“Looks like the type who only writes when the mood strikes, all in one go. I don’t make a habit of snooping through other people’s diaries, but…… sorry. I’m using your body, so I’ll read a little for the sake of understanding the situation.”
Yihyun murmured quietly to himself and read through the diary. The early entries were full of loneliness at the Ability Authority and the heartache of living as an illegitimate child. Then, starting from a certain date, the mood began to shift in a strange way.
[2023. 01. 01 — Father has decided to use my body for a new project he’s starting. He said it’s a liquid refined from byproducts retrieved from deep inside a gate. Every time I receive the injection, it’s unbearably hot and painful, like shards of glass flowing through my veins.]
[2023. 05. 15 — When I wake up in the morning, my pillow is covered in hair. The color of my eyes in the mirror seems to be changing, bit by bit. The researchers cheer when they see my readings. The numbers go up, but something inside me keeps getting shaved away.]
[2024. 03. 10 — When I close my eyes, I keep hearing things that aren’t there. I’m clearly inside the Ability Authority building, but it feels like I’m in a damp cave. Father smiled at me for the first time, saying I’m the only “case” that hasn’t gone berserk.]
[2024. 11. 12 — At some point, I keep finding my eyes drawn to that person. There’s no contempt in the way he looks at me — not like everyone else.]
[2024. 12. 22 — I had my first real conversation with that person today. He’s different from the other espers. He’s kind. He was the first person in the Ability Authority to speak to me first.]
Using your own child as a test subject — the man has lost his mind.
Yihyun smiled bitterly and turned the page. With each page, Baek Yihyun’s desperate, aching feelings for “that person” seemed to bleed through. It was becoming too painful to keep peeking at someone else’s unrequited love, and Yihyun had been about to put the notebook back — but on the next page, he stopped.
[2025. 01. 01 — They say it’s a gift from heaven. As the price for enduring all those agonizing injections, I — who had been A-Rank — underwent a re-awakening to S-Rank. The researchers cheered and called it a miracle, but Father was cold. He said the drug side effects have left my mana circuits so dangerously unstable they could rupture at any time, and he called me a failed specimen. It hurts so much. The fear of not knowing when I might die has its hands around my throat.]
[2025. 01. 10 — Changhun congratulated me and gave me flowers. Father dismissed me as a failed specimen, but Changhun held me when I became S-Rank. It was the first time I was glad to have re-awakened. He’s the only person who smiles when he looks at me. When I’m with Changhun, I can’t even hear the whispers calling me a bastard child.]
[2025. 10. 21 — Changhun asked about Father today. He seemed curious about what my existence means to Father. I want to help Changhun rise higher. For his sake, I could do anything — smooth things over with Father, take those injections as many times as it takes.]
“Re-awakening……? Baek Yihyun’s rank actually increased after the fact?”
Yihyun’s eyes shook violently. Rank was a fixed form decided at the moment of awakening — an absolute law of the world that never changed. A post-awakening re-awakening was a phenomenon so close to impossible it would be called one-in-ten-million, a divine joke.
And yet Yihyun had already encountered this impossible word just hours ago, in a classified document he’d glimpsed on the guide quarters’ internal network.
[Confirmed: Han Taeyun re-awakening following mana wave reversal.]
“Han Taeyun, and now Baek Yihyun too……”
A chill crept down his spine. A one-in-ten-million miracle had occurred for two people in succession, within just a few years of each other? The old Lee Seunghyun would have chalked it up to extraordinary luck or exceptional talent — but here in Baek Yihyun’s diary was written the ugly truth lurking behind that miracle.
Then what about Han Taeyun? Could his re-awakening also have been……
His thoughts made it that far before Yihyun shook his head.
No, it doesn’t add up. The diary says the new project began in 2023, so the timeline doesn’t match.
Yihyun let out a hollow laugh and rubbed his face dry. But a prickling unease lingered in one corner of his chest.
What if Baek Seungho hadn’t started this cruel project independently from the beginning?
An already-completed form of the “miracle.”
Meaning — what if, after witnessing Han Taeyun’s abnormal re-awakening, he had begun experimenting on his own child in order to replicate it?
“……That sick bastard.”
His thoughts knotted until it felt like his head might burst, but one thing had become clear.
At the center of this ugly miracle was Baek Seungho — biological father, and Director of the Ability Authority.
No wonder this body feels so impossibly fragile.
Baek Yihyun’s face, as he’d seen it in the mirror, flashed through his mind.
