Chapter 26: Where He Belongs Without Trying

Wearing Colonel Shan’s coat and sitting on the colonel’s wide sofa made Lee Juju feel strange.

Noncommissioned officers were seated in a line to his left, and officers in a line to his right.

When he’d first come in, he hadn’t been able to tell who was an NCO and who was an officer, but sitting in the colonel’s seat made it clear there was a certain order to it all.

‘How did I even… end up sitting here…’

But since the colonel himself had seated him, now wasn’t a good time to stand up and say he couldn’t sit there.

Because the officers and NCOs weren’t paying Lee Juju any attention at all.

If he stood up, though, their gazes would definitely turn back to him.

The discussion about the inspector coming from the Center was in full swing.

“Come to think of it, I happened to run into Lady Rwendel in Shankriti. If we ask her to look after Juju, I bet she’d gladly agree.”

“You met my mother?”

Colonel Shan’s brow furrowed.

Lieutenant Colonel Miles shrugged his shoulders.

“Yes, Colonel Shan. You’re not going to kick away such a good opportunity just because you’ve cut ties with your family, are you? She even said she’d be staying in Shankriti for a while, so the timing’s perfect. A nearby city, and someone who’d treat Juju well, who else fits the bill?”

“That’s enough, Miles.”

Colonel Shan’s face hardened like ice.

Of course, Lieutenant Colonel Miles wasn’t the sort of naïve person to be intimidated by that expression.

“What a shame. I already mentioned it to Lady Rwendel… and while I was at it, I even showed her my eyes. Told her you’d been blessed with better luck than even me, Shan.”

“Lieutenant Colonel Miles. Juju’s existence is top secret. Are you saying you went around talking about it?”

“She’s your mother, what’s the big deal? Oh, right. I guess you haven’t told Juju yet. Colonel Shan here is the legitimate heir of the Rwendel family. Unfortunately, he manifested as an esper and ended up belonging to the military, but still, thanks to his family, he started out as a second lieutenant the moment he enlisted. And after that, his rank shot straight up. No matter how capable I am, the reason I couldn’t make colonel is because my family isn’t Rwendel. Got it, Juju?”

“…I should’ve killed you three days ago.”

Colonel Shan muttered in a chilling voice.

Lieutenant Colonel Miles, still utterly incapable of keeping his mouth shut, spun a lazy smile.

“Just yesterday I was itching to tell Juju that you’re basically a nepotism hire. What, does Juju look down on me just because I’m only a lieutenant colonel?”

“I don’t look down on you.”

Wrapped snugly in the colonel’s fur-lined coat, with only his eyes peeking out, Lee Juju muttered softly.

“Hah! You totally do, don’t you? One’s a colonel and the other only made it to lieutenant colonel-!”

“That’s not looking down on you. That’s just a fact.”

“Pfft.”

One of the officers hurriedly covered his mouth and turned away.

Colonel Shan, who had been burning with anger, looked at Lee Juju with a strangely subdued expression.

He’d thought it was just complicated family circumstances that had driven him apart from his parents, but cutting ties entirely?

What on earth had happened?

He was genuinely dying of curiosity.

“So then, Juju. Will you go? To Shankriti?”

“Do I even have a choice?”

“There’s also the option of coming to our unit for a while.”

Lieutenant Colonel Miles said, his eyes lighting up.

Lee Juju hesitated for a moment.

“How far away is it?”

At that, Lieutenant Colonel Miles’ expression dimmed.

“Well… if you take the shortest route, it’s only about a week.”

Shankriti took less than ten minutes if you rode in a taxi called Lieutenant Colonel Miles.

By an actual taxi, it was about an hour away.

Lee Juju answered without much thought.

“I’ll go to Shankriti. If you’re okay with it, Colonel.”

“What wouldn’t be okay about it, Juju?”

Lieutenant Colonel Miles clicked his tongue and looked at Colonel Shan.

Colonel Shan looked like he was deep in thought, as if weighing what the right answer was.

“I also… think Shankriti is the better option. But there’s no need to rely on the Rwendel family. I’ll reserve a hotel for you, Juju.”

‘Is a hotel better?’

Lee Juju rolled his eyes briefly.

Lieutenant Colonel Miles clicked his tongue again in displeasure, but neither Colonel Shan nor Lee Juju spared him a glance.

“And until the inspection is over, I’ll assign personnel every night to guard you. So there’s no need to worry.”

