Chapter 94: The Night That Shouldn’t Have Been Possible

“Damn it!
Trying to get guided once and I’ll be up all night, f*ck!”

“Then go get guided somewhere else.
Why are you making a scene here?
You rushed over the moment you heard an SS-rank guide came from Seoul, so shut up and wait quietly in line.”

It was noisy.

No… very noisy.

“…I’m pretty sure I told you not to wait inside the guiding room.”

Ah… if it were up to my personality, I’d want to kick them out by force like I used to when I ran an illegal guiding office.

The only thing I regret is that I can’t do that now.

Maybe because I deliberately spoke in an irritated tone, the Espers who had been bickering quietly left the guiding room.

The moment I got off the helicopter, I headed straight to the guiding room prepared inside the Busan Center.

I’d heard a rough explanation, but the situation here was far worse than I’d imagined.

Compared to the Seoul Center, the abundance of rough, wild Espers was… well, probably just part of this center’s culture, so let’s set that aside.

The real problem was that the number of guides was absurdly low.

I felt like I could guess why things had turned out this way.

There was no way these beast-like Espers would have left lamb-like guides alone.

They probably bullied them using the gap in strength, or coaxed them out through legal means until they quit the center.

Otherwise, there was no way such a distorted ratio could exist.

Because of the shortage of guides, I was now on the verge of dizziness from endlessly guiding the agents flooding in.

It was astonishing how unstable every single one of them was.

More than one looked like they should’ve gone berserk already.

And yet, no matter how many were processed, the waiting line showed no sign of shrinking.

Just how many people were they planning to include in the subjugation team.

“Let’s take a short break.
If I keep going, I think my mana’s going to run dry.”

I asked for a break from the center staff member sitting in front of me, who was handling registration while checking the agents’ information.

Honestly, his face had turned ashen a long time ago.

Even someone just handling registration had been stuck in place for hours.

So what about me, who’d been constantly draining mana.

I felt like I was about to die.

“Th-thank you…!”

The staff member bowed deeply, looking like he might cry, and hurried out of the guiding room.

Maybe he went out to announce the break, because the complaints of the waiting Espers carried clearly to where I was sitting.

No matter how much they ranted, I couldn’t.

No, I wouldn’t.

I checked my phone out of habit.

[Service unavailable]

The message on the screen was worse than it had been on the helicopter.

It wasn’t just disconnected.

It outright said the area was out of service.

Hours without internet, messages, or calls was maddening beyond words.

“At this point it’s just a clock….”

The only function still working was the clock.

It was already nine in the evening.

I wondered if Jaeyul was resting well at home.

Since I didn’t know how long the gate subjugation would take, I should’ve left plenty of food for Poppy….

It wasn’t that I wasn’t contacting him.

I couldn’t.

And that made my thoughts spiral even more.

If there was any consolation, it was that I’d managed to tell Jaeyul the most important thing before the signal died.

To bring antidotes.

All I could do now was pray that message had gone through properly.

I was realizing all over again how precious a phone really was.

Something I usually barely looked at, I was now checking constantly.

I’d asked people around me several times just in case, but everyone’s phones were dead.

When we finally contacted the Support Administration through a wired line, they said they’d check and get back to us.

They still hadn’t shared any information.

If I said I wanted to pop home for a bit right now…

They definitely wouldn’t let me, right…?

Because my mind wasn’t at ease, all kinds of pointless thoughts surfaced.

Like withdrawal symptoms, a baseless anxiety bloomed from deep in my chest.

Tonight felt like it would be far more restless than usual.

“…Ha… this place is a dump….”

…f*ck.

After guiding until near dawn, I entered the assigned lodging and turned on the light, and curses spilled out on their own.

No matter how much of an outsider I was, how could they give a room this trashy to someone who’d come to help them.

With a bit of exaggeration, it was on par with the rooftop shack Jaeyul and I used to live in.

A cramped room.

A single bed.

A desk that looked like an antique.

There wasn’t a single thing to like.

Creeeak.
Creeeeak.

Unbelievable.

When I sat on the bed, the springs cried out like they were begging to be put out of their misery.

