‘……With this body, I guess I can only pull something like that off once.’
He felt as though he might pass out at any moment, but he forced his head up and glared toward the door. There were probably still pieces of trash lined up in the hallway waiting to be cleaned up.
Yihyun pulled another strawberry-flavored mana supplement from his inventory and downed it in one go. As the strawberry-flavored liquid slid down his throat, his mind finally began to clear.
‘…Does this stuff only come in strawberry?’
He had already lost count of how many bottles he had gone through just today. Staring at the empty bottle, Yihyun swept back his disheveled hair and composed his expression.
He had just sunk deep into the chair and crossed his legs when a cautious knock sounded.
The heavy door slowly cracked open.
An Esper poked his head through the gap, his eyes darting around as he cautiously gauged Yihyun’s mood.
“……Um, may I come in?”
This was the same bastard who, until just a little while ago, had been spitting in the hallway and boasting about how he was going to raise hell.
But after seeing Kang Jindu dragged out like an overturned frog, every trace of his earlier bravado had vanished.
Yihyun leisurely took in the cowardly waves coming from him before speaking.
“Why are you standing there instead of coming in? You’re wasting time.”
“Ah, ah……. Yes! S-sorry! I’ll come in right away!”
Without even being told, the man sat bolt upright in the single-seat recliner, both hands neatly placed on his knees, and waited in perfect posture for Yihyun’s judgment.
Yihyun tapped his terminal with a satisfied expression.
‘Right. Whether they’re Espers or Guides, this is how you properly educate people.’
Silence filled the room.
A Guide possessing the commanding presence of a high-rank Esper, and an Esper sitting in terror like a student in a study hall.
The afternoon sunlight stretched across the bizarre scene, one rarely seen in the Guide Wing.
A sharp notification tone cut through the languid afternoon air.
[Guide Baek Yihyun, proceed to the Precision Examination Room in Research Building 1.]
Yihyun rolled his stiff neck and stepped into the hallway. His eyes kept being drawn to those pitch-black collars wrapped around the necks of the Guides passing him.
‘How the hell am I supposed to break those things?’
His mind filled with schematics and circuit diagrams all the way to the research lab.
If the devices incorporated location trackers, then there had to be some way for the central control room to send signals to individual chokers and overload their mana receptors.
‘If only I could’ve had that bastard Han Taeyun standing behind me at a time like this…….’
Back when the Ability Bureau bastards constantly shoved regulations and orders in his face, picking pointless power struggles whenever they got the chance, Seunghyun used to drag Han Taeyun into the Director’s office instead of wasting his breath arguing.
‘Hey, Han Taeyun. Stand there.’
Seunghyun would put his feet up on the desk and start making demands, while Taeyun simply stood silently behind him.
Seunghyun himself had been a top-ranked S-Rank Esper, but to the Ability Bureau, he was still an insider they could bind with rules and orders.
Han Taeyun, humanity’s one and only EX-Rank, was different.
He had nothing to lose by walking away from the Ability Bureau, and there was no one capable of forcibly keeping him there.
Just having someone like that standing silently behind Seunghyun was enough to make the old bastards in upper management stamp their approval on documents as though they had never resisted in the first place.
‘……Was I no different from those old bastards?’
The sudden thought left a bitter taste in his mouth.
Taeyun had understood better than anyone exactly how Seunghyun was using his presence. He knew that the weight of his name was being used as a threat and his silence as a means of pressure, yet the bastard had never complained even once.
He had simply remained there until Lee Seunghyun got what he wanted.
“……But now the guy who used to have my back is busy destroying the world.”
Suppressing the bitterness in his chest, Yihyun opened the laboratory door.
“Sit down. We’ll begin the examination.”
The room was filled with nothing but cold metal and machinery.
Researchers even more mechanical than his attending physician mercilessly rolled up Yihyun’s sleeve. A thick needle plunged ruthlessly into his pale forearm.
“Ah……!”
As hot liquid flowed into his veins, a sharp metallic pain stabbed through his brain.
Next, claiming they needed to measure his guiding levels, they attached electrodes to his temples and forcibly drew out his energy waves.
It was unpleasant on an entirely different level from the regular post-combat examinations he had undergone as an Esper.
This wasn’t an examination.
It was exploitation, plain and simple.
‘Guides have been put through this every month?’
Yihyun gritted his teeth at the unfamiliar sensation of guiding energy being sucked out from deep within his core.
Back when he had been an Esper, he had only ever been accustomed to receiving the energy Guides gave him.
He had never known what kind of pain the person giving that energy had to endure.
As they continued endlessly draining energy from him, Yihyun ground out a question through clenched teeth.
“You said this was an examination, so why do you keep extracting my energy? This is way too much just to check my levels.”
