Hee-young shot up from where he’d been lying, propped himself on one leg, and sneered with a crooked grin, swaggering like he owned the place. It was a complete one-eighty from just moments ago, when he’d been lying in the soft early-winter sunlight like some kind of fairy. Tae-seong startled at the sight. And when this crooked little fairy opened his mouth, it only got worse.
“Ah— fuck, seriously. This bastard opens his mouth and it’s all ‘manners this, manners that.’ What are you, the manners police? You got possessed by the ghost of some etiquette teacher who died on the job? It’s always the worthless little shit-for-nothing pricks who yap the most about manners and propriety. Keep preaching about manners and you’ll end up setting out offerings at a funeral — your own.”
“What the….”
Through several hard-learned experiences, Hee-young had come to understand that throwing punches with a body frailer than a scrap of cloth posed absolutely zero threat to anyone — so he held back the fist that had been itching to fly and instead went straight for the verbal assault.
Any trace of the guilt he’d felt toward Tae-seong after hearing Ha-ram’s explanation earlier had been wiped completely clean. Hee-young shoved both hands into his trouser pockets, tilted his head, and pulled his face into the most menacing expression he could manage. Even so, with that young, gentle face of his, he looked more like a cat with its fur standing on end than anything truly intimidating — but the words spilling from his mouth were anything but gentle.
Tae-seong had known from their first meeting that Hee-young’s temper was something else entirely, but that delicate, fragile appearance had made him forget just how unhinged the guy could get — so when Hee-young came charging at him this recklessly, all teeth and claws and zero hesitation, Tae-seong was caught off guard and found himself slowly backing away.
“And another thing, asshole — if you want to talk about manners, how about you check your own household’s first. Your little buddy’s got such impeccable manners that he picks a fight with someone who’s lying down trying to rest? Did yours come knockoff-brand from some internet discount site? Huh? Got nothing better to do? Useless? Is ‘manners enforcement officer’ the full extent of your job description?”
“Useless—!”
Tae-seong trembled with fury. His sharp jaw clenched tight, face twisting, veins rising and pulsing in his neck. His large hands balled into white-knuckled fists, shaking.
Tae-seong was, at his core, a careful and clear-headed person. He was also the type to completely ignore anything outside of his areas of interest — not exactly what you’d call considerate — but by his colleagues’ accounts, he didn’t go around causing trouble, had basic common sense, and always got his work done properly, which made him a fairly decent person to work with. Extremely particular about work matters, but still.
So why had he suddenly picked a fight with Hee-young — why had he, an Esper, suddenly gone after someone else’s Guide?
There were a few tangled reasons, but the biggest two stood out above the rest.
The first and foremost was the incident from their very first meeting. In truth, Tae-seong wasn’t even angry about Hee-young screaming at him. That meant nothing to him. He also didn’t care that Hee-young had completely lost it over what had been perfectly valid advice and transformed into the world’s worst piece of trash in response. But there was one thing — one thing — that had set his blood boiling: Hee-young had cut off the Guiding session he’d spent days upon days of begging to secure, and on top of that, had taken Ha-ram away with him.
How many days and nights had he rolled around like a dog, trying to get Ha-ram to Guide him? He’d deliberately taken on the mountain of work Han Shin-yul had irresponsibly dumped and abandoned, keeping his Guiding levels teetering on the edge just right, and painstakingly studied the on-call schedules of the Center’s unmatched Guides just to scrape together this one slot.
Because The Center prioritized the Guide’s wishes over the Esper’s when it came to Guiding, Ha-ram — who refused to Guide him — would normally be redirected to whichever other on-call Guide was available without a second thought. That left Tae-seong with no choice but to calculate with precision. Ha-ram, warm-hearted and kind as he was, would only relent and Guide him if there was absolutely no one else available — which meant a bloody, painstaking effort was required just to lure him in.
After the Guiding session, Tae-seong had planned to take Ha-ram out for coffee. Personally brewed drip coffee, using the method Ha-ram liked best. In the midst of everything, he’d mastered the art of brewing perfectly — and had lined up all the right equipment to show Ha-ram his finest side, along with little anecdotes about all twenty-six coffee bean varieties that Ha-ram could choose from, all neatly prepared as small talk topics. But his perfect plan had been blown to pieces the moment Hee-young showed up. How could he not despise the guy?
The second reason was Hee-young’s pair, Shin-yul.
Whatever had gotten under that lunatic’s skin, Tae-seong couldn’t say — sane people could never understand the logic of a madman — but watching Shin-yul at the morning briefing, wearing that trademark cool, unsettling smile of his, Tae-seong had clicked his tongue and immediately turned away to focus on his own work.
There hadn’t been any high-level dangerous Dungeons today, so the workload was supposed to be light — but every time the Dungeon management staff tried to assign a Dungeon to Tae-seong, Shin-yul would swoop in with a pleasant smile and snatch it away, leaving Tae-seong with a grand total of zero assigned tasks for the day. Tae-seong, who took fierce pride in his identity as an Esper and in his work, was furious — but Shin-yul had cited the fact that Tae-seong had been picking up an unusually heavy workload while he’d been out, and kept cherry-picking exactly Tae-seong’s assignments. And despite Tae-seong’s fierce protests, The Center — perhaps wanting to test the newly paired Shin-yul’s stability — had accepted the arrangement.
Between colleagues dispersing to their posts, Tae-seong caught Shin-yul’s cold, sharp gaze fixed on him. And that’s when it hit him. That bastard. He did it on purpose. Han Shin-yul knew Tae-seong’s character well — his pride in his abilities, his obsession with work — and had understood that the far more effective way to infuriate him wasn’t to dump extra work on him, but to strip him of work entirely. And so he had done exactly that, deliberately.
