POSSESSED 8

The man increased the pressure on the arm crushing my throat. Deprived of oxygen, my consciousness began to drift, my vision blurred, and the strength drained from my struggling body. Death was inches away.

I had a bad feeling about this, and it seems I was destined to die like this after all. My life as Jang Taeyeon was ending so futilely. I only wanted to live in peace, yet here I am, dying in a way that is anything but peaceful.

It was the moment I was about to give up on everything.

“Fuck, what are you?! Jang Taeyeon, why are your eyes…!”

The man, visibly startled as he looked at me, hurriedly withdrew his arm. Having regained the freedom to breathe, I inhaled and exhaled deeply until my ribcage swelled, repeating the cycle before hacking uncontrollably, unable to suppress the spasms in my throat.

“Haah, haah…! Cough!”

Even while coughing so violently my lungs stung, I didn’t take my eyes off the man. There was no telling when he might lunge again to kill me. Instead of being caught off guard like before, I intended to fight back this time.

“Did I see that wrong? Just now, those eyes were definitely….”

The man didn’t attack. Instead, he continued to watch me like I was a freak, maintaining a wary stance. This time, electric currents crackled through both of his fists.

What’s wrong with my eyes…. Don’t tell me they changed? That can’t be. I haven’t even used my ability, so there’s no way they’d change….

Jang Taeyeon’s ability was of the mental type. Mental-type abilities were characterized by the pupils turning green whenever a skill was activated, regardless of what the technique was.

A similar example was the blue eyes—Baek Joomyeong’s eyes. The pupils of psychokinetic ability users were mostly blue. Usually, the color only appears during activation and then vanishes, but from what I knew, Baek Joomyeong was different. Due to his overflowing mana, his eye color had changed permanently.

The man watched my breathing stabilize and lowered his fists slightly before making a surprisingly cautious proposal. From that, I could sense that my eye color hadn’t completely returned to normal yet.

” I’ll give you one more chance, so just hand him over. You just need to hand over Baek Joomyeong. Jang Taeyeon, you were the one who suggested it first! You said you could get close to that bastard easily!”

“What?”

The moment I heard the name fall from the man’s mouth, I reflexively contorted my face and stepped toward him. My heart, stained with horror, had already dropped to the floor and was rolling away.

“You’re telling me to hand over who?”

I asked back in a voice full of rasping metallic grit.

Baek Joomyeong? They’re fellow Hunters. What the hell do you plan to do by having him handed over?

“Why are you acting surprised? Like we discussed before, I’m not going to kill him. We just need to stop that arrogant prick from acting so high and mighty.”

Jang Taeyeon, you crazy psycho, what kind of plot did you cook up?

I was at a loss for words. It wasn’t just any man; Baek Joomyeong’s name had come up. It wasn’t just any Hunter, it was Baek Joomyeong. I don’t want to be at odds with Baek Joomyeong. I said I wanted to be at peace!

It seems the only way to uncover the whole truth of this situation… is to try using my ability.

Since I can’t remember, I’ll have to make this man spill it with his own mouth. I’m nervous since it’s my first time, but it’s worth a try. Even if I fail, I’ll just get beaten up. Surely he won’t try to kill me again?

Determined, I pushed my chaotic thoughts aside and looked the man straight in the eyes. I could clearly feel the green light seeping into my pupils.

Meanwhile, Baek Joomyeong arrived at the guild cafeteria with Yeonji. This place was operated late into the night for Hunters who worked around the clock. Also, being inside the guild, it was a place where a well-known Hunter like Baek Joomyeong could eat comfortably without worrying about others.

He was about to take off the child’s thin coat but stopped. Feeling that something was different about the child, he watched quietly to discover what it was.

“…Ah.”

His deep blue eyes settled on her small head. The child’s hair was different than usual. It was tied neatly and straight, and it didn’t look like it had been done long ago.

He knew who had tied the child’s hair. Visualizing the face he suspected, Baek Joomyeong asked Yeonji casually.

“Yeonji, your hair looks pretty. Did teacher tie it for you?”

Yeonji nodded. She then whispered to Baek Joomyeong, excitedly saying it was “KkuraePing hair.”

“Yeonji likes teacher so much.”

It was a confession like that of a shy girl in the throes of first love.

Baek Joomyeong was flabbergasted by Yeonji, who was blushing even on her pale face out of embarrassment. What does a little kid like you know to say you like someone? Yet, he smiled because the child was cute.

“You like teacher that much?”

“Uh-huh.”

Baek Joomyeong was pleased that his niece had shown affection for someone else.

How long had it been since the child expressed positive interest in someone other than himself? He had been worried because she rarely opened up to adults other than him—especially the other Hunters who helped with drop-offs and pick-ups on his behalf—so hearing her say she liked the teacher so much brought a bit of relief.

Then again, even to his own eyes, it was clear that he treated Yeonji kindly, so how could Yeonji herself not know? No matter how much of a child she was, there was no way she could be unaware of the goodwill directed toward her.

Feeling a bit mischievous, Baek Joomyeong crossed his arms on the table and asked.

“Do you like him more than uncle?”

He asked assuming she would obviously say she liked him more, but Yeonji hesitated.

“You’re saying you like teacher more than uncle?”

The child quickly hung her head. To an innocent child, there was no such thing as a white lie. Since a lie was simply a lie, she chose silence. Although Baek Joomyeong felt quite slighted, he brushed it off, thinking she was just a child and he was someone she spent more time with.

No, he couldn’t quite let it go, so he asked the reason.

“Why do you like Teacher Jang Taeyeon so much?”

“Because teacher is pretty…. His eyes sparkle like stars…!”

Pretty? His eyes sparkle like stars?

Recalling Jang Taeyeon’s face, Baek Joomyeong vividly pictured the eyes set in that slender face.

Jang Taeyeon had black eyes, unlike his own. Rather than “sparkling like stars,” it was more fitting to say those black pupils were calmly settled. If he had to use light to describe them, they were closer to the shimmering moonlight reflected on a dark night sea.

He hadn’t particularly thought of him as pretty. It wasn’t because it was Jang Taeyeon, but because Baek Joomyeong himself had been more fixated on monsters than people lately. He was indifferent to anyone he looked at. Oh, it’s a human, not a monster, he would simply think.

I guess someone like Teacher Jang Taeyeon… is on the pretty side.

Actually, the first impression when they first met hadn’t been great. Unlike his neat appearance, Jang Taeyeon gave off a gloomy atmosphere that didn’t seem right for a daycare teacher. At times, that suspicious aura had felt off-putting.

However, he had changed starting from a certain day. His appearance was the same, but the brightness of his overall aura had increased. The man had become affectionate, and the tone of the daily reports had become warm.

“Teacher understands Yeonji’s heart the mo-o-ost, the ve-e-e-ry most!”

Yeonji spread her short arms wide and flapped them, showing that teacher understood her “this much.”

Understands Yeonji’s heart the most? I’m a little jealous of that.