Chapter 62: The Guide Who Stayed

Se-jin noticed that Su-ha was clearly displeased with the atmosphere, but instead of smoothing things over, she thought it would be more fun to make the situation even worse. This time, Se-jin lightly pushed Su-ha in the back.

“Then hurry up and go work out! Train hard! Chaewon-ssi, you can head over there first and start with some basic tests.”

“Yes!”

Pushed along by Se-jin, Su-ha could only stare blankly at Chaewon, who answered her with an enthusiastic expression. Something had gone seriously wrong, but there was no way to fix it. Letting Se-jin grab his wrist and drag him along, Chaewon spoke to Su-ha.

“Su-ha-ssi, be careful while you exercise… I’ll see you in a bit!”

And with that, he didn’t even look back, heading off toward the basic fitness training room with Se-jin.

Left behind all alone, Su-ha watched the two of them walk away. Chaewon’s last words had been far too bright, and even though he hadn’t fought with Se-jin, Su-ha felt strangely defeated and had to stand there for a long while.

****

“Well, it’s not like there was no adjustment at all.”

Se-jin spoke lightly as she looked over Chaewon’s physical examination results. Chaewon, who had been waiting nervously as if he were about to have homework checked, blinked and asked, “Huh?” Se-jin continued.

“Your weight is below average, but considering that, your muscle mass is decent, and your overall condition isn’t bad. Hmm, want to try a few movements I’ll show you?”

“Yes.”

Though he looked puzzled, Chaewon diligently followed the basic stretching exercises Se-jin instructed. None of them were particularly difficult, but they required a fair amount of flexibility. Even so, Chaewon completed every movement smoothly, without much sign of strain.

When Chaewon was just thinking,

‘Was I always this flexible?’

Se-jin nodded and spoke.

“Your posture’s good, no bad habits, and you’re flexible. Were you like this before you awakened?”

“Um… I don’t think so.”

Before awakening, he’d never undergone tests like these, and exercise had been completely out of the question in his life. He wasn’t entirely sure, but he doubted he’d been in a condition worthy of praise.

He’d thought that simply being cured of his illness meant he’d already received plenty of esper compensation, but even if it didn’t show on the surface, awakening seemed to have affected Chaewon’s body in many other ways.

“You’ve got a good foundation, so if you’re consistent and work hard, you’ll get good results faster than you expect.”

“Ah, then if I work hard too…”

At Se-jin’s unexpectedly positive words, Chaewon spoke in an excited voice without realizing it and turned his head to look at the other espers training nearby.

Their sturdy physiques and well-built muscles immediately caught his eye, exactly the image of an ideal esper as Chaewon imagined it.

But Se-jin lightly tapped Chaewon’s arm to make him look back at her and said playfully, rolling her eyes,

“Hey, Chaewon-ssi. That’s not it. How can you already be coveting bodies like that?”

Chaewon’s face flushed bright red.

“N-No, that’s not what I meant…!”

“If this were my business, I’d sell you some miracle pitch about getting a body like that in just three months, but to be honest, unfortunately, that’s not really possible.”

“Ah… I see…”

“Well, unless you’ve got some hidden special ability where even a little exercise makes your muscles grow dozens of times better than other people’s?”

“I-I wasn’t hoping for that much…”

Feeling embarrassed after hearing Se-jin out, Chaewon lowered his head slightly as he replied. Seeing that, Se-jin let out a small laugh and continued.

“And honestly, a body like that wouldn’t suit your face anyway. You said you’ll be getting combat training from Su-ha, right? Let’s start by aiming to build enough stamina to endure that training. Jin Su-ha–style training is notorious for being brutal.”

At the mention of Su-ha’s name, Chaewon reflexively turned his head to look for him. Off in the distance, he spotted Su-ha jogging lightly on a treadmill.

Chaewon knew nothing about exercise, but even to him, Su-ha’s form, running without the slightest disorder, looked like something straight out of a picture.

He was reminded of the sight of Su-ha standing fearlessly before espers, firing guns and swinging blades to neutralize their power. Chaewon couldn’t even begin to imagine how much effort Su-ha must have put in to reach that point.

