No Rest for a C-Rank Guide
"Hong Ye-rim! Hong Ye-rim is one of the agents rotating home this cycle — and she handled three A-rank Guides in the United States, if you can believe it. Practically the perfect—"
Seo Joo-hwan caught himself and slid back into his usual level tone.
"Yes, that's right. Not near-perfect — she'd have to be perfect. Even I was thinking that a mere three A-rank charges was still falling short."
"So in the end, there is no one fit to use. Did you actually conduct this search properly?"
Seo Joo-hwan bowed his head.
"I apologize."
His eyes darted this way and that. No one else came to mind. At this rate, he would have to beg for more time, even if it cost him a scolding.
"If you could just grant me a little more—"
"A pity. It can't be helped."
Wait — is he saying he'll give me the time?
Seo Joo-hwan lifted his head, hope blossoming in his chest.
"No suitable candidate, and not enough time."
"..."
Sorry was the only word left in him, so Seo Joo-hwan simply wet his dry lips.
"As for the agent to be assigned to Baek Yeo-eul—"
"Director."
Kim Yu-ra cut in before Do Geon could finish.
Kim Yu-ra, who always kept herself concealed in the shadows, stood one step forward.
"A-rank Team 2 has reported in. The position of the Gate forecast to emerge along the outskirts of the Yeouido Hangang riverbank has shifted. The updated coordinates are... near the penthouse, roughly five kilometers away."
"Contact Esper Han Yi-hyeon. Immediately."
Without so much as a pause to grab his jacket, Do Geon issued the order to Seo Joo-hwan.
The Gate had moved — right next to where Han Yi-hyeon lived.
Four days passed.
In that time, Han Yi-hyeon and Baek Yeo-eul grew close at a remarkable pace.
Baek Yeo-eul learned a great deal about him.
"Wow, so Esper Seo Joo-hwan is your assigned handler?"
"Yes. I entered the Bureau when I was very young, and he was the agent assigned to train me at the time. As I grew up, he naturally became my handler in due course."
Han Yi-hyeon, it turned out, enjoyed far more of the state's attention than Baek Yeo-eul had ever imagined.
For an A-rank Esper — one so elite that being handed any assignment would have been beneath his caliber — to serve as a personal handler, just like that? S-rank truly did operate on another plane entirely.
Baek Yeo-eul lay stretched out at full length, savoring her vacation.
Insane benefits.
An entire week off. Even back in her days as an ordinary C-rank Guide, before she'd partnered with Han Yi-hyeon, she had managed a stretch this long exactly once — and she'd been busier then than she was now. Working as Han Yi-hyeon's partner merely meant burning through stamina until she passed out in the field; back in those days, every single day had been a war.
If she could return to the past, the Baek Yeo-eul from before she'd checked her bank balance would go back in a heartbeat. But the Baek Yeo-eul who had checked it was another creature altogether.
Life was, by design, one hardship after another. Everyone struggled, and everyone's lot was thoroughly f—ed. The only difference between past and present was whether you were broke and f—ed or rich and f—ed. And given the choice, Baek Yeo-eul fully intended to be the rich kind. Getting f—ed without any money on top felt, frankly, a little too unfair.
"I'm having one more ice cream, and—"
She had been about to ask whether he wanted one too.
Han Yi-hyeon shot up from his seat. Baek Yeo-eul floundered at his sudden shift in mood.
...Should I stop eating the ice cream?
The freezer she'd happened to peek into was packed with Häagen-Xzs in every flavor imaginable, and a tub a day was already finding its way into Baek Yeo-eul's stomach. Just as she was beginning to feel the weight of his gaze, Han Yi-hyeon strode to the window and roughly flung back the half-drawn curtain. Only then did something register as off about his behavior, and Baek Yeo-eul followed him to stand before the wide living-room window.
A brilliant blue sky stretched outside.
After more than a month of living under the same roof, Baek Yeo-eul could now roughly read his moods.
"Aw, come on."
She simply didn't want to believe it.
"No way. Right?"
"...Afraid so."
Beep-beep! Beep-beep! Beep-beep!
The instant Han Yi-hyeon finished speaking, her watch began shrieking. She could guess the gist of the emergency alert without looking, so she silenced it on the spot.
Beep-beep! Beep-beep! Beep-beep!
But the alerts kept ringing. It was Han Yi-hyeon's watch, buried somewhere in the living room. He went hunting for it while Baek Yeo-eul stared out the window.
Weee-ooo! Weee-ooo!
Sirens wailed outside, and people small as dots scrambled busily to flee.
"Guide Baek Yeo-eul."
"..."
Baek Yeo-eul turned around. And at the sight of Han Yi-hyeon standing there holding his watch, she let out a long, deep sigh.
"Emergency deployment, right?"
Han Yi-hyeon nodded.
Baek Yeo-eul accepted it without complaint. Fair enough — she'd had three whole days of proper rest. Honestly, she had never believed she'd make it through the entire week without a single emergency call, so the disappointment barely registered.
She left the penthouse with Han Yi-hyeon straight away, and by the time they reached the scene, Do Geon and Seo Joo-hwan were already there.
"Yi-hyeon."
"A Gate that wasn't supposed to appear?"
"No. Looks like the frequency got misread — a location error. Sorry for pulling you out. A-rank Team 2 will be here soon, so just stick with us until then."
