“You said you had something to say…”
Rion approached Tae-hwan with a slightly tense expression. The man who said he wanted to talk was waiting for Rion a short distance away from the tent, along with Hee-soo.
“Yeah. Ah, no need to be so nervous. It’s just something personal, so I wanted to talk separately.”
“Yes, what is it?”
Tae-hwan patted the spot next to him as if to say “relax and sit down.” Rion sat beside him, quietly glancing between the two.
“Here, drink this. I stole it from someone else’s bag.”
“Oh, this is…”
What Tae-hwan handed over was a health drink in very familiar packaging. Somehow, Rion could already guess whose bag it came from, and he quietly accepted the drink.
“Thank you.”
“You’re having a hard time, right?”
Tae-hwan looked at Rion as he asked. Unsure how to respond, Rion paused before answering.
“It’d be a lie to say I’m not struggling… but I’m managing.”
“Haha, right. There’s no way it’s easy. These damn S-rank Gates.”
Tae-hwan nodded as he spoke.
“When I went into an S-rank Gate… well, even though it was technically also S-rank, it wasn’t as overwhelming as what you’re dealing with now. Still, I was a pretty well-known S-rank Esper back then. But once I got in, there was nothing I could do, and things just got harder every day… and the so-called pair I had was a rookie who hadn’t even been in the field for a month, constantly ignoring everything I said like it didn’t matter.”
“You don’t have to say it like that…”
Hee-soo grumbled beside him, sounding like she’d been wronged. But even she had to admit that was how she’d been back then.
Truthfully, she hadn’t even wanted to be a Guide. But the moment she joined, she was bombarded with praise about how she’d found a noble calling, how she was now the pride of her family—all just because she’d been matched with an S-rank Esper.
Of course, that didn’t excuse her from constantly picking fights with her partner Tae-hwan, day in and day out.
“I was already having a rough time, and then seeing how everyone else acted like their pairs were soulmates, always stuck together like glue… it just made it all the more frustrating that we couldn’t even get along.”
“I can imagine.”
“Doesn’t sound too unfamiliar, right?”
“Ahaha.”
It was then that Rion finally realized why Tae-hwan had called him out here. The tension in his shoulders eased, and he let out a small laugh. It seemed this was about Yu-won.
“Even during training, I noticed you two barely talk after entering the Gate. It really reminds me of how things were for us back then.”
Tae-hwan gazed off into the distance. After a brief silence, he slowly began to speak again.
“It’s not exactly a fun story, but… want to hear an old tale?”
He looked over at Hee-soo, recalling what had happened twenty-one years ago inside an S-rank Gate.
***
“So what exactly do you want me to do?”
Back then, Tae-hwan and Hee-soo had been the youngest members of their team—but also among the most crucial.
At the time, there was no mandatory testing to evaluate a Guide’s aptitude, and the machines could only detect those ranked B or higher. Because of that, there were far fewer Guides than there are now.
That meant Hee-soo had to exert almost as much stamina as the Espers. Not just for her pair, Tae-hwan, but for others as well, which drained her energy quickly and made her increasingly irritable.
“This isn’t the kind of place where people have the luxury of looking after your every little hardship. Didn’t you see Chan-hyuk’s arm get messed up? Didn’t you see Gyu-ri almost die? And you’re still acting like this?”
She had just turned twenty and had barely been at the Center for a month. The people around her were too strung out to console a struggling rookie—they were sharp-edged, angry, and had little patience to spare.
She lacked the experience, the age, and the strength to deal with all of it. Her fellow team members, seasoned and already frayed from seeing longtime colleagues injured or worse, couldn’t even handle Hee-soo showing that she was struggling.
In that kind of Gate, the only one willing to take her outbursts was Tae-hwan.
“Hey, you okay? I told you not to show you’re struggling in front of Kyung-chul sunbae. Things are already—”
“So what, exactly? Am I supposed to catalog everything that upsets me and then cry on cue? What do you expect me to do when the tears just come?!”
It might’ve been a cowardly, immature reaction—but that’s how she was then. And clueless Tae-hwan had a way of making it worse without even trying.
