Chapter 27: Midnight Visitor with Blackened Eyes

“True enough. Any esper loses their mind right before a rampage. I did too, remember? From the Center’s point of view, it’s only natural they’d want to manage espers somehow.”

Lieutenant Colonel Miles said it with an easygoing smile.

When gates and rifts had almost completely disappeared, the Center’s very authority had supposedly become meaningless.

Even if someone tried to lie about not being an esper, the moment their eye color darkened even a little, it meant manifestation, so the Center would keep them under observation, inject TCA-Induce, and the risk of rampage would be gone.

The espers who survived were forcibly enlisted into the military, formed into units, and sent off to sparsely populated areas, conveniently cutting them off from society.

That was how things had been, until a month ago, before gates suddenly began increasing again.

Since only espers could close gates and rifts, the Center must have scrambled to reuse espers by any means necessary. That, Miles explained, was why they’d even sent inspectors all the way out to this mountain backwater where it took over an hour by car to reach the nearest city.

Of course, inspections had been conducted periodically before, but this one would definitely be different.

“So you can really avoid suspicion with just sunglasses?”

“Well… that, I don’t know.”

Lieutenant Colonel Miles avoided Lee Juju’s gaze and looked out the window instead. It felt like he had something in mind but was pretending otherwise. Just as Lee Juju narrowed his eyes.

“Looks like we’ve arrived.”

Once they got out of the car, a luxurious-looking mansion came into view.

“Welcome.”

“Ma’am, you didn’t need to come out to greet us.”

“As I’ve gotten older, welcoming guests has become my greatest pleasure.”

It was Lady Gorrella Rwendel, the same woman they’d met at the restaurant. She approached with a servant of the Rwendel household, as if she’d been waiting. The driver recognized her and bowed at a perfect ninety degrees.

She studied Lee Juju with a peculiar expression for a moment before turning to the driver.

“You’ve worked hard, Mr. Western.”

After that, Lieutenant Colonel Miles and Lee Juju were shown to rooms 202 and 203 in the mansion.

“It would’ve been nicer to go to a villa, but even the nearest Rwendel villa would require a private plane. For today, unpack and rest. I’ll come again tomorrow at lunch. Let’s eat together.”

That was what Lady Gorrella said. Lee Juju, who’d assumed he’d be staying in an empty room of a big house for three days, smiled politely, then panicked a little when she turned to leave.

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“How polite you are.”

She praised him warmly, then patted his shoulder with dignified grace before departing in her private car.

“…This isn’t what I expected. I thought there’d be guards.”

“Well, what could possibly happen? Juju. Don’t worry. This is inside the city.”

Lieutenant Colonel Miles said it breezily. Choosing Shankriti had been mostly because it was close, but to be honest, Lee Juju had also hoped to stay with Lady Rwendel and pry a bit about Colonel Shan. That plan fell flat, and his energy drained away.

“So much for that.”

“And even if something did happen, what’s there to worry about? I’ll protect you.”

Miles boasted as he brushed back his red hair. Lee Juju stared at him for a moment with a dumbfounded look, then shrugged.

“Sure. Let’s go in.”

“More importantly, think about what you’ll do for the next three days.”

“Does Shankriti have capsule rooms?”

Lee Juju frowned. His original plan had been to hole up in a nearby capsule room and play games all day if needed.

“Capsule room? What’s that?”

“…Never mind.”

‘No way virtual reality games exist here anyway.’

Right. This city, advanced at best to the twentieth, maybe twenty-first century, wasn’t going to have that kind of high-tech gaming. Only then did the horrifying realization hit him: he might have absolutely nothing to do for three days.

Without games, he had no idea how to pass the time.

Watching him, Lieutenant Colonel Miles snickered.

“Want to read some comics, then?”

“…”

For the record, Lee Juju hadn’t touched a comic since graduating middle school.

“…Yeah. Sure.”

With no other choice, he sighed and agreed.

Room 202 was furnished like a hotel, neat and orderly.

When he opened the refrigerator, it was neatly stocked with side dishes, bottled water, and instant meals ready to be prepared. The wardrobe was filled with brand-new clothes still wrapped in plastic, tags intact.

