Chapter 37
My noona was, without a doubt, the most precious being in our family.
‘A Story of a D-class Esper’ began with this sentence. I read the novel halfway through, then returned to the first sentence again. Then I accessed the Association website with my laptop. It was to learn about Esper Jeong Sanghyeop’s family relationships.
However, there were limitations to the materials viewable on the Association website. Since S-class espers sometimes needed to contact each other without going through the Management Department, everything from contact information to secretaries was shared, but for other grades, it was at most their affiliation and skill attributes.
This meant I had no choice but to rely on the novel. I began to carefully read through the novel once more.
Jeong Sanghyeop’s noona was an A-class esper who was the breadwinner supporting the family. When she turned seventeen, their parents died in an accident. Leaving behind massive debt. The silver lining was that she was already an A-class esper at that time.
She didn’t avoid dangerous sites to prevent sending her two younger brothers, who were still young, to an institution. However, there were limits to the gates that a minor esper could deploy to. The second child, Jeong Sanghyeop, was thirteen years old. He took care of his younger brother, who was only a year younger, while handling all the household chores.
Debt collectors came every day to destroy the house. They didn’t hit us, but they did everything they could. When noona went to work, my younger brother and I had to hide in the closet. Noona would always be furious when she came back, but she couldn’t retaliate.
Noona was strong. Stronger than anyone I knew. But the debt collectors knew that noona couldn’t hit them. We tried to clean the house before noona came home, but noona always noticed. Noona would apologize with her face covered in wounds.
Some days, they would wait until noona came home from work to torment us.
“A-class esper? That’s a joke. Hit me. Go ahead, try hitting me.”
I saw noona’s fists trembling. If she hit them, the Association wouldn’t give her money. Without money, we would starve. So noona couldn’t hit them. That day, noona cried a lot.
I was sad that noona suffered because of those bastards. I wanted to become strong quickly. I wanted to become someone who could protect noona, the most precious person in the world.
It was a painful story. Despite Jeong Sanghyeop’s noona paying off debts as fast as she earned money, the debt collectors enjoyed frightening the children.
Perhaps they wanted to torment a girl who was stronger than them. Taking advantage of the fact that she was an Association-affiliated esper who couldn’t hit civilians.
The situation turned around two years later. Fifteen-year-old Jeong Sanghyeop realized that his body was different from before. He felt an unknown power. However, he didn’t tell his noona or younger brother. It was time for revenge.
I secretly trained every day. To beat them, to give them a thorough beating. We didn’t have much debt left, but they had become more vicious.
That day, I put my younger brother in the closet.
“Isn’t hyung going in?”
“No, it’s cramped.”
Even though we had grown, the closet hadn’t grown. Even with just my younger brother inside, the closet was full. My younger brother said with tears hanging in his eyes.
“Then hyung will get hurt. I want to stay outside too.”
“No. If both of us get hurt, noona will be sad.”
“But!”
“Just trust hyung.”
After closing the closet with my younger brother inside, I waited for them. I wasn’t an Association-affiliated esper. So I could hit them.
The power of a fifteen-year-old, newly manifested D-class esper wasn’t extraordinary. However, it was enough to handle three thugs. Jeong Sanghyeop got beaten a lot, beaten again, and beaten some more, but didn’t give up and kept hitting them. Until they begged for mercy, until noona came home, he couldn’t stop.
As soon as noona saw me, she pulled me away from them. Then she asked where the third child was. I pointed to the closet. Noona saw the third child sleeping inside the closet and closed the closet again.
What noona did next was wipe the blood from my hands. She stripped off my blood-stained clothes and scrubbed away the blood that had splattered everywhere. I stood still and watched noona frantically trying to clean something up. It was strange.
“Noona, aren’t you happy?”
Noona, who had been frantically cleaning me, suddenly froze. Noona looked at me and cried. She cried saying she was sorry.
I had only wanted noona to be happy, but noona wasn’t happy.
That day, one of the three thugs died. One became permanently lame. Still, I didn’t regret it. Not then.
I put down my phone for a moment. It was too painful a story. I felt like I could see the eyes of a teenage child who had been exposed to violence for a long time. My stomach churned.
