The place where I went to have a meal with the Center Director was a traditional Korean restaurant.
The well-maintained garden trees, unknown flowers blooming profusely, and the charming pond certainly suited the hanok very well. It would have been a nice place if only it weren’t just the two of us, the Center Director and me.
“Eating isn’t the objective, so aren’t you putting in too much effort?”
It was a meal appointment suddenly made just a few dozen minutes ago, yet not only was I naturally guided to a reserved room, but the basic table setting was already arranged as if the order had been placed beforehand. I spoke without hiding my inwardly uncomfortable expression at this obviously carefully arranged meeting.
“Even viewing Kumgang Mountain comes after a meal, doesn’t it?”
“Do you take care of every meal this well?”
“As if.”
The Center Director showed no wavering at all and instead spoke with a shameless smile.
“I came here because you like Korean food.”
I looked at the Center Director with a puzzled expression. Nowhere in my memory had I ever told him I liked Korean food.
“Me?”
To be precise, not in this life.
“Well, who else is here besides you?”
The only time I’d had a meal with the Center Director was in my previous life, on my 24th birthday.
‘Back then he asked what food I liked and I did say I ate all Korean food well, but could he really be talking about that now?’
One month before having a meal with the Center Director, Woo Jeonghyun was murdered by a villain.
The investigative agency proposed to autopsy Woo Jeonghyun’s body, and at the sound that they could catch decisive evidence about the villain, I couldn’t even hold a proper funeral and entrusted my younger sibling’s body to them. The examination results came out three days later, but the content was absurd.
‘The cause of death was cardiac arrest, so you can’t tell what kind of ability was used?’
My younger sibling met death alone at home, and the investigative authorities designated an unregistered Esper—that is, a villain—as the suspect. However, there weren’t just one or two villains who harbored resentment against the nation, and most of them were specialized in hiding their abilities and living in everyday life.
There were limits to what I could find.
The only thing worth targeting was terrorist organizations operating as groups, but since they were those who had deliberately built up their strength in the shadows, it wasn’t easy to catch them by the tail.
If I’d at least known what kind of ability was used, I could have narrowed down the terrorist organization that villain belonged to, but my younger sibling’s body was fine both inside and out. Due to the phenomenon of wavelengths becoming distorted when Espers or Guides use their abilities, the circumstantial fact of “murder by a villain” was beyond doubt, but no other clues could be found anywhere.
Perhaps because my younger sibling was killed during work, the Center Director took particular responsibility and pushed the investigation forward. Nevertheless, the investigation ended after just two weeks without any notable results.
From this time on, I couldn’t leave the house. How the days passed, whether the sun rose or it was night—I couldn’t see or hear anything. My younger sibling died and one month later was my birthday, but I’d even forgotten that fact. It was natural. Because I wasn’t in my right mind at that time.
‘How long are you going to stay like that?’
Then one dawn, Joo Seolhyeon approached me as I crouched on the living room sofa late into the night, staring blankly out the window. After my younger sibling died, Joo Seolhyeon’s overnight stays stopped. For him, who normally stayed out every other day, it was uncharacteristic behavior. When our eyes met at home, he’d avert his gaze first with an annoyed expression, but that night was different from usual.
I spoke blankly without taking my eyes off the window.
‘I couldn’t save them.’
It was just a moment when the feelings I’d repeated thousands and tens of thousands of times came out of my mouth.
‘That’s right.’
Joo Seolhyeon agreed with those words, and my heart constricted again, making me grimace.
‘You couldn’t save your younger sibling. So what?’
Then Joo Seolhyeon’s concise counterquestion struck down.
‘The living have to live. Are you going to live your whole life like that?’
‘……’
‘Get up already. I don’t want to see my Esper in that state anymore.’
‘My Esper……’
It felt like lightning penetrating from head to toe. For the first time, Joo Seolhyeon acknowledged my existence. To me, who had been dried up with helplessness and guilt all along, that feeling was a strange experience like receiving new life.
‘Then you’re my Guide?’
‘……Yeah.’
Joo Seolhyeon didn’t take my hand or offer warm words of comfort. But in his bleak voice, I found a ray of light again.
What remained to me, my only Guide.
That night I engraved Joo Seolhyeon in my empty eyes and made a resolution. That I wouldn’t lose that person at least.
‘And the next day I ate with the Center Director. How coincidental that the day I resolved to live again was my birthday. Joo Seolhyeon probably didn’t even know my birthday……’
The reminiscence was brief, but my mouth felt gritty as if chewing sand. Glancing at the Center Director sitting across from me, I buried the memories to one side.
