# Chapter 20 Second order
An official letter arrived from the school. It was a polite request asking if he could take on the liberal arts class again for the first semester of next year. Without thinking twice, he replied expressing regret that he wouldn’t be available.
It’s not like he’d been shot in the head, but he would never teach a class again.
While gulping down a cold beer, he turned on his laptop and connected to the Center’s homepage. Then he searched and read the notices for field Guides. If he searched through active communities like those for regular Guides working at the Center or Center communities, somehow… he might find at least one opportunity.
Damn it.
He sighed and crushed the empty beer can.
‘They’re all looking for experienced people…’
Of course, if he were a team leader, he would have only hired experienced people too. Unless he wanted to give inexperienced regular Guides some field experience. Ability users with their heads screwed on right wouldn’t hire anyone without experience.
From the beginning, the only ways to learn about fieldwork were to join the field ability user class supported by the Center or to join a private company. This meant it was impossible to obtain a field ability user license just by poking around like this.
‘Should I register for the field ability user class that the Center offers to regular Guides…?’
But completing four hours of training every day for six weeks was quite a hassle. If he could just clear even one Gate, it would be recognized as experience.
Wondering if there was any other way, he smacked his lips before brushing his teeth and flopping down on the bed. Though he had properly finished the semester, the days that followed were just boring.
After that day, whether the incident with Lee Seungwoo had been too much for Ko Eungyo’s body, he had been sick for several days. Getting completely drenched in the pouring rain was the problem. Despite having been sick for a long time, the cold symptoms wouldn’t go away. Nevertheless, he had to go out today.
This was because he had been summoned by the Director.
The timing was appropriate, especially when he had been feeling stifled and bored. As a regular Guide, he had an obligation to respond to Guiding calls from the Center Director and Espers. The mention of a Guiding call reminded him of that day when Lee Seungwoo had mockingly muttered about making a Guiding call. And his right ankle, which still had lingering pain, felt uncomfortably sensitive again.
‘Why the hell did that guy do that?’
He thought impulsively. It must have been Woo Sihyun and Lee Seungwoo who harassed him. That was probably influenced by the ‘unconscious’ of the original owner of this body, Ko Eungyo.
In the past, the claim that Lee Seungwoo had twisted Ko Eungyo’s right ankle… didn’t seem like a lie, judging by his strange physical reactions.
Despite being someone who wouldn’t normally be frightened, he couldn’t open his mouth because of that chilling feeling.
Would it have been correct to live quietly like a dead mouse as per the original plan?
But anyway, the semester had ended safely. If they truly hated Ko Eungyo enough to kill him… even if not to kill, if they had wanted to inflict harm in some way, they wouldn’t have let the semester end so smoothly.
Woo Sihyun seemed like someone who couldn’t bear not being conscious of Ko Eungyo due to Ko Eungyo’s long-standing obsession, and Lee Seungwoo seemed like a person who observed such a Ko Eungyo. An annotation was added that he wasn’t just ‘observing’ but also seemed to have occasionally taken on the role of punishing Ko Eungyo.
‘Sigh.’
He wasn’t sure how long this relationship… should continue.
At first, he was greatly displeased and frightened, and it’s true that he had decided to end this relationship unconditionally. Of course, the real Ko Eungyo might have been willing to endure these things to hold onto Woo Sihyun.
The problem was that it was impossible to gauge the extent of those feelings. Though he had thought of cutting it off at once, his breath would catch whenever he entered Ko Eungyo’s room. It felt like a magnitude of feelings that he, who was temporarily borrowing Ko Eungyo’s body, couldn’t arbitrarily end.
In reality, ending it was also impossible. This was because the ‘Delete Esper’ button at the bottom of the application, which should naturally be activated in the Guide’s ‘my’ list, was grayed out and deactivated.
How dumbfounded he had been when he first discovered this.
He had planned to go to the Center to ask about this issue anyway. Apart from deleting Woo Sihyun and Lee Seungwoo, it seemed like a problem with the Center application. Adding Espers to ‘my’ and deleting them was the unique right of a Guide. The fact that this right was blocked could only be explained as a system issue.
Upon arriving at the Center, he headed to the Director’s office first. Since it was a place he had been in and out of several times before, he could go there directly without getting lost.
After lightly knocking on the door, he heard a voice telling him to come in.
Entering the Director’s office, he saw a middle-aged man standing by the window with his hands behind his back. He turned toward him leisurely, without rushing.
It had been nearly four months since he had last seen the Director. He seemed to have more gray hair than the last time he saw him. Or maybe he had forgotten to dye his hair recently.
“Welcome, Guide Ko Eungyo.”
“Hello, sir.”
As he greeted lightly, a look of surprise crossed the Director’s face.
‘…Wait, he’s surprised just by my greeting?’
It seemed Ko Eungyo was far more of a rascal than he had thought. In his mind, he pictured a third-generation chaebol who would go straight to the sofa without greeting the Director, acting aloof.
He had been worried that the Director might recognize his true identity, and since he didn’t know how the original Ko Eungyo would have behaved, he had planned to feign ignorance no matter what the Director asked. In fact, the Director was a busy person, and it would take quite a long time to schedule a meeting with him.
No matter how he thought about it, he couldn’t understand why the Director had summoned him, a mere regular Guide like Ko Eungyo.
‘Ah, could it be about the recent commissioned lecture?’
To separately call a Guide who had just returned from teaching… hmm, it might be because two of the students he was in charge of were S-class ability users.
“Sit down.”
“…”
He obediently went to sit across from the Director as instructed.
He and the Director, in the past… were, let’s say, like a capable boss and a capable subordinate, just to that extent. As a field Guide who had worked long-term, he had known the Director for more than ten years as a senior Guide. Inevitably, he came to know in detail about the Director’s working methods, lines not to cross, and the preferences of his superior.
The Director was a lazy person who pursued the height of efficiency. He had a good background and handled people smoothly, so he had a good reputation, but he knew exactly about the Director’s true nature.
First, the Director absolutely tried to avoid troublesome tasks. So he had gone on business trips in place of the Director many times, and while doing the Director’s work, he had made deals to seek his own benefits.
…Although those benefits were also extensions of work, anyway.
The Director would most likely ask if the S-class Espers were ready to go to S-class Gates. Undoubtedly, Ko Eungyo’s lecture curriculum would have been reported, and asking Ko Eungyo, who was in charge of the class, about those Espers’ capabilities would be the most efficient method.
“It seems the Korea University class suited you quite well?”
“Yes.”
What he had overlooked was how often Ko Eungyo had met with the Director in the past.
In the past, when the Director called for Ko Eungyo, it was usually to clean up messes Ko Eungyo had created. When he would engage in eccentric behavior like overtly feeling possessive of Woo Sihyun and illegally detaining him, or using his backing to negatively influence the Center, the Director would meet him separately to ask what Ko Eungyo really wanted and negotiate by accommodating it to a reasonable extent.
In other words, it meant the Director didn’t expect Ko Eungyo to benefit the Center or himself without any reason.
“Hmm, as you know, Esper Woo Sihyun and Esper Lee Seungwoo never perform their duties carelessly. They’ve earned all the necessary credits, and although they’ll register for next semester, they probably won’t have time to attend classes. Isn’t it about time those friends started learning practical skills?”
“Ah, yes.”
The Director wasn’t the type to beat around the bush. Until then, Ko Eungyo had firmly believed that the Director would say, ‘Yes, about those friends. What grade level do you think they can reach?’
“But I heard they failed the required liberal arts class by two points.”
After saying that, the Director smiled subtly. Ko Eungyo nodded mindlessly before stopping abruptly to look at the Director.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
