The Civil Servant Who Concealed Their True Strength Turns Out to be a Master of Possession - Chapter 202

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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A Civil Servant Who Hides His Strength Is Exceptionally Good at Possession – Episode 202
XX County XX Town 11-10
Kwon Ik-seong’s expression turned puzzled as he saw the address I’d entered into the navigation system.
“What building are we going to? Or what kind of place? A warehouse or something?”
I didn’t know either, but….
‘If I say I don’t know, he’ll get suspicious again.’
With that thought, I answered simply.
“It’s a lead Choi Woo-jin gave me. A suspected illegal weapons storage facility.”
“I see.”
Watching Kwon Ik-seong accept my words without question, a pang of guilt struck my chest.
This must be what they call a guilty conscience.
‘Anyone would find this suspicious….’
But what choice did I have?
I couldn’t let such a significant reward—the Part 2 Prologue—slip away right before my eyes.
Truthfully, my head was spinning.
Part 2 Prologue? What did that even mean?
Could it be that Choi Woo-jin, who was the protagonist of this world, might no longer be the protagonist?
Could new villains emerge and the world flip upside down, leading to genuine destruction?
If the world perishes, what happens to us?
Do we all just disappear as extras—me, Yu Gyeom, Kwon Ik-seong, Pee So-won—everything gone?
Leaving our fate entirely to the world?
‘That can’t be it.’
I felt the Status Window was summoning me here to give me some kind of opportunity.
That’s what frightened me most.
Every time the Status Window presented these strange events, my life’s trajectory flowed toward unknowable places.
But this time, it wasn’t just my life at stake.
Perhaps Kwon Ik-seong’s fate…and Pee So-won’s…all of our fates hung in the balance.
It was as I exhaled a sigh.
“Is this dangerous work?”
“Ah….”
Only then did I turn my attention to Kwon Ik-seong, who held the steering wheel.
The car had already veered toward the outskirts of Gyeonggi-do.
‘We’ve been driving for an hour without any explanation.’
I shook my head.
How suspicious must this look?
I glanced at Kwon Ik-seong as he drove and asked.
“But why did you lie for me back in the interrogation room….”
I felt sorry, as if I was always just ‘using’ him.
Kwon Ik-seong always helped me whenever I found myself in crisis.
“If you’re referring to the dinner plans, I was going to suggest we eat together. So it wasn’t really a lie.”
Kwon Ik-seong answered matter-of-factly.
“You seemed to have clocked out, so I went to the monitoring room inside the Interrogation Room to look for files, and that’s how I heard about it.”
So he saw me being interrogated.
He pulled me out because I looked like I was in trouble.
“Thank you for saving me.”
I spoke in a slightly dejected voice.
A colleague who’s always causing incidents and never explains anything clearly beforehand.
‘Even I would find it hard to trust myself.’
As if he’d read that thought, Kwon Ik-seong spoke.
“Trust doesn’t come from the absence of secrets.”
Kwon Ik-seong, gripping the steering wheel, kept his gaze fixed on the road ahead.
A driver maintaining perfect forward focus.
Truly befitting an AI.
“The absence of secrets doesn’t mean you can trust someone, does it?”
“Well….”
“Similarly, the reason I trust Lee Yu-ji is not because she doesn’t lie to me.”
The moment the light turned amber, he eased off the accelerator, brought the car to a precise stop at the line, and shifted gears.
At a crosswalk with no pedestrians.
Through the car window, the traffic light’s glow illuminated Kwon Ik-seong’s already sharp features even more distinctly.
Despite the dark night, it only became clearer.
“I trust Lee Yu-ji’s heart. Like the moon that’s always there even when hidden by clouds on a dark night, I believe Lee Yu-ji will be there.”
There was none of that soothing tone unique to someone offering comfort.
Kwon Ik-seong’s voice carried only the bluntness of conveying fact.
And because of that, his words sank deeper into my chest.
“Team Leader Pee So-won must believe in her the same way. Only—”
The light turned green, and Kwon Ik-seong immediately shifted gears and drove forward.
“Lee Yu-ji is what we’re worried about. That she might get hurt. I feel the same way.”
Kwon Ik-seong’s profile grew distant.