Then, all of a sudden, Chaewon realized that Se-jin not only spoke casually to Su-ha, but even called him by name with ease. More than that, from their brief exchange earlier, it had been unmistakably clear how close they were.

Until now, Chaewon had never seen Su-ha treat anyone so comfortably.

Even though he knew it might be rude, Chaewon found himself unable to stop the question from slipping out.

“Um… Trainer-nim…”

“Call me Se-jin noona.”

“Ah, yes. Se-jin noona, you and Su-ha-ssi, um… I mean…”

He’d started speaking, but the more he thought about it, the more it felt like an overly personal question, and his words trailed off. As he hesitated, wondering how to recover, Se-jin perceptively picked up the thread.

“You’re asking if I’m close with Su-ha?”

“…Yes. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Su-ha-ssi treat someone this comfortably.”

As he spoke, his face felt strangely hot. It was none of his business whom Su-ha treated comfortably, yet he didn’t understand why he was even asking this.

Even so, though he could still retract the question and say it was nothing, that she didn’t need to answer, he found that he didn’t want to take it back.

“…Well. Su-ha was actually my first guide.”

At the moment Se-jin answered, her eyes sinking ever so slightly, Chaewon realized that he had no right to hear about something so personal and hurriedly spoke up.

“I-If you don’t want to answer, that’s fine! I asked something too personal right after meeting you.”

Because Sejin had treated him so comfortably from the moment they met, his guard must have dropped. Normally, he would have been extra careful and restrained around someone he’d just met, but he didn’t know what had come over him.

“You’re allowed to ask questions like that. No need to be so stiff. It’s fine.”

Even so, Se-jin continued in a light tone.

“Normally, I’d stop there, but… you’re Su-ha’s first paired esper, Chaewon-ssi, and I really liked my first impression of you, so I’ll tell you a bit more.”

The words paired guide that slipped from Se-jin’s mouth caught painfully in some corner of Chaewon’s heart. He hurriedly tried to refuse. He wanted to say that he was merely an esper in name to Su-ha, not someone truly acknowledged as his pair.

But at that moment, the previous night came back to him, Su-ha holding him close, sending him the warmest energy in the world, whispering to him.

“Right now, I’m Chaewon-ssi’s paired guide, and I’m trying not to think about anything beyond that. I want to get through all of this… together with you, my esper.”

The meaning of trying not to think about anything beyond that, Chaewon had lain awake all night, thinking it over again and again. It would have been easier to dismiss it as empty words said out of consideration, but he couldn’t let go and kept chewing on it.

“I am Lee Chaewon’s guide.”

He wanted to find even the smallest fragment of sincerity in those words. He wanted to be sure. He wanted to believe that, at the very least, he wasn’t someone who was only a burden to Su-ha.

As Chaewon hesitated, unable to respond to being called Jin Su-ha’s esper, Se-jin spoke again, her voice lowered slightly.

“See this scar here?”

Se-jin pointed to the long scar across her forehead that had caught Chaewon’s eye from the very beginning. With a sense that the conversation was about to turn heavy, Chaewon clasped his hands tightly and nodded.

“I was originally an A-rank esper, top-tier, even. But now, if I took a rank test… I’d probably barely make D-rank.”

“…What?”

“I went on a mission and nearly died. I was right on the verge of a complete rampage, honestly, at a level where I should’ve been put down.”

Se-jin spoke so casually that at first Chaewon thought he must have misheard. But the air growing so heavy that he could barely breathe proved that he’d heard her correctly.

An esper’s rampage was something everyone feared above all else. No matter how careful people were, catastrophic incidents caused by rampages happened again and again, and each time, the methods of dealing with them grew more extreme.

An esper on the brink of rampage was often someone who had stood at the front lines, fighting the hardest in moments of crisis, which made it all the more tragic.

But when a single esper lost control, the damage could spread not only to other awakened individuals, but to civilians as well, so there was no helping it.

Chaewon, who had only ever encountered such situations through the news, could do nothing but hold his breath at the story, unable to respond. Se-jin gestured lightly with her chin toward Su-ha in the distance and continued.

“Back then, on a battlefield where everyone said it was impossible, that we had to give up and put me down, the one who risked his life to guide me… was Jin Su-ha.”

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