* * *
When Suhyeon regained consciousness, he was lying in what appeared to be a hospital room.
He barely managed to push his weakened body up into a sitting position.
His light brown eyes stared blankly at the blanket covering his knees.
Memories from just before the blackness swallowed him knocked sharply against his skull.
Feeling hollow and completely drained of strength, Suhyeon slumped his body against the wall behind him.
“……Uh……”
“……Go……way……”
“Guid……Ye……”
He must have drifted off again.
Suhyeon lifted his heavy eyelids at the sound of people talking in low voices.
“……?”
As his vision gradually cleared, he saw a crowd of sturdy men in suits filling one wall of the hospital room.
Dressed in black suits and wearing black sunglasses, every one of them looked burly and quite intimidating.
Slide—
While Suhyeon stared at the suited men with a mental question mark, the door to the room opened.
“Ah, you’re awake.”
It was Yihan and Hajin who entered.
The men bowed their heads to Yihan and Hajin and then filed out of the room in a group.
“……?”
“Suhyeon.”
Suhyeon’s gaze, which had been fixed on the door the men exited, shifted when Hajin approached.
He took a spot behind the head of the bed where Suhyeon was leaning and pulled him into an embrace.
A refreshing scent tickled the tip of Suhyeon’s nose.
“……?”
Not stopping there, Hajin buried his face in Suhyeon’s shoulder.
As if merely burying his face wasn’t enough, he even rubbed his cheek softly against Suhyeon’s shoulder.
Suhyeon blinked, feeling as though a large dog was acting cute.
However, since his low mood felt like it was improving slightly, he instinctively stroked Hajin’s hair.
At that, Yihan—who looked exhausted for some reason—furrowed his brow deeply, but he soon let out a long sigh and approached Suhyeon.
“Are you feeling okay? You almost got into big trouble.”
Suhyeon tilted his head.
Yihan’s face looked a bit different than it usually did when Suhyeon woke up after collapsing.
It was a bit sad that fainting had become part of his daily routine, and it was indeed a serious matter, but one has a sense for these things.
Yihan looked even more serious than usual.
Suhyeon tentatively moved his body.
‘I think I’m okay?’
“I feel a bit weak, but other than that, I think I’m fine……?”
“Is that so……?”
When he answered like that, Yihan tilted his head and made a strange expression.
“You’re fine after spreading a Guiding wavelength like that?”
‘Guiding wavelength?’
While Suhyeon blinked in confusion, trapped in Hajin’s arms, Yihan hummed and held up two fingers.
“There’s good news and bad news. Which do you want to hear first?”
Yihan sounded like he was delivering a line from a movie.
“The good news……?”
“From now on, you probably won’t collapse anymore—or at least very rarely.”
After hesitating and picking one, Suhyeon’s eyes widened at the declaration that followed.
Yihan shrugged.
“Remember how your Core was distorted?”
Images from the photos he saw right after coming out of the Gate and being hospitalized flashed through Suhyeon’s mind.
“Well, how should I explain this? I haven’t done a full analysis of the cause yet, but do you remember your Guiding rampaging this time? It seems the Core was set in such a malformed way that the energy was blocked, but as it burst out, the Core seems to have stabilized.”
“……Guiding rampage?”
When Suhyeon reflexively asked about the unfamiliar term, Yihan swallowed a sigh.
“You don’t remember. Hmm, what should I do. You—”
Slide—
“Suhyeon!!”
Before Yihan could continue, the door opened once more.
The owner of the urgent shout was Yihan.
Pale as a ghost, he strode toward Suhyeon.
Despite always growling at Hajin, Yihan didn’t even seem to notice Hajin still holding Suhyeon; he simply grabbed Suhyeon’s hand with trembling fingers.
“I heard you collapsed again. Are you okay? Are you in pain anywhere? Even I felt the Guiding. It felt like it wrapped around the entire building. Are you really okay? Can you hear me?”
Just like that time he broke all the windows in Hajin’s house to get in, Yihan poured out a barrage of questions while looking deathly pale.
“I couldn’t even feel a wavelength last time I saw him. Isn’t this serious, Ryu Yihan?”
Yihan, whose breathing was ragged from running so fast, turned sharply toward Yihan.
The light emanating from eyes the same color as Suhyeon’s was fierce and almost frightening.
“No, well, rather than being serious, Suhyeon’s current physical state is actually……”
Guiding.
While Yihan spoke to Yihan, Suhyeon blinked alone.
A word that didn’t seem to suit him kept popping up.
Suhyeon asked Hajin, who still had his head on Suhyeon’s shoulder, in a daze.
“Did I…… provide Guiding?”
“It wasn’t just ‘providing’ it.”
Suhyeon was stunned to hear that it had covered the entire building and was an enormous Guiding that prevented the Espers from even moving.
‘Didn’t they say I was F-class during the measurement?’
Suhyeon had never felt any kind of power until now, and he thought F-class was for people who were no different from ordinary people with only tiny amounts of power.
