# Chapter 11
The main course hadn’t even arrived yet, but I tried to stop Ha-min as he was eating hurriedly, asking what he was doing. Ha-min looked like he couldn’t see anything else because he was so hungry.
I seriously decided that next time I train him, I should feed him during the process.
They must have realized this wasn’t working, so they immediately brought out the main course. Ha-min didn’t seem to taste the food at all – he was just stuffing it into his mouth desperately, like he was trying to survive.
Even I could tell the S-class Espers looked disappointed.
“Ah… I can live now.”
The S-class Espers looked like they never expected their carefully prepared dishes would receive such an evaluation.
Once Ha-min’s stomach was full, he seemed to have no energy left. The S-class Espers looked at me as if asking what had happened.
“Seo Eunwoo Esper, what did you do to Ha-min?” Kyun In asked suspiciously, but I shook my head.
“Looks like he was hungry.”
“Then why are his clothes so wet? And why is his hair wet too?”
“We just did some exercise. I need to build my strength too,” Ha-min said.
Kyun In snickered as if that was ridiculous. “What would a Guide need strength for?”
“For many things. Guiding takes energy, and if a dungeon appears near the Center, I’d have to run away too. There’s no rule saying dungeons can’t appear at the Center.”
When Ha-min said this, everyone looked dumbfounded.
“If the Guide runs away, who does the Guiding?” Byun Tae-young asked with a look that said this made no sense, and Ha-min tilted his head.
“Don’t I need to survive too? If a dungeon appears at the Center, I’m going to run.”
You shouldn’t say that.
It hasn’t even happened yet, so there’s no need to make such bold statements and unnecessarily upset the S-class Espers.
I would do the same thing, but I’m keeping my mouth shut, aren’t I?
Kyun In seemed to notice and looked at me. “What does Seo Eunwoo Esper plan to do? Surely you wouldn’t run away too?”
“Yes.”
“‘Yes’ means no, right?”
“Yes.”
“Want to elaborate a bit?”
“No, I won’t run.”
“That’s all?”
“Yes.”
That was plenty long enough.
Meanwhile, Shim Woo-jin was looking at me.
He was watching me very carefully. I wonder what he’s thinking about me.
I briefly wondered if I would ever get to see his strange ability up close, but I missed what Kyun In was saying.
He was persistently demanding an answer from me for something that probably wasn’t important anyway.
“Yes,” I answered carelessly, which made Kyun In stare at me blankly while Tae-young burst out laughing.
“From what I see, Eunwoo didn’t hear what hyung said earlier. But he was too lazy to ask again, so he just said ‘yes.'”
“You don’t have to spell it out. I already know,” Kyun In said, sounding embarrassed.
Tae-young’s real ability must be mind reading.
“Hyung said he almost died from a monster when he got distracted during battle. He said if he had died, Eunwoo would have been happy,” Tae-young kindly repeated.
“Ah…”
So he really was saying something useless.
It felt newly tiring to have to respond to such comments.
He said, “got distracted during battle.”
I looked at Kyun In, wondering if he really thought about that incident that way.
I didn’t look long, though.
I wasn’t confident about what emotions might show in my gaze.
I despised Kyun In because of how he treated Ha-min, and it wouldn’t do any good if he noticed those feelings.
But Kyun In had better intuition than I thought and seemed to realize how I felt about him.
It’s not good that he’s only perceptive about things like this.
Tae-young looked at me with interest.
“What happened? From what hyung says, it sounds like there would have been big trouble if not for Eunwoo. I thought something was strange about the monsters that day too. They were different from usual. They should have already been dead, but they moved again. Again, I mean. They were clearly dead, and I felt it was over, but…”
Then he demanded an answer from me again.
“How did you know?”
“I’m a physical enhancer. I have good eyesight too.”
“Right. A physical enhancer. A D-class physical enhancer.”
So what?
I brushed it off like I didn’t care, and Tae-young smiled slightly.
“Interesting. No one acts this indifferent in front of us. Even the sly ones at the Center can’t do this with us. Thanks to you, I’m feeling a strange sensation I haven’t felt in a very long time.”
I turned my head away, thinking I didn’t care either way, only to meet eyes with someone else looking at me searchingly.
