OMH Chapter 52

My Oh My Hero – Episode 52

52. Hooligans (16)

I scoured the ground and bushes of the restricted area.

I checked for unnaturally bent branches or footprints and subtly observed the people around me.

‘A hooligan could be disguised as a staff member.’

In fact, that’s the best way to infiltrate. It’s best to be sure about everything.

But I feel like I’ve forgotten something since earlier… is it just my imagination?

*

“Do we really have to go this far? We’ve never done this before.”

“Just be quiet. Unless you want to get caught.”

Two figures peered around in a dimly lit space. The enclosed air was stuffy and held an unpleasant humidity, despite the dry winter weather.

The two men checked the situation outside through a sliver of a gap in the door.

The outside was teeming with Espers searching for them. Espers had searched before, but this was the first time they were doing it so thoroughly.

Fortunately for the two men, a warning sign had occurred before they had to face this situation.

“Ugh-”

The man lying beneath the two men squirmed.

The person sitting on his upper body pressed down on the back of the man’s head, shoving his face into the floor.

The man’s face, Cha Woojin, was buried in the dirty floor, covered in thick dust and dirt from outside. He stopped resisting and became quiet.

To explain how Cha Woojin ended up in this state, we have to go back 30 minutes.

*

30 minutes earlier, Cha Woojin had briefly left the restricted area he was patrolling and was in Control Center-D. He didn’t come out of defiance or anything like that, he was just going to the restroom.

When he came out of the restroom inside the Control Center, there was no one else inside the Control Center.

It was supposed to be empty, but Cha Woojin heard a strange sound.

A thumping sound, as if something was bumping against something.

‘Where is that sound coming from?’

Cha Woojin instinctively looked for the source of the sound. Based on his survival experience, it was better to react sensitively to even small anomalies rather than ignoring them.

He looked around to find the direction where the sound was loudest.

Eventually, he found that the sound was coming from the cover of the distribution board on the corner wall.

Cha Woojin took out the pistol he had on his thigh.

Usually, there would be a circuit breaker in the distribution board, but since he could hear something bumping from inside, he couldn’t guess what was inside.

From what he had experienced so far, there was always a monster beyond the door where the unidentified sound was coming from. A monster might have sneaked in this time as well.

Cha Woojin stood close to the wall and aimed the gun at the opening of the door.

Then, he carefully opened the door of the distribution board.

Inside, Cha Woojin cautiously opened the door and saw a strange sight.

Thick electrical wires, which must have been carrying high-voltage current, were wriggling in the air as if they were alive, raising their heads into the air.

At the bizarre sight he was seeing for the first time, Cha Woojin felt an urge to close the door of the distribution board again.

Just as he was about to close the door, something particularly rattling suddenly rose from among the wires.

“……!”

It was a large, rusty nail.

The nail rose leisurely from among the wriggling wires. When the nail rose to about the height of a hand span, the wires, which had been moving like live earthworms in a bait container, suddenly stopped moving.

However, even when the movement of the wires stopped, the nail floated in the air.

The nail, which floated up to Cha Woojin’s eye level, began to fly out of the Control Center.

Cha Woojin followed it outside as if possessed.

The nail flew over the barbed wire fence behind the Control Center building.

Then, someone caught the nail as it flew by.

It was a man with shabby and dirty clothes. Next to him was another man in equally shabby clothes. The man with him opened his mouth, complaining.

“You should be used to it by now, but do you have to fly something like that every time to gauge the location? What if someone sees you?”

“How else am I supposed to figure out where the wires are if I don’t fly something to check the location? Why are you undoing your Invisibility? What if someone sees you?”

The man with the rusty nail in his hand retorted curtly.

The man who had been complaining straightened his posture and turned his head to the front.

“It’s undone when I talk, so I can just do it again. Anyway, no one’s here… Huh?”

Then, he made eye contact with Cha Woojin, who was standing in front of them across the barbed wire fence.

Cha Woojin aimed the pistol he was holding at them.

He could tell at a glance who they were. They were the Espers called hooligans.

Cha Woojin was reminded of the hooligans he had seen on a mission just a week ago.

Although he had only seen them through a scope, the way they indiscriminately killed people was no different from monsters.

He couldn’t let those monsters hurt people.

Determined, Cha Woojin aimed at the hooligans in front of him. No, he tried to aim, but his head was in chaos.

He knew that they hurt people just like monsters, but their appearance was that of humans.

‘Where… should I aim?’

On the previous mission, Cha Woojin had clearly shot at the hooligans, but he was not prepared to kill them.

