When the Rain Comes
'No way...'
The Anti-Government Forces? Had they finally come for her?
Of all the times for Han Yi-hyeon to have somewhere else to be, he'd picked today, leaving her alone for the first time in ages. When she was with him, all she'd wanted was a moment to herself—but now that something like this was happening the second she actually had it, she found herself desperately wishing he were back.
Baek Yeo-eul gave her head a rough shake, hair flying.
Guides were the weakest of the awakened; if she wanted to survive, she had to protect her own skin. She dredged up the self-defense techniques she'd learned in practical training five years ago. She could not die here. Pretending to toss and turn, she swept the blanket aside—and then, with every ounce of strength she had, launched a kick at the shadow of a figure beyond the curtain.
"Aaagh!"
The instant she felt the impact against her foot, someone toppled over with a crash.
Baek Yeo-eul sprang out of bed and yanked the curtain back. If the person looked like more than she could handle, she meant to be ready to bolt.
"...Mi-so?"
"Yeo-eul!"
That was her reaction, at least, right up until she recognized the person sprawled on the floor, clutching her arm and groaning, as Lee Mi-so.
"What the—why are you... ugh."
"Yeo-euul!"
Before Baek Yeo-eul could even finish her sentence, she caught Mi-so as the girl came barreling at her. Mi-so bent herself nearly in half and burrowed into Baek Yeo-eul's arms.
"You know it's been forever since we last saw each other, right? Huh? Do you have any idea how much I missed you!"
It had been nearly a month since she'd seen Mi-so, whom she used to meet at least once every two weeks. The Mi-so standing before her now looked somehow haggard, and her already-thin frame had grown even more gaunt.
"Have you lost weight?"
"Mm-hm. Just a little."
Having finally finished their long, tearful reunion, Mi-so pulled back with eyes puffy and swollen, sniffling hard.
"Is your arm okay? That's going to bruise."
"I'm fine."
Baek Yeo-eul clicked her tongue at the sight of Mi-so's arm, swollen worse than before. She was worried about the arm that had caught the full force of a kick thrown in dead earnest.
"So start talking. Why did you sneak in like that? No, wait—how did you even get in here in the first place?"
she demanded, handing over a glass of cold water. Mi-so drank it, her gaze wandering everywhere for no good reason, then flinched the moment her eyes met Baek Yeo-eul's.
"Okay, okay, I'll tell you! It's just—I missed my Yeo-eul so much and I couldn't even see her... But then I heard you were in this hospital, so I just gave my forehead one little bonk on a book, that's all!"
Baek Yeo-eul brushed aside Mi-so's bangs. Hidden beneath the thick fringe was a pad of gauze.
"Hey, you..."
"You think I'd have done that if I didn't miss you that much? And you know how much I hate being in pain, right? I tapped it as gently as I possibly could! I swear!"
"...I know. I know all too well."
Baek Yeo-eul was suddenly struck by a wave of shame. Busy and exhausted, she'd used it all as an excuse to make no contact with Mi-so whatsoever—and she'd done it even knowing full well that one word to Han Yi-hyeon would have gotten her a visit.
As though she were the injured one, Baek Yeo-eul carefully smoothed the gauze on Mi-so's forehead.
"I'm really fine. I just came because I was worried about you. The rainy season is... almost here, you know."
Baek Yeo-eul's hand, still toying with the gauze, stopped dead. She tidied Mi-so's rumpled bangs, then withdrew.
"I'm really okay now."
"Yeo-eul."
"You remember we kept in touch just fine last year, right?"
Baek Yeo-eul smiled playfully and helped Mi-so to her feet. She opened the door, checked the corridor, and pushed her out.
"You've seen my face, now go, quick. You never know when someone might show up."
"Yeo-eul, wait—here."
Half-dragged toward the exit, Mi-so fished a pill bottle out of her bag.
"What's this?"
"You said your head hurt and you couldn't sleep, remember? Sleeping pills. I take them myself—they work great."
So she had said something like that, apparently.
Before Mi-so could get caught by anyone, Baek Yeo-eul hurriedly took the bottle.
"Got it. Thanks. Now go."
"You have to take them, okay? You have to! And—!"
Baek Yeo-eul shut the door. Once Mi-so got ahold of her, they'd be talking for a solid hour.
The presence that had been hovering behind the door soon faded away. Baek Yeo-eul let out a long, deep sigh of relief, then lifted her head to gaze out the window. It was a bright, sunny day—so pleasant it was impossible to imagine the rainy season beginning any time soon.
"...The rainy season."
Baek Yeo-eul murmured blankly, staring up at the sky.
An emergency meeting was convened.
A Grade 5 monster had appeared inside the Grade 3 gate dungeon that Han Yi-hyeon had been caught up in—inside a Grade 3 gate, of all places. Worse still, the monster had timed its strike at Baek Yeo-eul to the exact moment Han Yi-hyeon was destroying the core. Had it been an even higher-grade monster, she might have been seriously hurt.
"This isn't a problem we can resolve on our own. In my view, we need the Research Director here—at the very least."
The Research Director Se Yeon-ah spoke of was the man who had diagnosed Han Yi-hyeon's guiding rejection and unraveled the gate's characteristics.
"We have no idea what that bastard will demand this time. You can't just loop him in because we're at a complete loss. I'm against it!" Hwang Tae-seon shouted.
The Research Director was a man extraordinarily difficult to sum up in a single word. If pressed, the closest description would be that he stood with one foot planted in good and one in evil. His abilities were brilliant, and he had racked up any number of achievements in the name of public safety—but he had also exacted exorbitant prices to match.
