A moderate attack was a luxury.
She would only be able to buy time if she attacked with the intent to kill Ji Gwan-young. But even after making such a vicious resolve, she had only one concern. Choi Tae-hoon. That violent Esper’s Guide getting hurt.
But in the center of the training room, which had been hidden behind the mass of steel until now, only one man stood. Fortunately, it seemed he had sent his Guide out beforehand. That was one good thing amid the disaster.
Lee Mihyun unleashed fire arrows at Ji Gwan-young without hesitation. Gwan-young blocked the sharp attack easily with a small tilt of his chin, swinging the steel plate at his feet, then hurled the red-hot lump of metal straight toward her.
Mihyun quickly launched herself aside and dodged it. But every place her foot touched for even a single second was shredded so badly it might as well have been disintegrated, leaving her no time to catch her breath. Gritting her teeth, she burned the entire tile panel Gwan-young was standing on, but the man with overwhelming power avoided her decisive attack simply by shifting slightly to the side before she could even properly catch him in her sight.
“As expected, Ji Gwan-young, you—”
“……”
“You pissed me off from the moment we first met.”
“……Is that so?”
Gwan-young answered quietly to Mihyun, who had now completely thrown away even polite speech and was panting out vulgar curses.
As expected, there wasn’t a trace of elegance in the way this woman spoke. Gwan-young tilted his head slightly. That picturesque posture made him look like Ji Gwan-young, the actor loved by everyone, but Lee Mihyun no longer fell for it.
“For the first time, I agree with one of The Center’s idiots.”
“You crazy bastard, you think you’ll get away with acting like this?!”
Gwan-young’s eyes curved faintly.
“You’ve been rolling around here long enough to know, haven’t you?”
“……”
“Esper Lee Mihyun and Esper Ji Gwan-young. Between the two of us, who do you think The Center cares about more?”
Lee Mihyun ground her teeth. Whatever happened, she wanted to land one punch on that flawless face. But she knew very well that the man before her would attack Oh Yeon and Park Seungwon’s Pair next, so she couldn’t act on that impulse.
At the very least, she had to buy enough time for those two to slip out of this place unnoticed, and for the support unit to arrive. Suppressing the rage boiling inside her at Gwan-young’s deliberate provocation, Lee Mihyun opened her mouth.
“Let’s hear why you suddenly attacked us. Ji Gwan-young.”
“Because I felt filthy.”
“…..Felt? You did this over something like your mood? Why the hell!”
In the end, her composure didn’t even last a few seconds. Ji Gwan-young, that Esper, was so absurdly insane there was no other way to see him but as a complete psycho.
Instead of answering Mihyun’s words, the monster merely curved his brows faintly and hurled a sharp steel beam toward the place her head had been just moments ago. There was no other choice. Lee Mihyun decided to use the thing she had intended to save until the very end. It was a method of setting the entire training room ceiling on fire and making it pour down on Ji Gwan-young with one wrong move.
She could be injured as well, but there was no other way to stop that Esper, even briefly. Lee Mihyun placed her hand against the wall and moved quickly around the training room.
But that was her mistake, and a fatal misjudgment that handed Ji Gwan-young the advantage. Yet she still had not realized it. Lee Mihyun’s flames instantly climbed the walls and began surging toward the high ceiling of the training room.
The stale smoke and the force burning through the walls blazed as if they would set the entire training room on fire at any moment. Lee Mihyun lifted the corner of her lips slightly. Now, if she simply swung her hand, the metal heated to its limit would rain down on Ji Gwan-young.
With the entire ceiling falling, there would be nowhere to dodge. Even if he smashed it apart, that was fine. She didn’t even dream of completely subduing Ji Gwan-young. She only needed enough time to hold back the ferocious Esper before her, even a little.
But the Esper, as if “watching” something, did not so much as blink at the fire Mihyun had unleashed. He merely watched her power race toward the high ceiling like a time bomb. There was no trace of impatience anywhere in him. No—if anything, he even looked amused.
