To Live Again, For the First Time!

"So won't you tell me which organization or person you work for, hm?" The man in front of Emilin, who had already introduced himself as Calim asked with a curious expression on his face.

Since Emilin was sitting on the floor with her wrists and ankles tied, Calim sat himself down next to her with his legs in the same retracted position and his head resting on his arms, which were on his brought up knees, looking at Emilin.

Emilin didn't respond, just staring at Calim, who was also one of her wardens at the moment.

If she couldn't even use her words while talking to people she wanted to talk to, there was really no point in wasting words with someone she didn't want to talk to.

And she had quite a lot of experience not talking to people, some might even say she's really an expert.

Master of the arts.

Seeing as Emilin hadn't responded, Calim just took it as her not wanting to expose any information about her employers.

'She's a loyal one!' He thought.

"Hey, you don't have to be like this you know? Good things should be shared. If your employers are willing to hire someone like you, then I'm sure they would at least consider allowing me to join the fray." Calim persuaded as if he truly wanted to quit working for his own organization to join hers.

Well, the truth wasn't entirely like that.

Calim really just wanted to probe Emilin for any information he could squeeze out of her.

Later, he realized how shut-lipped she was, but he didn't give up. 

In the end, it ended up as more of a one-sided conversation, a monologue really, sounding almost as if he were arguing pros and cons with himself about himself.

"Hey for real. Can't you give me the contact info or something, maybe just a number? I don't need to know the address or anything, I mean it's about time I quit here. There are just too many working hours you know?" Calim sighed as he ranted.

He was already getting used to just speaking to himself like this, so when Emilin finally gave him a response, he was a little startled.

"No."

"No what? No, you don't want to give me the contact number, no you don't work for anyone, or no you don't understand?"

"The second one." Emilin stoically replied.

It was her way of speaking that made everything she said sound like lies.

From the other people's perspective, Emilin was just acting too calm in general.

She had been tied up by some strange men, kept in a dark cave, and they were going who knows where later.

Yet, here she was, just sitting quietly, and even when she was being questioned, she just calmly answered while claiming that she had no affiliations with any groups.

Even a ghost wouldn't believe her.

Well in this aspect, Calim could say that she was quite skilled, and she wouldn't open her mouth either.

If she had a solid skill set, it was likely that even he would want to hire her. 

Just because it was hard to find people who didn't open their mouths when probed by a group of people clearly stronger than themselves, and could still remain calm when cornered.

As for Emilin, she was neither as calm as she looked nor able to disclose any sort of information like they thought because there was really nothing to disclose.

"I see, so you want to play the long game. But I must say, even if you don't tell me now, you can always tell me later when we get to the base, but I don't think the circumstances we be so good once the boss finds out and decides what to do with you." Calim sighed, though he couldn't really talk about what the boss would do, he could still speculate.

"Do I have to go?" Emilin's reluctance was written all over her face in black.

"Ah, you don't want to go I see. But we have no other choice in the matter either. You seem suspicious enough, you're in our territory and you also know too much."

"Though if we end up finding out that there's nothing suspicious about you, we'll just have Moulan hypnotize you and then we'll most likely let you off." Calim scratched his head.

He searched through his mind to find what was the most common procedure when this happened, and it seemed that that was more or less it.

Yes, this was most definitely not the first, nor the last time they would find someone suspected of being a spy around here and so this was quite normal.

Their base had already been around here for centuries, before their current boss's grandfather was even born, and so the number of people who knew of this place weren't few in numbers.

Even so, the base still held strong. After all, there's a reason why it was able to survive this long. 

Still, no matter how normal this was, it never improved their acting skills. They really did rely on Moulan, their hypnotist, a little too much.

'Hypnotist huh.'

When Emilin heard the word hypnotist, she had thought back to the moments before she had decided to go out and travel.

Back then, she had also considered getting hypnotized, just enough so that she would be able to talk to people.

That also wasn't the first time she had considered it, but in the end, she had discarded that idea every single time.

There were just too many drawbacks.

Emilin would much rather have a hard time and strive for improvement rather than trying her best to bury the issue in hand, after all even if a hypnotist masked her problems, they would still be there, and if they were to resurface, she would have already missed the ideal time to treat them.

That's why, to her, hypnotists were a no-go.

In addition to that, it was really just too hard to hypnotize her. It was more likely for her to accidentally hypnotize the hypnotist subconsciously due to self-defense mechanisms integrated deep within her mind.

"How long will that take?"

Calim just answered all of this like it was nothing, even though some of this information should clearly not be disclosed and no one else stopped him.

Well, it was rare for this girl to be asking questions as she hadn't opened her mouth in the past one and a half hours, not even when the chatterbox Haneo sat there for 30 minutes talking about everything and nothing.

Hunter and Zeek also didn't seem to have much better luck as Emilin just acted as if there weren't there when they spoke during their shift.

He might as well indulge her with some well-deserved answers.

"Um, we'll set off in about another 10 minutes, get there in another 15, and by the time the leader makes some time for you and we get you to our hypnotist. That will be perhaps a day or two."

Emilin nodded her head.

She needed to see through to the meeting because if she didn't these people might keep looking for her in the future.

That was just so much more trouble for its worth.

She had no doubts that she would be able to escape if necessary.

The only thing that was pressing her mind at the moment was the people that her Big Brother might send and when they would arrive.

That would greatly affect her future plans, but at the same time, it was something that she could neither predict for certain nor change.

Chances were, they were going to get here before two more days passed, so the best for her would be for things to speed up a little so that she could get out of here sooner.

As for just who this group was, she really didn't want to know.

It's not like she was going to get revenge on them for tying her up and basically kidnapping her or anything of the sort.

It was a fact that she had come to their territory and she had to admit she was somewhat suspicious, but as long as she wasn't harmed, she didn't really care about this delay in her travels.

If someone else trespassed on her territory where her secret base was located, she would have done the same, even if the other person hadn't done it intentionally.

Getting revenge for something so petty would really turn the whole world blind [1].

"Okay," was the last thing Emilin said before going silent once again.

Calim saw that the little lass didn't want to talk anymore, but he still couldn't help but keep talking for the remaining 10 minutes.

It was quite strange since he wasn't usually the most talkative of the group, but when he started, he also seemed to have trouble stopping.

'Who knows, maybe this girl is a good listener,' Calim thought.

After catching himself nearly talking for 30 minutes with a dry throat, Calim was already nearing the conclusion that perhaps this was part of the girl's skill set.

Making other people open up and talk freely to extract information…

If this was true, then things would truly be a little scary, after all, he was like a trained soldier, yet at the moment, he felt quite comfortable talking freely to a person he had just met today. 

He had even shared some information he really shouldn't have for precautious measures.

If Emilin could hear his current thoughts, she might very well start laughing at just how much this person was overthinking everything.

He was talking about all this random stuff of his own violation, in fact, she didn't even want to hear most of it, yet now he was putting the blame on her?

She might very well flare up for being used as a scapegoat like this.

[1] Reference to: an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.