This S-Class Esper is Not an Obsessive Maniac

1.

Bang bang bang bang!

“Ho-yeon! Open the door! Ryu Ho-yeon!”

Bang bang bang!

“……”

The sound of relentless knocking on the door echoed again, as if the person’s fist didn’t hurt at all. Ryu Ho-yeon had been ignoring the desperate voice calling his name for over ten minutes now. He turned up the volume on the anime he was watching, pretending not to hear.

In the video, the protagonist, with fluorescent hair and even more vibrant fluorescent eyes – features unnatural for East Asians – was looking down at his arm, which was engraved with a black dragon, with a serious expression. Then, in a solemn voice, he muttered, “So… am I the protagonist of this world…?” The animation, which had been aired over 5 years ago, felt a bit outdated by today’s standards. However, this didn’t break Ryu Ho-yeon’s concentration as he immersed himself in the media.

The crudeness of this animation, which others might point out as chuunibyou or cringeworthy, was precisely what struck a chord with – or rather, hit dead-on – the heart of a true otaku.

Having watched the same scene dozens, if not hundreds of times, Ryu Ho-yeon could recite the following scenes, including other characters’ lines, without even looking (though he had never actually vocalized them out loud).

As another round of persistent knocking reached his ears, Ryu Ho-yeon turned the volume up to maximum and swallowed hard. Now, his favorite scene was approaching.

“I guess there’s no choice. Then I… I will protect this world…!!”

The voice actor exaggerated the tone, feigning overwhelming emotion. Strangely, every time Ryu Ho-yeon watched this scene, his heart would race. Had he over-identified with the protagonist? Although he didn’t have the protagonist’s flashy fluorescent hair and eyes, whenever he watched works with a similar vibe, Ryu Ho-yeon’s heart would swell as if he had become the world-saving protagonist himself.

Among his acquaintances who knew of this chronic condition, someone with a particularly sharp tongue would often ask when his annoying chuunibyou phase would end. But what could he do? He had no intention of denying it. Even Ryu Ho-yeon himself acknowledged that he was a mass media addict with severe over-immersion tendencies – in other words, an otaku.

However, what set him apart from other ordinary addicts was that his baseless belief that the whole world was watching him, and his arrogance in thinking he was fundamentally different from ordinary people, weren’t just manifestations of immature egocentricity from failing to graduate from adolescence.

He was, unofficially, South Korea’s first S-class Esper, and simultaneously the world’s only materialization S-class ability user, whose very existence was classified due to his overwhelmingly powerful potential.

The state had thoroughly hidden Ryu Ho-yeon as an individual underground, fearing that this outstanding Esper might be snatched away by other countries or forces, as a compatible Guide had not yet appeared within the country.

“Hmm. A masterpiece is always a masterpiece, no matter how many times you watch it…”

He finally got up sluggishly from his seat, as if doing a favor, only when the ending theme of the anime he had been watching started to play, having ignored the desperate cries from beyond the door as always. When he slid open the locked door, three or four people who had been eagerly waiting for him to come out rushed in all at once. They were all researchers from the Center, wearing white gowns.

“Why did you come out only now! Today is the day your Guide is coming!”

“T-t-this won’t do! Hurry…! Let’s go, hurry!”

It was amusing that they were already referring to ‘your’ Guide when they hadn’t even properly measured the matching rate yet. Ironically, the Esper himself, who should be welcoming the Guide more than anyone else, was this indifferent.

“Hmm…”

For Ryu Ho-yeon, who had lived as an Esper not through later awakening but from birth – no, from the moment he began to take human form in his mother’s womb – and had never had a proper official pair Guide… it was more surprising to see these researchers still getting their hopes up after countless futile matching rate tests with numerous pair candidates.

“He should have arrived at the main building by now. He said he’d just stop by the Guide department for official registration, so hurry up and get ready!”

Ryu Ho-yeon had done matching rate tests as often as breathing until now. In fact, it wasn’t the Esper or Guide who needed preparation for the test, but the researchers who had to interpret the results with complex sensors and wires attached to their bodies that gave him a headache just by looking at them. What exactly was he supposed to prepare? It was too bothersome to even open his mouth wide. Ryu Ho-yeon just stared blankly at the chief researcher in front of him, trying to convey such thoughts.

The chief researcher, who had been practically co-parenting Ryu Ho-yeon since he could walk, immediately understood what was going through his small head and sighed out of habit.

“What? Didn’t the Director tell you anything?”

