The nanny wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes and hurried toward the kitchen. A short while later, faced with a steaming spread of food, Yihyun picked up his spoon as though he had been waiting for exactly this.
“Our young master… it does my heart so much good to see you eating like this.”
“Nanny! Another bowl, please!”
Watching the rice bowl emptied in no time at all, the nanny moved to refill it with a look of deep emotion.
“Of course, of course. That’s how you build your strength back up.”
Sitting at the table, Yihyun chewed and swallowed everything the nanny had laid out — rice and side dishes alike — in the most literal sense of the word.
He practically inhaled his meal as he thought to himself. To deal with the bastards who sent those messages and go after Han Taeyun in this frail Guide body, I need to put something in first and build up my stamina. Even if the muscle from his Esper days was gone, he at least had to project an air of strength.
When Yihyun finished eating and stepped out of the penthouse, a luxury sedan with a dedicated driver was waiting at the building’s front entrance.
Even as Yihyun approached, the driver didn’t spare him so much as a glance, simply opening the rear door. It was the same attitude as the physician’s — doing only the bare minimum required and nothing more.
Yihyun brushed past the driver’s transparent contempt and settled himself deep into the backseat. A low, quiet laugh slipped out.
Can’t get treated like a person, but the lifestyle sure isn’t bad.
The car, befitting its exorbitant worth, glided smoothly over the road without the faintest tremor. The ride was flawless — but the interior, with not even a radio on, was thick with uncomfortable silence.
Cutting through that heavy quiet, the car eventually came to a stop in front of the Ability Management Bureau.
The Ability Bureau, seeing it for the first time in five years, had transformed beyond recognition. Where the old Ability Bureau had been a blunt, solid fortress built for function above all else, what stood now was so extravagantly showy it was almost unsettling — enough to overwhelm. The cold gleam of a building coated entirely in smooth tempered glass and chrome. The sight of the high-rise tower, now unrecognizable and stripped of anything familiar, sent a wave of alienation washing over him.
While that madman Han Taeyun was blowing up half the world and wreaking havoc, the people left on the remaining land were busy spending money like it was nothing.
Yihyun couldn’t hold back the hollow laugh that crept out. Not a trace of battlefield desperation or fear of annihilation could be found anywhere on these gleaming glass walls. The thought that the world he had blown his Core apart to protect had been reduced to something this shallow made his insides twist.
He climbed out of the car into the tense atmosphere, and the gazes of the guards and everyone passing through the lobby locked onto Yihyun at once. Eyes full of pity, contempt, and undisguised ridicule. Yihyun received every one of those stares head-on and let a cold smile settle at the corner of his lips.
Baek Yihyun, I think I’ve got a rough idea of how you’ve been treated all this time.
“Hey, Baek Yihyun! Heard you swallowed a bunch of pills trying to die — how’d you manage to crawl back out alive?”
In the middle of the lobby, a few large men spotted Yihyun and came swaggering over with jeering laughs. They looked like a far worse breed than the types who used to grovel at Seunghyun’s feet and watch his every move.
“Hey, who do you think you are, pulling a suicide stunt when you’re just a Guide?”
Word of the attempt had spread this thoroughly in a single day. Someone had apparently taken great care to gossip it all around.
Yihyun let out a quiet sigh. One of the men shoved Yihyun’s shoulder and planted himself in the way. The difference in their heights made the man’s chin loom unusually close to his face. Back in the day, he would have sent him flying with a single finger.
“Move. Take your barking home with you.”
At the unexpected response, the Esper’s jeering face twisted in an instant.
“This little bastard… you actually want to die?”
Guiding and mana are all about how you use them.
The man’s hand shot out to grab Yihyun by the collar. The grip yanked Yihyun’s body up off the ground. Yihyun smiled coldly and seized the man’s wrist. Then he recalled those mana circuits — the ones that had burned and convulsed on the very edge of berserk, something he had lived through thousands of times before his death.
Without a moment’s hesitation, he honed his Guide wavelength into something needle-sharp and drove it into the most sensitive points along the man’s mana circuits. The Guiding that was meant to calm an Esper’s berserk was reversed, stabbing into the circuits — and the man screamed as though he had taken an electric shock.
“AAAGH! Wh— what the hell is this!”
The man yanked his hand back in shock. The one standing beside him grabbed Yihyun’s shoulder in alarm.
“Hey, what’s your problem? What are you doing all of a sudden!”
Yihyun, as though he had been waiting for this, drove the same Guiding needle into that one too. A Guide’s energy was supposed to feel sweet to an Esper — that was the norm — but what Yihyun forced in was closer to the pain of foreign matter being jammed through the body by force. As the man stumbled backward, Yihyun didn’t hesitate for a second, driving the toe of his dress shoe straight into the man’s shin.
