← The Guide Who Hides Their Power is an Otter
A rampage temporarily halted. He had been told the test results said he could rampage again at any time.
“…I’ll find it.”
The rain struck the water, splashing everywhere as it poured down noisily.
Heisha sat on the single-person leather sofa and looked around the inside of the Center Director’s office here and there.
“Has it gotten nicer than when I first came?”
“The office? Well. I suppose so.”
Heisha, who had been stroking the smooth leather out of habit, put his hand in his pocket. What bulged up there was, to anyone’s eyes, the yellow clam he had grown attached to.
Seeing it, the Center Director rolled up a newspaper and pointed at Heisha with it.
“What’s that?”
“Yes?”
“That thing in your pocket. Take it out and show me.”
“NO.”
“Don’t give me that ‘no’ nonsense. Hurry up and take it out!”
Heisha grinned with his eyes curved in a smile. When he slowly took the yellow clam out of his pocket and showed it, the Center Director’s face turned fierce.
“Why do you carry something like that around?”
“Mind control….”
“There you go again. Really. Hey! Never mind that. Why did you guide Esper Park Gang-u?”
So that was why he had called him in. Heisha smiled until his eyes bent and said,
“You can’t just stand there and watch someone die, can you?”
“Just because of that?”
“If I hadn’t stopped it, the Captain would have died there too.”
“After you threw him and knocked him out?”
“…How did you know?”
He had only meant to flip him over so he would lie down. He just hadn’t known he would pass out right there…. It felt a little unfair, but he shrugged his shoulders and pushed his lips out.
“I could have died too if I’d slipped up. I only learned late that ‘run!’ meant run away.”
The Center Director smacked his own forehead and let out a big sigh.
“You did it to stick yourself to Esper Park Gang-u, didn’t you?”
“Huh?”
How did he know that, too? Heisha rolled his eyes and avoided his gaze. The Center Director narrowed the space between his brows and laced his fingers together.
“Esper Park Gang-u is not allowed.”
“Why not?”
“Do you want to pair with him?”
He did not quite know about that much yet….
“It’s already been a year since I came here, and I have no friends. Everyone hates me because I’m C-rank, so I live alone. But that esper seems to be hated by everyone too, so I thought it would be nice if he became friends with me.”
“Friends?”
The Center Director snorted.
“He isn’t the kind of material who makes friends with anyone. Heisha. Unlike where you live, the conditions here aren’t such that people can live while making friends and getting close. You know the gates here boast the most notoriously high difficulty in the whole world, right?”
“I know.”
The Center Director sighed again.
“You have to pair with a stronger esper.”
“Esper Park Gang-u is strong too.”
Heisha tilted his head.
“No.”
The Center Director recited it with his eyes flashing blue.
“I’ll find you someone stronger than him and make you do it with him. Park Gang-u is not allowed.”
He could not give a prize guide like this to a man with a ruined personality who might quit his work at any moment.
“Soon you’ll do matching with Park Gang-u. I broke the machine in advance, so don’t worry. Just sit still and then go out. Got it?”
Heisha wondered why the Center Director was going this far. With that overbearing attitude, whatever he said, it was obvious he would just be told to be quiet. Heisha rubbed the armrest of the leather sofa back and forth and grinned.
“I’ll just sit still.”
So he just had to sit still. Heisha smiled brightly.
“I’ll be going!”
It would be a moment when he would be alone with Park Gang-u, so he meant to try talking to him.
Heisha came straight out of the office humming. The moment he came out, a summons announcement came through the speakers set here and there in the ceiling.
“Ah, ah. Espers and guides who have received the message, please all gather on the third floor at once.”
Ding. Together with the announcement, a message popped up.
[Matching Test Scheduled Recipients
Matcher: Heisha (Guide) Place: 3rd Floor, Lab AF-17 Hello, Guide. Today from 14:00 to 16:00, matching tests with the espers on the list are scheduled. Please note that if you ignore or refuse this message, you may be judged to have violated Article 9, Paragraph 1 of the Center Regulations and be given penalty points.
For the esper and guide matching rate guide, click the link. For what an esper and guide pair is, click the link. Please file matching objections through the Center ‘Sound Spring.’ For more details, please contact the Center’s customer center. Customer Center 0XX-XXXX-8282]
The announcement rang once more.
“Espers and guides who have received the matching message, please all gather on the third floor at once. End of announcement.”
