Kidnapped, of All Things
So now, on top of everything, I'd been kidnapped.
The funny thing was, I'd long since passed the stage of panicking and flailing about. The past few days of sheer chaos had apparently inoculated me.
I kept myself in a calm I found almost unnatural even from the inside, and stared at the person sitting across from me.
So I wasn't seeing things from shock after all.
The person before me was unmistakably Yoo Jinchae, the teacher from the Jellyfish Class. For whatever reason, her outfit wasn't her usual off-duty style — a white dress shirt and black slacks, pressed and immaculate, like someone about to walk into a job interview or a make-or-break presentation.
But the clothes aren't what matter right now.
I let out the breath I'd been holding and spoke.
"We really were kidnapped, then…"
"Yes! I was honestly so shocked. Out of nowhere, someone I know just goes — ta-daa! — and appears in front of me."
"If I may ask, was it you who kidnapped me, teacher…?"
"Hehe, as you can see."
"Right, of course not… couldn't possibly be."
Yes — what use was suspicion between two people bound together like this? Jinchae, grinning ear to ear, was in exactly the same boat as me: seated on a chair with her wrists restrained behind her back, her whole body wrapped round and round in chains.
Seriously… are they out of their minds?
Irritation flared up in me. And yet, even now, my survival instinct was apparently still on the clock, because my mouth kept moving on its own.
"Any idea where this place might be?"
At that, Jinchae flashed a tight smile and glanced slyly toward the heavily shut steel door.
"All I know is that it took over two hours by car to get here. The kidnappers put sackcloth hoods over our faces, so I couldn't even see outside, let alone their faces."
There was a flicker of genuine anger under her words. I nodded.
"I blacked out right away too, so I don't know anything either. Ah — unless you happen to know why we were taken…"
As far as I could guess, it came down to human trafficking or organ harvesting. I didn't realize these crimes were still so rampant these days…
Jinchae fell silent for a moment, as if weighing something, then gave a small shake of her head.
"No. Hmm… Though I do remember what the kidnappers were chattering about on the way here. I don't know anything else, but on this point I'm certain."
Her sharp chin pointed at me once — then back at herself.
"I don't know their reason, but the targets were apparently decided in advance. The two of us, like this."
"…I'm sorry, what?"
What was that supposed to mean?
A kidnapping with pre-designated targets?
I wasn't some chaebol heir, and there was no ransom worth squeezing out of me. If they'd mixed me up with someone else, that'd at least make sense.
"Well, the fact that they grabbed me mistaking me for Team Leader Moon Chaeyoung is probably the answer right there. They were talking among themselves about needing to kidnap one more man after Moon Chaeyoung, but I never imagined it'd be you, teacher…"
Hold on — so I was the one kidnapped by mistake? A case of mistaken identity, because they'd confused me for Moon Chaeyoung of BOND?
Fine. A hundred concessions granted — say they really did pick a big-corporation team leader as a kidnapping target.
…But then why on earth me?
One glance at my salary and that idea would've evaporated on the spot.
If money wasn't the motive, it got even more absurd. Beyond a few pennies, what exactly was there for them to strip from me?
But even that wasn't the part that truly refused to compute.
"But… with all due respect, I don't see how anyone could mistake you for Team Leader Moon."
Moon Chaeyoung wore her dark navy hair in a near-pixie cut; Jinchae's blonde hair fell to her waist. And mistaking a woman who looked barely over 160 centimeters for someone remembered as towering past 170…
These kidnappers don't have lazy eyes — how could they possibly miss that?
Jinchae caught my meaning and gave a rueful little laugh.
"Ah, that's my ability. Long story short, I'd briefly transformed into Team Leader Moon Chaeyoung's appearance."
Oh. Right.
Jinchae's ability was physical transformation, wasn't it.
I remembered asking around after the kindergarten fire, trying to track down a teacher with exactly the skill we'd needed at the time.
But still — what possible circumstances required her to be wearing someone else's face?
In lieu of an answer, Jinchae gave a short explanation of her B-rank physical transformation's main skill, and finished with a deep sigh.
"It's not all that useful in brawls or actual combat, honestly. So I trained separately in close-quarters fighting."
