Before I could even send a reply, something hit the window with a tap tap.
Who the hell is that?
As I stayed still, tap tap, the sound came again. Someone was deliberately throwing small pebbles at the window.
What kind of lunatic was messing with someone else’s window like this?
I threw the window open with a bang—and saw Je-ha down below.
Wherever he’d been, his clothes were pitch black, the kind that blended into the night. Aside from his face, the rest of him was swallowed by the shadows.
As soon as he saw me spot him, Je-ha flew up with telekinesis and carried me to a nearby park, a short distance away.
Thanks to his stealth artifact, no one recognized us.
“What’s with the prank at this hour?”
I asked with a laugh, wondering what he was up to, but Je-ha scanned me with an intensely serious look.
I told him I wasn’t hurt, but he didn’t seem to believe me. He looked me over meticulously, as if he couldn’t relax until he’d confirmed with his own eyes that I was truly standing there—like he was desperate.
“You haven’t had any suspicious visitors, right? No one lingering around you, hanging around in front of you?”
“Why are you acting like some overprotective parent? And weren’t we supposed to make plans ahead of time before meeting up? You’re breaking your own rule.”
It was a joke, something to lighten the mood, but Je-ha practically pleaded with me for an answer.
“Hurry. Please answer me. Please.”
…What the hell’s gotten into him?
“I’m always holed up in the practice room. How would that even be possible?”
“Thank God…”
Relief washed over Je-ha’s face. He smelled like sweat, grass, and dirt. Mud was caked onto his shoes.
He’s been somewhere.
I could sense it from the way his Esper waves bled out around him—his corrosion level had risen again since I’d last lowered it. My brow furrowed involuntarily.
The reason was obvious.
“Don’t tell me… you ran into X?”
At the mention of “X,” Potato’s eyes flew wide open, still half-asleep, and he climbed up from my pocket onto the top of my head.
“……”
Je-ha didn’t answer right away. His deep blue eyes shimmered like calm waves, but his pupils trembled faintly now and then.
After a long pause, he finally responded.
“…Yeah.”
“Seriously?”
“It wasn’t X himself, not directly. What I faced was another Esper who’d been brainwashed by him.”
“That means you nearly caught him.”
I couldn’t hide the excitement in my voice. Given all the years we’d spent at the frontlines honing our detection skills against mental-type abilities, if we just had a proper tracker, we’d believed capturing X was totally within reach.
“Wait. What are you doing here, then? Shouldn’t you be out there hunting him down with the others? Even if you don’t have a tracker—can’t you find one?”
At that, Je-ha’s expression darkened even further.
“We can’t. We can’t chase him anymore.”
“What?”
“The bastard set up a bunch of escape routes in advance and disappeared.”
Je-ha explained everything that had happened.
Just like I’d suspected, he’d found Jin Eutteum’s disappearance strange and gone after it with his team—including a tracker.
At the scene, they found Jin Eutteum’s corpse—and some dumb pawn. What followed wasn’t quite a battle, but close.
X had tried to frame the idiot he’d chosen to take the fall, but when the guy couldn’t handle his role from sheer terror, X stepped in using his mental powers to hijack his consciousness.
But Je-ha didn’t fall for it. In the end, X left behind traces of teleportation—he’d moved multiple people at once, leaving nothing they could track.
“…That’s how it went. Our tracker can’t use their power anymore, so there was nothing we could do.”
“……”
“I’m sorry.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“Why the hell are you apologizing? X caused all that mess.”
“But I still let him slip away when he was right in front of me. I don’t deserve to call myself your Esper.”
“Oh, come on. Why are you digging yourself into the ground like this?”
I was baffled. If my own teammate were on the verge of death from overusing their ability, I’d have made the call to retreat too.
But Je-ha looked like he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, like he’d committed some unpardonable crime. His broad shoulders looked pitiful, slumped like that. Like a damn fool.
“…I know it was the right call.”
“Then?”
“Even so, I can’t face you. I should’ve torn him apart, no matter what.”
