes. The Colonel is looking for you. Let us go.”

Captain Russell pointed toward the door with firm finality, as though he had no intention of entertaining objections.

It was the very image of a career soldier.

Lee Juju had already thought that he should meet the person in charge here as soon as he woke up.

He nodded.

It wasn’t as if refusing would change anything. Captain Russell looked ready to drag him there by force if necessary.

The moment Lee Juju signaled his agreement, Captain Russell took the lead.

His pace was far too fast for Lee Juju to keep up comfortably, but Lee Juju pretended not to notice and asked a question as he followed.

“Is the person I saw yesterday the Colonel? The one with blue eyes.”

Captain Russell halted for a split second.

Since he was facing forward, Lee Juju couldn’t see his expression.

After a brief pause, Captain Russell answered.

“……Yes. That is correct.”

The brisk pace of Captain Russell’s steps slowed.

Lee Juju looked at the suddenly considerate Captain for a moment, then broke into a laugh and followed along.

The Colonel’s office wasn’t very far away.

As they climbed the stairs, Lee Juju realized that the building was made of wood.

The structure itself looked like a temporary shelter, so he couldn’t imagine how they had installed a bathroom.

There must be an Esper with construction or engineering-related abilities.

Captain Russell knocked.

“Come in.”

“Yes, Colonel.”

The door swung open wide, and Lee Juju silently followed behind Captain Russell.

The ash-gray–haired Esper entered the room with disciplined steps and stood to the Colonel’s right.

There were already about ten Espers inside the office, and several who looked to be higher-ranking were seated on a long sofa placed across the room.

Most of them, however, were standing.

And seated at the seat of honor was, without question, the Colonel Lee Juju had seen the night before.

Lee Juju could see that the majority of the Espers present had pitch-black eyes.

His steps faltered instinctively as he tried to enter the room.

They had been waiting for Lee Juju to come in, and judging by how some of their eye colors had lightened, those individuals were likely the Espers who had been at the Gate last night.

‘Alright. I didn’t die last night. I probably won’t die today either. Let’s go, Lee Juju.’

No matter how much he steeled his resolve, stepping into a crowd of black-eyed Espers on the verge of berserk was not an easy thing to do.

It felt like facing a cluster of time bombs that could explode at the slightest misstep.

But with no other option available, Lee Juju put on a brave face and walked into the room.

The Esper standing by the door slammed it shut as if he had been waiting for the moment.

“I will report.”

Captain Russell spoke in a rigid tone.

“Name: Lee Juju. He claims not to be an Esper, but there is a high probability that he is a hypnosis-type or support-type Esper. He is the sole survivor discovered in a Gate where no lifeforms were detected last night. He stated an affiliation, but it is presumed to be false. That is all.”

“An affiliation, you say?”

“There is no country with a Central Union Headquarters. We checked through the communications unit to see if any such headquarters had been recently established, but there were none.”

“Hah, he’s got guts. This is the first time I’ve seen an Esper lie straight to Colonel Shan’s face.”

One of the older-looking soldiers seated on the sofa spoke.

Lee Juju had never served in the military, and since the Guide Union and the government military were on bad terms, the military wanted to treat Espers like state-owned dogs, while the Guide Union was concerned with Esper human rights, making conflict between them inevitable, he had rarely encountered soldiers.

Because of that, he found it difficult to guess their ranks just by looking at their insignia.

Standing there blankly, Lee Juju found it oddly refreshing that no one told him to sit down.

Espers generally assumed Guides were ordinary civilians, so they treated Guides with extreme care, as if they might shatter at any moment like fragile glass marbles.

If Michelle were here and saw Juju in this state, he would have shouted, “Juju!” and run over, asking if his legs hurt, dragging over a chair and forcing him to sit down no matter what.

A faint smile appeared at the corner of Lee Juju’s mouth.

The officers and non-commissioned officers gathered here had already received full reports about last night’s commotion.

Even so, they were deliberately making their report while keeping Lee Juju standing, purely to intimidate him.

They wanted this man to, so to speak, “curl up in fear.”

Instead, he was smiling.

Of course they were dumbfounded.

Chief Warrant Officer Rascal narrowed his eyes.

Laughing in a situation like this took more than ordinary nerve.

He had found it strange that no lifeforms were detected in the Gate, but he never expected a man like this to suddenly pop out.

He had thought the reason for gathering all the officers and NCOs was some alarming abnormality, but the reality was unexpected.

All they had done was summon a seemingly harmless survivor to the Colonel’s office.

The Chief Master Sergeant couldn’t tell what the Colonel was thinking.

The Colonel’s face remained expressionless.

The same was true of Captain Russell and the NCOs who had gone to the Gate with him the night before.

They looked like people waiting for something… or rather, people anticipating something.

As Colonel Shan Pei kept his lips firmly shut, silence naturally settled over the room.

Lee Juju glanced down at his legs, which were starting to ache, then looked up at Colonel Shan Fei.

Sunlight streamed in through the large window, giving a bluish sheen to the Colonel’s jet-black hair.

That was a new discovery.

‘He looks even more handsome in the light.’

Honestly, Lee Juju had never seen someone that frighteningly good-looking before.

He looked like one of those legendary actors said to be born once every thousand years.

If not that, then maybe CGI, or a painting, something unreal.

At last, Colonel Shan Fei spoke.

“Why did you give a false affiliation? The Central Union Headquarters you mentioned does not exist anywhere.”

‘Hmm.’

Lee Juju thought.

He had assumed some lunatic was conducting a twisted experiment, dumping Espers deep in the mountains and forcing them to survive without Guides, but that didn’t seem to be the case.

At the very least, that meant this wasn’t the same reality he had come from, but he had no idea what exactly the machine had activated.

‘Did I really fall into another world?’

“Are you ignoring the Colonel’s question?”

One of the officers seated on the sofa barked sharply at Lee Juju.

Startled by the sudden shout, Lee Juju looked at him.

Of course, he still wasn’t trembling or cowering.

He was simply surprised by the loud noise.

He replied calmly instead.

“I’m thinking. Why are you yelling suddenly?”

“What did you say?”

The officer who had shouted at Lee Juju looked utterly incredulous.

Tilting his head with a contemplative expression, Lee Juju began to speak.

“I am definitely affiliated with the Central Union Headquarters, and due to a malfunction in experimental equipment, I woke up in a place I’d never seen before. Then I met all of you. But if the Central Union Headquarters doesn’t exist, does that mean this isn’t Earth, but some other world?”

“Another world? At least try to make sense.”

The older soldier shook his head and muttered.

Colonel Shan Pei answered without so much as twitching an eyebrow.

“Of course this is Earth.”

‘Huh. So it’s not another world. Then what is it? Did the Central Union Headquarters collapse overnight?’

That was obviously impossible.

There was no way the Central Union Headquarters could have vanished overnight, so judging from the dusty, decrepit state of the facility, the most reasonable conclusion was that he had traveled through time along with the facility.

Unless, of course, they were lying to him.

But if they were lying, the view outside the window was far too…

‘Unfamiliar.’

On top of that, Lee Juju was an S-class, state-certified Guide.

If he had been missing for this long, there was no way a tracker-type Esper wouldn’t have found him.

And if this were all an act, the fact that these Espers were genuinely on the brink of berserk was very real.

It didn’t make sense that so many Espers would risk their lives, delaying their berserk states to the very limit, just to abduct Lee Juju.