Since it had been all but confirmed that Cha Han-gyeom came from the Ability Analysis Research Facility, there was no room for hesitation.
Kang Woo-chan was determined to get Cha Han-gyeom out of Seo Won’s confinement—no matter what it took.
From that day on, Woo-chan’s top priority changed in an instant.
“Securing Cha Han-gyeom comes first.”
He declared it firmly in front of all his teammates.
No one objected. In fact, many were clearly hoping he’d say exactly that.
They all shared a bond too deep to ignore—an unspoken camaraderie born from shared pain. And now, they yearned for the salvation of yet another brother they thought they’d lost.
But things weren’t nearly as easy as they’d hoped.
“It was an ability I’d never even heard of. He didn’t even guide him properly—wasn’t doing any hands-on base guiding or anything. Their bare skin just brushed a little, and in a flash, paralysis kicked in.”
Lee Ji-hye, one of the four Espers dispatched to the Seo Won-hosted yacht party, shuddered as she recalled the incident.
Woo-chan had already explained that as a Guide from the research facility, Han-gyeom likely had some unique abilities. But they’d assumed it would be something along the lines of a variant ability for guiding Espers—nothing more than that. No one imagined it might be a power capable of physically attacking someone’s body.
As Woo-chan quietly listened to Ji-hye’s report, he fell into thought.
‘An ability meant to subdue Espers? But the researchers wouldn’t have developed a power for a Guide to subdue Espers… that doesn’t make sense.’
All research facilities focused on developing Guides to more efficiently enhance Espers’ abilities. Even Woo-chan himself, one of the prototype models for Guide development, had been subjected to the creation of a “Fake Imprint”—a variant guiding method capable of providing Imprint-level support to any Esper.
Cha Han-gyeom wouldn’t have been any different.
‘The Fourth Ability Analysis Research Facility only had one Guide—Han-gyeom. That means he had to care for all the Espers on his own… Even with a huge GP reserve, there had to be a limit!’
Inside the lab, packed with Espers undergoing relentless daily experiments, just one person was expected to provide constant guiding and care? The mere thought of it was unbearable.
To make matters worse, as other facilities shut down one after another, experimental Espers who were originally meant to go elsewhere had nowhere left to go. They were funneled into the only remaining option: the Fourth Ability Analysis Research Facility.
And that facility had just a single Guide.
This wasn’t mere overwork—it was torment.
‘Did they create that environment on purpose? To force ability development…’
The moment a power mutates is always when you’re in the very depths of hell. Forward or back—either direction leads to more hell. No cliff to jump from. No end in sight. Just a breath away from losing your mind.
And right at that edge, the raw instinct to survive clenches down and awakens the power.
So it was likely that Cha Han-gyeom developed the ability to forcibly suppress an Esper’s ESP simply to survive. A form of guiding that didn’t calm through care and patience, but one that sealed the mouth and bound the body by force.
That kind of guiding would allow him to pacify Espers he couldn’t handle due to sheer overload—at least for a short while. The ESP suppression and paralysis ability he’d used on Lee Ji-hye could be seen as a more advanced version of that very method.
‘I always wondered how the Fourth Facility managed to care for all those Espers with only one Guide… Of course—it was insane.’
The thought of what Han-gyeom must have endured at that ruthless research facility, which had over a hundred experiment codes, left Woo-chan once again with a heavy heart.
The guiding Cha Han-gyeom had performed on Seo Won at the product demonstration must have been the same type of ability he’d used on Ji-hye.
Han-gyeom’s ‘Suppression’ Guiding had instantly pacified the violent ESP surge that had escalated to the limits of the Black Vein. As if he’d subdued Espers pushed to the edge of rampage countless times before.
After witnessing just a glimpse of the power the Fourth Ability Analysis Research Facility had wanted from Cha Han-gyeom, Woo-chan froze at a sudden realization.
Seo Won had received a heart transplant from the Fourth Facility’s immortal ability user.
And since they’d been in the same research lab, there was no doubt that Cha Han-gyeom had once guided that immortal while they were still alive.
That connection alone was startling, but Woo-chan focused on something more critical.
An Esper’s ESP flows in a circuit centered around the heart. Naturally, the GP of the Guide supporting them is directed toward soothing that heart’s pathway above all else.
Even if it was transplanted, Seo Won’s heart had already been under Han-gyeom’s care for several years. It was only natural that his body would welcome Han-gyeom’s presence and come to see his guiding as something euphoric.
There’s a common belief: if an Esper receives continuous guiding from a single Guide over many years, any guiding from someone else afterward becomes almost entirely ineffective.
This idea had already been proven true within the Esper Association. In fact, unless they were Imprinted pairs, it became standard policy to rotate multiple Guides to maintain effectiveness. That was precisely why unregistered Espers from chaebol families like Seo Won kept several dedicated Guides on standby.
From that perspective, it was clear—because of his transplanted heart, the only person truly capable of guiding Seo Won properly was Cha Han-gyeom. Whether Seo Won had tracked him down after realizing this or not, the result was the same: driven to the brink, with even his Black Vein manifesting, Seo Won had no one else he could depend on but Han-gyeom.
And if Cha Han-gyeom were pulled away from Seo Won’s side, the man would likely suffer a severe breakdown due to the loss of his constant source of care. Even if they were to bring in another Guide afterward, it would be pointless. In his current state—essentially addicted to Han-gyeom’s guiding—Seo Won wouldn’t be able to stop the Black Vein’s progression.
Without Cha Han-gyeom, Seo Won’s collapse was inevitable.
The only problem was that Seo Won never left Han-gyeom’s side.
