The Protagonist's Unique Ability
"......"
Geon-woo froze the moment he heard those words. His mind went blank for a second, a faint scraping sound echoing deep in his ears. How the hell?Why me? How can he be so sure? Questions bubbled up, but none led to answers. Of course not. From the start, it wasn't thinking for answers—it was thinking to escape.
Scenes flashed through Geon-woo's head in no particular order. The tiniest expressions. The shortest conversations. And wedged between them, futures that might not even exist. Sung-hoon telling everyone. The classroom buzzing. Park Ha-yoon hearing it. Everyone looking at him with eyes full of contempt.
No way.
That can't happen.
He denied it, but his brain kept serving up the worst possible endings. That's how humans are wired. We invent disasters that haven't happened yet to protect ourselves. It might've worked back when we lived in forests. When you weren't sure if that shadow was a tiger, running first meant survival. That imagination boosted our primitive odds.
But in modern society, where real dangers are mostly gone? The answer was unfolding right here in Lee Geon-woo.
"Looks like I hit the nail on the head?"
Kang Sung-hoon's voice pierced again. In that instant, Geon-woo didn't hear it as words—as pressure. Sung-hoon was studying him closely, certainty gleaming in his eyes.
"It was always off. The timing was too perfect."
Sung-hoon had been mulling it over for a while now. Ever since Park Ha-yoon pulled out that cutter on the rooftop. He'd kept wondering: How do rumors like that spread so fast?
He laid it out calmly, piecing facts together like puzzle bits. But Geon-woo's ears weren't taking it in. He wasn't in listening mode anymore, let alone processing. His body was in the bathroom, damp hands claiming he'd just washed them. But his mind? It was somewhere else entirely.
A narrow tunnel. Walls closing in, suffocating. Pitch-black void on all sides. And far ahead—a tiny speck of light. A future inside it. Unreachable, but Geon-woo slammed his head right into it. His brain's imagined nightmare forcibly reshaped into an inevitable reality.
Sung-hoon leaving the bathroom. Opening his mouth in the hall. Everyone listening, staring at him.
Sung-hoon tells.
It spreads.
I'm done.
Not possibilities—events that had already happened. Geon-woo didn't even question how weird he was being. What his mind was building wasn't speculation; it was fact. Even actions the usual Sung-hoon wouldn't take? In this moment, he was recast as the guy who'd obviously do it.
"So why spread that rumor? I just can't wrap my head around it."
Sung-hoon's words kept coming. Geon-woo's pupils flickered—just a twitch. Not a response; a reflex. Inside, something else was churning. Anxiety. Jitters. Unexplained pressure. Emotions tangled without order, collapsing his thought process entirely. Like uncompiled code. Thousands of branches spawning hundreds of bugs.
Caught in one go.
Over.
He already knows.
Certainty formed that way. Not from evidence—from emotional loops.
Geon-woo's fingers clenched. Just once. If there was one way to break this—anything to shut that mouth...!
His thoughts accelerated. No real answers possible. Half-panic—what good ideas come then? But Geon-woo latched onto a fragment.
Hit him. Punch him. He'll shut up.
Ridiculous logic. He convinced himself it was right. No thought of fallout—his body prepped for fight naturally. And the second his fist balled—
"I wouldn't recommend violence."
Sung-hoon's voice cut in. Geon-woo's body halted, a split-second freeze. Timing like he'd read the thought already. And just like that, the momentum shattered.
Is this guy insane? Sung-hoon wondered quietly. He couldn't see the guy in front of him as sane.
Why do all the crazies latch onto me...?
He sighed inwardly. Why do these types always find the one normal guy? Still, his eyes never left Geon-woo. Facial tics, breathing rhythm, foot placement—every detail logged in his brain. It was an art form. Like a seasoned craftsman, Sung-hoon absorbed the data whole.
This occupational hazard won't quit.
Watching the still Geon-woo, Sung-hoon sank into thought himself.
When did it start? This habit of observing people.
-"Bored? Wanna play with the doc? Face-reading game!"
Yeah. That was the beginning. The doctor's pitying offer to the lonely kid in the hospital.
After that, Kang Sung-hoon started scrutinizing expressions. During face-matching games, he realized something: People make faces before they speak. And those faces? Way more honest than words.
Sung-hoon had seen tons of people since he was little. Dozens a day, sometimes over a hundred faces passing by. At first, it was simple.
Smiling means okay.
Slow speech means tense.
Hospitals teemed with raw emotions—and their facial signatures. Sung-hoon studied them daily, guessing solo.
-Is that sadness?
-Whoa, that's pure joy.
-Looks gloomy. Something up?
He passed time like that. Before long, a pattern emerged.
-People with similar feelings have similar faces, huh?
He'd found the common thread. A truth invisible in normal spots. Hospitals were special—visitors brutally honest with their feelings. Sung-hoon mapped expression patterns. Like deep learning on thousands of photos, he extracted denominators. It became statistics. To normals, it was psychology.
Time flowed.
-"That's a sad face!"
Sung-hoon never missed in the game anymore. What face for what situation. Where eyes flick on certain words. When fingers stiffen or relax. Every pattern spectrum etched in his mind.
For a normal kid? Useless trivia. But—
"Hey kid. Where's your mom?"
"Doc said she went far away..."
"Aigoo! Sorry, kiddo."
The old man bolted after that. Sung-hoon watched intently.
-Panicked. Yeah, this works best.
He thought quietly. Sung-hoon was different from other kids. While they played normally, he was alone in the hospital, faces his only world. Soon, he voiced inner thoughts without realizing.
Inevitable. After dissecting people that much. That's why he could say things like this now. He had zero interest in chatting with grannies like that.
He'd learned to steer behavior. A sad, dangerous skill for a child.
That's exactly the vibe this guy's giving. I thought quietly.
This Lee Geon-woo? A control freak who gets off on manipulating people. Speech patterns. Gestures. Foot position. Breath rate. Even the faint forehead crease. All data streamed in. No need to process—conclusion preset.
I've seen tens of thousands. Spotting matches? Easy.
Judgment instant: Geon-woo wasn't rational right now.
Others would've panicked here. But I'd handled this crap plenty.
I turned on the sink. Water rushed, but no reaction from him.
"In that case."
I splashed him—kid-game style.
"Whoa! Pfft!"
Geon-woo snapped back, flailing like a drowned rat. I knew he'd escaped the tunnel.
Staring at his dazed face, I murmured low.
"Better now?"