Being carried in by Shin-yul, dangling in the air, Hee-young entered The Center to find it packed with people inside — a stark contrast to the quiet outside.
“These people are seriously all unhinged….”
Among them, some were in plain sight of everyone, continuing sloppy, wet kisses. What was surprising was that the ones clinging to each other were of the same sex, and even as they groped each other heavily while kissing, no one paid them any attention.
Hee-young stared wide-eyed at the two bodies plastered together, and Shin-yul firmly secured his small frame in place with his Telekinetic ability, then covered Hee-young’s eyes with his large hand.
“Princess, you keep staring at other people? I get jealous easily, you know.”
“What is this guy on about.”
A staff member who had caught their voices sneaked a glance at them and approached, whispering.
“At The Center, when people are kissing or engaging in heavy physical contact, it usually means an Esper and a Guide are in the middle of Guiding. Staring openly could be considered rude, so the proper manner is to pretend you didn’t see anything.”
“Well, if they’re embarrassed about it, why are they out here smooching away in broad daylight?”
“It’s not that they’re embarrassed….”
It was because of the instincts of a matched Esper acting up, but the staff member let the sentence trail off. Shin-yul would make sure he didn’t look anyway.
Even with his field of vision blacked out, Hee-young fluttered his lashes and thought, Hm, these people here are strange.
“Today, you just need to complete the Guide registration and schedule your training sessions, then you can go home and rest. You must be tired.”
“Yeah, yeah. Hurry it up before this old man dies, will you.”
Having given up on getting down after feeling the threat at his ankle, Hee-young dangled his little feet and said flatly. The staff members smiled at his cute habit of calling people “old man” in that whining, nasal voice, and Shin-yul’s eyes sharpened at the sight.
That temperament of his…. The staff members stepped back a respectful distance to signal that they understood.
The others who had visited the hospital room arrived only now, rushing in after them and hurriedly going through the paperwork. The staff members who had processed all the identity documents based on the power of attorney Hee-young had scrawled without reading handed them over to Hee-young, and Shin-yul intercepted them midway, pressing them firmly into Hee-young’s hands.
“What’s this?”
“Mm, it’s like our wedding ring.”
“Doesn’t it tire you out, spewing nonsense like that all day? Must be a talent.”
Hee-young grumbled, looking at the watch now clasped around his thin wrist. He hadn’t done much of anything, yet his damned body was running low on energy and his head was spinning. He watched quietly as Shin-yul took back the phone that had been handed to him and busily configured one thing after another, and gradually felt his head growing more and more dizzy.
“Ah, Hee-young. Go home and rest today, and we’ll schedule training to start in about two days. How does that sound?”
“Sure, sure. I don’t know about any of that, old man.”
“Yes, we’ll set it up for you.”
The people around them made confused faces at the sight of someone speaking to a young man as though he were an elderly person. The noise of people murmuring around him reverberated in his aching head and irritation surged up inside him. Just as he was about to ask if they could leave now, a loud shout cut through the crowd.
“Hey, Han Shin-yul! Holy shit, this bastard — he was here?! Hey, I get where you’re coming from, but it’s been weeks without a single sign of you — don’t you think that’s a bit much? Do you have any idea how much I’ve been cleaning up your mess? If you’re a decent human being, at least explain the situation and give someone a call. And don’t you dare tell me you don’t have my number again. Got it?”
“Kang Ji-hyuk, please wait just a moment…. There was an announcement posted — did you not see it?”
“You’d have to give me the time to look at it before I could read it! I can barely even eat properly! And besides that — you know full well that if one S-rank goes missing, the rest of us are killing ourselves to cover for them. If there were more of us, fine. But there’s only four of us. Is common decency completely dead when it comes to sending a single message?”
The man who was furiously jumping up and down had a voice as booming as his hulking build, and the lobby rang with it. Shin-yul acted as though he couldn’t even hear the man shouting, and finished setting up the phone with a bright smile before pressing it into Hee-young’s hand. Hee-young gripped the phone and muttered, Ah, this bastard… talks so damn much…. but his small, thin voice was swallowed up by Ji-hyuk’s.
His head was already spinning, and now this loud man had come out of nowhere to bellow at full volume — he was on the verge of collapsing. Unable to hold back the rage rising up inside him, Hee-young pulled a face and fired back.
“What the f*ck. Hey! Whining and carrying on over doing a little extra work — throwing a proper fit, aren’t you. Huh?! Who’s the one that ate manners for breakfast and spit them out?! This little brat talks way too damn much and has zero tact, seriously!”
As the stream of anger poured out of him, his fury only climbed higher, and unable to shake the old habit, Hee-young kicked out at the man. In an instant he lunged forward, and with a smack, his thin leg struck the man’s thick calf — but Ju-hyuk felt absolutely nothing, not even a tremor.
The tiny figure who had been shrieking suddenly felt his body lurch from the impact of his own kick, his consciousness beginning to fade.
Wow, fck.*
So a person really can pass out from the shock of their own punch, huh……
***
“Ah — Hee-young! Hee-young!”
“What, what?! I didn’t do anything!”
Shin-yul swiftly caught the slight body that collapsed unconscious in an instant. The moment he saw Hee-young lying there with his eyes gently shut, face gone pale as a sheet, breathing in shallow gasps, Shin-yul’s expression turned ice cold.
“No, seriously, I didn’t do anything! He came at me first! Since when does the person who throws the punch end up passing out?!”
