The first few days, Hee-young was fine. That was partly because Shin-yul had left like a general marching off to war, and Hee-young himself had been too busy enduring his own grueling education to notice.
But as one week passed, and then two, with not even a hair of Shin-yul or the team members in sight, he found himself inexplicably thinking about them — and started regularly checking the news, half-wondering if an actual war had broken out, though nothing of note ever came up.
It felt vaguely beneath his dignity to be the one to seek them out first, so Hee-young was busy pretending he didn’t care. One day — while he was reading a book alone because Ha-ram had said he had something to do and would be staying out for the night (he was staring blankly into space) — the watch he’d left on the shelf beside him flashed and beeped like an emergency alert. He checked it in a hurry, and the words Guiding Level 10% were glowing red on the screen.
Thanks to the relentless rote-style education that had nearly driven him out of his mind, Hee-young had become keenly sensitive to those numbers. He shot to his feet before he even realized it. Ever since Shin-yul’s absence had started quietly gnawing at him, Hee-young had been checking the watch in his spare moments — and every time, it showed low numbers like 25 or 19. Occasionally it would spike all the way up to 80, and Ha-ram had glanced at it and said casually, Looks like he took some Guiding Medication.
Didn’t he say he hated Guiding Medication? And if he’s going to take it anyway, shouldn’t he take enough to fill it to 100%… he had muttered, and been startled by the reply: Guiding Medication maxes out at 80%. We went over this before…. Would you like to open the book again, Hee-young?
Clutching the frantically beeping watch and going oh no, oh no, what’s this, what do I do, what do I do, Hee-young found himself flooded with an involuntary rush of relief the moment the Guiding level shot back up to 50% almost instantly. He took the medication… I guess. Thank goodness…. Even as he thought it, he stared blankly at the number as it dropped back down precariously again.
Maybe it was because he’d been studying deeply about Guiding lately — Hee-young kept flinching at every drop in the number and couldn’t tear his eyes from the watch. Just the other day, he’d learned why the pre-Rampage signs were monitored so obsessively. Because once the level dropped below 7%, the Guiding level would start plummeting on its own even without the Esper using any abilities.
When an Esper was in the pre-Rampage state, Guiding Medication was useless. A Guide would have to keep Guiding continuously — like pouring water into a bottomless jar — until the level stabilized and stopped falling. If the level rose more slowly than it fell, the Rampage would proceed, and once a Rampage began, the Esper would lose control of their abilities, exhaust them recklessly, and self-destruct.
And of all things, he’d just been hearing about a tragic incident caused by an Esper’s Rampage, which left him with an unshakably bad feeling. Being able to track the life-or-death situation of someone whose face he knew, in real time, from a distance — was more unsettling and difficult to ignore than he’d expected.
No matter how busy he is, his Guiding level is in that state. Will he stop by today for a bit? It never dropped this low before. Today, if he shows up, I’m going to ask if there really was a war. And ask whether that Bangshin — or Bangsa — Guiding is working well. Wow, thinking about it like this, I really am acting like a Guide. Fck, the education really scared it into me. Han Shin-yul should be grateful to me, seriously.*
Muttering to himself and thinking all manner of things, Hee-young picked the watch up and strapped it on, then lifted his book. Alone in the quiet patient room, completely robbed of focus by the numbers blipping and lurching up and down on the watch, Hee-young realized he’d never waited for someone like this before. He wasn’t the type who waited. If anything, he was the type who was at the front of the action, handling things himself and then reporting back. Waiting is harder than I expected. He thought this plainly and without fuss.
But the winter night stretched on, and in the end, Shin-yul never came to find him before morning. As the pale morning light crept in, the watch kept beeping alone, forlornly — and Hee-young glanced at the patient room door again and again, but it never opened.
***
Two more weeks passed after that, and only once Hee-young’s arm and leg had fully healed and the cast had been removed did the hospital finally grant him discharge. What is this, why are they keeping me locked up like this when outpatient treatment would be fine? Is this also part of Ha-ram’s scheme…? Hee-young looked at Ha-ram, who walked out beaming brightly, with a mildly exasperated expression.
“Hee-young, the Center sent a staff member. Let’s go.”
“Yeah, yeah….”
Ha-ram himself had been fully recovered for a long time, but driven purely by the single-minded goal of teaching Hee-young, he had stubbornly refused to be discharged. Isn’t that faking it? Is that even allowed? Hee-young had stared at Ha-ram, who was shamelessly occupying his bed, with a look of distaste. Whatever anyone said, that level of fixation had to be a sickness. He needs to see the psychiatrist too.
The Center staff member who had come to pick up Ha-ram and Hee-young courteously opened the car door. Hee-young got in quietly and swallowed a sigh. The Guiding Matching Rate analysis chart folded in his inner pocket felt strangely prickly. He was a little embarrassed — at his age, getting worked up on his own over nothing — and a little mortified, like he’d put on a whole performance by himself.
A month was both short and long, but for Hee-young it had felt particularly long. In the hospital, all there was to do was Ha-ram’s hellish, Spartan rote-style lessons — and Hee-young, with no knowledge of this world and no one he knew, had nothing to do other than wait for Shin-yul, who he didn’t even know was dead or alive. It was nothing like the time when, the moment they met, they’d been stuck together causing unimaginable incidents left and right and keeping each other too busy to breathe.
The waiting had been dull, sometimes infuriating, sometimes enough to make him want to give up — but Hee-young, who had learned to wait for the first time, hadn’t yet learned how to stop waiting, and so developed the habit of checking the news and looking at the watch constantly.
“We’ll be departing now.”
