“But it really is strange.
How did someone like you, who hasn’t even fully manifested as a guide, manage to guide Ms.
Cha, when even trained guides couldn’t control her?
Were your affinities just that compatible?”
That part baffled Seunghyun too.
The sensation that had passed between them where they touched, the exchange that could only be called guiding, had been there from the very first time he met her.
He had come into contact with many Espers in the course of investigations, so why had he only reacted to Cha Yeonsu?
Even Injeong hadn’t been able to come up with a convincing explanation.
Even in the modern era, guiding remained a largely unknown field.
‘She said the side effects vary from person to person.’
Which meant the approach to guiding had to vary as well.
“For now, just start by observing Ms.
Cha.
That’s where it begins,” Injeong stated.
Observing a subject was not difficult for a detective like him.
And over the past week, he had learned a few things about her ability.
First, the backlash was proportional to how much she used her ability.
Second, the effectiveness of relief varied depending on the degree of physical contact.
Third, once guiding began, it had to be carried through to the end.
According to Yeonsu, after they first ran into each other at the club, the clumsy contact she had with him had actually made the backlash worse, and she had suffered for longer.
“So what did you do then?”
After parking in the underground lot of the police headquarters, he turned to her.
As she unbuckled her seat belt, she looked at him as if she had no idea what he was talking about.
“Back then?”
“When we first met.
You said you had a hard time after we parted ways.”
“Oh.
Right, I did.”
She answered, still a bit dazed.
She had no idea why he was suddenly asking about that after they had been quiet the whole drive.
“Did you find someone like me to… get relief every time that happened?”
“…What did you just say?”
The question was so outrageous that her face flushed with humiliation, but his expression remained perfectly innocent, genuinely curious.
That only made it more absurd.
“If there were a lot of people like you, of course I would have.
Unfortunately, I never found anyone like that.”
At her sharp retort, a strange look crossed his face.
He truly seemed to have no idea how Espers lived.
It was a difficult thing for an ordinary person to understand.
To people like him, Espers were just disgusting beings who defied common sense.
“So I was your first?”
The first.
For Yeonsu, both guiding and sex—everything—had been a first with Tae Seunghyun.
That night, she had experienced more physical contact with another person than she had in her entire life, along with intense pleasure.
She remembered the heat of his body, the solid chest that had held her securely when he embraced her, and the hatred-tinged heat in his eyes when he had looked at her like he was going to devour her.
“Who knows?”
But she didn’t want to tell him that.
With that, she quickly opened the passenger door and got out.
He followed her out and fell into step beside her.
“So what did you do then?
I asked how you dealt with it.
If you didn’t have sex with someone like me, how exactly did you handle the backlash?”
Under his persistent questioning, she was the one who surrendered first.
“There was no relief.
I just… endured it.
Alone, at home.”
“You just endured it?”
“Yes.
Just endured it.
That’s how it always was.”
There were private guiding services, but they were illegal, and there weren’t many of them, so they could charge whatever they wanted.
Every time she used her ability, the backlash would eat away at her body, and she couldn’t afford to pour all the money she earned into guiding.
To earn that kind of money, she would have to use her ability even more.
It was a vicious cycle.
“Endured it alone… that’s how it always was…”
Feeling an odd sense of satisfaction at her words, he spoke even more brusquely than usual.
“I’ve heard it’s quite painful, especially if not relieved right away.”
He remembered her, feverish and out of her mind, clinging to him.
The backlash varied from person to person, but the stronger the ability, the more painful the backlash.
And Cha Yeonsu had been rated as an A-class with a powerful ability.
Unrelieved backlash accumulated in a user’s body and gnawed away at them for a long time.
That was probably why she had clung to a stranger like him the first time they met.
At his words, she just shrugged, as if it were nothing.
“There was no other way.
As you know, unregistered Espers like me can’t go to public guides.
And the meds are way too expensive.”
“Couldn’t you ask the government for help?
Registered Espers receive various benefits from the state.”
