Chapter 174

Even after I realized I couldn't see, my mind stayed strangely calm.

Because there was no shortage of people around me losing it far worse than I was.

"O-optic nerve damage? Get every scan machine we can fire up right now — MRI, CT, all of it!"

Han Soeun was running around in a frenzy, spilling terms I couldn't follow.

"C-calm down, please calm down! With our guild's tech, we make prosthetic arms and legs — a prosthetic eye should be no problem…!"

Lee Jinwoo's shaky voice was almost painful to hear.

"Whaaah! Direektuh! Whaaaaah—"

"Direektuh, look at me! I'm right here! Hm? You can't shee me?"

The twins, clamped to both my sides, cupped my cheeks in their tiny fern-frond hands and started turning my face this way and that.

"K-kids, wait a—"

And then.

"Please, please…! Heal, please heal! Please let the Director's eyes open!"

A warmth so hot it stung poured over my eyes, but cruelly, the pitch-black didn't let so much as a crack of light through.

When I took Suho's hand — burning through his mana for nothing — and gently stopped him, something damp landed on my shoulder shortly after.

"Whaaah, Director! I'm sorry! Because I'm weak…!"

I patted Suho's back slowly as he sobbed.

"Just a moment! I'll go look through the books! There might be a treatment…!"

"I'll help! Let's go together!"

Sea-ah shot out as if struck by lightning, and Cha Yul went thundering out of the sickroom after her.

Amid the racket, with not a scrap of quiet to be found, a solid, weighty warmth pressed suddenly against my hip.

The signature shadow-like presence — Sihyeok.

Without a single word, he wrapped his arms around my waist tight enough to crush me.

Well… this is chaos.

The vertigo of having lost my sight only doubled under the wailing around me.

At this point I couldn't tell whether I was the one being comforted or the one who should be comforting them.

"Kids… settle down first. Number One, Number Two, you two also."

I barely got the words out, but the decibel level in the room showed no sign of dropping.

Casting about, I pulled out the strongest card I had for redirecting them.

"Instead of standing around like this, how about we call Cheon Sarang?"

The moment that name landed, the sniffling stopped, and I heard someone suck in a sharp breath.

"Th-that's right! An S-rank healer! Of course, her! I'll contact Guild Master Han Jewoon this instant!"

Lee Jinwoo's device clicked away frantically — but a bewildered voice broke through a moment later.

"Guild Master's device is completely off. Looks like he's gone into a Gate!"

"Ugh, then try Hunter Seo Jihyeok!"

At Han Soeun's urgent shout, Lee Jinwoo connected somewhere else. A short, hurried exchange came through the line, and then Lee Jinwoo called out, voice much brighter now.

"They said they'll send Hunter Cheon Sarang within ten minutes!"

And exactly ten minutes later.

Fwip—!

Along with the wavelength of Yun Gyeongha's space-teleport, a new presence appeared in the sickroom.

"Director… it's been a while…"

Cheon Sarang's signature languid, dreamy voice wound around my ear.

Even after seeing the state I was in, her reaction stayed endlessly light and unruffled.

Strangely, that unbotheredness comforted me more than any wailing could have.

I nodded lightly in the direction I sensed her.

"Yes, been a while. Sorry I can't greet you properly, looking like this."

"Hmm… it's fine… you didn't lose an arm or a leg… above the neck you're all in one piece, not a scratch… this is honestly nothing…"

Along with a soft, pleasant fragrance, her presence stepped closer.

"Excuse me a moment…"

A comforting warmth touched my closed eyes.

I let my body go slack and took it in quietly.

Around me, the kids held their breath, the sound of them swallowing hard ringing out unusually loud.

A moment's silence, and her lips parted.

"Oh dear… this one… I can't fix this."

"Nnh…!"

At Cheon Sarang's grim diagnosis, the air in the room turned to ice.

The kids sucked in sharp breaths — clear as day even in the black.

My heart, too, felt like it had dropped straight through the floor.

I'd taken it for granted that the world's top healer would have a way — and when that vague hope shattered in an instant, my head went white.

"…What… does that mean? You're saying even you can't do it?"

"It's the same as your right arm, Director… not just a plain injury, it's tangled up with mana… if I forced healing through, it'd only make it worse."

Same as my right arm?

Was my sight going to go the way of the arm — permanent damage, an aftereffect I'd never shake?

"That can't be right…! You're the world's best healer! You're an S-rank!"

"Whaaah! Please fix our Direektuh… don't lie to ush!"

Just as the room was tipping back into a sea of tears, Cheon Sarang lifted her hand from my eyes and added:

"…I meant 'I' can't fix it. Not me — could someone go bring Teacher Kim Sunja?"

"Teacher? Why…"

I couldn't wrap my head around it.

Wasn't I a textbook non-Awakened, not a single drop of mana in me?

Why on earth would someone like me need Teacher Kim Sunja — who read the flow of mana?

"It seems… we're going to need to open your mana meridians. This isn't my specialty, you see…"

At Cheon Sarang's cryptic answer, for the time being I sent Number Three off to fetch the teacher.

Not long after, the door opened, and the familiar tap-tap of a cane on the floor came in.

"What on earth is this bizarre uproar. Is this a sickroom, or the Wailing Wall?"

Cheon Sarang moved over with unhurried steps and explained the situation to Teacher Kim Sunja.

