Crash!
The moment I realized I might have regressed, I hurried to open the internet. The first thing I needed wasn’t lottery numbers or stocks. It was an illegal wave suppression chip.
Wave suppression chips are originally tools used by espers. They forcibly slow the waves running through the body to lessen the strain and delay rampages. The official chips are expensive, so people usually go for illegal ones.
But a few years later, a study came out saying that if a guide uses an illegal suppression chip, their guiding waves get scrambled and the average match rate drops sharply. Usage among guides exploded as those trying to avoid matching with espers flocked to it, and eventually a major crackdown began.
At this point in time, that research hasn’t happened yet, so illegal chips should be easy to buy. It would cost a fair sum, but right now I couldn’t care less about money.
Yeah. Not compared to the days I lived with the bastard I’m about to be matched with.
Those days were hell. I shivered, recalling how I’d been waiting to die in a gate only a few hours ago.
If you’re going to go mad, do it cleanly. Why did he have to choose something that weird to go mad with?
Tsk. I clicked my tongue and checked the time.
“…The suppression chip needs to get here fast.”
I could already feel my condition worsening. I’d told them it was urgent and they said they’d send it by quick courier, but you can’t trust a damned thing illegal vendors say. I’d emptied my entire account to buy a single unit; there was no way I could go hunting for a different seller now.
I gnawed at my nails, unable to hide my anxiety. Tomorrow won’t do, nor the day after. I had to receive the chip by tonight at the latest.
March 30.
Because today was the day I awakened.
When awakening starts, a high fever hits with unbearable pain, so staying conscious through it is basically impossible. With a normal person’s body, the physical changes are too much to endure; unless you get an awakening sedative at the hospital, there’s a high chance of aftereffects. I’ve just died and come back, and now I’m supposed to live disabled? Hard pass.
“Damn it… when is it getting here.”
As time went by, I could clearly feel my temperature rising. Looked like the awakening agony was about to start.
And I had to go through that again. I grimaced, remembering the day I first awakened.
Suddenly my whole body hurt like crazy, my vision spun, and I really thought I was going to die right there. Then I woke up in a hospital and heard I’d awakened as an S-class guide, and I thought the worst was over. Yeah, right. That wasn’t the end—that was the start of my train-wreck life.
Anyway, once the agony truly begins, there’s no enduring it in your right mind. So before that, I needed to call an ambulance and implant the chip in the back of my neck.
From the instant an unconscious me arrived at the hospital and got identified as a guide, matching with espers would begin, so if I was late implanting the chip, none of this would matter. This was a race against time—whether the package would arrive before I blacked out.
“At least get here before I collapse…”
My head pounded like it would split and chills wracked me. I’d been waiting hours for a delivery that never came; I tossed a few painkillers into my mouth and crunched them dry.
“What if I got scammed?”
I didn’t have any money left in my account.
Pacing anxiously with my phone in hand, I hovered by the front door. Damn it, am I really going down the slave route again?
Guides technically had the right to choose their esper, but it was a sham right. An S-class esper’s nomination was absolute.
It’s not that I never tried to escape Vasily. Not long after we matched, I barely managed to switch assignments because I couldn’t take it anymore—but a few days later the new esper I’d matched with turned half-crippled for some unknown reason, and I had to become Vasily’s guide again.
‘Late.’
The way he casually welcomed me back after just a few days away—yeah. The second I saw his face I was sure it was his doing. And from exactly then on, the way he worked me got even worse.
“Urk!”
Suddenly it felt like someone clubbed the back of my head. My skull screamed, my body started shaking. I staggered against the wall and finally dropped to the floor.
A pain you can’t forget even if you want to. The awakening agony had begun.
“Haah, haah…”
My chest was tight, and I couldn’t breathe. Instinctively, to survive, I punched in 119 and was about to hit call, but stopped at the last second and flung my phone into a corner.
