2 – TDG 2

Exactly ​five ​years ​passed ​after ​that.

Fieldwork.

Guide.

Names spat out ​along ​with ​a ​deep, ​boiling sigh.

Department 7 Field ​Guide.

It ​was a path ​I chose to ​get ​into ​the ​Center ​all ​at once without ​taking ​the ​exam, but if ​I were asked to ​do it ​a second ​time, I ​couldn’t.

“This job ​is ​seriously ​like dog shit, ​right? Just ​absolute dog shit. I ​hope I wake up ​tomorrow morning to news ​that those ​Esper ​bastards drank so much all night ​that they swallowed the ​bottles ​whole ​and ​died ​of esophageal rupture. ​Then I ​wouldn’t ​have to look ​at ​their ugly faces talking anymore. ​Just die ​already, ​you sons of ​bitches!”

“Joo-won ​Seonbae, ​think ​about ​it. Those ​guys ​went through ​interviews, right? Which Read on Read BL Novelsmeans the interviewers were ​the ones who ​were fucked up ​from the start. I’m ​just saying, ​what if we ​arrive ​about 30 [Read on Read BL Novels]seconds ​late when they ​start to ​rampage? ​Then they’ll ​enter ​’kill each ​other’ ​mode, and ​if ​they ​all [visit our site]die, we ​can ​wipe Espers ​off ​the ​face ​of the earth without lifting a finger. Sounds great, doesn’t it?”

“Guides need to go on a general strike! The world would be peaceful once those shitty Esper bastards’ heads burst and they all die, so why the hell are we repeating this bullshit? But come to think of it, those C-rank and below don’t even rampage, do they?! You low-life C-ranks, don’t even call yourselves Espers, just go kill yourselves quickly, you damn bastards!”

I briefly borrow the gem-like, grudge-filled famous lines of my Hubae Guide, Park Han-seung, whose nickname was ‘Die-All’ because he expressed my exact feelings.

While that guy was a bit of a special case, honestly, you could say almost every Guide in Department 7 was this crazy.

Because field Guides were… just handymen. And not just any handymen, but the king of all miscellaneous handymen. The King Handyman.

In this world, there are Espers who cause accidents and Espers who clean them up. The monsters crawling out of the gates have a justification for existing, but no monster was as shitty as a human Esper.

At the very least, Espers only have to clean up external accidents, but the most fucked up part of this job was that Guides had to clean up the accidents caused by the Espers in their own unit. In so-called terms, the bottom of the caste.

Working at Department 7, I could poignantly understand why my father described Espers as ‘low-borns.’

‘Low-born’ was actually being generous; for those Esper bastards, the most appropriate expression would be ‘irrecoverable lumps of radioactive waste.’

They say that when you awaken as an Esper, the brainwaves transmitted to the brain change. Perhaps that’s why, using that as an excuse, they cause innovative accidents I’ve never heard of or seen every single day. It was common [unauthorized copy]to be called out while [Read on Read BL Novels]sleeping, eating, or even washing, and since being on 10-minute standby was the default, how could a person not go insane? Because of this, there wasn’t a single moment of peace on holidays or traditional festivals.

If it weren’t for Han Ji-hyuk, I might have already lost it, killed a few Espers, and ended up in prison.

Those killable bastards, those damn low-life, godforsaken, whining pieces of shit.

They’d use a tiny bit of power and then act like they were dying, throwing tantrums as if guiding was something they were entitled to. Every time I saw that, I had a burning desire to give them guiding via a 43-meter-per-second hectopascal kick.

Those Esper bastards should be grateful that the constitution explicitly states that kicking a person with your foot is a crime of violence.

No matter how good-natured a person is, the moment they enter Department 7, they all commonly end up cursing the world within a month. No, a month is too long. It was a hellish department where people would walk in vigorously today, claiming to be a lifelong civil servant, only to evaporate by the time lunch passed—a daily occurrence.

