Chapter 30: Marriage Blue (10)

Baek Lak asked back with a bewildered face.

“Personal protection? Who?”

“Han is Professor Eugene Han’s only blood relative, isn’t she? For that reason alone, there must be many people targeting Han.”

“Ah, right. Professor Aleksandr was also in Eugenia Han’s lab back then.”

She let out a deep sigh.

Then she opened a small water bottle provided in the car and sipped it as if drinking alcohol.

“Sir Adrian is there, so what are you worried about? Even if I were dispatched, I’d be a target of protection for him, not a guard.”

“That’s not it, isn’t he originally a villain?”

“Ah, protection in that sense.”

Baek Lak chugged the remaining water and shook the empty bottle over her head.

When Aleksandr moved to the opposite side by the door with a disgusted face, she laughed out loud and added.

“You didn’t understand what I meant, Professor. I thought Professor Aleksandr would know better than anyone.”

“What do you mean?”

“It wouldn’t happen, but if Sir Adrian were to change his mind, about half of the Federation would go boom.”

Baek Lak playfully made a gesture of something exploding with her hands.

However, the content of her words was far from light.

Professor Aleksandr pulled out a red checkered handkerchief and wiped his forehead.

They were wild words, but they carried the authority of the Special Bureau.

If her words were true, the Special Bureau was holding a bomb capable of blowing up six planets at once.

“That kind of nonsense……”

Professor Aleksandr realized anew just how crazy of a project he had participated in.

Baek Lak coaxed him gently, as if persuading him.

“But look, Sir Adrian is being quiet, isn’t he? It’s my first time seeing him read the room like a real human being since I was born. We just need to be grateful to Han.”

“But that is.”

Professor Aleksandr hesitated for a moment.

Various thoughts clouded his mind.

When he thought of his respected mentor, Chair Professor Eugene Han, guilt filled his chest tightly.

He was amazed by the Special Bureau playing such a tightrope-like game, and he felt sorry for his cherished student.

He slowly came to realize it.

Yes, he pitied Sena Han.

“How is that any different from human sacrifice? I have never agreed to such a thing.”

Professor Aleksandr spoke in a firm tone.

He looked ready to open the door and get out of the car right away.

However, Baek Lak remained unperturbed and shook the empty water bottle in front of his eyes.

“Where do you think the water I just drank comes from, Professor?”

“Isn’t it groundwater or purified seawater?”

“Nobody asks the soil or the water for permission to use them, do they?”

“Supposedly, but those aren’t human beings.”

Baek Lak tilted her head upon hearing Professor Aleksandr’s reluctant answer.

“How strange. Then, do you consider Sir Adrian or Sena Han to be human, Professor?”

Aleksandr did not answer.

Before he was named Adrian Blake, before he even took the form of a human, young Aleksandr Vlasicha believed that existence was a person and shared affection with him.

The same was true for Sena Han.

Wasn’t she the daughter who was the spitting image of his respected Chair Professor Eugene Han?

However.

“……I am not sure anymore.”

Aleksandr answered with difficulty, recalling the face of his student who looked just like his mentor.

For now, that was the best answer he could offer.

Baek Lak seemed to lose interest in his response, crumpled the water bottle, and threw it to the floor.

“Well, whether we agree or object, does it even matter? The Federation is slowly dying anyway.”

Professor Aleksandr simply remained silent.

Before long, the inside of the car grew quiet enough to hear his breathing, and the investigators sitting in front and behind were meticulously observing his reaction.

Or perhaps it had been that way from the beginning, and he had only just noticed.

A familiar headache surged.

Pressing his temples, he asked the seemingly cold-blooded investigator.

“Then do you plan to leave Han as she is?”

“No, Sena Han is surprisingly a diligent taxpayer. And the Special Bureau has a duty to protect Federation citizens.”

It’s not as if the Special Bureau receives tax money for free.

Baek Lak rested her chin on her hand and spoke toward Professor Aleksandr’s heavily distorted face reflected in the car window.

“Putting him back in his place and smuggling Han out is what the Special Bureau needs to do.”

“……Without treating either of them as human, does that mean Han is a citizen and Adrian Blake is not?”

“Yes.”

Instead of giving a lecture on human rights and citizenship defined by the Special Bureau, she answered briefly and clearly.

Then she extended her hand toward Professor Aleksandr.

