Rodeo stared at Turner with an expression bordering on shock as Turner asked with an embarrassed face, grabbing his shoulders firmly with both hands.
Flustered by the almost lunge-like movement, Turner nevertheless did his best to hold his ground so Rodeo wouldn’t fall off the bed.
“How on earth did the Guides agree to something like this?”
“They didn’t… agree, exactly…?”
“What?”
“…Ah, right. If I don’t explain this, it’ll be hard for you to adjust. For now, please get some rest today, and when you’re discharged tomorrow, I’ll explain everything.”
Rodeo felt anew just how much time had changed things.
Of course, it was unbelievably surprising to see how much the facility’s buildings had been expanded, and how so many things — including Guiding — had been automated.
When he heard that most Espers were now living freely outside the facility at a level comparable to ordinary people, even Rodeo, uncharacteristically, was so shocked he couldn’t speak for a while.
But there was one thing that had changed to a truly frightening degree.
He had been led from person to person on what felt like a tour — from the 17th floor of the newly constructed facility building all the way down to the basement cafeteria — but not a single Guide was anywhere to be seen.
Every person he greeted or was introduced to was an Esper, and even the administrative and management staff unrelated to Esper duties were either ordinary people or Espers.
Rodeo thought about it. The Guides had stepped back, automating even Guiding to a remote system, leaving Espers to carry out missions among themselves.
Whatever anyone might say, the fact that Guides and Espers — who couldn’t easily live without each other — had grown this far apart could only mean that something significant had happened during the ten years of his absence, whatever it was.
Those proud Guides, the ones who had always wanted to break free from the facility — they must have finally found a way to make that wish a reality through some kind of incident.
Espers had gained freedom too, supposedly, but seeing that everyone gathered at the facility was still an Esper, it seemed like they hadn’t quite escaped from under the facility’s influence.
Rodeo was certain: the Guides had truly escaped out there, beyond the walls.
Because that had always been the inevitable hierarchy of the facility, it was bittersweet — but not surprising.
“Alright, now we finally get to the brief history lesson.”
And just then, Carousel appeared — Rodeo’s fellow agent, now ten years older than him — and began the orientation.
The orange-tinted red hair was the same as ever, but the person in his memory who had always kept his hair short was now casually brushing back long hair that fell to his shoulders, and on both hands he wore white leather gloves Rodeo had never seen before.
Rodeo felt once again that ten years was a long time.
Before lunch, the young unfamiliar faces Rodeo didn’t know had spent their time reciting how much the facility had developed over the past decade, how technologically impressive the new building was — either touring him around various places or introducing him to people — and that had been the extent of it.
But now, following Carousel’s lead, the door that stood before Rodeo bore the rather daunting label: “Audiovisual Room.”
Rodeo glanced at Carousel and opened his mouth.
“This got serious all of a sudden.”
“Well, it would, wouldn’t it. The history I’m about to teach is a very proud history for Espers. Proud enough to warrant a proper lesson.”
Carousel said this in a tone that made it impossible to tell whether he was being sarcastic or sincere, then opened the door and walked in, with Rodeo following behind.
Sitting alone in the very front row of the tiered seating spread across the spacious room, looking up at his friend who had aged ten years — Rodeo felt a complicated feeling settle over him all over again.
Whether or not Carousel noticed, he removed the white glove from his right hand and turned on the computer at the podium.
“Feels like a make-up class. Just the two of us like this.”
“Shh. I’m starting it.”
Carousel played a video and turned off the lights.
Then he sauntered over and dropped down into the seat next to Rodeo.
He seemed to fidget for a moment before quickly reclining and crossing his legs.
The image of the Carousel Rodeo knew so well — who had always sat ramrod straight, insisting that Espers were soldiers — flashed before his eyes, but Rodeo only cleared his throat and said nothing.
Soon a cheerful intro piece played, and the first chapter of the video began.
Anticlimactically, this part was something Rodeo knew very well — a basic explanation of the facility, Guides, and Espers.
He had been about to joke that it looked like educational material for ordinary people, but the sight of Carousel watching the screen with an unusually serious expression made Rodeo quietly close his mouth and try to focus on the video.
Espers were agents and human weapons managed by government agencies, primarily used to resolve incidents that ordinary people could not handle.
When necessary, facilities across different countries would cooperate and dispatch Espers as representatives, and if an Esper was injured or killed on a mission, there were certain provisions afforded to them as government agents.
However, this was, at the end of the day, treatment befitting a weapon — management of a valuable resource — and no one could honestly answer yes to the question of whether the facility had ever treated Espers as human beings.
First of all, every Esper was taken to the facility around the time their ability manifested in early childhood, losing both their parents and their name.
The facility, as a government agency, transferred all Espers to facilities in their respective regions through legally sanctioned procedures — regardless of gender, regardless of age, regardless of who their parents were, with absolutely no exceptions.
A child stripped of their name was given only a codename based on their ability or their individual characteristics as an Esper.
The only education the facility provided was how to use that power, the rule that they must obey the facility’s orders, and an ideology bordering on brainwashing that they must serve the nation for eternity.
In such a state of suppression, it was an inevitable and unstoppable progression that the frequency of Espers’ Rampages increased, and that the scale of those Rampages continued to grow.
As the situation gradually worsened, the facility began to ease its coercive policies one by one.
There was even a time when hopeful rumors spread that Espers might be able to return to their families.
For Espers soaking in that sweet dream, it was nothing short of a golden age.
But unfortunately, it was right around that time that the existence of Guides was discovered.
It was the beginning of a tragedy.