Even while being ground down so miserably, I couldn’t breathe a word to my father for fear of being forced to quit.

Was it thanks to that? I developed a steel mentality and experience where I wouldn’t even bat an eye even if the most obnoxious Esper bared their teeth and barked, or even if the Bifrost bridge descended upon the Han River and Seoul became connected to Jotunheim.

I became so accustomed to living in this body that the memories of my previous life often grew blurred.

No matter how much I reminded myself that this was inside a novel, what visit our siteI actually breathed [unauthorized copy]and felt against my body wasn’t paper or text, but a world that existed with a tangible reality.

Thinking of this as unrealistic became too difficult, so at some point, I compromised with myself. That wherever I am alive is the ‘real world.’

Since the original ‘Seo Joo-won’ was a nearly colorless and odorless human being, it was easier to paint my own colors over him.

That didn’t mean I forgot what I had to do.

Even amidst the hellish busyness, I made time here and there to steadily track down the characters from the original work, reminding myself of the fact that they actually existed.

Especially Kwon Min-wook.

According to my investigation, just like the novel’s setting, he was a man with a good reputation. He was tall, strikingly handsome, and his smile and manner of speaking were sophisticated. It was impossible for him not to be popular.

With that good-natured face, he established the Alias Guild, took dirty bribes, and committed all sorts of atrocities using brainwashed Espers. It makes me even angrier because he’s the kind of person you’d never imagine just by looking at his face. Ironically, it was thanks to Kwon Min-wook that I endured even more with stubbornness and grit.

The desperate vow that I could never hand Ji-hyuk over to that bastard’s hands held me together when I was about to falter.

Having endured those five years so unauthorized copymiserably, I finally succeeded in entering Read on Read BL Novelsthe unauthorized copy‘Center’ I had dreamed of so much.

My assignment is Guide Team 2. Team 1, where Kwon Min-wook is, is the successful one, but there’s no reason for me to go there and just end up doing all the work for someone else’s benefit. Above all, it was important to join the team that the female protagonist, Jung Ah-yoon, would later belong to.

“Hello. I am Seo Joo-won, assigned to Guide Team 2 starting today.”

The Team leader who greeted me was a man in his mid-forties with a large build, looking as if he had played sports, and a smiling impression.

“Nice to meet you. I’m Team leader Park Chi-soo. I heard you volunteered for Team 2? Is there a reason?”

In other words, why didn’t I go to Team 1.

“I have personally respected Team leader Park Chi-soo. That’s why I really wanted to be part of Team 2.”

I didn’t actually know him, but this was sincere. Park Chi-soo was actually a good person and helped the female lead a lot with her initial adjustment. And he was weak to flattery. At my smooth words, his expression visibly softened, and he beamed.

“Haha, this fellow is quite the smooth talker.”

Well, I am a ‘seasoned’ rookie in my own way.

“Welcome to Team 2. I heard you were in Department 7 before? You must have suffered a lot.”

He offered a conventional remark and guided me to the office.

“Alright, attention. Everyone, say hello. This is our new recruit. His name is Seo Joo-won, and he’s twenty-four.”

“Hello, Seonbaes.”

As I stepped forward and gave a polite greeting, a woman with short hair stood up with a surprised face.

“Oh my. You’re a man? I thought you were a woman.”

At her words, a man who had been scribbling something in a corner seat also craned his neck like a crane to check me out.

“I’m Yoon Soo-jeong. Nice to meet you.”

“I’m Kim Ho-jin.”

Last night, I had re-examined the novel’s contents I wrote five years ago. Meeting the characters in person brought back a flood of emotions. They all felt reasonably similar to the descriptions in the novel. Since I’m the only one with built-up internal intimacy, I have to be careful not to accidentally act too friendly.

“But our new face is really pretty. So cute. Right, Ho-jin?”

Yoon Soo-jeong sent me a gaze full of liking with a friendly smile. Kim Ho-jin scanned me up and down once and spoke bluntly.

