Chapter 94
B-Besides, I have no reason to tell you. From the start, coming all the way here together was for survival, not to have this kind of conversation.
Jinseop showed a rather brazen refusal.
He'd always been gutsy. Even with me effectively holding his life in my hands, he was still acting this uncooperatively.
Well, you needed this kind of nerve to pull off big things. It was because I had subordinates like this under me that I survived the apocalypse.
Right.
If we'd met under different circumstances, maybe I could have made a good connection this round too. Just like my close friend Kim Sungjin and those vampire hunters.
Jinseop is my precious comrade, so I have to save him. But to do that, I need to learn as much as I can about the fake Administration Bureau.
If that's what it takes to find out.
I can use somewhat coercive methods too.
"That stubbornness will have to wait until after you survive and come back."
"Are you trying to kill me...?"
"If you become a threat."
"Hah, then you'd better kill me right now, you filthy aberration."
"Very brave. Don't you realize there are monsters everywhere?"
"You think an Administration Bureau agent would be scared of that!"
Fierce fighting spirit.
That fighting spirit felt far too suspicious to me.
No matter how I looked at it, it was abnormal.
Just as the fake Administration Bureau was abnormal, the people in it were abnormal too.
"You're really in no position to be careless with your life. Like I said, you're still only high school age, and a rookie no-name who just became an agent."
"W-What does that have to do with anything?"
When I pointed it out while looking him in the eye, he shrank back.
Maybe he even sensed that something was off himself.
It wasn't even some isekai high schooler nonsense—how does a modern high school kid start yelling Allahu Akbar the moment he becomes an agent?
"Have you ever doubted it? Why you became such a fanatical agent?"
"What are you talking about..."
"I'm asking when exactly you became someone who'd shout 'Long live the Administration Bureau!' and blow himself up without hesitation."
"..."
A guy who had been a high school student just a short while ago had become an agent who didn't care about his life in an instant.
That was far too strange.
Those were the things I'd been thinking over so far.
"Blowing yourself up? That's the sort of thing Islamist terrorists do, isn't it? And even those guys don't just go around suicide-bombing at random. Only chosen fanatics who went through long brainwashing would do that."
"W-What does that..."
"You. The Administration Bureau people did something to you, didn't they?"
"Shut up! Trying to divide us with that nonsense won't work!"
I shook my head.
"What would be the point of that against a mere rookie agent like you?"
"Then why would you say something like that...!"
"Because I feel sorry for you."
"Sorry for me?"
Good. He's getting drawn into my pace.
Right now, I'm deftly steering the conversation against this guy. That's possible partly because I know Jinseop well, but fundamentally it's proof that I've gained that much experience.
"I'm an Administration Bureau agent. How could I stand by while an ordinary civilian like you, a minor at that, was kidnapped by a suspicious organization called the 'fake Administration Bureau' and turned into a suicide-bombing terrorist?"
"What...!"
"Think back. What happened after you became an agent?"
At that point, I considered taking out the perception-manipulation pen in my pocket. From what I'd heard, it didn't work on fake Administration Bureau agents, but it wouldn't hurt to test it once.
But if it failed, his alertness would probably skyrocket by a hundredfold. Let's leave it as a last resort.
"B-Bullshit! The fake Administration Bureau is you bastards! You're just trying to trick me...!"
"Fine. According to what you were taught, I'm an aberration and a monster, right? But do I look like that now? I'm speaking rationally and pointing things out logically. Does this look like the fake Administration Bureau aberration you've been taught to see?"
"..."
Jinseop clenched his teeth.
He couldn't refute that.
"Then... what about those guys who transform into monsters?"
How should I answer that here.
In this fake Administration Bureau, I don't know about me, but people like Mr. Spandal, who have psychic powers, are being treated as outright monsters.
But that's also a bit of a misunderstanding, because Mr. Spandal and the fake Administration Bureau only ever cross paths in battle. At those times, he'd naturally be using his thorn abilities, so he'd have no choice but to look like a monster.
"Well, that's because..."
I decided to press my theory.
The fake Administration Bureau recruits ordinary people and brainwashes them into becoming their agents.
Jinseop's existence supported my theory. The fact that he had been a high school student just a short while ago and had become a crazy agent willing to blow himself up was all because of brainwashing techniques.
Come to think of it, those bastards had even pulled out my brain once. People like that would obviously brainwash someone without batting an eye.
"Because your agents' perceptions have been manipulated."
"What?"
"Do I look like a monster right now? No, you say they turn into monsters when they transform? Do you think you can have a conversation with a monster?"
"Not really..."
His eyes trembled with anxiety.
I could see it.
Jinseop was wavering.
"They got to you. They force-fed you information. Otherwise there's no way you'd become an agent willing to blow himself up in just a few months."
But doing this almost made it feel like I was really brainwashing Jinseop.
"You can think I'm deceiving you if you want. But go back through the timeline yourself and think about it logically. At what point did you become such a zealous agent?"
"..."
"Learning the world's secrets, becoming an agent of a secret organization called the Administration Bureau, and carrying out missions for humanity is certainly something to be proud of. But becoming willing to blow yourself up in such a short time is truly strange. Much less... burning civilians is absurd."
Jinseop's condition kept getting worse. His hands were shaking, and his eyes, full of anxiety, trembled even more violently.
Then he grabbed his head with both hands.
"Wait... wait... something's wrong... back then, I definitely..."
He started muttering something.
Looks like his mental state was shaken badly.
"Unlike what you think, our Administration Bureau works for humanity. Just the other day we went to deal with vampires and ghouls. You burned civilians, but we rescued them. We're erasing their memories of the vampires and going through the process of returning them to society."