“I mean… the sunbaes probably have it harder…”
“Then let the great sunbaes lean on you. Don’t expect someone who can’t handle it to just magically be able to. Let those who can step up instead.”
Maybe she’d taken it out on the easiest target—the one person who tried to look after her. But for a twenty-year-old suddenly tasked with national-level responsibilities inside an S-rank Gate, everything happening around her had already long since passed the limits of reason.
Just staying upright was a struggle. There was no room in her head to think about anyone else. And when she finally made it out of the Gate, things didn’t change.
Gate. Monster. Esper. Guide.
All of those words used to feel like something out of another world. Then suddenly, overnight, they became her reality. It was only natural that she wanted—needed—a place to throw her tantrums.
“I’m sorry about back then. I knew none of it was your fault, that I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. But I had nothing left in me, and I lashed out somewhere I shouldn’t have.”
“It wasn’t your fault that Chan-hyuk or Gyu-ri ended up like that… I really am sorry.”
By the time the senior Espers who had yelled at her inside that S-rank Gate came to apologize, Hee-soo had already realized she’d been in the wrong, too.
Still, she couldn’t quite work up the courage to apologize back. And Tae-hwan, oblivious as ever, continued to annoy her in little ways. So she kept snapping at him—grumbling, picking fights, taking jabs whenever she saw him.
“It’s rare enough to get a matching rate high enough for a pair… but I’ve never seen a pair with this good a match who were also such enemies.”
“Same. I mean, we’re only the third official pair since the Center was founded… but the other two teams were basically attached at the hip. Right?”
They had always drawn attention at the Center. Even early on, but especially after surviving the S-rank Gate.
Not just because they were a powerful asset to the Center. But because—
“So if we already decided to do it, why are you making a fuss again?!”
“Because unlike you and your single-celled brain, this isn’t just about ticking off a box! There are a ton of things that need to be prepped in advance and mountains of paperwork, but sure, let’s just pretend it’s that simple!”
“Then I’ll do it all myself!”
“Like hell you will—if we’re a pair, I’m gonna get dragged into the fallout too!”
The two of them would get into shouting matches in the middle of the Center almost daily. Usually, it followed the same pattern: Tae-hwan, who generally went with the flow, would agree to something without thinking it through, and Hee-soo would explode.
“Shouldn’t we step in?”
“Leave them. Kids grow up through this kind of thing.”
“They are young, but fighting like this in the Center every day…”
“Say that kind of stuff outside and you’ll just sound like some grumpy old boomer. Besides, it’s entertaining.”
The senior staff found their bickering amusing and never tried to stop them. And since they still got their work done—despite the arguments—no one really saw a need to intervene.
But what seemed like harmless banter from the outside was, in reality, gradually widening the gap between them.
Frustration had built up so much that it could’ve exploded at any moment—and no one would’ve been surprised.
“Is it still like that now? You get assigned to the same room when you’re a pair. Since we were opposite sexes, we didn’t share a dorm room, but… she got rid of my office and dumped all my stuff in her treatment room. Every time I came in to work, it was a headache.”
“You think it was easy for me? My pair, the one I had to be glued to the moment I arrived at the Center, had the emotional range of a bacterium. You have no idea how hard that was.”
The two of them laughed and grumbled as they talked. It was something they could joke about now—but back then, it had been genuinely stressful.
“So when did you two… start getting along?”
Rion, who had been listening quietly, asked the question carefully. Sure, they still bickered sometimes now, but it felt more like banter rooted in trust and comfort than actual anger.
If I could be like that with Yu-won someday… Rion thought, heart beating a little faster.
“Ah, well… don’t take this as advice you have to follow, okay?”
Tae-hwan’s expression turned a little serious. Rion instinctively straightened up, sensing the shift.
They’re sunbaes giving me advice. Even if it sounds a bit weird, I should take it to heart and try it out.
With that thought, Rion leaned in to listen.
Then Tae-hwan dropped the bombshell.
“We, uh… dated for a bit.”
“…Sorry, what?”
