"Ko… Kobayashi-san?"
Someone seemed to have recognized the boy surrounded by the crowd.
"It's me," the boy in the wheelchair replied immediately.
Kobayashi felt troubled as well. At a glance, he could tell that the vast majority of the people around them were uninformed bystanders.
They bore no personal malice, and many of them might not even know that Talent Workshop had an illegal side at all.
Yet at this very moment, they had effectively become an obstacle—forming a tight encirclement around Kobayashi and Torahachi Toumi, cutting off Dolly and Keisaku Mitori's path of escape.
Once the name Kobayashi was spoken, even more people recognized him. Recently, almost everyone had seen at least some interview or report about him.
"Student Kobayashi, what are you doing here?" someone finally asked after recalling those reports.
"Could it be that our Talent Workshop is also an illegal research institution?"
Kobayashi raised his voice and said clearly,
"I only received a call for help and came to take away a girl whose life is in danger. Please don't interfere with us!"
The crowd gathered at the entrance stirred again. Most of the people present were ordinary civilians. Avoiding risk and staying away from trouble was only natural.
So even though the ones standing opposite them were just two teenagers, once it became clear that they had legitimate reasons, few wanted to keep blocking them. At the very least, people wanted to distance themselves from this hotbed of trouble.
"This is a restricted research facility! How can we let a couple of brats do whatever they want?"
Another voice rang out from within the crowd, scolding loudly while urging everyone not to retreat.
The human wall shifted and writhed for a moment, but in the end, it did not disperse.
Kobayashi and Torahachi exchanged a glance, both seeing helplessness in the other's eyes—
No, only Kobayashi was helpless. Torahachi Toumi had already activated her ability. The ribbon in her hand was pulled taut, her gaze steady and unshaken.
Realizing this only made Kobayashi's headache worse.
—Who would have thought the obstruction would take this form…
And what is Shokuhou Misaki doing right now? In a situation like this, her ability should be perfect for handling it, shouldn't it?
Shokuhou Misaki, meanwhile, was fighting on another battlefield—one that could not be seen.
Her opponent was Kihara Gensei.
More precisely, it was Kihara Gensei operating the Exterior through a backdoor program.
Kobayashi's memory-derived information had been correct, and Shokuhou Misaki's caution had paid off—Kihara Gensei really had tampered with the Exterior.
The Exterior had already been completed and had entered its final adjustment phase. Today, Kihara Gensei, the project's lead developer, decided it was time to verify the results of his work.
—Could the backdoor bypass Shokuhou Misaki's own will and, via the Exterior, allow other users to indirectly obtain the Esper ability Mental Out?
—And through such probing, could he assess Shokuhou Misaki's true current strength?
Kihara Gensei was already suspicious that Shokuhou Misaki might be concealing her real ability level. If that were true, then had she already learned the full truth behind the project?
The Exterior and Interior Evolution were two separately operated research projects. Although they were fundamentally part of the same whole, in theory, Shokuhou Misaki should not have known anything about the Exterior.
But she was mentally out. Even if she had not yet reached Level 5, she still possessed the strongest mind-reading ability in the entire city. Kihara Gensei never truly expected to keep secrets from her.
The real question was:
How much had Shokuhou Misaki learned?
And to what extent was she already making use of the Exterior?
From any perspective, the Exterior was fundamentally Shokuhou Misaki's property. As such, she naturally held the highest level of authority over it.
Even though Kihara Gensei had embedded a backdoor during system development, he could only "borrow" her power covertly—he could not fully seize control. The best possible outcome was mutual non-interference, a kind of shared usage of the device's power.
If luck ran bad, the foreign access might be discovered and expelled by Shokuhou Misaki altogether.
Seen this way, the Exterior project had already failed.
After all, the original goal had been to obtain a weapon that could be freely wield Mental Out—like a gun. Whoever held the gun, as long as they pulled the trigger, could fire a bullet.
In other words, the Exterior was meant to be a mind-reading and brainwashing device usable by anyone. Whoever controlled it could exploit it for countless purposes.
But now, the gun had been built—only to become Shokuhou Misaki's exclusive weapon.
To salvage at least part of the loss, Kihara Gensei had left the backdoor in the system, preserving a limited possibility for others to "borrow" the weapon's power.
Before the Exterior's final form was fully locked in, it was necessary to conduct a real-world test of this function.
Kihara Gensei had always kept a close watch on Shokuhou Misaki's movements, carefully maintaining his distance to avoid the effects of Mental Out.
As a result, many of her actions had not escaped his notice—including her three meetings with Kobayashi.
For an experimental subject who was supposed to be confined within the Talent Workshop and cooperating with the research, that frequency was unusually high.
And as a consequence, Lin Wuming also drew Kihara Gensei's attention.
Earlier that day, Kobayashi's sudden movement—rushing straight toward the Talent Workshop in his wheelchair—was naturally reported to Kihara Gensei at once.
Kihara Gensei was only nominally affiliated with the Third Research Lab, Interior Evolution. In truth, he had his own laboratory and projects and did not particularly care whether Talent Workshop lived or died.
But since the timing was perfect, and he happened to be planning to test the Exterior anyway, he did not mind using this opportunity to lend his partner a small hand.
Thus came the scene at the beginning—all Talent Workshop employees pouring out together to surround Kobayashi.
If it had merely been Shundou Toshizō issuing orders and mid-level managers mobilizing people, how could such a rapid, efficient gathering have been achieved—quietly and all at once?
It was simply because Kihara Gensei had used the Exterior to implant psychological suggestions into all Talent Workshop staff.
And the instant Kihara Gensei connected to the Exterior via the backdoor, Shokuhou Misaki noticed.
Thanks to the "spoilers" contained in Kobayashi's memory-derived information, she had already been mentally prepared. After quickly grasping the situation, she remained perfectly calm.
"As expected, it happened again. Senpai's memory information is really accurate~".
The blonde, starry-eyed girl murmured to herself.
(End of Chapter)
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