# Chapter 3
“……”
“I was under the impression that it’s a crime. Please correct me if the law has changed recently.”
There was no need to argue about it; stalking was indeed a crime, not just in the legal sense but also ethically it fell into a fundamentally wrong category.
Yeo Dowoon, conflicted about whether he should prostrate himself and apologize right now, decided he should at least offer the coffee first and opened his mouth.
“As an apology……”
“So, from now on, just ask me directly.”
Cha Haseong’s usually cold voice underwent an unreadable change. Dowoon stared at his suddenly empty hands with a dumbfounded expression.
He had wanted to ask whether Haseong preferred hazelnut or vanilla syrup, but the timing was completely lost.
Cha Haseong took a small sip through his straw and lightly touched Dowoon’s cheek as he advised, “You need to ask the person directly to get accurate information.”
“……”
“I like coffee with milk in it.”
At the same time, he placed the protein drink he had just taken a sip from into Dowoon’s awkwardly extended left hand. Smiling like a mischievous child, he added nonchalantly, “Like a mocha latte.”
Dowoon almost replied that it was a recommendation he’d received from a barista at a café Haseong frequently visited, but he hesitated nervously, afraid of coming across as a stalker.
…Or wait. Since this person already saw him as a stalker anyway, maybe it was okay to say it?
While he wasted precious time on this trivial dilemma, Cha Haseong dangled the coffee, drawing his attention.
The deeply carved corners of his mouth looked exceptionally pretty. Dowoon blankly admired the sight of his lips moving.
“This isn’t bad either.”
Cha Haseong spoke as if kindness directed at him was entirely natural and familiar, in a voice that might have sounded arrogant. Nevertheless, Dowoon, acting unlike himself, only blushed deeply.
For no reason, his nape tingled and his mouth felt parched.
“……Guide-nim.”
Like a teenage boy suffering through late summer puberty, an embarrassed Dowoon blurted out his confession like a slap.
“Would you date me?”
At that, Cha Haseong was truly struck speechless, as if he’d been hit in the head. The corners of his eyes, which had begun to show some warmth, narrowed again with coldness.
Judging that he needed to provide reassurance before Haseong doubted his sincerity, Dowoon spoke with a voice as energetic as his bold confession.
“I think I’ve fallen deeply in love.”
“……”
“Whenever I think about Guide-nim, my heart beats like it’s going to shatter, my hands tingle, my throat tightens… and sometimes even the soles of my feet burn. Anyway, I feel like I’m dying every night.”
“…I see.”
On that day when Dowoon abruptly threw his confession at Cha Haseong and put him in an awkward position, Dowoon was barely twenty-two years old.
An inexperienced kid who hadn’t even properly finished his regular education and was struggling with the pressure of equivalency exams.
Perhaps that’s why he could be so immature and daring.
“But…, Dowoon-ssi.”
Even after being immediately kicked aside by the team’s exclusive guide following his first confession and experiencing an unfamiliar rejection, he still sought opportunities and confessed at least 10 more times.
“You weren’t a stalker, but a crazy bastard.”
***
“Yeo Dowoon. Are you insane?”
Since the object of his one-sided love also enjoyed calling him a crazy bastard, by this point he thought it was somewhat reasonable.
When Kwon Jeonghoo shouted reproachfully, Dowoon nodded listlessly.
“I’ll accept whatever you say.”
Even though he was at the point of facing his long-postponed retirement, rather than feeling regretful or bittersweet, he only felt relieved.
Realizing that Dowoon was letting his words go in one ear and out the other, Jeonghoo wearily rubbed his haggard face with a sense of despair.
The resignation letter envelope sitting conspicuously on the desk added to his fatigue.
Already with long dark circles under his eyes from consecutive all-night shifts, he now had a workplace subordinate appearing without warning, pointing at a shabby piece of paper while spewing sophistry.
“I want to retire now, Captain.”
Dowoon kept repeating the same words persistently, like a sheet of music filled with repeat signs.
“My back aches, my ankles hurt. My body isn’t what it used to be.”
“Didn’t you see the exam results? You ranked first in the physical evaluation this time.”
Judging that if he wasted any more energy here, his entire face might be covered with dark circles, Jeonghoo commanded Dowoon, who was staring at him blankly.
“If you want to retire, clear out the monsters in the underground dungeon first.”
“…No Esper who’s gone in there has come out alive.”
