‘Right. Espers have always been the kind of bastards who live off their own inflated egos.’
For a moment, images of the squad members who had moved in perfect unison under his command before his death flashed through Yihyun’s mind. Most of them had graduated from the same training center, so they knew Seunghyun’s personality better than anyone.
Han Taeyun had always been so detached and indifferent to others that, in practice, Lee Seunghyun had been the one who held the real authority among the Ability Bureau’s Espers. And there was nothing Seunghyun hated more than the senseless practice of dividing Guides by rank and harassing them.
Once, behind the Ability Bureau building, he had caught an explosion-type Esper molesting a Guide while casually patting the Guide’s cheek.
“Hey, aren’t you guys basically batteries who get to sit comfortably in the back and feed us energy while we risk our lives fighting? So come on, smile a little, huh?”
Before he could even finish speaking, a combat boot slammed into the Esper’s side.
Thud!
The bastard went rolling without even managing to scream, and Seunghyun mercilessly grabbed him by the back of the neck and smashed him into the wall.
“A battery? Then I guess that means you’re a fucking cripple who can’t last five minutes without that battery before your brain cells burn up and you die?”
Seunghyun shoved his fist in front of the trembling Esper’s face.
“Touch a Guide without consent one more time. Next time, I don’t give a shit about the Ability Bureau or anything else—I’ll rip your mana circuits apart for good. Got it? If you’re that fucking horny, piss off to the red-light district or something. This is a battlefield, not a place for you to satisfy your fucking urges. Understand?”
After that day, word spread that getting caught by Lee Seunghyun, the ‘Mad Dog,’ meant getting beaten half to death, and Espers who dared try anything during guiding virtually disappeared. Seunghyun maintained discipline through fear, and on the battlefield, he had gone through life-and-death situations with them until he had forged the bastards into elite soldiers who moved together seamlessly. Back then, Guides had been able to hold their heads high even in front of Espers.
Yihyun’s gaze, which had drifted into memories of his old squad members, settled once more on Go Cheolsu in front of him. Watching the hulking bastard rake his filthy gaze over him made Yihyun feel more than anger. It made him sick.
“Sit over there.”
“So the rumors that you’ve lost your sense of fear must be true?”
Yihyun gestured with his chin toward the single-seat reclining sofa provided for guiding. Go Cheolsu faltered at his cold, commanding tone. Baek Yihyun would normally have been trembling in some corner, yet now he was giving orders, and Go Cheolsu was visibly taken aback. But soon enough, he snickered and walked over to the sofa, sinking deep into it.
“After coming back from the dead, didn’t you miss me like crazy?”
“You’re the one who missed me that badly, aren’t you? Your guiding level is already high, so I don’t know why you even came.”
“Can never have too much guiding stored up. That way I can raid Gates, and you can sleep soundly at night thanks to me.”
“Sure. Let’s go with that.”
The moment Yihyun stepped closer, Go Cheolsu roughly seized his wrist and pulled him toward himself.
“If standing is too hard for you, I don’t mind if you sit on my lap while you do it.”
“Hey. Watch your mouth. My patience is a hell of a lot shorter than it was five years ago.”
Yihyun grabbed the hand wrapped around his wrist. Then he compressed his guiding energy into a sharp form and ruthlessly drove it into Go Cheolsu’s mana circuits. This body might be unfamiliar, but the instincts engraved into his soul remained intact. He wasn’t merely disrupting the flow. It was more like driving stakes into every vital point of the violently surging mana.
Today, he intended to use this bastard’s own body to teach him a very clear lesson: an Esper who treated Guides like trash didn’t deserve to be treated properly either.
“G-Ghk! Gaaaagh!”
Go Cheolsu couldn’t even scream properly. His entire body convulsed as he tumbled off the reclining sofa. His eyes bulged from the pain, as though needles were scraping along the insides of his blood vessels. White foam began spilling from the mouth of the bastard writhing and clawing at the floor. His mana wasn’t being purified at all. Instead, it was tangling wildly and hammering at his brain, so there was no way he could endure it.
Yihyun watched coldly until Go Cheolsu finally went completely limp and unconscious, then lightly dusted off his hands.
“Mr. Go Cheolsu. It seems you pushed yourself too hard.”
Deliberately raising his voice, Yihyun pressed the emergency button on the wall. Before long, the door flew open and security personnel rushed inside. They stared in horror between the A-Rank Esper lying on the floor foaming at the mouth and the slender Yihyun standing beside him in apparent bewilderment(?).
“What happened, Guide Baek Yihyun?!”
“I’m not sure…. He suddenly started having a seizure as soon as I began guiding him. I suppose he pushed himself too hard during his recent Gate raid. His condition must have been so poor that even my guiding didn’t agree with his body.”
