Yoon Kihyun didn’t want to Guide Jung Sijun. He’d reconsidered several times, but he really didn’t feel like it.
If it had been a different Esper, he would have gladly helped with Guiding, but of all people, to Guide that unlucky bastard.
To be honest, the fact that he’d even reconsidered several times felt impressive enough—that’s how much Yoon Kihyun disliked Jung Sijun.
When he worked at the Center, it was an emotion that had always been pressed down at the bottom of his heart, never properly examined. Back then, he’d squeezed out even the energy to genuinely dislike and hate someone and devoted it to Guiding.
However, the emotions he’d forgotten, crushed under the fatigue accumulated from overwork and big and small pains, floated up eerily like something drifting after his resignation from the Center as a turning point, tormenting Yoon Kihyun.
Every time he drank expensive alcohol alone, he’d chew over the things he’d experienced at the Center like drinking snacks. He knew it wasn’t good for his mental health, but there was nothing he could do about it.
How could he block things that came up in his head on their own?
Rather, the more he tried not to think about them, even things he’d considered trivial came to mind as if they’d been waiting, to the point of irritation.
“I’m asking for a favor. I’ll make sure to take care of the special Guiding allowance too, okay?”
His words were blocked when someone grabbed him out of the blue asking for help with work.
Seo Jintae shook the sleeve of Yoon Kihyun, who had no intention of moving. In his own way, he was being as friendly as possible and pretending to be close, but Yoon Kihyun felt even that was like mockery.
The Center people still seemed to regard him as a Guide crazy for money. It was true he hadn’t actively explained himself, but this also didn’t feel good.
‘Did they think I’d come running happily if they asked me to help with Guiding out of the blue without even empty words like “how have you been”……’
He wasn’t an idiot—he knew the situation was urgent. Yoon Kihyun had seen it himself, so he could fully understand Seo Jintae’s request.
He knew Jung Sijun had difficult waves, and because of that, Seo Jintae had struggled every time, but he couldn’t understand why he was so irritated.
It must be because the subject was that bastard Jung Sijun, right?
Yoon Kihyun glanced at Jung Sijun being moved to a place somewhat out of people’s sight. It was a shabby space that was crumpled and wrinkled from being set up temporarily and couldn’t properly serve its role as a partition.
There was also the reason that they couldn’t create a proper temporary base because the gate had occurred in a residential alley, but in Yoon Kihyun’s opinion, the Awakened Center’s chronic insensitivity to safety was also serious.
“Come on, Team Leader Yoon. Quickly, please?”
At Seo Jintae’s urging, Yoon Kihyun slowly moved his feet. What he wanted to do was still ambiguous. Passing by several people whose eyes widened in surprise at seeing him, staring down at Jung Sijun covered in blood, he felt strange.
‘If Team Leader Seo can’t even catch the waves, does that mean he hasn’t been receiving proper Guiding all this time?’
As his consciousness gradually returned, Jung Sijun, who had curled up his body halfway, lifted his head. The hazy focus gradually became clearer, and it was the moment their eyes met.
“Stop gawking and if you’ve seen enough, do some fucking Guiding.”
Jung Sijun spat blood on the ground and threw a fit.
What did this bastard just say? Heat rose to Yoon Kihyun’s head in an instant.
Even for Kihyun, who didn’t have many good memories of the Center, he felt at least minimal respect or gratitude toward Espers who went in and out of gates for the safety of citizens.
But Jung Sijun always spouted bullshit that completely blew away such sentiments. Honestly, the consistently imaginatively novel bullshit was almost awe-inspiring.
“……There’s something I’ve really been curious about for a while.”
“What?”
When Yoon Kihyun started speaking in a gentle tone, Jung Sijun asked back like someone who had misheard. His heavily furrowed eyebrows and displeased gaze became even more menacing.
At this moment, the only one anxious behind the flimsy partition was Seo Jintae. He was still grasping Yoon Kihyun’s sleeve, restless and busy reading the room.
“Don’t you know you’ll die if you don’t receive Guiding?”
“Fuck, who doesn’t know that?”
“No, you treat people like water purifier filters so much, I thought you didn’t know.”
“……”
At Yoon Kihyun’s indifferent retort, Jung Sijun closed his mouth. The person who usually focused on Guiding without complaint was being sarcastic.
Thinking about it, this was the second time.
The first was when he’d asked in the Guiding room if the resignation news was true. Back then, he’d immediately offered a polite apology, leaving him speechless, but today he was openly sneering in banmal.
Water purifier filter treatment. It was a more blatant and accurate metaphor than expected, so Jung Sijun couldn’t easily open his mouth.
That Espers tended to look down on Guides was a story everyone affiliated with the Center knew. Since Jung Sijun actually thought that way too, he couldn’t say even as an empty compliment that he’d never thought that.
