This S-Class Esper is Not an Obsessive Maniac

8.

It’s now become a somewhat faded memory, but Kim Jun-young, officially South Korea’s first S-class Esper, had accumulated all sorts of bad karma after being paired with Lee Jung-hyuk, who was then a B-class Guide. And this lasted for several years.

Ryu Ho-yeon, who had been watching them closely, knew well how emotionally difficult it had been for Jung-hyuk and how shamelessly Jun-young had behaved. However, due to his young age at the time, he had some difficulty fully understanding exactly what had transpired between the two.

“Why are you suddenly asking about that?”

Jung-hyuk, visibly flustered, wiped his mouth and asked back. It was indeed an unexpected question for someone who hadn’t visited in a long time. To abruptly ask how much of a jerk Kim Jun-young had been.

However, that was only by normal people’s standards. For Ho-yeon, whose thought process was quite creative, or rather bizarre, beyond the normal range, it was a question that had its own logic, at least to him.

Both in Ho-yeon’s limited human relationships and by objective standards, Kim Jun-young, the first director of the Ability Management Office and former head of the Esper Management Team, was a typical example of an exemplary “obsessive maniac” that anyone would recognize.

In fact, Ho-yeon was showing a fairly sociable attitude towards Choi Jae-won, a complete stranger, considering his extremely low sociability and friendliness. Of course, part of the reason was that Jae-won was his pair Guide, something he had waited for all his life, but more importantly, it was because Jae-won was Han-seo’s cousin and because he clearly liked Ho-yeon himself, which was obvious even to Ho-yeon’s terribly poor social awareness.

That’s right. For whatever reason, despite being a Guide who usually doesn’t stray from the superior position in the realistic Esper-Guide dynamic… Choi Jae-won truly liked Ho-yeon enthusiastically. Almost to the point of worship, desperately.

It had been a few weeks since they started living together, but it became more certain as time passed. It was evident from how he circled around like a dog in heat, unable to hold hands for guiding every day, and from his pitiful attempts to have at least one meal together face-to-face every day, making up the lame excuse that cooking was his hobby.

At first, Ho-yeon was curious about why Jae-won acted this way, but he found a quite plausible hypothesis even before a few days had passed.

‘…I guess I am pretty good-looking, even to myself.’

He found it right in his own face reflected in the mirror. He had just finished washing his face and was wiping it in front of the mirror. His jawline, as if carefully sculpted by someone, fell sharply, and the features on that small face were artistically placed and shaped. Although it was true that he had grown up isolated from society like a microorganism in a flask throughout his life, making him somewhat clumsy at forming intimate relationships with others and notoriously lacking in social awareness, he wasn’t incapable of objectively distinguishing between beauty and ugliness.

Ryu Ho-yeon was beautiful. So beautiful that merely describing him as “pretty” felt insulting compared to his innate appearance. Even if you lined up all the top leading actors appearing in various movies and dramas that he so enjoyed watching, none of them would be able to stand in front of Ho-yeon. It was an appearance that could plausibly cause someone to fall in love at first sight and dedicate their life to him. This wasn’t subjective, but an objective fact.

‘So it’s because of my face, after all.’

The behavior pattern he knew of a “bottom” was to blush uncontrollably, captivated by the obsessive maniac’s stunning appearance, and to timidly shrug their shoulders like a herbivore. From what he had observed so far, Choi Jae-won didn’t deviate at all from this typical behavior pattern.

This was a big deal. It was somewhat awkward too. He had been candid about sexual contact from their first meeting to lower the expectations and fantasies about Espers that his Guide, if they were an ordinary person, would naturally have. This really was a big deal.

Except for his handsome face and tall stature, which were nearly as good as Ho-yeon’s own, Choi Jae-won, who had become his pair Guide, more than sufficiently satisfied the common attributes of a “bottom” extracted from various works. He even possessed the clumsy and unhandy attribute, getting new scratches on his hands every time he cooked, and hiding both hands behind his back, claiming it was nothing if Ho-yeon’s gaze happened to fall on the bandages!

I can’t be an obsessive maniac, but my (probably) only Guide is (most likely) a bottom… My bottom already loves me… As far as he knew, Guide characters with bottom attributes never let go of the Esper they fall in love with, even if they die. He felt a sense of responsibility.

For Choi Jae-won, who was also Han-seo’s cousin, Ho-yeon made a solemn resolve. He decided to become an Esper with obsessive maniac attributes, lacking in nothing except sexual contact.

