Adam felt his heart drop at the words he heard. It didn’t make sense. It’s not that he was particularly close to discovering a culprit, he had barely started his investigation after all. He doubted anyone other than his superiors knew of his involvement either, since he had only been brought on in the last week.
His partner snapped at him.
“If you’re in a daze, you’ll just end up being killed. Snap out of it, Bait.”
“No it’s Baek.”
The partner slowly turned around and glared at him.
“I’m sorry?”
“My name. It’s Baek. Not…not whatever you said.”
Adam’s partner rolled his eyes, and slowly stood up. Then, he once again gave him a blow to the head.
As Adam clutched his head in pain, the other person pulled himself onto the area connecting the front and back of the car, and spoke.
“I still don’t think you understand the gravity of our current situation. You are here to investigate The Isekai initiative. The plague on our world for the last century, and for many more to come, unless we find the cause. Not that I think that you’ll be able to do it.”
The person sneered, and pushed Adam’s hair out of his eyes.
“Why do you think we picked you?”
“Because of my investigative abilities? Not to brag, but back in the academy I…”
Again, another blow to the head.
“Again with the prattle. As to your response, no. Are you really vain enough to think that you could be the best we could find for what started as a missing person case over a century ago?”
There was a brief pause, as Adam collected his thoughts.
“No. You were so far down the list, that it’s taken us this long to get to you. You were one of our final choices, only to be picked if we were desperate.”
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Adam’s heart fell at these words
“You’re a two-bit, small time investigator, who receives fewer and fewer cases as time goes on. I know you work part-time jobs, and that this case is your first in a while. You have little merit as it is, and the worst part is that you’re unprofessional, slow on the uptake, and infuriating as a person!”
The other person fell back, seemingly spent, and now quieter, seemingly having vented his frustrations on Adam Baek. After a few seconds of silence, Adam spoke up.
“But in the end, I was a choice.”
The silence stretched for a few seconds longer, before the other person spoke up, in a whisper so silent it could have been his breath.
“And it’s a choice that at this point, I would rather not take.”
The other person took a moment to gather his thoughts.
“Did you truly not think of why at this point, so long after the acknowledgement of the phenomenon, so long after The Isekai initiative was started, that you were finally brought into the case?”
“I figured that my predecessors would have grown old, or simply just moved on. If the investigation had really taken this long…”
“THEY DIED!”
Adam flinched at the guttural, gutted voice, so full of rage, shame and sorrow coming from a small, shaking frame. The other person was welling with emotions, to the point where it seemed he couldn’t maintain the steady facade it seemed he had been putting up before, and all of his emotions seemed to be spilling out of him at once. Without a second thought, Adam instinctively reached out and grabbed the other person’s hand. He held it until it seemed the other person had calmed down. In a numb voice, the other person continued.
“They all died. Every single investigator, policeman, detective before you, was killed. All of them barely lived the first days on the job, and those who survived barely lasted a week.”
Adam gathered his thoughts, before bringing himself to speak up.
“So before me there were…”
“Tens, if not hundreds before you. All dead. All victims of accidental death. All with missing bodies. Taken, by this curse on our world. For doing their jobs.”
An empty silence passed, and the two just sat like they were for a while. Adam holding the other person’s hand, the other person still shivering from their outburst. Then, abruptly, the other person withdrew their hand, and straightened themself.
In a recovered, more commanding voice, the other person began to speak.
“We need to get right to the archives. The more time we spend here, the more likely the phenomenon will strike, so let’s get moving.”
They both got out of the car, before Adam hesitantly spoke up.
“If it’s not too much, do you mind if…”
He quickly braced himself for another attack, only to feel a light tap on his head. He looked up to see the doors of an elevator closing, the other person inside, back to their serious self from before, with the hint of a smile playing over their face. As he hurriedly rushed to get on, the other person allowed to slip out.
“My name, though a waste of time, is Caleb.”