“He’ll get a lot of calls.”

‘You always have to put it like that.’ Since Yoon Soo-jeong glared at him, Kim Ho-jin pretended not to hear. I didn’t mind and responded with a bright smile.

“Thank you for seeing me in a positive light.”

Team leader Park Chi-soo waited for the atmosphere to settle before continuing.

“Soo-jeong, do you want to be Joo-won’s mentor?”

“Me? Oh my, it’s my first time doing something like this, I wonder if I can do it well.”

Yoon Soo-jeong said that, but she didn’t seem to dislike it. With my mentor decided, Team leader Park Chi-soo raised his hand and pointed inside.

“That empty desk over there is your spot, Joo-won. The other team members are currently out on field duty, so I’ll introduce you later.”

I put my bag down at the assigned seat. Well, for a first day of work, this isn’t bad.

The Center was magnificent, beyond any possible comparison to Department 7. A state-of-the-art, future-oriented building built on a lavish site of 180,000 pyeong. Well-equipped auxiliary facilities and endless welfare. It was almost unbelievable that a beggar’s den like Department 7 and a land flowing with milk and honey like the Center coexisted on the same Korean soil.

They are both national civil servants, but while on one side, rag-like C-rank and below Espers, smelling strongly of alcohol, wriggle like dying stick insects to clock in, here, people with pomade in their hair and wearing stylish uniforms clock in via iris authentication.

‘It’s heaven… yes. It’s absolutely heaven.’

The Espers here are almost all A or B rank, excluding the special types. S-ranks are few, so they’re an exception. Anyway, as you can tell from the ranks, the Center side was naturally much more ‘cultured.’

While personality interviews aren’t part of the personnel evaluation for Espers, where ability is the number one condition for promotion, it’s the same logic as how people naturally pay attention to their behavior to be conscious of others’ gazes once they achieve success.

From my perspective, having experienced all sorts of trash Espers, the Espers [Read on Read BL Novels]at the Center were almost like angels? They were [unauthorized copy]practically comparable to virtuous [Read on Read BL Novels]scholars… or so I thought, but it seemed to be perceived differently depending on the person.

“Do Jong-soo, that son of a bitch! Always calling only me. A piece of shit not even worth dog poop! Acting all high and mighty just because he’s a borderline A-rank. I want to grab his head and shove it in a toilet.”

Yoon Soo-jeong returned to Team 2, pouring out a rapid-fire, furious rap that reminded me of my Hubae from Department 7, Park Han-seung. She had been out on a mission since morning, having been designated by an Esper.

The colorful scarf wrapped around her neck was irritably flung onto the desk.

“Esper bastards are originally psychos. He probably calls you more because he knows you hate it.”

“Don’t do that, just file a formal complaint. A complaint.”

Following Kim Ho-jin, Seon Jae-young, who had been enjoying a mobile game in the corner, tossed out a half-hearted piece of advice. He was the last team member who had been out on field duty during my first day.

“I’d rather he just molested me so I could stab him, but he never crosses the line, that damn bastard.”

Yoon Soo-jeong huffed and slammed down the spoon she used to stir her coffee.

“You’ve got it easy. I have Im Seong-joon.”

At Seon Jae-young’s sigh-filled words, the anger in Yoon Soo-jeong’s eyes vanished for a moment, and sympathy and pity surged in like a tide. Kim Ho-jin, still focused on his phone, only moved his mouth.

“Did that bastard still not get re-measured?”

“Would he? His A-rank status would be exposed.”

“That idiot, he has no ability but his greed is something else.”

“You should put a steel plate on your ass before you go. Who knows when he’ll start groping you under the pretext of guiding.”

At Yoon Soo-jeong’s sincere advice, Seon Jae-young made a face of extreme disgust.

Im Seong-joon was an Esper surrounded by rumors that he had become an S-rank due to a machine measurement error.