Chapter 1: It Was Just a Malfunction

I am a Guide.

[Beep- beep- beep- beep-]

That was a Level 3 alarm.

Lee Juju, who had been dozing off, started in surprise and opened his eyes, sitting blankly for a moment.

‘Am I not fully awake yet?’

Even though he shook his head to clear his mind, the ominous sound still filled the dormitory, or to be precise, the entire building where Lee Juju was sleeping.

‘Why does this have to happen when I am on duty?’

Pouring out curses inwardly, he raised his body from where he had been slumped.

The damned alarm still blared, its ominous presence still in full effect.

No matter how peaceful the moment was, anyone would harbor anxiety in their heart if they suddenly heard a sound like that.

‘There is no one here.’

While dragging his body reluctantly, towards the facility where the alarm was coming from, Lee Juju looked for someone who could go in his stead, or at least go with him.

However, unfortunately, Lee Juju was the only one on night duty in this vast and large building, and it was scheduled to be that way for at least two days.

Although night duty is usually done alone, this place was safe enough for the person on duty to doze off.

It was an experimental facility built in the middle of Seoul, the capital of Korea, which was nicknamed the Greenbelt for being an ultra-safe zone where not even a common F-Class Gate had appeared for three months.

The days when all of humanity had to put forth their total effort to block Gates, Rifts, and Monster Lairs were gone a hundred years ago.

Now, an era had arrived where one had to discover even those mediocre Gates first and occupy them somehow to extract resources.

The types of most monsters and Gates had been identified, and it was a natural sequence that the things scientists had to experiment on were drastically reduced.

As humanity reached the stage where they could directly control the Gate phenomenon that used to make the whole world tremble in fear, not knowing when or where it would open randomly, there was no reason for even a Level 1 alarm to ring in such a downtown area, let alone a Level 3 alarm.

So, hearing an alarm he had only ever encountered in manuals, he couldn’t erase the thought that it was just a machine malfunction, even though his whole body shivered for no reason.

‘I told them to switch to the new emergency equipment.’

It was the emergency equipment that was ten years old.

Like emergency equipment from a time when people were more sensitive to Gates, the sprinklers would go off noisily at the slightest hint of cigarette smoke, so this was likely nothing special either.

Lee Juju tried his best to walk nonchalantly.

When he finally arrived at the laboratory, blocked by a 50-centimeter thick iron door, where the alarm was ringing loudly, there was no other way.

He let out a sigh and pushed the iron door open with force.

Contrary to his thought that it would be brightly lit, the inside of the laboratory was a world of pitch-black wavering darkness.

Come to think of it, Lee Juju was the only person left in this building.

So the scientists who usually worked overtime as if eating meals would also not be in their seats, and naturally, there was no one to turn on the lights in the laboratory.

He swallowed hard in front of the iron door.

 The urge to quickly resolve this matter and finish his remaining duty had vanished like snow melting away.

There is nothing as stupid as being afraid of ghosts in this day and age, but anyone is bound to hesitate when witnessing darkness like a bottomless pit.

To think he had to go in there alone.

‘Still…… would anything actually happen?’

Only after laying out a long self-rationalization did his fear-stricken heart seem to subside.

Lee Juju did not notice the fact that this was not simply a fear of darkness, but his intuition as a Guide.

It was understandable, given that this place was not a Gate or a Rift, but the Head Office and Center where Guides and Espers rested.

‘Right, I am an adult. I graduated while staying up all night for a week after watching a horror movie back in my teenage days.’

Up until he entered the facility while roughly groping the wall with his hands, Lee Juju still wasn’t able to shake off the uneasiness.

Rather, the irritation that surged because he couldn’t find the switch to turn on the lights was enough to suppress even the fear of darkness.

‘Crazy scientists. Your research is most important, and your convenience comes first, right? You should have made turning on the lights normal!’

‘Or don’t tell me are there no fluorescent lights?’

It was just when he was thinking that.

[Creak, bam!]

Lee Juju, who had been walking in with large strides trying to be bold while melting his body into the darkness, turned pale.

Behind his back, the iron door, reaching a thickness of a whopping 50 centimeters, had closed with a tremendous sound.

