This S-Class Esper is Not an Obsessive Maniac

23.

Unaware of the wounds he had inflicted on his pair Guide’s heart with his extraordinarily excessive consideration the previous night while drowsy, Ryu Ho-yeon slept soundly. He slept so deeply that he wasn’t bothered even when that strange recurring dream appeared again.

Perhaps because in his previous dream he had thought of bathwater while surrounded by complete darkness, this time the strange space serving as the background in his dream didn’t feel particularly lonely or desolate. In fact, thinking of it as bathwater with his favorite bath salts made it even comfortable. Thanks to this, Ryu Ho-yeon’s face practically glowed when he woke up the next morning.

“Huh? Jae-won. What’s wrong with your face…?”

“…It’s nothing, hyung. I just had trouble sleeping.”

Meanwhile, Choi Jae-won, who had spent the night desperately trying to recover from his burning heart after providing guiding with his body, hadn’t been able to sleep at all, tossing and turning all night.

Around five in the morning, Choi Jae-won finally gave up on sleep and headed early to the kitchen, resulting in an especially elaborate breakfast spread. The lie that cooking was his hobby, which had started simply because he wanted to eat breakfast with Ryu Ho-yeon somehow, had become reality over the past year.

Now, whenever they were at the residence together, Ryu Ho-yeon took it for granted that they would eat meals facing each other, even if it wasn’t Choi Jae-won’s cooking, but Choi Jae-won still volunteered as the cook. It wasn’t that he had discovered some hidden aptitude or talent for cooking.

He simply enjoyed the sight of Ryu Ho-yeon secretly approaching and lingering nearby with eyes full of curiosity, pretending to observe what he was doing. While he still needed the internet’s help for particularly fancy dishes, he could whip up simple daily meals with his eyes closed.

The residence, which had once looked like it had just jumped out of the latest interior design magazine, had accumulated signs of life over time. Particularly impressive was how the cute but impractical small dryer and dishwasher had been replaced with generously sized ones. The multi-million won sound system that had never been used after installation had been relegated to storage, with a robot vacuum cleaner and its charging station taking its place.

Though it might have been an aesthetic regression, Choi Jae-won much preferred the current state of their residence over how it was initially, because it gave him the strong feeling that he and Ryu Ho-yeon were truly “living” together. His next goal was to merge their separate bedrooms. It had taken a year to get this far, so combining rooms would probably take about two more years at most. While taking out more side dishes that Ryu Ho-yeon enjoyed, Choi Jae-won renewed his determination.

“Wouldn’t it be better if you got at least a little sleep?”

“I’m fine. Today I don’t have any schedule… Ah, no. It’s today, isn’t it?”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

How else could they be so leisurely from the morning on a day that wasn’t even a scheduled holiday? Today was the day that Ryu Ho-yeon, a special-type materialization Esper, would make his first official public appearance upon becoming the Acting Head of Esper Oversight, one year after forming his pair bond. After Ryu Ho-yeon had firmly refused again and again, it was finally decided that he and Kim Jun-young would take turns as Acting Head for a year each until Park Woo-jun returned. The only downside was not knowing when Park Woo-jun would return, but it seemed like quite a dramatic game of hot potato.

Choi Jae-won also needed to attend today’s press conference as Ryu Ho-yeon’s pair Guide. He would likely attract considerable attention too. After graduating with a business degree, everyone had expected Choi Jae-won to study abroad and work his way up to a director position at a company by his thirties or forties at the latest. His sudden career change had been newsworthy across both social and economic sections of Korean media.

“Well, I don’t matter… You’re the star today, hyung.”

“Ugh. I really hate this.”

Ryu Ho-yeon, who was fine with paying attention to others but absolutely hated having attention focused on him, was already losing energy, shaking his head while biting into his fried egg. Under normal circumstances, his first official appearance before the media should have been last year when he first formed a pair with Choi Jae-won.

He had coldly rejected the Public Relations Department’s desperate pleas, and only allowed his name—”S-class Esper, Special-type Ryu Ho-yeon”—to appear in the official personnel announcement from the Ability Management Agency without a single photograph. Because of this, the PR staff had been in a festive mood for days, having waited with bated breath for this day to come.

The Park Woo-jun and Lee Han-seo pair who had been responsible for quarterly PR activities had long since left the country. Kim Jun-young, who had efficiently handled his responsibilities before Park Woo-jun came, frequently refused outright after resigning as Agency Director, saying they couldn’t exploit someone who was essentially retired. Therefore, Ryu Ho-yeon was their only remaining hope.

