Perhaps it was a sensation like a single drop of water falling on cracked, parched earth. They might have thought that a curse had settled within them—the idea that they might have been better off not knowing even that single drop of water.
‘And yet they’re saying they’ll seat a guide like that as the team guide. They should at least say something that makes sense.’
In any case, Esper Do Ganghyun wasn’t someone who would interfere with them. They weren’t people who would listen to anyone either.
The Team Leader would try to restrain them, but it would clearly end as mere pretense. He wouldn’t be pleased about Myeong Eunha coming as the team guide either.
Adding a word or two as if they didn’t understand the situation didn’t even count as insubordination. After all, they weren’t even speaking to Esper Do Ganghyun, were they? They were high-rank Espers who acted before thinking, and they were in a position where they could grumble this much.
“Eh— Well, nice to meet you first. But we already each have our own guides and they’re all A-rank, so… will you be able to handle it?”
As expected, Esper Do Ganghyun only raised and wiggled his eyebrows without saying much.
Of course. Whatever his intention, Esper Do Ganghyun had anticipated this level of resistance and clearly had no intention of stopping it. The Esper who had been watching cautiously while keeping that possibility in mind, Park Subin, looked down at Guide Myeong Eunha comfortably.
“Ah, I know. So the Esper said as long as I just watch the situation and hold down the position…”
“Wow… Even so, it’s troublesome if you say things so bluntly like that.”
He seemed to understand what was being said. They were saying that since this was a guide position that didn’t exist from the beginning, it wouldn’t be a big problem who came to fill that seat.
It wasn’t wrong, but to mention it so openly like this. Wasn’t this making it look like he himself had called himself a kkakdugi?
From what Park Subin had heard, Guide Myeong Eunha before his eyes was timid and tended to comply with given situations. A gentle person who couldn’t even dream of rebelling or talking back.
If that was the case, there was a high possibility that even that clumsily offered reason had been told to him by Esper Do Ganghyun.
‘What on earth is the Captain thinking?’
Park Subin pondered the reason why Do Ganghyun had suddenly seated Myeong Eunha as team guide while accepting the backlash.
The guide before his eyes not only lacked the rank, but also lacked confidence in himself enough to shrink and trail off even in just this level of conversation. It meant he was extremely unqualified as a team guide. Even if he just quietly held down the position, it was obvious it would be hard for him to endure with that temperament. He was so flustered that guiding waves were flowing out and permeating the air.
‘Is it because his matching rate with an SS-rank Esper is high? The guiding itself tastes deli—’
It was when Park Subin was continuing such trivial thoughts.
Crack—!
With a bursting sound, his head was thrown forward greatly. It was no different from bowing his whole waist in greeting. He couldn’t even scream from the pain and shock.
“Get your head on straight.”
“Agh! Seriously, Team Leader, are you crazy?!”
Park Subin belatedly shouted and snapped his head up. He was fully prepared to turn around and protest about why he was hitting someone who was just standing still.
However…
Crash! Crunch!
When he turned around, he saw a dented wall. It had been crushed by some strong pressure that had come flying. And that position was exactly…
‘If I had been standing there fine, my head would have been crushed together with it.’
That was right. It seemed to have aimed precisely at his head. If Team Leader Hwangbo Hyun hadn’t hit his head to make it miss the aim point, he would clearly have been buried together in those remains.
At the truly dizzying sight, cold sweat trickled down Park Subin’s back. Seeing it with his own two eyes made it seem like an attack full of sincerity, making it even more so.
There were few here who could show this level of ability against an A-rank. And among them, the only one who would cause this incident to the point where Park Subin couldn’t even feel the signs was, as far as he knew, only one person.
‘Esper Do Ganghyun.’
With telekinesis as his main ability, he was someone who could cause this much trouble without lifting a finger.
When Park Subin turned his head to look at him just in case, their Captain had a composed expression of regret and didn’t even turn his gaze. There was neither denial nor affirmation, but rather, that appearance allowed Park Subin to gain certainty. It meant it was indeed something he had done.
The problem was why he had suddenly done this to him when he was just standing still.
‘Could it be because I touched Guide Myeong Eunha?’
It was an absurd reason. Even though they had rarely stayed at the Center due to overseas deployment, they knew the rumors about their Captain and Guide Myeong Eunha inside and out. They had even confirmed it with their own eyes during the time they stayed at the Center, hadn’t they? The fact that Do Ganghyun disliked Myeong Eunha was proven to the point where everyone here wouldn’t try to protect Myeong Eunha for being the Captain’s guide. Rather, looking after the guide would be going against the Captain’s wishes.