“…Tell me? Well, let’s see. Mom said she was going to Dubai this time. Did she say she’d bring back some dates?”

Well, the incoming Guide won’t be dates, right? Oh, is the Guide from the Middle East? At the nonsensical babbling delivered with a doll-like expressionless face, the group in gowns surrounding Ryu Ho-yeon collectively grabbed the back of their necks in exasperation. It was a wonder how the child of the research director, who was such a staunch realist that jokes didn’t work on her at all, could spout nonsense every time he opened his mouth.

Ryu Ho-yeon’s mother, who had hurriedly boarded a plane to Dubai this morning due to an urgently scheduled international academic exchange meeting, was the research director who had stood firm in the Center’s executive position solely based on her abilities, from when the Center was just a bureau under the Ministry of National Defense to its current status as an independent agency. She was so high up that ordinary researchers didn’t dare to even catch a glimpse of her face.

In other words, for them, Ryu Ho-yeon was the precious only son of their direct superior, who was far above them. It also meant that their relationship could be as uncomfortable as it could possibly be.

“This kid, this kid really! You stayed up all night watching anime and fell asleep in the morning again, didn’t you!! You didn’t listen to the Director properly!! I can’t live because of you!”

The chief researcher furrowed his brows as much as possible and slapped the back of the Director’s only precious son soundly. Although he was indeed an Esper, Ryu Ho-yeon, not being of the natural or physical enhancement type, had no difference in physical strength compared to ordinary people. Perhaps because he grew up without seeing sunlight, trapped in the research lab, his height barely exceeding 170cm and his thin limbs were even weaker than the average for an adult male.

“I did stay up, but last night I watched a drama instead of anime… Ow! It hurts!”

“I hit you so it would hurt, so it would hurt!! We don’t have time, so go wash up and put on proper clothes right now! Are you going to meet your Guide for the first time in 25 years in your pajamas?”

It was at this point that Ryu Ho-yeon sensed something was off. The atmosphere of the people was completely different from how they had treated the numerous pair candidates they had brought in so far. Come to think of it, his mother seemed to have said something just as he was dozing off…

‘Ho-yeon, Mom will be back in about a week, so make sure to eat well…’

Well, he couldn’t remember anything after that.

“The Guide coming today isn’t just a candidate, but an official pair Guide!”

“Huh? Auntie, what did you just say…”

“They’ve already done the matching rate test with your DNA sample. They’ll need to cross-verify, but the sample test showed a matching rate in the low 80 percent range, and the Guide also barely passed the A-class criteria, so they said your pairing is already confirmed. The Director said she told you everything before she left, so we shouldn’t worry.”

…A Guide? My real Guide?

Even after hearing it with his own ears, it felt so unreal that Ryu Ho-yeon just blinked his eyes. His pale eyelashes fluttered like butterfly wings.

As always, he had been immersed in media until dawn, falling asleep only when morning came, and then quietly waking up well past noon to eat cup noodles while reviewing episodes of what he considered masterpiece animations. It was too sudden news to hear while still in his pajamas without even washing his face. Of course, it was also news he had been desperately waiting for for too long to not accept just because it was sudden.

“Hey, Ho-yeon. Are you listening to me? Hurry up and wash. Hurry!”

“Uh, uh… uh…”

Only then did Ryu Ho-yeon come to his senses at the hand pushing his back, and he dashed into the living space set up in one corner of the lab. Even as he mechanically washed and changed clothes, it still didn’t feel real.

However, no matter how flustered he was, he wasn’t perplexed. Isn’t it a required virtue for an over-immersed otaku to unfold various impossible scenarios in their head and let their imagination run wild? He had already run over 185 simulations of patterns for politely greeting the Guide who might pop out from anywhere. (Most of the situation settings in these patterns were also drawn from various movies, dramas, and animations featuring Espers and Guides as protagonists.)

“Alright, I can do this.”

Ryu Ho-yeon gathered his resolve as he looked at his reflection in the mirror. It didn’t matter whether the Guide was the same gender or not. In almost 99.9 percent of the media he had learned from so far, the Esper had to protect and lead their Guide partner in a cool and charismatic manner.

Among them, the worst Espers were those who hid their weaknesses or special conditions, only to make their Guide cry in the face of problems that had snowballed as a result. He decided that no matter who arrived as his Guide, he would not be flustered and would honestly apologize first.

If you had expectations, I’m sorry… but the Esper you’ll be in charge of cannot become an obsessive maniac.