It was a summons from the Center — and not just any summons, but a direct call from the Center Director himself. Yujin startled and dismissed the alert on his watch, then turned around.
“Hah… I guess I have no choice but to just dive in……”
Given the circumstances, there was little doubt that Yujin Langford had been impersonating him for the past three years. But unlike when he’d first transmigrated — when he’d already read the novel and known in advance what villainy Yujin Langford had committed — everything now was completely unpredictable. Yujin changed into his neatly pressed uniform and bit his lip.
If only he had the memories from when Yujin Langford had been in this body. But it was as if the change in soul had wiped every trace of those years clean from his mind. Yujin exhaled and made his way out.
“Mm, the Director’s office is……”
He tried to piece together the route from old memories. Fortunately, the Center building had a directory map, so finding the Director’s office wasn’t too difficult. A few Guides glanced at him with puzzled expressions as he stood in the lobby studying the map intently — but he didn’t seem to have raised any serious suspicion.
Either way, he managed to locate the Director’s office and made his way to the top floor of the building. The Director’s office wasn’t a place just any Guide could enter freely. Only team leaders and above could come and go without restriction — and Yujin found that he, too, was able to reach the top floor without any interference. From that, he gathered that his current position was at least at the team leader level.
He was the only S-rank Guide in the country, and given his background, making team leader or higher within three years would have been no difficult feat. He himself had sketched out a similar trajectory when he first entered the Center.
What bothered him, though, was that it was Yujin Langford who had climbed that ladder — not him. He knew better than anyone what kind of disaster it was when someone with absolutely no social sense ended up in a position of authority.
“Team Leader Kwon, the Director is waiting for you.”
“…Understood.”
The Director’s secretary approached and spoke in a stiff, clipped voice. Yujin absentmindedly nodded in reply — and surprise immediately crossed the secretary’s previously rigid face. Yujin did his best to ignore the reaction and stepped inside the Director’s office.
“Good day, Director.”
The moment he walked in, Yujin dipped his head in greeting. With no memories of the past three years, the Director was practically a stranger to him. Back then, he had been nothing more than a newly admitted Guide — while the Director was, quite literally, the head of the entire Guide Center.
“Oh, yes. Come in, come in.”
“……”
Yujin raised his head and studied the Director openly. He looked somewhat different from what Yujin remembered, which caught him off guard.
S-rank Guide turned Center Director — Jeong Yoseop.
He had long since aged out of active duty, his guiding energy spent, but in his prime he had been one of Korea’s most celebrated Guides. Thirty years since the gates first opened — a grueling stretch of time in which he had distinguished himself with extraordinary merit. It was only fitting that he had risen to lead this vast Guide Center.
Yujin had always thought of him as someone with a somewhat pale complexion and a mild-mannered air, but right now the man looked beyond pale — he looked ashen. Yujin settled into the seat across from the Director and decided to read the room for now.
“Team Leader Kwon doesn’t drink coffee, so I had black tea prepared.”
“Oh……”
“I was told it’s quite a fine variety, so I had it brought in specially…… Does it suit your taste?”
Yujin’s gaze drifted to the teacup in front of him. Just the thought of black tea was enough to make his stomach turn at this point.
The world in the novel he’d transmigrated into had been a medieval fantasy setting. Regrettably, coffee had not developed there — and the nobility drank nothing but black tea, day after day. Among them, Yujin Langford had been a famously devoted tea enthusiast.
Yujin himself, on the other hand, had never been particularly fond of black tea. He didn’t hate it — but given the choice, he preferred coffee. Yet after transmigrating into Yujin Langford’s body, he hadn’t touched a single drop of coffee. He had forced himself to drink black tea like water so as not to be exposed as a fraud — and eventually, even the mere scent of it was enough to make him nauseous. That tea had played no small part in his decision to return to his original world.
“I’m sorry — would it be all right if I asked for coffee instead?”
“What? Coffee?”
“Yes.”
The Director stared at him with a baffled expression. It made perfect sense — Yujin Langford would have refused to even touch the unfamiliar drink all this time. Showing too many differences from Yujin Langford would raise suspicion, but he simply could not bring himself to drink another drop of that tea, not even a sip.
“Oh — er, yes. Bring some coffee, please.”
Fortunately, the Director seemed to chalk it up to Yujin being his usual unpredictable self. After a moment of flustered surprise, he quickly turned to his secretary.
He’s been tiptoeing around me since the moment I walked in. A team leader wouldn’t exactly rank anywhere near the Director, but still.
There was no room for deeper thought, though — his craving for coffee after going without it for so long was far too overwhelming. When the secretary brought the coffee over, Yujin breathed it in first, savoring the aroma. The rich, fragrant scent curled around him.