“I have a pair now too. I wanted to hear about you guys and learn from it.”

“Ah. Is that why? Our Ho-yeon has really grown up.”

Jung-hyuk assumed that Ho-yeon wanted to know what not to do to a dedicated Guide as a pair Esper, and what implicit manners should be kept as a pair, learning from Kim Jun-young’s past mistakes. For a normal person’s way of thinking, that would have been more natural.

“Yeah. Also, I don’t have anyone else to ask… After all, Kim Jun-young is… well… the best when it comes to that aspect.”

Jung-hyuk once again interpreted Ho-yeon’s response, nodding his head with a strange tone, as referring to “that aspect” as a cautionary tale. However, the reality was completely different. The “that aspect” Ho-yeon intended here meant the closest to the model of an obsessive maniac among the Espers existing in the real world as far as he knew, and Ho-yeon intended to use Kim Jun-young not as a cautionary tale but as a role model to emulate.

After all, only an obsessive maniac Esper can make a bottom Guide happy. Even if he couldn’t truly fall in love, since Jae-won was Han-seo’s cousin who liked him so fervently, Ho-yeon was determined to show a cooperative attitude as much as he could. That’s why he rushed here as soon as he heard that Kim Jun-young and Lee Jung-hyuk had cleared a dungeon and returned to the central branch.

“So, what was it like when you first met Jun-young hyung? How did he treat you?”

“Well… Don’t misunderstand what I’m about to say. You know Jun-young hyung isn’t like that anymore, right?”

When Jung-hyuk first entered as a B-class Guide and was paired with Kim Jun-young, Ho-yeon was just a child of about ten. Although the two older boys often played with him whenever they had time, he was too young to notice and remember everything that happened between them.

Now that he was about to talk about the past, Jung-hyuk seemed a bit embarrassed and repeatedly emphasized that regardless of Kim Jun-young’s past, he was absolutely not like that anymore, as he slowly began to tell the old story. Ho-yeon, for once, pricked up his ears and even took notes, focusing intently.

The bad karma Kim Jun-young accumulated in the early stages of their matching was roughly as follows:

First, coming to receive guiding at will when he had a blackout, then not remembering it at all and ignoring Jung-hyuk like a stranger if they happened to meet elsewhere.

Second, emphasizing the difference in rank between B-class and S-class, and flirting with other A-class Guides who were close to him in front of Jung-hyuk from time to time.

Third, after somehow becoming pairs, secretly going to other Guides for guiding before missions.

Fourth, pretending not to know for years that Jung-hyuk liked him, even though he clearly knew.

‘Oh… What a jerk…’

Is it true that those who try can never surpass those who are born with it? Ho-yeon clicked his tongue inwardly as he jotted down only the key points from Jung-hyuk’s story. He had thought that regardless of how things were in the past, since the two of them now lived so happily, crazy about each other, he could satisfy his own Guide by simply copying Kim Jun-young’s actions. But it seemed he wasn’t capable of being such a jerk. In fact, there weren’t many things he could realistically implement.

First of all, even if they searched the whole of South Korea for twenty years, Choi Jae-won was the only Guide with a matching rate over 50 percent. So the third option was out. He couldn’t force a blackout to happen, so the first option was out too. Although the ranks were set for external appearances, Choi Jae-won was an A-class Guide, and above all… Ho-yeon didn’t really know any other Guides, so flirting was impossible too. In the end, all options except the fourth were eliminated.

“Hyung, then for exactly how many years did Jun-young hyung pretend not to know about your feelings?”

The fourth option seemed like something he could keep doing, as he was already doing it. Originally, the more bad karma one accumulated, the stronger the obsessive maniac character became, so the closer he got to Kim Jun-young’s mountain of bad karma, the higher Choi Jae-won’s happiness and satisfaction would be in the long run.

“Exactly? Well, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly how many years it was.”

“Just roughly.”

Knowing well Ho-yeon’s obsessive curiosity that would persistently dig for an answer once something piqued his interest, Jung-hyuk, without the slightest inkling of the aspiring obsessive maniac Esper’s quite twisted inner thoughts, ended up giving an answer.

“I entered when I was twenty-one, and I left the center when I was about thirty… So roughly ten years?”

“Great, ten years.”

“Huh? What’s great about that?”

“I think I can manage that much! Thanks, hyung!”

Not knowing that his casual answer had just paved a direct tunnel that would stretch for years in a junior Guide’s love endeavor.