Surprise

Thursday – 12:30

I sat there, jaw wide open. "I must have misheard you, Thaddeus. What was that?"

Thaddeus sighed before repeating himself. "What I said was that I wanted revenge on you for running me over with a truck five years ago." He opened the file and showed it to me. On it showcased a picture of a teenager who looked hauntingly familiar. It was the boy that I had targeted right before I was promoted to the top of T-rank.

But that's impossible!

I looked at the photo attached to the file and then back to Thaddeus' face. While the faces weren't obviously the same, which was understandable considering the five-year difference, there was a striking resemblance between the two faces. Now that I knew what to look for, I couldn't see otherwise. They were indeed the same person, and it came as a huge surprise.

Was that what struck me about Thaddeus on initiation day? I thought to myself. Did I subconsciously recognize him from my mission? My nightmares started the night after targeting this kid. Did I somehow realize something even back then which caused my bad dreams to manifest?

However, I soon shoved those thoughts to the sidelines. The idea that I was some kind of psychic was too ridiculous for my logical mind to take seriously. Still, the timing seemed like too much of a coincidence. Then again, the chances of me training a past target of mine were astronomically low. Something about this whole situation didn't make sense.

I was about to ask how Thaddeus got the file when I suddenly remembered catching my pupil sneaking around in the file room. I even remembered planning to look through the files to check on what my trainee was looking at, but it totally slipped my mind after the car crash. All I had been thinking about was investigating who could have done it. All along, I had overlooked an essential piece of the puzzle.

"This is impossible," I stated.

"What makes you say that?" Thaddeus asked. "Is it because the chances of your target becoming an agent, your pupil, and finding out about the incident are pretty much non-existent?"

"Precisely," I confirmed. "Also, what happened to your stutter? Was your impediment fake all along?"

"Of course," Thaddeus confirmed. "I figured that it would make me appear more innocent and thus easy to ignore as a threat. It seems as if I was correct in assuming that. You didn't seriously suspect me for a second until now, even though I should have raised many red flags over the last few days."

"Wait a minute," I said. "Why did you blow up the tire? Was your plan to be injured all along to avoid suspicion? If so, that was really risky. Too risky. I don't buy it."

"I didn't have a specific objective in mind when I looked for who targeted me," Thaddeus said. "I wasn't sure what I would do, but after witnessing your accidental success in hitting the girl, I knew that I couldn't stand allowing you to do that again. I then quickly put that custom-made grenade together and attached it to the wheel. My plan was to wait until the perfect opportunity when you alone were in the speeding truck."

"How would you have gotten me alone?" I asked.

"Well," Thaddeus explained. "When I saw your first file, I noticed that you were outside of the truck helping on the street while your mentor Terry drove the truck alone. I thought that was normal and figured you would do the same. Therefore, I didn't even think that it could have backfired. I waited until the last minute since I was a little scared to injure myself, but I was resolute to stop you from targeting another person. Therefore, I accepted whatever potential injuries I might get and blew up the tire. I should have checked other files to double-check, but you did catch me in the middle of my research.

"For the next missions, we had already bonded by then, and I wasn't sure if I would be in the truck for the next missions or now. I then decided only to make you fail and retire and thus stuck to more safe methods. Then, work completed, I myself would have retired or disappeared."

The most difficult part of figuring out who the culprit was trying to come up with a reason for the varying tactics of causing him to fail. The first one could have killed him, but then the second one was so tame. It didn't make sense. That's the reason I knew it wasn't about rankings, and thus most likely not the twins. If it were solely about rankings, they wouldn't have chosen that moment to blow the tire. They would have done it while I was further away from the target. I only barely missed the target after all. If it were out of jealousy or hatred, then the second attempt would have been more lethal than it turned out to be.

That entire reasoning was what had confused me the most in his investigation, and I couldn't think of a single believable explanation for it. However, Thaddeus' claim made perfect sense regarding the apparent change in sabotage.

"Moving on to the previous topic, how this all came about. You see, none of it was a coincidence. The reason I applied as a truck driver is because of what happened five years ago. I was recruited into TRUCK-KUN due to not saving a person hit by a truck. That, in turn, was due to you hitting me before that event. Your choice in picking me as a recruit was a surprise, but it's likely that you subconsciously recognized me and chose me due to a connection that you felt.

I thought about that explanation, and while it did explain a lot, the overall premise was flawed. "It's still impossible. You say that you remembered what happened five years ago, but you clearly couldn't have recognized me when we first met in initiation since I have nightmares about that mission every night. You never looked at me once while saving the girl. So you couldn't have known about my involvement. That must be why you went to the file room to find out who ran you over.

"Additionally, the device wipes your recent memory when it copies your soul. So there is no way that you could have remembered any of it. You either were hit and are clueless, or you weren't hit and are making up stories."

Thaddeus shook his head wildly. "I am telling the truth. You hit me, and I remember everything, even the actual story that you hide from the new trainees."

"Actual story?" I asked in confusion. "What are you talking about?"

"You can't fool me," Thaddeus declared. "I know everything since I experienced everything. You don't make copies of souls and send them to the fantasy world." Thaddeus paused for dramatic effect before continuing onto the surprise.

"You actually just sent my soul itself to the fantasy world."