Listening quietly, the teacher let out a low, incredulous scoff.

"Me? Look at that one? What use is my power on a non-Awakened brat."

At those cold words, the kids swarmed her like a hive.

"Whaaah, Master, pleeease! Fix the Director! Just look at him this once!"

As the kids clung to her clothes and wailed, the teacher clicked her tongue and adjusted her grip on the cane.

"Oh, honestly, all right, all right. I'll take a look."

Soon, though I couldn't see it, an intense gaze that seemed to prick the skin fell on me.

Teacher Kim Sunja's ability, [Root Sight].

"……!"

The teacher's presence — steady all along — went stiff for an instant.

Then, as if she couldn't believe it, a heavy voice — sunk lower than usual — cut through the air.

"You, boy… you were an Awakened after all."

"……What?!"

"W-what did you say?"

The kids and researchers sucked in breath as one, dumbstruck.

I froze too, as if struck by lightning.

"Wh-what are you talking about? Me, an Awakened?"

"Cast your mind back to your childhood, carefully. There must have been something unusual — or some great disturbance in your body — at some point."

Under the teacher's sharp interrogation, I lost my words.

As a transmigrator, I had no way of knowing Chae Junhyeok's boyhood — something the original novel had never even touched on.

I hid my trembling hands behind me and pushed the panic down as best I could.

"Well… it's so long ago, I don't really remember."

At my hedging, the teacher let out a deep sigh, exasperated.

"Tch. Do you remember what I said the first time I set eyes on you, back then?"

"What you said back then, that would be…"

"In my eyes, an Awakened's core and mana flow show up white; on a non-Awakened, that same spot is simply empty. But you… I said your core spot wasn't empty. Something like a black lump was coiled tight there, holding firm."

"Ah, yes. I remember."

"Back then I brushed it off, but looking again now, part of that black lump has moved toward your eyes. Likely that's the cause. And more startling still — it's very faint, but a flow of mana has appeared in your body."

"……What?! Mana is flowing in my body?"

I couldn't contain my shock.

"Yes. That black lump is still choking your core off, but it's smaller than before. Through that narrowed gap, mana is leaking out and running through your blood vessels. What in the world happened to you when you were taken?"

Fumbling to sort through the storm in my head, I dragged the memory of that moment back up.

The horrific despair of being trapped in the net.

The alien feeling of something surging out of Hajun's body, pressed to my chest.

The overwhelming wish to protect the kids.

The pain that had followed in my gut and my eyes, and the enormous explosion.

When I laid out the whole thing as I remembered it, the first to react were the kids.

"Th-that was you, Director?!"

"I was so sure it came from outside — turns out it was the Director!"

The kids cried out, dumbstruck.

But the teacher was focused on a different point than that fact.

"Looks like that one there did something…"

I felt Hajun flinch and start trembling faintly in my arms.

Just then, Sea-ah's voice — she'd come back without me noticing — cut in.

"Come to think of it… Hayun, you used telekinesis on your own, on the ship."

At those words, my head whipped toward what I guessed was Hayun in my arms.

"Hayun used telekinesis on her own? What do you mean?"

"Hic—!"

Barely had my question landed when a huge hiccup burst out of my arms.

I couldn't see it, but I could picture Hayun's round eyes gone huge with alarm, clear as day.

Hayun used her power on her own? Could she have had a secondary awakening?

But…

When Sea-ah had her secondary awakening, her mana had surged and her vision had gone white — the effects were dramatic.

But Hayun had shown no signs at all.

Every kind of theory was chasing its own tail through my head like a storm — that was when.

"Whaaaaaah—!"

A heartbroken sob ripped through the quiet and filled the sickroom.

"Direektuhh, I'm shorry for lyingg! Whaaah!"

"?!"

Thrown by the sudden burst of tears for only a moment, I reflexively pulled the kids in tight, their small, desperate warmth burrowing into my chest.

"I-I didn't do it on purposhee! Hic! I wash — hic — shcared the Direektuh would hate ush… Whaaah!"

"W-we weren't really trying to lie, hic, whaaah…"

Faces buried in my chest, the twins took turns tumbling over each other's words, garbled and rushed.

But they were sobbing so pitifully, hiccuping between every word, that it all came out as mush and I couldn't make out a thing.

Have to calm them down first.

In the darkness, I carefully reached toward where I guessed their faces would be, and my fingertips caught on hot, tear-soaked cheeks.

I gently wiped the tears with my thumbs and soothed them, soft.

"It's all right, it's all right. You've cried an awful lot today. That's enough now."

"Whaaah, but…… buutt……!"

"The Director isn't angry, not even a little. If it's hard to say, you don't have to, okay? Come on, stop crying. Your eyes'll swell up."

After a long spell of soothing, the kids gripping my clothes gradually eased their ragged breathing.

The twins bumped their foreheads to my chest — thunk — and after hesitating for a long moment, spoke in tiny voices.

"S-see… the truth is……"

Then, halting, came the kids' confession.

The instant that short confession ended, a silence fell over the sickroom, as if cold water had been dumped on it.

Not just me — Lee Jinwoo, Han Soeun, and the other kids — I could feel every one of them suck in a breath, dumbstruck.

"…So what you're saying is, the two of you using your telekinesis together — it was never actually the two of you combining your powers?"