“Oh my, what’s all this.”
“Yeah, it’s only been a day. Have you been well? Shit, sorry, but can you book him a psychiatry appointment when I go to the hospital next?”
The employees were horrified to see Hee-young turn up looking like a complete wreck after just one day. Hee-young had arrived bundled up in a cute little pink rabbit blanket, hair an absolute disaster, wearing nothing but pajamas underneath, pupils blank and vacant, slumping with the expression of a man who had given up on everything.
Having drained every last bit of energy fighting back since morning, Hee-young hung limp in Shin-yul’s arms, not even reacting to the kisses being pressed to his cheek — and when he was carefully set down on the office sofa, he gave Shin-yul’s leg a dull kick.
“Princess, rest here for a bit. I’ll be right back.”
“Get lost, you piece of shit.”
He cursed and kicked out a couple more times, but Shin-yul didn’t seem to feel it at all — he just smiled brightly, gently smoothed down Hee-young’s tangled hair, and walked out of the office.
Hee-young watched that breezy retreating figure, and the moment Shin-yul disappeared, let out a long, heavy haa and collapsed back onto the sofa.
“Um, Hee-young? What brings you in today?”
“Ask that crazy bastard, not me. He’s the one who lost his mind and hauled me here out of nowhere.”
“Ah… is that right……?”
Deputy Shin responded with a blank look, and Hee-young scowled. Hey, forget it.
“I’m going home. I need to leave before that lunatic gets back.”
He shot to his feet — and immediately swayed with a dizzy spell. The employees fussed around him like he was a frail elder, supporting him on all sides.
“Oh dear, you seem to be running low on energy — why don’t you rest a bit before leaving? We’ll have someone take you home.”
Whatever had happened, Shin-yul wouldn’t have brought Hee-young here without reason. An Esper’s animal instincts, particularly regarding their own Guide, fire with frightening precision. An Esper who had not yet formed a sufficient bond of trust with his Guide had brought that Guide — his only Guide, at that — to The Center, a place crawling with Espers on all sides. The employees didn’t need to know the reason to work at keeping Hee-young right where he was.
Their best guess was that it had something to do with Hee-young’s mental condition. If there had been a problem with the housing, they would have reported it immediately, and if Shin-yul had simply not wanted to be apart from him for a second, he wouldn’t have left him in the office. There was likely a reason he couldn’t be left alone. The employees communicated this in silent glances and guided Hee-young back to the sofa, settling him in comfortably.
“Shin-yul just showed up and brought you here without any warning?”
“Yes! That guy is actually insane! He was getting ready for work all on his own just fine, and then he suddenly scooped me up and carried me here! What am I supposed to do with him, huh?”
“Well, he’s always been a bit of a bulldozer. Please bear with him, Hee-young.”
“Ugh… good lord…….”
Hee-young clicked his tongue and settled back onto the sofa. His body was so small and slight that the sofa may as well have been a bed — he lay down with a surly expression and lounged around for a moment before suddenly sitting bolt upright.
“Hey. Right. Since I’m here, let me ask something. How do I go about meeting those other Espers?”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Why are you acting like an idiot? We talked about this, didn’t we? The foreign Espers with special abilities — you were going to tell me about their powers.”
“Ah, ah yes…. You’re right, we did say that….”
The employees exchanged uncomfortable glances. Staff from other teams, who had been pricking up their ears since the moment Hee-young arrived, visibly flinched and their typing speed increased. Since this was the S-rank Esper dedicated team’s office, it wasn’t just Deputy Seong and Deputy Shin — Shin-yul and Hee-young’s assigned staff — but many unfamiliar faces too, and yet Hee-young paid them no mind and kept talking.
“That, what was it. Sharing information about foreign country Espers is a bit sensitive, you said? You’re all public servants, so I’m thinking of you, okay? Just tell me how to meet them, and I’ll casually ask around myself. Just tell me how to make it happen.”
…You’re a public servant too, you know.
The employees sweated with distress as they watched Hee-young beam with self-satisfaction. They could only bow their heads at his innocent face, clearly unaware of how deeply unethical and inflammatory it was to ask to meet other Espers while leaving his own newly matched pair Esper behind.
Ding ding ding — the group messenger lit up. Fortunately, since they were all dedicated staff for S-rank Espers, their discretion was solid and they’d received more detailed briefings on Hee-young’s condition than regular staff, so there was no major cause for alarm — but protecting their assigned Guide was also part of their job, and the employees scrambled to redirect the conversation.
“Ah, how about we give you a tour of The Center instead? You must be bored?”
Hee-young looked at Deputy Seong’s awkwardly smiling face with a flat expression, but nodded. Having lived as long as he had, Hee-young had decent enough instincts — watching the employees fall over themselves to change the subject and catching the stream of chat messages cascading endlessly on the screen across the room, he thought, ah, must be awkward to talk about with other people around.
“Sure, let’s go. Oh lord, my whole body aches…. Getting old is just dying slowly.”
“Oh, why would you say something like that.”
You’re twenty-one years old….
Hee-young went ahead of everyone and shuffled out of the office, dragging along the matching indoor slippers that came with his fluffy light blue pajama set. Deputy Seong glanced back at the other employees, eyes blown wide — silently mouthing spread a word and you’re dead…. with a throat-slitting gesture, an extra warning in case anything leaked. The other team staff sitting at their desks nodded cheerfully as if to say don’t worry — but the tap-tap-tapping of keyboards didn’t stop.
If the rumors made their rounds and reached Shin-yul’s ears, it would be absolutely catastrophic. Everyone here knew well that any pair would spiral toward disaster if the Esper heard that their Guide had gone looking for other Espers behind their back — so they’d be careful on their own, but the employees couldn’t quite hide their unease. Do you know how hard it was to get him here….