At the staff member’s polite voice, Hee-young glanced at the number on the watch out of habit, then shifted his gaze to the window. Honestly, his feelings were tangled. Why am I thinking about them all month like we’re so close? Part of him thought that. And the time he’d spent with Shin-yul and the time he’d been without him were now about equal — so honestly, it was a little awkward now too. On top of that, going back to the place where they’d been living together in that state — that was its own kind of embarrassing.
The brief time they’d spent bickering and tumbling through things together in that apartment felt impossibly distant now. Feeling strangely sentimental at an odd moment, Hee-young frowned. This is why people shouldn’t get old.
“Haah….”
At Hee-young’s sigh, Ha-ram glanced over carefully. The longer the stretch without Han Shin-yul coming to visit, the quieter Hee-young had grown, and the more time he’d spent staring off into nothing. During lessons and in conversation he still used the brash tone of a stubborn middle-aged man and seemed fine on the surface — but the time he spent looking at the watch had increased, and the time he spent staring at the window or the patient room door had increased even more. Since it was an S-rank Pair’s business, Ha-ram had difficulty finding out the details — and above all, since Hee-young himself never asked, it would have been presumptuous for Ha-ram to go out of his way to do something about it.
Of course, it wasn’t as if Hee-young hadn’t considered asking the staff what was going on. He too was desperately curious about why everyone had gone completely silent all at once — how long they’d be busy, whether the Guiding they were always pushing was actually needed at times like these — he had a whole bucket of questions.
But in the end, he never reached out. Contact them and do what, exactly. Demand to know why they haven’t been requesting Guiding? I’m not going to whine like a child about everyone tossing me in the hospital and being too busy for me.
Things that any ordinary Guide should have demanded as a matter of course — Hee-young had learned the knowledge, but his mindset was still that of a regular middle-aged man, and all of it felt deeply unfamiliar and difficult. In the end, without knowing what he was supposed to do, the waiting simply continued, and time passed helplessly — and now here they were.
I wonder if I’ll see him soon. Or if he’s still too busy. And if I do see him, what am I even supposed to say. Fck, I’m not some twenty-year-old kid on a blind date. What is happening to me.*
The scenery blurred past the window, and soon the now-familiar sight of the Center came into view. The car pulled up right in front of his accommodation — but Hee-young hesitated and didn’t get out.
“…Hee-young?”
“Hm? Oh yeah. Go ahead, I’ll be right there.”
Not even noticing that his accent had suddenly thickened in his nervousness, Hee-young clambered hurriedly out of the car and went into his accommodation. The same scenery, the same door code.
…Will he be inside?
Click—
“…Anyone home?”
Out of character, he hesitated — peeking just his head through the gap in the front door to peer inside. There was no sign of anyone, and after a whole month, all traces of daily life and warmth had vanished too. The apartment was full of nothing but hollow, desolate air.
“He said he was busy — couldn’t even come home, huh….”
Hee-young grumbled with an oddly self-conscious tone and looked around the apartment. It was tidy — someone had been keeping up with the cleaning — but the interior was so bleak it felt cold, exactly the same as when Hee-young had left. The same wardrobe, the colorful clothes that were Hee-young’s portion, the enormous bed — bigger than a king — where two grown men could lie comfortably. Seeing that nothing had changed, Hee-young was hit by a wave of inexplicable emptiness and irritation.
His mind churning with a restlessness he couldn’t hold back, the watch beeped at him with perfect obliviousness. 23%. Another low number, same as always. Haah… He exhaled a long, deep sigh, watched the level dropping rapidly, then yanked the watch off his wrist in annoyance and threw it onto the bed. It bounced and slipped neatly between the pillow and the duvet, buried out of sight.
“Is there any food?”
The moment the watch left his wrist, Hee-young’s face cleared as if a weight had been lifted off him. He even hummed a little tune as he opened the refrigerator — but of course it was empty except for water, so he clicked his tongue and opened the delivery app that Shin-yul had set up for him. The address and card were already registered, ready to order — but back when they’d been together, Shin-yul had always either cooked or ordered delivery, and since Hee-young was the type to just eat whatever he was given, this was the first time he’d actually opened the app.
“What should I eat. Ah, hmm…. Spicy pork stir-fry? Pork cutlet…? Why are there so many restaurants. They deliver all the way out here?”
After much deliberation Hee-young finally selected something and placed the order. He set aside his phone — which had heroically perished, its battery drained to zero by the delivery order — and turned on the TV, switching not to the news but to a variety show. He had no idea who the celebrities were or what program it was, but it was just funny, and he laughed out loud for the first time in a while. Lying back comfortably waiting for the food — it felt like a luxury he hadn’t had in a long time.
“Oh, it’s here, it’s here. I was about to keel over from hunger.”
At the doorbell rung by the delivery rider, Hee-young dashed out, collected the food, and set it up neatly. He spread everything out on the small low table in front of the TV-facing sofa and took a big first spoonful.
Beep beep beep — clatter—!
“Hee-young? Hee-young, are you here?”
“Aah, f*ck! You scared me!”
“You were here! Why is your phone off! Your watch — did you not get the alert?”
“What, huh?”
Deputy Seong came bursting in and collapsed into a seat the moment he saw Hee-young sitting there with a spoon in his hand.
“What, did something happen? War?”
“No, this is bigger than a war! Hee-young!”
Hee-young looked at Deputy Seong’s face — he seemed to have lost a bit of weight since they’d last met — and said what’s going on then, before going ahead and putting the spoonful he’d been holding into his mouth. Well. Even if it is a war, I still need to eat. Can’t run away on an empty stomach.
“Shin-yul — Han Shin-yul the Esper — is on the verge of a Rampage right now! He needs emergency Guiding! Sexual Guiding!”
“…….”
Of all things to say, you choose to say it while I’m eating pork bone soup.