It was a terrible room, but I decided to let it go for now.

I was too exhausted to complain or even think about switching rooms.

“…This is strange….”

I lay back on the bed, stretched one arm up, and stared at my phone screen.

It still displayed the same message saying the area was out of service.

It had been like this almost all day, and that was what felt strange.

No matter how hard I searched my memory, I couldn’t recall an incident like this.

Of course, it wasn’t as if I remembered every detail of the past.

But phones issued exclusively to Support Administration staff and agents becoming unusable was unthinkable.

Even when a city was half-destroyed by a gate break, agent phones had always functioned properly.

They had to.

That was how communication with headquarters was maintained in any situation.

If phones had been unusable for this long in the past, it would’ve left at least a vague impression in my memory.

But nothing came to mind.

“Haa… I don’t know.”

Maybe because I was so exhausted, my brain wouldn’t work properly.

Trying to recall anything in this state was pointless.

Giving up on thinking, I went into the bathroom, showered quickly, and collapsed onto the creaking bed.

I was so tired that I didn’t even turn off the light before my consciousness was dragged under.

Whether it was sleep or fainting, I couldn’t tell.

‘Whiiine….’

What was that.

A dream…?

A hazy mind.

Bright light piercing my eyelids.

And… the sound of a whining puppy.

The familiar sound made me lift my heavy eyelids with great effort.

My vision was so blurred that nothing came into focus, so I closed my eyes again.

As my awareness faded once more, I felt a warm, pleasant presence in my arms.

Such a familiar warmth…

What was this again….

Just as the memory hovered on the edge of recall, sleep crashed over me like a wave and swallowed my consciousness whole.

I didn’t know how much time had passed.

When I opened my eyes again, bright sunlight was streaming through the window.

And of course, the fluorescent light in the room was still on.

I couldn’t tell whether I’d actually slept or just closed my eyes and opened them again.

I felt rested.

And also not.

Staring blankly at the ceiling, I recalled the dream I’d had half-asleep.

Why had I heard Poppy’s whining voice.

I hadn’t realized it then, but the warmth in my arms had definitely been Poppy’s.

“What a vivid dream….”

I brushed a hand over my chest where I’d held Poppy in the dream and even checked under the blanket.

It had to be a dream.

But a part of me wondered if Poppy had actually come.

He was smart enough to make it all the way to Busan…

No, that couldn’t be.

I’d been on this trip for less than a day, and I already missed him.

To wake myself up, I washed quickly and checked my phone out of habit.

I hoped, just maybe, the communication issue had been resolved while I slept.

But every function was still dead.

Knock knock.

Even as I kept trying messengers, texts, and calls despite knowing they wouldn’t work, a knock sounded at the door.

“Yes.”

“Ah!
You’re awake…?
Th-they told me to check in case something was wrong….”

Was that startled voice because I was alive.

…Or were they hoping I wouldn’t be.

“I’m fine.
I’ll head to the guiding room shortly, so please prepare.”

“Y-yes!”

What did I do to make them that tense.

Even through the door and wall, I could feel how stiff the other person was.

With how urgently they were pushing me to come out, and since my condition was clearly better than before I slept, I decided to finish all the guiding today.

So I could return to Seoul even a day sooner.

I was changing clothes and walking toward the desk to grab the ID I’d forgotten.

“…Huh…?”

Something utterly impossible caught my eye.

Something that didn’t belong in this dump of a room at all.

Something that hadn’t been there last night.

For a moment, my thoughts froze.

Then I snapped back to my senses and hurriedly checked the clothes I’d slept in.

Silver-gray fur was stuck to the chest of my black T-shirt.

Only then did I realize that last night hadn’t been a dream.

How could I be so sure from just a few strands of fur.

Because there was a slice of strawberry cake sitting on the desk.

The same strawberry cake Jaeyul bought me every year on my birthday.

How could something like that exist here in distant Busan.

Inside the lodging of a special-ability center where even outsiders had trouble entering.

The only one capable of something that absurd was Poppy.

Poppy, who must have run an errand for Jaeyul.