“So, will you cooperate with us?”

“What help could I possibly be at this point?”

“Among the researchers who participated in the Solar Return Project, you are the only one whose survival has been confirmed so far.”

Professor Aleksandr froze stiff upon hearing those words, but he did not look overly surprised.

When the professor didn’t give in easily, Baek Lak whispered in a subtle tone.

“Of course, you are also the only one left to inherit Eugenia Han’s research, Professor.”

“…….”

“We can’t just let the research achievements go to waste, can we?”

After much deliberation, he took the investigator’s hand.

As soon as Professor Aleksandr and the investigators left, Sena followed Adrian around and interrogated him.

The fact that the professor pretended to know Adrian was one thing, but there were more than a few suspicious details.

She hovered around Adrian, close enough to reach out and touch him, tossing questions at him.

However, he exercised his right to remain silent until the very end and eventually fled to his room.

Sena caught the closing door right in front of her nose.

“Did you know Professor Sasha?”

If he didn’t answer, she looked ready to step right into the room.

Normally he would have welcomed it, but right now it was troublesome.

Cursing the careless intruder, Adrian reluctantly opened his mouth.

“Right now, no. I do not know who Professor Vlasicha is.”

Instead of falling for that indirect answer, Sena scoffed.

What a strange way to talk.

“Oh, if not now, did you know him 26 years ago?”

That was the end of Adrian’s answer.

He closed his mouth as if his lips were glued shut.

Sena still didn’t believe the nonsense that he couldn’t lie, but whenever his compelling gray eyes looked down at her intently, she felt as if she would end up believing him.

Believing Adrian Blake? That made no sense.

She shook her head vigorously and, to brush off the strange feeling, said jokingly.

“Just how old are you anyway? It’s not like you’re 260 years old or something, right?”

“It is not like that.”

Adrian answered with a solemn face.

Unaware that his credibility had dropped again in Sena’s heart, he leaned casually against the doorway and let out a sigh.

“I am the one who wants to ask you, Sena. How do you know that person?”

“He was my academic advisor during my university years.”

“I know that much. What I mean is.”

Adrian licked his dry lips as if anxious.

“You seem quite close with Aleksandr Vlasicha.”

For a question asked after a hesitation, it was rather anticlimactic.

It was a question she had heard throughout her time at Trase Magic University.

Sena shrugged her shoulders and spoke in a light tone.

“As you probably know, I majored in Magic Engineering without any magic power.”

“…….”

“Thanks to my mother, I received bonus points when I was admitted, and although I got full marks in theory, still…… a magic engineering student who can’t use magic is kind of funny, right?”

There was still no particular reaction from Adrian.

His gray eyes, dark like a storm-clouded sky, were fixed on Sena’s face, but the unfocused look made it seem like he was thinking of something else.

Feeling unnecessarily embarrassed, Sena brushed her hair back.

The former Chair Professor of Trase Magic University, Eugenia Han.

Her mother was someone to whom modifiers like genius or great person fit better than someone’s parent.

Whenever Sena thought of the mother she had never even seen face to face, she felt a distant dizziness, as if counting the stars in the night sky.

A peerless genius who succeeded in the terraforming of Red County—something deemed impossible—and brought success to every research project she touched, except for her final project, Solar Return.

Even if ordinary people didn’t know the weight of those achievements, Professor Eugenia Han was nothing short of a legend in the field of magic engineering.

And it was a famous story at Trase Magic University that Selena Han, the daughter who was the spitting image of Eugenia Han, didn’t have a single drop of magic power.

The staff and her peers approached Sena expecting her mother’s genius, but soon turned their backs in disappointment.

Paradoxically, the person who did not turn his back on Sena until the very end was the person who respected her mother the most.

“So when there were problems, Professor Sasha helped me a lot. If it weren’t for him, I might have dropped out.”

Sena dismissed the times she didn’t want to recall with the single word “problems.”

Adrian’s gray eyes curved into a slight, faint smile.

Her back, which she had stiffened without realizing it, grew taut with tension.

Sena hurriedly lowered her eyes.

Whenever Adrian Blake smiled like that, a disaster too difficult to handle would sweep in right after.

“There is one thing you left out, Sena.”

Adrian said cheerfully, pressing his thumb gently against Sena’s lips.

“Didn’t you come to see me back then?”

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