“But you don’t have a combat uniform?”
Brian smiled with an awkward look on his face.
“It’s illegal to put an Esper who hasn’t graduated yet in a combat uniform and assign them to training or missions.”
“…If that’s illegal, then drafting Espers who manifested young into the facility — is that illegal now too?”
“Of course it is!”
Rodeo had suspected as much, but the reality was even more surprising than he’d expected, and he just stood there with his mouth open, listening to Brian talk.
“Back then they said they brought kids in because of the risk of Rampage, but these days adults can use Decorkers to stabilize kids’ levels. As they grow up they need to learn to manage on their own, so instead of regular school they go to the Academy. Actually, even up to my time, I apparently got dragged into the facility when I was little… about a year or two? I honestly don’t remember much.”
Rodeo was startled by Brian’s words and asked.
“You lived at the facility for a few years? So you went back to your parents?”
“Ah, well… I had nowhere to go, so… I was adopted.”
Rodeo’s mouth closed. Having nowhere to go after only a year or two meant there was quite a complicated family situation. Brian smiled and waved a hand, continuing on.
“A lot of people have stories like that, though.”
Rodeo managed a faint smile following Brian’s lead, but his expression became serious for a moment, as though lost in thought.
“Did the facility handle the adoption quietly?”
“No, originally they were going to keep kids with nowhere to go at the facility — but my dad was one of the leaders of the Esper Liberation Movement. They did group adoptions through that. They even helped find names. Mine was given to me by my dad, though.”
The Esper Liberation Movement. Quite the grand name.
To think something that interesting happened — it makes it all the more frustrating that Time Warp is illegal. But when Rodeo thought of those who still remained in his memory — colleagues who had died like tools of the facility — he genuinely didn’t want to recklessly go back in time and interfere with anything. Rodeo grinned and muttered.
“Seems like no one wanted to give the facility an inch. They must have finally had enough… yeah, that makes sense. But hey, how do you rattle all this off? Does the facility teach you this stuff?”
“It’s less something I was taught and more… early education. The Academy is a special school, but we learn everything they teach at regular schools too. My dad said if they don’t do that, the foundation of Esper liberalization shakes.”
Brian’s eyes lit up for a moment.
“Is your dad a politician?”
“Not a politician exactly, but he worked in the Esper Liberation Movement and now works at the Academy. He’s friends with Instructor Carousel!”
“Your dad is the same age as Carousel?”
“Probably?”
“What’s his name?”
“Logan Jet — oh, the name the facility gave him is Ink. He decided he wasn’t going to live only as an Esper, so he found his family and changed his name, so he doesn’t use that name anymore, but…”
Rodeo’s head snapped around and the cup in his hand dropped to the table with a loud clatter. Fortunately the cup was empty, and it rolled to a stop in Brian’s hand.
“Ink?”
“Oh — yes, yes.”
“You’re Ink’s son???”
Brian’s eyes went wide.
“You know my dad?”
“That makes sense! If it’s Ink, of course he’d do the Liberation Movement. Wow, this world is small, but…”
“But hyung, how old are you actually? Between twenty-seven and thirty-seven, which one is really true?”
“No, but — that means he raised you alone? Wow, that guy’s a dad… insane.”
Brian tried to ask again after not getting an answer, but stopped when he spotted a figure standing behind Rodeo, and bowed. Rodeo, still reeling from the shocking news he’d just heard, hadn’t even noticed anyone was behind him.
“Answer the kid, answer. He’s asking you a question.”
Rodeo spun around and caught sight of Carousel’s red hair.
“Hey, did you find a name too? What was your original name? Actually — what about me?”
“…….”
“…….”
A brief silence fell. Brian glanced between them nervously, and Carousel pulled out the chair next to Rodeo and sat down.
“Finding a name isn’t easy, idiot.”
“Why? Ink found a last name too, apparently…”
Carousel pressed a hand to his forehead and muttered in exasperation, so Brian stepped in to explain.
“It’s not like there are that many Espers, and of course their families couldn’t just forget about a child taken from them like that… so some people found their families and names without much trouble. Like my dad. But looking into it, a lot of families had passed away, or there were cases where records didn’t exist at all… so a lot of people just live with their facility names.”
