“It’s a relief I knew the reporter; we managed to block it well.”
“And the others?”
“We’ve suppressed the rest as much as possible. Luckily, there weren’t many reporters on-site. It seems you had a hand in it as well.”
Throughout last night, Hajin had been on the phone constantly, leaving the house and returning repeatedly.
Yihan had also been summoned by Hajin.
These two men, who usually couldn’t stand the sight of each other and practically snarled at every meeting, were for once sitting across from each other, making calls in tandem.
Thanks to their efforts, Suhyeon’s identity—which had come dangerously close to being exposed yesterday—was fortunately shielded.
One reporter had even discovered that Suhyeon was the survivor who had been sucked into a Gate and was planning to write a story on it.
Suhyeon sat wedged between Yihan and Hajin, fiddling with his fingers.
Even if he was a newcomer just starting to take his first baby steps in the world of the gifted, he wasn’t stupid.
He had felt the rarity of an S-rank Guide and the desperation of the Espers’ thirst for guiding with his own body.
He understood why he needed guards now.
‘Kidnapping, confinement…’
could these things happen to him without warning?
He felt there was no way to stop it entirely, and it was admittedly frightening.
For now, Hajin and Yihan were holding the line, but his existence was already spreading like wildfire among the gifted.
It would likely be exposed in the near future.
The lack of news articles might just be a temporary reprieve.
But there was nothing to be done.
He couldn’t run away now; he had already become a Guide.
Nothing he did would change the fundamental situation.
Suhyeon reached out and grasped Hajin’s hand.
Hajin’s blue eyes looked down at him, swirling with nothing but affection.
Suhyeon managed a faint smile.
“I’ll have to be more careful.”
“Yes. Stay with me from now on.”
Hajin nodded, pulling Suhyeon into a protective embrace.
Before leaving the room, Suhyeon turned back.
“Hyung, thank you.”
Yihan, who had been unusually silent as if lost in thought, flinched and looked up.
Two pairs of nearly identical light brown eyes met.
Yihan, who usually showered Suhyeon with a barrage of worried words, simply watched him quietly today.
After staring at Suhyeon for a long time, his lips parted.
“I’d do anything for you. I’ll block the information as much as I can on my end, so you just do whatever you want to do.”
Once again, Suhyeon saw that Yihan’s eyes were filled solely with love.
It was something he could never have imagined during the years he grew up watching him, but Suhyeon was slowly, like being soaked by a fine drizzle, adapting to this changed version of Yihan.
Suhyeon nodded and stepped out of the room.
Despite the incident with the reporters, the Gate Rush showed no mercy for Suhyeon’s circumstances.
Gates continued to erupt everywhere, and the gifted worked without a moment’s rest.
Suhyeon was no different.
The only change was that the frequency of him going on individual support missions without Hajin had dropped to zero, and Hajin now practically carried Suhyeon with him to every site.
Suhyeon had no complaints about this.
The individual support had been a request from the Association anyway, and once the President heard of the incident, he didn’t complain as long as Suhyeon was with Hajin.
For the next two weeks, Suhyeon was breathtakingly busy.
Gates appeared in city centers, rural areas, and even remote mountain regions.
Sometimes they had to deploy at night, leading to Suhyeon huddling under blankets with other Guides at base camps, nodding off.
The cycle continued: guiding Hajin and other Espers who returned exhausted, then returning home himself in a state of total fatigue.
As a result, concerns about reporters and the media quickly faded from his mind.
The issue of pestering Espers was the same.
With Hajin always by his side, the advances had almost vanished.
Though some still stole glances at him, even that subsided.
The Espers were living lives much more exhausting than the Guides; when you’re on the verge of death from overwork, a pretty Guide is the last thing on your mind.
Just as the collective energy of the Espers and Guides was beginning to hit a downward curve due to pure exhaustion, Suhyeon traveled with the entirety of Team 1 to a high-rank Gate site in Yeoju.
“Suhyeon… are you still alive? Want a supplement…?”
The Guides he met there had turned into literal zombies.
While Suhyeon had done his fair share of support work, the members of Guide Team 1 were top-tier personnel in terms of experience and rank, meaning they were being worked far harder than him.
It was night now, but he had seen them just this morning.
