PARADOX 53

Just as Seong Semin suspected, Hanseo was wishing for something quite grand.

A normal, happy life—unlike his past one.

And to obtain that, he absolutely needed a living Gu Jeyi. The keyword here was “living.”

Through this incident, Hanseo fully realized that the future was changing due to his intervention. The future would continue to change moving forward. Just as Gu Jeyi had cleared the Miudong Gate, which originally should have been cleared by the Leader. This meant that things Hanseo could not predict would increase more and more. Until now, he had been able to prepare because he knew the future in advance, but he didn’t know how long such a trick would work. He had thought the same before, but the reality had never hit home as much as it did now.

‘If I hadn’t followed him to the Miudong Gate…’

Gu Jeyi would likely have lost his team members and suffered a huge psychological shock.

If that guy—whose mental state was already poor—had become despondent from that incident and swallowed poison again?

When Hanseo’s complexion turned pale, Gu Jeyi, seeing this, spoke.

“You look tired, so go and rest. You don’t need to follow me all the way to the isolation room.”

“No! I’m not tired at all! I want to go with you. You’re going to the isolation room because you’re worried you might rampage like the others if you fall asleep. I’ll stay by your side and provide guiding if a problem arises.”

Hanseo countered urgently.

The thought of Gu Jeyi going somewhere unknown, out of his sight, made his heart pound fearfully.

‘You brat, what are you going to do if something happens in the isolation room, talking so easily like that? Are you not afraid of the world?’

Of course, an S-class Esper would have fewer things to fear than others. He was so extraordinary that he didn’t even seem to fear his own death.

Hanseo didn’t like that either. It would actually have been better for him if the man were a self-preserving coward. But since Gu Jeyi was the type to walk around with poison hidden in his mouth, he couldn’t relax for a second. Gu Jeyi didn’t realize that while his life might be cheap to himself, it wasn’t cheap at all to Hanseo.

Thinking about it gave him the chills.

‘What on earth was I thinking, letting this guy wander around alone?’

In the first place, Gu Jeyi’s cause of death was suicide. Even without a rampage, it was a form of death he could choose at any time given the right motivation.

‘From now on, I have to watch him closely. Even if you die, you have to prevent the Great Cataclysm before you go, you!’

“But…”

“I’m going with you! No matter what you say!”

Hanseo’s eyes shone with determination. Gu Jeyi looked at him with an unreadable expression.

Hanseo thought Gu Jeyi would coldly refuse or ignore him and just leave. However, Gu Jeyi’s reaction was different from his expectations.

“…Why so much.”

“Pardon?”

“No, I understand. But feel free to go back whenever you change your mind.”

‘What’s this? Is this also because he’s sleepy?’

It was puzzling, but come to think of it, Gu Jeyi didn’t have a proper excuse to refuse. If he was going to the isolation room out of concern for a rampage, he would naturally need a guide. At any rate, it had gone his way, so it was a good thing for Hanseo.

Gu Jeyi proceeded with the work swiftly. He made a call somewhere and, a short while later, went down to the basement via the elevator, just as Pyo Myeongho had done.

Then, he opened the door to the isolation room himself and stepped inside.

The attitude was so natural that Hanseo almost forgot for a moment that this was an isolation room.

‘Is this place his house or something…’

Looking at that sight was dumbfounding.

It seemed this wasn’t the first time Gu Jeyi had entered the isolation room voluntarily.

Unlike Gu Jeyi, Hanseo could not enter the isolation room immediately. This was because gate residue was all over his body. He was only able to enter the isolation room after quickly washing up in a temporary shower and changing into new clothes.

Upon entering the isolation room, the first things he saw were armed guards, not Gu Jeyi. Perhaps they were as used to this as Gu Jeyi was, as they didn’t seem nervous. However, they seemed a bit surprised to see Hanseo coming inside, even though they had already been informed.

The guard captain, making eye contact with Hanseo, cleared his throat for no reason and approached Gu Jeyi.

“Ahem… Esper Gu Jeyi, may I put on the restraints?”

“Yes.”

Throughout the process of putting on the restraints, Gu Jeyi was as docile as a tamed beast. He even put on the neck restraint himself.

Watching that scene, Hanseo felt bad for some reason, though he couldn’t guess the exact cause.