Without even raising his head, the researcher replied in a mechanical voice.
“That’s classified. All you need to do is cooperate, Guide.”
His dry tone made it clear he had no intention of having a conversation.
They drew Yihyun’s blood, injected him with drugs, and continued an examination that felt as though they were trying to wring out his very soul.
Yihyun’s eyes gradually turned cold.
Then the researcher studying the waveforms on the monitor slowly curved his lips into a deep smile.
“Your guiding concentration has improved since the last time. Purification speed, density…… Everything is perfect, but your remaining mana is practically depleted. Hmm. Looks like you’ve been guiding quite diligently.”
After finishing his notes on the chart, the researcher looked at the wildly fluctuating graph on the monitor and chuckled softly again.
It wasn’t the kind of smile a doctor gave when pleased by a patient’s recovery.
It was closer to the greedy smile of a technician who had gotten his hands on a high-performance component.
‘……They’re plotting something.’
A cold shiver ran down Yihyun’s spine when he saw that smile.
It was far too sinister and ominous to be simple enthusiasm for research.
It felt as though they weren’t examining Baek Yihyun at all.
They were happily measuring his limits to see how much more they could extract from him.
The researcher closed the chart and added indifferently,
“You’re truly within the stable range now. The yield is better than expected, so I think we can aim for even more next time.”
***
‘Why the hell is one day this long? This is more exhausting than running Gates back-to-back.’
Yihyun sank into the back seat of the car and let out a quiet sigh on the way home.
The luxury sedan glided smoothly along the road without the slightest jolt, but after spending the entire day sharpening his energy waves into blades, Yihyun’s body felt as heavy as lead.
“I’m home.”
“Young Master, you’re back! You worked so hard today. Hurry and wash your hands.”
The moment he stepped through the front door, he was greeted by a warm meal his nanny had carefully prepared.
The savory aroma of soybean paste stew and golden grilled fish hit him, and the hunger he had forgotten came crashing back like a wave.
‘Right. I need to fill my stomach before my brain can work. Then I’ll get a good night’s sleep and recharge. Starting tomorrow, I should get some exercise too.’
Yihyun moved his spoon without saying another word.
He chewed and swallowed so heartily that both of his pale cheeks puffed out, and his nanny kept pushing more side dishes toward him with a mixture of relief and satisfaction in her eyes.
Then, as though something had suddenly occurred to her, she cautiously spoke.
“Young Master, how was today? I’m glad you seem a little brighter…… but… no one bullied you, did they?”
“Yes. Well, there were some bastards…… I mean, some people who tried.”
Yihyun answered calmly as he put a large piece of salty fish into his mouth.
“It’s fine. I paid them all back.”
Remembering Go Cheolsu collapsing with foam at his mouth and Kang Jindu toppling backward, the corners of Yihyun’s lips curved upward.
It was Lee Seunghyun’s characteristic rough, vicious smile—the one he often wore after thoroughly crushing his enemies.
But what his nanny saw was entirely different.
On Baek Yihyun’s delicate, fragile face, that smile looked like nothing more than a pitiful, frail attempt to force a smile while hiding his sadness.
Tears suddenly welled in the nanny’s eyes.
“……You did well. Eat plenty more and keep your strength up.”
“What? Ah, thank you.”
Yihyun paused with his spoon halfway to his mouth at her excessive reaction as she suddenly reddened around the eyes and piled a generous helping of fish onto his plate.
‘Did I say something wrong? What’s with her?’
Still having no idea what had happened, Yihyun finished the rest of his meal, patted his now-full stomach, and went to his room.
He picked up the tablet lying off to one side, stretched out on the bed, and once again traced the rebels’ movements.
Then, as he compared their route against detailed news articles, Yihyun’s eyes narrowed sharply.
[Breaking News] Dust Raids ‘Mana Applied Technology Research Institute’ in Fourth Outer District… Facility Completely Devastated
[Exclusive] Ability Bureau-Contracted Pharmaceutical Research Institutes Hit in Series of Attacks. Estimated Damages Near 1 Trillion Won
If Han Taeyun was deliberately targeting research institutes and Gates, there had to be a reason.
Yihyun wanted to figure out what it was… but nothing came to mind.
“Ah, seriously. Why is everything such a fucking mess!”
Frustrated, Yihyun tossed and turned before repeatedly punching the large rabbit plush beside him.
Then his fingertips struck something strangely hard and foreign.
“Hm? What the hell is this now?”
He turned the plush over and found a zipper hidden along its back.
When he opened it, an old leather notebook dropped out.
“A diary?”
Yihyun hesitated for a moment.
He casually flipped through the first few pages and found a loosely kept diary—written in for a few days, abandoned, then picked up again after a long gap.