The middle-aged man with the unpleasant face who’d been asking him things like what position he took in bed was now suddenly calling him formally and nervously watching his reactions.
Tae-hoon could only wonder what the hell kind of situation this was.
As the Minister repeatedly dabbed sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief and continued talking, Tae-hoon had no idea what he was even supposed to say back, so his eyes merely darted around helplessly.
Growing even more anxious at that reaction, the Minister hurriedly reached out toward Tae-hoon.
“Now then, you’re alright, aren’t you?”
But that feigned gentleness was harshly slapped away before his hand could even touch Tae-hoon’s shoulder.
The Minister swallowed dryly as he looked at Gwan-young, who had somehow appeared standing crookedly beside Tae-hoon.
The man was neither an Esper nor a Guide, merely an ordinary Middle. Yet he could feel with terrifying clarity the warning screaming from the deepest part of his instincts.
The elegant man standing before him like something out of a painting was not actor Ji Gwan-young.
This was Esper Ji Gwan-young—the one who had butchered the terrorist responsible for turning Gangnam into chaos as casually as if playing with a toy, solely because the man had threatened the young man beside him.
“Not even a damn animal…….”
“……Ugh.”
“I seriously can’t understand why some things only listen once you establish dominance.”
A small groan mixed with humiliation and fear escaped the Minister’s mouth.
Despite his beautiful appearance, the face that should have held at least some trace of human emotion revealed absolutely nothing, making the fear he inspired even stranger and more horrifying.
“Crawl properly.”
The sweat-soaked, disheveled hair and wrinkled clothes didn’t diminish the Esper’s overwhelming presence in the slightest.
If anything, they only made him feel more raw.
“Unless you want your obituary in the papers listed as a mysterious death.”
“Ji Gwan-young-ssi!”
“Ah, that just now was a slip of the tongue on my part too.”
The face adding that comment with a bright smile was undeniably Korea’s top actor Ji Gwan-young.
And yet not a single person watching him took those words as a mere slip of the tongue. Especially not the people at The Center.
That Esper, Ji Gwan-young, was completely serious right now. And he had the power to make it reality.
His words were neither a slip of the tongue nor an empty threat.
Meanwhile, Choi Tae-hoon had gone pale at that cheerful murder threat.
I should’ve stopped him!
Panicking after his Esper casually tossed out an outrageous threat while he’d been briefly spacing out, Tae-hoon grabbed Gwan-young’s arm and fidgeted anxiously before finally dragging his Pair out of the laboratory by force.
Of course, Ji Gwan-young offered no real resistance as Tae-hoon pulled him away. Even so, he never took his eyes off the pale-faced Minister until the very end.
It was the kind of gaze that looked like it intended to track prey to the finish, to the point that even the researchers at The Center—who weren’t the targets of it—subconsciously rubbed at the goosebumps rising on their arms.
Even after the problematic Pair had completely left the laboratory, the Minister continued sweating and trembling violently for quite some time before hurriedly fleeing The Center.
It was a very different exit from his grand and imposing arrival.
The Center, which had been thrown into utter chaos by the Minister’s sudden visit, instantly sank into a strange kind of silence once it was over.
Honestly, the entire chain of events that had unfolded over the past few minutes still felt like a dream.
They’d always wanted to knock that pathetic man down a peg.
He strutted around puffing out his chest just because he was a Minister, constantly spewing disgusting nonsense, so much so that nobody would’ve been surprised if one day an enraged Esper ended up punching him.
But to utterly crush him this cleanly, this perfectly, and without any consequences attached?
“……My god.”
“……”
“What do we do? I think I’m about to fall in love with that dogshit personality.”
At Mihyun’s crude yet astonishingly accurate comment, the researchers at The Center unanimously agreed.
They’d all built up that much resentment over time that agreement was unavoidable.
Even Oh Yeon—who’d once seriously contemplated hacking the Minister’s computer and leaking classified information—gave a small nod.
***
Right now, Ji Gwan-young was getting scolded by his Guide inside one of The Center’s reception rooms.
“Ji Gwan-young-ssi, no matter how angry you are, you can’t say things like that!”
“……”
“What do you mean you’ll kill someone? Don’t even think about it!”
Ji Gwan-young found himself mildly curious about what Tae-hoon thought his abilities even were.
A Physical-type Esper. Not just any Esper, but one possessing the strongest killing power imaginable. And yet this person was telling him not to think about killing people.
In a way, it was absurd.
Besides, that painfully upright Guide definitely hadn’t fully understood why the foolish-looking Minister had turned deathly pale the moment immigration was brought up.
Still, Ji Gwan-young didn’t argue with Choi Tae-hoon and answered calmly. Naturally, he wasn’t being sincere.
“Alright.”
“No, seriously……… Have you even finished filming? What is this state you’re in?”
Gwan-young stared directly at Tae-hoon, who looked at him as though dumbfounded. His attitude was almost shamelessly confident.
“You kept calling me.”
“Huh?”
“Choi Tae-hoon. You kept calling for me.”
“……”
Before Tae-hoon could even respond, Ji Gwan-young pulled his Guide toward him.
At first he’d intended to hug him directly, but realizing he himself was soaked in sweat and dust, he gave a bitter smile and instead wrapped his arms around Tae-hoon from behind.
It happened too quickly for Tae-hoon to protest.
“This side’s been hurting nonstop for the past few days.”
“……Your Name?”
Gwan-young gave a small nod and buried his face against the back of Tae-hoon’s neck with almost ticklish care.
Tae-hoon reflexively hunched his shoulders at the warm breath brushing his neck, but he didn’t push away the warmth embracing him. Instead, he quietly stayed in his arms.
