TSBIRBV Ch 30

Chapter 30 Black Ghost (2)

“It seems the companion who brought you here failed to properly explain what kind of place this is.”

The reply was cold. That harsh, metallic voice — like iron scraping on stone — was already becoming oddly familiar to Yegyeol.

He feigned an effort not to shrink away as he answered.

“I was told it’s a dangerous place. But Samrang is someone my Senior Brother personally assigned to me. If she left me alone with you, Black Ghost, then that means you must be… ‘safe’.”

That’s right, isn’t it? — the cheeky glint in his gaze made Je Haryang swallow a dry chuckle.

“Though we are in a relationship of mutual cooperation, you shouldn’t rely too heavily on your guard’s judgment. Not long ago, precisely because she left you alone, you encountered trouble, did you not?”

His growl was edged with threat. Yegyeol could tell he wasn’t exactly angry, but the intent to impress a warning on him was plain.

“But…”

Yegyeol’s lips parted slightly, catching on a pause before he leaned in with a near-whisper.

“You helped me, didn’t you, Black Ghost.”

How’s that, Senior Brother? Driving you crazy yet?

Keeping his gaze lowered, he waited for a reaction.

He would be pleased if the sight of a disciple who trusted anyone indiscriminately blackened his Senior Brother’s guts with worry. If his heart had dropped at being recognized beneath a false identity, that would be fine too. And if he felt a stab of jealousy at the sight of Yegyeol clinging to a “stranger,” he’d happily spend the whole day riding on Haryang’s back.

“The Black Spot — wasn’t it you who said it deals in anything?”

Wrapped up in hazy daydreams, his impatience crept through into the clinging words. Whether it had the intended effect or not, the furrow between Black Ghost’s brows deepened as he replied.

“The Black Spot deals in everything, yes — but I don’t extend my hand.”

“Of course you’d find it unpleasant.”

“…However, there was a failing on our side in what you went through earlier. I’ll humor you, to some extent.”

He added that, of course, there would be a fee.

Seeing this money-grubbing version of Je Haryang so committed to the act made Yegyeol’s lips twitch with amusement. Mistaking it for relief, Haryang seemed not to think much of it.

“Thank you…”

Yegyeol clasped the roughly altered hand tightly. The scars across the back could have been repulsive, but Yegyeol didn’t care. As his slightly uneven breathing fell into rhythm, the man wearing the Black Ghost’s face remarked bluntly:

“You’d do better to find someone more dependable.”

“Senior Brother isn’t here.”

After a moment’s hesitation, he added,

“And if I hang on you for help every time something happens, even the kindest person would tire of it eventually.”

It was, to some degree, drawn from personal experience.

“And yet you’ll cling to a complete stranger?”

The voice, altered somehow beyond recognition, was icily cold.

“You said you’d be charging me a fee,” Yegyeol replied with a sly grin.

For a time, the Black Ghost was silent. The guiding energy pulsing between their joined hands shifted — unsteady, betraying that Je Haryang was at least somewhat unsettled.

An experienced guide could regulate their own resonance regardless of rank, but a man with no concept of guiding — even one of the highest grade — was bound to let it show.

I wonder what it was I did that rattled him.

“…That ruffian you met earlier won’t be walking out of the Black Spot ever again.”

“That’s a relief.”

A wry smile tugged at Yegyeol’s lips. Even here, still the same Senior Brother.

“Do you happen to know Geoak Wangsahn?”

“No.”

He shook his head, but the Black Ghost’s gaze did not leave his face.

“For a first meeting, you seemed awfully frightened of him.”

“You’re a frightening man, Black Ghost.”

When Yegyeol shook his head, the other’s eyes narrowed.

“You handed over a pouch of silver for information on what the Black Spot trades, yet now you want to learn my secrets for free.”

It was a roundabout refusal. Knowing Yegyeol would understand, the man lifted one corner of his mouth.

