← The Resurrected Guide Wants to Live Quietly
With that, Yi-yeon — his past life’s worries all swept away — could make up his mind. About how he would live from now on.
After a round of rest, all manner of tests awaited him.
Perhaps because he was the first successful case of an important experiment — not just a basic physical, but memory, mental, and psychological exams too. There were so many he wondered if they were running every test in existence. Naturally it couldn’t be done in a day; pacing his condition, he devoted a solid week.
Among the tests Yi-yeon underwent were the esper and guide aptitude exams.
He’d awakened at fifteen, become a licensed esper at twenty, and used his powers as naturally as breathing for ten years — so feeling loss when he couldn’t manage a thing in the esper aptitude test lasted only a moment. Yi-yeon was soon encountering the unfamiliar power dwelling in his body.
*I’ve really become a guide.*
He’d always lived on the "receiving" end of guiding; he’d never even imagined becoming someone on the "giving" end.
Bewildering, but not bad. He’d already done everything he wanted to do as an esper. But going fully civilian was out of the question either — he’d lived too long as "the esper who dreamed of revenge." With all his property inherited away, he was penniless now, his education a middle-school dropout turned GED, ignorant of how the world worked — going out into it with nothing but his body recovered was too little to live on. Having a guide’s powers was a relief.
This wasn’t an official testing institution, so it was only an "estimate" — but even so, his rank came out A-class. In many ways, his conditions were good.
"Yi-yeon! You lucky charm, you!"
He was enjoying a quiet rest with a book, waiting for the results after finishing all the tests, when he heard what sounded like hurried footsteps — and Jo Min-young burst into his room without knocking.
She rushed in and hugged him tight, her face bright — enough for him to guess what it was about. The results must have been good. She was terrible at lying about things like this; it showed on her face.
He closed the book he was reading and carefully returned the hug — though he couldn’t quite bring himself to lay his hands on her.
"You’re the one who brought a dead man back to life, so you’re the lucky charm too."
"What, the lucky charm talks pretty too. You rascal." Min-young laughed heartily, slapped Yi-yeon’s back a couple of times, and let go.
As she flicked through the tablet PC she’d brought, her fingers swiping, Min-young’s smile only deepened.
"All the test results are good. Good enough to walk out of here today. We’ll keep watching your condition for the next few months, of course, but you’re so stable I doubt there’ll be any problems."
"I see. That’s a relief."
"Exactly! We’re really going down in history!"
She wasn’t the type to crave glory at all, and yet she kept emphasizing it — she must have been deeply moved.
Well — she’d brought a dead person back to life.
Even limiting the subjects to high-rank espers, even with some side effects, the applications would be endless. It could be a game changer in the decades-long war against monsters.
"You want to get out soon, right? But even if you go, the project itself is classified, so you’ll have to hide your identity for now. You can stay here during the confidentiality period if you want, or I’ll get you a temporary identity. It won’t be that long, so even if you’re itching to go, just hold out a little…"
"That’s fine. I have no desire to reveal my identity. For the rest of my life, if possible."
"…Huh?"
Min-young, flipping through the documents on her tablet PC, blinked. As if retracing what she’d just heard, she asked.
"You’re not going to reveal it?"
"Yeah. If you’re okay with it, that’s what I’d like."
"I’m fine either way — getting official recognition internally is already a net gain for me. But you’re really going to live under a new identity?"
"Yeah. Revenge is over, and I’m not an esper anymore. I want to live quietly."
A-class was a high rank, but given the nature of a guide’s work, it wouldn’t draw much attention. Unless he joined a famous guild and worked in the field — if he worked quietly at a center like most guides, it wouldn’t be a problem.
"Hmm. Even if you avoid going public, you’re going to tell Yu-geon, right? If you contact him, everyone will find out anyway."
"I’m not telling Gun either."
"Huh? You’re keeping it secret from Han Yu-geon too? You’re not going to see him?"
"It’s been six years since I died, hasn’t it? He’s an adult now, and the funeral and the inheritance are all over. If I showed up out of nowhere, it would only cause trouble. And we’re not close enough to see each other at the cost of all that."
"Uh… what do you mean? You two aren’t close?"