“That’s exactly my point. Didn’t you want to retire because you wanted to die?”
His boss wasn’t just making idle talk. Dowoon had been a rookie who surprised everyone with his overwhelming performance and sense of mission since he first joined the base at around seventeen.
It had already been ten years since his awakening, but Jeonghoo still couldn’t forget how Dowoon would clench and unclench his fist after completing dungeon raids, saying he felt catharsis.
‘I think I was born to be an Esper.’
The young face that said those words with a bright smile flickered like cloud patterns in his mind. Jeonghoo, leaning back deeply into the sofa, let out a heavy sigh.
Tap, tap. The sound of fingers drumming on the desk seemed particularly irritable today.
Eventually, as if he couldn’t stand the sight anymore, he dropped Dowoon’s resignation letter on the floor and wiggled his finger, beckoning him to come closer.
“……Please let me retire.”
Just as Dowoon was bending down obediently but still expressing his wishes firmly.
“Yeo Dowoon.”
“Yes, Captain.”
When Jeonghoo’s right eye, bearing the marks of harsh battle days, stared directly at him, Dowoon finally couldn’t overcome his dismay and let out an awkward cough.
A memory of one terrible afternoon pierced through his mind—when a gate reopened in a dungeon they thought they had successfully cleared, forcing them to fight several more battles despite their exhausted bodies.
“Hyung, fuck… Are you really going to do this?”
“There’s no hyung here.”
It was because Jeonghoo, a mental domain Esper, had cunningly manipulated his guilt.
As Dowoon bowed his head so low that his crown was visible and placed both hands on the desk, Jeonghoo took a chocolate from the plastic plate and slipped it between his fingers.
“You still have 10 years left on your contract. If you act like this now, you’ll just get your salary cut and that’s it.”
“I came knowing you could help me. Who do you take me for, a fool?”
“You’re getting too old to be calling me hyung.”
“……Captain, you’re really so cold-hearted that not a single drop of blood would come out even if you were stabbed with a big nail.”
Just as Dowoon peeled the chocolate wrapper and quickly put it in his mouth.
“Is it because of Cha Haseong?”
Jeonghoo, having succeeded in kicking the resignation letter back to Dowoon with his foot, bluntly asked.
“I heard there’s a commotion because he seems to have gotten a lover.”
“……”
Rumors were something he couldn’t avoid knowing even if he wanted to.
Befitting Espers who couldn’t even dream of having a normal relationship, they enjoyed digging into and gossiping about other people’s love lives.
Among them, Cha Haseong was undoubtedly the one who garnered the most attention.
His face is pretty and handsome, his body is well-built like nobody’s business, and his annual salary is in the billions—he’s an expensive person.
There was a whole bunch of people at the Esper base speculating about who his lover might be, saying that guys like him would only choose extraordinary women like himself.
After briefly recalling various voices, Dowoon answered indifferently.
“It would be stranger if he didn’t have someone before.”
“…You seem calm?”
At that, Jeonghoo asked as if finding it strange. Slightly shrugging his shoulders, Dowoon put down the chocolate wrapper he was holding on the desk. He said composedly.
“I’m trying to appear that way, but I’m not sure how long I can hide it.”
“……”
“Honestly, I feel fucking miserable. I want to go and ask him why not me.”
“…I see. You’re being honest.”
“If I stay here any longer, I think I’ll end up crying and making a scene, so I need to retire if only to avoid that sight.”
He needed to distance himself physically somehow.
No matter how desperately he wanted to end this wearisome one-sided love, the person he saw when he opened his eyes was Cha Haseong, and the person he faced when he took a step was Cha Haseong.
While confined to the base, he would undoubtedly spend his life yearning alone until the end.
But Jeonghoo only offered an even more callous refusal.
“Clear the underground dungeon first, and I’ll retire you immediately, no big deal.”
“Haa, Captain……”
It was a heartless answer, but as a superior, it was also an inevitable choice.
Not only was it impossible to find another Esper who could achieve results like Dowoon’s, but he couldn’t allow them to lose someone who served as the center of a team that had been working together for 10 years.
Ruffling his hair, Dowoon asked gravely.
“Is it because of the handover?”
“The key is whether an Esper capable of handling it will appear.”
“One will appear. I didn’t just fall from the sky either, you know.”
“Besides you and Team Delta, what other S-class Espers have awakened in the past 10 years?”
Damn it. Those bastards were all of them.
