One Condition
Unlike Guides, Espers saw their ranks rise often enough. Of course, that mostly happened at the lower tiers. But those who had watched Han Yi-hyeon grow up, seeing his power sharpen year after year, had been nursing a quiet hope: Could he...?
Han Yi-hyeon was only twenty-three. Young still, which meant he had that much further left to grow. And there was one more person whose name kept coming up alongside his as a strong candidate for promotion to SS-rank.
"Han Yi-hyeon, sure—but what about the Director? Couldn't he have a shot too? He's only twenty-seven, after all."
"And what possibility would that be."
"What do you mean, what possibility? Obviously, he'd rise to SS-rank... he'd..."
The B-rank Esper's voice, mid-reply to that counterquestion, dwindled away to nothing. The coworker he'd been chatting with bowed deep at the waist, face gone chalk-white.
"D-D-Director, sir!"
Hic. The Esper who had answered Do Geon's counterquestion began to hiccup.
"Hic—h-hello, hic—sir!"
The instant they met that cold gaze, a chill swept over them so fierce it felt like a cutting wind—though Do Geon hadn't so much as brushed his ability.
"You haven't forgotten that even on standby, one is not to let one's guard down... have you."
If there was one small mercy, it was that Do Geon had merely called out their conduct instead of turning them into fish flopping on a cutting board.
"We apologize, sir!"
The gap between B-rank and S-rank was plain enough, but not so vast that a B-rank needed to grovel. It was simply that Do Geon was both an S-rank Esper and the Director of the Guide Protection Center—which was to say, a man one bowed to as a matter of course.
"See that it's corrected."
"We'll bear it in mind, sir!"
The men at rigid attention scurried off to new posts. Do Geon turned his head toward a certain colt running wild.
'So he's been getting Guided, has he.'
Do Geon had been listening since before the Espers even struck up their small talk.
Han Yi-hyeon was certainly moving with reckless haste. Whether the monsters lunged at him or not, he was too busy throwing punches to care. Watching him already put down more than half of the five, Do Geon's brow creased almost imperceptibly.
A Guide could perform Guiding only while fully conscious. For that reason, Espers guarded their Guides with their lives, and for exceptional circumstances, Guides too were drilled through brutal survival training of their own.
Han Yi-hyeon's current Guide lay in a coma, so the guess that he'd received Guiding was flat wrong. And yet even to Do Geon's eye, the man's condition was better than usual.
Two explanations came to mind.
First: he had been hiding even more of his strength than anyone knew.
Second: he had received Guiding from another Guide.
Han Yi-hyeon would never choose the second, so the answer settled naturally on the first.
Perhaps even that display was still him holding back. Do Geon had heard himself called a monster more times than he could count—but Han Yi-hyeon was something beyond that.
KA-BOOM!
With a bone-jarring thud, a monster went down. All that remained now was a single one turning tail at the sight of Han Yi-hyeon.
"Huh? What's with him?"
A flustered voice rang out.
"Wh-what the—?"
Around Han Yi-hyeon—whom they'd assumed was merely catching his breath—a black haze was smoldering slowly to life.
Do Geon shouted.
"...All personnel, evacuate!"
A rampage.
"I won't do it."
That was the verdict Baek Yeo-eul delivered at the end of a long silence. One mountain after another, apparently. The worry Seo Joo-hwan had hoped was unfounded had just become fact: Baek Yeo-eul refused to become Han Yi-hyeon's Guide. It was already the third refusal, and he still couldn't believe it. No—he couldn't accept it.
"Why?"
Seo Joo-hwan genuinely wanted to know her reason.
"Guide Baek Yeo-eul, do you know what kind of power comes with being an S-rank Esper's Guide?"
Seo Joo-hwan reeled off the list.
"We'll set you up in a top-tier penthouse, in a completely different league from wherever you're living now."
"In exchange, I'd be living with Esper Han Yi-hyeon."
"You'd gain social standing, too."
"Which would be Han Yi-hyeon's standing, not mine."
"And we'd pay you a lot."
"In other words, the price of my cheap little life."
The duel between the spear that pierced everything and the shield that blocked everything was plain as day from the outset. He had barely managed to drag the selling points out one by one, but Baek Yeo-eul was no easy mark.
"...You wouldn't have to sleep with him."
"That's for me—the Guide—to decide, not you, Department Head."
Baek Yeo-eul's face twisted. There was a hypothesis that the broader and more intimate the physical contact, the more effective the Guiding. That hypothesis was half right and half wrong: a single act of sex delivered the same effect as thirty minutes of holding hands. Put simply, it was a matter of saving time.
Which meant that, exactly as Baek Yeo-eul said, the scope of contact was for the Guide to assess, decide, and execute. It was nobody else's place to haggle over it.
"Also, I'm still a patient, if you hadn't noticed."
Baek Yeo-eul flapped her hospital gown.
"A patient who only just woke up after a week and needs a little rest, at that."
