“What did he say? Where’s Team Leader?”
Choi Sunwoo scampered up beside Kwon Dajung the moment he ended the call. Dajung twisted sharply away from him when Sunwoo craned his neck to look.
“Fuck off.”
Sunwoo didn’t so much as blink at the icy snap. Dajung being prickly was nothing new, and when Yoon Gyujin wasn’t around, he was usually like this anyway. There was hardly anything surprising about it anymore.
As Dajung strode ahead, Sunwoo, Moon Guk, and Song Youngju followed in that order. Beside Sunwoo, who was watching the atmosphere carefully, Guk muttered,
“Team Leader left in a car earlier.”
“Did you see whose car it was?”
“Looked like someone from the Guide Center.”
Youngju, who had been listening, went, “Huh?”
“I saw Team Leader’s replacement Guide still waiting at the site earlier. You’re saying Team Leader left by himself and just abandoned the guy there? Why?”
Whatever else could be said about Yoon Gyujin, he always took meticulous care of his fellow Guides. No matter how much of a shock it had been to slap Kwon Dajung across the face, this was definitely unlike him.
“Is he really that sick? He’s been kind of weird lately, hasn’t he?”
Sunwoo frowned.
Youngju, who had been agreeing with him, and Guk, who had only been listening in silence, clearly seemed to be thinking the same thing.
Between his uncharacteristic behavior and everything else, Gyujin really had been acting like someone with a few screws loose lately.
Sometimes he seemed almost dazed, and his condition had been visibly poor more than once. But if anyone tried to pinpoint whether he was actually sick, there was nothing obvious enough to say for certain.
Still, anyone who knew Gyujin’s personality couldn’t simply relax.
“Shouldn’t we make him go back to the hospital? What if this really is guiding dependency syndrome?”
Yoon Gyujin was enough of an idiot that even if he did have guiding dependency syndrome, he might keep quiet just so the people around him wouldn’t worry.
No.
He definitely would.
The more Sunwoo thought about it, the more convincing the possibility became, and unease flickered through his eyes.
He immediately hurried over to Dajung. With the difference in their heights, keeping up with Dajung’s stride meant he practically had to jog.
“Hey, Kwon Dajung! Did you check Team Leader’s medical records? The hospital should definitely have—”
“I already looked. Except Yoon Gyujin’s records were the only ones missing. Apparently the doctor who treated him went on some kind of extended leave too.”
Dajung’s lips twisted viciously.
He had, in fact, gone to the hospital the previous night.
Naturally, his goal had been to find Gyujin’s medical records and figure out what the hell he was hiding.
But by the time Dajung arrived, there was nothing left at the hospital.
The records were gone.
Even the doctor was gone.
It was as though someone had gotten there first and deliberately wiped everything clean.
Could that really have been a coincidence?
“This is fucking ridiculous.”
The disappearance of the evidence was evidence in itself.
Gyujin was hiding something.
It had something to do with his health.
And even now, he continued refusing to guide.
Put those three facts in order, and they all pointed toward one conclusion.
“Yoon Gyujin has guiding dependency syndrome.”
Was Gyujin the kind of person who would refuse to guide for no reason?
Absolutely not.
Even if he collapsed, he was the kind of man who would grit his teeth and carry out his guiding perfectly to the end.
Hadn’t he actually passed out while guiding Dajung?
A man who took responsibility for his duties to an almost vicious degree would never refuse guiding just because he wasn’t feeling well.
So there had to be some unavoidable reason he couldn’t bring himself to talk about.
And when Dajung added in the fact that Gyujin had collapsed while guiding, it had to be an illness.
Dajung’s heart tightened painfully.
Just imagining Gyujin suffering made it hard to breathe.
Dajung’s life had meaning only because Yoon Gyujin existed in it.
If the alternative was losing him, Dajung would rather suffer from guiding depletion for the rest of his life.
Once he reached that conclusion, he looked back at the others following him.
“None of you are getting guiding from Yoon Gyujin anymore.”
“What?”
Sunwoo stared at him in disbelief.
Youngju and Guk exchanged peculiar looks.
Maybe all of them had already realized it to some extent.
That something was wrong with Gyujin’s body.
“Hey, Kwon Dajung. You know this too, but if Team Leader quits, they’re not just going to let it go. With you and all the guiding he’s done for us, they’ll investigate—”
“Yoon Gyujin isn’t quitting, so mind your own business.”
Dajung delivered the words like an announcement and kept striding forward.
Why should he give a shit what anyone on either side thought?
Whether Gyujin could guide or not, there was no scenario in which he would leave Dajung’s side.
That was the conclusion Dajung had reached over the past five years.
There was no need to think any deeper about it.
For Gyujin, Kwon Dajung could literally throw away everything he had.
***
When Ko Hyeguk heard that Dajung was coming, he looked genuinely horrified.
