“I’m not usually like this—it’s just that when I try to do it here, my mind goes blank, that’s why!”
I was mortified, like someone caught writing a secret love letter. Maybe it was worse because, in Cha Gweonwoo, I could see my professor’s face when he rips into assignments.
You do not make that face at lyrics someone wrote, seriously! Did you eat your manners with your rice?
Huffing, I yanked the notebook toward me—and still determined to do the assignment, I continued the lyrics.
[My four-year-old cat, don’t get sick, my cat]
I’d matched the rhyme—ki, gi, goyangi, goyangi—in my own way. It may look thoughtless, but I actually calculated it. Got that, Cha Gweonwoo?
Only then did he stop peeking at my assignment, turn his gaze away, and go back to his book.
And today again, he only let me go after taking the full four hours of guiding. Ruthless bastard.
“By the way, I’m curious about one thing.”
I’d chatted on and off with the front-desk staffer for nearly two years now, and finally worked up the courage to ask:
“Does my esper… not talk?”
It suddenly hit me that I’d never once heard Cha Gweonwoo’s voice.
“I used to think so too.”
The staffer jerked her chin toward the other side.
“He talks to his team when necessary. Very occasionally…”
Beyond the glass door, arms folded, Cha Gweonwoo was speaking with a teammate. I couldn’t hear his voice, but watching his mouth move was astonishing. More astonishing than when my newborn nephew had babbled for the first time.
Wait—Cha Gweonwoo talks?
Who knows how long I stared. While he was talking with his colleague, Cha Gweonwoo suddenly snapped his head this way. My heart dropped to the floor.
Like a cockroach caught mid-crawl on a wall, I froze, flustered, as our eyes met. His face darkened with a scowl on the spot. I bowed ninety degrees and fled the Center.
***
The next day, and the day after that, he summoned me again.
Eating, in lecture, just as I was about to fall asleep—every time the summoner buzzed on my wrist, I swallowed curses.
This relentless bastard. Can’t you let me rest for just one day? Huh? Just one day?
They say a genius can work anywhere, but I am picky about where I do assignments. Obviously—I’m not a genius.
Plus, half my assignments require equipment, and on top of that, one hand is always surrendered to Cha Gweonwoo, so I can’t even use my laptop.
Yesterday, while I was trying to do homework one-handed on my laptop, I got so pissed I mouthed off to him.
Can’t we just kiss and be done with it? Mr. Cha Gweonwoo, let’s have one good, clean kiss and wrap guiding in three hours! Yeah?
……
Fine, then screw it—let’s do it, do it! Let’s do mucosal guiding! Huh?!
Cha Gweonwoo grabbed me by the collar as I charged in, and tossed me out the door like luggage. The security guard—who’d come running at the commotion—helped gather me up from where I’d splattered across the hallway like a popped water balloon, and offered sincere consolation.
“Hey, if Esper Cha Gweonwoo had thrown you because he genuinely hates you, your skull and ribs would both be utterly shattered by now.”
“Thank you. That’s incredibly comforting.”
Humans, you see—need sleep. Lacking sleep is how you end up with this kind of reckless bravado.
Seeing the gaunter-than-yesterday zombie reflected in the elevator mirror only made me sadder.
Doesn’t he feel anything, looking at a face like this? Where are the goblins when you need them—why won’t they spirit Mr. Cha Gweonwoo away?
Clicking my tongue internally, I entered Room 305—now practically my home. Today, I let go of any ambition to get anything done here. I didn’t even bring my bag.
I took both hands to grasp the hand I now knew better than a bus strap, and pressed my forehead to it.
I couldn’t just come here to earn money and sleep the whole time, though, so I planned to keep my eyes closed for four hours and pray in silence for Cha Gweonwoo’s health and well-being.
“I’m going to close my eyes and think for a bit… Don’t disturb me… mmnya.”
Maybe ten minutes of shut-eye passed.
With zero patience as usual, he tapped my shoulder. Unbelievable. Can’t you let me have ten minutes?
