“Dungeon gate data confirmed. Rank: B. Maximum entry, twelve. Flood in four days plus eight hours. Dungeon type, Illusion-Type… specifically, a mindscape.”
The Espers around the gate let out a long, collective sigh, as if on cue. One even scrubbed his face with both hands.
Only Cha-hyeon kept quiet. He’d just watched his pair guide slip through his fingers and stared blankly ahead for a moment; then he’d closed his eyes, drew a breath to swallow his temper, headed straight for the Esper team, and held his tongue ever since.
“Ji Se-min… he’s a Guide, right?”
The on-site Esper team leader brought up Se-min while sneaking a look at Cha-hyeon. The others pretended not to, but they were watching him, too. Still silent, Cha-hyeon fixed his gaze on a point in the air.
Some Espers feared him, some found him uncomfortable, others were curious; reactions varied, but the man himself didn’t seem to care. In fact, staring toward the dungeon, he looked as if he weren’t listening at all.
“We’ll start the raid once the site support team arrives and civilians are fully evacuated. Entry team will be…”
“Just me.”
Cha-hyeon cut him off cleanly. Eyes round, the Espers traded looks.
“All we have to do is wake him and it clears. I go in and pull Ji Se-min out.”
“But Esper Sung Cha-hyeon…!”
“You don’t know what scene will be instantiated in there, so why rummage through someone’s private life? When support gets here, run the solo-clear probability. See how many hours it projects.”
Couldn’t handle the job and made this mess, but you’ve got plenty to say? With a look that all but said as much, Cha-hyeon glanced at the leader. That arrogant gaze—as if he weren’t dealing with another human being—skated off as he turned away, bored and dismissive.
No one pushed back, despite his imperious tone. He often took silent curses to the face whenever he had to cooperate with other Awakened, but the reason today’s team swallowed their irritation had a lot to do with this dungeon’s peculiarities.
A mindscape. This Illusion-Type gate—also nicknamed a “balance game” dungeon—was among the most dreaded by Awakened. For several reasons.
First, there were hostages. In a normal gate, you fix your raid team and enter; this one, at the moment of transformation, vacuumed up any hostages within range.
If the hostage dragged helplessly inside realized the world was a sham and woke up—success. Put like that it sounded simple, but in a dream, you don’t know you’re dreaming.
True to the name “mindscape,” the dungeon formed itself from the hostage’s inner world. The hostage, living in a world identical to reality, didn’t even realize they’d entered a gate.
Tell someone like that, “This world is fake”—what happens? Paradoxically, they can’t trust the Esper who came to save them and start running. They won’t hesitate to get violent, either. When the time limit ends, everyone inside dies, and the gate floods.
The handicap—keeping the hostage from realizing it’s a dream—spiked the difficulty.
There was another problem: the dungeon was built on the hostage’s inner life.
The dungeon’s job was to make the hostage not want to wake up. So it engineered the most stimulating, most blissful environment a human could feel—and in the process, it inevitably exposed to the raid team the hostage’s private life they’d never want public: secret desires, unspoken memories, down to sexual fantasies.
Survive while livestreaming your most intimate kinks vs. die in the gate and protect your dignity.
The “balance game” nickname hadn’t come from nowhere.
And just like waking from any dream, once the hostage did wake, their memories of the dungeon blurred—yet another source of anxiety.
You feel like you had a dirty dream, but can’t recall it clearly. The raid-team Espers, however, remember it vividly because it wasn’t their dream—it was reality to them.
The fear that someone else might remember some shameful piece of you—something you can’t even see yourself—only made the person more anxious. Who wants to show others a private side you yourself don’t remember?
That’s why civilians who experienced this type of dungeon often tried to sue the raid team afterward. Awakened, ashamed at exposing secrets to coworkers, resigned; some broke up with their pair partners. In the end, it stoked conflict between civilians and Awakened and shrank the pool of on-call personnel.
So the ideal tactic was to send in a trustworthy, small number of same-sex Espers—people who’d pretend they hadn’t seen the hostage’s secrets. Even better, have an Esper the hostage trusted clear it solo.
It was a pie-in-the-sky ideal that had never been realized, but there was logic to what Cha-hyeon proposed.
The on-site commander, after wavering, gave a conditional yes.
“Understood. But on one condition. Once support arrives, if a solo clear looks viable, and if you don’t clear within the projected window, we’ll send in additional members. We can’t just stand around and watch.”
“And you showing up is supposed to help? You couldn’t even manage Rift management properly.”
“…That’s—”
“Just don’t get in my way. If you’ve got nothing to do, sit on your hands and wait.”
With eyes flat as if staring at an inanimate object, Cha-hyeon gave the leader one last look and turned away. Hearing the famed Sung Cha-hyeon’s mouth firsthand, two members behind the leader whispered to each other.
Before long, the site support team arrived—and when they heard he meant to go in alone, a fresh wave of shock rippled through them.
Still, while no one had tried this approach before, the support team judged that if it was that Sung Cha-hyeon, a solo clear was possible.
The simulation put his clear at just two full days; the flood point was four days plus eight hours—meaning if he didn’t clear by then, it was a wipe. All or nothing.
From one of the dispatched Espers about his height, Cha-hyeon borrowed a spare Esper-only combat suit in black, then strapped on the Esper-issue smartwatch handed out on site.
He rolled his neck left and right. The height matched, but wearing gear cut for a different build made the tighter-than-usual squeeze grate on him.
Getting a single date is a damn ordeal. Listening to the field team’s voices—half sour, half worried—Cha-hyeon stared at the rippling dungeon.
“Five, four, three, two, one. 18:45. One entrant, Sung Cha-hyeon. Commencing raid on B-rank Illusion-Type dungeon gate.”
Just before he moved, his eyes met one of the raiders’—the Esper who’d lent him the spare suit. Startled by the direct look, the man flinched, then raised a fist in a “fighting” gesture.
…what a fucking dick.
Muttering inwardly, Cha-hyeon stepped into the gate without hesitation.
***
Se-min walked hand in hand with Hyung.
An S-rank Esper no Korean could fail to recognize. And the partner whose endless string of rumors with him had finally been confirmed live on air—Ji Se-min.
With the two of them holding hands like lovers and strolling along, of course every eye would be on them. Normally that attention would’ve tied Se-min in knots; maybe it was Hyung’s unabashed poise, but he felt like he could even savor the embarrassment.
…Embarrassing was still embarrassing, though. He wasn’t the type who enjoyed the spotlight, so he kept glancing off to the side, pretending distraction. He heard Hyung give a soft chuckle, as if finding his flustered act adorable.
“Still not used to it?”
“…How would I get used to this? It’s not like I’m a clout-chaser…”
If he were the type to enjoy those stares, he would’ve been bragging on social media long ago. They’d lived together even before they started dating, and the whole country had been whispering, “Aren’t those two going out?”—he wouldn’t have pretended no while acting yes, keeping it coy and ambiguous?
He’d slip Hyung’s hand into a photo and post it, put a cryptic line on his story, take a shot with the car brand’s logo visible so people would know it was Hyung’s…
“…Ah—right. What about our car?”
Only then did he remember the car they’d left in the underground lot. If they were having drinks in the lounge and staying the night at the hotel, shouldn’t they have brought the car along? Can you keep it parked after the department store closes? Are we going to end up paying a fine?
Hyung’s laugh grew a shade louder at Se-min’s practical worry. The hand holding his stayed warm. Lips curved in a gentle smile parted.
“You don’t have to worry about that.”
The angle of their joined hands shifted, and Hyung slid their fingers together, lacing them. In a low voice, he whispered a sweet promise.
“Hyung will handle… everything.”