What the hell was I about to do? I’d barely escaped that hell after years, and I almost walked back into it on my own two feet.
I curled up and groaned alone. I nearly blacked out several times but clung to consciousness.
I couldn’t faint. The moment I let go here, everything was over. The courier would just drop the chip at the door and leave, and I’d end up in the ER without the chip implanted and get assigned back to that bastard, same as before. If I was unlucky, getting to the ER late might even saddle me with aftereffects.
But my brain, swallowed by pain, grew foggier and foggier.
“Fuck… survive first, think later…”
At this rate I really felt like I’d die. I crawled to the corner, picked up my phone, and brought a trembling finger to the call button.
Ding-dong.
“…!”
It came.
Right before I pressed call, the doorbell rang. Only then did my mind clear, and the finger that was about to summon an ambulance froze.
“Courier.”
The moment I opened the door, I saw a delivery man holding a small parcel. I never thought a single package could look this damn beautiful.
“Uh, are you alr—”
Bang!
He’d probably been about to say something when he saw my half-dead face, but I wasn’t in any state to listen. I snatched the package and slammed the door.
The instant I got inside, I tore open the tape-sealed box like I was breaking it and dumped everything on the floor. A wad of papers that looked like instructions and warnings, an injector loaded with the chip, and, lastly, a mysterious red pill.
“Why is there so much crap.”
Warnings and instructions for days. I didn’t have the time to read any of it. I could pass out any second.
I shoved aside the small-print instructions and grabbed the injector first.
I knew it was supposed to go in the back of my neck, so thankfully I didn’t need to read a guide. I broke the seal, pulled out the injector, pressed it to my nape, and pushed the end in firmly. My neck stung, but the awakening pain drowned it out instantly.
Then I took out one pill. A nasty, dark red. I didn’t know what it was, but they’d sent a bunch, so I assumed I had to take it. I tossed it in my mouth and swallowed. Without water, it scraped my throat raw.
All I’d done was rip open the box and take things out, but the place looked like a war zone. I shoved the crumpled pill packet and injector back into the box and kicked it into a corner.
Ah, now I could finally call an ambulance. Maybe it was the relief, but the pain felt duller.
I picked up my phone, tapped in the three familiar digits, and hit call.
Brr— click.
— 119, what is your emergency?
“A— awakening pain…”
And then I lost consciousness.
***
“Ugh…”
I woke because it was noisy around me. My head was foggy, thoughts scattered—then the ache at the back of my neck snapped me alert.
The suppression chip?
I felt around my nape and touched skin swollen up hard.
Good. At least it seemed to be in. But I couldn’t relax until I heard the results from a doctor. It was an illegal chip—there was always a chance the device was faulty.
I let out a breath and closed my eyes. As my vision darkened, the scenes of everything I’d suffered flickered past like a panorama.
Only after dying and regressing could I finally run from Vasily. I felt so proud of myself for surviving six years that I could cry.
Goodbye, you horrible days.
Freedom—what a sweet word. Right now I felt like I could even smile in Vasily’s face.
I reveled in the happiness of a peaceful future about to unfold. Right up until I heard my grade.
“C-class.”
“…Pardon?”
Happiness didn’t last.
A doctor, called in once I’d woken, checked my test chart and calmly informed me of my grade. I doubted my ears for a moment and asked again.
“C-class?”
“Yes. Patient Kwon Gidam has awakened as a C-class guide.”
“Not S-class—C-class…?”
“Even if it isn’t the grade you hoped for, don’t be discouraged. C-class is still a perfectly respectable level.”
C-class? Is that a side effect of the chip?
I’d heard the chip only affected compatibility with espers, not the guiding waves themselves.
I’d never heard of grades dropping because of the chip. But what I used was an illegal suppression chip. In other words, any side effect wouldn’t be surprising.
I went pale at the bolt-from-the-blue.
What is this… my salary just turned into confetti, didn’t it?