That’s why Woo-chan had reached out to Song Jae-woo, watching for the right moment to use him to draw Cha Han-gyeom out of the mansion. If Seo Won became deeply enough addicted and obedient, there was even a chance Han-gyeom might break away from him on his own.
As part of that plan, they focused their attention on the product demonstration hosted once again by Seo Won and Yoon Jeong-ho. Sure enough, Seo Won appeared with Cha Han-gyeom by his side again.
– But Woo-chan, Han-gyeom is still at the mansion.
Woo-chan, who had been on the phone with Jung Ah-young while watching Cha Han-gyeom standing there in plain sight at the demonstration, responded with confusion.
“What are you talking about? He’s right here next to Seo Won.”
– No way! I just took him a cup of tea in his bedroom. We were even joking around.
Jung Ah-young’s voice was thick with both disbelief and frustration. She had no reason to lie—so that left only one conclusion.
One of them was a clone created by Seo Won.
From a distance, there was nothing odd about the behavior of Im Du-hyuk, one of Seo Won’s personal guards. He protected Han-gyeom closely, even chatting with him now and then to ease his tension—it all seemed perfectly natural.
But the other guard, Jung Ah-young, was just as convinced that the Cha Han-gyeom in the mansion was the real one. Both versions of Han-gyeom moved and acted with such authenticity that even Seo Won’s closest aides hadn’t been told which was the original and which was the copy.
Given the progression of the Black Vein and the resulting anxiety, it made sense for Seo Won to have his personal Guide by his side at all times. On the other hand, after what had happened on the cruise, it was also possible he’d left the real Han-gyeom at the mansion to protect him from potential threats.
With no way of knowing which Han-gyeom was real—the one at the scene or the one at the estate—they had to make a decision.
After some deliberation, Woo-chan assigned a separate team to watch over the mansion and targeted the Cha Han-gyeom present at the demonstration first.
In the end, it was Seo Won who showed up at the rendezvous point. The Han-gyeom they had seen at the demo turned out to be a clone.
Maybe it was for the best.
If they could use this opportunity to implant a Fake Imprint in Seo Won and get him addicted, they could not only liberate Cha Han-gyeom but potentially even use Seo Won to threaten the Esper Association—at least until the Black Vein fully spun out of control.
But the moment he touched him, Woo-chan felt a prickling sensation, as though warning him to stop. The intertwined ESP pathways bristled like thorns, radiating a hostile snarl that made fury bubble up from deep inside.
“You piece of shit… You dare, when you’re just an Esper!”
The unmistakable sign of an Imprint ignited Woo-chan’s rage.
Even from a distance, Cha Han-gyeom looked completely lifeless. Based on Jung Ah-young’s reports, he was just a pitiful Guide locked away in confinement—there was no way he could’ve developed any kind of affection for Seo Won.
Seo Won, on the other hand, had clearly begun to show signs of deep obsession and attachment toward Han-gyeom.
So how could an Imprint have formed under such circumstances? Was it really mutual?
‘No way in hell!’
As Woo-chan looked down at Seo Won’s face pinned beneath his own, the faces of countless researchers from the facility and the scheming officials from the Association overlapped with his. Seo Won, who had made deals with them and harvested organs from test subjects, looked no different in the end.
“You bastards didn’t do enough already with what you did to us?! And now you dare… to force an Imprint…?!”
Even the most ruthless labs had never dared to force an Imprint.
Because an Imprint binds a Guide’s ability exclusively to one Esper, the losses were too great for the labs to risk it—that’s probably why even they never dared to cross that line. It had always been the one sacred boundary between Ability Users, untouchable even by the most ruthless of them.
And now, even that had been desecrated.
The rage surged to the very top of Woo-chan’s skull, impossible to contain.
Poor Cha Han-gyeom.
A brother he couldn’t help but pity.
A boy so precious, his entire life trampled—and now even his sanctuary violated.
Woo-chan was willing to do anything to save him.
So he gave Song Jae-woo to him—a man in such an extreme state of Guiding addiction that he could die without proper care. Along with him, Woo-chan delivered a black cube—a portable AI Hologram Box that would let Han-gyeom locate him at any time.
He only wanted one thing.
To get Cha Han-gyeom out of that madhouse of a mansion.
That was all.
Then one day, a letter arrived for Kang Woo-chan with no sender listed—just a single note and a few neatly folded copies of official documents.
The letter stated that Seo Won’s heart had already been Imprinted with Cha Han-gyeom prior to transplantation. That meant Seo Won hadn’t forced the Imprint himself. It also explained the increasingly erratic behavior he’d displayed over the past year. And even the Black Vein that was now consuming him.
But more than the letter’s revelation, what shattered Woo-chan was what he saw in the attached documents.
As he clutched the papers, his knees buckled, and a blinding surge of fury seized his thoughts.
[Client request: secure heart for transplant use.]
[Purification required to precisely match ESP waveforms.]
[Estimated time post-extraction: approximately 4 years.]
[Extraction carries risk of bodily collapse and ESP rampage.]
“You… it was because of you…”
[Disposal date for Experiment E_NO.17: June 19, 2018]
[Heart transplant recipient: Seo Won (S)]
The listed disposal date matched the exact day the immortal ability user went on a rampage.
“You killed everyone at the Fourth Facility.”
Only now did Woo-chan realize the truth behind the explosion he had never managed to prevent—the incident at the Fourth Ability Analysis Research Facility. It had all been for Seo Won’s risky heart extraction and transplant.
Seo Won was beyond forgiveness.
And he knew—when Cha Han-gyeom eventually uncovered the full truth, he’d feel exactly the same.