Yihyun deliberately hunched his shoulders and gave them an innocent, concerned smile. Judging from everyone’s reactions so far, the original Baek Yihyun had been powerless, quiet, and withdrawn, always watching other people’s moods. Remembering the Yihyun they knew, the agents nodded without suspicion.
“Ah… It must have been a precursor to overload. Understood. We’ll take him to the medical room for now.”
Watching the agents carry Go Cheolsu away like a piece of luggage, Yihyun let out a short sigh.
The instant the door closed, his eyes sharpened again.
‘That’s one down. Any bastard coming in today who acts like an asshole is getting disciplined.’
His determination to straighten out the Guide Wing wasn’t an empty threat. The next two Espers who came in were also overwhelmed by Yihyun’s offensive guiding, either foaming at the mouth or dry-heaving before being carried away. Outside the room, people began whispering, “Why does everyone who goes into Guide Baek Yihyun’s room end up like that?” Yet Yihyun himself remained perfectly calm.
Eventually, his morning quota ended and the alarm announcing lunchtime rang.
By following the crowd of people streaming in the same direction, he quickly found the Ability Bureau cafeteria.
The moment he opened the door and stepped inside, the noisy room fell silent.
Every gaze turned toward Yihyun. Some were curious, but most held the fascination of people watching a spectacle, mixed with blatant contempt.
Clicking his tongue, Yihyun confidently picked up a tray. Everyone had expected Baek Yihyun to eat silently in some corner as usual, but instead he squared his shoulders, collected his food, and deliberately took a seat in an open, conspicuous spot. At his unexpected behavior, whispers rolled through the room like waves.
“Hey, did you see that? He’s seriously shameless.”
“Well, there must be a reason people say he’s the Ability Bureau Director’s kept boy. Bet that whole suicide attempt was just an act too.”
‘Yihyun, you seriously lived your life on hard mode.’
Yihyun faltered at the barely audible words kept boy. He didn’t know whether the Ability Bureau Director’s side had spread the rumor to hide the fact that Yihyun was his illegitimate son or whether people had simply pulled that garbage out of their asses, but either way, it was utterly disgusting.
At the same time, an entirely different kind of hushed whispering was spreading from the other side of the cafeteria.
“……It’s true. I saw Go Cheolsu being carried out earlier.”
“It wasn’t just Go Cheolsu. I heard every Esper who went in during the morning session ended up in the medical room. Apparently, Baek Yihyun barely touched them and they started foaming at the mouth.”
Voices filled with curiosity began cracking the atmosphere that had previously been nothing but mockery. Several Guides who had been watching cautiously began approaching with their trays. The empty space around Yihyun, which people normally would have avoided because they wanted nothing to do with him, gradually began filling up.
“Um, Yihyun…….”
A woman cautiously spoke to him.
Yihyun stopped his spoon and looked up at her. He had never seen her before. His gaze naturally fell to the name tag pinned to her chest.
[B-Rank Guide Seo Minji]
Putting down his spoon, Yihyun deliberately made an awkward expression.
“Sorry. I took some pretty strong drugs, and my memory’s hazy because of the side effects. Did we know each other before?”
“Huh? ……Ah, well. We just used to greet each other in passing……I think?”
Seo Minji trailed off and avoided his gaze. She was visibly flustered, her eyes shifting awkwardly. Judging from her expression, forget exchanging greetings—they were clearly speaking to each other for the first time today.
For this much attention to suddenly be focused on Baek Yihyun, the illegitimate child no one would normally even bother speaking to, Yihyun could imagine just how shocking the morning’s string of Espers being sent to the medical room had been.
His gaze shifted to Seo Minji’s wrist, exposed beneath her sleeve. Dark blue bruises were clearly visible there, undoubtedly left by an Esper’s excessive demands.
Pretending not to notice, Yihyun asked,
“Really? So what did you need?”
“Um, is it really true… that Go Cheolsu was carried out of your room?”
Yihyun nodded indifferently.
“Yeah. Guess he doesn’t usually take very good care of himself. I barely guided him and he keeled right over.”
The eyes of the Guides secretly listening nearby widened in shock. Go Cheolsu was infamous for treating Guides like his personal playthings.
Minji asked again in a trembling voice.
“That can’t be. Esper Go Cheolsu is famous for taking meticulous care of himself……. What exactly did you do to him?”
At Seo Minji’s question, the atmosphere in the cafeteria seemed to sink another degree.
The nearby Guides who had been listening in also held their breath, their gazes fixed entirely on Yihyun’s lips.
Yihyun casually set down his spoon and answered as though it were nothing worth mentioning.
“Hm? Nothing much. If those bastards treat us like batteries, then we can treat them like machines.”
Yihyun’s eyes curved beautifully into crescents.
“Because machines are the things that blow up when they’re overloaded.”