“Then perhaps this: in exchange for me letting you hold my hand, I’ll take some information from you.”

“That won’t be necessary. A stranger asking to hold my hand ought to be thrown out, but you listened seriously to my story. Instead…”

He trailed off deliberately, and the Black Ghost tipped his chin, inviting him to go on.

“Since you know Samrang, perhaps you also know my Senior Brother?”

“Who’s to say.”

The answer was deliberately vague.

“In case he someday asks about my secrets — or about today — please say nothing. If you promise me that, I’ll tell you.”

It was, in essence, asking Je Haryang to keep a secret from himself.

Perhaps bemused by the request, the Black Ghost nodded after a slight delay.

“It may be hard to put faith in the word of a petty outlaw, but anything spoken here will not be repeated outside. You have my word.”

“They say a merchant’s honor is as heavy as gold.”

It meant he would trust in the money between them, given how many deals they already had.

Yegyeol let his gaze slide just off the Black Ghost’s face.

“I’m afraid… of other people. Especially men bigger than me, pulling me around or holding me down.”

Moistening his lips, he added quietly,

“I have… bad memories about that.”

In this second life, the parents he’d met had been decent enough — not abandoning or starving him like those of his previous life. But they were ordinary, perhaps too much so, and couldn’t easily accept that their child was unusual. From an early age, he had spoken unlearned foreign languages, mentioned Mount Kunlun — which didn’t exist on any map. They struggled with it.

When he awakened as an esper, all the repressed strain snapped.

Hearing that an esper who failed to meet their guide in time could suffer hallucinations, his parents sent him to a special hospitalization facility for awakened individuals.

In their way, it was an effort — they’d researched the fact that normal hospitals couldn’t handle espers with psychological issues and searched for a “special” place for their “special” son.

But the facility wasn’t what it appeared.

After the Esper Rights Ordinance, all research on minors was banned. Yet some organizations continued illegally under the guise of medical care — and by bad luck, that was the kind of place Yegyeol ended up in.

Even with his powers sealed, handling an awakened subject made the staff perpetually on edge. The researchers and their assistants were often coercive or outright violent.

“Tied down. Dragged around… Given unknown drugs…”

A nurse’s tip-off eventually saw him rescued. After that, he was in and out of an esper center regularly.

Wracked with guilt, his parents wept through every visit for weeks — but the already-cracked family was like a shattered porcelain bowl badly glued with rice paste.

If he’d been sent somewhere truly therapeutic, maybe things could have been different.

“And this Senior Brother of yours — he doesn’t know?”

The scraping-iron voice was testing him. Yegyeol smiled awkwardly.

“He should never know. You promised to keep it a secret, didn’t you?”

Black Ghost slowly released him, careful in the movement as if not to squeeze too hard.

The frustrating incompleteness of the guiding left Yegyeol restless. He resolved that once he was back, he’d latch onto his Senior Brother’s back like a koala.

His hair was still as short as when he’d first returned to the Central Plains.

If not for the anchor that was his guide — Je Haryang — he might have thought all of this nothing but a dream. The sort of dream he’d had since he was very small, in which even his own parents called him an illusion, locking him away, and his friends deemed him insane.

“…Once again, as I said: the Black Spot trades in many things. They need not be tangible. Just as we deal with information, we are adept at dealing in people.”

It was a proposal for revenge, coupled with a probe for information — and Yegyeol had to bite back a laugh.

Really, what had happened in the last twenty years to make him so devious?

“I’ll think about it.”

Which was as good as a refusal.

“I understand — it’s hard to entrust such a matter to the Black Spot without certainty.”

Black Ghost seemed to retreat easily.

“But if you truly want to keep this secret from your Senior Brother to the very end, commissioning us through the Black Spot would be the wise choice.”

Yegyeol bit his lip, dropping his gaze, then murmured just loud enough for him to hear,

“I’ll keep your offer in mind.”