RG Chapter 20

← The Resurrected Guide Wants to Live Quietly

But he’d always felt something was off. Yi-yeon was never wasteful. If anything he was excessively frugal — so why act like that?

"Isn’t registering as his guardian enough?"

"I could adopt him, but… I don’t want to make a boy who’s already lost his family go through the same thing again. I’d just like him to get as much of the inheritance as possible."

"…I’ll consider it and contact you again."

He’d learned the reason for that contradictory behavior from a phone call he happened to overhear coming home from school.

Yi-yeon had always been preparing for death. Emptying his place so he could leave the world at any time.

He lived on vengeance alone, and the monster he had to take revenge on was enormously strong, so preparing for an end that could come at any time was natural. It was also consideration for Yu-geon, who would be left alone after his death.

Yu-geon had understood, but at the same time hadn’t wanted to understand.

His own room had been piled high with gifts and decorations for every little anniversary. And yet Yi-yeon’s own room was kept so clean he wondered if anyone lived in it — and each time, he felt discarded…

Why did Yi-yeon love even the dead so much, while Yu-geon, alive, couldn’t become someone he was reluctant to leave? Self-loathing had bloomed…

"Yu-geon! Han Yu-geon!"

"……."

"Snap out of it! Can you hear me? You really don’t look good — are you okay?"

"Haa. I’m fine."

Yu-geon, who had been blankly staring down at the room’s bed, let out a long breath and squared his jaw.

It’s fine. Han Yu-geon had grown — as much as the regret of losing Seon Yi-yeon twice, as much as the years that had flowed by. He was no longer a minor; he was a formally licensed esper, and not foolish enough to repeat the same regret again.

He had no intention of letting the one link to Jo Min-young’s traces — to recovering Yi-yeon’s body — slip through his fingers in vain.

Guiding…

"Guiding… take it…"

"Your condition… I’m worried…"

…No. Not just the matter of Yi-yeon’s body…

Remembering the movement of the eyelids that had willingly closed under his hand, Yu-geon clenched his fist.

"Ngh. Wh-what. All of a sudden."

In an instant, the temperature inside the room plummeted. Enough to make even an esper’s body shiver.

Yu-geon had opened his ability.

After fully seizing the room, he opened the window and checked the flow of warmth, then turned without hesitation.

"Let’s go. He can’t have gotten far."

He spoke unilaterally and left the room without waiting for an answer.

"Hey, wait! Come with—"

While Oh Yeon-seo was talking with Chae Jun-hyeok, Yu-geon got on the elevator, and she barely slipped in before the doors closed.

"What? Do you know where the guide went?"

"He went out through the window. I have a rough idea where he is now, too."

"Huh. How do you know that?"

"Because I attached something."

"What?"

"A shard of ice."

Before leaving the room, as he’d smoothed Ha-neul’s eyelids shut, Yu-geon had tucked a shard of ice made from his ability into his hair, just in case.

So that wherever Ha-neul went, it would leave a trace.

"Wow, Han Yu-geon. You could do that? Turns out your ability was stalker-specialized all along."

"……"

It was the first time he’d used his ability to track someone. He’d only tried it on a whim.

So how long the trace would last, and how far he could track it, was unknown.

This time Yu-geon opened the driver’s door. Oh Yeon-seo studied his expression worriedly, but since he seemed to know the location, he wasn’t in a terribly worked-up state, so she let him have it. He was prickly, but at least he was answering.

Only, the direction the car headed was a little unexpected.

"But… isn’t this toward the Center?"

"Right. That’s where he went."

"Uh…"

Oh Yeon-seo let out a flustered breath.

She was probably thinking Yu-geon had overreacted and Ha-neul had just gone home normally.

Yu-geon swallowed a sigh.

"He did run. If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have left a perfectly good door and gone out through the window."

"The window? Oh, right…."

According to Chae Jun-hyeok, he hadn’t left his post watching the room’s door for a single moment.

Around the time he was about to change shifts, he’d realized the room was unnaturally quiet and contacted them.

Ha-neul’s disappearance was clearly deliberate. He’d fled to evade the watching eyes on him.

"Hm. Kind of unexpected, in a way."

"The guide, I mean. He seems wilder than he looks. Honestly, I can’t picture someone like him going out through a window."

As Oh Yeon-seo said, Ha-neul wasn’t large-framed, and his musculature wasn’t notably impressive.

When Yu-geon had held his limp body, he’d been astonishingly light — feeling so fragile it seemed he’d break with a little force.

How had a body like that gone out a hospital room window? The VVIP ward sat on the fifteenth floor, no less.

…That side of him was also astonishingly like Seon Yi-yeon.