Soon, the guard captain took something out of a bag. It was a pouch containing a syringe and medication. Hanseo, who had no good memories of syringes, felt slightly nauseous but asked without showing it.

“What is that?”

“It’s a stabilizer.”

Hanseo recalled that when he came here before, Gu Jeyi had been in an unconscious state after being injected with a stabilizer. Though it was called a stabilizer, if it were a drug capable of piercing an S-class Esper’s immune defense to put them to sleep, it was as good as poison. The moment his thoughts reached that point, words came out without passing through his brain.

“Leave that.”

“Pardon? But…”

“I’ve been injured before while guiding Esper Gu Jeyi in an unconscious state. I’ll proceed with guiding first, and then we’ll administer the stabilizer later if necessary.”

The guard captain hesitated, caught in a dilemma. Hanseo drove the point home.

“I am Esper Gu Jeyi’s exclusive guide. I will judge what is necessary for my Esper.”

In times like this, the guide training he had received at the Center was very helpful. An exclusive guide, like a doctor, had the right to make decisions regarding the treatment an Esper would receive.

“…Yes, I understand.”

Since the guard captain was also an Esper, he had no choice but to acknowledge that it was a guide’s prerogative. Furthermore, the guide in front of him was the famous guide with a 98% matching rate. He was the one and only person who could prevent Gu Jeyi’s rampage.

The guards, having finished putting on all the restraints, went back outside, leaving the two of them alone in the sealed room.

Gu Jeyi seemed to want to let Hanseo sit on the only cot, but since the shackles restricted his range of motion, he eventually gave up and sat on the edge of the bed himself. Unlike just a moment ago, he looked strangely uncomfortable.

‘Well, it would be hard to be comfortable while hanging all that metal off your body.’

Hanseo asked Gu Jeyi as if doing him a favor.

“It’s heavy, isn’t it? Should I ask them to take off the ones on your arms? Or the ones on your ankles?”

“It’s fine.”

“But you look uncomfortable…”

“It’s not that, it’s just that this is the first time someone has been here with me. It’s not a sight I want to show others.”

At those words, Hanseo could easily imagine Gu Jeyi being trapped alone in this sealed room.

Gu Jeyi was the guy who had tried to kill him, but surprisingly, that imagination wasn’t very pleasant.

Then Gu Jeyi spoke.

“There are restraints this time, so Yeo Hanseo-ssi won’t get hurt like before.”

It seemed what Hanseo had said to the guard captain had been on his mind. Hanseo paused for a second because he had briefly forgotten he had made such an excuse, but he nodded calmly as if it weren’t the case.

“Then that’s a relief. But is that effective?”

Hanseo scanned the restraints Gu Jeyi was wearing with a doubtful gaze. The thick pieces of iron binding his arms and legs looked impressive, but the person wearing them was the one and only S-class Esper in this world. Knowing how powerful his abilities were, he couldn’t help but feel that those thick restraints were like thin thread bracelets.

Gu Jeyi introduced the items calmly, as if what he was wearing were new clothes rather than restraints.

“These aren’t ordinary restraints; they are items made from the core of an A-class gate. They are inscribed with a strong ‘restraint’ supernatural power, so even I cannot break them at once.”

“…Does that mean you can break them?”

“Yes, but it takes time, so they’ll be able to kill me before that happens.”

Hanseo, who had been looking at the restraints with interest, snapped his head up. His eyes, which had been sparkling with curiosity about a new item, had turned ice-cold.

“Why do you keep saying things like that?”

“…?”

Hanseo was annoyed. It was because his heart, which had been quiet until just now, began to pound fearfully again as soon as Gu Jeyi talked about dying.

‘I’m going through all this trouble to make sure you don’t die, so why do you keep talking about dying?’

A surge of anger flared up momentarily, but Hanseo managed to put on a gentle expression.

“I wish you wouldn’t talk about dying so casually. I accepted the deal because I want you to be safe, hyung.”

Hanseo liked the words he had made up. This was a much warmer and more refined way of speaking than, ‘If you keep talking about dying, I’ll really kill you.’

Thinking he should say more of what he wanted while he was at it, he continued.

“So you should feel free to use me too, hyung.”

Hanseo smiled sweetly.

“That’s why we became a married couple, isn’t it?”