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A few days later, the promised day of the first training arrived.

Knock, knock, knock.

With the sound of knocking on the office door, Juyoung poked his face through the gap.

“Team Leader. I heard the Alpha Team is currently training, so I think we can just wait and switch out with them immediately.”

Had it already been that long? It felt like only a few minutes had passed since lunch, but it was already close to four o’clock, the scheduled training time.

The time given to Kang Juha was a mere hour. I had barely managed to secure that hour by negotiating with Manager Hong to push back the Alpha Team’s night training—originally set for five o’clock—to five-thirty.

Since this was the first training session since his return, I couldn’t help but consider various variables. That’s why I thought an hour would be necessary, but when I asked Kang Juha, he said he usually trained for at least three to six hours, which left me speechless.

Then wouldn’t an hour be nothing more than a warm-up…? No, but what kind of person trains for that long?

So when I asked, “If you train for that long, is there even any Guiding left?”, he said he tries to use his supernatural abilities to a minimum during normal training. Hearing that, a question naturally arose.

What kind of Esper in the world tries not to use their abilities while training? Is that even possible?

“This is the annex.”

The building Juyoung pointed to had a somewhat peculiar structure at first glance. Its height looked like it would easily exceed five stories, yet it had no windows, and only a single door sat lonely on the wall.

It looked like I was looking at one giant fortress. It didn’t feel like a building at all. They said it was a new construction, but to my eyes, it was just a lump of concrete, which made me feel a bit skeptical. It looked like a place that had been tossed aside without even the will to give it a nice coat of paint.

“Uh… well… it looks like a space where training would go well.”

“You mean it looks crappy, right?”

Juyoung delivered a piercingly honest remark, making my effort to wrap my words in pretty packaging pointless.

Kang Juha, seemingly having no particular thoughts, was looking up at the training center without a word. I thought he might be deeply moved since it was a place he was visiting after a long time, but I couldn’t read anything on Kang Juha’s face.

“I’ll go change into my training gear.”

Instead, as soon as he entered the building, he walked into the changing room as if he were very familiar with it.

He vanished before I could even reply, so I answered “Oh, right” to the closed door and awkwardly headed toward the waiting room.

“Wow… this is my first time coming in here.”

“Me too.”

“Why do we work in such an old-fashioned way while this place is state-of-the-art? Is there an invisible timeline between the Esper Bureau and the National Security Bureau? It feels like there’s a 100-year time difference right now.”

“Don’t exaggerate. It’s not 100 years. Maybe… 20?”

Considering us, who sit people down with their hands and feet tightly bound just to interrogate them, this side was certainly closer to an advanced civilization. Why were there so many monitors attached to the wall?

One… two… three.

When I counted them, there were as many as twelve.

“We don’t have twenty-four eyes, so do we really need this many monitors? It’s like a dragonfly or something.”

“Logically, do you think they installed them intending to look at all of them at once? Huh?”

I shook my head at his pathetic remark and took a long look around the interior of the waiting room. There was a sofa on the wall opposite the monitors, and various emergency supplies were provided inside a glass storage cabinet.

Above the monitors, there was an electronic clock that looked like a timer, and the remaining time was about 32 minutes.

“Oh, that looks like the Alpha Team.”

Juyoung pointed to the small figures inside the monitors. I could see black silhouettes scurrying here and there inside the screens.

“Ah, this side is the interior of the training room, and it seems this half is the screen the person training sees.”

Just as he said, the six monitors on the left used an indoor setting that looked like a training ground as a background, while the other half used a city street as a background. And except for the last monitor providing a bird’s-eye view of the whole, the rest focused exactly on each of the five people.

As I looked back and forth between the two sides, the steel structures visible on the left were represented as buildings or trees on the right.

“I thought the background would be a Gate, but it’s not.”

“True.”

At Juyoung’s mutter, only then did I realize that the training background was not a Gate. As I scanned the monitors, I saw beings that looked like targets. They were humans, not monsters.

I found it quite strange because I knew the Alpha Team specialized in Gate activity rather than working on special missions.

In fact, among Espers, most of those who receive special missions to operate are affiliated with the National Intelligence Service, not the Center. Or, like Kang Juha, they operate within the Center without an assigned team, though there were separate personnel who were not publicly known.