He stood in front of the elevator with light steps, and people who had heard the announcement and come out from here and there crowded together in a rush. When the elevator doors opened, people were already packed full, and he was tilting his head wondering if he could get on when the people behind him got on at the same speed they had gathered.
Beep! Beep!
A noisy sound rang inside the wide elevator.
“Hey! You there in front, get out!”
“The rest, come by the stairs. What is this? The last person who got on, get out.”
Heisha raised his eyebrows with one foot caught in the elevator.
“Heisha Guide. Take the next one, or come by the stairs.”
He felt offended that it blared at him for being the last to set foot in it when he had stood at the very front, but there was nothing he could do. When Heisha took his foot out, the elevator doors slid closed.
“Does even the elevator hate me?”
He got the feeling even the machines were ostracizing him.
“It’s okay!”
Once he became close with someone, this loneliness would disappear all at once!
Heisha turned his steps toward the emergency stairs. He wondered when the emergency exit door had ever been used, from the creaking sound it made. Even when he pushed it with his shoulder and put strength into it, it only budged a little, so it seemed truly no one used it.
Going by the stairs for some light exercise would be good too. He pushed his lips out, shoved the emergency door open hard, and came in, and behind him the door closed with a bang!
“That startled me.”
He froze in a startled posture with his shoulders shrugged up, and in the dark emergency stairwell, between the back stairs, a large shadow could be seen. It was strange and scary that someone was on stairs nobody used, and in the middle of it curiosity rose too.
“Hu, ah, yu?”
Ah. This was Korea.
“Who… is there?”
As he walked carefully and opened his mouth, the whole emergency stairwell thrummed and rang.
“Be quiet.”
Someone answered in an unpleasant voice. He had not even spoken that loudly, so he felt sheepish, rolled his lips in, and climbed the stairs.
“Sorry….”
“Get out.”
He had not meant to put him in a bad mood. But he had missed the elevator, so this was the only way. Even if he was told to get out, he could not get out. The elevator would already be busily moving, carrying people here and there.
“I have to go up.”
“…Get out.”
There was no time to stage an argument at the basement first-floor emergency exit.
“I’ll just pass right by you.”
“Get out, I said.”
“No. Really, I’ll pass by so fast you won’t even see me.”
“Can’t you hear me?”
Arguing with a person he could not see became frustrating. Heisha, frowning in a way he rarely did, completely ignored the hostility the other person was showing and climbed the stairs. Just as he was thinking the voice was very familiar and wondering where he had heard it,
a foolish exclamation popped out first.
“Oh, so it’s you.”
Park Gang-u was sitting in a corner of the stairs, panting and glaring at Heisha. Who should be saying that line first?
Heisha looked at Park Gang-u with a blank face, then tilted his head to the side.
“What are you doing here?”
He was sweating cold sweat, and he looked somehow uncomfortable, or dizzy, opening and closing his eyes restlessly.
“Surely you aren’t, like, rampaging here or something, are you?”
That would be a bit dangerous.
“…If you figured it out, get out.”
So it was the right answer immediately. His breathing was rough and his respiration was getting faster, and he looked nothing if not stifled. What should he do? In this state, even if he wanted to guide him, he could not.
“You know you’re supposed to do matching with me, right?”
Park Gang-u only leaned against the emergency exit wall, squeezed his eyes shut, and frowned; he did not answer. Or was it that he could not?
“Let’s go together.”
“…You really don’t listen, damn it.”
“What does ‘don’t listen, damn it’ mean? I can hear just fine, clean and clear.”
He could not even open his eyes, and his body was trembling more and more. He would not rampage here, but he could lose consciousness. His state was visibly getting worse and worse, so how hard must it be for him to endure it?
“Shall I support you?”
“I don’t need it. Just go. I just have to stay like this for a little while….”
It seemed his personality really was not good, as the rumors said. And yet, not wanting to show this side of himself to anyone, and hating to hang onto guiding he could not receive anyway, had he always been like this in this spot?
His own particular way and posture for minimizing the pain looked somehow familiar.
“Come with me.”
He could not just leave him like this here.
“I’ll help you.”
He could save him, and leaving him behind here was something that could not exist in his dictionary.
“Hurry, take my hand!”
“…….”
“Hurry!”
“Get lost.”
His bloodshot eyes glared at him, shining fiercely with anxiety, fear, and wariness. They resembled his own appearance when he first became a sea otter.
“If you’re here alone like this, who will help you? There’s no one to help you. Even if you die like this, no one will know. That’s a bit sad, isn’t it? Anyway, even if you hate it, I’ll help you.”
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