[79]
‘What a mess.’
Chris pushed January away with telekinesis, taking in the disaster that had unfolded in the room.
“Did an Esper come and cause a rampage?”
“Sob. Y-yes…”
January nodded while bursting into tears.
“It was, it was so scary, Chris.”
Chris pushed away the man trying to fall into his arms. Clinging to Chris with trembling hands, January pleaded desperately.
“He was a regular customer who often visited the establishment. He was waiting for me. I thought I could appease him and send him away, but suddenly he changed… look.”
The young man lifted his clothes to show bite marks.
“I was startled… I attacked out of surprise. I was just trying to escape, but I didn’t know things would turn out like this. What should I do now?”
“Espers are people in the end. If their heart is stabbed, they die. If their head is crushed, they die too.”
Chris spoke with unusual calmness.
At the comment about Espers being human, January almost flared up unconsciously.
If he had been an Esper, he wouldn’t have needed to live like this, cowering and begging.
What made them the same humans?
“I’ll help you.”
Success!
January almost exclaimed in excitement.
This thrill was different from relief.
The guilt of deciding to deceive the other.
The sense of achievement at having succeeded.
As if the drug had numbed his conscience, January covered his mouth to hide his grin.
However, he couldn’t control his increasingly unfocused gaze.
“First, you need to be honest with me.”
Honest?
January was taken aback.
The situation itself was overwhelming for him.
He had thoughtlessly assumed it would be the same for the other.
“I won’t judge you.”
At those words, January suddenly felt strange.
Won’t judge? Why would he say that?
Does he suspect me after all?
“How did you know?”
‘I’ve only told the truth.’
What came out was the opposite of what he had intended to say.
Was this another side effect of the drug?
January covered his mouth and shook his head gently.
A wave of nausea came over him, as if he were on rough seas.
“Careful. You’ll hurt yourself.”
He must have staggered badly, as Chris supported him and helped him sit in a chair.
Trying to calm his queasy stomach, January looked at Chris with a dazed face.
“You won’t judge? Why say that?”
It wasn’t a question seeking an answer.
“I mean exactly what I said.”
Chris explained gruffly.
“I have no intention of weighing your motives, actions, and their consequences. That’s not my role.”
Those words were strangely comforting.
Distinguishing between good and evil is difficult.
Neither one nor the other—January belonged to a gray area. He was too stained to be called white, yet not completely black either, so he drifted somewhere in between, always lamenting his situation.
As a mediocre person, he lived a mediocre life. A life that wouldn’t seem particularly strange if others pointed fingers at him.
So deceiving others was natural.
Who would want to live causing friction at every turn?
But a momentary impulse surged. If he couldn’t answer someone who spoke like this, he would truly have to hide forever.
“My name is… not Jay, but January.”
January took a deep breath and mumbled.
“I was born in the Winter Continent, but I crossed over to the Spring Continent about two years ago. Yes, I’m an illegal immigrant.”
Chris could easily imagine how shocked Peter would be to hear this.
“I worked hard, but I met several employers who wouldn’t pay me because my status was unclear. I tried to live tenaciously, but I’ve been to detention centers… and while wandering aimlessly, someone asked me.”
January rubbed his eyes.
“If I would be interested in… delivery work.”
At first, it was just delivering notes or milk.
The pay was relatively generous compared to the time and effort required. When he was no longer behind on rent, it was the first time he felt he could breathe.
“Then I started being entrusted with increasingly important items. It felt rewarding.”
He couldn’t help but smile.
“I have a colleague in a similar situation, but he lives more comfortably and at ease than I do. He said he was telling me specially because he didn’t want to see me living so miserably… and introduced me to this job.”
“This job?”
At Chris’s question, January raised the corners of his mouth.
It was somehow like the smile of a broken doll.
“The job of soothing Espers’ distress.”
Espers.
Those born with power, dedicated to serving humanity in this harsh world.
It’s said that Espers selflessly serve despite feeling pain as a side effect of using their abilities.
January, who came from the January Continent in the Winter Continent, didn’t believe all that propaganda.
But he knew well that Espers cherished Guides who could alleviate their suffering.
They said Guides lived in warm houses even in the dead of winter, eating, sleeping, and resting. Not lifting a finger while being waited on by Espers.