The air around Je-ha turned violent. His blue eyes gleamed like a beast’s.
“Because I won’t let you be in danger again.”
Rage, regret, and fear were all mixed together in his voice.
“What are you so scared of?”
I lifted a hand and placed it gently against his cheek to begin guiding.
Je-ha leaned into my hand and closed his eyes. A powerful Esper, practically ageless since his second awakening, he still felt frozen in time, just like when I’d first met him.
As my guiding energy flowed through him, he whispered:
“I’m scared I’ll lose you again.”
“I’m alive, aren’t I? Perfectly fine, right here.”
“I know. But the thought that X might target you again—it makes my blood boil. I can’t take it.”
X had stirred up trouble at the testing center and disappeared. I didn’t get why Je-ha was still so fixated on that.
“Didn’t he just show up to test me? Like, to see if I was really a D-rank Guide or not? Maybe he was trying to size up whether I was worth stealing powers from.”
Yeon Yu-jin, just like me, had no family. An orphan. So maybe that day was just a sample test for X, to see if I was viable.
But Je-ha shook his head.
“Maybe. But the whole thing went sideways because I was hovering nearby. Because I spotted him.”
I understood immediately.
“…You’re saying X might come after me again?”
“…Yeah.”
I couldn’t argue.
Je-ha’s every move had been calculated to trap X—but I’d been the exception.
When they crossed paths near the testing center, X must’ve been completely caught off guard. He’d never have expected to see Je-ha there—but there he was.
Naturally, that would’ve made him suspicious about the relationship between “D-rank Guide Yeon Yu-jin” and “deserter S-rank Esper Hyun Je-ha.”
And that suspicion… would’ve turned into interest.
X would definitely come looking for me again. I didn’t know what form he’d take, but as long as he feared and hated Je-ha, it was inevitable.
If he figured out how important I was to Je-ha, he’d use that against us—whether to threaten, manipulate, or worse.
I found myself comparing Secreti’s members with X, whose combat abilities were still a mystery.
Could they hold their own against someone who’d stolen multiple powers?
I couldn’t be sure. Not until they actually clashed.
“Might be a good idea to get some kind of self-defense artifact.”
I muttered under my breath, but Je-ha stood up suddenly.
“No.”
“Huh?”
“It might be safer if I stay away from you for a while. Maybe it’d be best if I disappeared completely—like a stranger.”
“…What?”
What the hell was he saying?
As I stared at him in disbelief, Je-ha brushed my cheek and gave me a sad smile.
“I should’ve left after confirming you were safe. Chasing down X is my burden to carry… and because I got greedy, I put you in danger.”
“That’s not—”
“Don’t deny it, Ga-hyun. Don’t try to comfort me just to make me feel better.”
Je-ha had already made up his mind. He was digging his own grave deeper and deeper.
“Until I catch X… let’s act like strangers. Just until then. It won’t take long…”
“Hey. Hyun Je-ha.”
I couldn’t take this anymore. I shot to my feet and grabbed him by the collar.
“Cut the weak-ass bullshit. It’s been twenty years. Twenty years to finally catch a glimpse of his tail, whether he got sloppy or not.”
And now you’re telling me to sit tight and wait?
“I’m the one who got killed by X, you idiot. What’s this about penance and guilt? Why the hell are you shackling yourself to that?”
The one who committed an unforgivable crime was X. Je-ha was a victim—just like me. He’d lost someone precious, and suffered the fallout for it.
And he was talking about atonement? What a joke. Meanwhile, the real criminal was still out there, covering his tracks like a coward.
I pressed my forehead to his and spoke clearly, every word deliberate.
“Listen. I’m the one who’s gonna catch that bastard. Don’t start with that ‘I’m doing this for you’ crap. If you really care about me, then include me in the hunt for X.”
Because we were already in this together.
“Even if you back off now, X will come find me. Whether you’re by my side or not, he’ll use me to get to you. After all the pain he’s caused you, you still don’t get that?”
