← How a Guide Copes with the Loss of an Esper
That vow was made three years ago now.
*Bone replacement.*
For an ordinary guide to produce efficiency rivaling an esper’s, a complete metamorphosis was required. It meant changing one’s bones and stealing away the old self.
[Bibi. Are you sure you’ll be fine alone?]
“Yes. Just give me the signal.”
[Be careful. I’ll cover you from behind.]
At the voice in his earpiece, Nayun steadied his breath. Fog lay thick outside the alley. Mist spewed from the monster’s jaws blocked his vision. Nayun leaned his back against the wall.
The monster’s toxic fog was especially sensitive to an esper’s wavelength — no esper could even approach it.
“What a vicious thing.”
[You’re one to talk.]
“Are you saying I’m on a monster’s level?”
[That’s cruel, really. A guide with no esper to run the field — of course you’re vicious.]
Nayun laughed softly. An exasperated sigh came through the earpiece. He pulled the shotgun in his hands closer to his chest.
[If a guide running the field without an esper isn’t vicious, who would be?]
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
[You’re something else…]
“Look how far I’ve come.”
For three years he worked himself to death. He only hadn’t died; trying to follow esper training with a guide’s body, he went to bed breathless every day.
…Damn. I was insane.
He laughed hollowly.
“What hope does someone who can’t even twist a chicken’s neck have of taking on an esper? Let it go, he’ll give up eventually.”
“What’s with that, only espers get to be soldiers? Is there a law that says a guide has to serve only through guiding?”
Espers and guides were obligated to serve the nation. Espers risked danger on the front lines; guides supported esper combat from the rear.
No guide had ever tried to break the mold.
Until now.
“Wait a second.”
A good idea struck him. A strange vitality lit Nayun’s eyes.
“What? You got a plan?”
“I thought there was no way… but there is. Nobody ever tried, so nobody knew.”
Nayun muttered as if in a daze. Someone might call it a crazy idea, but a strange exhilaration boiled up inside him.
Seeing life return to Nayun’s dead eyes, Yeongjun found it eerie, unaware of what realization he’d handed him.
“If I don’t want to do guiding, I just won’t stay in the rear. Is there a law that says a guide can only do guiding?”
“What are you talking about? If you don’t guide, what are you going to do?”
“Go to the front. Like an esper.”
“How?”
Yeongjun couldn’t absorb Nayun’s words right away. His eyes slowly widened. He’d understood what was packed into them.
“You’re telling me that with no pair esper, you’re going to go to the front lines yourself and risk your life fighting?”
Espers to the front, guides to the rear. It wasn’t written law. There’d never been a need. It was too obvious to record.
“You want to fight like an esper? That’s insane.”
“Nobody’s tried it. Who knows if it’ll work or not?”
“Wow, I’m at a loss for words…”
Jang Jaewan surely wouldn’t have wanted this. Hadn’t Jang Jaewan gone off to die alone, wanting Nayun to stay behind and live safely?
But you’re the one who abandoned me.
Jang Jaewan was no longer by his side.
Nayun’s heart had twisted. You left me behind and went off to die as you pleased. And I’m supposed to live lazily and comfortably, spending freely the money you earned fighting and bleeding?
I can’t do that.
“Can you even kill a monster? You?”
Nayun cried and vomited and rolled on the floor, sometimes falling ill. When the next day came, he dragged his leaden body to training.
If it were pain one could easily endure, they wouldn’t call it bone-scraping pain. He truly felt how much of a sheltered flower he’d been as Jang Jaewan’s guide.
“Watch the timing for me — when?”
[Now.]
That thing was wary of an esper’s wavelength but didn’t judge a guide’s wavelength a threat.
That’s my chance.
Through the fog, Nayun fired a shotgun blast to draw the mist-spider monster’s attention. A shotgun scatters many pellets in one shot. At this distance the power wasn’t enough.
He just needed to get close, once.
Hearing the monster move, he dashed quickly into the opposite alley. Nayun pressed his back to the wall. The cold barrel settled into his hand. Outside the alley the monster shrieked in a frenzy, destroying everything in its path.
Nayun squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them. He steadied his last breath. The moment he burst from the alley, he aimed at the monster. Through the fog his eyes met its yellow ones — he pulled the trigger. Now.
The bullet tore through the air with a whistle.
***
“Thanks to you, it went down easy. The kid who used to fall apart even on long runs — when did you get so big…”
“Anyone would think you raised me, sunbae.”
The scattered pellets struck the monster’s eyes. With its visual organs damaged, it was no match for the espers. Nayun received the empty praise with an impassive face.
So this day came.
The days he’d endured, gritting his teeth through the mockery, flashed past. It felt strange and new.
He’d run until his lungs screamed and he thought he’d die on the spot, until his vision went yellow with practice. A nonstop succession of pain, enough to make him want to be reborn. Every single day.
—What’s a guide going to do?
—He won’t last long anyway.
Those stares changed at some point.
Eventually Nayun could run with a tire tied to his ankle and spray bullets at moving targets.
The espers at the training ground couldn’t believe it even watching.
—How did Jang Jaewan raise his guide?
“Is that really a guide? Isn’t he actually an esper?”
Sprains all over his body and going to the brink of breaking bones were routine. Seeing his limbs full of blue bruises, Yeongjun stuck patches on him with a horrified face.
A guide who’d surpassed his limits through his own effort. That reputation let Nayun escape the rear.
“Why would a guide bother running the field? If you stay still, the espers will handle everything.”
“You think that’s the first time I’ve heard that?”
“I don’t get it. It’s not like you’re dying to die. And you don’t even have a pair esper.”
“Why are you wounding me like this?”
Nayun stopped digging and straightened his back, gazing into the distance. Thinking of his pair at a site where monster corpses were being processed wasn’t exactly civilized, but.
Every hour had been hell, and he’d wanted to give up, but he swallowed the bile rising in his throat. Living on, time had faithfully passed.
He remembered going to an operation zone for the first time in his life, spilling blood and fighting with bared bones. He could still recall the feeling of twisting a monster’s neck and hurling its collapsing bulk.
Sometimes news came that the rebel leadership had been assassinated during an operation.
There was no glory there. Only the desperate struggle to survive and the fury to kill.
So this is where you were.
At last he could fathom Jang Jaewan’s feelings.
—Rather than take you to a place I worry about, I’d rather collapse from lack of guiding.
He belatedly understood Jang Jaewan’s stubbornness, which he hadn’t empathized with then. He wouldn’t have wanted to send him to a place like this.
“Still, I wanted to be by your side.”
“What?”
The esper beside him asked. Nayun shook his head, saying it was nothing.
“Just talking to myself.”
“Who talks to themselves that loudly?”
“Only an esper would hear it. I’m just a guide.”
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