DSWG-C4

Chapter 4

The nanny wiped away the tears gathered around her eyes and hurried toward the kitchen.

A short while later, Ihyun sat before a steaming meal and immediately picked up his spoon as though he’d been waiting for it.

“Our young master… It makes me so happy to see you eating this well.”

“Auntie! Give me another bowl!”

Seeing the bowl emptied in an instant, the nanny hurriedly filled it again, looking deeply moved.

“Of course, of course. You need to eat properly so you can regain your strength.”

Sitting at the table, Ihyun literally shoveled down the rice and side dishes the nanny had prepared.

As he practically inhaled his meal, Ihyun thought to himself:

If I’m going to deal with the bastards who sent those messages and go after Han Taeyoon with this fragile Guide body, I need to put something in my stomach and build up my stamina first.

He might not have the muscles he’d possessed as an Esper anymore, but surely he could at least build up his presence.

After finishing his meal, Ihyun left the penthouse.

A luxurious sedan, arranged by his personal chauffeur, was waiting at the main entrance of the building.

Even when Ihyun approached, the chauffeur didn’t spare him a single glance and simply opened the rear door.

Just like the physician, his attitude made it blatantly clear that he intended to do nothing beyond the bare minimum of his duties.

Ihyun casually ignored the chauffeur’s disregard and sank deep into the back seat.

A low chuckle escaped him.

I may not be treated like a person, but damn, I do live well.

The car glided smoothly down the road without the slightest bump, befitting its eye-watering price tag.

The ride was exceptionally comfortable, but the car was steeped in an uncomfortable silence, with not even the radio turned on.

Breaking through that heavy silence, the car eventually came to a stop in front of the Ability User Administration.

The Ability Administration Ihyun was seeing for the first time in five years had changed beyond recognition.

If the Ability Administration of the past had been a sturdy, rugged fortress built with practicality in mind, the current one was so extravagantly bizarre that it was almost overwhelming.

The cold sheen of the building, completely covered in sleek reinforced glass and chrome, was blinding.

Looking at the unfamiliar skyscraper with none of the traces he remembered, Ihyun felt a wave of alienation wash over him.

That crazy bastard Han Taeyoon has already wrecked half the world, and apparently they still found the time to spend an obscene amount of money making the remaining half look like this.

Ihyun couldn’t suppress a derisive laugh.

There wasn’t a trace of the desperation of the battlefield or fear of the apocalypse anywhere in those gleaming glass walls.

The realization that the world he’d wanted to protect badly enough to detonate his Core had been swallowed up by this kind of superficial extravagance made his stomach twist.

The moment he opened the car door and stepped out amid the heavily guarded surroundings, the eyes of the guards and passersby in the lobby immediately turned toward him.

Pity.

Contempt.

And blatant mockery.

Ihyun met all those gazes head-on, a cold smile curling at the corner of his lips.

Baek Ihyun, I have a rough idea of how you’ve been treated all this time.

“Hey, Baek Ihyun! Heard you took pills trying to kill yourself. Can’t believe you managed to survive and crawl back out!”

Several large men spotted Ihyun in the middle of the lobby and approached him with mocking laughter.

They looked far more vicious than the types who used to fawn over Seunghyun and constantly watch their behavior around him.

“Hey, what kind of suicide stunt was that, Guide?”

For news of his suicide attempt to have spread this widely overnight, someone must have gone out of their way to spread the story.

Ihyun let out a quiet sigh.

One of the men tapped him on the shoulder and blocked his path.

Because of their height difference, the man’s chin was unusually close to Ihyun’s face.

Back then, I could’ve sent this bastard flying with one finger.

“Move. Save your barking for when you’re at home.”

The Esper who had been mocking Ihyun hadn’t expected that response.

His face immediately twisted.

“You little shit…… You really want to die?”

Guiding, mana—it’s all a matter of how you use it.

The man’s hand reached out to grab Ihyun by the collar.

His collar was seized, and his body was yanked off the ground.

Ihyun coldly sneered and grabbed the man’s wrist.

Then he recalled the mana circuits he’d experienced thousands of times before dying—the circuits that had throbbed and burned as his Core approached the point of rampage.

Without hesitation, he honed his Guide waves into needles and drove them into the most sensitive points of the man’s mana circuits.

Guiding was supposed to suppress an Esper’s rampaging power.

But Ihyun reversed the process, stabbing directly into the circuits instead.

The man screamed as though he’d been electrocuted.

“Argh! W-What the hell is this?!”

The man recoiled in shock and released him.

Another man beside him grabbed Ihyun by the shoulder.

“Hey, what the hell did you do to him?!”

As though he’d been waiting for it, Ihyun drove the same Guiding needles into him.

For an Esper, a Guide’s energy was normally supposed to feel sweet and soothing.

