1 – TDG 1

“Huff… ​whew.”

I ​had ​been ​sprinting ​back and forth ​along ​the ​same ​stretch ​of road for thirty ​minutes, ​but there was ​still no sign ​of ​anything ​unusual.

I ​wiped ​away ​the droplets of ​sweat ​sliding ​down my chin ​and took a moment ​to catch ​my breath. ​My heart ​was pounding ​in ​my ​chest as if ​it were ​about to burst.

In a ​little while, somewhere in ​this bustling intersection, the ​protagonist, Han ​Ji-hyuk, ​will awaken as an S-rank Esper.

Seo ​Joo-won had waited a ​full ​five ​years ​for ​this day.

Actually, saying ​I ‘waited’ ​is ​a bit misleading.

‘Endured’… ​that’s ​more like it. That fits ​much better.

Five ​years ​of enduring, barely ​clinging ​to ​life, ​just ​to meet ​Han ​Ji-hyuk.

That was ​why I absolutely had to find him ​before Kwon Min-wook ​did.

It wasn’t about ​the smooth romance between ​the male ​and stolen contentfemale leads. ​Setting ​that aside, this ​was the only ​way stolen contentto ​save ​three million ​lives.

One ​day, I ​woke ​up inside ​the ​world ​of a novel.

It ​was ​a near-future ​fantasy ​web ​novel ​set in 2040 called ‘Lost Paradise.’ It had become an unprecedented hit, blending the right amount of melodrama and clichés with a heartbreaking love story.

Anyway, in ‘Lost Paradise,’ there are new humanity who possess abnormal abilities known as Espers and Guides, and the protagonist, Han Ji-hyuk, appears as an S-rank Esper. However, he was actually an L-rank Esper—one level above S-rank—and he was the only one of his kind in the entire world.

Because of this, Han Ji-hyuk was unable to control his overwhelming power at the time of his awakening and went into a rampage. He was first discovered and calmed down by a Guide named Kwon Min-wook.

Kwon Min-wook was the ultimate catalyst for misery, a man so loathsome that readers wondered why he wasn’t the main villain, showering him with every curse imaginable.

A prime example of a corrupt government official, Kwon Min-wook saw through Han Ji-hyuk’s potential and schemed his way into becoming his dedicated guide. This was the beginning of all the misfortune.

He cast mental spells on the unstable Han Ji-hyuk to force him to obey only his words, and whenever he disobeyed, he tormented him with excruciating pain.

Completely broken, Han Ji-hyuk rampaged once more, triggering a massive chain of explosions that wiped out half of Seoul. A staggering three million people died in the accident, including the parents, brother, and lover of the female lead and Guide, Jung Ah-yoon.

Because Jung Ah-yoon was a strong person, upon learning Han Ji-hyuk’s story, she chose to help the broken man stand again rather than resent him.

In this novel, which concludes in six volumes, the two do not end up together until the end of volume five. They are deeply attracted to each other, but the damn relationship between them was harder to cross than the bridge between the Weaver Girl and the Cowherd… It was just too tragic!

Perhaps it was because my heartache was [stolen content]so deep as I watched the man and woman [Read on Read BL Novels]do their best in their respective positions, only to feel the lingering traces of where they had brushed past each other.

Leaving the final sixth volume untouched, I woke up in the world of ‘Lost Paradise’ as Extra Guide 1.

The phrase ‘a bolt from the blue’ finally made literal sense.

At first, I simply denied it. I chanted that this was a dream, plunged my head into ice water, and waited to wake up in my own bed, but even after a full week, it didn’t happen.

Whether I liked it or not, I had to accept it.

The fact that I was not the protagonist, nor a close associate of the protagonist, nor even a villain, but simply a piece of background scenery existing to flesh out the protagonist’s world.

Seo Joo-won. 19 years old.

The novel had provided a very modest place for ‘Extra Seo Joo-won.’

As if unwilling to waste a single byte, it had taken my real name, face, and other physical characteristics exactly as they were, changing only my age and background.

Furthermore—

Thanks to that, I was ten years younger than before, but I didn’t know whether to be happy or sad about it.

After a long period of struggling to process everything, I finally regained my stolen contentcomposure [Read on Read BL Novels]and calmly organized the flow of events.

The area where I currently live will vanish without a trace in the future due to Han Ji-hyuk’s rampage. That was it. Among those three million casualties was Extra Seo Joo-won.

The descriptions in the novel, which had felt superficial when read in a book, became a reality touching my own future, and a chill ran down my spine the moment I realized it.

“…….”

There was no such thing as a choice. If I couldn’t find a way back, I had to stop the scheduled tragedy.

It is currently the summer of 2035.

There are exactly five years left until the main curtain of the novel rises.

I wonder where Han Ji-hyuk is right now.

I was curious, but searching for him was meaningless.

He was an orphan with an unclear residence, and if I acted too hastily and skewed the story too much, I wouldn’t be able to handle the consequences personally.

For now, since I knew the time and place of Han Ji-hyuk’s first appearance, I decided to focus on snatching him up there.

Even so, I wouldn’t be able to protect Han Ji-hyuk alone.

‘Alone,’ that is.

I looked into the mirror and grinned.

As if fate didn’t want me to die, the father of Extra ‘Seo Joo-won’ was none other than an A-rank Esper and the Minister of the national department dedicated to Espers!

That Minister, whose name only appeared a few times in the novel! He was my father!

I immediately went to my father and expressed my desire to work as a Guide.

