Left Behind in the Gate
The moment the door opened, someone came to stand beside Do Geon.
"Seoul is simply beautiful at this hour, don't you think?"
"I'm here on business."
Do Geon ignored the woman's pleasantry entirely.
Showing not a trace of displeasure, she smiled brightly and settled onto the sofa.
"So, when do you plan to hand over your position? How much longer do you intend to occupy that trifling Director's chair at the Guide Center?"
"Show me the UK dispatch documents for unregistered Esper Kim Dong-soo."
"Do Geon."
"Yes, Managing Director."
"My son."
"...Yes, Mother."
Only then did Do Yoon-ah — the non-awakened executive in charge of the headquarters, and Do Geon's birth mother — finally give a nod.
Though she was knocking on fifty's door, Do Yoon-ah looked barely into her early forties as she beckoned toward the sofa.
"Sit, dear."
Do Geon exhaled a sigh and took a seat. As if she had been waiting for exactly that, the secretary slipped in, set down a modest service of tea and refreshments, and withdrew.
"Quite a lot happened while I was away, it seems."
"..."
"An 89% matching rate, I hear?"
It was a sentence with no subject, but Do Geon nodded. "Yes."
"And Han Yi-hyeon's attitude? How does he behave?"
"...Positive. It's markedly different from how he treated his previous Guides."
"So the articles were true."
Do Yoon-ah nodded away, again and again.
At the sight of it, Do Geon barely suppressed the hollow laugh rising in his chest. Even in the middle of her trip abroad, she would have been the first person to hear every piece of news out of South Korea — and now she insisted on verifying each detail, one by one. Of course she did.
Even so, Do Geon knew all too well that he had inherited that exact disposition from her, so he answered without protest.
Before his patience could scrape bottom, Do Yoon-ah — having confirmed every last detail to her satisfaction — finally nodded.
"Now, then. Tell me."
"I need the UK dispatch records for unregistered S-rank Esper Kim Dong-soo."
"Why?"
"Han Yi-hyeon has been dispatched to the UK. For a coincidence, there is far too much about it that sits poorly with me. And—"
"Geon. We don't move on 'feelings.' We move on evidence we can see."
"..."
"You know that better than anyone."
"...You already know, don't you."
Do Geon had seen through it: his mother had no intention of handing anything over.
Instead of answering, Do Yoon-ah took a sip of her tea.
Do Geon knew perfectly well that he was behaving with an anxiety uncharacteristic of him. But the ominous feeling refused to lift.
The moment the thought struck him that he might have to go to the UK himself, Do Geon had gone straight to Do Yoon-ah — who had only just returned from her own trip — without a second's deliberation. He had never once sought her out on his own initiative since taking the Director's seat; it was the first time in a full four years.
And now he had realized: she did not intend to give him the information.
Do Geon's lips had just parted—
"Director!"
The door burst open and a pale-faced Kim Yu-ra rushed in.
Do Geon caught the wrongness of it at once and rose from his seat. In the same breath, Kim Yu-ra shouted:
"Guide Baek Yeo-eul has been left behind alone inside a Gate!"
Whshhhhh. The wind came blowing in.
Her loosened hair thrashed wildly with the gale, slapping against her face again and again. Baek Yeo-eul blinked, but did nothing more — she simply stood there.
To be precise, she couldn't even muster the thought of tidying it.
Baek Yeo-eul abruptly shut her eyes. Then, silently counting backward from ten — slower than slow — she opened them again.
She picked apart the scene before her eyes, piece by piece. A couple of half-collapsed houses. A desolate wind. Ash drifting through the air. The artificial turf spread across the ground and the trees planted at tidy intervals were so withered that the slightest touch might crumble them to dust.
Not a single strand of the bodyguards who had been packed tight around her mere moments ago remained in sight. Ah — let me amend that. Some of those bodyguards had been bald, after all. In any case, to rephrase: there wasn't so much as the 'B' of 'bodyguard' to be seen.
"...Ah."
From between the lips of Baek Yeo-eul — who had been raking her surroundings with such ferocity it seemed she meant to tear apart the very air hanging in the void — a shallow groan of realization spilled out.
"So it's real..."
The thing I wanted to believe was a dream is reality.
Baek Yeo-eul murmured it flatly and nodded along.
That's how it is, then. It's real. I wasn't dreaming.
"Right. I really did get left behind inside a Gate."
It's reality.
The moment her mechanically bobbing head stopped dead, her deadpan face hardened in a flash.
"Screwed."
Baek Yeo-eul combed back through her memory, trying to piece together exactly how she had ended up here.
It had been the height of the battle. She had quietly held her breath, eyes fixed on the battle feed projected in hologram.
The moment Han Yi-hyeon drew near, the Gate had rippled and begun disgorging monsters as if vomiting them up. The hologram analyzed the creatures and stamped them with the words Grade 2, along with a notice reading Caution.
Baek Yeo-eul had swept the text aside with an irritated hand and focused on the screen.
Han Yi-hyeon, apparently braced for a prolonged fight, was moving without drawing on his abilities to their fullest. Time drained away without mercy, and then the thirty-minute mark arrived.