“…And finding your identity is up to each person individually. You disappeared and were gone, so no one looked for you. If you want, say the word. I’ll look into it.”
Rodeo went quiet and thought for a moment, then spoke.
“…Forget the family. Just find me a name.”
After finishing their meal, the three of them moved to the café near the restaurant. Carousel said he didn’t have time, left word that he’d pass along the application documents if Rodeo came the next day, took his coffee, and disappeared. Only Brian and Rodeo were left, sitting across from each other with a peppermint tea and an Americano in front of them.
“About what you asked earlier.”
“Huh? Earlier?”
“My dad didn’t raise me alone.”
“Then? Communal parenting among Espers?”
Brian nearly choked on his tea laughing.
“No. I have a mom.”
Rodeo’s eyes narrowed and his head tilted. It was because information he couldn’t make sense of kept coming in without stopping.
“What do you mean?”
“You really seem like you’ve come back from the North Pole or something… my dad got married. I have a younger sibling too.”
“How can an Esper get married? Who would put up with the Guiding… don’t tell me Ink married a Guide? That doesn’t sound like him at all.”
“Ah, no! My mom is a civilian. And that kind of traditional Guiding… people basically don’t do it anymore!”
Brian’s face turned red in an instant. He seemed to know, even without experience, what the traditional method of Guiding involved. Rodeo grinned at the teenage boy’s reaction and asked.
“At all? Not at all?”
“They don’t do it!”
“Come on… when you’re young they can just press lips together. You don’t have to lie to me.”
“It’s true. I only have memories of experiencing it when I was little, so I don’t even really remember what contact Guiding feels like.”
“What? That’s a loss… I haven’t received remote Guiding through a Decorker that many times, but the feeling is completely different from real Guiding.”
Rodeo licked his lips with a deliberate smirk, and Brian cupped his burning face in both hands.
“Adults… I don’t know about adults, but… it’s been forever since I’ve even seen a Guide…!”
Rodeo, who had been teasing the kid, was surprised once more and his expression went stiff. He’d known that unlike before, Espers no longer lived together at the facility and that their living spaces were completely separated — but he hadn’t realized the educational institutions were completely separate too.
Thinking of what Chalice had said about occasionally teaching basic combat at the Guide Academy, there would clearly be a need for joint training — but Rodeo had no way of knowing whether that kind of collaboration was actually happening at the mission level, or whether a Guide could even become an agent in the first place.
Above all, the fact that even at the Academy there was no opportunity to meet a Guide meant that young Espers had never seen firsthand what the process called “remote Guiding via Decorker” — a name that sounded reasonable enough — actually did to a Guide. When his thoughts reached that point, Rodeo’s expression became noticeably serious.
“The last Guide I saw was one of the combat training instructors… but I was too young back then to have learned anything directly.”
“…Chalice?”
The unexpected reference made Rodeo ask with a face full of curiosity, but this time too Brian looked uncomfortable.
“I don’t know the name. And what does a Guide have to do with us anymore, really?”
“…What? How does it have nothing to do with you.”
“Guides don’t really have any skills anymore. They’d just be living mixed in among civilians.”
“You said your stability levels are below the threshold. You think you’re alive right now without your head exploding because of Guides, and you don’t know that?”
“It’s a power they wouldn’t have known about themselves if it weren’t for Espers — we’re just making use of it. Because we have to survive. Guides can’t even fight. They just keep putting out PR about how they’re always sacrificing themselves, without actually doing much of anything.”
Rodeo was dumbfounded. He had suspected that awareness of Guides was nearly nonexistent — but it turned out that wasn’t quite it either. The resentment and contempt from ten years ago had remained, and only the desperation had been buried under ignorance.
“Guides have their own Guide Academy too. You didn’t know?”
“I know. But it’s just a formality. They don’t really teach anything, or put in any effort.”
“A formality? Guides do combat training too — actually, what about you guys? You said it yourself, you’re just like a regular school. You don’t even have combat uniforms — if you want to become an agent, that’s when you enlist and start training, right? You said that earlier. That they only teach power control.”