Even when he aimed and shot at the hooligans, he only hit their arms and legs, or their fingers or ears.

But even if he didn’t kill them directly, Cha Woojin thought they were no different from monsters.

How could he feel that someone who indiscriminately tore people apart and killed them was the same human being?

However, making up his mind to kill them directly was a separate matter.

Even a murderer is still human.

Knowing that he would become a murderer himself if he killed them, Cha Woojin couldn’t pull the trigger at those in front of him.

‘I wish someone would just get rid of them for me, like last time…’

Cha Woojin gripped the pistol so tightly that his hand trembled. He was afraid of being alone at this moment. He was afraid of the situation he was in, where he could be harmed by them, and he was afraid of having to be prepared to take their lives directly.

Unable to think rationally due to fear, his mind desperately wanted someone to get rid of the hooligans for him instead.

As Cha Woojin thought of Gang Hana’s face, he felt a dull pain in the back of his head and lost consciousness.

*

And currently, Cha Woojin is lying under those hooligans, his arms and legs tied.

He had only woken up after losing consciousness, but the hooligans had shoved Cha Woojin’s head into the floor.

Even though he was gagged, acrid clumps of dust entered his respiratory system.

When Cha Woojin coughed to breathe, the hooligan pressed down on his head even harder.

“Just be quiet.”

“Let’s just use Invisibility and get through quickly. Leave him here.”

“There are five people waiting to catch us, how are we supposed to get through there? Our footprints will be left on the dirt.”

“Then are we going to stay here? The psychic-type is looking for us. It’s only a matter of time before we’re discovered if we don’t get out of here quickly.”

The two men sitting on Cha Woojin bickered in whispers.

Cha Woojin felt wronged because it seemed like the sound of the two of them fighting was much louder than his coughing.

Regardless of the two men fighting, Cha Woojin had a hard time breathing due to the weight of the two adult men pressing down on his entire body and the dust.

He felt like he was going to lose consciousness again due to suffocation. As his consciousness faded, the hooligan grabbed Cha Woojin’s hair and lifted his head back.

“We can’t just leave him behind. He’s a Guide. We can enhance our abilities by Guiding him.”

Those disgusting guys always recognize Guides, and it seemed like that was the case this time as well.

“Didn’t you say that enhancing through Guiding is all luck?”

“I’ve tried it, and if you do it right, everything gets enhanced. We don’t have much time, so let’s hurry up and do it right, buddy.”

The guy holding his hair grabbed Cha Woojin’s cheek with his other hand.

He felt a chill at the unpleasant sensation.

Those disgusting guys called Espers always did the same things.

An unfamiliar sense of despair washed over his entire body. He trembled with a sense of horror that he could never get used to as his pants were being pulled down.

Without realizing it, Cha Woojin desperately called for Gang Hana.

*

“Teacher. What are you doing?”

“You told us to find the hooligans, so why are you spacing out?”

I turned around when I heard the grumbling voices of the kids.

“No, I just felt a strange sensation.”

“What’s strange is your obsession with this mission’s performance, sunbae.”

Jang Hana, who had been wandering around searching, walked out of the bushes and sneered.

“I’ve been all over this Control Center-D area or whatever. I couldn’t find any strange thoughts. But I did hear something that sounded like static noise, then it disappeared.”

“What, so you found something? Why didn’t you say anything until it disappeared?”

“At first, it was just a thought that was complaining! Saying things like, ‘Today’s going to be a bad day.’ But suddenly it became hard to hear and then it disappeared.”

“So you should have reported it when it was grumbling about having a bad day. Don’t you know that it sounds suspicious?

“Dozens of thoughts like that came out from when you called out the wasps, sunbae?”

Jang Hana didn’t realize her own incompetence and endlessly complained. She was an S-grade Esper who didn’t even know the extent of her abilities, and she just repeated that she couldn’t do well on something she was doing for the first time.

Not satisfied with grumbling like that, Jang Hana looked for a fundamental excuse.

“When you think about it, isn’t all of this just for the Guide’s sake? Right? I know we came here to help the Guide build up his performance. That’s what they were grumbling about at the Research Center. Of course, I heard it through thoughts. Anyway, shouldn’t the Guide be working the hardest? Where did the Guide go? Is he skipping out?”

Jang Hana was furious that Woojin hadn’t shown his face while she was out searching.

Woojin was no different from an ordinary person, so why was she trying to make him work? What a mean personality.

But I hadn’t seen Woojin either. I definitely saw him assigned to the patrol position and sticking to that position.

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