The Gate that had been spewing out monsters vanished without warning.
Baek Yeo-eul had been gritting her teeth against a headache that only deepened by the second. With a voice murmuring who-knew-what in an unidentifiable language ringing through her skull, the pain was twice as bad.
When the Gate disappeared, people began to panic, but Baek Yeo-eul was too busy gasping against the pain to register what was happening.
Then she felt a chill crawl up her spine and lifted her head—
"...Huh?"
In the space of a single blink, something formless reached out from within the fissure of the Gate — which had crept right up against the barrier — and snatched Baek Yeo-eul away.
And that was how she had ended up here.
First, rest. Just for a bit.
Baek Yeo-eul, who had been staring blankly around, plopped down where she stood. The headache had dulled to a faint throb, but it still lingered.
Besides, her previous experience inside a Gate had taught her that the dizziness ran worst right after entry, so she took slow, deep breaths.
If there was one mercy, it was that Baek Yeo-eul prized her own safety and her own life above nearly everything else.
Looking down at the emergency survival kit tucked in her arms, she couldn't help but laugh hollowly. Among a crowd of bodyguards numbering a good hundred by her estimate, she had accepted the kit on a stray just-in-case whim and had been carrying it ever since — and that just-in-case had actually become reality.
First things first: she recited the rules for being stranded alone in a Gate, one by one, in her head.
Rule one: think calmly and get the situation straight.
'Right. Stay calm. Think it through.'
"...Like that's gonna happen!"
Baek Yeo-eul shrieked at the top of her lungs.
Her skull rang like a struck bell; she screwed her eyes shut and hauled in a rough breath.
Stranded. Alone.
A C-rank Guide, inside a Grade 2 Gate — one that hadn't even passed its first stage, no less.
There was no telling whether a monster lurked somewhere in this place.
When her thoughts reached that point, Baek Yeo-eul finally registered just how badly she had been rattled. She had forgotten the Gate was still in its first stage entirely — sunk down on the spot, busying herself with nothing more than settling her dizziness.
Cradling the emergency survival kit as though it were her life itself, Baek Yeo-eul cautiously slipped into the parking lot of one of the ruined houses.
She checked the contents and confirmed that the kit was little different from the Korean standard issue.
Her palm stung — perhaps she had been injured when the Gate snatched her — but she was in no state to treat it.
'They will come to rescue me. Definitely.'
Honestly, if an ordinary C-rank Guide were left alone in a Grade 2 Gate, she would be written off as dead on the spot, the rescue itself dismissed as a waste of manpower, and not a finger would be lifted.
For the sake of the eyes watching, they would put on a token show of searching. That would be the extent of it.
'But I'm not an ordinary C-rank Guide.'
She was the Guide who had tested at an 89% matching rate with Han Yi-hyeon — the only Guide alive who could guide him.
'And I'm here on an official dispatch.'
A dispatch is a transaction between nations.
A Guide of the Republic of Korea had gone out on dispatch and been left stranded alone — the UK would pour in every scrap of manpower it had to get her back.
If she died, they would at least come to collect the body.
Either way, all Baek Yeo-eul had to do now was hold out until the rescue team arrived.
The rations in the survival kit were a week's worth — enough to stretch to two weeks at the very most. Of course, the far likelier outcome was that Baek Yeo-eul would cross paths with a monster before the food ran out and die without managing even one proper act of resistance.
"Ha..."
Baek Yeo-eul scrubbed at her dry face with both hands, again and again, at the sheer absurdity of her situation.
"Get a grip."
Han Yi-hyeon would come to rescue her. Definitely.
You believe that?
No sooner had she steeled her heart than something asked back from somewhere deep inside it.
"I do."
Really? I'm nothing but a C-rank Guide. What if Yi-hyeon meets a Guide in the UK who suits him better than I do — a higher-ranked one, at that? Honestly, how embarrassing must it be for him too. An S-rank Esper, and his partner is nothing but a measly C-rank Guide.
"...No. That's not it."
"Han Yi-hyeon treats me well, and..."
Well, sure — that's only because I'm the only Guide who matches him. If it weren't for that, would he ever be gentle with someone like me? No — would he even have bothered to spare me a word?
She had no answer to give.
After all, before meeting Han Yi-hyeon in the matching room, Baek Yeo-eul had never once crossed paths with him. At most, she had glimpsed him in passing from far away, or seen him through the media.
Whenever she caught sight of the S-rank Espers who occasionally appeared, she had always thought of them as people with no place whatsoever in her life.
But the feelings Baek Yeo-eul had worked so hard to smother, bury, and plug her ears against finally clawed their way back up, feeding the planted anxiety until it grew fat and lush. And in the moment that anxiety — until now no more than a tiny seed — put out its first sprout—
BOOM!
At the thunderous crash from somewhere not far off, Baek Yeo-eul snapped wide awake.
Her clenched fists and her back were already drenched in cold sweat, and a fair stretch of time had slipped past without her noticing. Suppressing every trace of her presence, Baek Yeo-eul carefully poked her head out past the garage door.
"......!"
A monster was prowling the ruins.