# Chapter 1
“Hey, if you’re not even A-rank, can’t you hurry up? Ugh, it hurts like I’m dying…”
Acting like that when he’s barely a B-rank Esper himself… I finished organizing the energy wavelengths of the people I was guiding with both hands. I didn’t have the energy to deal with being disrespected on site. Even as a veteran, being C-rank meant there were limits to what I could do.
This gate was disaster level “Gi”¹. Due to the high risk, Espers of various ranks from B to C were all mobilized. But they only ended up seriously injured without properly handling the situation, and I heard that eventually a few A-rank Espers came and cleared the scene.
What remained were numerous Espers with tangled energy wavelengths. The reason I was dispatched to this site, while already on my thirteenth hour of overtime, was because of this overwhelming number.
There was a limit to processing Espers one by one while checking matching rates, so they needed a Guide who could be worked to the bone. And that was me.
I had a matching rate of over 50% with most Espers, and even when that wasn’t the case, no one was better at basic energy wavelength organization than a Guide with 20 years of experience. Even if I was only C-rank.
Plus, I could perform dual guiding. Meaning I could guide two people at once. Of course, this only applied to other C-ranks, but still. When the number of injured Espers was this overwhelming, I could be more useful than even a single A-rank Guide. I was inconveniently versatile.
Sure, they probably wouldn’t be very satisfied with my guiding, but at least they’d be functional again. Whether the bastard in front of me knew this or not, he kept running his mouth.
“But that guy’s guiding with both hands. Isn’t that basically the same as taking it from both ends?”
It felt like a button in my head was pressed when I heard his vulgar snickering. I checked my watch. It was just hitting thirteen hours. Eight hours of regular work plus five hours of overtime.
I’d already earned the maximum amount I could for today. So was there any need to continue working? The answer was obviously no. I finished up my guiding while watching the seconds tick by.
“Esper Choi Hanyong-nim, please stop. Guide Park Garam-nim came here and the site cleanup has progressed a lot…”
10, 9, 8, 7, 6,
“Let go! Like he’s going to heal all our injuries? Fix all our energy? He’s just a band-aid at best.”
5, 4, 3,
“But still…”
“Fuck. Good-looking guys are all assholes. That guy especially looks like he gets around with women, which makes him more annoying. Acting like that when he’s just C-rank.”
2, 1.
The moment the clock struck the hour, I stood up abruptly. The guiding was already finished anyway.
“W-what? This f-fucking guy suddenly—”
I smiled broadly and continued speaking.
“This band-aid has completed his allocated work hours and is now leaving! Good work!”
“What the hell?”
“G-Guide Park Garam-nim!”
I grabbed my bag and briskly walked out of the barracks. People stared with round eyes, not knowing what to do. Choi Hanyong, who had been insulting me, grabbed my shoulder. I twisted his hand and executed a perfect throw, slamming him to the ground.
Everyone stood with their mouths open, unable to say anything. A deathly silence fell.
“Ow! You’re going to kill someone!”
He yelled loudly in the quiet space. Espers who had nearly depleted their power were no different from ordinary people. Especially those like him who neglected self-care and had developed a pot belly. I looked down at Choi Hanyong, who was groaning and holding his elbow on the floor.
“Who the hell do you think you are, starting shit with someone you just met? Fuck you, asshole.”
I raised my middle finger, waving it in front of his face, then turned and walked away. I heard people calling my name from behind, but it didn’t matter.
Being a Guide isn’t a profession with some special mission. It’s just a job. A profession where you get paid to do your work on time. C-rank Guides don’t have time to play hero like those stupid Espers.
I walked toward home with a lighter step. Tomorrow was my day off, and the fantasy novel I’d been reading as a hobby was about to conclude. I quickened my pace, excited to read the novel’s ending.
* * *
“This is unacceptable!”
I threw my phone across the room. The ending of my favorite web novel was completely absurd. Was this karma for what I did to Choi Hanyong today? The ending was the exact opposite of my values. It was a ridiculous parade of character destruction where the selfish protagonist suddenly chose to die for the greater good.
*C-rank Guide OOO bore all sacrifices and died. With his battered body, having exceeded his limits, he wrapped himself around a bomb to minimize civilian casualties. And so, he was recorded as an unnamed casualty #1.*
*TV stations praised the SS-rank Esper who appeared at the scene. He became a hero who would protect Earth for years to come. But no one remembered the name of the C-rank Guide who died so cruelly.*
*Even you couldn’t know it.*
*—The End*
*Thank you for your love and support.*
Is that why the author never revealed the protagonist’s name from the beginning? So no one would remember him until the end? This was such bullshit.
The novel I had been reading was one of the rare ones with a C-rank Guide as the protagonist. Not an S-rank Esper or an A-rank Guide, but a C-rank Guide. It felt like it was my own story.
