* * *
Not only the investigation support team but the equipment support team as well had been summoned.
Pi Sowon was the first to receive the video footage of the urban bus hijacking.
“I’m asking you if the item you bought in that subspace was actually a Lamia hide bag! Answer me straight, you piece of sh*t!”
Pi Sowon was interrogating a suspect.
At that moment, Byeon Gudo entered the interrogation room. Pi Sowon furrowed her brows at his stern expression and said,
“I’m about to tear this guy apart, so later—”
“Um, Team Leader.”
But moments later, at Byeon Gudo’s whispered words, Pi Sowon immediately sprang from her seat.
She opened the door with such force that it rattled in its frame.
“So… some b*stard high on Funny Powder hijacked that bus, and who exactly is inside?”
Instead of answering, Byeon Gudo played a video on his tablet PC.
On the CCTV screen, enhanced to high definition, a single bus stop was visible.
The figures of passengers standing in line were also seen.
As the red No. 316 bus arrived, they boarded one by one.
When a certain face among the passengers was caught on screen, Byeon Gudo pressed pause.
Byeon Gudo broke into a cold sweat inwardly as he saw the fierce light burning in Pi Sowon’s eyes as she stared at the tablet with a hardened face.
“This….”
Pi Sowon furrowed her brow again and resumed the video.
As the footage played again, two or three more passengers boarded the bus.
It was then.—
A person fell onto the signboard next to the bus stop.
No—landed safely.
“That guy is the terrorist. His name is Seo Gilsoo. His rank is—”
Byeon Gudo’s words played in the background as the footage continued.
The man pushed past the panicked people and boarded the No. 316 bus. The bus departed immediately.
The video ended there, leaving a black screen on the tablet PC, reflecting Byeon Gudo’s tense face and Pi Sowon’s stern expression.
Pi Sowon rewound the video.
Back to the moment when the passengers began boarding Bus 316.
Pi Sowon hit pause again.
Her eyes fixed on the screen.
“This….”
On the frozen frame was a woman with her usual vacant expression.
A woman who looked younger than her age and always seemed somewhat dim-witted.
The plastic document folder Pi Sowon was holding shattered in her hand.
“…Is this Lee Yu-ji?”
Watching the folder crumble into pieces, Byeon Gudo ran his fingers through his hair.
He had a headache too.
Why her, of all people… Why…
‘Why did it have to be the Team Leader’s partner? Again.’
As Byeon Gudo thought this and muttered,
“Ha… Yes. I heard the scale of the bomb is enough to blow away a decent-sized building, and Lee Yuji just happens to be on that bus right now…”
Before Byeon Gudo could even finish his sentence, Pi Sowon had already disappeared.
‘She’s… something else. How should I put it…? If you put it badly, she’s reckless. If you put it nicely, she’s full of justice. But here… the good ones always take the first hit.’
Pi Sowon heard the voice of a former colleague in her ear.
The voice of the colleague who had given her a heads-up about Lee Yuji’s “Athlete’s Village days.”
‘F*ck.’
What kind of logic is that?
Why do the good ones get hit first?
The bad ones should take the fall.
‘In the end, Lee Yuji took the fall again. Even while being cursed at by the victim.’
‘Lee Yuji… that naïve idiot.’
When she meets her again, she’ll fix that mindset.
Even if she had to beat her within an inch of her life.
With that thought, Pi Sowon made a call.
“I’m heading down to check out two magic bullets and two pistols right now. …Don’t worry, I’ll get the Inspector’s permission immediately on my way.”
This time, she would never lose her partner.
Never.
As she thought this, a spider with faint red light shining from its eyes crawled across the ceiling above Pi Sowon.
* * *
“Huuugh… sob…”
Sobbing could be heard from all over.
I tried not to look at the man diagonally in front of me to my left, whose lower half was dampening.
I couldn’t help it.
Next to him lay a man bleeding, dying.
The reason he was like that—
“There are nineteen…”
A woman handed nineteen cell phones to a man standing near the driver’s seat.
The man was trembling, his teeth gnashing and crunching on something
He was eating candy infused with Funny Powder.
How do I know that?
‘I saw it in the original.’
That man’s name was Seo Gilsoo, a C-rank Hunter.
He barely appeared in this incident, but because he was the culprit of such a major event, his name appeared in the original.
‘Unlike me…’
Tch. Even criminals have names.
I swallowed the bitter taste and recalled the phone handed to Seo Gilsoo.
As soon as Seo Gilsoo boarded the bus, I hid my smartwatch pager in my pocket.
The strap detaches with just a touch, turning it into a simple round object, so there was no risk of my identity being discovered, and thanks to that, I was able to give up only my phone.
Would the Hunter Bureau have grasped the situation by now?
‘There’s no way I could beat a C-rank Hunter head-on anyway.’
Moreover, Seo Gilsoo possessed a pistol loaded with magic bullets.
As soon as he boarded Bus 316, he shot the driver’s thigh—
Bang!
‘Aaahhhh!’
He told him to drive if he wanted to receive treatment.
In the process, a passenger who attempted to get off the bus…
‘Just like that over there.’
…was crushed by the pistol handle.
Afterward, the woman in the checkered shirt confiscated all the other passengers’ phones.
And in the original story…
Crash!
The windows were broken, and all confiscated phones were thrown out.
‘Just like the original.’
I heard people’s screams.
Expressions of utter despair appeared on the passengers’ faces.
Seo Gilsoo burst into boisterous laughter and fired his gun wildly at the bus ceiling.
“Hehehehehe! Why? Why those faces? Did you think you’d live? How stupid. But dying isn’t so bad, you know? Look at everything positively!”
Even if the effect of Funny Powder was to make one recall their happiest memories or fantasies, seeing him act like that while committing a crime was quite grotesque.
He even said this while looking at the man he had beaten and left bleeding:
“Wow, strawberry jam!”
I’m going crazy.
‘I get what Byeon Gudo meant when he said there’s no hope for people on Funny Powder.’
Meanwhile—
The bus was violently shaking.
Part of it was likely because the driver was flooring it due to Seo Gilsoo’s threat to kill a person every time the speed dropped below 100 km/h, but for starters, that driver…
‘He’s on the verge of fainting.’
Because he lost too much blood, the original story says he loses consciousness midway.
In an effort to maintain 100 km/h, he had repeatedly collided with guardrails or other vehicles.
Seeing how things were unfolding, the passengers, huddled and trembling, gradually realized this situation would not end easily.
“Why on earth aren’t the police cars following us?”
“In a situation like this, the Hunter Bureau should be stepping in, not the police.”
“Those Hunter Bureau b*stards! They do nothing but eat up my taxes!”
…Sorry.
…but I’m here, you know?
“If they had supported the Hunter Association with those b*stards’ salaries instead, the Hunters would have already mobilized and saved us!”
We don’t get that much salary! The Hunter Association gets way more!
I felt wronged but tried to stay calm and quietly seated.
There was no choice.
I still couldn’t possess Seo Gilsoo.
Because—
I heard whispers from the back.
“Sh-shouldn’t we do something?”
“Do what? That guy looks like a Hunter and he has a gun.”
“Actually, I’m an E-rank Hunter. I even have an item. Even now…”
…There are always people like that.
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Man. I know Lee Yuji got involved in this situation willingly but seriosuly, can she ever catch a break?
And now we have civies trying to intervene who are just going to make a mess of things.
Ugh, I hope Team Leader hurries! She needs to save her partner asap