Lee Han-seo couldn’t stand watching the two Espers bicker like toddlers any longer. Neither one looked like they’d back down anytime soon, so he finally stepped in. As always, the one who got targeted was the easier prey.
“Hey, Park Woo-jun. Seriously, what’s with the childish tantrum?”
“C-Childish? Did you just call me childish…?!”
“Tch. Other people are watching.”
Throwing a sharp, not-so-subtle warning glance, Lee Han-seo dragged Choi Jae-won away—who’d been awkwardly hovering nearby—muttering that he’d get the drinks himself.
At his curt parting shot—“Follow us and you’re dead”—Park Woo-jun shriveled, a defeated whimper slipping out as he slumped back into his seat. He pouted dramatically, glaring daggers at the other side of the table. The look screamed, I seriously can’t stand you.
“Relax. I can’t stand you either.”
Ryu Ho-yeon shot back casually, doing his best to hide the mess brewing inside him.
But Park Woo-jun’s snide remark—“When was that lemonade even from?”—had been echoing in his head nonstop. They used to be the kind of friends who knew everything about each other. That was years ago. And even though Ryu Ho-yeon hadn’t changed one bit since then, it felt like Lee Han-seo had gone somewhere so far ahead, he couldn’t possibly catch up anymore.
Sure, to someone else, getting that worked up over a drink might seem ridiculous. But to Ryu Ho-yeon, Lee Han-seo was never “just” anyone. He wasn’t someone you could reduce with a simple adjective. That’s why even the smallest things ended up feeling overwhelmingly significant.
Most Espers lived normal lives before awakening and joining the system. But Ryu Ho-yeon had been born inside the Center. His mother was one of its researchers.
Whether by fate or coincidence, he’d been declared an Esper the moment he took his first breath. And from that day forward, he had to live as if he didn’t exist. Not just any Esper either—but an S-Class manifestation-type Esper so rare, even B- or C-Class couldn’t match with him, let alone guide him.
His mother was always busy—frantically trying to find a compatible Guide for her son. Imagine how it must’ve felt to have a child born with such rare, precious power, only to watch him wither away—never even given the chance to spread his wings because no Guide could sync with him.
She always clutched his frail arm, bruised and mottled from countless substitute injections, whispering apologies. His forearms were a mess of needle marks, always frighteningly thin.
Eventually, she realized no one in Korea could help. She wanted to search the entire planet if that’s what it took to find the right match. But the government crushed her efforts at every turn, throwing excuses her way. Heaven forbid his Guide be found in another country—that would be a political nightmare.
And because a bird that’s never flown doesn’t even know how to long for the sky, Ryu Ho-yeon learned to accept things. Obedience and surrender came far too easily to him.
But while her son was growing up, his mother wasn’t standing still. Maybe she’d decided she had to survive, no matter how dirty the system got. By the time Ryu Ho-yeon was five or six, she wasn’t just another researcher anymore—she was leading the entire division.
A heartless woman who wouldn’t bleed a drop even if stabbed.
A monster who shoved her own son into the lab.
That’s what people who didn’t know her liked to say. But Ryu Ho-yeon didn’t care. To him, all of it was proof she was fighting for him—fighting harder than anyone else. Her infamous reputation? To him, it was the most valuable trophy the world could offer.
Some early mornings, when he managed to fall into a shallow sleep despite the pain from his Guiding deficiency, he’d occasionally hear faint, ragged sobs through the haze. Sometimes, gentle fingers would brush through his hair.
He’d inherited his mother’s brilliant mind. And thankfully, he was sharp enough to understand the warmth behind those rare, quiet gestures. But even so—he was still human. And some days, the loneliness was unbearable.
The many “aunts” and “uncles” in the lab treated him with a surface-level kindness—after all, he was the only child of their iron-fisted superior, a Special-Type S-Class Esper under constant surveillance from the top brass. But that wasn’t what Ryu Ho-yeon needed. What he wanted wasn’t polite courtesy. It was real, human affection.
And then, like a long-awaited Christmas present, Lee Han-seo appeared.
“…Hi. I’m Lee Han-seo. I’ll be eight soon. They said we’re the same age. Right?”
He had just been crying outside, whining that he wanted to go home. But now, with his tears quickly wiped away, he stood there bravely and stuck out his hand for a handshake.
No one could ever understand what Ryu Ho-yeon felt in that moment. Gratitude? Affection? Words like that couldn’t even come close to capturing the way his chest tightened, how it almost made him want to cry.
Lee Han-seo was the very first person Ryu Ho-yeon had ever met who was his age.
Not from a book. Not from a video. Someone real—standing right in front of him. A kid with short arms and legs, a missing front tooth, just like him.
Until that moment, Ryu Ho-yeon’s world had only been the labs and a few limited spaces in the Center. Everyone else had been an adult. That was the most instinctive way he’d understood how abnormal he was.
He was an Esper with a rare ability, but without a Guide, he’d never even used it properly. To Ryu Ho-yeon, that was the only difference that mattered. Not power. Not rank. Just the gaping distance between him and everyone else.
“They said I’m your Guide. So does that mean you’ll be my Esper?”