If you could call them that.
The “benefits” the government offered to mutants rejected by society and left with nowhere to go amounted to the bare minimum needed to survive.
At his words, she lifted her wrist and gave a short, derisive laugh.
The tracker on her wrist, a bit too big for her, blinked green.
“If living your whole life under surveillance with one of these strapped on is the price, then sure, that’s a great option.
I’d rather endure the backlash.
Oh, is this the kind of thing I’m not supposed to say in front of a detective?”
Why not?
She was already caught.
It wasn’t like they were going to arrest her again.
Talking to herself and answering herself—she had picked up that habit from living alone for so long.
At her muttering, he let out a brief chuckle.
“For someone who says that, you’ve told me quite a lot.”
His smile was awkward.
Then again, any smile directed at her felt awkward.
Staring blankly at him, she spoke again.
“…Anyway, I’m sure there are Espers who willingly enter the government system, but there’s a reason there are more people like me.”
As she said, registered Espers used their abilities for the country in exchange for the benefit of guiding and a modest allowance.
But if you looked beneath the surface, guiding was just a way to keep them in working order so they could be used, and the allowance didn’t even reach minimum wage.
On top of that, with devices like the one on her wrist, their location and ability usage would be monitored and controlled until the day they died.
They were also used in various research projects.
The government saw Espers purely as tools.
From their perspective, if they were going to be exploited anyway, it was better to sell their abilities in the underworld for a higher price.
That was why Espers didn’t willingly choose to become slaves of the state.
Listening to him call that a “benefit” and take the government’s side, she couldn’t help thinking he was a civil servant to the core.
With an ability like psychometry, regardless of rank, the government would have wrung every last drop out of her.
Maybe hiding like this really had been the better choice for Cha Yeonsu.
In any case, with the official route blocked, the only option left to her had been to grit her teeth and endure the backlash.
Which meant that before she met him, she had borne that pain alone.
In that small body, without anyone’s help.
He lifted his wrist and checked the watch that matched hers.
Along with the green dot, the backlash level was fluctuating in the single digits.
Even if it was minor, she had to be in pain right now too, yet she acted like it was nothing.
Whether it was hunger or backlash, it was all the same to her—something she was used to.
“It must have been very hard on you.”
Yeonsu stopped walking and looked at him.
He stopped as well and faced her.
“You must have been in pain for a long time.
With no one to help you.”
She looked quietly into his eyes.
His gaze held no pity or condemnation, but neither did it hold soft emotions like empathy or comfort.
His eyes were clear as he simply stated a fact, looking straight at her—at Cha Yeonsu.
At that gaze, at that one simple sentence that was nothing at all, something inside her began to ache.
Like a wound she hadn’t even known was there, it suddenly started to hurt the moment someone pointed out that it was bleeding.
“…Not really.”
It was the truth.
It hadn’t been a big deal.
Not until she heard Tae Seunghyun say it.
It was the first time she had ever heard those words: that it must have been hard.
It was another first.
Seunghyun’s unexpected words left her feeling strangely off-kilter, and she quickened her pace.
She was embarrassed, and for no good reason, her heart was in a flutter.
Seunghyun was acting a little strange today.
Or maybe, she was the strange one.
“Sir.”
Seunghyun, who had been sitting at his desk filling out paperwork, lifted his head to look at the team member standing before him.
It was Team 1’s only woman, Kwon Sejin.
“I want to use her for a bit.”
With a flick of her eyes, Sejin indicated Yeonsu, who was sitting next to Seunghyun.
“No.”
“Then at least let her come with me to the interrogation room…
Huh?”
Sejin, who had taken it for granted that he would say yes, trailed off mid-sentence and stared at him in confusion.
“Kwon Sejin.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What case are you in charge of right now?”
“The Seomun gang construction thugs we nabbed on-site during the Busan raid.”
Seunghyun rose from his seat.
When he stood, towering over her, Sejin instinctively took a step back, clasping her hands behind her, cowed by his imposing presence.