I was too tired to keep asking why. Where exactly would a kindergarten teacher ever need to deploy hand-to-hand combat skills…
My burnt-out brain went ahead and wrapped things up on its own. Right — let's think positive. At worst, it'd come in handy right here, in this exact kidnapped moment. Honestly, Jinchae looked a lot more survival-viable than someone who wouldn't even set foot in the gym across from his own apartment. Like, say, me.
Gripping my spinning thoughts together, I forced out one last question.
"Were you taken on your way home from work too, teacher?"
She'd said her contact had cut off since last night, so it was a reasonable deduction.
"…Pardon? Ah — yes, yes! It was such a shock! I'm walking home, and suddenly — whoosh!"
Figured.
Kidnapping bastards.
Messing with someone on their commute home is genuinely unforgivable.
Gritting my teeth against the feverish throbbing in my head, I made up my mind and spoke.
"First, let's get out of here."
I had absolutely zero intention of dying in a grimy hole like this without even knowing why. After every hardship and tribulation I'd already clawed my way through in life.
"Er… not a bad idea, of course! But you and I are both tied up, and even if I get free, well, there's only so much I could—"
Watching Jinchae's embarrassed face, I dusted off my grimy palm with a few light pats.
No need to worry about that part, teacher.
Then, smooth as flowing water, I dragged down the chains coiled around my torso and rose to my feet.
-CLANG.
Jinchae, who'd been staring blankly at the iron chain collapsing onto the concrete floor, went wide-eyed and shrieked.
"Oh my god — how did you undo all of that?!"
Her jaw hit the floor, and I felt a flicker of embarrassment.
Truth be told, I'd gotten out of the restraints a while ago.
Apparently our kidnappers weren't the brightest — they'd only snatched my phone and left my bag sitting right beside me. Maybe they took one look at the kindergartner-style backpack and simply dismissed it as a toy.
I fished the yellow bag out of the corner and slung it over my shoulder, then walked around behind Jinchae's chair and knelt down.
"I learned from a friend who had a knack for this sort of thing. Picking locks, untying bindings… you know the type."
"That doesn't sound like a very… upstanding friend? What kind of person knows how to open awakener-grade restraints?"
…These were awakener-grade restraints?
I had no idea. My friend just touched them with a finger and they split right in half.
She's not going to catch me bluffing… right?
While we talked, I carefully drew a lollipop from my back pocket — one I'd stashed there earlier with great deliberation — and waved it toward Nabi. Then, with an elaborate series of hand gestures, I managed to successfully communicate my request.
Who knew relaying a message without saying a single word could be this hard.
Anyway — that was why, even now, Nabi was hard at work behind Jinchae's back. Only after sawing clean through her chains as well did I perch a lollipop in Nabi's grip and whisper.
"Good. Nice work. Keep it up, just like that."
Then Nabi and I bumped fists.
Yeah. All right. Let's see about busting out of this dump.
Whoever laid hands on an office worker heading home was about to learn exactly how deep their regret needed to go.
Two days earlier, a private request had come in to Jinchae through BOND. She'd left the company and was working as a freelance hunter on the side, and the offered pay was nothing to sneeze at — so she'd accepted.
An extremely simple, extremely comfortable job: land a few interviews wearing Field Team Na's leader, Moon Chaeyoung's, face.
Easy money. All I'd have to do was memorize the prepared script and recite it.
After making her debut in an EX-rank dungeon, Moon Chaeyoung had become a national hero — by any measure, the hottest hunter in South Korea right now. Her interviews and news features had flooded the internet, growing denser by the day until it simply became the background noise of daily life.
The problem was that our Team Leader Moon was not, shall we say, media-friendly material.
Moon Chaeyoung almost never gave reporters the answers they wanted. She answered only with facts and evidence, and when an answer simply couldn't be given, she didn't dance around it — she chose silence. From the company's perspective, this verbal style of hers was agonizing, a pure stomach-turner. It amounted to torching a free opportunity to polish the corporate image.
Hence the request to me.
Even with a script in hand, she's not the type who'd bother memorizing it.
Up to that point, everything had gone beautifully. I'd successfully finished the interview wearing Moon Chaeyoung's disguise, collected the payment. All that remained was to waltz back to the comfort of my own home, and it would've been over.
And then I got kidnapped.