January may not have dared to envy Espers, but he had thought that Guides lived quite comfortably.
“They told me if I wanted to help Espers dedicated to the Spring Continent, I should hold their hands.”
Like other continents, prostitution was illegal in the Spring Continent.
This was for purely practical reasons beyond morality.
With continental reconstruction projects underway, they couldn’t allow precious human resources to be wasted that way.
“How do you soothe an Esper’s distress?”
At Chris’s question, January fumblingly raised his hands and clutched his neck.
It felt as if the slippery sensation of the potion he had drunk just before Chris arrived still lingered around there.
“I, I…”
The man squeezed out his voice with difficulty and blurted out:
“I’m a Guide.”
January’s face turned pale.
He had done it.
‘I’ve been honest about everything else, so this much should be fine.’
Just as a prince only rescues a princess…
Espers only seek Guides.
“I’ve told you everything. So, please help me.”
To avoid being caught in his lie, January looked at Chris with moist eyes.
“Won’t you hold my hand?”
I prepared it for you.
I used that expensive drug waiting for you, who isn’t even a customer.
“Chris is an Esper too. You need a Guide, right? I heard that Northernlight doesn’t operate the same way as before either.”
Chris remained silent.
January pressed his body closer, as if willing to give anything he could offer.
But how could Chris explain this?
‘I didn’t come here to make a deal.’
Judging by the other’s reaction, he wouldn’t accept this explanation no matter how much Chris tried.
You can’t take a fish that has breathed through gills its entire life, lift it onto land, and tell it to breathe through its nose.
No one would blame the fish for that.
It was the same for Chris.
“Please stand up.”
He supported January and helped him to his feet.
January examined Chris’s expression. Suddenly, fear arose.
‘Could he have detected my lie?’
But his attitude hadn’t changed from before and after hearing January’s confession.
“Let’s get out of here first.”
***
“He really did it.”
Peter, who had been monitoring the situation through the listening device attached to Chris, had a stunned expression.
“How did you guess this?”
“It was actually slower than I expected.”
Yuri said calmly.
And the scale of the incident was larger than anticipated.
The death of an Esper.
“Then what made you think January would seek out Chris?”
“When a problem arises. Because now there’s an option other than having to solve it alone.”
That was the only variable Yuri had introduced.
“Was this the first incident of an Esper going berserk?”
“It probably wasn’t the first to begin with.”
‘This was a problem bound to happen eventually when operating a fake guiding establishment.’
It made them feel similar to receiving guiding, but no actual guiding took place.
They had been surviving on a sort of placebo effect.
“But it is strange. Even if their abilities are low-ranked and non-lethal… when an Esper goes berserk, the surroundings should be devastated. Yet dying at the hands of an ordinary person.”
Yuri muttered.
It occurred to him that the guiding drug might have an Esper weakening function.
“If it’s Thorns Order, they must know that what this establishment provides isn’t real guiding. Why would they send their members to such a place?”
“That’s obvious.”
Yuri smiled bitterly.
“The number of Espers in the organization overwhelmingly exceeds the number of Guides.”
“That’s…”
“Being a minority, they would monopolize guiding.”
The higher-ups who need guiding—probably executives or action team leaders—would enjoy that privilege while keeping it quiet.
Without any compensation, maintaining this situation would likely cause the organization to collapse.
Even if Thorns Order’s new leader had remarkable organizational control, it would be difficult for their surveillance to reach all the way to the bottom. What would lower-ranking members think if they saw executives functioning normally while they suffered from lack of guiding?
It would only be a matter of time before they realized the executives were hoarding Guides for themselves.
So they supplied fake Guides to subdue everyday anxiety. They would occasionally provide real Guides only to Espers who had become ticking time bombs from the illusion of receiving guiding and were approaching the danger of going berserk.
It wasn’t difficult to guess why they managed this operation externally rather than directly within the organization.
While avoiding charges of Guide abduction and exploitation was important, they also wanted to be seen paying an external company for guiding services. To create the image that they were caring for their rank-and-file members despite difficult circumstances.
‘It’s efficient in the short term.’
But in the long run, problems would inevitably arise. Like this incident.
That’s why it was strange.
Yuri tilted his head and muttered:
“Does Thorns Order… not intend to continue existing?”
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