After taking several deep breaths, I began reading again. Jeong Sanghyeop was put on trial due to his noona’s report. However, the atrocities committed by the debt collectors and the fact that he was a juvenile offender were taken into consideration. Instead, he underwent esper testing and became an Association-affiliated esper. As already known, his grade was D-class, and his attribute was strength-type.
D-class espers were treated as small fry everywhere in the Association. The 32 Esper Nations I belonged to were hot in summer and cold in winter. But no one tried to improve the treatment. The salary was low, and there were few gates they could enter. Even inside gates, they did the work of disposing of small fry.
Small fry, small fry, small fry.
Still, it was okay. I had noona, who was an A-class esper. Noona is a precious person. I can do jobs like handling small fry. Noona should go to the center, more to the center. Because noona is the most precious being in our family. I was glad to be D-class. There were things I could do for noona.
For Jeong Sanghyeop, noona was more than a parent. Even after the murder, noona didn’t treat Jeong Sanghyeop differently. Rather, she seemed to treat him more preciously than before. Jeong Sanghyeop felt misery in many aspects of D-class esper treatment, but he endured it thinking only of noona. It would have been good if he could have lived happily like that.
But that wasn’t the case. The year Jeong Sanghyeop turned twenty-two, noona died inside a gate. It was a sacrifice due to another A-class esper’s rampage. They barely recovered the body, but it was damaged beyond recognition.
There was no reason for noona’s death. Because the Association didn’t tell him. The Association only tried to cover up this incident. They didn’t want to conduct a proper investigation.
They didn’t tell him how that esper came to go on a rampage, why only our noona died among the espers and guides who were together. And why they didn’t dispatch an S-class esper to a gate that should have had six A-class espers enter.
Jeong Sanghyeop knew that the gate noona entered was unusual and was waiting near the gate area. But it was a gate that D-class espers couldn’t enter, and he couldn’t go get her until the end.
Even when he fought tooth and nail saying he’d rather die with noona, the Management Department isolated him.
Small fry couldn’t enter that gate. Small fry weren’t qualified to die with noona. Because I was small fry, because I was small fry, I couldn’t protect noona.
But that day, there was no gate that S-class espers were deployed to. Nowhere in the entire country. While a hundred S-class espers were playing around, noona was murdered.
By the incompetent Association, by A-class guides who didn’t guide properly, by S-class espers who didn’t deploy. I want to ask them. Who really should have died, who really are the small fry.
He continued investigating the incident. The truth about the incident wasn’t revealed in the novel. However, the more the investigation continued, the more Jeong Sanghyeop’s anger soared. ‘That force’ approached him. Saying they would give him a chance to get revenge on the Association.
Jeong Sanghyeop obtained hypnotic ability through two years of drug administration and research. While feeling the pain of his body being mercilessly carved away, while overcoming several near-death experiences.
He instinctively realized. That he wouldn’t be able to use this ability more than ten times. Every time he used it, he felt death approaching step by step. Yet he didn’t give up.
‘That force’ said they would create an opportunity for him to get revenge. The first target of revenge was Han Miyeon. At that time, she was one of the A-class guides who had been deployed to the same gate as noona. The special episode ended there.
It was literally a special episode. Why did they want to tell me this fact? Even if Jeong Sanghyeop’s circumstances were pitiful, it couldn’t justify all the actions he was trying to take.
However, I was curious about what the truth of that incident he had discovered was. Did Guide Han Miyeon remember that A-class esper who died then? Did she know the truth of the incident? I continued thinking while biting my thumbnail.
“Jeong Sanghyeop is already as good as dead. He died with noona then. The current Jeong Sanghyeop is like a vengeful ghost left in this world.”
That was the most dangerous point. He no longer feared death. No. He wasn’t afraid of anything. Because noona’s death had pierced through him, and he had experienced pain worse than death. So he was trying to use hypnotic ability while throwing away his own life.
I became more curious about ‘that force’ that had approached him. That force that was trying to overthrow the Association by cleverly using personal grudges. Those who had become more cunning than the force that existed in the novel I had read.
I turned off the novel and organized what I had to do.
First of all, I had to meet Han Miyeon.
