Master and Servant (3)
Time rewound to a few days before the present.
Agent Han Yeri stood by the window of the safe house, anxiously biting her nails. It had already been three days since their escape from the Abandoned Factory. She was supposed to be resting. The overwhelming aftereffects of the magic power Seo Eunha had unleashed still lingered throughout her bloodstream. Because of it, a strange throbbing pulsed in her lower abdomen every night, making sleep impossible.
‘…Just thinking about that moment makes me dizzy.’
Still, it was also true that it had saved her life. For the first time in her life, she had wielded power on par with an Awakener.
“Her name was Seo Eunha… Just who is she, really?”
Han Yeri sighed as she alternated between checking her radio and her smartphone. The signal was still completely dead. The bizarre curtain of magic power covering all of Busan had perfectly severed any communication with the outside world. It was driving her insane.
The moment she had infiltrated Busan, contact with the government had been cut off. There was nothing she could do alone in her current state. She had been moving between safe houses, gathering what information she could, but she had no colleagues to call for help and no way to send information outward.
In that hopeless situation, the girl she had encountered was Seo Eunha. She was no ordinary civilian victim. Eunha, who had hidden her Awakener status to infiltrate the Abandoned Factory, even seemed to know about the hypnosis that had struck the city.
But three days had passed without any contact. She had given her two days to collect herself. Yet with no reply even on the third day, Yeri could no longer sit still.
“Something must have happened to her.”
Yeri felt utterly powerless. She couldn’t expect any support from the government. She was completely isolated. The fact that she had to rely on an Awakener like Eunha wounded her pride as an agent, but right now, the mission came before pride.
Yeri finally decided to move on her own. Disguised as an ordinary citizen, she wandered around Seongwon Academy. After half a day of eavesdropping on students and observing the situation, she surprisingly managed to learn Eunha’s current status with ease.
“Seo Eunha? I heard she hasn’t been coming to school lately.”
“Yeah, isn’t she that really pretty girl? She’s been skipping without permission for days.”
“No one knows why. Even Hayeon says she doesn’t know.”
Seo Eunha’s name kept coming up in the students’ conversations. Yeri followed the trail of Eunha’s whereabouts and tracked down her only friend, Baek Hayeon.
Yeri carefully approached Hayeon and asked about Eunha’s well-being. But Hayeon’s response was cold.
“Eunha? I don’t really know either. She just sent a message saying she was sick and wanted to rest… and told me not to look for her for a while.”
Her tone was polite, but her eyes had flickered slightly. It was a clumsy lie that couldn’t fool an agent’s eyes. If Eunha wasn’t contactable in the first place, the claim that she had received a message about resting due to illness didn’t add up.
‘Baek Hayeon. This girl must have some kind of clue.’
Having reached that conclusion, Yeri began secretly tailing Hayeon. The pursuit continued until evening. When night had grown deep, Hayeon entered her dormitory room. Yeri checked the room number, then headed to the rooftop of a nearby building. From there, she began observing the interior with a camera.
The scene reflected on the LCD screen was shocking.
“……Crazy.”
There was Eunha. Wearing a crumpled school uniform with a collar around her neck, trembling at Hayeon’s feet like a dog wagging its tail.
Yeri couldn’t hide her astonishment. That powerful Awakener was being treated like an animal, raised as a pet. Yeri narrowed her eyes, watching for an opportunity to break in.
Today's inspection time has ended.
Hayeon stroked my head with a satisfied expression before stepping out for a moment. I lay face-down on the bed, breathing heavily. My entire body was sticky, covered in Hayeon’s fluids and my own Magic Liquid.
‘I have to escape. If this keeps up, I’m really going to lose my mind…’
My head knew it. Hayeon’s actions were fundamentally no different from what the villains had done. But my body was bound by Hayeon’s command not to leave, unable to move even a single finger.
Knock, knock.
Then, suddenly, there was a knock at the door. Hayeon had just left. She would have opened the door and come in on her own. For a second, I thought it might be the student council coming to catch me and clamped a hand over my mouth. But the identity of the visitor was someone I had never expected.
“Seo Eunha, I know you’re inside. It’s me. The agent you met at the Abandoned Factory last week.”
“A-Agent…?”
A voice I remembered. It was Han Yeri, the agent who had helped me escape from the Abandoned Factory.
I wanted to open the door out of relief and the hope of escape, but Hayeon’s command was still in effect.
‘Wait, I’m not trying to go out. I’m trying to let the agent in. That’s not escaping, right?’
I desperately racked my brain, searching for a loophole in the hypnosis. Hayeon had forbidden me from leaving the room, but she hadn’t forbidden me from letting someone in. The moment I repeated that to myself, my body moved as if by magic.