“Perhaps the distorted Core couldn’t do its job and kept the power locked inside.”
As if reading Suhyeon’s mind full of questions, Yihan explained again.
It seemed his conversation with Yihan had ended.
“Well, I’m not a Guide so I don’t know for sure, but they say you get a feeling like something is spreading out rapidly. You didn’t feel anything like that?”
There was that crazy pain hitting his chest, but…… Ah.
As he continued to recall the situation right before losing consciousness, Suhyeon’s light brown eyes suddenly trembled.
That something swaying next to his heart.
A certain energy that burst out of his body in an instant.
Was that Guiding?
“The measurement you got earlier was obviously an error, and…… tch, this is the bad news I mentioned earlier……”
Hajin, who had his face on Suhyeon’s shoulder and was hugging him like an imprinted animal, furrowed his brow deeply.
Yihan, who stopped mid-sentence, let out a deep sigh, and Yihan clicked his tongue as if he knew what Yihan was about to say.
Suhyeon tilted his head, sensing there was something only he didn’t know.
‘What is it?’
And then, BOOM!!
As if waiting for him to wonder, the hospital room door opened with another loud noise, making Suhyeon’s shoulders jump reflexively.
“He finally showed up.”
He thought he heard Yihan mutter sarcastically, and the arm Hajin had wrapped around Suhyeon’s waist tightened a bit more.
Suhyeon instinctively turned his head toward the source of the noise.
“Hahahaha!!”
What reached his ears was a booming cheer that was closer to a shout than a laugh.
What entered his vision was skin that was entirely bronze…….
“?”
Suhyeon looked up at the muscular stranger standing before him.
He wasn’t seeing things.
The man, who looked to be in his mid-forties, seemed strangely familiar for some reason, but he was wearing only pants with nothing on his upper body.
Clear muscle lines that could be described as “bursting” flexed burdensomely before his eyes.
Having never seen anyone so explicitly shirtless in public before, Suhyeon forgot his confusion and stared at the man blankly.
“You shouldn’t look at things like that.”
However, Hajin’s hand soon gently took Suhyeon’s chin and turned it back toward him.
Suddenly, Suhyeon’s vision was filled with Hajin.
Discontent swirled in those blue eyes, but they soon curved lazily as he looked at Suhyeon.
Hajin’s appearance was much healthier for the eyes than lumpy muscles.
Suhyeon obediently met Hajin’s gaze.
“Hahahahaha!!!”
Until that booming laughter echoed again.
“I’ve never seen you protect a person like this before!”
A crack formed in Hajin’s brow as he glared.
“I think it would be best if you mind your own business and go on your way.”
“Eeeing, you’re still as cold as ever.”
It was not pleasant to hear a middle-aged man well over his thirties, especially one with such a rugged body, making whining nasal sounds.
Suhyeon instinctively shivered and turned his head, only to flinch.
The mysterious, boisterous man was staring intently at Suhyeon.
The gaze they suddenly exchanged lasted quite a while.
Just as he was starting to feel a bit uncomfortable with the feeling that the man’s curved eyes were scanning him thoroughly, Yihan stepped in front of Suhyeon.
“Stop staring at the kid, Association President.”
“Oh, I’ve never seen you act like this either!”
‘Association President?’
Only then did Suhyeon realize where he had seen that unfamiliar yet somehow familiar man.
Just like when he first saw Yihan, he had a memory of seeing him briefly on the news.
“Is your name Chae Suhyeon? I am Kim Gyu-han, and I am—humbly—the President of the Korean Ability Users Association!”
And it seemed the man had business with him and no one else.
He pulled a card out of his pocket and placed it in front of Suhyeon.
It was the ID card he hadn’t been able to finish issuing earlier.
“Congratulations on becoming Korea’s second S-class Guide! Technically, you’re the first among the young generation, so I suppose we could call you the ‘only’ one. Hmm. Hahahahaha!”
Another massive laugh echoed through the room.
Suhyeon stared blankly at the ID card the Association President had handed him.
S-class.
A high rank he had only seen on Hajin’s ID and thought he would never have a connection with in his life was clearly written on the card with Suhyeon’s photo on it.
‘S-class?’
Suhyeon looked around. Yihan slightly avoided Suhyeon’s gaze, Yihan lowered his eyes, and Hajin simply looked back at him.
It meant it was true.
So, he had provided Guiding while collapsing, the energy hidden in his Core had been coughed out, that power was strong enough to envelop the building, and the rank he was told was F-class had turned into S-class and was now attached to his name.
Suhyeon blankly listed the things that had happened while he was unconscious.
S-class. Guide.
His head grew complicated at the words that felt like they would never belong to him.
Thud!
However, the thoughts filling his head stopped at another loud sound.
It was because the muscular Association President had approached right next to him and slammed his hand against the bed frame.
Hajin pulled Suhyeon a little closer. At the same time—
“Now, I understand that you might not be able to process the current situation well, but you have to make a choice.”
‘A choice about what?’
* * *