Wandering aimlessly through The Center, unable to even hide the hollow, dejected look on his face, Tae-seong had run into Hee-young — and the sight of that small figure lying there in peaceful, warm sunlight, in complete contrast to his own miserable state, made something turn over inside him. Before he even knew what he was doing, a snide remark had come out of his mouth.
And then when Hee-young, rather than apologizing, had the audacity to call him useless — how could he not feel completely scraped raw?
But he couldn’t very well get into a full-on brawl with a Guide either, so all Tae-seong could do was grip his own fists hard and tremble in place. The careless jab he’d thrown had come back at him tenfold, and his head was starting to spin.
“Wow, nothing to say? Nothing to say and nothing to do. Why are you even alive? Huh? Why bother? Government jobs are real cushy, aren’t they? Get paid by the country just to pick fights and play manners cop all day.”
“…….”
Hee-young had even been making the effort to speak in standard Seoul dialect so Tae-seong wouldn’t miss anything — which, by his own standards, was a rather refined sort of verbal sparring. But Tae-seong, who was normally so indifferent to others that getting scraped this raw almost never happened to him, was pouring every ounce of his strength into suppressing the boiling fury inside him, shaking like a vibrating doll.
Hee-young watched with a snort as Tae-seong — rage clearly at its peak from just a little teasing — trembled and quivered. Then he remembered how just the day before, he himself had been shaking and seething with uncontrollable anger.
What is this, some kind of trembling quota system….
He muttered in a tone that said he found the whole thing absurd.
I may not have the body for it, but I’ve sure as hell got the mouth.
Hee-young had been looking at Tae-seong’s contorted face with satisfaction, taking in the veins popping at his temples from the effort of holding back his anger, the large fists clenching and unclenching repeatedly, and the muscular frame showing through a light shirt despite the early-winter chill — the sheer size of him that had made Hee-young briefly mistake him for Shin-yul. He was big in a similar way. Especially those hands, the size of pot lids — every time they splayed open wide, Hee-young’s body flinched involuntarily.
Hmm.
Hee-young took one step back.
Am I fucked?
Only now remembering just how frail and breakable his own body was, Hee-young rolled his big eyes around rapidly to scout out an escape route. If he could just get inside the building… no, that’s way too far. He looked at the main headquarters building in the distance. He’d bet his life he’d be caught before he got three steps away.
Ah, you brainless idiot…. Hee-young cursed himself belatedly for only thinking about how his weak body made attacking difficult, and completely failing to consider the aftermath of poking at a guy that size — but what was done was done. This is why a person needs to use their head.
Even back in his days with the organization, Hee-young had always acted before he thought, which regularly earned him a scolding from the person he’d followed — the Chairman. It was his instinct and his stubborn refusal to back down from anyone that had gotten him through to where he was now — if he’d slipped up even slightly, he’d have fallen straight to rock bottom. Think before you move. He’d heard this advice from the Chairman over and over again, yet he always acted first and scrambled to clean up the mess afterward. And even after being called in and chewed out multiple times for the exact same reason, he’d always just laughed it off with a grin — Ah, Chairman. What d’you expect from a thug? Thugs are thugs for a reason. He’d say it without a shred of remorse.
Hee-young squeezed his eyes shut.
Ah, why the hell isn’t Han Shin-yul here. Fuck, normally even when I tell him to get lost he clings to my side like a shadow — but when I actually need him, he’s nowhere to be found.
Grumbling internally, Hee-young stole a glance at Tae-seong, who seemed to have calmed down somewhat and was now steadying his rough breathing.
Silence hung between the two of them.
“Ahem…. So, uh… we’re even now, right?”
At Hee-young’s awkward, sheepish words, Tae-seong’s face went blank with disbelief. He could feel the anger he’d just barely managed to tamp down beginning to rise again.
“…What?”
“Ah, come on, it makes sense. You came at me twice picking fights, right? And I landed one good hit on you — so that makes us square.”
Hee-young said it shamelessly while slowly, carefully inching his body toward the main building’s front entrance. The completely transparent maneuver drew an exasperated sigh from Tae-seong.
“Ha…….”
“Hey, sighing like that — you’re gonna lose something important down south. Be a man about it! We’ve both given and taken, so let’s wipe the slate clean! Men don’t drag things out like that. A person with no chill is a person with no charm. You dated a lot, old man? Well… looking at your face, I guess you probably have, but — words from your elders are never wasted, so take it to heart.”
“No charm….”
The fury that had been burning in Tae-seong’s face suddenly gave way to something lost and bewildered. Hee-young, who had been sweating through the sudden realization of how much danger he was in, froze the moment he saw the anger on Tae-seong’s face not just subside but shift — all at once — into something sad.
“Uh…….”
“Was I… not cool enough?”
Tae-seong muttered to himself and swayed slightly on his feet. His face, swimming in dejection, was the unmistakable face of a man nursing a broken heart — from any angle. Before he knew it, Hee-young had asked:
“What…. Want me to hear you out?”
Tae-seong’s large frame gave a small flinch. The way he kept darting hesitant glances at Hee-young was, to anyone watching, the look of a man practically begging: please, someone listen to me.
Hee-young wasn’t sure whether to feel relieved that the situation had ended without any broken bones, or alarmed that he’d somehow become an impromptu advice booth for someone much older than him — and as he went back and forth between the two, he rubbed at the corners of his eyes and let out a sigh. Why do I even watch TV. My life is already a comedy.
“Hey, fuck’s sake. Sit down.”