Baek Yeo-eul, quietly eavesdropping on Seo Joo-hwan, relaxed. The gist was that once Team 2 arrived and the monsters emerged, they could head home.
"Guide Baek Yeo-eul."
"Good day, Director."
Oh, come on. Why is he talking to me.
Baek Yeo-eul had been angling to slip away from the superior who'd had his eyes on her since earlier, only to get caught at the very edge of her escape. Halfway through her turn, she faced Do Geon wearing the most aggressively pleasant smile capitalism had to offer.
"How are your injuries?"
"They're fine now."
The bruises had all faded within two days.
Do Geon stole a glance at Baek Yeo-eul's forehead, now free of its gauze.
"If you fall ill, Guide Baek Yeo-eul, there will be no one left to calm Esper Han Yi-hyeon. Do take particular care with your health and safety at all times."
"...Yes, sir. Understood."
Do Geon offered his hand. Absent-minded and lost somewhere in her own head, Baek Yeo-eul shook it without a second thought.
His words had made her newly conscious of her own position. How generously Han Yi-hyeon treated her, how carefully he tiptoed around her — none of it mattered. Not really.
People tended to assume the Guide was the one at the bottom of the food chain. It was the exact opposite.
The nation needed Espers, Espers needed Guides, Guides needed the nation. The nation squeezed the Guides, the Guides squeezed the Espers, the Espers squeezed the nation. In a word: symbiosis. Which was precisely why anyone born an Esper who could also guide — a true Multi — was a nightmare to handle. And so Multi-ability users usually drifted through life as nomads, unwelcome anywhere.
In Do Geon's case, he happened to possess sound convictions and a genuinely self-sacrificing devotion to his country — and thank goodness for that. Otherwise, the Bureau would have been tearing its hair out trying to manage him.
At any rate, Baek Yeo-eul had made her choice with her own two hands. Prison, or partnership with Han Yi-hyeon. She had picked the latter, and she had been paid fair value for it. Which meant she owed something in return.
Having settled the matter in her head, Baek Yeo-eul reached out and took the hand of Han Yi-hyeon, just back from his talk with Seo Joo-hwan.
"Guide Baek Yeo-eul?"
Han Yi-hyeon stammered, thoroughly flustered. Baek Yeo-eul murmured under her breath.
"We didn't get to do it today."
From the look of things, the Gate would form before Team 2 arrived. Best to get the guiding out of the way beforehand — it was simply more convenient that way.
Her eyes were closed, her focus sunk deep into the guiding, when a researcher circulating the perimeter with a strange device stopped dead in his tracks.
"The Gate is about to form! Grade 3, as forecast— no. No!"
The researcher's face drained to sheet white. And then he bellowed:
"Grade 2!"
The Aberrant Gate had arrived.
"An Aberrant Gate..." someone murmured.
An Aberrant Gate — exactly what the name implied: not an ordinary Gate, but one warped somewhere deep in its make. The classic example was a Gate that emerged at a grade different from its forecast, precisely as this one had.
Before a Gate takes form, the area gives off a distinctive frequency, and the fiercer that frequency's pulse, the higher the Gate's grade. To put it simply, a Gate is a hermit crab: monsters cannot exist without one. Grade 1s, for the record, are the exception — beings that can surface anytime, anywhere, Gate or no.
Aberrant Gates did not come about easily. The one mercy here was that the location shift meant two S-rank Espers were already on-site, braced for any contingency.
And mercifully, the Gate was forming not over the river but on a construction site.
"Ah, that's a terrible spot."
Seo Joo-hwan sighed under his breath.
Construction sites bristled with hazards, and with nothing more than the bare skeleton of the building standing, the odds of a fatal fall ran high.
Were these ordinary Espers, he might have worried — but Seo Joo-hwan's mind stayed as tranquil as ever. These were Do Geon and Han Yi-hyeon, of all people. There wasn't a soul alive who needed to worry about those two.
Han Yi-hyeon, who had guided until the very last second, kept glancing over his shoulder, bothered by how Baek Yeo-eul looked like she had aged a decade in a single moment.
"I'll stay with her."
Seo Joo-hwan propped Baek Yeo-eul up and waved him off — hurry, go.
The instant Do Geon and Han Yi-hyeon stood before the Gate, its center heaved and rippled — and it began spitting out monsters.
SKREEEAAAK!
Three Grade 2 monsters — a full three of them — came pouring out, their proportions unsettlingly close to a human's. Something mud-sticky drooled down their bodies as they vaulted high and slapped flat against the ground.
If those things are Grade 2 monsters, then these two are the actual monsters.
The creatures lunged before Han Yi-hyeon and Do Geon had even taken their positions, yet all their mantis-sharp arms managed to slice was air.
Skreek. Skreek.
The pair of antennae rooted in their skulls worked busily, hunting for human presence. They scrambled to evade the human bearing down on them at a monstrous speed, but the instant they registered him, their heads were already flying off.
SKREEEEAGH!
Unlike the cry they had loosed upon arrival, this was a scream steeped in agony.
That a monster, of all things, knew how to feel pain struck him as deeply disagreeable. Han Yi-hyeon, fresh off sending the creature's head sailing, knitted his brow. Then he tipped his head to one side, and something soggy whipped past.
Spit, hurled by yet another of the monsters.