“I regretted sending Lee Yu-ji off like that the day before my leave.”
From a face I couldn’t see directly came a voice I’d never heard from Kwon Ik-seong before.
“I should have asked.”
Tension crept into Kwon Ik-seong’s fingertips.
The navigation’s voice announcing entry into a speed-restricted zone came through very faintly.
But the car didn’t accelerate.
“Where she was going. What she was going to do. Again….”
Kwon Ik-seong exhaled sharply.
A sound that blended with the warning chime, sounding like a sigh.
“…whether she could come back.”
Kwon Ik-seong finally accelerated.
The engine’s output surged with a roar.
I watched as Kwon Ik-seong’s hand slowly found its place, and I struggled to open my mouth.
“I’ve liked you for a long time, Team Leader Kwon. A very long time.”
You will never know that you were once the only joy in my life.
Every day, complaints poured in endlessly, administrative work processed with convenience in mind, people turning away with disappointed faces.
‘A tax-wasting parasite!’
When I trudged home hearing such words, my only solace was reading web novels.
Why did I even become a civil servant in the first place?
Am I really just living this way to keep my secure government job?
Whenever I escaped those dizzying questions and entered the world within those novels, you were always there.
Someone who upheld principles in any situation, who carried out justice.
Someone who never broke their convictions even when circumstances were unfavorable.
In the darkness of night.
Like the moon hidden behind clouds, you were someone I could always be certain was shining somewhere, even if I didn’t know where. That person was you to me.
If such a person believed in me, then no matter what lay at the end of this path, I could walk it without fear.
“I know.”
As expected.
Kwon Ik-seong’s deduction was correct once again.
That’s why I liked him.
Because he knew everything, yet never used it against me.
“I’ve liked you longer than you think. Really.”
At my words, Kwon Ik-seong glanced toward me for a moment.
“Eyes on the road!”
At my words, Kwon Ik-seong looked forward again.
“Actually, you don’t really need to watch the road to drive without difficulty, do you?”
At my question, Kwon Ik-seong hesitated for a moment.
I know.
His skill is ‘Focus’ after all.
I know it even better because I’ve used it myself.
“All five senses are just naturally heightened.”
An affirmation.
“But watching the road is still a principle, so you follow it.”
Ik-seong didn’t answer my words.
An answer given through silence.
In that affirmation, an inexplicable courage welled up within me.
“That’s why I liked you. Still do.”
The navigation system’s voice announced that we were approaching our destination.
“I was always wavering. Was the path I was on correct? Or wrong? But after coming to the Heonsu Bureau, I decided not to worry about such things anymore. I do what needs to be done. That’s all I want to think about.”
It was the moment I spoke with a steady voice.
Beyond the headlights cutting white through the darkness on the pitch-black road, something appeared.
‘A deer?’
The steering wheel twisted faster than my thoughts could process.
The moment the wheel turned, the car tilted precariously to one side.
Beyond the windshield illuminated by the headlights, there was no road to be seen.
A pitch-black sinkhole.
It swallowed every beam of light from the headlights.
And then it swallowed the entire car.

* * *
…P-please, save me.
Those words wouldn’t leave my throat.
It wasn’t simply that they wouldn’t come out.
My throat… or rather, my body… it felt like it didn’t exist.
I could immediately recognize this strange sensation because I had experienced it once before.
When I became a man’s severed hand.
A space shrouded in mist where lime dust flowing from concrete fragments met the faint moonlight seeping in from outside.
I was gazing at that space.
Not with my eyes, but with something else.
And within that space stood a person.
“Are you alright?”
The person spoke.
Click.
The person swallowed hard and turned on the flashlight they were holding.
As the space brightened slightly, I could make out the clothing of the person holding the flashlight.
A traffic police officer.
“Hey there. Are you alright?”
Only then could I identify who this person was.
Someone rushing desperately toward the completely overturned car.
“Hey! Hey!”
That voice.
That back.
“Are you okay?!”
It was Mother.
But something felt wrong.
“Officer?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m a police officer. Are you okay?”
What the status window showed in Special Episode 2 was—
“Yes, I’m fine. But my mother and father….”
“It’s okay. It’ll be okay. Let’s get you out of there first.”
There was no sign of Mother acting so flustered.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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