Colonel Shan looked firmly convinced that Juju would choose the hotel.

Lee Juju blinked once… then…

“I’ll do as Lieutenant Colonel Miles suggested.”

…said that instead.

“Bravo!”

Lieutenant Colonel Miles clapped enthusiastically.

Colonel Shan’s face faltered just a little.

Lee Juju hurriedly added, sounding apologetic.

“You said it’s a good family. Then they’ll have guards, too, and if inspectors are around, they’ll definitely get suspicious if soldiers disappear every night. So if there’s a place I can rely on, I think it’s better to ask.”

“You really know your stuff,”

Lieutenant Colonel Miles chimed in.

‘Know my stuff, my ass…’

He really was an incorrigible man.

Colonel Shan listened to Lee Juju with his brow furrowed, then silently tilted his gaze.

‘So that noblewoman I saw back then was the colonel’s mother?’

Just what kind of family situation did he have?

Lady Rwendel had said she came all the way to Shankriti because she wanted to see her son, yet Colonel Shan had cut ties with his family and didn’t even see his parents.

Lee Juju was going crazy with curiosity.

If he met Lady Rwendel, he might get a chance to learn the truth.

And if possible…

As he followed that train of thought, Lee Juju suddenly realized something.

“Um, but-”

When Lee Juju, who had been occupying a small corner of the colonel’s massive sofa, spoke up, the officers and NCOs naturally turned their attention to him.

In truth, ever since Lee Juju had entered the colonel’s office, every esper inside had been watching him, consciously or not.

“How are you all planning to hide your eye colors?”

A brief silence fell.

“Ah.”

Someone let out a groan.

“…I guess we need to buy sunglasses.”

After a long moment, Colonel Shan, who had been quietly staring at Lee Juju with an unreadable expression, muttered.

****

Three days later, Monday.

With a conflicted expression, Lee Juju turned around.

He’d never seen Colonel Shan Pei joke before, but he’d really thought that comment had been a joke…

The entire company was seeing him off wearing sunglasses.

“Let’s get going,”

Lieutenant Colonel Miles urged cheerfully.

Since he wasn’t a member of the Ghost Company either, he too had to be away from the unit for the time being.

To merge the unit he commanded into the Ghost Company, they needed to submit an official report to the Center, but since most of it was just formality, approval would come quickly.

While riding in the private car sent by the Rwendel family, Lieutenant Colonel Miles gave Lee Juju a brief explanation about the Center.

The Center was the abbreviated name for the Esper Administration Headquarters.

Originally, it had been a research institute established to prevent esper rampages, and that institute later became the foundation of the current Center.

After the Great Gate Explosion, as espers began to explode just like gates, scientists devoted themselves wholeheartedly to stopping them.

The first person to invent TCA-Induce was said to be the first director of the Center, whose daughter had manifested as an esper.

To save his daughter at any cost, he’d had no choice but to create the drug.

Waiting to pass full clinical trials would have resulted in too many casualties, so the newly created drug had to be injected directly into espers.

Unfortunately, most espers who received the drug died, leading espers to suspect that rather than inducing abnormal blood flow to prevent death, the drug was actually meant to kill them.

As a result, the research institute was frequently targeted by esper terrorism in its early days.

Already seen as little more than walking explosives, espers became the focus of widespread hostility during this period.

However, when espers who had survived after receiving the TCA-Induce vaccine continued to live normally into their thirties and forties, the vaccine’s effectiveness was finally acknowledged.

The problem was that due to countless terrorist attacks, most experimental data had been lost, and the Center’s director himself had passed away.

As a result, the reality was that they could only mass-produce the remaining TCA-Induce vaccine and were unable to develop it any further.

In any case, the Esper Administration Headquarters, built upon the former research institute, grew rapidly with aid from numerous countries to manage the surviving espers.

Since espers wouldn’t rampage if they received the drug at their initial manifestation, negative perceptions of espers seemed to fade, but the real problem was the rampage symptoms that steadily accumulated in their bodies.

On the surface, they showed no signs and appeared perfectly normal, but in the end, those symptoms gnawed away at their minds.

Eventually, espers who had completely lost their reason would rampage after many years, destroying everything around them and themselves as well.

That was when the perception of espers as monsters became firmly entrenched.

It was a tragedy.

Anyone would lose their sanity if they developed a disease in their own body and had to live knowing they might die at any time, yet because it wasn’t visible, people assumed everything was fine.