"Is the price what matters right now, Esper Hwang Tae-seon? This time, thanks to Esper Han Yi-hyeon's efforts, things may have been settled without a single casualty—but what about the next time?"
Se Yeon-ah's argument was sound in every particular, and it left Hwang Tae-seon with nothing to say. Instead, he turned his head toward Do Geon.
"Director, you're not seriously going to report this to the Research Director, are you? You know exactly what a lunatic that bastard is!"
The Research Director had never once hesitated to run unethical experiments in pursuit of his goals. Insisting that the age of animal testing was over, he'd been caught conducting human experiments on violent criminals more times than anyone could count.
And yet, in the end, those unethical experiments had produced the Esper suppressants, contributing enormously to the nation. Because of conduct like that, opinion on the man tended to split cleanly in two—just as it had between Se Yeon-ah and Hwang Tae-seon.
"This is not a matter we can settle within our own walls. We will submit a report to headquarters and hold a joint meeting."
At the announcement that the issue would be tabled for now, Se Yeon-ah and Hwang Tae-seon each let out a sigh heavy with very different meanings.
With the emergency meeting adjourned, everyone but Do Geon rose from their seats. Han Yi-hyeon, who had been restless through the entire session, was no exception.
"Esper Han Yi-hyeon."
Han Yi-hyeon shot up from his seat before Do Geon even finished declaring the meeting over, only to be blocked by the man himself. Sensing that something unusual was afoot, Se Yeon-ah and Hwang Tae-seon, halfway out of the conference room, stopped awkwardly at the threshold.
Do Geon held Han Yi-hyeon's gaze and gave a slight tilt of the file folder in his hand. Catching his meaning, Se Yeon-ah and Hwang Tae-seon exchanged a glance, bowed to the Director, and left the conference room.
Left alone with Han Yi-hyeon, Do Geon rose from his seat, planting the upright file folder against the desk.
"This is your next assignment."
He pressed the folder against Han Yi-hyeon's chest with a light tap.
Judging by how he'd cleared the room, this was evidently a classified assignment rather than a public one. It was the sort of thing that got slipped into his schedule at least once a month, so it was hardly startling news.
"Together with Guide Baek Yeo-eul."
"..."
"Do you understand?"
Han Yi-hyeon walked out of the conference room without a word, carrying nothing but the folder. When he blinked, the corridor that met his eyes was not the one outside the conference room—it was the hallway of the penthouse.
At the presence of Baek Yeo-eul he sensed inside the penthouse, Han Yi-hyeon hurried the door open—and in the same instant, something crashed into him. He moved to strike on pure instinct, then realized it was Baek Yeo-eul and hastily slackened his grip.
Baek Yeo-eul, blissfully unaware that her head had very nearly gone flying, stood with her face buried low.
"Guide Baek Yeo-eul, are you all right?"
Her head didn't so much as twitch.
"...Guide Baek Yeo-eul?"
Something felt wrong. Baek Yeo-eul's body, always on the cool side, felt like a slab of ice. And the moment he registered it—
...!
Baek Yeo-eul crumpled into Han Yi-hyeon's arms.
Baek Yeo-eul's consciousness surfaced.
Like an old television flickering on after years of disuse, her thoughts were muffled and slow to start.
'So warm.'
A body heat high enough to melt her limb from limb wrapped around her entire body. Baek Yeo-eul burrowed deeper into that warmth. Letting out a contented sigh, it was a long while before she opened her eyes.
'...Huh?'
What lay before her eyes was a bare chest, its muscle carved in clean, defined lines.
Baek Yeo-eul was vulnerable to the rainy season.
She couldn't remember when it had started, or why, but her grandmother had once told her it was because it had rained on the day her parents died, and Baek Yeo-eul had believed her, just like that. Whenever the summer monsoon began, her body was at its worst.
After even her grandmother—her only family—left the world, Baek Yeo-eul had endured it entirely alone. Before the rains set in, she would stock up on medicine and every other necessity, then bury herself beneath her blankets.
She'd been to the hospital any number of times; the cause remained unknown. If anything, being sick at home sat easier on her heart than a strange hospital ward. Once the rainy season started, Baek Yeo-eul was too busy shivering under her covers to do much of anything else.
A day or so of cycling between waking and passing out, and she would recover more or less. But Baek Yeo-eul, who had lived alone all her life except for her teenage years, had no idea what she was supposed to say to Han Yi-hyeon about any of it.
The rainy season had arrived earlier than expected, and the moment Baek Yeo-eul, roused from an afternoon nap, came downstairs for a glass of water, she knew something was badly wrong.
To make matters worse, she'd spent the past month in such a haze that she hadn't even managed to prepare her medicine. Clutching at hair that felt ready to split, Baek Yeo-eul braced herself against the wall and groped her way forward, step by step.
Her plan was to get outside and buy whatever medicine she could, just to get by.
'Just a little further...'
But she was forced to a halt with only a few steps left to go.
One more step, and she was certain she would drop right where she stood. The penthouse floor was polished marble; a bad fall would mean a fracture at the very least. If her luck turned, she could crack her head open, too.
Staring down at the gleaming marble, Baek Yeo-eul licked her parched lips.
Cold sweat had soaked the palms she pressed against the wall, leaving them damp and slick.
Just as she decided she could endure no more—
"Guide Baek Yeo-eul?"
Ah.
At the familiar voice sinking into her ear, Baek Yeo-eul surrendered to her relief—and let her consciousness go.