There was even a note by the closet with a phone number, saying to call if the size didn’t fit.

‘All this for just three days?’

His vacation had technically been last week, but somehow it felt like the real break was starting now. After looking around the room, Lee Juju flopped onto the bed. The bed in the base wasn’t bad by any means, but the mansion’s bed was so soft it felt like his body was melting into it.

Without realizing it, he dozed off.

The sound of the doorbell woke him.

“Who is it?”

“Good afternoon.”

A delivery of comic books, apparently ordered directly by Lieutenant Colonel Miles, had arrived. A brown-haired deliveryman stacked the comics inside room 202 like a mountain.

“How many are these…?”

“Three hundred volumes.”

As if performing a trick, the deliveryman effortlessly stacked the books higher and higher in one corner of the living room. Lee Juju stared, mouth agape.

‘What, am I supposed to read a hundred a day…?’

“…Thank you.”

“It’s my job. Please call anytime.”

Every single one had been ordered by Lieutenant Colonel Miles. Honestly, what a menace. As Lee Juju thanked him in a drained voice, he suddenly looked up.

The man wasn’t just a deliveryman; he was the servant who’d been with Lady Rwendel earlier. He wore a gentle smile, but his eyes were black.

‘I should probably guide him.’

If Colonel Shan hadn’t repeatedly emphasized that Juju’s existence needed to stay hidden, he might’ve guided this esper right then and there. Juju deliberately avoided his gaze. T

he man introduced himself as Sion, an esper tasked with guarding the mansion, and confidently promised to protect Lee Juju and Lieutenant Colonel Miles from any danger.

****

To sum it up, the esper who introduced himself as Sion was far more useful than Lieutenant Colonel Miles in the room next door.

On a midsummer night, when a cold breeze brushes across the sweat-damp nape of your neck while you sleep, your whole body shivers with a deep chill.

It was that kind of sensation.

Feeling the chill at the back of his neck, Lee Juju opened his eyes. The shadow that had been padding forward like a cat froze.

“Who… are you?”

‘Why do I keep saying that today?’

The thought was absurdly unreal.

“Hi, pretty thing. Shame. If you’d kept your eyes closed, I could’ve kidnapped you just like that. Though, well, resisting wouldn’t have helped anyway?”

The voice was lively, yet strangely sticky.

Lee Juju blinked slowly. He was exactly as he’d fallen asleep, on the bed, chewing potato chips and reading comics. He hadn’t even turned off the lamp, so the entire room was brightly lit.

A woman in a skintight black suit stepped lightly over the piles of comics. Each time she bounced like a cat, her pink bob-length hair swayed around her shoulders.

In stark contrast to the playful color of her hair, her eyes were pitch-black, like an abyss, gleaming eerily in the lamplight.

“Oh, you can scream if you want. I like that sort of thing.”

There was static in her voice. Lee Juju realized then that this suspicious woman was an esper so far gone that the emergency codes might as well not exist, a rampaging esper, half out of her mind.

‘Stay calm…’

He’d always known that someday, in this world, he’d run into a rampaging esper. Still, this was the first time he’d ever encountered one so completely unhinged.

Usually, when an esper’s eyes turned black, their mind collapsed and they rampaged, but in Juju’s original time, guides were plentiful, so it was something you only learned about from textbooks.

This woman, too, must have received TCA-Induce in order to survive, and she must have survived. And then, having overused her abilities, she’d finally tipped into rampage.

At first, he’d wondered if Center inspectors had discovered him and sent an agent to capture the guide, but the Center wouldn’t dispatch someone this utterly broken. If they had, at the very least, she’d look more stable… and at the very least, she’d be wearing a military uniform.

Something Lieutenant Colonel Miles had mentioned came back to him: cases where espers fled rather than be forcibly enlisted, or survived by sheer luck after being injected with illicit, diluted vaccines siphoned off by researchers seeking profit instead of proper TCA-Induce.

Since one capsule of TCA-Induce was typically diluted and shared, survival rates in those cases dropped below one percent.

And yet…

She had survived.