“What’s so funny that you didn’t even notice someone walk in?”
“Ah, Sunbae.”
Lost in quiet conversation, they hadn’t realized someone had approached until a familiar voice rang out from close by. When they turned, Lee Hye-soo was standing there, calm and composed. She had come up to the Central Branch with her Guide to complete the imprint nullification process.
Given her abilities, she’d long had close ties with the Esper Human Rights Bureau. The moment she heard the anonymized case in a routine seminar, she immediately knew Park Woo-jun had started counseling—and she wasted no time reaching out to offer her help. As someone who could read even unconscious thoughts and emotions that the subject wasn’t aware of, her skills had been a tremendous asset, just as she’d promised.
But today, she wasn’t alone. Dressed casually, likely having come straight from her lodgings, she was accompanied by a young man in a sharp, neatly pressed suit—like he was on his way to a job interview. His hands were trembling with nerves, fingertips quivering uncontrollably. Even though he clearly knew it made him look awkward, he couldn’t stop himself from shaking.
“It’s an honor to meet you. I’m Park Woo-jun. Thank you so much for agreeing to help.”
Park Woo-jun offered his hand with an easy smile. The man flinched like he’d been shocked, then quickly grabbed it. His grip was overly firm, shaking their clasped hands up and down with excessive enthusiasm.
“N-No! Team Leader Park! It’s… such an honor to finally meet you! I’m Jung Sang-hoon from the Esper Administrative Department of the Sejong Branch. I’ve always wanted to meet you!”
Jung Sang-hoon, a B-Class mental-type Esper specializing in suggestion and hypnosis, was one of Lee Hye-soo’s close juniors. After sitting in on a few counseling sessions, she felt that delving deeper into the subconscious would require his assistance, so she had personally called him in to the Central Branch. Since Jung didn’t participate in combat missions and focused solely on administrative work, it wasn’t hard to issue a temporary dispatch order under her authority as Team Leader.
Jung Sang-hoon launched into a heartfelt monologue, saying that Team Leader Park had once saved his family during an Instant Dungeon incident and that he’d always been grateful—respected him deeply, even. The entire time, he was still clinging to Park Woo-jun’s hand. Park smiled politely and replied, “Ah, is that so?” before gently slipping his hand free and discreetly wiping it on his sleeve. Luckily, caught up in his own emotional whirlwind, Jung didn’t notice.
“Hey, why are you acting like he’s some god? Maybe try treating your oh-so-great Sunbae with half that respect sometime.”
“Sunbae, please!”
Lee Hye-soo stepped in, cutting through the flustered atmosphere. The perceptive doctor gave a few light claps to draw attention back to himself.
“Now that everyone’s here, let’s begin. Woo-jun, how are you feeling? Can we start right away?”
“Yes. I’m ready.”
As Park Woo-jun leaned back into the sofa, Jung Sang-hoon smoothly administered a guiding substitute into his own forearm. Gone was the awkward, jittery demeanor—his movements now carried the confidence of someone well-trained.
A few minutes passed. Once the substitute had fully taken effect, Jung sat beside Park, gently placing his hand over Woo-jun’s.
“Just think of it like taking a nap. Relax.”
And then it hit. The light, drowsy waves that had been brushing at his ankles surged upward all at once, filling his chest and washing over him in a single overwhelming tide.
***
“Where are you right now?”
“……”
The doctor asked, but Park Woo-jun didn’t respond. Or rather—he couldn’t. That would be more accurate. Beneath his tightly shut eyelids, his eyes darted back and forth, restless. He was in a sleep too deep for words. The doctor asked again, all while checking the monitor to make sure his vitals—heart rate, blood pressure, and so on—were stable.
“It feels… like home. There’s a kid who looks like my older brother playing games on the computer… and ‘I’ have my arms raised, being punished.”
His lips didn’t move. The one speaking was Lee Hye-soo, reading his unconscious mind.
Regression was a defense mechanism, a way to escape from unbearable mental and physical trauma by retreating to a time the mind perceived as safer, happier. In Woo-jun’s case, the regression triggered by the temporary loss of his imprint was likely sending him back to what he subconsciously considered the safest moment in his life—a hypothesis that made sense.