I staggered over and unlocked the door. When it opened, Han Yeri stood there with her sharp eyes. The moment she saw my appearance, she opened her mouth, seemingly at a loss for words.
“Seo Eunha… You look terrible. Are you okay?”
“Agent… How did you even know to come here…?”
Overwhelmed by indescribable shame, I hung my head and covered my face. My skin, crusted with dried sticky fluids, was covered in reddish marks. And around my neck hung a leather collar that trampled on my pride.
Han Yeri quickly stepped inside. She examined my body carefully, then frowned.
“You didn’t contact me for a whole week, so I came looking. What kind of trouble have you gotten into this time?”
“…It’s a long story.”
“What about escape? Someone with your power should’ve been able to break through a wall easily… Is that collar some kind of magic tool?”
“No. My magic power is fine. But… because of the hypnosis, my body won’t listen to me.”
I confessed everything about the hypnotic contract I had formed with Hayeon. Every time I spoke about how her commands directly controlled me, waves of self-loathing washed over me.
After hearing the whole story, Han Yeri let out a dumbfounded laugh.
“You ended up like this just because of some wordplay hypnosis? I really can’t tell if you’re insanely strong or just a total klutz.”
The agent sighed, then pulled a black handgun from inside her jacket.
“So I just need to take care of that Baek Hayeon girl, right? Can you tell me how strong her defenses are?”
“No! Don’t shoot!”
I jumped in alarm and grabbed Yeri’s arm. She looked back at me with a puzzled expression.
“Why? She’s the one who did this to you. She might even be a villain.”
“Hayeon isn’t a villain. She’s my friend! She’s just another victim whose common sense got twisted because of the city’s hypnosis!”
“…Friend? That woman who treats you like a pet is just a hypnotized student?”
Han Yeri’s eyes widened in shock. She lowered the hand holding the gun, clearly flustered. I poured every ounce of my strength into defending Hayeon, desperate to stop her from pulling the trigger.
“Yes. She was originally a really kind and gentle girl. I said something wrong… and it overlapped with the hypnosis, which is why she ended up like this.”
“Ah… I see. Sorry. You’re such a powerful Awakener that I automatically assumed whoever suppressed and controlled you had to be a high-ranking villain. My mistake.”
Hayeon was an Awakener, but she was a special type. Her physical abilities were only slightly better than an ordinary person’s. If she were shot, she would get a hole in her body instantly. I breathed a huge sigh of relief that such a disaster seemed unlikely to happen.
“Alright. I won’t kill her. But you agree that we need to subdue her, right?”
“…Yes, I’ll ask that of you. And I have a way.”
I searched Hayeon’s room and found my bag. Inside was a potion I always carried just in case. It was a mental barrier potion that Hayeon had made herself.
“If she drinks this, she should come back to her senses.”
“Wouldn’t it be better if you drank it? We should break your hypnosis first.”
“It doesn’t work on me. I already tested it.”
We came up with a plan. Han Yeri would hide in the blind spot behind the door and ambush Hayeon the moment she entered to subdue her. I would sit on the bed as usual and greet Hayeon. It was almost time for her to return. My heart pounded wildly. There was tension about whether the plan would succeed, but the thought of subduing Hayeon by force made me feel uneasy.
Then, familiar footsteps echoed from the end of the hallway. At the same time, a cheerful humming reached my ears.
“Hmm-hmm, hmm…”
Hayeon was back. Soon the electronic lock beeped.
Beep-beep-beep. Click.
The door opened, and Hayeon entered the room with a bright smile.
“Eunha, did you wait long? Were you a good girl today too?”
“Ah…♡”
Maybe because of the repeated inspections over the past week, my body reacted before my mind could stop it. But today wasn’t like usual. We weren’t alone.
The moment Hayeon tried to approach me, Han Yeri, who had been hiding her presence, moved like lightning.
“…!”
Thud!
Han Yeri’s hand strike landed precisely on the back of Hayeon’s neck. Without even noticing the ambush, Hayeon collapsed powerlessly in the same posture she had been in while approaching me.
I rushed forward and caught Hayeon as she fell.
“The potion! Hurry!”
“Y-yes…!”
At Yeri’s urging, I quickly uncorked the potion bottle. I poured it between the unconscious Hayeon’s lips, but she spilled it all out the corners of her mouth. When I panicked, Han Yeri spoke calmly.
“When someone loses consciousness, they can’t swallow on their own. Give me that potion.”
“Is there a way?”
“No choice. We’ll have to pass it mouth-to-mouth.”
“…I’ll do it.”
For Hayeon’s sake, I took a mouthful of the potion.