I Picked Up the Greatest Villain in the Story

25.

Jian recited the story that had already become familiar to him. As soon as Jian finished speaking, Hyunwoo shook his head.

“It seems Hyunsu is becoming more mischievous. It must be because he’s spending time with a friend his age. You must have been quite surprised.”

“I was planning to trim his hair soon anyway, so I thought it worked out well. You’ll see later. Our Sehun has become even cuter.”

Watching Jian shrug his shoulders, Hyunwoo fell into thought for a moment. His fingertips tapping on the counter betrayed his hesitation.

“But you came early today? Or are you just stopping by?”

“Ah, I had some business nearby. Strangely, the coffee you brew tastes good. I dropped by because I was craving coffee. Also to check if the kids weren’t causing any more trouble.”

In fact, Hyunwoo had obtained information related to the research facility from which Sehun was presumed to have escaped.

When Hyunwoo arrived at the facility a few months ago, its self-destruct program had already been activated, and everything was burning. He hurriedly extinguished the fire, gathered the remaining documents and traces, and from them, obtained information about the escaped child.

He thought there were no survivors except for the child. But today, he confirmed that it wasn’t just the experimental subject who had escaped from the facility at that time.

‘I’m not sure how much of this story I should tell him.’

Jian and Sehun have different surnames. So Jian had already honestly told Hyunwoo that he and Sehun weren’t blood brothers, and as Hyunwoo had guessed when he first saw them, Jian had taken in a child who had nowhere else to go.

However, Hyunwoo hadn’t yet told Jian about his own identity. Jian just thought he was running an ordinary guild, but his guild dealt with all profitable information not just in South Korea, but worldwide.

‘Well, Jian is also hiding that he’s an S-rank hunter, so we’re in similar situations. I’ve kept my A-rank status a secret too.’

The difference was that Hyunwoo knew Jian’s secret, but Jian didn’t know his.

“Do you have a moment? I have something to talk about.”

“Right now?”

Jian, who had been wiping espresso shot glasses while talking to Hyunwoo, opened his eyes wide. Hyunwoo’s expression was serious, unlike his usual smooth demeanor.

Jian looked around the cafe. Three customers were sitting at tables. They all had laptops in front of them, and it hadn’t been long since they ordered their drinks, so it seemed okay to step away for a moment.

“It feels like you want to talk somewhere else, right?”

“Yes. Let’s go to my car. I parked it right in front.”

Hyunwoo pointed outside the cafe. A black SUV was parked conspicuously in front.

After apologizing to the customers, Jian got into the passenger seat of Hyunwoo’s car. Hyunwoo, sitting in the driver’s seat, turned towards Jian. Instead of giving a lengthy explanation, he went straight to the point.

“How much do you know about Sehun?”

“What do you mean?”

“Exactly what I said. All you know is Sehun’s name and age, right? Do you know anything for certain about where he lived before he met you, who his parents are, why he was wandering the streets?”

His tone was gentle and calm, so it didn’t feel like an interrogation. However, the content was hard to ignore. The expression slowly faded from Jian’s face.

The wariness towards Hyunwoo that had momentarily disappeared now peaked. Jian quietly activated his skill window. Seeing the window flashing with blue light gave him a bit of mental composure.

“You’re talking as if you know where Sehun came from.”

“I’m not certain, but I think there’s a high probability I’m right.”

“About what?”

“You don’t know what my guild does.”

“I thought it was just an ordinary guild…”

“No. Have you heard of ‘Dark Net’?”

Jian furrowed his brows, deep in thought. After learning that a post about him had been uploaded to the hunter community, Jian had been visiting the community to gather information whenever he had the chance.

Dark Net. He had definitely read about it there a few times.

“I know it’s the most famous information guild in South Korea. Don’t tell me you’re the guild master of Dark Net?”

“Yeah. That’s right.”

This meant that Hyunwoo might really know information about Sehun. Everyone who talked about Dark Net said that if the Dark Net guild master didn’t know something, it was as good as no one knowing it.

