The novel he’d been dying to read—the one he’d waited for, hoping the side stories would drop soon—had gone completely off the rails. Side stories? Who cared anymore. It was ruined.
Lee Tae-rim was currently twenty-two years old. He was going to die at twenty-three. That left him with less than a year to live.
At this point in the story, all the trouble had already been caused. Every scandal, every mistake—he was neck-deep in them.
Since it had been officially declared that Tae-rim had memory loss, maybe he could just play dumb. Or… should he apologize? Maybe try to explain? Or… or… His head started to ache from thinking too much. He had no clue what the right move was.
Still, it wasn’t all bad. This world didn’t have secondary genders. That meant Tae-rim’s body wasn’t an Alpha or an Omega—it was just Beta.
He didn’t have to constantly worry about his pheromones leaking or dread the monthly Heat cycles that used to tear him apart.
Living in a world without pheromones—it was shockingly liberating.
Back in his old life, even a faint whiff of the wrong pheromone could make him nauseous for an entire day, his head pounding nonstop. Now, that was all behind him.
It felt amazing.
There were stories where Alphas and Omegas had been swapped out for Espers and Guides, but thankfully, he hadn’t ended up inside one of those books.
Tae-rim found peace in being ordinary. He genuinely enjoyed it.
When his condition didn’t improve after an extended hospital stay, they discharged him. The reason? They couldn’t let an S-rank Guide sit around doing nothing.
The problem was… Tae-rim didn’t know how to guide.
Sure, touching an Esper triggered guiding automatically, but just pouring energy into someone without control wasn’t helpful—it could even be dangerous.
So he had to learn from scratch, starting with locating the guiding energy within his body.
Maybe because he wasn’t the original Lee Tae-rim, he had no sense for it at all.
But thanks to the sheer persistence of his instructor—and Tae-rim’s own teary-eyed determination—he eventually managed to guide, at least at a functional level.
Barely, but still.
And his instructor had praised him like it was a major accomplishment, clapping and encouraging him every step of the way. A genuinely kind person.
The one who taught him was Park Seon-wook, a B-rank Guide. Thirty-five years old, still full of energy, and still working in the field. He liked teaching, so he mostly trained rookies.
Honestly, when Tae-rim was introduced to him and heard the word “B-rank,” his first thought had been: Did they assign a B-rank on purpose?
Turned out, yes.
Throughout training, Tae-rim often felt like Park Seon-wook was watching him closely—observing him.
The real Lee Tae-rim would’ve thrown a fit at being trained by someone B-rank.
But he wasn’t really Lee Tae-rim, so he didn’t care about Park Seonwook’s rank. The man was teaching him, and that was all that mattered.
Still, no matter how quietly and diligently he tried to work, the reactions around him were cold.
People were probably whispering behind his back again, “Look at him putting on another act.”
Even Park Seon-wook, who treated him kindly on the surface, might’ve had other thoughts underneath. Who knew?
“Getting guided by an S-rank? What an honor. I should go brag about it.”
After three days of one-on-one instruction, Tae-rim was finally sent out to the field.
He was assigned to a team that guided low-rank Espers—C-rank and below—who’d spent their whole day crawling through the contaminated zones.
The work itself wasn’t hard.
The real challenge was enduring the constant mockery and sarcastic jabs from the Espers.
The safe zones were divided into the Central Zone and Districts 1 through 7. The Central Zone and District 1 were the safest. Districts 3 and 4 were the most dangerous. The others fell somewhere in between—neither safe nor especially risky.
Espers were assigned to districts based on the threat level.
When a sudden surge of gates appeared in one area, releasing more monsters, Espers from safer zones would be dispatched to help contain the outbreak.
Lately, District 3 had been getting flooded with low-level gates. There were so many that the monster count had ballooned, and Espers from District 1 had to be sent in as backup.
On the outskirts of District 3, near the outer wall, a makeshift guiding tent had been set up with a barrier around it. Inside, a row of Guides sat in folding chairs, ready to work.
Since Tae-rim couldn’t fully control his energy—half of it just spilled out without focus—he was seated in the center of the tent.
They didn’t want to waste the S-rank energy pouring out of him.
The Guides sitting on either side of him didn’t even glance in his direction.
Of course not, he thought. I’m the villain in this story, after all.
“Bet your guiding feels amazing, huh?”
The Esper in front of him was massaging his hand suggestively, but Tae-rim ignored him.
He was too busy trying to figure out how to guide better—how to do the job right.
Dying next year? That could wait. Right now, he needed to protect his meal ticket.
No workplace dislikes someone who’s good at what they do.