“My child, Joo-won. What on earth are you talking about? Is something wrong?”

This man in his late fifties, with a sorrowful and conservative impression, is my father, Seo Hyung-shik. He is set up as a doting father who would do anything for his son. He had worried about me immensely when I first possessed this body and was wandering around in confusion. He was my only, yet greatest, ally. With a face that could pass for someone in their forties, he looked at me with a mixture of surprise and deep concern.

At first, I had been distant because this existence called a ‘father’ was unfamiliar, but now I had grown somewhat accustomed to it. He was so flustered by his son’s statement that he didn’t even notice he had dropped the book he was reading.

At a glance, it seemed like overprotection, but there was a clear reason why he looked at me as if I were a child left alone by the water.

‘Seo Joo-won’ had an introverted personality and had been severely bullied at school.

He had been dragged around, beaten, and extorted, eventually becoming a laughingstock [stolen content]and unauthorized copydeveloping severe panic disorder.

After that, he dropped out of school and shut himself in his room, living as a so-called hikikomori and attempting self-harm several times.

The fact that he was a Guide was something I discovered some time after possessing the body. I saw something strange the moment I accidentally touched my father. Or rather, it would be better to say I felt it. Anyway, it was a special waveform that only Espers possess, and I found out through searching that only Guides could see it.

The father being the Minister of the Esper department and the son being a Guide—it was truly a coincidental setup. Even after digging through medical records, I found it was a fact known only to him and my father, as it had happened shortly after awakening.

I clasped my hands together, fiddling with the faint self-harm scars remaining on my wrists, and spoke.

“No. It’s nothing like that.”

“Then why so suddenly…?”

“Just… I quit school, and I can’t just keep idling around and eating for the rest of my life.”

I tried to appeal to the fact that his son was perfectly fine with positive gestures, but it didn’t work at all. My father stared at me with worried eyes for a long time before suddenly grabbing my hand.

“Joo-won, to be honest, being a Guide is a very difficult job. Can’t I introduce you to something else? Didn’t you say before that you would never do something like being a Guide?”

Did I? But now I have to save my favorite character who will rampage in five years.

“…I felt that way before, but I’ve changed my visit our sitemind now. You’ve suffered so much because of me, visit our siteso now I want to be of help to you, Father.”

“Help? You can do that in plenty of other ways…. No, in the first place, you don’t have to worry about such things, Joo-won. I….”

My father stopped mid-sentence, quickly averted his eyes, and his eyes welled up. Seeing how clearly his past heartache showed, my heart ached a little, even though I wasn’t his real son.

I’m sorry for lying.

But I will definitely be a ‘help.’

“Father. Please.”

After hearing my earnest request, my father remained silent for a long while before finally nodding.

“…Alright. I don’t want to make you do such work, but I can find you a stable position….”

“No, Department 7! I’m going to apply for Department 7.”

This man is talking about something dangerous… Who is he trying to make into an unfilial son?

If he gets caught for illegal solicitation, he won’t even get his pension and will face a dishonorable retirement.

What I wanted was to be a field Guide for Department 7, which required no special conditions.

Originally, there were seven departments, but they have since been consolidated into one. It’s a bottom-tier department that is Department 7 in name only, equivalent to a grade 9 civil servant in our terms.

They didn’t care about educational background; as long as you had no criminal record and were a government-certified Esper or Guide, you could pass based solely on an interview without undergoing a test. It was the only government department that Seo Joo-won, a high school dropout, could enter.

Of course, I had looked into it beforehand. If I could just endure five years here, I could enter the Esper and Guide Central Management Office in Seoul—the so-called Center—without any complicated process.

Even in this world, Korea is still Korea, so the competition for civil service exams is fierce…. It might sound ridiculous, but to become a Center Guide, you normally have to take the national exam. The only merit of Department 7 is that it doesn’t have that damn exam, but in exchange, it’s a place where your body gets ground down, so it was only natural for my father’s complexion to change.

“Department 7? Absolutely not! Those Esper bastards are much more vulgar—no, rougher than you think. There’s a high chance of getting hurt on the job, and if things go south, there’s no telling what they might do to you. They call it a civil service job, but Department 7 is notorious! You won’t be able to endure it. It would be better to slowly learn the ropes in a safe place first….”

Both my father and I paused at the expression ‘bastards.’ Since he is an Esper himself, his description was vivid.

I know. You don’t want to send your precious son to do such a thing.

But if we stay like this, half of Seoul will disappear in five years. And you will die that day too, Father.

“I’m already prepared.”

I couldn’t show even a hint of hesitation. When I spoke firmly with my fists clenched, my father fell silent with an expression mixed with pity and anxiety.

Hmm, did I speak too strongly?

But since I have no way of knowing how the original ‘Seo Joo-won’ usually spoke, what can I do? I have to do it my way.

My father looked like he wanted to talk me out of it by any means, but this is the first time his son, who had been living like a wreck, has said he wants to do something. He’ll have no choice but to agree. They say no parent can win against their child.

In reality, since Seo Joo-won was over 18, he didn’t strictly need parental permission to get a job. However, since I would need my father’s cooperation later, it was desirable to get his full support from the start.

To demonstrate my burning determination, I looked my father straight in the eyes. My father frowned in thought, then finally nodded with a short sigh.

“…Alright…. But promise me. If it gets too hard, you must tell me immediately and quit.”

Yes! Permission granted. I suppressed the urge to cheer and smiled brightly.

“Don’t worry!”