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Chapter 29
“It’s that attitude—how people that incredible are willing to do anything just because I say the word. Who am I, really? I’m just an ordinary human. Greedy, timid, selfish. When I see the way they look at me during guiding… sometimes I get scared all of a sudden. That I—whether I can really accept something like this. They say it only gets worse after imprinting. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to imprint in my lifetime.”
Jeongyun slowly blinked her eyes, damp with alcohol, then lifted the half-full beer glass and drained it in one go. After that, she added,
“…Still, our team is so cute. All of them. Cute to death. Especially Mr. Junho.”
“Oh, if the team leader heard that, he’d be so happy he’d pass out.”
“Shh, it’s a secret. A secret.”
Even if drunken Jeongyun hadn’t waved a limp, cold french fry around like a weapon and forced her to swear secrecy, Jiseo wouldn’t have said a word anyway. Junho’s claim—that a confession was the confirmation of mutual feelings—was something Jiseo also agreed with. That was how confessions should be done. Not like Baek Dohyeok, who fed her convenience-store fire-flavored stir-fried noodles until she was full and then suddenly blurted out, You were my first love, and bolted.
And to Jiseo, thinking someone was “cute” meant nothing at all, so she had no intention of giving Junho pointless hope.
She sometimes found Junho and Minhyuk cute herself. And Hayeon was a child who was cute just by existing.
Besides, the affection Espers felt toward guides existed on a spectrum. There were, of course, romantic feelings—but there were also kinds closer to familial or friendly affection.
That bottomless protectiveness and boiling possessiveness often seemed to develop into romance.
But romance? That was out of the question. For Jiseo, Esper work was work. And therefore, the guiding that came with it also had to be work.
Emotions shouldn’t be mixed into work—and yet Espers were a species that, upon contact, spilled out all kinds of emotions, and overwhelmingly one-sided ones at that. Were professionals who suppressed Gates supposed to get swept up in emotions and do a sloppy job?
Of course, Jiseo herself had come to feel an instinctive fondness toward guides after receiving S-rank guiding. Still, watching other Espers inevitably entangled in fate, fretting and finding satisfaction in acts with their guides regardless of their own will, made her feel somewhat uncomfortable.
It wasn’t unpleasant enough to avoid. Just… just a little strange.
That she could be on the verge of dying from how good touching someone felt, while the other person might feel nothing at all—depending on how you looked at it, it felt unfair, and also somehow apologetic.
And on top of that, to ordinary people, “guide and Esper” automatically meant romance.
Even the lyrics of the challenge videos her often-cute-but-often-annoying teammates filmed assumed Espers and guides to be a form of destined love. Not destiny—more like one-sided love.
This way of thinking wasn’t just because she stayed in the stability range most of the time, rarely needed guiding, and was dull to it on top of that. There was an actual case she’d witnessed up close.
“Jiseo, hello.”
The person who stopped Jiseo, who had been heading toward the locker room lost in thought, was Esper Park Eunseok of Blue Team 3.
With an air more befitting a researcher or an accountant than an Esper, he stood beside a woman. And the woman was someone Jiseo also knew.
Guide Lee Eunhyeong of Red Team 1—the A-rank guide who had inadvertently taken Jiseo’s first kiss while attempting mucosal guiding when contact guiding wouldn’t work.
“Oh, hello. Eunseok. Guide Lee Eunhyeong.”
Jiseo hadn’t harbored any grand fantasies about her first kiss, and since Eunhyeong had been trying to help her, she hadn’t minded much. Seeing her again in a quiet place, with her tall figure and stylish short haircut, Jiseo even thought it wouldn’t be bad to count it as a proper first kiss.
“We were just on our way to the Blue Team 2 office.”
Eunseok pulled out a thick envelope with a pale apricot sheen. Jiseo took it without thinking, then, sensing something odd from its appearance, alternated her gaze between the two of them with suspicion. The smooth texture, the thickness—this size was unmistakably that.
“Are you two, by any chance…?”
“Yes, we’re getting married.”
It was Eunhyeong who answered.
The way she smiled broadly and linked arms with Eunseok looked completely natural. Of course it did—they were an engaged couple, after all.
As Jiseo clapped her hands and congratulated them, the two tilted their heads toward each other and smiled, as if on cue, looking like a picture-perfect scene.
“Wow, I had no idea. You gave absolutely no hints. They say even the copier knows about office romances—guess we didn’t know because we don’t have a copier?”
She wasn’t wrong. Eunseok was close with Junho and Minhyuk and often joined Blue Team 2 for company dinners. If Minhyuk called people out, Eunseok was always there. Meaning he had plenty of free time.
And unless it was between guides, there was hardly any overlap between a Red Team guide and a Blue Team Esper. Except in special circumstances where a guide temporarily supported another team’s Esper—like when Eunhyeong had guided Blue Team 2 last time.