Skin so pale it looked like it had never once seen sunlight. Hair so light it looked as if it might crumble apart strand by strand. Eyes an unrealistically pale color, like glass marbles.
None of that was simply natural beauty or a lack of pigment. It was the product of the Ability Authority Director’s relentless injections of unidentified gate byproducts and cruel drug experiments.
And the way Baek Seungho had called his own child a “failed specimen” and discarded him for being unstable — it made Yihyun’s blood run cold with disgust. In that hell, Lee Changhun had been the one salvation Baek Yihyun had held on to.
And he had no idea that salvation was a rotten rope……
Toward the back of the diary, the handwriting deteriorated until it was barely legible. The pages were covered in nothing but dried tear stains, and the final entry laid bare exactly how Lee Changhun had changed after confirming that the Director had no emotional investment in the response — that he viewed Baek Yihyun not as a son but as an expendable test subject, replaceable at any time.
The lips that had whispered love in the gentlest of voices began spreading vicious rumors about Baek Yihyun — calling him “the bastard child of a concubine who tried to seduce the Director.” Lee Changhun had used Baek Yihyun as a shield, reframing him as a deranged bastard who had come onto him first, all to conceal the fact that he himself had been cast aside.
“To think you tried to die over a piece of trash like this. Baek Yihyun, you really are pitiful.”
A cold smile settled at the corners of Yihyun’s mouth.
Lee Changhun. Back when Seunghyun had been the real power behind the Ability Authority, there had been one person who used to trail after him with a servile grin. A young upstart — A-Rank fire-type, if he remembered right — with no real ability to speak of, obsessed with nothing but factional infighting.
“That bastard’s only talent back then was riding the right coattails, and apparently he’s ridden them all the way here.”
Yihyun closed the diary and fixed his cold, settled gaze on some point on the wall. That piece of trash was probably out there right now, somewhere, wagging his tail to latch onto the next useful line — without even knowing whether the Baek Yihyun he’d thrown away had swallowed pills and died or survived.
“Just you wait, Changhun. Your hyung will be cutting that precious connection of yours real soon.”
Whether it was the aftermath of yesterday’s chaos, he was able to get through the morning shift without a hitch. When lunchtime came, Yihyun headed to the cafeteria. He ignored the stares that pelted him the moment he walked in and scanned the room for a gentle soul worth mining for information. Then, in a corner of the cafeteria, he spotted a familiar face eating alone. It was the staff member who had kindly given him directions in the lobby yesterday morning.
Yihyun strode over and set his tray down in the seat beside him. The staff member looked up at Yihyun with a flustered expression.
“Sorry…… this was the only open seat I could find, so I sat here — would you like me to move if it’s a bother?”
The helpless act, leveraging Baek Yihyun’s frail appearance, landed square on target. The staff member took one look at Yihyun’s pale face and immediately waved his hands in a fluster.
“Oh, no! It’s fine. Please, sit, make yourself comfortable.”
Wow, this guy is genuinely kind. Hard to believe a rare specimen like this exists in a place this bleak.
Yihyun cheered inwardly and scooped up a spoonful of rice. Then he let his gaze drift casually toward the ID badge hanging around the staff member’s neck.
[Research Institute Support Team: Kim Seonho]
A research institute employee. Far better positioned than the espers out grinding in the field to access classified information about the Ability Authority’s inner workings and data on the Gehenna Gate incident five years ago. Yihyun subtly struck up a conversation with Seonho.
“It’s Seonho, right? I was really grateful for the directions yesterday. I made it on time thanks to you.”
At Yihyun’s soft voice, Seonho’s face brightened a little. Yihyun didn’t let the opening pass — he curved the corners of his eyes and smiled as harmlessly as he could manage. Smiling prettily with Baek Yihyun’s already fair face was enough to send Kim Seonho turning red all the way to his ears, eyes darting away in a fluster.
“Oh…… it was nothing.”
“If they had money to build such a lavish building, you’d think they could at least feed people decently. Isn’t it a bit much, expecting people to work on this? We’re all just trying to live.”
Yihyun clicked his tongue as he poked through the meager side dishes on his tray with his chopsticks. For all its outward glitter — a building like a glass palace — the way it actually fed the people working inside was dismal. At Yihyun’s offhand remark, Seonho startled and glanced around, then dropped his voice to a whisper.
“Shh, please. This building…… it was actually completely destroyed by Han Taeyun five years ago, so it had to be rebuilt from scratch. Apparently the entire Ability Authority budget went into reconstruction costs.”
Yihyun’s chopsticks stopped.