“Shin-yul, calm down, calm down!”
“No, wait — Shin-yul! Ugh—!”
Ji-hyuk’s body launched into the air and was slammed into the wall in an instant. The Center, built to withstand frequent clashes between Espers, was constructed from special materials and was incredibly sturdy — but it shook with a deep rumble at the impact of an S-rank’s full-force throw.
“Shin-yul, Kang Ji-hyuk is definitely trash, so stop it. Your Guide collapsed — go take care of him.”
A short-haired woman who had been walking casually through the gathered crowd stepped out, closed the distance with her long strides, and dragged Ji-hyuk by the leg as he slumped against the wall, hauling him back over. Befitting an Esper with physical enhancement abilities, Ji-hyuk’s body was unharmed. His face, however, was filled with nothing but pure indignation.
“Why am I trash?! It’s not like I said anything out of line — that Guide… wait. Guide?”
“Yep. And you’re the trash who knocked out Han Shin-yul’s Guide who showed up after twenty-six years.”
“I didn’t know….”
“The announcement went up. That’s on you for not reading it.”
Chae-yun spoke in her quiet, measured way, her short hair swaying gently. She was the only one among the S-ranks who had a gentle nature and calm disposition, making her the staff’s favorite and most respected. Upon hearing Chae-yun’s words, Ji-hyuk’s bronze face drained completely white.
“No, I didn’t have the time to read the— yeah, fine, I’m trash. Shin-yul, you want to kill me?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh god, please.”
Shin-yul’s face was still cold. He was furious that Hee-young had collapsed, but what infuriated him even more was the fact that his Guide had gotten angry at another Esper. He could understand frequent conversation and emotional expression toward staff, since they were his own dedicated team — but he didn’t like it when it extended to other Espers. Han Shin-yul was supposed to be the only Esper who could make Yoo Hee-young laugh and make him angry.
Shin-yul’s golden eyes flickered again, and at the same moment, the building’s intercom crackled to life.
— Attention. On the first floor of headquarters, first floor of headquarters, a disturbance caused by Espers has resulted in trembling of the building, but it has been confirmed there is no issue, so staff please return to your respective duties. Additionally, the Espers responsible for the disturbance are requested to report to the fifth floor of The Center. Repeating the announcement. First floor of headquarters—
“You’re going to get called in. Shin-yul, run before that happens. Ji-hyuk will handle things here.”
“Yeah, I’ll take the blame and accept the disciplinary action — just let it go this once.”
“That’s obvious. This one’s a hundred percent your fault. How dare an Esper do that to a Guide.”
“That’s right, Shin-yul. You need to look after Hee-young. Yeah? He’s not in good shape right now — you need to let him rest. It’s too noisy here. Let me help get him out. Let’s go now.”
“Yeah, I’ll sort things out with Kang Ji-hyuk here. If you cause another scene, there’s no covering for it. Right now it’s a hundred percent Ji-hyuk’s fault, but if you keep going, you’ll be the one getting called in.”
Shin-yul let out a slow breath. Visibly unsettled in more ways than one, Shin-yul was dragged away by the staff members and disappeared.
As a parting gesture, Shin-yul’s golden eyes flashed — and he slammed Ji-hyuk’s head hard into the ground.
“Ah, sh*t…. Good thing I didn’t drop my ability. If I were even B-rank, that would’ve been instant death….”
“Right? Why would you mess with someone else’s Guide.”
“I didn’t mess with him…. He came charging at me out of nowhere like a Chihuahua — what was I supposed to do? When Han Shin-yul’s matched Guide hit me, I didn’t even use my ability.”
He had shown up raging and roaring, but Ji-hyuk was actually a fairly easygoing person. He had a hot temper and got riled up easily, but when he knew something was his fault, he was quick to apologize and didn’t hold grudges.
This time, it really was a catastrophe born from misunderstanding and overwork, so it was understandable that he felt wronged — but what could be done. In a conflict between a Guide and an Esper, if the Guide so much as sheds a tear, regardless of who was at fault to begin with, it is unconditionally the Esper’s fault.
That being the general rule, Ji-hyuk — who had knocked out another Esper’s Guide, and of all people, Han Shin-yul’s matched Guide — had absolutely nothing to say for himself, even if he had ten mouths.
“Stop whining and get up. The announcement keeps playing. I’ll go with you.”
“Haaah…. Give me a break, Chae-yun. That bastard Shin-yul, he threw me for real. I had my ability fully up and my head is still ringing.”
“That probably was him going easy on you. You better reach out to Shin-yul later and apologize. From the start, the fact that Shin-yul was taking on the same work as us without any Guide — that alone should have been something to be grateful for, not something to throw a tantrum about.”
“Damn, you still have a way of leaving people with nothing to say.”
Ji-hyuk let out a grunt as he pushed himself up off the ground. Chae-yun stared quietly at the door beyond which Shin-yul and Hee-young had disappeared.
‘Do you like Guiding? I feel like I’m suffocating, like I might die, whenever I do it. But if I’m not receiving Guiding, I feel like my breathing might stop altogether. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.’
A lost, hollow voice seemed to echo in her ears. The image of Shin-yul clutching his Guide like a precious treasure surfaced in her mind once more.
“How is it — is it good?”
“Does this look good to you?”
“Not you.”
Chae-yun let out a soft, wry smile and turned away.
