# Chapter 53
“I should have killed Lee Ha-min at that time. If I had, those obsessive maniacs would have gone completely insane. That would have had a stronger impact. He should be grateful I’ve kept him alive all this time, but he’s being so demanding.”
I frantically approached my sister and snatched the smartphone she was looking at.
“Hey, you bastard! What are you doing? Are you crazy? Give it back right now!”
My sister yelled furiously.
Her voice was so real, as if she was shouting right next to me.
“I said give it back right now!!”
But I couldn’t do as she asked.
Instead, I took it and ran to the front door.
That felt really familiar too.
I knew exactly where to go, where the door would lead—I knew it all so well.
When I opened the door, a familiar scene appeared before me.
Even the smell was identical.
‘Am I back? Have I returned?’
After entering the martial arts game world, I desperately endured each day hoping only to return to this place.
And I thought that after becoming the sword master in the game world, I would finally be able to return here.
But for all that anticipation, it felt too ordinary and boring.
Even tedious.
I wondered why I had worked so hard to return here.
Is this how people who searched for treasure islands felt when they finally found them?
Did those who sought the Holy Grail feel this emptiness after obtaining it?
In my case, rather than emptiness, it was more like…
How should I put it?
A feeling that it doesn’t seem to be that meaningful anymore?
My sister, my family, the life I belonged to and the daily routine I had built.
None of it held such great meaning anymore.
What was this life I had wanted to return to?
Certainly not my sister.
Nor this house.
What exactly was this “life” of mine?
But now wasn’t the time to leisurely ponder such things.
There was something more important now.
I urgently touched the screen, thinking I needed to see my sister’s novel right away.
No wonder my sister was upset.
From the little I’d seen, there were many negative comments.
Is this why my sister turned dark?
No, more importantly, what is this thing?
This must be a dream, right?
Just a simple dream, right?
What’s happening now has nothing to do with me. So I don’t need to try to change anything and I just…
Right. I just need to look at this and laugh it off. I don’t need to try to change it.
That should be correct, but why do I feel so anxious?
I pressed “View First Chapter.”
And I discovered that the first chapter had completely changed.
It wasn’t the scene I originally knew.
The first chapter I knew was about Lee Ha-min fleeing into the forest while being chased like a rabbit by S-class Espers.
There, the S-class Espers would torment Ha-min as if teasing him, then let him go as if giving him hope.
Ha-min would despair and resign himself, yet still try to escape only to be caught again by the S-class Espers, but the screen showed a completely different scene.
S-class Espers attacking monsters in a dungeon.
It started with their battle scenes, with a strong fantasy atmosphere.
It showed impactful moments that weren’t boring, highlighting the special qualities of S-class Espers, followed by scenes of them returning to the Center and receiving Guiding from Lee Ha-min.
The Guiding I knew from Ha-min.
That pure kneading was being shown.
While watching it, I could clearly tell it was from the novel I had been in.
My heart was racing wildly.
Because I thought this was truly the story of the place where I had been.
“Hey! Are you really crazy? Did this bastard eat something wrong?!”
My sister followed me out, cursing harshly, but I moved as far away as possible while continuing to turn the pages.
Everything that had happened so far kept appearing.
Every single conversation was exactly the same.
There were scenes of me training Ha-min, taking a wrong turn into the forest and meeting Shim Woo-jin, and even incredibly detailed descriptions of how his violin playing felt.
The way each character was described was like someone had examined photographs meticulously and transcribed every detail into words.
I didn’t need to reread the parts I already knew.
It was enough to confirm that this was the story of the world I had lived in.
I quickly skipped ahead to find the current situation.
Occasionally, words caught my eye as I did so.
Lines containing Ha-min’s feelings kept jumping out at me.
It was amazing how these sentences were entering my eyes even as I rapidly flipped through the pages.
How he felt when he found me.
How he waited for me until we met.
How much his heart burned when I was late returning from the dungeon.
