Come to think of it, he’d been crazy with work recently and hadn’t met anyone.
“Fucking anti-government bastards.”
It had been chaos since the May golden holiday. Even then, he was going on vacation when he urgently turned the car around. The pension fee? All wasted.
No. Thinking about it, it had been well over a year since he’d had sex. Because Ilkyung didn’t do one-night stands. He had a somewhat pure side. He was the diligent type who only had sex with his girlfriends. Unlike someone.
“Ah!”
In an instant, he thought of Director Ha again. Ilkyung banged his forehead against the bathroom wall. He was thinking of him at all times like crazy.
“Get out of my head! Get out!”
Ilkyung punched at the air. His lower body showed no signs of calming down.
“Just wait until the contract relationship ends. I’ll definitely date a pretty girlfriend.”
Ilkyung firmly resolved.
Even after that, Ilkyung sat there longer before coming out. Since it absolutely wouldn’t calm down, he took deep breaths and finally sang the national anthem. His face turned bright red, and Ilkyung felt self-loathing as he came down using the stairs instead of the elevator. He had no idea what he was doing right now. He praised himself for not masturbating in the Center bathroom, then later punched at the air again and shouted internally, ‘I’m not gay!’ Fortunately, there was no one going up and down the stairs at that time.
Coming back down to the 7th floor, Ilkyung tried to concentrate on work as if he’d bury his face in the monitor. But that was just Ilkyung’s wish.
“Assistant Manager Woo, hasn’t your cold gotten better yet?”
“What?”
“Your face is red.”
When was the cold even over? At Section Chief Kang’s words, Ilkyung jumped up about 50 centimeters on the spot without lying.
“I-it’s because I couldn’t sleep!”
That was true. How many hours had he been awake now? Before that, he’d tossed and turned last night too. And this was all because of whom!
“You left work early yesterday.”
“Noona woke me up from dawn.”
Ilkyung tried hard to make excuses. In fact, the main cause of his current daze was someone else rather than his noona. The person who barged into his head no matter how hard he tried.
Ilkyung gulped down the coffee in his tumbler as if receiving a caffeine transfusion. Come to think of it, it was now full-fledged summer. Ilkyung, who was born in summer, was actually better with heat than cold. Of course, the best was spring and fall when it was moderately warm and good for playing, but somehow those two seasons increasingly just passed by like transition periods between summer and winter.
In May, the best time to play, he fought bitterly with Director Ha and then got caught cursing behind his back and entered into a contract relationship he never had in his fate. It continued to June, and he thought he’d be more comfortable when the contract relationship ended, but as if mocking that, now the anti-government forces were going crazy.
“Today is already so hard.”
Section Chief Kang handed documents to such Ilkyung and smiled.
“We’re just starting now. This is the list of Espers in the Gyeonggi Province region for now, so let’s look it over and sort out the telekinesis Espers. You know if we just send an email saying please support or please recommend, it’ll be like sending envoys to Hamheung, right? We have to specifically say please send one person from among these people, and only then do they listen, so let’s do it.”
Ilkyung nodded and received the documents from Section Chief Kang.
Even if they posted a notice saying personnel support needed at the Central Center, everyone would make excuses about being busy and not even glance at it. Because once S-rank Espers went down to the provinces, they didn’t want to get swept up in chaos again.
Even Ilkyung’s second noona was like that. After getting married, second noona made all kinds of excuses and went down to the provinces. Mom, a representative figure among S-rank Espers, felt regretful about her daughter’s lack of ambition.
But Ilkyung thought he could understand. If a mother is too strict and intense, her children just want to live happily. Watching his noonas who went down to the provinces exhausted by their dictator mother’s nagging, Ilkyung rather felt fortunate he wasn’t an ability user. If he’d been an ability user, he would have already become worn out and exhausted, unable to withstand mom’s nagging. His twin noona Minkyung and eldest noona also seemed to secretly feel fortunate they only reached A-rank.
“Really, isn’t there a telekinesis Esper around? Assistant Manager Woo, don’t you have one?”