But what Ihyun forced into him felt more like the agony of having impurities forcibly injected into his body.

As the man staggered backward, Ihyun didn’t hesitate.

He swung the toe of his dress shoe straight into the man’s shin.

Crack!

“Argh!”

Leaving the screaming men behind, Ihyun calmly brushed off his clothes and walked away.

In truth, kicking an Esper’s solid leg with this fragile Guide body had hurt his own foot more.

But there were too many eyes watching, so he gritted his teeth and continued walking as though nothing had happened.

Nothing’s changed.

The strong still trample the weak, and Espers are still arrogant.

Ihyun grumbled inwardly.

The newly built Ability Administration was so complicated inside that he had absolutely no idea where anything was.

Since everyone’s attention was already on him, Ihyun simply walked straight ahead as though he knew exactly where he was going.

Once he was reasonably sure he’d gotten out of those men’s line of sight, he stopped an employee carrying a stack of documents.

“Excuse me, where’s the Guide wing?”

The employee stopped at the sudden question and looked at Ihyun.

Then his eyes widened as though he’d recognized his face.

“Oh, aren’t you Guide Baek Ihyun? Are you feeling okay? The Guide wing is down the corridor to the left. Keep going and you’ll reach Building B.”

Seeing the employee’s concerned expression as he gave directions, Ihyun gave a small nod.

Apparently, not everyone in the Ability Administration hated this body.

“Thank you.”

Following the directions, Ihyun strode toward the new Building B.

Even though he was an illegitimate child, he was still the Director’s blood relative and an S-rank Guide.

If it was the Guide wing, he was certain he’d have access to the Ability Administration’s internal network.

Baek Ihyun, I don’t know how much of a pushover you were before…

But things are going to be different starting today.

As Ihyun walked toward the Guide wing, a familiar face appeared across an enormous electronic billboard that nearly swallowed the entire lobby wall.

Ihyun approached the screen as though hypnotized.

Countless people passed behind him, but Ihyun’s world stopped as his gaze locked onto the eyes of Taeyoon displayed on the billboard.

He remembered the day that photograph had been taken with startling clarity.

It was the day the new recruits graduated from the ability-user training center and officially entered the Ability Administration.

They had hastily erected a tent in one corner of the training building and called in a photographer to take ID photos for every new recruit.

The Espers, excited at finally becoming official agents, lined up after training while still reeking of sweat.

Nobody cared that the makeshift photo studio was shabby, with a poorly secured backdrop fluttering and wrinkling behind them.

Seunghyun, who had been supervising the recruits, had nearly laughed himself sick when he saw Han Taeyoon’s result.

“Hey, did you seriously turn an ID photo into a fucking magazine shoot?”

Everyone else looked like criminals after being drenched in sweat.

But even under those terrible lights, Taeyoon’s photograph looked unreal, like a masterpiece.

Instead of answering, Taeyoon had simply turned his head and looked at Seunghyun.

Those eyes had been far more vivid and chilling than they were in the photograph.

But now, across that same handsome face displayed before Ihyun, a thick, blood-red message had been brutally stamped:

[WANTED / SHOOT ON SIGHT]

Even though the photograph was from seven or eight years ago, that gaze somehow felt as though it were piercing straight through him now.

Ihyun stared at Taeyoon through the cold glass wall.

Part of him wanted to reach out and erase those red words.

Another part wanted to grab Taeyoon by the collar and demand to know exactly why the hell he’d turned the world into this.

“…Did you get pissed off because I teased you about taking a magazine shoot instead of an ID photo, you crazy bastard?”

Ihyun’s low murmur scattered beneath the billboard.

After being trapped in Taeyoon’s gaze for a long while, Ihyun finally turned and headed toward the Guide wing.

The cold light from the billboard stretched a long shadow across his shoulders.

After asking the security officers for directions several times, Ihyun eventually made his way to the private waiting room on the second floor of the Guide wing.

“Where did you say Room 208 was?”

The security officer lazily pointed toward the end of the corridor with one finger.

A mocking gaze stabbed into Ihyun’s back, as though he couldn’t even remember his own room number after nearly dying.

But Ihyun ignored it.

Fortunately, thanks to his status as the Director’s illegitimate son, he had been assigned an independent space.

They might bully him, but at least he had his own room.

Ihyun locked the waiting-room door and stepped inside.

Then he stopped.

The room was spotless, almost obsessively clean, without a single speck of dust.

And at the center, sitting on the chair at the desk, was a white rabbit character cushion that looked completely out of place in the room.

“……”

Ihyun swallowed a hollow laugh and sank into the chair.

The soft, fluffy texture of the cushion against his back felt unfamiliar.

From the strawberry-flavored mana supplements in his inventory to this cushion—

Everything about Baek Ihyun was getting stranger by the minute.