Crack—!
“OW!”
Leaving the men crying out behind him, Yihyun dusted off his lapels and walked away at a leisurely pace. In truth, kicking an Esper’s solid shin with a Guide’s frail body meant his own foot hurt more — but with so many eyes watching, he gritted his teeth and walked on as though nothing had happened.
Same as always — the strong trampling the weak, and Espers as arrogant as ever.
Yihyun grumbled inwardly.
The newly built Ability Bureau was so labyrinthine inside he had no idea which way was which. With eyes already fixed on him, Yihyun walked straight ahead as if he knew exactly where he was going. When he figured he had put enough distance from their line of sight, he stopped an employee passing by with an armful of documents.
“Excuse me, where’s the Guide wing?”
The employee stopped at the sudden question, looked at Yihyun — and then, apparently recognizing his face, eyes went wide.
“Oh, aren’t you Guide Baek Yihyun? Are you feeling alright? The Guide wing is down the left corridor from here, then through to Building B.”
Yihyun gave a small nod at the employee who pointed him in the right direction with a look of genuine concern. It seemed not everyone in the Ability Bureau had it out for this body after all.
“Thank you.”
Yihyun set off at a brisk stride toward the new Building B, following the directions he had been given. Illegitimate child or not, he was the Director’s blood — and an S-Rank Guide. In the Guide wing, he would surely have authorization to access the Ability Bureau’s internal network.
Baek Yihyun, I don’t know how much of a pushover you let yourself be all this time… but starting today, that changes.
On the way to the Guide wing, a familiar face rose up on the enormous electronic display board that seemed to devour the entire lobby wall. Yihyun drifted toward it as though drawn in. Countless people flowed past behind him, but Yihyun’s world came to a standstill, fixed on Taeyun’s eyes inside the display.
He remembered vividly the day that photo had been taken. The day the new recruits completed their time at the Ability user training institution and were officially inducted into the Ability Bureau. A tent had been hastily thrown up in one corner of the training block, a photographer brought in, and every new agent had their access badge photo taken.
The Espers, buzzing with the thrill of becoming official agents, stood in line still reeking of post-training sweat. Nobody cared that the backdrop was crinkled and kept flapping, or that the makeshift photo station was a sorry sight.
Seunghyun, who had been overseeing the new recruits, had looked at Han Taeyun’s result and let out a dumbfounded laugh.
“Hey, who takes their badge photo like a magazine shoot?”
Everyone else had come out drenched in sweat and looking like criminals — but Taeyun’s photo, even under those terrible lights, was so flawlessly surreal it might as well have been a painting. Taeyun had said nothing in response, simply turning his head and looking at Seunghyun with that unhurried gaze. Eyes far more vivid and cold in person than any photograph.
But now, stamped across that perfect face in front of Yihyun’s eyes, were thick, blood-red letters: [WANTED / SHOOT ON SIGHT].
It was a photo from seven or eight years ago, and yet — strangely — that gaze pressed down on him as though it were looking straight through him, right now, in this very moment.
Yihyun stared hard at Taeyun through the cold glass of the display. Part of him wanted to reach out and scrub those red letters away. Part of him wanted to grab him by the collar and demand to know why he had reduced the world to this state.
“……Did you go and lose your mind because I teased you about the magazine photo, you insane bastard.”
The low murmur fell from Yihyun’s lips and dissolved into nothing beneath the display board. After standing fixed in Taeyun’s gaze for a long moment, Yihyun finally turned his head and stepped toward the Guide wing. The cold light of the display cast a long shadow across Yihyun’s shoulders.
Yihyun asked security personnel for directions several times over before finding his way to the private waiting room on the second floor of the Guide wing.
“Where did you say Room 208 was?”
At Yihyun’s question, the security guard pointed vaguely down the end of the corridor with an air of annoyance. The mocking look that followed — crawled back from the dead and can’t even remember your own room number — needled into his back, but Yihyun let it slide. Fortunately, by virtue of being the Director’s illegitimate child, he had been assigned an independent space — even if bullying came with it. Yihyun locked the door behind him and stepped inside, then paused.
A room immaculate enough to border on obsessive — not a speck of dust in sight. And sitting squarely in the center of the desk chair, completely at odds with the rest of the room, was a single white rabbit character cushion.
“……”
Yihyun swallowed a hollow laugh and sank into the chair. The soft, plush texture of the cushion against his back felt strange. From the strawberry-flavored Mana Supplements in his inventory to this cushion —