As the session progressed, the doctor quietly followed the timeline of Woo-jun’s life. Unfortunately, most of his memories only went back as far as elementary school. Before that, there was just one vivid fragment from around the age of four: his older brother taking his Choco Pie, and him getting scolded anyway. It wasn’t enough to draw solid conclusions. That’s why they needed the help of two mental-type Espers—Lee Hye-soo and Jung Sang-hoon—to dig even deeper, into a past he couldn’t remember on his own.
“Why are you being punished? What did you do wrong?”
“I don’t know. They said… just being born was a mistake. That surviving without knowing my place was the problem… Mom and Dad were really angry. They said things weren’t supposed to turn out this way…”
For a five-year-old to hear something so brutal—it was unspeakably cruel. The doctor knew he should maintain a calm, objective tone, but as a parent himself, he couldn’t understand Woo-jun’s parents. Nor did he want to.
The recorder kept running, but he jotted a note onto the session sheet: “Surviving without knowing his place.” He’d suspected as much from the earlier details, but seeing the truth spelled out—confirming it—was something else entirely.
“Let’s go back a little further. Where are you now, at age three?”
The doctor gently dabbed the sweat from Jung Sang-hoon’s forehead with a tissue. Then he injected another dose of the guiding substitute into Jung’s arm, where veins bulged dark blue from the strain. A muffled groan slipped through Jung’s teeth, and beneath his sealed eyelids, his eyeballs began to flutter once more in wild disarray.
“I’m in a car. I think it’s night—it’s dark outside the window. Dad’s driving… and Mom’s humming along with the radio…”
It was the first time he’d used the words “Mom” and “Dad.” And it was clear that the “Mom and Dad” humming softly in the car with their three-year-old weren’t the same people as the “Mother and Father” who could force a five-year-old to stand for punishment and coldly spit out words no child should ever hear. The doctor jotted a quick note in the file—an early assumption, perhaps, but not an unfounded one.
“And what about you, Woo-jun? What are you doing in the car?”
“I’m in a car seat. I dropped my toy and got frustrated because my arms wouldn’t move the way I wanted. I started crying, and Mom… she turned around and said, ‘What’s wrong, my little prince?’ Then she giggled. Said my crying face looked just like Dad’s.”
Everything was already clear, but the doctor asked one final question—just to be sure.
“Is it just the three of you in the car? What about Park Seon-jun—your brother?”
“……”
Both Park Woo-jun and Lee Hye-soo frowned at the same time. A moment later, Hye-soo quietly opened her mouth.
“There is no brother. ‘I’ am the eldest.”
Her words were sharp and firm. No doubt. No hesitation.
***
Park Woo-jun walked slowly, the wind playing gently with his hair as if trying to comfort the tangled mess of thoughts in his head.
He still didn’t know exactly what he’d seen while submerged in that dreamless, pitch-black sleep. All he had were the words Hye-soo had carefully explained to him afterward, and the notes left behind by the doctor.
He’d need to check the official records to be sure, but it matched what he’d suspected all along—he wasn’t his parents’ biological child.
It was believed that his birth parents had died shortly before his third birthday. Left with no one, he was taken in by a relative—someone who, most likely, saw him as nothing more than a potential source of scraps. It wasn’t common, but it wasn’t unheard of, either.
What made it tragic was the kind of people his adoptive parents turned out to be. Lacking even the most basic decency or sense of responsibility, they were the kind of guardians that should’ve never been allowed to raise a child.
The Espers who had helped him dive into his subconscious, and even the doctor who’d been with him throughout the sessions, had all seemed worried—afraid that uncovering the truth would shatter him.
But instead… all Park Woo-jun felt was relief.
There had been a time when he’d asked himself that question over and over: Why don’t they love me?
Why the hatred? Why the cruel indifference? Why the stark difference between how they treated him and Park Seon-jun?
The answer had always felt out of reach. And in the absence of an answer, he had blamed himself.
Maybe I was just too slow. Maybe it was because I didn’t resemble them. Maybe… like my brother said, I was just a useless idiot who didn’t know how to take a hint. Of course they hated me.
That cruel, gnawing self-blame had followed him relentlessly. Until he met Lee Han-seo. Until the gravitational center of his world finally shifted away from his so-called family—and settled firmly, irrevocably, on Han-seo.