…Did something go wrong?
At the chilling intuition, Lee Mihyun snapped her head up toward the ceiling Gwan-young was looking at. Before long, she swallowed a curse and tried to stop her own power. But the flames had already burned madly all the way to the end.
Ji Gwan-young’s eyes folded lazily.
He could not handle his power with the extreme delicacy Lee Mihyun could. He had never once trained in that way. That was why he had tried to suppress and cut down Oh Yeon’s program with brute force, without any room to play with it.
But there was one thing even Ji Gwan-young handled with frightening skill. It was something he had manipulated by habit ever since awakening as an Esper, and if it was given to Ji Gwan-young, the faint chance Lee Mihyun had would disappear completely. No matter how many covers came, they would be sliced apart the moment they stepped forward.
It was water.
Mihyun swallowed a sigh. She didn’t even think to avoid the water falling from the sprinklers in the ceiling and was soaked through. It was her mistake. As water fell onto the metal that had been heated to its limit, steam rose in great clouds with a violent hiss.
Ji Gwan-young closed his eyes and fully enjoyed the reinforcements that had come for him.
Even though his hair and clothes were completely drenched, his face remained calm, as if he didn’t care at all. Lee Mihyun couldn’t even muster the will to ambush that Esper. She merely bit down hard on her lip.
After who knew how long, a leisurely voice reached Mihyun as she lowered her gaze.
“The reason is sufficient.”
Reason?
Lee Mihyun struggled to understand Gwan-young’s sudden words while pretending to remain calm. It was all she could do to keep her teeth from chattering without realizing it. She also tightened her trembling hands. Mihyun hoped the reason was simply that she had been doused in icy water for several minutes.
Her pride wouldn’t allow her to admit that she was frightened by the Esper walking toward her, sweeping back his wet hair with a faint smile.
She was an Esper too. Mihyun took a small, deep breath and turned Ji Gwan-young’s words over in her mind. “Reason.”
Before long, she recalled what she had said. She had asked that man exactly “why” he had attacked. Lee Mihyun finally understood Ji Gwan-young’s unkind answer. Right now, Ji Gwan-young, that Esper, was saying there was enough reason for his attack.
A “reason” for blowing up an entire training room and trying to crush two Espers and one Guide to death with a lump of steel.
Lee Mihyun glared at the Esper who had approached to within about one step of her. Fuck. Even if I die, you think I’ll beg this bastard to spare me? Her eyes were filled with that stubborn attitude. As though he found it amusing, the monster faintly furrowed his brow and smiled.
At some point, the water falling from the sprinklers no longer touched her at all. Aside from the moisture remaining in the air, every drop of water in this space was gathering behind Ji Gwan-young, growing into a massive, sharp spear. Mihyun drew in a small breath at the sight, which could truly be called spectacular.
Ji Gwan-young arranged Lee Mihyun’s wet hair with a surprisingly gentle touch. Mihyun held her breath, then opened her mouth in a faintly trembling voice.
“…..What, exactly, is that fucking reason?”
His thick brows twitched slightly. Like Mihyun, he was soaked from head to toe, water dripping from his body in droplets. Lee Mihyun unconsciously hunched her shoulders at the sensation touching her. She couldn’t suppress every bit of that primal fear.
The man looked down at Mihyun as though inspecting prey, then finally opened his mouth in the clear voice befitting his profession.
“Because Choi Tae-hoon is crying.”
It was something she had not expected at all. Mihyun kept her mouth shut for a moment, wearing an expression of disbelief, then belatedly snapped back to her senses and tried to ask if he had seriously tried to kill people for a reason like that. But her mouth did not open right away as she expected.
Because the monster’s expression had turned icy, with none of its former leisure remaining.
“Hey! You two Espers sticking together all~ sticky over there?!”
Lee Mihyun realized it in that instant.