“Mmmf, just ten minutes…”
I pushed his hand away, trying to shoo him off, but he’s not the type to wait. His hand prodded me again—get up—and I scowled.
God, this is too much. Won’t even let a person sleep ten minutes. I’m dead on my feet. Do you even know what exams are, Cha Gweonwoo? Have you ever gone to college? Huh?
…Did I just say that in my head? Or did it come out of my mouth?
A chill ran through me, and I cracked one eye open.
Huh…?
Something about the angle was wrong. Why could I see Cha Gweonwoo from here?
I darted my eyes around in a panic…
I had no memory of climbing up, but I was on the bed.
At his feet.
I lifted my head and looked down at myself.
Curled up like a baby in the womb, I was hugging his left foot to my chest. Tightly. Tenderly.
You’ve got to be kidding me. That’s me?
I could practically hear his patience snap. Tilting his head, he seemed to decide words wouldn’t cut it, and raised his free hand. Before that hand could come flying at me, I pulled off a miraculous reflex roll—off the bed and onto the floor.
Right then, the alarm blared to announce the end of the guiding session.
“Thank you for your hard work!”
Without looking back, I bolted out of Room 305.
And that day, on my way home, I sent Cha Gweonwoo this message:
[Esper Cha Gweonwoo, hello—this is Guide Kim Doweon.
Thank you for your hard work today as always!
I really do love guiding our amazing esper.
It’s just—
Next week I have five exams and four assignments.
You didn’t ask? I’m just saying.
Have a great day today, too! >_< ]
…Naturally, I was left on read.
A week went by after that, and the summoner still didn’t ring.
***
When it pinged every day, I had curses glued to my lips—“I’m sick of this; knock it off already!” But when it didn’t go off, that was its own kind of anxiety.
Human adaptability is terrifying.
I checked the summoner during exams, in the shower, whenever I woke in the dead of night, even stopped on the sidewalk to check it. Today at a café, the table buzzer went off next to me and I sprang to my feet, thinking it was my summoner.
Why isn’t it ringing?
The bastard who used to call me like clockwork every single day—now he goes more than a week without so much as a peep?
Thinking it might be broken, I hit reset and reconfigured it, but it stayed silent the next day, and the day after that.
Definitely strange.
Me—the guide slave who’d been howling for freedom—now that the esper had actually given me freedom, I couldn’t enjoy it at all.
Have aberrants just not been appearing lately? Are the espers taking it easy?
My thoughts went everywhere. I even searched a portal site to see what espers were up to these days. Esper. You don’t really see their activities anymore unless you actively look them up.
They say when the first aberrants appeared, the world turned upside down. There were even people making plans to abandon Earth for other stars, convinced the world was ending.
But that was all over a hundred years ago.
Now, people on Earth don’t even flinch when an aberrant kills one or two. We’ve been through it so often we’ve gone numb.
From the articles, it looked like he’d already gone out on-site three times just this week. So why hasn’t he requested guiding?
“Don’t tell me the bastard’s cutting me some slack because it’s my exam period?”
…As if Cha Gweonwoo would.
Embarrassed by my own words, I rubbed my nose with a finger.
For reference, among the days he summoned me to the Center last year, one was Parents’ Day, one was Buddha’s Birthday, one was my birthday, one was Christmas Eve, and another was Christmas Day.
“Do you just want to spend every special day with me? You called me on my birthday, then on Christmas Eve, and now today’s Christmas.”
I’d said that because I couldn’t believe how he managed to pick only those dates, and he looked at me with a face that said he’d never heard such filthy talk in his life.
Right then, I nearly said, “What I just said isn’t filthy talk—it’s me pointing out that you handpicked only the shittiest possible days to summon me.” But I held back for the sake of my own safety.
I know my place very well, and I know just as well that when a guide and an esper fight, the guide dies one hundred percent of the time.
Anyway, that’s not the point right now.
Tomorrow, third period, I’ve got an exam in Basic Classical Chinese. I signed up for that liberal arts class all cocky because I got a Level-7 Hanja certificate back in sixth grade—but I’d clean forgotten that our university has an actual Chinese Literature department.