The kidnappers rolled up in a vehicle identical to the company car BOND had provided…
By the time I climbed in, it was already too late. Whether one of them was a strength-reinforced awakener or not, the sudden force pressed me down, and restraints snapped around my wrists almost instantly.
The moment she registered the restraints locking on, Jinchae went limp.
Further resistance would've been pointless.
Who even does this anymore — kidnapping people, in this day and age?
Utterly resigned, she breathed calmly and pieced the situation together from the conversation the kidnappers tossed around so carelessly.
One driving. Two flanking me on either side.
All three seemed to be awakeners. And at least one of them appeared to carry a skill that forcibly suppressed abilities.
Moon Chaeyoung's shell nearly slipped off right then — that gave me a proper fright.
After that, she poured everything she had into just holding Moon Chaeyoung's form. Rather than waste strength in the wrong places, she held her breath and waited for her moment.
And at last — while being walked from the car into the building, in the sliver of a gap when the surveillance loosened — she made her move. A distress request fired off through the temporary watch BOND had issued her.
It was voice-to-text, so the spelling had fallen apart — but I'm no idiot; they'd understand it well enough.
Right on cue, the moment the request went out, the kidnappers lunged to strip away the watch and her phone first.
Getting the message out before they took it was the lucky part.
Fighting her way out alone was one option — but that was the contingency plan, the fallback for later.
And for good reason…
Whatever this was, it wasn't an ordinary kidnapping.
Before they threw the sackcloth over her face, she'd watched them hold up photographs, checking identities one by one — and at that sight, her suspicion hardened into certainty.
Targeted abduction.
People who went to the trouble of abducting a specific individual like Moon Chaeyoung had to be after something far beyond a simple ransom.
Since I got dragged into this anyway, I'll dig the whole thing out root and branch and hand it over to BOND.
That was the conclusion she'd reached while calculating the severance pay that would come with it.
But the support she'd waited for and waited for never arrived — and instead, her own kindergarten colleague appeared before her eyes.
Unconscious, no less.
And so, returning to the present…
Jinchae was smiling until her face cracked, but inside, her mind had already fragmented into five or more warring selves, tearing itself apart.
How on earth did things end up like this?
"Moon Chaeyoung? We got this one woman down — one more man left, right?"
And that remaining man turned out to be Na Hwiyeon?!
The purpose of the kidnapping was sinking deeper and deeper into fog. On rare occasions, foreign parties would force meetings with major domestic hunter corporations, strong-arming or threatening deals out of them — so she'd dared to assume this was another case of that kind.
But why a perfectly ordinary kindergarten teacher?
At this rate, of course, the plan was ruined. Jinchae could only watch in silence as the steps she'd laid out so carefully crumbled into dust, undone by the single appearance of Na Hwiyeon.
"Is there anyone out there?"
Watching Na Hwiyeon knock on the thick steel door, Jinchae was secretly trembling behind him, legs quivering.
I'm going to lose my mind.
It had reached the point of being genuinely frightening…
I'm going crazy, seriously.
And how on earth did he undo that, too?
"First, let's get out of here."
The moment he said that, Na Hwiyeon tossed aside the restraints and chains like a magician's flourish…
So that's what people meant by "flinching backward in shock."
You're an awakener, but a D-rank! How does a D-rank Tamer pick awakener-grade restraints with nothing but his fingers?!
Even the excuse he'd laboriously produced was shamelessly thin. Learned it from a friend, he said — but did that even make sense in the first place? Worse, when she'd casually glanced at the chain lying on the floor, the cross-section was cut clean and even, as if sliced with a blade.
And how calm he's being — that alone doesn't add up!
Squinting, she quietly studied the round back of his head as he pressed his ear to the door like any seasoned field operative.
Now she truly had to decide.
Still, he's a civilian first and foremost…. Knock him out fast, slip out alone, and handle this somehow on my own….
At the end of a ferocious civil war of the self, she finally settled on a conclusion and gave the slightest nod — and at that very instant:
-Creeeeak.
"Teacher — the door's open."
Ta-daa.
"…!"
Na Hwiyeon held the half-torn steel door open, wearing a thoroughly self-satisfied expression as he beckoned Jinchae out.
…Against her own will, she took a step backward.
He is a perfectly ordinary kindergarten teacher… right?