Shadow In Your Mind [ARC 1- 5]

Chapter 136 - Were they actually cursing at her

XG 136 - Were they actually cursing at her

"I just want to ask something."

Wong Xue Guo's back stiffened. Did he want to ask about her fear? She had purposely shifted to look at Woojin's fear whenever Chen Yibo's image appeared, not wanting to open the door she dared not to open. But not each of her attempts succeeded and she had already opened that door halfway already.

Woojin did not care if she looked comfortable or not. "If you were in my shoes, what would you do?"

Her heart quickly steadied when he did not ask the question she did not want to answer. Relieved that her fear was not going to be displayed to everyone to see, she decided to indulge him. "Which situation are you speaking of?"

Woojin does not want unnecessary people to know he was being bullied in the past and spoke vaguely. "... towards that son of a bitch. What will you do if you are in my shoes?"

"If I'm a petty, vengeful and a person with money at my disposal, I would hire a bunch of thugs to let him have a taste of his actions. If I were a law-abiding person, I would record everything, take photos of my injury including the testimony from the doctor and report it to the police. If I'm a person that does not want to offend any parties as much as possible, I would go straight to his parents and have a good talk about anti-violence. Anything else you want to ask?"

Woojin's expression twisted in conflict as if he wanted to argue yet does not know how to. He remained silent for a long time, so occupied with his thoughts that he did not notice the researchers and Wong Xue Guo had left, thinking there was nothing else he wanted to talk about.

"Woojin, it's in the past now. He's no longer alive and no longer could harm you," Teacher Jang said softly and squeezed his shoulder comfortingly.

"I know. I just want to know if there was something else I could do."

Teacher Jang grasped Woojin's cold hands. "Your parents removed the complaint from the police, not that you are unable to report it. Your parents had also made sure you won't have the chance to meet that person's family to keep his violence a secret. There's also no way for you to pay people to beat him up when he could do the same thing to you. You have done your best, so don't think about it anymore."

Staring at the entwined hands, Woojin slowly said, "Teacher, your hand is very warm."

"Are you cold? Here, cover yourself with a blanket. I will go and find if there's any hot pack."

Woojin stared at the back of his teacher as he went to find things to warm him up. His sincere care chased away the chill in his head and tossed his heart in the hot spring.

If Teacher Jang did not appear in his life, perhaps he would have murdered that bastard before the apocalypse arrive. "Teacher, you could have run away from me when you found out what I did. Even if you choose to stay away from me now, I won't do anything to you."

Woojin could not erase the memory of Teacher Jang's horrified expression when he first saw how he had burned a living person. He threatened that he would kill Teacher Jang if he did not join his camp just to keep him by his side, even if his actions scared him.

Yet, even being afraid of him, Teacher Jang had never been anything but sincere in treating him well. Towards this person that accepted him even at his worse, Woojin could never bring himself to hurt him and gradually became more protective of him.

No one among his church members does not know Teacher Jang was his inverse scale and should not be harmed if they do not want to die.

Teacher Jang patted Woojin's hands. "Woojin is my precious student. How can I leave you when you need me?"

"You are the one that needs me," Woojin retorted, causing Teacher Jang to laugh.

"Yes, teacher needs Woojin. Will Woojin let teacher continue to stay by your side?"

"Only because teacher is weak and I can spare some energy to protect you."

Teacher Jang slowly smiled. "Yes, teacher is weak, so teacher is thankful that I meet Woojin."

Woojin felt a little bad for mocking his teacher a little too much. "... You are weak physically, but that does not mean you are useless. You secured a place for us here."

"Only because our Woojin is powerful."

A little uncomfortable from the proud gaze, Woojin shifted awkwardly. "Then continue securing a place for us. I'm not good at talking."

Teacher Jang laughed. "Woojin can leave it to me."

Wong Xue Guo was finally able to walk straight without needing support. "Yibo, you want to start with Woojin, right?"

"Yes, but we will start tomorrow." Chen Yibo recalled that Woojin had vomited after flinging Wong Xue Guo's hands away.

Surprisingly, Wong Xue Guo's mind was strong enough to recover quickly, seemingly as if nothing had happened. Or was she just hiding it under her casual facade?

Now that her gene was completely activated, she could use a VR set to test what her ability was. Without any important things to occupy her time, Wong Xue Guo went to grab a VR set. Today marked the first batch of booster shot testers had succeeded in Awakening their gene, with one tester failed. It was their basic decency and respect not to use their comrade as an experiment after he turned into a zombie and immediately put him down.

The dead tester pulled the researchers from their excitement from the success and had them recheck anything they had missed on why the booster shot failed to achieve a hundred percent success that they had predicted confidently. Some guessed that just like their worry about Miu's foresight would have an error in checking the timer for the natural awakening duration, it held the same error for booster shots too.

Even so, the news of the tester that failed to Awaken does not deter the succeeded testers from being overjoyed and impatient to test what their ability was after recovering enough strength.

There were only five VR sets, so they had to make bookings.

When Chen YiWen heard she was going to test what her ability was, he misused his authority and pulled her name forward to the earliest slot.

She had expected Chen Yibo to accompany her, and even to a certain extent, expected Chin Chun, Kang Xunsu, and L.L. to join the fun. What astounded her was the number of onlookers grew more and more that she wondered if they had not witnessed the earlier testers' ability manifestation before.

Or were they actually cursing at her for getting a special preference to jump the queue?

No matter how unsatisfied they were, she was still the daughter of a director and co-founder of Musihada laboratory.

Wong Xue Guo had played VR games twice when she visited Kang Xunsu's apartment, so she was used to him and L.L. watching her play. But to play before this large number of people gave her the feeling of shame. There were a lot of videos of VR game players being laughed at when they played horror games, and even she had laughed along.

Shit, is this karma?

Standing alone in a room with cameras installed at four corners, she strove hard to pretend to be alone, ignoring the feeling of a hundred eyes staring at her from the camera. Looking like a picture of calmness while holding onto the VR goggles, she was actually in a mess in her inner world.

What if my ability turns out to be something embarrassing?

What if my reaction during a VR game is shameful and stupid?

What if my embarrassing reaction is recorded and distributed everywhere?

Oh, she should have kicked everyone out of the monitoring room earlier!