There are only enough S-Rank Espers in the entire world to count on one hand. Because of that, Cha Jae-woo, an S-Rank Esper, carried an overwhelming presence—so much so that he alone could elevate South Korea to the ranks of advanced nations.
Espers were national power.
Cha Jae-woo’s existence made a tremendous contribution to strengthening South Korea’s global standing.
It was said with absolute certainty that no Esper could defeat Cha Jae-woo. Even if a group of S-Rank Espers joined forces against him, people agreed it would still be nearly impossible to bring him down.
The real problem, however, lay in the fact that since his awakening, Cha Jae-woo had yet to meet a Guide with a matching rate exceeding 20%.
An Esper without a high-matching Guide was destined to run rampant—it was practically a foregone conclusion. Everyone knew this, and the Korean government faced relentless pressure because of it.
The dominant opinion was that Cha Jae-woo should seek asylum. If a suitable Guide couldn’t be found within Korea, then one had to be secured from abroad and paired with him.
Truthfully, it was only in South Korea and a handful of other countries that Guides were still poorly regarded. Elsewhere, Guides were considered as rare and vital a resource as Espers themselves. Governments were scrambling to locate and recruit newly awakened Guides, treating them as national treasures. They had come to recognize that Guides were, in essence, national power as well.
But South Korea remained stubbornly conservative. The fact that guiding required physical contact—and that the more sexual and intimate the contact, the more quickly it stabilized the Esper—did nothing to move public sentiment.
Because of this societal attitude, the number of Guides was woefully insufficient compared to Espers. Except for a few oddballs who volunteered, most citizens didn’t even bother to get tested.
And I was no different.
I had never once thought about becoming a Guide, nor did I want to. The idea of having to engage in physical contact with total strangers made me sick, no matter how much I tried to rationalize it.
But life is unpredictable.
Who could have seen it coming? One day, what had always been a voluntary test for those interested suddenly became mandatory for the entire population. Figuring I might as well get it over with quickly, I went in for the test—only to be hit with the utterly unwelcome news that not only was I a Guide, but I had an extremely high matching rate with Cha Jae-woo.
Because of that, I even ended up meeting the President of the Guide Association himself.
They say that when you’re trapped in a situation too absurd to process, your mind goes blank. Honestly, I could hardly remember what I said at the time. I was completely out of it.
Guide… Cha Jae-woo… 97.8% matching rate… and D-Rank.
Those four things were the only facts that embedded themselves firmly in my mind, despite the Guide Association President’s honey-tongued persuasion. But really, that was more than enough.
“……ARGH! I’m seriously going insane!”
Just those facts alone were enough to drive me to madness, so maybe it was a blessing that I didn’t remember anything else. My vision blurred, and it felt like tears were about to spill from my eyes.
Wiping my eyes in frustration, I realized there was no real wetness. The haze in front of me wasn’t tears—it was dust. Dust kicked up by my own meltdown in my perpetually unclean apartment.
“Seriously, what a mess……”
Who had let the place get this bad? Who else could it have been? Obviously, me.
Given the circumstances, even trivial things sent me into a rage. I threw aside the few clothes I’d been trying to stuff into a bag and collapsed flat onto the floor.
“……Maybe I should just slit my belly open.”
Maybe if I staged some dramatic meltdown, they’d let me off the hook. Honestly, this was beyond absurd. Fine, matching rates. They call it “matching” for a reason, right?
Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that it made sense. Maybe it was just my rotten luck that I ended up being the Guide with a high matching rate to Cha Jae-woo. Physical contact? Between two men… Ugh. Even just thinking about it made my skin crawl, but okay. I could grit my teeth and endure it. If we’re calling something as minor as a friendly arm-around-shoulder move “physical contact,” surely I could manage that much.
That part—I could handle. I truly could have endured all of that.
But the real issue was my Rank. I was a D-Rank. D-Rank. The other party was an S-Rank Esper, and here I was, a pathetic D-Rank Guide.
No matter how I looked at it, the math just didn’t add up. It was like they were sending me in to get my life drained dry and end up a mummified corpse. I was no different from some hapless sacrifice being thrown into a vampire’s mansion.
“It’s like a noob who just learned basic skills being sent to fight a boss monster……”
Strictly speaking, it was like a noob healer, fresh off character creation, being thrown straight into a max-level dungeon. Either way, the outcome was the same—sacrificed to the boss monster in a single blow.
“Haaah……”
Sighs kept slipping out of him, one after another. It felt like the floor should cave in from the weight of it all, but his tiny apartment remained perfectly still. Normally, the noise from next door or the street made it unbearable, but today, it was so quiet and cozy it could have passed for a sanctuary.
‘It’s just your imagination, obviously. Of course you’d feel like this.’