Jung Sijun, having lost his words, vomited blood once more.
Dark red blood splattered on Yoon Kihyun’s sneakers, purchased in one payment at a department store. Quietly watching this, Kihyun responded in an indifferent tone toward Jung Sijun, who was starting to half-raise his upper body from the ground.
“Anyway, you’re working hard. Team Leader Jung Sijun, good luck with your shit work.”
Yoon Kihyun detached Seo Jintae clinging to his arm and went back the way he came.
The flustered Seo Jintae seemed to say something, but he didn’t listen carefully. He just wanted to get away from this place quickly.
So what he’d snapped at Jung Sijun earlier was a kind of childish revenge. A revenge that wasn’t revenge, directed at the source of Yoon Kihyun being called public property at the Awakened Center.
However, the feeling of being blatantly sarcastic to someone he disliked for the first time in his life, and right to their face at that, was terrible. Wasn’t this no different from those bastards who spout nonsense drunk on cider emotions?
He’d wanted to see Jung Sijun groveling at least once before dying, but he didn’t feel refreshed at all. Rather, it felt unpleasant and uncomfortable.
‘Still, that bastard deserved to hear that.’
‘Why should I Guide that bastard even in the neighborhood I came to die in? He treated people as public property and finally went crazy, really.’
Even after returning to his accommodation, he tried to rationalize it several times, but strangely, he felt embarrassed and ashamed of himself.
Separate from those feelings, Yoon Kihyun still disliked Jung Sijun. Because he was the only person who gave him negative feelings until the very end.
‘Still, if I had done the Guiding, I think I would’ve been pissed off in that way too.’
Money wasn’t precious to him anymore, so there was absolutely no reason to endure pain and Guide someone he disliked. He was no longer the Awakened Management Center’s public property, was he?
Two weeks or so until the day he decided to die. Unless something happened, there would be no more encounters with the S-rank Esper who was endlessly busy going in and out of gates.
After returning to his accommodation, Yoon Kihyun curled up on the bed, groaning from a headache that couldn’t be covered even by the soju he’d poured down his throat.
His head hurt as if someone was putting a sharp chisel to his temple and hitting it down with a hammer. He felt a strong pulse in his head, to the point where he wondered if his head might burst.
Feeling the throb of blood flowing through his blood vessels, Yoon Kihyun closed his eyes.
Over the black field of vision, the blood clot Jung Sijun had vomited near his shoes came to mind. Come to think of it, those shoes splattered with blood—they were new, purchased in one payment at a department store only two days ago.
Thinking about it, it couldn’t be anything but an unlucky day.
Yoon Kihyun pressed down on his drooping eyelids with the back of his hand and forced himself to sleep. It seemed like it would be the first night he couldn’t sleep from pain.
***
In the end, he couldn’t sleep deeply. Even after sleeping and waking up, his head didn’t clear and with the persistent headache, his mood was gloomy and he craved alcohol.
Yoon Kihyun left the accommodation with just an outer coat thrown on in a half-asleep state of mind.
Yoon Kihyun was enjoying binge drinking akin to self-harm, enough to think it wasn’t bad to drink alcohol to his heart’s content before dying.
While drinking alone, he suddenly remembered the contact information he’d shoved into his pants pocket.
Remembering the words to contact him when he wanted to have a drink, he impulsively contacted him, and fortunately, the man said he was nearby and readily came to the bar where Yoon Kihyun was.
“I really didn’t think Kihyun-ssi would contact me first.”
“Really?”
Yoon Kihyun glanced at the man sitting next to him at an appropriate distance.
His face was passable, but he somehow gave off a strangely player-ish vibe. Should he call it the unique atmosphere of someone working in entertainment?
“Actually, I run a shop near here. I was going to tell you to come there, but I came here directly instead.”
“What kind of shop do you run?”
“Ah, it’s this kind of place.”
Instead of taking out something like a business card, the man showed him his phone screen with the shop’s SNS account displayed.
“It’s not illegal business at all, and I thought Kihyun-ssi would match our shop’s image so well and it would be fun to work together.”
Shit, of all things, this kind of guy. Yoon Kihyun frowned.
“Our main customer base is female customers, but male customers also come frequently as guests. Well, everyone takes profits as much as they work hard, so there are many friends who’ve been there a long time.”
He looked at the images decorated to seem sophisticated and the promotional phrases, but in the end, it was a shop that did that kind of work. Even though it was splendidly packaged with plausible modifiers, it was a host bar.
Yoon Kihyun looked at the man sitting next to him. He was resting his chin with a sleazy expression.
‘Ah, fuck. Really, what kind of day is today?’
Yoon Kihyun slowly closed his eyes.
Even with his eyelids closed, the sleazy face that seemed to be testing him that he’d seen just before remained like an afterimage.
His stomach churned and he didn’t feel good. It really was an unlucky day.