"To be precise, Gun doesn’t like me."
He’d looked after him for nearly ten years by the calendar, but they’d only passed the time together — asked whether it was a close relationship, Yi-yeon thought not. They’d met at the moment of his death after nearly half a year apart, after all.
Of course Yi-yeon had cared for Yu-geon — enough to take him in and raise him. But that feeling had been rather one-sided.
The ten-year-old Yu-geon, just taken in, had been a bit sullen but had still been quite attached to his new guardian. Had his complaints grown along with him as he got older? The moment puberty hit he started acting awkward around him, and once he entered the esper academy he’d stayed in the dorms entirely, not even coming home on breaks, until it was hard to even see his face.
Yi-yeon, whose personality was on the odd side anyway from an unusual upbringing, could hardly understand why Yu-geon acted that way, or a pubescent boy’s heart — but he wasn’t entirely without guesses.
If he’d caught that monster sooner, Yu-geon would never have lost his family.
Besides that, he figured it couldn’t be helped that someone not related by blood wouldn’t grow attached to a guardian as lacking as he was in so many ways.
Yu-geon was the one "special" existence in Yi-yeon’s life, and he’d tried in his own way to look after him, so he’d felt hurt and wounded — but he had no intention of forcing Yu-geon, who wanted distance, not to ignore him.
So this was enough. He’d seen him doing well; that was enough.
"…Han Yu-geon doesn’t like you…"
"Yeah."
"Uh… hmm…? But the name of the guild he founded…"
"…?"
"Hmm, well… Or not?"
Min-young, rolling her eyes and tilting her head as if something were odd, clicked the tablet stylus she was holding. It was the sound of her interest — interested in nothing but experiments — snapping off.
"If you say so, then so it is. Then you’ll need a new identity. Got a name you want?"
"Hmm…"
Come to think of it, if he was going to live under a new identity, he couldn’t keep using his real name.
He had no confidence in naming. What name would be good? Yi-yeon, who had lowered his gaze to the floor out of habit, suddenly looked up.
It had come to him. The name he’d want, if he lived a new life.
"Haneul. I’ll go with Haneul."
"Oh. That’s not like you, answering so readily. I thought you’d agonize for days."
"This life, I want to see a lot of sky. If it’s my name, I’ll look at it consciously, at least."
The burns covering his face and the mask he’d worn to hide them inevitably caught the eye, and even aside from that, he’d kept sinking into thoughts of revenge and hanging his head without realizing it.
That was why Yi-yeon had almost no memory of looking at the sky. The blue sky of a clear day, the sky decorated with white clouds, the sky turned red by the setting sun, the sky under dark clouds… there must have been countless skies, but he couldn’t properly remember a single one.
But now things were different, and he wanted to face the world a little more proudly. Head held high, eyes never lowered.
"Okay. Good name, Haneul. Let’s go with that." Min-young smiled wryly and wrote "Lee Ha-neul" on the tablet PC.
***
Everyone assumed "Seonyeon" — final victor of the S-class dungeon race, crowned the undisputed number-one guild — would be in a festive mood, but the insiders, especially the executive members, were in no mood to celebrate.
Because Han Yu-geon — founder and guild master of Seonyeon, its public face and figurehead, S-class esper — was thoroughly being a pain.
"Yu-geon, get some guiding already! You’re really going to die at this rate!"
Han Yu-geon, who refused guiding, had never once been in sound condition since his debut — but right now was especially bad.
Five years of barely-scraping-by guiding had piled up, and even Han Yu-geon couldn’t clear an S-class dungeon without showing everything he had — yet he hadn’t gotten a single guiding since the clear.
His condition was at its worst because of it. The insomnia he’d developed from lack of guiding had flared up in earnest now. All his sleep over the past week added up to less than ten hours. "Forget it. Did you bring what I asked for?"
"Haa, you crazy bastard. What is an esper supposed to do without guiding?"
"I’m getting by, so I’m not getting it. What’s the problem?"
"Getting by? The last time you got guiding was right before the boss fight… and even that you cut short!"
"I’m getting by, really."
"How, haa, does that make sense? More than half the raid team came out like walking corpses…"
"Nothing’s impossible."
…
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