They had been relatively energetic then, but in just half a day, they had returned with dark circles reaching down to their chins.
Stumbling into the tent, they each claimed a spot and collapsed.
“I’m gonna sleep a bit…”
“Me too…”
“Wake us up when the Espers get here…”
They fell asleep instantly.
Somehow, Suhyeon found himself the only one awake in the quiet tent.
Most of the security personnel were also human, and many were nodding off at their posts.
Suhyeon blinked and pulled out his phone.
His eyes, adjusted to the dim light of the tent, winced momentarily at the bright screen.
It was nearly midnight.
He was tired and thought about closing his eyes, but sleep wouldn’t come.
He pushed aside the tent flap and stepped outside.
Outside was a desolate wasteland, the kind of place you wouldn’t believe existed in Korea.
Only a few abandoned houses and utility poles were visible.
It was an area with almost no development potential.
Suhyeon sat down on a thick, fallen tree trunk near the tent—perhaps felled by a storm or a lightning strike.
He could see the massive Gate that had opened today looming in the distance.
Even though he was far from the immediate field, he could clearly see monsters pouring endlessly from the Gate, which pulsed with an ominous dark purple light.
Beside it, flashes of multicolored light signaled the ongoing battle.
They said it was a Level 11.
It was a Gate larger than anything seen in the last decade, let alone normal operations.
The days when his heart had fluttered with fear over a Level 9 Gate seemed cute in comparison.
He no longer lived in constant terror that Hajin would return injured, but the underlying worry remained.
Suhyeon was exhausted just from guiding; Hajin was stepping into the jaws of death every single day.
“Guide Chae Suhyeon? You’re out here.”
Suhyeon, who had been dazed by the distant vibrations and roars, turned around.
One of the guards was standing by the tent entrance.
It seemed he had noticed Suhyeon leaving and followed him.
‘Should I go back in?’
Suhyeon started to stand up from the log when—
Crack.
He blinked at the sound of something fracturing.
—…! …!
Simultaneously, static erupted in his earpiece.
“……?”
The guard heard it too, raising a hand to his ear with a puzzled expression.
Crack. Cra-ack.
The bizarre sound echoed in Suhyeon’s ears again, proving it wasn’t a hallucination.
He looked around, but there was nothing in sight.
‘Did I hear it wrong?’
Just as he was about to take a step—
—Guide Team 1! Guide Team 1!
A scream-like shout tore through his earpiece.
—Evacuate immediately! Repeating! Guide Team 1, arm yourselves and evacuate at once! A sudden surge of new Gate energy has been detected in your vicinity! Repeating—
Suhyeon’s entire body froze.
It wasn’t just the call from the observation team.
Just a few meters from where he stood—literally in the empty air beside him—a crack appeared.
—…! …!
“……!”
He saw people rushing out of the tent in a panic.
The guard was running toward him, and an Esper who had been on standby was sprinting toward him, face pale with terror.
—Gate Open!
A piercing scream erupted from the earpiece.
But the Gate opening was faster than anyone running toward him.
And the tentacles that shot out of it, blowing away the Esper and the guards, were faster still.
Suhyeon watched it in a daze.
A gale rose, and his body was lifted into the air.
His eyes widened to the point of tearing, and his heart hammered wildly.
The monster that had emerged from the Gate was right in front of him.
Countless tentacles writhed threateningly, and with a roar far louder than anything he had heard from a distance, they slammed into the ground.
And then, it struck Suhyeon.
“Gah!!!!”
With a sickening shock of pain that felt like his body was being pierced, Suhyeon was tossed into the distance like a ragdoll, tumbling across the dusty ground.
Through his blurring vision, he saw an Esper screaming and a streak of blue light surging forward.
He saw the other Guides moving in chaos, some coughing up blood from the shockwave, but he could do nothing.
A shadow loomed over the crumpled Suhyeon.
Time seemed to slow down.
All sounds were muffled into a low hum in his ringing ears.
“CHAE Suhyeon!!!!!!!!!”
He heard a familiar voice as blue light surged everywhere, but the monster was first.
Suhyeon’s face turned deathly pale.
Just as the monster was about to fall upon him, he felt a surge of guiding fluctuations within his chest.
His vision flickered into black.