Shim Woo-jin was hard to define in one word.
He seemed very sophisticated but also had a rough, unrefined feeling about him.
Words that absolutely couldn’t coexist somehow all suited him perfectly.
Polite yet rude, harmful yet harmless, corrupted yet innocent…
The strange thing was that each of these words felt like the only word that could describe him.
“Why don’t you come with me next time, Eunwoo? Let’s be on the same team next time.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Seo Eunwoo Esper is going to go with me from now on,” Kyun In declared confidently.
Ha. Since when?
But then Tae-young jumped in too.
“You guys don’t need team members anyway. So I’ll take Eunwoo with me.”
“Hey, Tae-young. Did you hear anything I just said? If it wasn’t for Seo Eunwoo Esper, I would have almost died! I was distracted, and Seo Eunwoo Esper killed the monster and saved me. Man, you should have seen it.”
“Don’t worry. You’ll get to see it now.”
At Tae-young’s words, Shim Woo-jin seemed to back off.
This must be where the prestige of being ranked number one shows.
I wasn’t pleased with the thought that my opinion didn’t matter at all in making these decisions.
Woo-jin seemed to be getting out of their foolish argument early, and I rashly felt relieved that at least he had come to his senses.
I didn’t know what kind of person he really was.
Meanwhile, Ha-min was being very quiet beside us.
The sudden physical training must have been too much for him. He wasn’t saying anything, and then he started making rhythmic, peaceful sounds that didn’t belong in that place.
No way… Ha-min, are you sleeping?
I didn’t need to ask. The only person who would fall asleep making those drowsy sounds was Ha-min.
Above all, Ha-min was the only one who would be tired enough to pass out like this.
Ha-min’s head dropped aimlessly back and forth until it touched me, and from then on, he seemed to find it very comfortable and leaned against me peacefully while sleeping.
He’s really cute.
Kyun In, who was sitting across from us, clicked his tongue when he saw this.
After that, a chair moved by itself quietly to Ha-min’s side.
The only person among them who could do that was Kyun In, and while I wondered what he was doing, he came over and sat down, then wrapped Ha-min’s head and moved it toward himself.
It seemed like he was saying Ha-min should lean on him instead of bothering me, but as far as I knew, Kyun In would never do that for Ha-min.
I might understand if he woke Ha-min up with harsh words and yelled at him.
I was preparing to step in if Kyun In bothered Ha-min, but ended up just staring blankly at the scene.
“Seo Eunwoo Esper, please understand. Guide Ha-min must have been having a hard time lately. He’s not usually such a weakling. Well, he is a weakling. But he seems happy these days because he made a friend. Since his friend is a physical enhancer, it might be hard for Ha-min to keep up and play together. But don’t ignore him or be too harsh. I’ll believe that Seo Eunwoo Esper isn’t the type who just builds muscles and shows off strength.”
Is that really Kyun In?
Could those words really come from Kyun In?
Ha-min also seemed to come to his senses at those words and sat up straight.
“Dinner is over, so we’ll be going now. I’d like to rest a bit.”
I stood up because Ha-min must be tired and I was tired too, and they didn’t try to stop us.
“Alright. From now on, come here for meals. I’ll tell the Center about it,” Kyun In said confidently, and I looked at Ha-min.
The food here was definitely better and incomparable to what we had been eating.
But Ha-min was firm. “I don’t think it suits my taste. I barely managed to eat.”
“…?”
I thought maybe he was saying that because he felt uncomfortable eating with these people, but that didn’t seem to be the case.
His face was full of an expression that said he really had forced himself to eat.
The three of them couldn’t say anything and just looked at Ha-min, who bowed his head slightly and looked at me.
“Let’s go, Eunwoo.”
“Okay.”
Wow, Ha-min.
You’ve got some nerve!
After returning to our room, I took a quick shower and lay down, realizing that everything I had tried so hard to avoid had now happened.
I’ve now met all three of the obsessive stalkers who are crazy about the novel’s protagonist, and I had an ominous feeling that I’d continue to be entangled with them from now on.
‘I thought I made a good plan, but where did it go wrong?’
Still, if there was any consolation, it was that Shim Woo-jin didn’t seem to be as self-centered as Kyun In or Tae-young.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
