DSWG-C7

Chapter 7

At Ihyun’s cold and straightforward answer, the Guides’ expressions changed.

Baek Ihyun, who had always been the object of their pity, had suddenly shown them a form of retaliation they had never even dared imagine.

Just then, the sharp click of heels rang out from the cafeteria entrance.

The Guide wing’s chief disciplinarian—and a senior Guide known to be the Director of the Ability Administration’s right-hand woman—Jeong Yura walked straight toward Ihyun’s table with a cold expression.

“Baek Ihyun, can you really swallow your food right now? The medical room is a mess because of all those Espers you caused trouble with.”

At Jeong Yura’s arrival, the Guides who had gathered around Ihyun became frightened and lowered their heads.

Ihyun, however, clicked his tongue and stared directly at her.

“Trouble? I heard it was a warning sign of a rampage caused by overwork. Besides, what kind of power do I have to knock out an Esper?”

He smiled innocently.

“Right, senior?”

Jeong Yura’s eyebrow twitched.

“Hah! They said you took pills trying to die. Is this one of the side effects?”

“I guess so. After nearly dying, I started wondering why I’d lived like such an idiot.”

“What? What did you just say……?”

Jeong Yura stared at him as though she couldn’t believe her ears.

The old Ihyun would have been unable to make eye contact and would have mumbled in a tiny voice.

She had never seen him raise his eyes like this and answer back so clearly, with such obvious disdain.

Overwhelmed by Ihyun’s unexpected force of character, Yura missed her chance to respond and simply opened and closed her mouth like a fish.

“You…… You’ve really gone completely insane. Fine. Go ahead. Let’s see what happens.”

“Sure. Go ahead.”

The sheer annoyance in Ihyun’s voice made Yura’s face flush red with anger.

She eventually turned away, stomping off.

The cafeteria fell into a silence as though someone had poured cold water over it.

Jeong Yura, practically the absolute authority of the Guide wing, had been unable to properly retort before retreating.

The Guides stared in shock between Yura’s retreating back and Ihyun, who casually picked up his spoon again.

“……”

Ihyun quietly chewed his food.

But underneath the table, his left hand had been trembling uncontrollably for some time.

That was the price of forcibly twisting the circuits of three A-rank Espers throughout the morning.

The soul of an S-rank Esper was still razor-sharp.

But the Baek Ihyun body that had to carry out his commands was as fragile as a thin glass cup.

Damn. All that, and this is what I get? This body is like a fucking sunfish.

Ihyun gripped his thigh tightly to hide the trembling.

Even as the sensation in his fingertips began to go numb, he forced himself to swallow his soup without showing the slightest weakness in front of all the eyes watching him.

“He’s really changed. Did you see Senior Jeong Yura’s face?”

“Yeah. Serves her right. It felt like ten years of indigestion finally went away.”

“But why did the Espers get carried out? I kind of want to learn how to do that.”

“……Me too. I got assigned a bastard like Ko Cheolsu today. He kept rubbing my thigh during Guiding. I was so pissed I thought I was going to die.”

“Don’t even get me started. My assigned Esper is practically at the level of a jealous husband. He even monitors me because he’s afraid I might defect to the rebels.”

“……Still…… I heard the rebels treat Guides incredibly well.”

Using the nearby whispers as background noise for his meal, Ihyun noticed the voices around him gradually getting quieter.

Then he heard the word “rebels.”

His eyebrow twitched.

“That’s right. Did you see the post on UnderArk? Apparently, on the rebel side, if an Esper even touches a Guide’s finger improperly, they’re immediately disciplined. Guiding is strictly contractual instead of forced, too. It’s completely different from here.”

Ihyun couldn’t help snorting.

“Hey. Are you guys naive, or just stupid?”

The Guides fell silent.

“What are rebels? They’re an armed organization, aren’t they? You really think a bunch of people with no national system are going to treat Guides well?”

He gave them a cold look.

“They’ll be worse than this, if anything. Don’t let yourselves get fooled by their sweet talk.”

The Guides hesitated at Ihyun’s firm response.

But Minji bit her lip and quietly argued back.

“Even so…… It still seems like it would be better than here. There aren’t enough Guides, but instead of treating us better, they don’t even treat us like people.”

Apparently, the shortage of Guides had always been a chronic problem within the Ability Administration.

Even in Seunghyun’s memories, there had only been three or four Guides for every ten Espers.

A grotesquely imbalanced system where a single Guide had to handle three or four Espers.