Cough, cough. Hand pressed over her mouth, Baek Yeo-eul even obliged him with a few dry coughs.
Seo Joo-hwan knew perfectly well how rude he was being at this very moment.
"You'd better hurry up and go. She looks about ready to report any minute now."
Where Baek Yeo-eul's gaze pointed was none other than the doorway, where Ha Yoon-seo—shooed out the moment Baek Yeo-eul had opened her eyes—was pacing in visible agitation. But there was a reason Seo Joo-hwan was committing such discourtesy.
"...Yi-hyeon is at risk of rampaging as we speak."
It was also why he never came down too hard on Han Yi-hyeon for refusing to wear his Watch. If the boy wore it, the thing would go beep-beep! everywhere he walked, trumpeting his rampage risk to anyone in earshot.
Han Yi-hyeon had long since entered the state where a rampage would have surprised no one. Fortunately he had never actually tipped over, but his rampage probability alone had been climbing steadily for years. The Suppressants had built up a tolerance in his system—useless no matter how many he swallowed—so he had stopped taking them altogether.
"Keep going like this, and one day he really will rampage."
Seo Joo-hwan knew Han Yi-hyeon was hiding his strength. He also knew that if the boy ever did rampage, S-rank Espers would be the only ones capable of stopping him. But no one could justify risking one S-rank to save another.
Which meant the odds of Han Yi-hyeon being put down were appallingly high. Seo Joo-hwan had stayed at his side without fail since the day eight-year-old Han Yi-hyeon entered the Center—and he wanted to prevent that ending above all else.
"Hyung, run a matching test for me with a C-rank Guide."
That was why he had granted such a preposterous request. Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined a Guide compatible with Han Yi-hyeon would turn up among the C-ranks—not the A-ranks, not the B-ranks, but the C-ranks.
In any case, to Seo Joo-hwan, Baek Yeo-eul was someone he could not afford to lose.
"Then have him get Guided by someone else. Anyone but me."
"It's not a matter of Yi-hyeon being picky about Guides.... His Guiding Rejection Syndrome is severe."
Guided by force as a child, Han Yi-hyeon had suffered a seizure and dropped into shock. He still retched and coughed up blood even now—and the fact that it had improved this much was itself saying something.
Years of research had finally concluded that his body was fully ready for Guiding, but the psychological rejection ran so deep that his body had conditioned itself to revolt in kind.
Of course, no one could guarantee Baek Yeo-eul wouldn't trigger the same rejection—but this was a situation where all they could do was push forward and trust the matching rate.
"And this part is classified."
"...I never asked to hear it."
"But you did hear it. You know what happens to people who eavesdrop on classified information, don't you?"
Baek Yeo-eul could only stare at him in disbelief. Seo Joo-hwan knew better than anyone how low and petty this tactic was. He'd never expected to end up persuading anyone this way. But pleading got him nowhere, and so did sympathy. That left exactly one option.
"Think it over carefully. Become an S-rank Esper's Guide—or rot in prison for the rest of your life."
It was a threat.
What an F-ed up life.
Baek Yeo-eul was certain that when God made her, He'd gone "Whoops—my bad!" and shoveled misfortune in by the armful.
Viewed objectively, the terms weren't bad at all. It wasn't widely known, but an S-rank Esper's Guide drew a monthly salary jaw-dropping enough to make anyone's eyes bulge.
True, it was hazard pay—the price tag on her life—but Espers placed their Guide's safety above everything else, so a Guide actually getting hurt, let alone an S-rank Esper's partner, was exceedingly rare.
Baek Yeo-eul knew that too. Cohabiting, social standing, however many zeroes on the paycheck... no, wait, that one matters. In any case—salary aside, none of the rest of it mattered.
'They get deployed into the field.'
The higher an Esper's rank, the deadlier the missions assigned. There was no such thing as sitting out field duty. And the Guide—the Esper's partner—had to follow them into every one of those fields.
'Call it once a week, give or take.'
At least four times a month, twenty-four times in half a year, forty-eight times a year.... She couldn't. Not wouldn't—couldn't.
It was only natural for Baek Yeo-eul to recoil this hard from field deployment. She thought back to her own deployment a few days before. The nauseating smoke aside, a seasick sort of dizziness had tormented her without pause.
Worse, strange unidentifiable sounds had reverberated through her skull, and Baek Yeo-eul learned firsthand, for the first time in her life, what it felt like for her organs to dance. Just remembering it was enough to send bile creeping up her throat even now.
But Baek Yeo-eul had no choice. Every last worker was precious—Guides more than anyone—so even a Guide sent to prison would end up deployed to the field. As Baek Yeo-eul saw it, the only difference between her two options was whether she'd be the inmate of a luxurious prison or the inmate of a brutal one.
"...I have one condition."
"What is it? If it's money you want, I can get you more."
Baek Yeo-eul shook her head and drew a breath.
"Take me off field deployment."
"That's...."
"That's the only additional condition I'm asking for."