Still, there was something he couldn’t quite understand.
I kept calling for Ji Gwan-young-ssi?
Tae-hoon mulled over those words briefly before a possibility suddenly struck him.
As much as he hated to admit it, he had spent the last few days waiting quite a bit for Ji Gwan-young to contact him. And every time that happened, Gwan-young would almost immediately text or call him as though he somehow knew.
Really. Almost every single time.
Could it be that every time that happened…… his Name had hurt?
The moment Choi Tae-hoon realized his guess might actually be true, his head felt strangely dizzy.
An overwhelming wave of embarrassment rushed over him. He suddenly didn’t even want to imagine what Ji Gwan-young must’ve thought every time.
Unable to bring himself to speak, Tae-hoon pressed at the corners of his burning eyes and deliberately looked elsewhere.
Then a low voice brushed against his reddened ear.
“Are you angry?”
“……No. Why?”
“I wondered if you were angry because of the threats earlier.”
Those threats.
Ji Gwan-young clearly wasn’t even treating the Minister as a person anymore. Honestly, there were probably quite a lot of people Ji Gwan-young didn’t consider human. Choi Tae-hoon understood that well now.
“Well. Saying you’d kill someone absolutely wasn’t okay, but……..”
“…..”
“I’m not angry. Honestly… that guy really was kind of an asshole.”
It was an honest answer. Thinking back on it now, it had actually been a little satisfying. But even after hearing Tae-hoon’s words, Ji Gwan-young remained silent.
“Gwan-young-ssi?”
Tae-hoon called his Pair in slight confusion. But unlike usual, no response came back.
Wondering what exactly he was supposed to do with the man hugging him from behind, Tae-hoon carefully shifted his body slightly.
At that, Ji Gwan-young’s body suddenly tilted and collapsed.
Startled, Tae-hoon barely managed to catch the limp man before he fell completely.
“…..”
Only then did he notice the evenly spreading sound of breathing.
Tae-hoon stared blankly at Gwan-young, who had lost consciousness in his arms—whether asleep or passed out, he couldn’t tell.
The man had always been impeccably neat, almost offensively perfect.
He was someone with such immense pride that unless they were alone together, he never showed even the slightest weakness in front of others.
And yet now that Esper had fallen asleep here, not in his official residence nor his own home, but at The Center—a place he absolutely despised—while still wearing sweat-soaked clothes stained here and there.
“If you’re struggling, then you should say you’re struggling……..”
Tae-hoon quietly sighed as he looked at Ji Gwan-young’s slightly pale face.
Right now, the only thing he could do was hold the sleeping man leaning against him a little tighter.
***
“I’m going to kill Ji Gwan-young.”
A terrifying voice practically grinding its teeth came from Lee Mihyun’s mouth.
Her confession of love had turned ice-cold after lasting barely a single day. Yet no one objected to her statement.
Right now, The Center was in an even bigger state of emergency than during the Minister’s visit.
No—calling it wartime would probably be more accurate.
“The PR department says they want us to send people over. Or at least share phone lines with them.”
“Ah, we’re busy here too, so tell them to figure it out themselves!”
“They’re saying they’re seriously going to die from this. What are we supposed to do?”
From Damyang in Jeollanam-do to The Center located in Jung-gu, Seoul—a distance of approximately 283 kilometers.
And the time it took Ji Gwan-young to cover that distance? Roughly fifty minutes.
The Esper had apparently charged straight toward Seoul completely alone in a direct line, stopping only once at a rest stop somewhere in Chungcheongnam-do to drink water and borrow a phone to look at a map.
Korea’s top actor suddenly appearing without a car had smilingly signed a few autographs before vanishing again not long after.
Then he resurfaced several dozen minutes later in Gyeonggi Province. And soon after that, Seoul.
Because the population density was too high, Ji Gwan-young seemed forced to walk for a bit, but before long he’d started leaping over buildings with a frown on his face.
The researchers at The Center had no trouble identifying the black figure captured on CCTV footage as him.
[Ji Gwan-young is insane. I saw him at a rest stop lolol holy shit he was fucking crazy LOL suddenly popped outta nowhere and borrowed some woman’s phone. Lucky bitch T_T]
[I’m in Suwon. Heard Ji Gwan-young showed up so I took pics and talked with my friend for a sec, then checked Instagram and apparently he was already in Seoul LOLLLLL]
[Yeah I’m in Yeongdeungpo and I saw Ji Gwan-young flying around. Suddenly he was standing on top of a utility pole staring at something far away.]
[Wasn’t he filming a drama?]
[Why the fuck would a clothing company team manager suddenly be standing on top of a utility pole? This genre is collapsing.]
The internet was now overflowing with “Ji Gwan-young sightings.”
Seriously, couldn’t he have moved around a little more quietly? There was absolutely no need for the nation’s hottest top actor to prove his popularity like this!
Lee Mihyun clutched her head and screamed.
Newspapers, magazines, TV programs—everyone was bombarding The Center with questions like they were trying to beat information out of them.
Entertainment media was in an uproar asking whether something had happened to “actor Ji Gwan-young.”
Current affairs programs focused on the sudden movement of an “Esper,” sharply bringing up the recently strained Korea-Russia relations.
Esper-Guide human rights organizations released official statements criticizing brutal working conditions. But The Center couldn’t give any of them real answers.
Because while they possessed the greatest minds in South Korea, they unfortunately did not possess the greatest shamelessness.
All The Center could do was cling to truths they absolutely couldn’t reveal while endlessly spouting lies about “classified information” and “top secrecy.”