Every moment of his seemed filled with longing for me.
The world without me was a colorless grayscale, and only when I returned would his world be colored again.
I could tell that was really how Ha-min felt.
My hand paused for a moment.
The thought that I missed that guy.
The warm sensation that came from him.
The touch of his arms embracing me and the look in his eyes.
All of it felt incredibly vivid, unbelievably so.
I even turned around, feeling like I might find him standing there looking at me.
But there was only the endless gray cityscape stretching out.
I turned back to the smartphone and flipped through the pages even faster.
Stabilizer, New Central, Exodus. S-class Esper.
I quickly passed through scenes of Ha-min awakening as an Esper, me becoming a Guide, and me becoming an S-class Esper.
Then a name that passed by too quickly remained in my mind, uncomfortably pulling at me, so I hurriedly went back.
Cha Yoon.
That name appeared there.
‘Who is this?’
It was a name I had never seen before.
It was the scene where Kyun In tried to persuade me to leave for the New Central Origin.
When I refused, someone approached Kyun In.
‘I don’t know this scene?’
I had thought I knew this part well so I skipped it, but even as I mechanically turned the pages, that scene kept pulling me back, so I went back several pages and finally found it.
My sister, whom I thought had given up, opened the door again and shouted at me to bring it back immediately, making me even more anxious.
She was determined not to let the smartphone out of her hands.
After asking nicely a few times like that, if I didn’t listen, she might suddenly rush at me, pin me down, and mercilessly throw punches.
Being steeped in Confucian values, I couldn’t hit my sister back, so I’d just have to take the beating.
I didn’t come back for this, so I stayed as far away as possible while quickly reading that section with my eyes.
「”You said you could do it. But aren’t you putting too much effort into a D-class Esper? Looking at your face, it seems like a big blow. Does Seo Eunwoo have some special ability?”
“What do you think?”
“Well? I didn’t feel anything like that. More importantly, what’s happening with Lee Ha-min? We absolutely need to bring Ha-min to Origin. If he refuses, you should force him to come, Esper. It has to be done.”
“Really? You really think so? That’s disappointing.”
“What do you mean? Are you saying Seo Eunwoo is better than Lee Ha-min?”
Laughter burst from Cha Yoon’s mouth.
It was a violent laugh that one wouldn’t expect to see in front of an S-class Esper.
But Kyun In didn’t mind.
He didn’t want to explain to Cha Yoon why he was right.
“He is pretty, I’ll give him that. He would have been useful as a Guide. Is there no way to forcibly convert an Esper into a Guide? Should we lock the researchers in the research building and make them figure it out? Ah, nothing’s impossible. Should we really try that?”
Kyun In shook his head as if he couldn’t believe it.
But seeing Cha Yoon’s eyes shine, he realized that for him, this wasn’t an impossible task at all.
He was about to leave for the New Central.
He had already made arrangements with capable researchers.
The researchers chosen by Cha Yoon would leave together for the new Origin, and those left behind would only be those classified as disposable.
Cha Yoon was planning to use those he classified as disposable to get what he wanted.
To find a way to forcibly awaken Espers as Guides.
Under his orders, the researchers wouldn’t feel fatigue or hunger and would continuously dedicate themselves to research.
Many would collapse from continuing to work without knowing they were exhausted.
If that happened, it would attract people’s attention—would he go that far?
Kyun In looked at Cha Yoon with concern.
But he had many things to deal with and didn’t have time to think about Cha Yoon for long.
So even when Seo Eunwoo suddenly awakened as a Guide one day, he had completely forgotten about it.
For a long time, he couldn’t even imagine the connection between the two events.
Not until he coincidentally met Cha Yoon at Central.」
‘What is this? What does this mean? Are they saying I became a Guide because of Cha Yoon? Did Cha Yoon make the researchers conduct this research? So they found a way for an Esper to awaken as a Guide? This guy left for Origin? He left with the people who went to Origin? And he still came back to our Center after that?’
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
