Chapter 2
There was a chill inside the bathroom. It seemed like staying in such a cold place for just a few hours would be enough to catch a cold, but considering the dried blood pooled on the floor, quite a bit of time must have passed. He left the bathroom first.
His awkward steps came to an abrupt halt at the scene inside the room.
‘Good grief.’
The room looked a bit large for a single person. Photos with glossy coatings covered all four walls, each one reflecting the fluorescent light, making his eyes dizzy.
The photos, densely packed without a single gap, hinted at an obsessive tendency. Were they cut out from celebrity photo books? Or merchandise produced by an entertainment agency? Either way, it was an unusual taste.
He thought the owner of this body might be much younger than they appeared.
As he entered the room, warmth finally seeped into his feet. The muscles of his body, which had stiffened from lying on the bathroom floor for a long time, began to loosen gradually.
As he carefully surveyed the room’s unique landscape, his gaze stopped on the largest photo among those decorating the room. He stared intently at the celebrity face that was more visible than any other picture.
A very handsome face with a chin held high arrogantly.
‘An idol?’
Cutting out celebrity photos and pasting them on wallpaper wasn’t something even friends who were particularly fond of idols did in high school. So this is what the face this body likes the most looks like. He stared at the dark, thick eyebrows and the black eyes shining beneath them.
Now he walked as slowly as possible toward the bed. His right ankle throbbed strangely, possibly from hitting it properly when he fell.
Sitting lightly on the edge of the bed, he looked around.
Soon after, he found a mobile phone near the pillow, its screen flickering as it charged. Carefully picking up the phone and pressing the home button, a lock screen appeared.
He hesitated before alternately placing his index finger and thumb on the fingerprint recognition pattern. Shortly after, the phone screen lit up brightly.
Indeed, it was his… or rather, this body’s phone.
After several trial and errors, he found a familiar application. He had hoped for this, and fortunately, it was there. Without installing the Center Guide application on a mobile phone, Guide duty at the Center would be impossible. If the owner of this body was a Guide, they would definitely use this app.
The basic information of the person logged into the Center app was registered. Without thinking about anything else, he immediately pressed the application. With a ring, the Center app opened.
[Ability users prioritize protecting the nation and the well-being of the elderly and vulnerable.]
The familiar loading screen passed by. When he pressed the options menu, a small photo along with name, age, and basic information appeared.
Name, Ko Eungyo. Age thirty-two. B-class Guide.
Thirty-two years old? Thirty-two? He couldn’t believe his eyes. Hastily raising his head to look around the room, he immediately met the eyes of dozens of men looking down at him with arrogant expressions. They were just photos, but the charisma they exuded was extraordinary. He unconsciously lowered his gaze.
‘…Well, one can be peculiar even after thirty.’
Come to think of it, he felt like he’d heard the name Ko Eungyo before. No, he definitely had heard it. After all, it’s common to have heard the name of a mid-level or higher Guide at least once.
His original name was Jang Iju.
As an S-class Guide, rare even among high-class Guides, he was a workaholic with over twenty Espers under his charge.
Working day and night, he took on everything from paperwork to Guiding, and somehow managed both field and office work by cutting into his eating and sleeping time. In an era where field Guides and regular Guides were separate, Guides like him who performed both jobs and achieved rapid promotion were rare.
That was precisely the problem. With a family history of various complications requiring medication and treatment management, he was by no means considered healthy, yet he was too ambitious with work.
It was the kind of thing that could make a brief newspaper article: “He had been working on a major project involving an A-class Gate for the past month, sleeping less than 10 hours, and eventually died from overwork.”
Since he died in his sleep, it seems he went without much pain. However, it does feel like an anticlimactic end compared to how diligently he lived.
Suddenly finding himself reborn in a different body like this was bewildering.
The good thing about entering a new body was that it didn’t hurt. Actually, saying it “doesn’t hurt” wasn’t entirely accurate. The back of his head was cracked from the impact of falling in the bathroom, not to mention the twisted ankle and elbow that ached whenever he moved.
But it was okay if he just lay still on the bed. If he didn’t move, he hardly felt any pain. By the standards of someone who had suffered for a long time, this was merely a tickle.
That was enough for him to be satisfied.
He blankly stared at the ceiling, reviewing his situation.
Ko Eungyo… For a B-class Guide, there were quite a few rumors about him.
Rumor had it that he was the illegitimate child of a major corporation, very rude, and had a reckless style. Whether he was really the illegitimate child of a conglomerate chairman or not, he recalled that the Director General of the Center had quite a headache because of his rampaging with formidable backing.
However, Ko Eungyo was a regular Guide. Although he also did paperwork as a regular Guide for promotion, he was basically a field Guide. As someone who only visited the Center for Guiding, he had never met Ko Eungyo. So when he heard the story through others, he simply joked lightly that the world needs such audacious Guides too, and that was all he knew about Ko Eungyo.
‘If that’s the case, he wouldn’t have needed to be a Guide.’
If the rumors were true, Ko Eungyo… would have been pampered thanks to that great family. Even the Director couldn’t disrespect him, so they said he didn’t respect his seniors and looked down on his juniors. In other words, it meant he had no attachment to the profession of being a Guide.
So why did he want to be a Guide in the first place?
Espers and Guides were professions that required innate talents that must manifest. Though they had more advantages compared to other professions, there was no need to pursue it if one could live comfortably without lifting a finger.
He stopped thinking about it at that point. There must have been some reason.
In any case, among all that Ko Eungyo possessed, this body was what he liked most.
It wasn’t particularly good-looking or robust, but it also didn’t have an incurable disease with a name so difficult you might bite your tongue trying to pronounce it. No need to bother taking medicine twelve times a day, and no pain, so it was very comfortable. A life that had been like a penance now became happy just by breathing. Perhaps that’s why all sorts of idle thoughts were floating around in his head like never before.
He felt optimistic—what did it matter even if he had entered a body that died from unfortunately hitting its head? It had been a long time since he’d awkwardly lain on a soft bed with nothing to do.
Then his eyes met again with the man on the wall.
“…”
What was Ko Eungyo thinking when he did this to his room?
‘…I’d like to take them all down, but I should restrain myself.’
Anyway, everyone has something they’re passionate about, and in Ko Eungyo’s case, it seemed to be a person.
Not knowing when the owner of this body might return, he decided to just… preserve everything as close to its current state as possible.
Both the body and the room.
That’s roughly how he organized his thoughts.
The back of his head was still aching. He wondered how hard he must have hit his occipital bone. After lying in bed for a while, as soon as the dizziness completely subsided, he got up, gathered Ko Eungyo’s mobile phone, and searched the bedroom to find his wallet.
‘First… let’s go to the hospital.’
His original self used to push through pain by focusing on work. It was a bit ironic how carefully he was treating this body now, despite his intention to maintain the status quo.
‘This place is…’
According to the map, it was right in the center of Gangnam, Seoul. Was this house also in his name? He thought that the rumor about Ko Eungyo being the illegitimate child of a conglomerate chairman might be true.
Finding a hospital wasn’t difficult. As expected of Gangnam Palace Tower, there was a hospital right nearby. No need for transportation—it was within walking distance.
Upon entering the hospital, he smelled the familiar scent of disinfectant.
“Please wait for a moment.”
“Yes.”
He didn’t particularly like hospitals. He never had.
To feel a sort of nostalgia in a hospital—what an unfunny thing. He sat in a chair in the hospital lobby, waiting for his turn. There was a thin wall-mounted TV on the lobby wall. The news was on.
A briefing about the A-class Gate, which he had desperately tried to secure until just before his death, was being broadcast.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