In that sense, Kang Juha was an exception in many ways. While his face was widely known, he was active across all fronts, including Gates and individual tasks.

The moment I thought that far. Beep, beep, beep! Along with a sharp warning sound, red lights on the monitor frames began to flash.

Soon, red borders appeared around the bodies of the Alpha Team members who were clashing with the human-shaped targets, and the word [DECEASED] popped up. Simultaneously, the monitors tracking the people processed as dead turned off.

At the screens that had turned black, Juyoung let out a small sigh, and I stared at the screens of those remaining until the end.

“You don’t need to watch that.”

I had been so focused on the people in the screens without realizing it that I hadn’t noticed Kang Juha had come right up behind me.

“Pardon?”

“You don’t need to watch others training. You came here to see me…”

Kang Juha’s voice was full of disappointment and dissatisfaction. I wanted to ignore it and move on, but his gaze demanding a reaction was persistent, so I opened my mouth as if making an excuse.

“I was watching for a bit to get used to it because the training method and such are unfamiliar. It’s not that I was watching someone else’s training.”

When I slightly avoided his gaze, I made eye contact with Juyoung, who was looking at me this time. Juyoung looked at me with a gaze full of betrayal and a pouting expression.

No, what’s wrong with this one too?

…I had too many guilty spots to say that. Because the words I usually kept on my lips were “So what?” or “It’s my choice.”

Juyoung, who had to listen to nothing but those two answers no matter what he said while being by my side, couldn’t help but find it unpleasant to see me replying while being mindful of Kang Juha. Still, what I had to say to Juyoung was… still nothing but “So what?”

So when I mouthed those words, Juyoung let out a Hah sound and snapped his head away.

Watching the two of them sulking and pouting over me on both sides, I couldn’t tell if I was currently their lover, their father, or a kindergarten teacher. Being with them made me feel like my mental age was becoming younger too.

“You arrived early.”

Right on time, Manager Hong appeared in the training waiting room. Seeing me standing so close to Kang Juha, he made a slightly flustered expression, but soon let out a boisterous laugh, saying we looked close.

I didn’t know about others, but I was worried I had shown an unseemly sight in front of Manager Hong, who belonged to another department and was my elder, so I hurriedly widened the distance between me and Kang Juha.

This was also for when Kang Juha recovers his memories later. If he realizes he showed himself following behind me like a baby duck following its mother, he’ll have to kick his blankets ten times at night.

It was my own kind of consideration. He is a person called South Korea’s Alpha, after all; showing this kind of side to others is a bit much.

“Director Shin couldn’t come today because she has other business.”

“Ah, I heard. Since we won’t be able to train properly today anyway…”

Manager Hong, who had been muttering low, stared toward me and then suddenly strode forward with a fierce expression. Surprised by the sudden situation, my body froze, and Kang Juha pulled me toward himself, almost embracing me.

Manager Hong passed us and stopped in front of the monitors. Then he pressed a button firmly and brought his mouth to the microphone placed on the table.

“I believe I told you there would be an Esper Kang Juha training session today.”

Worried it might be because of the training room usage time, I spoke up urgently.

“It’s alright. We just arrived a bit early; there’s still time left.”

For a moment, Manager Hong, who seemed to be looking at me coldly, shook his head with a gentle smile. It was a mere flash, but his smiling face felt exactly like a lie.

…It must be my imagination, right?

“Don’t worry about it. I simply reminded the Alpha Team of something I had specifically instructed them on before.”

I didn’t accurately understand what those words meant, but I just brushed it off with a vague, awkward smile. I don’t know what it is, but getting entangled in another department’s business leads to headaches. I just need to do my job. And my job was to check Kang Juha’s condition and help him so he doesn’t get hurt or fall into danger.

“Mr. Kang Juha.”

“Yes.”

“This way.”

While Manager Hong stared at the monitors as if he were going to devour them, I took Kang Juha and stepped back.

Only then did Kang Juha’s attire catch my eye. A top so skin-tight that it was hard to tell where the skin ended and the clothes began, to the point where I could describe every single muscle in his upper body. My brow narrowed of its own accord.