Ah. This is it.
How much had he suffered, going without coffee all that time. Black tea did contain caffeine, but nowhere near enough — and the taste wasn’t nearly as bold or satisfying. Yujin allowed himself to thoroughly enjoy the first cup he’d had in what felt like a lifetime.
“Ahem, well. Team Leader Kwon.”
“Yes.”
One cup of coffee had put Yujin in a generous mood, and he answered in an unhurried tone. Yujin Langford could wait — for now, he wanted to savor this joy fully.
“It’s just that… the contamination levels of Alpha Team 1 have been getting dangerously high lately.”
“…Alpha Team 1?”
Yujin, who had been taking one sip of hot coffee after another, blinked.
Alpha Team 1 was a military unit composed entirely of S-rank Espers. A special battalion made up of every one of the country’s rare S-rank Espers, all gathered in one place. The nation’s most elite unit — one that closed countless gates too difficult for ordinary forces to handle, and dismantled terrorist groups causing chaos as unregistered awakeners.
He had received thorough training about them before entering the Center, so Yujin was well acquainted with the unit.
Come to think of it, he still didn’t know much about whatever Guide team Yujin Langford had put together — but since he’d been holding the team leader position, he would have been working alongside Espers.
Could it be that Alpha Team 1 was his assigned team?
When he thought about it, it made sense. He was the country’s only S-rank Guide — so even if the compatibility rates were somewhat lower, being assigned to Alpha Team 1, which was filled with S-rank Espers, was the most logical arrangement. Yujin nodded to himself inwardly.
“You’re asking me to guide them?”
“Yes, that’s right. If perhaps……”
“I’ll do it.”
“If you have any conditions you’d like to……, what?”
The Director, who had been clasping his hands together and rushing through his words, stopped short and stared with wide eyes.
Was it really so shocking for a Guide to simply say they’d guide someone?
It was absurd — but with Yujin Langford, it made complete sense. Even in the original novel, he had tried to hold the S-rank Espers hostage — Espers who could barely keep their contamination in check without his guiding — and bend them to his will. Whatever he’d been doing to the Espers of Alpha Team 1 over these past three years, the picture wasn’t a pretty one.
“You mean it? You’ll actually guide them? Without any conditions?”
“…Yes.”
The Director asked again in stunned disbelief. Whatever demands had been made until now, the Director’s expression upon hearing Yujin’s answer didn’t brighten in the slightest — if anything, he only looked more anxious, unsure of what to make of it.
“But… if I may ask — what kind of guiding are you referring to?”
The question made no sense to Yujin, and he couldn’t help but frown despite himself. Guiding was guiding — what else could it be? Surely something about the nature of guiding hadn’t changed in the three years he’d been gone. With growing suspicion, he asked in return.
“What do you mean by that?”
The Director flustered and explained.
“Well, it’s just that… you said previously that ordinary guiding wasn’t something you’d do — that unless it was s**… intimate guiding, you wouldn’t bother. So I assumed……”
“Pardon?”
For a moment, Yujin thought he’d misheard. He blinked dumbly. But the Director’s thoroughly cowed expression didn’t change. He didn’t look like a man making things up.
This insane son of a…
Intimate guiding — sometimes called insertion guiding — was a form of guiding whose effectiveness increased with the depth of physical contact. As the name implied, it was guiding that involved a sexual act, whether that meant inserting part of the Esper’s body into the Guide’s, or the reverse.
Thirty years after the gates first opened, the regulations around high-intensity guiding had become strict — to protect Guides’ rights, such guiding was only permitted in emergency situations where an Esper was at immediate risk of going berserk, or between bonded pairs. And yet Yujin Langford had disregarded all of that and actively sought to claim the bodies of S-rank Espers for his own desires.
“What I said then — please forget it. The guiding I’m proposing to Alpha Team 1 goes up to contact guiding.”
“Oh — really? You mean that?”
“Yes.”
Pressing a hand to his throbbing head, Yujin clenched his jaw.
He could grasp in an instant how far into the ground that madman had dragged his reputation. His standing among the Espers was probably rock-bottom, too. There were certainly brutish ones among them — but most weren’t.
“By any chance… were there any Espers who accepted my previous proposal? My memory of it is a little hazy.”
Yujin asked, holding onto a thread of hope.
If any Espers had agreed to Yujin Langford’s proposition and undergone insertion guiding — then his body was, in all likelihood, no longer untouched.
“Ah — no. If that had happened, at least some of their readings would have been more stable by now……”
“I see.”
The Director’s expression fell back into gloom — but Yujin felt relieved. It seemed that, thankfully, the Espers of Alpha Team 1 had enough decency that no unsavory rumors had come to pass.