Gyujin found him agonizing over how badly he wanted to avoid running into Dajung and offered a simple solution.
“Drop me off first. You go ahead without me.”
“No, I still don’t think that’s a good idea. At least until Dajung gets here, I should stay—”
“Hyeguk, I’m getting out here. Thanks for the ride.”
“Gyujin!”
Before Hyeguk could stop him, Gyujin quickly pushed open the car door.
With impeccable timing, the road ahead cleared and horns immediately blared from behind, urging Hyeguk forward.
After hesitating for quite a while, Hyeguk’s car finally began creeping away.
Without looking back, Gyujin headed toward the crowd.
Up close, the scene was far worse than it had looked from inside the car.
There were many injured people, and among them were several Guides Gyujin recognized.
The smell of burning hung thick in the air around the building, which continued spewing endless clouds of black smoke.
As Gyujin looked around, someone suddenly grabbed his shoulder.
“Gyujin! What are you doing here?”
Yoon Palsik stared at him in shock, soot smeared all over his body.
Even while looking horrified, his hands moved without hesitation as he checked Gyujin for injuries.
“You’re not hurt anywhere, right? No, seriously, why are you even here? Didn’t you say you were going to the exercise?”
“It ended earlier than scheduled, so we came back sooner. But what happened? Where did the fire start?”
“Well, that…”
Palsik stopped and swallowed a sigh.
He groaned, then scrubbed roughly at his hair.
“I don’t know either. They think it spread from the basement. At least the people who made it into the panic rooms got out safely, but apparently a lot of the rookies who didn’t know about them got badly hurt.”
Palsik dug through his pocket and pulled out a mask.
He handed it to Gyujin, but his gaze remained fixed on the burning building.
“But this looks like arson. I’m sure those lunatics did it.”
Gyujin’s hand stopped halfway through putting on the mask.
“…You mean Dawn?”
Palsik nodded.
His expression was grim.
“Who the hell else would pull shit like this?”
Ever since gates opened and Espers and Guides appeared, the world had changed faster than ever before.
Some people adapted quickly to the upheaval.
Others did not.
The divide was especially severe when it came to accepting Espers and their abilities.
Some worshiped Espers as heroes.
Others treated them like monsters.
Those two opposing views of the same reality gave rise to an endless series of complicated conflicts.
Anti-Esper, pro-Esper, anti-Guide, pro-Guide—the names and categories varied, but countless groups driven by hatred and disgust appeared and disappeared over time.
It was an age of chaos.
And Dawn had emerged from that chaos.
There was one incident behind Dawn’s rise to notoriety and its transformation into a genuine threat.
The tragedy in Sector 163.
Even the organization’s name, Dawn, had been taken from the address where it happened: Dawn Road, Sector 163.
Ten years ago, a B-level gate opened inside an apartment complex located at 163 Dawn Road.
The gate itself was not especially high-ranking, but because the authorities responded poorly in the early stages, an unprecedented disaster occurred: an entire apartment complex consisting of fifteen buildings and 2,134 households was swallowed into the gate.
Most of the people currently active in Dawn were unofficial survivors of that incident.
From that point onward, Dawn established itself as a terrorist organization that systematically attacked the government and the existing system.
Even now, aside from gates and monsters themselves, they were considered one of the most troublesome enemies society faced.
So there was nothing particularly strange about Dawn attacking the Guide Center.
They hated the entire system represented by the Guide Center and the Esper Bureau.
And they were unhinged enough to carry out indiscriminate terrorist attacks.
“Anyway, Gyujin, you need to get out of here. Air like this can’t be good for the ba— Ahem! Anyway! It can’t be good for you!”
Apparently realizing what he had almost said, Palsik abruptly raised his voice.
He smacked Gyujin on the back several times.
Getting beaten like this might be worse for me than breathing in the smoke.
The thought crossed Gyujin’s mind, but he didn’t bother resisting.
“I told Dajung and the others to come here. I’ll just stay until they finish helping with the situation, then I’ll head back with them.”
“Well, speak of the devil. There he is.”
Palsik pointed behind Gyujin.
Gyujin turned his head and immediately spotted Kwon Dajung making his way through the crowd.
Dajung held out his hand without a moment’s hesitation.
Apparently he had already forgotten all about being slapped.
His outstretched hand reached desperately toward Gyujin, silently demanding to be held.
Whenever Dajung did this, Gyujin never knew what else to do.
Even while thinking he was only encouraging his bad habits, he gave in every single time.
Whenever Dajung reached for him, Gyujin always wanted to take his hand.
Maybe eighty percent of Dajung’s personality really is my fault.
Gyujin walked toward him.
A moment later, their bodies met, and Dajung’s warmth wrapped around Gyujin without leaving so much as a sliver of space between them.