"R-Rescued them, not burned them...?"
This part shook Jinseop even more.
Because it was the exact opposite of what they had done when they burned civilians.
"Right. Rescue, yes. And do you know why we came here this time? That suspicious hospital you found. We came to rescue the people held there, and that's how this happened."
"Sh, shut up! Shut up, please...! That kind of nonsense...! My head feels like it's splitting...!"
I drew my pistol.
"What are you doing?!"
"Shh. Quiet. I see a monster."
This place was anything but a safe zone.
Looking carefully, I could see stitched-up people everywhere. Are they coming this way? The atmosphere was bad. We should change locations.
"Looks like we'll have to go somewhere else. Song Jinseop. Think about it. There's no point in pulling tricks on a rookie agent like you. No matter what you do to a mere underling, it won't help. I'm only trying to persuade you because I feel bad for you."
"Then I..."
"Hold on. Let's move locations."
The escape route had been identified.
I immediately dragged Jinseop and ran. As expected, the stitched-up people entered the building where we had been hiding.
* * *
After running for a long while, we entered a new building and caught our breath. While doing so, I checked Jinseop's condition. The bold, fighting-spirit-filled look he had at first was gone. He had a haggard, pale face.
I hadn't even seen that kind of face during the apocalypse.
"You're right... I remembered something strange."
"Go on."
"I was definitely... a high school student until a few months ago. I was attending Daeseo High School."
Ah, right.
That was the name.
"The one over in Seoul, right?"
"You know that too?"
His hostility had vanished, and he was using honorifics now.
It seems my persuasion worked very well.
"Like I said, I'm an agent serving in the Administration Bureau as well. I have that much information at least."
In fact, the Administration Bureau couldn't figure out the real identities of individual fake Administration Bureau agents. They'd already ruled it impossible. Since they were treated as aberrations, there'd be no personal details to dig up. I only knew because I was close with Jinseop.
"Anyway. Why did a high school student like you become an agent?"
"Well. Something strange happened, actually."
"Something strange?"
"I ended up like this after that happened, but I saw something strange the other day."
Jinseop's explanation began.
"I was walking down the street when suddenly I saw some twisted person... some completely twisted person? He was flailing around, so I figured something was up and watched closely."
A twisted person?
"He kept twisting his body and then suddenly started body-slamming a building, over and over, until he was bleeding..."
What!?
Could it be that giant?!
"When was that?"
"It wasn't that long ago. Ah, it was that day. You know, the day that news came out about a building collapsing in Seoul? That exact day."
It was that day!
The day I took down the Star's Child with Gorgodio and Curas!
"That was really weird. A disabled person? Definitely not—it was literally a twisted, bizarre person, so I took a picture and uploaded it online?"
"Then the men in black suits came looking for you."
"Y-Yeah! That's right! That's how I got taken away...!"
Exactly.
The ghost story that appears to people who experience anomalous phenomena.
That was the one that applied.
Of course, this wasn't just some simple ghost story.
In this parallel world, the fake Administration Bureau had its main base. From there they tracked Jinseop after he uploaded the anomaly photo, and sent an agent right away.
"You were taken and interrogated, I assume."
"Yes..."
"Section Chief Kim Johak?"
"W-What?! How do you know that!"
So it was that bastard after all.
Section Chief Kim Johak was the bastard who interrogated me when I was taken by the fake Administration Bureau after surviving the vampire attack back then.
He was the culprit who had pulled out my brain.
"The atmosphere must have been pretty intimidating, right?"
"Yes. I was scared... It was like some interrogation room from a movie. I, um, told them everything I knew first. Then at the very end they told me to choose."
"Choose?"
"Whether I'd become an agent or disappear from this world."
That's quite a
blunt choice.
"They said there are a lot of things like that in this world. And that if they just let someone who'd learned the secret go, it would only have bad effects. So they persuaded me to become an agent. I didn't want to die, so I said I'd become one first... and after that."
After that.
"After that, my memory gets a little fuzzy. Or rather, it feels strange. Thinking about it now, I seem a little strange too. I got trained and did things... but how could I have been able to try to blow myself up without hesitation..."
I had a rough idea.
"Were you hit by some kind of device? Or brainwashing waves?"
"A device...?"
"Yeah."
"Ah, y-yeah. I think there was something. But I don't really..."
At that point, I took out the perception-manipulation pen.
"Song Jinseop. This is a kind of hypnosis device. It's used to extract memories from people's minds."
"What?!"
"If you want me to take a closer look at your memories here, press this button yourself. If you don't want to, I'll put the pen away again."
"..."
"I'm saying I'm giving you a choice."
If I forced it, it'd obviously just plant negative perceptions. Better to say I'm giving him a choice here.
It wouldn't matter much if he refused.
I already knew a fair bit about the fake Administration Bureau.
I'd already extracted everything Jinseop knew.
I could even press it myself.
"O-Okay. I'll trust you. I'll press it."
"Good. I'll investigate what happened to you, and what the Administration Bureau bastards did to you."
Jinseop extended his hand and pressed the button.
ㅡFlash!
A brief light flashed, and Jinseop's eyes went slightly blank.
"Hmm... I heard it wouldn't work. Did it work because the brainwashing was broken?"
That means the fake Administration Bureau's brainwashing equipment probably has a function that makes it immune to our perception-manipulation gear.
"Song Jinseop. Remember. Back when you were being interrogated."
"Ah... I was scared... really..."
"You said you'd become an agent. What happened after that?"
"Well... they said we were going for some kind of test..."
A test?
"We moved to a place called the examination room. When I went inside, there were lots of strange machines. Ah, ah... th-there were several people there."