Governments across every nation withdrew their positions that had been moving toward the liberalization of Espers, and began conscripting Guides alongside them.
Unlike Espers, it was not easy to detect the manifestation of a Guide’s ability — and so they were considered far rarer and more precious than Espers, who were comparatively easier to identify.
But in the facility’s eyes, they too were nothing more than sedatives for Espers, not human beings.
And so they too were forcibly moved to the facility, losing their families, losing their names, and being assigned codenames.
“…….”
“…….”
“…Hey. Who made this material?”
When the video paused briefly due to buffering, Rodeo broke the silence in his characteristically blunt way.
The video was narrating these tragic facts in an extremely matter-of-fact manner — and astoundingly, there was not a single lie in it.
Seemingly caught off guard by that very fact, Rodeo couldn’t hide his confusion and continued with his questions.
Because if the place where he had opened his eyes was reality and not a dream, there was no way material like this could exist within the facility.
“Since when did the facility start showing things as they actually are? Before, it was always loyalty this, loyalty that—”
“You’ll find out soon enough, so watch quietly.”
But Carousel, who couldn’t possibly not know that, merely lifted the corner of his mouth slightly and gave an unhelpful answer.
From Rodeo’s perspective, it was a situation that warranted demanding an immediate explanation.
Yet despite failing to hide his shock, he fell silent and began to focus on the video again.
It was partly because an even more despairing history was being introduced at just that moment.
And its beginning traced back to the time when the abilities of Espers and Guides first manifested.
Unfortunately, a Guide’s power was frequently exposed because of Espers nearby who had manifested their own abilities — so when a Guide child and an Esper child were taken to the facility, it was far from rare to see news stories of the Guide child’s parents assaulting or even killing the Esper child’s parents.
Since both Guiding and Esper abilities were not auto-triggered but were rather abilities “used” according to the individual’s will, widespread sympathy arose for the Guide children who had been dragged to the facility for trying to help what was being called a demon using their power with malicious intent.
Needless to say, the one branded a demon here was an Esper child — equally young, equally innocent in the manifestation of their power.
The parents of an Esper child would lose their child overnight and then find themselves living as sinless sinners under hostile stares.
When they eventually couldn’t bear to stay where they were and moved far away, there were occasional cases where an Esper child would escape the facility, follow their fading memories back to their family, only to find no one at their old home — and return on their own.
On days like those, the Esper children would silently take the grieving child’s sorrow as their own and cry together.
Not long after, in accordance with policy, key information such as names and addresses was forcibly erased from their minds using mental-type Espers — but even amid the unending tragedies, the grief never quite grew numb.
“…….”
“…….”
In the brief silence between chapters, Rodeo’s lips moved but he couldn’t bring himself to speak easily.
By this point, it was impossible not to notice. This material had been created from the perspective of Espers.
But what he couldn’t understand was how material like this could possibly be shown within the facility.
Yet knowing all of this, Carousel instead gestured for Rodeo to pay attention to the screen.
There was plenty Rodeo wanted to challenge, but he couldn’t say a word and had no choice but to look at the screen again.
The video material that resumed shortly after even covered how unjust the lives of Espers were and the treatment they had received.
Citing the isolation of Espers and the scarcity of Guides, unless it was an urgent matter, a Guide could choose which cases to Guide.
If a wavelength-compatible Guide exercised their right of refusal, the Esper would have to receive Guiding from a different Guide — but even if another Guide permitted it, the Guiding often failed to relieve the Esper’s suffering due to the poor compatibility.
Yet for Espers, this was simply something they had to accept as a matter of course.
Moreover, because there were many cases where a Guide was dispatched when an Esper was on the verge of a Rampage, only for it to be too late and both to die together, the facility — in order to protect the more precious of the two — gradually abolished nearly all conditions and restrictions on a Guide’s right of refusal.
As a result, the number of Espers dying senselessly from missed timing only continued to grow.
But the situation never changed, and whether to go out to an urgent field deployment was ultimately left to the Guide’s own judgment as well.
This was because there were many cases where Guides, who had no combat ability, were dispatched to the field solely for Guiding purposes and ended up being taken hostage — or killed.
The facility had even introduced a basic combat training course for Guides in order to protect their lives, but it was still entirely up to the Guide themselves whether to go to the field or not.
Before Rodeo’s now coldly expressionless face, the second chapter opened.
Fortunately, this chapter began with something Rodeo was entirely unfamiliar with — an explanation of a device shaped like an igloo: the Decorker.
Eight years ago, it was a device that Esper Yan had initially developed at the facility’s commission — a machine capable of drawing out Guiding without the Guide’s will.
It was the result of research the facility had enthusiastically funded, owing to how few Guide individuals there were, and consequently how short their lifespans tended to be.
In order to prevent Esper Rampages as much as possible and enable the efficient management of weapons and sedatives, they needed technology that could make use of any Guide’s power — even a newly discovered young Guide who hadn’t yet learned how to release their ability, or one whose channel hadn’t yet opened and whose power was only a faint trickle.
The facility mobilized countless scholars — Guides, Espers, and ordinary people alike — for the development of this technology.
The first to succeed was an Esper by the name of Yan, and this changed the future.
Yan rapidly reduced the size of the Decorker.
From the initial igloo form that required both the Guide and the Esper to be inside together, to a massive gate-like form where the Guide and Esper each pressed their palms against the front and back, to a rope-like form that worked when the Guide and Esper each held either end, and then to a modem-like device the size of a brick that operated on wavelength alone without the two needing to be in contact at all.