“There is. An S-rank telekinesis Esper.”
“Who?”
“My mom.”
At Ilkyung’s answer, Section Chief Kang held his forehead.
“No matter what, we can’t call back someone who’s retired…”
“That too, but if Mom comes… you know, right? We’ll all be working overtime together, and the Esper team has to go undercover right away.”
Ilkyung shook his head as if he didn’t even want to imagine it. No matter how much he liked work, Ilkyung was a company employee. He didn’t want to work excessively.
“Four people in your house are Espers, but among them there’s no S-rank telekinesis Esper we can use.”
At Ilkyung’s words, Section Chief Kang made an expression full of regret. Ilkyung sighed and started looking through the documents thoroughly.
“We got rejected by the Gyeonggi Province branch, and rejected by the Gangwon Province branch too.”
Ilkyung muttered while looking at the monitor. Section Chief Kang sitting next to him sighed.
“Are there originally no Espers like this? Then can’t we just use A-rank?”
“Even now, half of that team is A-rank.”
Minkyung, who had been briefing about the scene, was also A-rank.
“Are there originally no telekinesis Espers?”
“There are. But they’re all deployed to other incidents. But, Section Chief.”
Ilkyung looked at Section Chief Kang and started speaking.
“Gasp!”
“What?”
“How can dark circles come down that much in just a few days?”
At Section Chief Kang’s words, Ilkyung stood up abruptly from his seat.
“Really? Do I really look like a panda and all?”
While standing, Ilkyung picked up a mirror at his seat and looked at his face. His pale face became even paler. And! And under his eyes was pitch black.
“Huh!”
Team Leader Park at her seat shook her head. Noisy, so noisy. But that’s Woo Ilkyung’s charm. The team office, which had been quiet, became noisy because of Woo Ilkyung, but it wasn’t bad.
“Assistant Manager Woo.”
“Yes? Ah, I was too loud… I’m sorry.”
“No, go buy some coffee. While you’re at it, buy some macarons too.”
Team Leader Park held out a card. Ilkyung’s mouth fell open and he quickly took the card.
“No one’s changing their menu, right? I’ll buy the macarons as I please! Can I buy two each?”
“Yeah, do as you please. Let’s do it while eating something sweet.”
Ilkyung ran out holding the card. Looking at his excited back, the team members smiled.
Ilkyung clutched the card tightly and waited for the elevator. His eyeballs felt like they’d fall out from just staring at the monitor. At times like this, Espers would get better quickly if they received guiding, right? Whenever his body was tired or his condition was bad, Ilkyung envied Espers too.
It seemed S-rank telekinesis Espers really had dried up. Every email sent to branches was getting rejected. He knew S-rank was precious, but this was too much even so.
When the elevator stopped on the 7th floor and the door opened, Ilkyung was surprised. Because Ha Daehoon Director was plainly riding it.
“What are you doing? Aren’t you getting on?”
“Ah, hello.”
Come to think of it, this was the first time he’d seen Director Ha Daehoon’s face in almost four days. Ilkyung had been working overtime continuously lately.
“Where are you going?”
“The cafe.”
“In the middle of work?”
Ilkyung glanced at Daehoon. What kind of old-fashioned remark is this?
“I’m running an errand for Team Leader. What about you, Director, where are you going?”
“I’m going to receive data on the incidents that have occurred.”
“Where? Can’t you just receive it by email?”
Ilkyung tilted his head and looked at Daehoon.
“Haven’t you been sleeping lately?”
Daehoon didn’t give a proper answer and instead threw out a question. Ilkyung quickly covered his eyes.
“What are you doing?”
“My dark circles are really bad so you can’t look at them.”
“Even if you cover them like that, the dark circles have already come down below your chin so I can see them all.”
“Really?”
Ilkyung removed his hand and raised his head. Fatigue was smeared all over his pale face.
“Are you at least eating meals?”
“Did my dark circles really come down below my chin? Is it that bad?”
Even though the elevator door that stopped on the 1st floor opened, Ilkyung didn’t think about getting off and poured out questions like a waterfall.