Currently, they were somehow filling the gap by recruiting whatever decent ability users they could find each quarter, but… it was a gap that couldn’t really be filled to begin with. Needless to say, as the view counts and engagement with promotional videos plummeted, so did the morale of the PR staff. So how desperately they must have wanted Ryu Ho-yeon to officially reveal his stunning face and stand before the cameras with his center title. The PR staff knew from accumulated experience that getting someone in front of a camera for the first time was the hardest part—after that, they could somehow push them along.

Despite the earnest effort put into the breakfast table, Ryu Ho-yeon seemed to have lost his appetite at the thought of the press conference. After pushing his spoon around a few more times, he finally finished his meal without even emptying half of his rice bowl.

“Sigh.”

Another deep sigh escaped as he looked at a message that had just arrived on his phone. Choi Jae-won, who was hurriedly preparing Ryu Ho-yeon’s after-meal coffee without having finished his own meal, questioned him with just his eyes. After taking a sip of the warm hazelnut latte Choi Jae-won handed him, Ryu Ho-yeon answered solemnly.

“I just got a message from Jung-hyuk hyung…”

“And?”

“Cameras. There’s a record number of them. He says there might be even more than at Jun-young hyung’s Director inauguration.”

“Ah…”

“I’m doomed. If I had known it would be like this, I should have just briefly shown my face last year.”

He had thought Kim Jun-young was the first, but actually, Ryu Ho-yeon was the real first S-class who had existed in Korea for more than twenty years, and furthermore, the only materialization-type S-class in the entire world. A monstrous combatant who completed every A-class dungeon mission within five hours. Even excluding his breathtakingly beautiful features, Ryu Ho-yeon had enough merits as an Esper to draw people’s attention.

Understandably so, as wasn’t this an era where despair flooded in endlessly day after day? Today here, tomorrow there. Dungeons emerged cruelly and relentlessly, showing no consideration. Amidst this flood of despair, people continuously guzzled down faint, illusory hope despite knowing it was just salt water. Among these, the most potent and concentrated form of salt water was the fantasy about one’s own region and country—commonly called “national pride” in vulgar terms.

An S-class Esper with a unique ability in the world, who had been an ability user from the moment of taking his first breath at birth, was the perfect raw material for inducing extreme national pride. The more Ryu Ho-yeon avoided media exposure with various excuses, the more intensely people’s fantasies grew. As the former Choi Jae-won had been, humans tend to be more fascinated by vague shadows whose true form cannot be accurately gauged.

In a way, escalating a situation that was inevitable anyway was Ryu Ho-yeon’s self-inflicted predicament. It’s unclear what might have happened if the Research Director, who never forced his son to do anything he disliked, had strongly refused this time too… Unfortunately for Ryu Ho-yeon, the Research Director would be away until next month attending a dizzyingly-named gathering called the “Forum for Proper Knowledge Pursuit by Researchers for Establishing 4th Industrial Revolution Strategies” in India. It was still just a hypothesis, but perhaps the PR department had seized this opportunity while the Research Director was away.

Only after they had both finished their meals and were somewhat ready to leave did the doorbell ring. Perhaps worried that Ryu Ho-yeon might try to escape, Kim Jun-young had come personally to pick them up. His refreshingly smiling face perfectly matched his Esper uniform, which was white with navy blue accents.

“What? You’re still not ready? Let’s go quickly. Just do it roughly, roughly.”

How hearty was his laughter, expressing his lightness at finally being able to pass his tiresome duties to someone else and escape. Choi Jae-won thought this might be the first time he had seen Kim Jun-young looking so purely bright among all the impressions he had gathered of him so far. In stark contrast to Ryu Ho-yeon, whose gloomy mood was palpable from just his shadow.

“Why don’t you just continue, hyung…”

“Too late, Ho-yeon. The higher-ups have already approved it.”

“If we withdraw it and submit it again…”

“Hyung, you’re thirty-eight now. Isn’t it time to rest?”

“Ugh…”

“You just serve until you’re exactly thirty-eight too. If no successor appears by then, I’ll pass the baton back to you.”

“I really hate this…”

“Oh, you’ll do it? Thanks. There’s no one but you.”

Choi Jae-won gently patted Ryu Ho-yeon’s dejected shoulders. The small head that went limp and leaned against him when stroked was endearingly lovable.

“Hello. I am Ryu Ho-yeon, who from today will serve as the Acting Head of Esper Oversight for the Seoul Central Branch of the Korean Ability Management Agency.”

Inside a dark room. A white hand flipping through channels stops at a news screen broadcasting in a foreign language it doesn’t understand. Perhaps it was a summary of important news from another country shown in passing, because the person who caught his eye disappeared after just that one sentence. But there was no disappointment. Despite the brevity, it was enough to recognize him.

“What… He was in such a place? I’ve been wasting my energy looking far away…”

Found him. Now it was time to grasp him in hand. For the sake of this entire world heading toward destruction.