Yi-yeon, with his not-large frame, few words, and the air of a still lake about him, had looked meek to anyone — but now and then he’d do something bold as if it were nothing, startling everyone around him.

"So why head toward the Center? If you’re fleeing someone, it’s the worst possible destination. And it’s too sloppy to be a feint."

"Dunno…."

Maybe because he’d been thinking how much Yi-yeon and Ha-neul resembled each other —what came to mind first was suddenly yesterday: Ha-neul’s expression glimpsed through the rearview mirror.

Receiving ownership of the gun, gripping it with both hands, he’d smiled faintly. For the first time, life had come into a face that had stayed impassive even when a monster attacked.

That expression, those actions… they’d resembled Yi-yeon’s too. Enough that he’d overlapped them for a moment, despite the completely different faces.

"…He must have something he needs to pick up at home."

He’d erased every trace of himself and left — not even leaving the small everyday things he used, let alone a corpse — and yet in Yi-yeon’s safe he’d treasured everything: the paper flowers Yu-geon had folded as a child, the letters in crooked handwriting, even the empty snack wrappers from treats he’d been given.

It was beyond answering, but Yu-geon was certain: if the absurdly sentimental Yi-yeon, when it came to things related to him, did something reckless, it would be because of the gift Yu-geon had indirectly given him.

Even knowing he was "Lee Ha-neul," not "Seon Yi-yeon."

The original plan had been to get the hospital’s cooperation, briefly divert the watchers’ eyes, slip out of the room, and ride the car Jo Min-young had prepared straight back to the lab.

But the moment he was sure he’d shaken all the watchers and felt relieved, Yi-yeon realized there was one big problem with his plan.

"Um, excuse me."

"…Yes?"

"Before we go back, could we stop by the Center dormitory? Just for a moment." At Yi-yeon’s words, the driver from the lab let out a troubled breath.

"May I ask why? Of all places, going back to the dormitory would likely expose your location, wasting all the trouble of shaking them off."

"I’m sorry. But there’s something I absolutely have to get myself." Like the man driving now, Jo Min-young — who mostly lived in the underground lab — had several people who handled surface matters for her. Yi-yeon hadn’t had much luggage to begin with, so he could have asked them to move it.

The problem was that the most important thing among his belongings was the gun.

In a world where gates and dungeons could appear at any time, firearms were permitted not only to espers and guides but even to some unawakened Center staff — but to prevent harm to civilians, the regulations were extremely strict.

Every gun was granted usage rights through a watch issued by the Center, and if someone without those rights tried to use a gun — or even touched or moved it — all its functions froze.

There was a delegation feature, but since the rights had already been transferred once, it had to be someone from Seonyeon, the previous owner.

The problem was that this safety mechanism put considerable strain on the device itself —each time it triggered, performance degraded sharply, and it could even become complete junk.

Yi-yeon didn’t want to take that risk.

"Just take it."

"You’re not one of our guild’s people, so if something happens we can’t intervene, and you’re not quite a stranger either, so it’s hard not to care. So just take it. Better than us both feeling uneasy about it, no?"

He did like the gun itself, but more than that, it was something Yu-geon — no, the guild Yu-geon belonged to, Seonyeon — had transferred to him.

And as much as he was being chased by unknown watchers, it bothered him to leave without a word while Yu-geon, who had kindly brought him to the hospital, was away. On the way, he could leave a brief thank-you on the phone he’d left at home.

"If that’s the case, I’ll be reorganizing our route in preparation for any situation. Please be careful."

"Sorry for the trouble."

"It’s unavoidable if it’s something important. Just come back safely. I’ll be waiting."

"Yes. Thank you."

Relieved by the surprisingly ready agreement, a smile touched Yi-yeon’s lips.

A few of the watchers’ companions seemed to be waiting at his home too, but since they still thought of "Ha-neul" as an "ordinary guide," shaking them off wasn’t hard. He just had to take a "route no guide could use."

With lightened steps, he went up and carefully opened the front door.

But… something was wrong.

"Finally here. Thought my neck would break waiting." There was a strange man inside the house.

Was one of the watchers waiting inside the dormitory?

No. The atmosphere was wrong. Too relaxed for someone dealing with a target who’d slipped away once.

He acted as if he’d known Ha-neul would come home, as if he’d been waiting.

And the security of a dormitory attached to a guiding center couldn’t be this lax. These places were built to stop monsters — and esper attacks.

Yi-yeon’s eyes darted. The gun was in his bedroom, but unfortunately the man had his back to it.

"…Who are you?"

A whistle sounded.

"Ooh, it’s true. Just like Ju-ho said — damn pretty."

The man’s eyes blatantly roved up and down Yi-yeon. A thick, almost licking gaze.