“This is my first time having a meal with the Center Director.”
What mattered to me was the present. And the current me had no experience eating with the Center Director. Unless he’d gone senile already at thirty-two, he would understand exactly what I was saying.
“No, it’s the second time. The first was on your birthday.”
But my expectation was completely off the mark.
“Ah, but back then Joo Seolhyeon the Guide ate with us too, so this might be the first time just the two of us.”
“What are you talking about?”
The Center Director was precisely referring to me at 24, before my regression.
This kind of mention wasn’t even the first time. Following the Center and Quardo Island, this was the third time.
‘What’s his scheme?’
Though he hadn’t directly brought up the word “regression,” he kept appealing to me that he had regressed.
“Oh my, I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
The Center Director propped his chin with a grin. His leisurely, relaxed attitude resembled that of a predator whose mood was heightened before prey.
“You must have many questions, but don’t worry. Unlike you, I don’t have a hobby of running away. Let’s talk slowly over the meal.”
The food came out with good timing. However, neither I nor the Center Director touched the food, facing each other as if probing.
‘Why is he telling me these things? Because he regressed too, so I should confess obediently as well? But how did the Center Director regress? I at least had an artifact my mother made, but he wouldn’t have anything like that.’
Each jumbled question was like a bomb. Whichever question I asked, it would amount to admitting that I had also regressed like him, so I had no choice but to be more cautious.
“I’d like to hear your story now, but do you still not trust me?”
He lowered the arm that had been propping his chin and looked down as if bored.
‘Of course I don’t trust you.’
I’d never once thought the Center Director was my enemy, but I’d also never felt he was an ally. The efforts he’d made for me before regression were just two things: arranging a house when my mother went missing and our house burned down, and when my younger sibling was killed by a villain, helping the investigation proceed quickly and taking care of my birthday spent without family.
Both situations were when I was at my most difficult, but it was hard to think of him as an ally just because of that. It wasn’t that I had ill feelings toward the Center Director. However, the memory of his that I happened to glimpse at Quardo Island particularly bothered me.
“I don’t know what you want to say to me. Wasn’t the business between us the deal we didn’t finish tying up at Quardo Island?”
I carefully passed over this issue. It was premature to show him my hand. I also needed time to organize my thoughts.
Hearing my words, the Center Director burst into brief laughter.
“Haha, right, you’re right. I was hasty. If you don’t want to talk about it yet, let’s only discuss that business today.”
His tone, as if doing me a favor, was very irritating, but I was relieved the conversation was wrapping up here. The Center Director was already certain I had regressed, and he wanted to converse based on the fact that I had regressed. I didn’t know what he wanted from me, but he’d definitely bring up this issue again next time. I vaguely intuited that I wouldn’t be able to avoid it like this then.
“So what is it that the Center Director wants from me?”
The bracelet that came out of the dungeon was still stored in my room. Serubi, a magical beast, had recognized the artifact imbued with otherworldly power at a glance and told me how to use that bracelet.
‘It’s an artifact that reads the other person’s past memories. If you make contact with the person whose memories you want to read and pour energy into this magic stone, you can see the memories you want.’
The method of use was simple, but Serubi emphasized that this artifact was quite good. Usually mental-type artifacts inevitably strain both the user and the victim, but this one wouldn’t be noticed at all by the subject whose memories are being read, he said with a chuckle.
‘Honestly, it’s better to have something certain in one function than a half-baked artifact.’
Since I’d already received something, as long as what the Center Director proposed wasn’t something absurd like a slave contract, I was thinking of considering it positively.
“Mm, I’ve been agonizing over this all along.”
The way he pretended to be troubled while he’d already thought everything through reminded me of a cunning old fox.
“Esper Woo Jeongjae is still too young, so it’s quite difficult to ask for anything.”
Goosebumps rose slightly on my spine, wondering what he was thinking of making me do that he’d even mention my age.
“I thought about calling you to my house to have you do something, but I’d probably hear ‘thief’ from people around me.”
I rubbed my arms that had goosebumps from instinctive revulsion and furrowed my brows. I waited for his words to end, thinking that if he said something useless, I’d storm out instead of stammering like before.
“Just in time, an invitation came from the Esper Alliance organization. How about Esper Woo Jeongjae going with me as my partner? Isn’t this level of proposal acceptable?”
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