Guide rankings were determined by how much stamina they consumed while guiding. To put it simply, if an S-Rank Guide and a C-Rank Guide both tried to guide an Esper with the same matching rate, the C-Rank’s stamina would deplete much faster.
The rate of stamina drain accelerated the higher the Esper’s rank and the greater the gap between the Guide’s and the Esper’s ranks. Ideally, an S-Class Esper needed an S-Class Guide.
Of course, for guiding to even work properly, the matching rate had to be high to begin with. Even if the Guide was S-Rank and the Esper was D-Rank, if the matching rate was low, that S-Rank Guide would be less effective than an F-Rank Guide for that Esper.
In that sense, he was seriously unlucky. High matching rate, low rank. He had to become Cha Jae-woo’s Guide, and that was precisely why it felt like his insides were burning to ash.
The day after his guide test, the president of the Guide Association, who had personally come to see him, claimed that the drop in stamina would only be a slight inconvenience and wouldn’t harm his health—but that was a blatant lie. There were already countless Guides out there whose lives had become completely unmanageable due to the toll of reckless guiding. A simple internet search would tell you as much. Did they think he was an idiot?
“……I am an idiot. A complete moron.”
He slammed his hand against his own head, which had been sitting still and obediently. The pain in his hand was sharper than in his skull.
How could he be so brainless? Was he trying to be some kind of hero? Why—why had he signed that contract agreeing to become Cha Jae-woo’s Guide and move into his house?
He must have been possessed. Maybe he’d been brainwashed by the honeyed words of the Guide Association President.
But what was the point of regretting it now? The ink was dry on the contract. He had already agreed to become Cha Jae-woo’s Guide—and to live with him, no less!
‘You goddamn lunatic. Are you insane? Why the hell would you move into that house?’
He remembered Kim Geon-ung blowing up at him when he drunkenly blurted it out.
But when he muttered that he had already signed the contract and even taken the money, Kim Geon-ung yelled at him to return it immediately. If he wanted to cash in a life insurance payout so badly, he should just take out another policy—one that wouldn’t get him killed. He even joked that Haeyul should list him as the beneficiary.
Honestly, that didn’t sound like such a bad idea. Half-crying, he mumbled that if he died, whatever money was left should go to Kim Geon-ung.
Not that he actually cried. It wasn’t like he’d been forced to sign—it had been his decision too.
“That’s why being a good person is a goddamn curse….”
It wasn’t because he had some grand patriotic dream about saving the only S-Class Esper in Korea.
All that talk about national strength, diplomacy, and whatever else had gone in one ear and out the other. As stupid as it sounded, he barely had enough energy to manage his own miserable life, let alone think about the country.
No—the real reason was money. The insurance payout would come after he died, sure, but the salary he’d receive for being a Guide was money he could spend while he was still alive. Life was already miserable enough with how strapped he was for cash. If he could get some money out of this, wasn’t that better than nothing?
Besides, the Guide Association President had said he could continue attending school. He also promised to keep the whole thing a secret—unless Haeyul himself talked about it, nobody outside of the immediate circle would know he was a Guide.
Still, none of that would have been enough to make him sign if not for one specific thing. If the President hadn’t added just one more line, Lim Haeyul would have surely refused, no matter how much money they dangled in front of him.
“If a suitable Guide doesn’t appear for Esper Cha Jae-woo, he will eventually be executed.”
They wouldn’t just let Cha Jae-woo run rampant unchecked.
All over platforms like YouTube, people were claiming that Cha Jae-woo would end up moving to another country—that once abroad, he would surely find a matching Guide.
Haeyul had believed that too. But no—rather than sending him away, they were planning to kill him. It wasn’t just a joke; the threat was chillingly real.
“The Korean government has no intention of handing over Esper Cha Jae-woo to another nation. They believe that if he’s going to bolster another country’s power, it’s better to eliminate him instead.”
“No way…”
“Other governments are surely aware of this as well. If a matching Guide doesn’t appear, South Korea will execute him—and no one will intervene. They might even help.”
“That’s insane!”
“Better to have nothing at all than to let him belong to someone else, don’t you think?”
Lunatics. They were all goddamn lunatics.
In the end, the Guide Association President had blackmailed him—if Haeyul didn’t become his Guide, Cha Jae-woo would be killed.
“Aaargh! Goddamn it!”
That cursed sympathy of his. What the hell was he feeling sorry for? He should be worrying about his own life, not someone else’s, damn it! Even if Cha Jae-woo was going to be executed—! No, not even that… How could he just turn a blind eye when someone’s life was on the line?
He scrubbed his already burning-red eyes even harder. The sighs wouldn’t stop pouring out of him.
Sprawled out on the floor, Lim Haeyul didn’t move an inch.
Right next to him sat a modest pile of belongings—just enough to bring with him when he moved into Cha Jae-woo’s house.