Ridiculous as it was, Ji Gwan-young’s attitude toward her had truly stemmed from pure displeasure, just as he had said. If she asked whether he had attacked for only that much of a reason, the Esper before her would undoubtedly answer yes without hesitation. The man before her might sharpen himself with the resolve to kill, but he had not harbored killing intent toward her.
But not now.
Lee Mihyun instinctively sensed that, and in order to live, she kept her mouth firmly shut. The monster slowly turned his head like a broken machine beginning to move. From the moment he sensed the presence of the one with whom he had shared names, he felt something inside him come to a complete stop.
“If you don’t let Mihyun-ssi go, on your precious prince’s head—”
“…….”
“Bang, bang?”
A long sigh flowed from Oh Yeon’s mouth. He knew very well that once his reckless Guide was angry, he wouldn’t stop saying those obnoxious words unless he scraped at Ji Gwan-young’s nerves.
Ji Gwan-young silently looked at the people filling the entrance of the training room. The sight of those small-fry with mediocre power, unable even to hide their terrified faces, looked even worse than the foul-mouthed researcher stubbornly defying him. It was laughable that they had sent things like that as support.
Besides, above all else, something else had offended him.
“Hm? Prince. Say something.”
“Y-yes? Me? Say what…? But this isn’t a real gun, right?”
“Haha. Who knows. Hey. Ji Gwan-young?”
Ji Gwan-young stared at his Guide, who still wore a dazed expression even while Park Seungwon held him with a gun barrel pressed to his head. His reddened eyes still held a faint trace of moisture.
Meanwhile, Choi Tae-hoon was also bewildered. Ji Gwan-young had suddenly pushed him away and driven him out of the training room, only for the entire Center to fill with a blaring alarm. And what about the expressions on Oh Yeon and Park Seungwon’s faces as they ran out through the back door in a panic? The moment they saw him, their faces froze frighteningly, and they demanded to know whether he was hurt.
“B-but this place was fine just a moment ago, so why on earth…… Uh.”
“…….”
“What is that, Ji Gwan-young-ssi?”
At Tae-hoon’s question as he pointed to the massive spear he had made, Ji Gwan-young, who had kept his mouth firmly shut, frowned slightly. Before long, the spear that had been growing larger suddenly burst like something popping and fell in droplets over the ruined remains of the training room.
Only then did the rigid tension in Lee Mihyun’s shoulders drain away. But Gwan-young did not even glance at her and immediately walked toward his Guide. Park Seungwon grinned and released the “prince” he had been holding. The negotiation was successful.
“Prepare clothes.”
Ji Gwan-young spoke bluntly in a slightly languid voice, then dragged Choi Tae-hoon away while Tae-hoon still had questions written all over his face.
***
Right now, Choi Tae-hoon was sitting alone in a reception room inside The Center, half bewildered and half apologetic. His Pair, Ji Gwan-young, could not be with him because he was currently undergoing a special investigation by the researchers.
Up until he saw his Esper changing clothes with a somewhat sullen expression, Tae-hoon had only thought that perhaps some kind of accident had happened in the training room. He had many things he wanted to say. Whether Ji Gwan-young had been the person who saved him at the terrorist site that day, how he had known where Tae-hoon was and found him, and whether he had possibly known him before that…
But as soon as Gwan-young finished straightening his appearance, researchers with murderous expressions practically dragged him out of the reception room, so Tae-hoon couldn’t even ask a question, much less properly meet his eyes.
So instead, he asked someone else first.
“Did Ji Gwan-young-ssi cause some kind of accident?”
That was the first time Choi Tae-hoon had seen Lee Mihyun, the researcher closest to him inside The Center and practically an older sister he was friendly with, make such a strange expression. Maybe it was because he had always run around cleaning things up whenever his younger siblings caused big and small accidents. Somehow, he instinctively sensed there was an extremely exhausting story behind it.
And that instinct was exactly right.