‘But why now, all of a sudden?’
Park Subin looked around at everyone including Do Ganghyun with that question, but everyone was equally unable to understand the situation. Only Team Leader Hwangbo Hyun and the youngest, Seo Yuseok, had calm faces as if it had been a foreseen event.
“With your situational awareness being that slow, you’ll have a hell of a time being a ranger.”
“No, Team Leader, I was just representing everyone’s opin—”
Psssss…
Even before his words could finish, part of the broken debris turned completely to powder and scattered. Park Subin couldn’t continue his words and closed his mouth.
There was no time to judge right from wrong. Their Captain had decided to accept his guide, and had no intention of tolerating even a bit of insubordination. That was the only thing that needed to be engraved in this situation.
And Team Leader Hwangbo Hyun and the youngest seemed to have vaguely sensed this during the last gate raid. Looking at Seo Yuseok’s pale face, it seemed the Team Leader was the only one who had properly understood.
“Captain, let’s stop here. If any more shock goes out, the building will collapse.”
When Team Leader Hwang added, ‘The guide looks like he’s going to fall backward,’ the ferocious waves that had filled the lodging instantly quieted down.
Park Subin had no choice but to gasp again at that amazing sight. It was fascinating that Do Ganghyun was containing his waves for his guide, but it was also because of that elusive quality where he hadn’t felt the waves until the lodging reached this state. His legs lost strength in an instant and Park Subin plopped down on the floor.
“Shit, I almost got fucked…”
It wasn’t something to say in front of a workplace superior, but the curse popped out of his mouth before he could make such a rational judgment. He belatedly realized that it wasn’t simply that his skull would crack a little from being slammed into the wall, but that he would have nearly needed rehabilitation for an extended period requiring long-term recovery.
‘No mercy, no sense of belonging, no responsibility, and we don’t seem compatible either—is this okay?’
The immediate future was worrying enough. As he sighed and was raising his unsightly collapsed body—
“Hic!”
There was a sudden hiccup.
In an instant, everyone’s gaze turned to the source of the sound. There stood the timid guide who had witnessed all of this and was the only one among those present who, with physical abilities like an ordinary person, didn’t possess a strong heart, standing there blankly.
“I’m sor—hic!—ry, hic!”
It was a moment when he felt worried that the future would be harder than the time when they had been spinning around overseas without a leader.
***
I couldn’t believe what had unfolded before my eyes for a moment.
‘Why is a perfectly fine building wall collapsing?’
Of course, I clearly saw the scene where Do Ganghyun’s Esper waves rippled with anger and filled the lodging. I thought something would definitely happen, but I didn’t know something would happen so suddenly like this. Rather than intentionally causing trouble, the correct expression would be that the building couldn’t withstand the overflowing waves. It seemed that such a thing happened because power coincidentally concentrated on the Esper before my eyes.
It seemed that the words spoken in front of him as the Captain had gotten on his nerves. While I had fully expected that they wouldn’t welcome me, showing this through actions in front of Do Ganghyun was an entirely different story. It was enough to be seen as challenging his authority.
‘This side has complicated circumstances too.’
Though I was in a position of being an outsider as Do Ganghyun’s guide after entering the Center, I wasn’t oblivious. Rather, when it came to reading the room, I was second to none.
The foundation beneath these people before me rejecting me had wariness toward ‘Do Ganghyun’ laid beneath it. It meant they hadn’t built trust with each other that much. They were overwhelmingly lacking in those two things: time and experience.
So I didn’t misunderstand. That Do Ganghyun’s anger was for me.
I only thought that it would be hard to mix with them going forward while hiding my burning stomach.
However, separate from that, the experience of an enraged Esper’s waves turning my vision red and a building wall bursting out before my eyes was sufficiently shocking. Even more so if those waves and ability belonged to my imprinted Esper.
“Hic!”
I had no idea I would feel the waves this sensitively as an aftereffect of imprinting. I think I might have felt it twice as intensely as others.
And so, at the moment when everyone’s gaze was focused on me, I had no choice but to think the same thought as them.
That it wouldn’t be easy going forward. That the good fortune of everyone welcoming me like in the communal guiding room wouldn’t happen.