The exhaustion created by those murderous schedules, along with the scars left by abuse, hung visibly over the cafeteria in the tired expressions of the Guides.

“They’re tightening their grip on us because we’re in short supply.”

“So we can’t run away.”

Minji raised a hand and fiddled with the black band around her neck.

It was a choker with an unpleasant metallic sheen that didn’t exist in Seunghyun’s memories.

It resembled the vital checker used to detect an Esper’s rampage state, but it was much thinner and more sophisticated.

“What is that?”

Ihyun frowned.

The Guides around them all flinched at once.

Minji gave a self-deprecating smile and touched the clasp of the choker.

“You don’t remember this either?”

“This was distributed to every Guide last year after the law was amended. The Ability Administration calls it a safety-management device for Guides.”

Her smile faded.

“But it’s basically a tracking device.”

“A tracking device?”

“Yeah. If we move beyond a certain distance from the Ability Administration or head somewhere we’re not authorized to go, the control room is immediately alerted.”

Her fingers tightened around the choker.

“As more Guides started defecting to the rebels, they decided to put an actual leash around our necks.”

“At least the Esper vital checkers have a function that warns of rampages.”

“This thing is just…… a strap to keep us from running away.”

Minji’s voice trembled.

To Ihyun, the black choker looked almost like a living snake strangling the Guides’ necks.

If you’re short on Guides, shouldn’t you improve their treatment so they’ll want to stay?

Instead, you’re putting leashes on them like animals?

Ihyun instinctively touched his own neck.

……Nothing.

Right. This body didn’t have one.

His fingertips found nothing but smooth skin.

When Ihyun’s hand stopped, the eyes of all the Guides gathered around him immediately shifted toward his pale, slender neck.

Even Minji, who had been looking at him with curiosity moments ago, now had a coldness in her eyes.

Someone nearby gave a derisive laugh.

“Oh, right. Baek Ihyun doesn’t wear one, does he? I guess the Director made a special exception for him?”

“Illegitimate son or mistress, either way, it means he’s got some kind of special privilege.”

“We’re wearing leashes like dogs and working ourselves to death with a time bomb around our necks, while he gets to live comfortably without one. What bullshit.”

Ihyun frowned and muttered under his breath.

“Illegitimate son, mistress……”

“They really managed to mix every filthy rumor together.”

A Guide sitting beside him deliberately added, loud enough for Ihyun to hear.

“Who knows? They keep everything quiet upstairs. Maybe he’s being kept alive because he’s blood-related to the Director. Or maybe the rumors are true and the Director is protecting his favorite.”

“How would we know?”

“Either way, it must be nice for some people to live comfortably without a leash.”

The lively atmosphere from earlier instantly turned into mockery.

Only now did Ihyun understand why Baek Ihyun had been so completely isolated.

When the Espers treated him like an easy toy, the other Guides saw him as either a privileged elite or a fraud.

Baek Seungho, you calculating bastard.

You completely isolated Baek Ihyun until he couldn’t even breathe.

The Guides began picking up their trays and leaving one by one.

Even Minji lowered her head and hurried away.

Left alone at the table, Ihyun rubbed the back of his neck again.

The fact that the Ability Administration and Allied Nations he had once tried to protect had become this was painful enough.

But the worst part was realizing that they had become so terrible that Guides were now beginning to dream of the enemy camp as a paradise.

If Han Taeyoon is really their leader……

His personality may have been absolute garbage, but at least he could never stand by and watch someone bully the weak.

No matter how much Taeyoon had changed over the past five years, Ihyun knew his true nature.

There was no way Han Taeyoon would tolerate people sexually harassing Guides.

If what the Guides had said was true, then Han Taeyoon had built a system on the ruins of the world he’d destroyed that was actually far more reasonable than the Ability Administration.

A strange tightness developed in Ihyun’s chest.

Over the anger he felt toward Han Taeyoon, a tiny seed of hope began to grow.

Maybe—

Han Taeyoon was still the person Ihyun remembered.

There was still some time before the afternoon Guiding sessions.

Ihyun locked the waiting-room door and slumped into the chair at his desk.

The trembling that had begun around lunchtime had now spread through his entire arm.

“Haa…… What the hell is wrong with this body?”

Ihyun irritably opened his inventory, pulled out a strawberry-flavored mana supplement, and drank every last drop.

A faint warmth began spreading through his body, which had been cold as ice.

As sensation slowly returned to his trembling fingertips, Ihyun finally pulled out the terminal.