“We didn’t have time to make it obvious.”
When Eunhyeong pouted slightly, Eunseok smiled awkwardly and explained instead.
“We imprinted. Recently.”
“What?”
Eunhyeong shot Eunseok a sideways glance and added,
“You know. That thing. ASM.”
“…Ah.”
Among Espers it was called “speeding,” and among the public it was seen as the ultimate symbol of destined romance—Anomalous Spontaneous Making (ASM).
A case where a guide and an Esper suddenly, for no discernible reason, imprinted out of the blue.
The cause had yet to be identified, with theories ranging from psychological factors to hormonal issues.
Interestingly, this spontaneous imprinting was the only case where an Esper was known to draw something out of a guide first. Case studies showed that, by a slight margin, the Esper entered the imprinted state first.
Normally, imprinting occurred when an Esper and guide built long-term mutual trust, underwent repeated mucosal guiding, and developed exclusive attachment desires—in plain terms, when everything lined up emotionally and physically.
Imprinted Espers and guides experienced explosive secretion of phenethylamine and oxytocin—often called “love hormones”—a dramatic increase in guiding efficiency, the ability to sense each other’s emotional states even without contact, and other symptoms. To Jiseo, these were unprofessional side effects, but generally they were considered wonderful.
In any case, nothing explained the sudden marriage of a high-grade guide and a lower-grade Esper better than spontaneous imprinting.
“Wow, this is my first time seeing an ASM case. That’s amazing.”
At Jiseo’s words, the engaged couple widened their eyes. Realizing “amazing” might have sounded rude, like she was treating them as a spectacle, Jiseo was about to add something when Eunhyeong tilted her head and asked,
“Wasn’t Esper Im Jiseo imprinted too?”
“Me? No. Nothing like that’s ever happened.”
Her brief kiss with Eunhyeong was Jiseo’s only experience of mucosal guiding—and it hadn’t even worked that well. Im Jiseo was the kind of person who believed that even if every Esper and guide in the world imprinted, her turn would never come. As she wondered where such a random idea had come from, she remembered what had happened at the A-rank Gate site a few days ago.
Looks like being elementary school classmates wasn’t enough of an excuse after all.
But what Eunhyeong said next surprised her even more.
“Actually, our team guide had submitted a resignation letter. But I once trained Baek Dohyeok as a guide, so I asked him how he felt about joining Red Team 1. He said he already had someone. So I thought maybe he’d paired with Chae Yuri or Kwon Yul. But then Eunseok said that at the site the other day, Baek Dohyeok completely lost it thinking Esper Im Jiseo had been injured. I thought you two were imprinted.”
“Someone already taken—what nonsense.”
Jiseo smiled lightly and waved her hand dismissively.
“Huh? No, that’s not it. We’ve just known each other since we were kids. And as far as I know, Baek Dohyeok made that decision for work reasons. He already settled it with the director to only support A-rank-and-above Gate sites.”
It was true—even if Baek Dohyeok had been the only one who knew her.
“Oh, childhood friends. I see. I must’ve misunderstood. And don’t worry—I didn’t say anything to anyone else. That was just my own guess.”
Though Jiseo kept smiling, Eunseok remembered the cold, murderous look Baek Dohyeok had thrown at the Espers who’d been pestering him with questions about what happened at the site. He gently took Eunhyeong’s hand and led her away. After apologizing for holding her up in the hallway so long, the couple parted with Jiseo promising to attend the wedding.
Already taken, my ass. That rumor almost spread for no reason.
After quickly showering and changing, Jiseo returned to the Blue Team 2 office to find her teammates sitting in a circle on the floor, desks still unmoved, holding the wedding invitations Eunseok and Eunhyeong had given them—more excited than the couple themselves.
“Isn’t it so romantic? Imprinting! Wow, that’s amazing.”
That was Hayeon, addicted to all things “cool.”
“Were we practicing ‘My One and Only Guide’ just to perform a congratulatory stage when Park Eunseok marries his guide?”
Still spouting nonsense, Kim Junho.
“And if Eunseok drops out, we won’t have the right number for mahjong. Hyung, want to learn?”
Even Minhyuk, panicking over losing a regular member of the ‘Idle Espers With No Lovers or Friends Club.’
Instead of sitting on the floor, Jiseo leaned against the wall.
“Are you guys seriously not going to train…?”
That was when Junho checked the time, jumped to his feet, and shouted,
“Let’s go!”
It was a solemn, thunderous cry, like a tribal chief preparing for an enemy raid. Wondering what pointless scheme he was plotting now, Jiseo remained leaning against the wall without moving an inch—only for Junho to point at her sternly, as if declaring, You are today’s chosen warrior.
“Im Jiseo. Rank reassessment. Go, go.”