“…Yeah.”
“Cool. You’re pretty. I’ll let you be my Esper.”
“…Thanks.”
Only after meeting Lee Han-seo did Ryu Ho-yeon realize it—I’m human too. Something most people accept without question, without ever needing to think about it. That natural sense of being, of existing with worth—he hadn’t known it until then.
Han-seo came to the Center every month, staying for about a week each time. Whenever he visited, the rigid structure of Ryu Ho-yeon’s life would loosen, just a little. It was then he discovered the Center held far more spaces than he’d ever known. It was the first time he had ice cream waffles, the first time he played with the trendy toys other kids his age were obsessed with.
Sometimes they’d sit side by side, heads nearly touching, scribbling down endless English vocabulary or rushing through piles of math problems, because Han-seo hadn’t finished his homework. Every one of those “firsts” that Han-seo brought into his life shimmered like something sacred.
It wasn’t about being an S-Class Esper. It was about being Han-seo’s Esper, Han-seo’s friend. And in that space, Ryu felt happy. He often dreamed of a future where they stayed together, just like this.
But no human is perfect. No one is completely free from sin. Just as his mother’s desperation to end her son’s suffering pushed another Esper into despair, Ryu had turned away from the sight of Han-seo begging for death in the lab. He clung to his friend’s ankle instead, unwilling to let go.
He didn’t care if he never got to use his powers. He didn’t care if his veins ruptured from the now-ineffective Guiding substitutes. What terrified him was losing his one and only friend. If he lost Han-seo the Guide, he was sure Han-seo the friend would vanish too.
All the years they’d spent together under the title of “preliminary pair” had been more than enough to cloud even his sharpest instincts.
Compatibility between an Esper and a Guide ultimately came down to how much of the Esper’s wave activity the Guide could withstand. And because their match rate was so low, all the pain of the sync experiments fell on Han-seo alone.
Ryu Ho-yeon had watched it all—helplessly, silently—for years. If it hadn’t been for him, Han-seo could’ve chosen any Esper he wanted, treated them like a servant if he felt like it. But instead, he hurt—because of Ryu Ho-yeon.
They’d met at eight. And somehow, those two kids had grown into twenty-year-old adults, still trapped in this.
For all his attitude and sharp tongue, Han-seo was soft to the core when it came to the people he let in. Even when their pairing finally came to an end, he never said a single word about the pain he’d suffered through the years of sync experiments.
“Watch closely. Today’s the last time.”
…So he can make a face like that too. There was something unfamiliar about that cold, razor-sharp expression. Maybe it was because this was the first time they’d truly faced each other properly. Every time they’d crossed paths before felt more like squabbling kids than anything serious—but now, Park Woo-jun’s eyes burned with something dangerous.
“You already know, right? Han-seo’s not going into the dungeon. So this’ll be the last time you see his face.”
“……”
So he knew. Not that Ryu Ho-yeon had tried to hide it. But still, the words struck something raw in his chest.
“I’m not like someone who watches their Guide suffer and just stands around pretending not to see.”
The moment Park Woo-jun became Chief of Espers and got his clearance upgraded, the first thing he did was dive into the files on Ryu Ho-yeon and Han-seo’s pairing. At first, he hadn’t even been that serious about it. He already knew there was no romantic relationship between them. They were just close. He wasn’t suspicious—just… curious.
Curious how two people could share such a long, tangled history. Curious why Han-seo always looked so damn apologetic every time Ryu Ho-yeon came up. No one would talk about it, and as the guy who had “replaced” Ryu Ho-yeon, Woo-jun couldn’t exactly go around demanding answers.
So he read. And the more he read, the harder it became to stay calm.
Seizures lasting minutes. Loss of consciousness. Recovery. Continuation of the experiment. Guide requests termination. Denied. Interview with Esper. Sync continues. Incremental increase in match rate. Expected value recalculated…
Cold, clinical terms—page after page—flattened over a decade of Han-seo and Ryu Ho-yeon’s lives into sterile lines of text.
Woo-jun had always admired Han-seo’s boldness. Maybe it was because he himself could never live that way. Maybe that’s why it stung so much to see someone who should shine brighter than anyone else shrink into a shadow whenever Ryu Ho-yeon was mentioned—shouldering a guilt that didn’t belong to him.
Ryu Ho-yeon’s fate was Ryu Ho-yeon’s burden. It had nothing to do with Han-seo. There was no reason Han-seo should have to suffer for it. And yet… everyone who knew them both—even Han-seo himself—acted like it was only natural. That he owed it.
And when Han-seo finally broke the chain and paired with another Esper, they called him a traitor. Like he’d committed some unspeakable betrayal.
What a joke.
Unless there’s an Imprint involved, official pairs split all the time to pursue better compatibility. And Han-seo hadn’t even been officially paired. So how could it be wrong for him to choose Park Woo-jun?
“Keep playing the victim and stay out of our business. You don’t get to butt in. Understand?”
Park Woo-jun hated Ryu Ho-yeon.
More than Ryu Ho-yeon ever hated him. More than Han-seo ever felt guilt.