Jian slowly clenched his fist resting on his thigh. Hyunwoo knew about Sehun’s past, which hadn’t even been mentioned in the novel.

Remembering the state Sehun was in when Jian first found him, he tensed up, feeling it probably wasn’t a good story.

Seeing Jian’s changed eyes, Hyunwoo judged that he was ready to hear the story. Letting out a small sigh, he began telling a story that only a few trusted individuals in his guild knew.

“There was a research facility I’d been tracking for 6 months. There was a rumor circulating discreetly among high-ranking individuals about a place conducting inhumane experiments on children with nowhere to go.”

Jian’s eyes shook greatly. Experiments? Just hearing about it gave him goosebumps all over his body.

“There’s an abandoned hospital in a mountain village in Gangwon-do. A nearby resident once reported to the police that they had witnessed bodies on stretchers being brought out continuously. The resident was found drowned in a nearby reservoir shortly after, and it was ruled an accidental death, citing that the resident often spoke nonsense. Of course, there was no investigation into the abandoned hospital.”

His palms were sweating. This was the kind of story he’d only seen in dramas or movies. Although this was also a world from a novel, for Jian, life here had long since become reality.

“Our informant also received this information. The informant dismissed it as nothing, but that’s our motto. No matter how trivial the information, if there’s something unusual, we dig into it thoroughly. It seemed to be related to a rumor I was interested in, so I ordered an investigation, and the more we dug, the stranger it became.”

During the investigation, one guild member went missing. From then on, they had to find the truth of the fragmented information, if only for the sake of the missing guild member.

“The guild member sent information about discovering charred remains hidden in a pit less than 10km away from the abandoned hospital, and then disappeared.”

The investigation of the remains revealed that they all belonged to children between the ages of five and fifteen, and the number exceeded at least twenty.

Jian closed his eyes briefly and then opened them. The story was more horrific than he had imagined, and he felt as if he was being choked.

The fact that this story was related to Sehun… He had guessed that the child’s past wasn’t smooth, but he didn’t know it was to this extent.

“So I moved personally. I eventually caught circumstantial evidence that illegal experiments were indeed being conducted, and discovered that the abandoned hospital was a building disguising a research facility.”

Hyunwoo paused for a moment and let out a long sigh. Even now, the image of the burning abandoned hospital flickered before his eyes.

“By the time we identified the location of the research facility and arrived, it was already too late. Someone had activated the self-destruct device, and everything was burning.”

They searched thoroughly in case there were any surviving children.

They found piles of adult corpses in white research gowns, but no bodies that appeared to be children’s, which brought both relief and despair. It meant that no children had survived.

“Then I discovered a document, along with tunnels dug like a maze under the abandoned hospital.”

The tunnels were too narrow for an adult to pass through. They were only small enough for a child of five or six to pass through, so Hyunwoo couldn’t enter directly. He called a guild member with a puppeteer skill to send a puppet into the tunnel to follow the path.

“The tunnel was connected to the city center of Gangwon-do. There were drops of blood here and there, but we couldn’t find any traces of people.”

However, among the remaining documents, there was information about the last experimental subject.

There was also a photo of the child attached, but half of it was burned, making it difficult to recognize. Still, the particularly dark and messy hair and eyes remained clearly etched in his mind.

“When I first saw Sehun, I knew right away. Ah, this child is the experimental subject who escaped from that place. He was alive.”

Jian closed his eyes and swallowed hard. The hair that looked like it had never been cared for since birth, the long-grown fingernails and toenails, the face so swollen it was hard to make out the features, and the body covered in wounds.

His eyes stung. Learning about the child’s past, he understood why Sehun was destined to become a cruel villain later. Jian suppressed the rising tears, opened his eyes, and looked straight at Hyunwoo.

“Why are you telling me this now?”

He tried to speak calmly, but he couldn’t prevent his voice from trembling at the end.

“It seems Sehun might not be the only survivor from the research facility. I think Researcher Heather is alive. And it seems she’s looking for Sehun now.”

“You mean the person who committed those terrible acts against Sehun… is still alive?”

“That’s right.”