Even though there was no wind blowing!

Lee Juju, who stood frozen, unable to even scream because he was so surprised, realized that the warning sound that had been crying beep, beep, had disappeared.

It was even more ominous.

All directions were incredibly silent, and the inside of the laboratory was so dark that one had to rely on the faint moonlight coming through the narrow windows to distinguish objects.

“I’m screwed.”

Spouting any words seemed to loosen his body, which had been completely frozen with fear, just a little.

Lee Juju tried to compose himself so as not to tremble.

In the first place, he wasn’t the physical type, and he certainly didn’t have any abilities like those Espers possessed.

No matter how long he had worked there and even if he was an S-Class Guide reputed to be competent, in a situation without an Esper to protect him, he was no different from a civilian.

However, staying still and doing nothing in a crisis situation is a stupid thing to do.

Lee Juju pulled himself together and moved very little by little, slowly.

Whether examining the inside of the facility or keeping guard, he had to at least turn on the lights to do anything.

In fact, it was also too scary to just stay still.

It was an experience learned through long hours of training that a stiff body gets better if you take action.

The inside of the laboratory was still dark.

“Light… Switch… Damn it, where is it?”

At that moment, the lights flicked on without warning.

As the inside of the facility suddenly became bright, his eyes stung.

Lee Juju looked around the laboratory with a bewildered face.

He wondered if someone else had turned on the lights for him.

However, inside the brightly lit laboratory, it was solely Lee Juju.

With a face saying ‘no way’, Lee Juju muttered again.

“Light?”

Then the light turned off again.

“Light?”

The light turned on again.

Stopping right there with an absurd look on his face, he reflexively turned around.

The iron door remained shut.

It seemed the door closing wasn’t a hallucination.

But…

Well, that could happen.

The inside of the laboratory didn’t look much different from the facilities he usually saw.

To be precise, it was exactly the same scene he saw when leaving work yesterday.

“Ah damn, what the hell. I got scared for nothing.”

To think they set the lights to voice recognition.

He slumped into a nearby chair and rubbed his face vigorously.

Like a fool, a few tears had trickled out.

It seemed like he had put on a one-man show of panic for about an hour all by himself.

Thinking about it now, he belatedly realized that the suddenly closed iron door was likely a system set up for security to close automatically when a user entered.

If a worker checking the CCTV after the holidays saw this, it would be quite a laughable sight, but that would just end with a bit of embarrassment.

Only then did Lee Juju return to his usual business-like face.

By the way, why did alarm suddenly stop it’s ominous ringing?

He kept tilting his head in puzzlement.

It didn’t seem likely that a suddenly broken alarm would fix itself.

He knew that experiments were constant.

He also knew that those experiments were state secrets.

The problem was that because the secrets were so significant, no Esper or Guide knew the details about them.

It was suspicious that such a loud noise had vanished without a trace.

It wouldn’t have been this scary if there was at least one Esper with him.

‘No, if there was an Esper in the first place, I wouldn’t even be standing duty.’

He let out a groan and leaned back until his body was fully sprawled on the chair.

Naturally, his body relaxed comfortably.

His body, which had been tense since the alarm started ringing and startled when the iron door closed, was desperately craving rest.

Espers and Guides are state-certified ability users.

However, now that Gates and Rifts have stabilized and been relegated to the sole resource supplement for an Earth with depleted resources, the status of Espers and Guides has become very high.

Espers and Guides, who used to work day and night like dogs of the state, were now able to secure huge salaries and vacations.

And from tomorrow until Friday was a Golden Week holiday.

Unless one was slow-witted, everyone used their annual leave on Monday as if they had planned it.

Even the Esper who had been in a ‘some’ relationship with Lee Juju (“Please, Juju. Go to Hawaii with me just this once. I already booked a luxury hotel!”) had used his annual leave, so it was only natural.

No one, truly no one was here.

“If I knew this would happen, I should have just gone on vacation with Michelle.”

Lee Juju, muttering with a blank face, let out a deep sigh.

If Michelle were here, regardless of whether Juju had to stand duty or whatever, he would have safely tucked Juju into the dorm as soon as the alarm rang, handled everything neatly within 10 minutes, and returned to chat with him again.