So if he’d burned bridges before, the only solution was to work even harder now.
The original Lee Tae-rim had done a terrible job—too obsessed with clinging to an S-rank Esper he liked. That only made everyone hate him more. Tae-rim had no intention of repeating that.
He focused, and then focused again.
“Hey! You deaf or what?”
“I’m trying to guide. Please don’t talk to me.”
“Oh, look at this guy—acting all high and mighty now?”
“If your session’s over, stop running your mouth and get lost, asshole. I want a turn with the S-rank.”
Luckily, someone behind the Esper stepped in before it escalated. But that guy wasn’t any better.
Same crude jokes about how good it felt. Same hand groping.
Tae-rim told himself, This hand is temporarily out of service, and tuned everything else out.
He focused on guiding.
A week passed like that.
Even with the nonstop harassment from the Espers, Tae-rim didn’t respond once.
He just guided.
Over time, he started getting the hang of it—figuring out how to untangle messy waves of energy and smooth them out.
Other Guides matched with Espers based on their compatibility rate. But since he was S-rank, Tae-rim could guide anyone.
That meant he got to deal with every kind of Esper imaginable—all sorts of chaotic energy patterns, all kinds of cases.
“You’re getting a lot more comfortable with guiding, huh?”
“Thank you.”
Where there were jerks, there were also decent people. And those? Tae-rim didn’t ignore them.
At the very least, he made sure to respond.
Even though it had been officially announced that Lee Tae-rim was suffering from memory loss, no one really seemed to believe it.
But now that he was out in the field, visibly fumbling through his guiding, a few Espers were starting to come around.
The other Guides, on the other hand, wouldn’t even look him in the eye. So who knew what they actually thought.
The truth was, Tae-rim had been diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder—not amnesia. But if that ever got out, his already rock-bottom reputation would sink even lower. So the Center Director had ordered everyone to stick with the memory-loss narrative.
Tae-rim was still an S-rank Guide. No matter what he’d done, letting someone of his rank slip through their fingers would be a loss. He could always request a transfer to another district—better to keep him here, where they could manage him.
“Guide Lee Tae-rim. I think you’re ready to return to Team 1 now.”
On his tenth day with Team 4, the team leader called him in and praised his progress. But Tae-rim didn’t welcome the compliment.
Team 1 was home to the other S-rank Guides—and the protagonist of the novel. A special recruit assigned to work directly with an S-rank Esper.
Tae-rim didn’t want to face him.
Technically, he wasn’t even the real Lee Tae-rim, so he should’ve been able to treat the protagonist like anyone else.
But knowing he was the villain, and that his death was tied to that character, made the thought of seeing him feel… uncomfortable.
“Starting tomorrow, you’ll transfer to Team 1’s guiding room.”
“Yes, sir.”
He didn’t let his discomfort show. With a neutral expression, Tae-rim nodded as if nothing was wrong.
The next morning, he showed up at Team 1’s barracks—known more commonly as the S-rank guiding room.
Three people had already arrived. They were chatting happily, completely at ease with each other.
“Good morning.”
Tae-rim bowed politely.
The atmosphere froze in an instant. He’d been expecting it, but that didn’t make it any less uncomfortable.
He sighed inwardly.
“Tae-rim, hey. I heard you lost your memory—feeling any better now?”
At least one of them responded out of courtesy. Judging by the informal tone, it had to be Lee Yeong-jun, the oldest among the S-rank Guides.
That meant the woman must be Bae Jieun, the other S-rank Guide, and the third person—the one who hadn’t spoken—was the protagonist, Choi Jiwoon.
Bae Jieun stared him down coldly, her expression openly hostile. She clearly didn’t buy the memory-loss story.
Choi Jiwoon, on the other hand, gave him a polite but awkward smile.
“It’s been a while, Lee Tae-rim.”
“Ah, yes. Hello.”
“Why are you even greeting him? It’s not like he did anything right.”
Tae-rim made his way to the only empty seat—next to Lee Yeong-jun.
They probably put him there on purpose, hoping to prevent any clashes with the others.
Even with the official notice, no one truly trusted him.
The bitterness was hard to ignore, but what could he do?
The three carried on talking as if he weren’t even there.
Lee Yeong-jun tried, here and there, to include him in the conversation, but Bae Jieun shut it down every time.
The one silver lining was that Tae-rim had no desire to be part of their little group anyway.
Just sitting there was already awkward enough.
Getting involved in their conversation would’ve made it unbearable.
Eventually, two Espers walked in.
They offered Tae-rim a stiff, uncomfortable nod, then headed straight to the others for guiding.