I visited the site every day to read this unpopular novel that dealt with the story of a C-rank Guide that no one paid attention to.
There were only about three or four readers, including myself. The author was diligent and updated daily. Sometimes lamenting and complaining about their own lack of popularity.
‘Poor bastard, you’re struggling too.’
I sympathized with the author’s tough life in a different world than mine and became captivated by the novel.
The protagonist, a C-rank Guide in the novel, always had desperately low matching rates with Espers and was treated like an unwanted burden at the center. Then during a routine check-up at the center, he receives unexpected results. He’s the only one who can guide an SS-rank Esper. Despite the 98% matching rate, he was still a C-rank Guide, so he often coughed up blood or struggled when guiding the SS-rank Esper. Nevertheless, with the sole determination to save the world, he volunteers to be the S-rank Esper’s pair Guide.
That’s how the novel began. It was supposed to be a story about starting a new life and heading toward a happy ending.
The complete opposite of my reality.
Since my manifestation, I’ve never had bad matching rates with Espers. As long as our ranks matched, I always scored 70-80%. At the center, I wasn’t treated like an unwanted burden, but like a spare key that could fit anywhere.
Thanks to that, I rolled around from site to site like a roulette wheel. Embracing this person, then embracing that person. The only additional contract clause the Association gave me was one:
No pair guiding.
The Association wanted to use me, their universal key, as efficiently as possible. I didn’t particularly object to that clause. The Association wouldn’t listen even if I did, and I needed the money anyway.
The hazard pay of 50,000 won or 100,000 won from each site was a big help for our financially tight household. So I just worked. I’d never even dated, never moved out of my monthly rental. I lived a life where I just worked my ass off until I died.
This novel was hope for me. In some sense, it was also a dream. A dream that would never come true in reality.
But the author shattered that dream. Like someone who never intended to share the same dream in the first place. I got up and turned on the laptop issued by the center. Then I went to the serialization site.
I’ve never understood people who write hate comments. I still don’t understand.
But were hate comments always hate comments from the beginning?
Or are they created?
The me who cheered “Let’s keep going, let’s go!” until yesterday was gone. My fingers, filled with bitterness, flew across the keyboard.
*Author LOL*
*I usually don’t leave comments like this but what kind of anticlimax is this?*
*Why does the C-rank Guide die? Wasn’t he the protagonist? LOL And why is the S-rank Esper suddenly the hero? How much do C-rank Guides make that they have to sacrifice themselves and die without even a name? C-rank Guides have names too, you know? LOL?*
*And why do you think C-ranks have a hero mentality? They’re just office workers— Not Iron Man or Spider-Man, you know.*
*Even for a novel, I think this went too far. Do you perhaps hate C-rank Guides? LOL No matter how I look at it, the protagonist is pitiful and the ending is really f-ed up. I wish I could buy back my eyes that saw this.*
After writing that, I fell asleep. Partly because I was stressed, but also because I was tired after working three sites that day. Thinking that both the novel and life sucked, I closed my eyes and when I opened them again, nothing had changed.
Except that the entire post had disappeared.
* * *
Delete and run.
The act of deleting your writing and running away. Authors often did this. It happened when they needed to revise their work, or lost interest in writing, or due to other personal reasons. But this author had just finished the story yesterday. Why would they need to delete everything and run?
While brushing my teeth and looking in the mirror, I saw my sleep-laden face.
The me in the mirror seemed to be saying, “The reason is you.” More precisely, my fingers holding the toothbrush.
Hate comment. For the first time in my life, I left one. And the next day, the author deleted everything they’d written for over a year. Without a single word.
“Kak, kak.”
I jabbed my toothbrush too deep without thinking and gagged. I hurriedly finished brushing and wiped my face. No, I didn’t write anything that harsh. I wanted to believe that, but I couldn’t remember the exact content. I just spewed whatever came to mind because I was so angry.
‘Spew’ was the right word.
“Ah, there’s no way it was because of me, right?”
I shook my wet hair vigorously as I left the tiny bathroom. I couldn’t be the only one who felt that way. Others must have felt the same. Besides, there were no curse words, so it couldn’t be called a hate comment.
“Anyway, civilians always disregard Guides and then use us as bullet shields and kill us off at times like these.”
It was a common setting in movies. Cliché. The most unrealistic movie device to me. False, manufactured, force-fed stories.
Real C-rank Guides don’t have a hero mentality. We’re too busy running around guiding because we’re pushed by Association management staff. Voluntarily rubbing bodies with others?
“Since when has our society been so open-minded?”
I muttered as I left my studio apartment. People who always look at your lower body first when you say you’re a Guide. Tch.
———
¹Gate Disaster Rating: A standard for evaluating the difficulty of gates. Globally, they are divided into 3 levels (ORANGE/BLACK/RED). In Korea, they are further subdivided into 7 levels (Gab/Eul/Mu/Gi/Gyeong/Sin/Im).