“Hey, hurry up! Are you planning to be here all night?”
“Yes, yes!”
Deputy Seong shot one final wide-eyed warning glare, hastily sent a message to Shin-yul on his work phone, then hurried after Hee-young.
The employees stuck close beside him, rattling off the departments grouped by floor. Dungeon management, major incidents, public affairs, international coalition…. Hee-young hummed with disinterest, but quietly filed away the international coalition department on the 6th floor.
“Does the government really have you all doing everything?”
“Ha ha, it’s because Espers have such a heavy workload.”
Well, if I had someone with superpowers, I’d work them to the bone too. Hee-young thought of Shin-yul, who could subdue his struggling in an instant, and nodded. It was easy to understand — thinking back to how he’d given up resisting Shin-yul after every attack failed to land.
After a quick tour of the main building, they stepped outside and Deputy Seong pointed out various buildings — the training block, the Guide Center, the Esper Center — and by that point, Hee-young was already gasping for breath, energy thoroughly depleted.
“Oh no, should we take a break? You’ve been to the Guide Center for training before, right? There are rooms with beds, so should we stop in for a moment?”
Why is there a bed in there, he thought — but his arms and legs were trembling beyond his control, and he just nodded without thinking.
“Let’s… let’s rest a bit….”
Wobbling like a newborn fawn, he also refused to be supported by any of the staff — and struggled on by himself into the Guide Center. People had been whispering and staring ever since he left the main building, and it had only gotten worse here, but Hee-young didn’t care — he dropped straight down onto the lobby floor without ceremony.
There was no reason he wouldn’t draw attention. The childlike pajamas weren’t even the issue. From the very first moment he appeared, he was the one responsible for triggering a fight among Espers violent enough to shake the main building. The ill-fated Guide who had Manifested as an S-rank only to simultaneously fall into a state of mental confusion due to an unfortunate accident. The one who had matched with that very Han Shin-yul — who had never achieved a Matching Rate above 50% with any Guide — and had made a dramatic entrance as The Center’s official second 95% pair.
Hee-young was, in every sense, The Center’s hot potato. He was the only one who didn’t know it.
Hee-young sat plopped on the smooth lobby floor, listened to the people whispering around him, and with a completely unbothered expression, waved at the employees hovering anxiously beside him to hurry up and get a Guiding room sorted. Having spent his years in the organization under not just whispers but outright gazes of disgust and fear, this didn’t bother him much. His mind was more blankly fixed on the hope that the employees would hurry up and get a Guiding room assigned.
He’d heard from the teacher before that getting a Guiding room on short notice was quite a struggle. Espers’ missions were always in a state of overflow, and Guides were always reserving a Guiding room the moment their Esper was deployed, in order to carry out emergency Guiding the moment they returned.
Of course, Hee-young and Shin-yul’s housing was close enough to The Center to walk, so there’d be no need to use a Guiding room. Ha-ram’s point had simply been that all Guides made efforts for their Espers — but Hee-young had skipped the effort part entirely and only retained the fact that Guiding rooms were chronically overbooked, and now he was badgering the employees to get one.
“Good grief, I’m dying here! I keep telling you, just let me go home!”
He’d gone from sitting to flat-out lying on the bare floor, gasping. He didn’t want to be whining like a child at his age, but he genuinely felt like he was right at the edge of death. He’d been in a hopeless strength battle with Shin-yul since the crack of dawn, barely rested, and had then been dragged briskly from place to place — he’d scraped his depleted stamina all the way down to the bottom, and he had no margin left. He’d even reached the point of wishing Shin-yul would just show up and carry him home on his back.
Casual Guiding could be done quickly in the lobby, and there were in fact a few pairs already doing exactly that — pressed up against each other, hands roaming, exchanging deep, languid kisses.
“The world’s going to ruin…….”
Forgetting both the employees’ warnings and Shin-yul’s, Hee-young stared intently at a pair entangled against each other, trading a sultry kiss, and muttered.
The man who had been half-hidden behind the larger frame lifted his head slightly as the kiss ended — and Hee-young’s eyes went wide. Wait, that person….
The man who made eye contact with him opened his eyes wide too.
“Oh, Hee-young!”
Ha-ram called out to Hee-young, and Hee-young, still lying on the floor, gave an awkward little wave. Great, of all things to witness. He was clicking his tongue at his own bad luck, when the man who had been pressed against Ha-ram scowled deeply and stepped in front of Ha-ram, blocking him from approaching Hee-young, and snapped.
“Ha-ram, you don’t need to deal with someone like that. You’re just too kind for your own good.”
“Pardon?”
Hee-young, who caught the muttered words with uncanny precision, immediately twisted his face in fury. Hee-young, who never bit his tongue, erupted.
“Shit, I’ve seen every kind of crazy bastard now!”
A Guide Center staff member who had been assigning Guiding rooms to the waiting pairs nearby looked up at the word crazy bastard — took in Hee-young lying on the floor throwing a fit — went ah, I see, and buried his face back in his paperwork.
Hee-young stared at that scene with his eyes popping out of his head.
“Hey! Think about it — two people plastered together like that out in the open in broad daylight, and you’re all saying nothing?! You’re the crazy ones, not me!”
Genuinely unbelievable. In my world, you’d all get cited for public indecency! Something like that! His slender body thrashed with indignation.
And in the very next moment, the body that had been heaving in its own outrage floated gently into the air.
“Huh…?”
“Who made my princess so upset?”
Out of nowhere, Shin-yul scooped Hee-young up lightly into his arms, pressed a kiss to his soft cheek, and smiled.
Hey, no…. If you pull this out of nowhere, what was the point of me being furious just now….
