I ran into a problem. It would have been ideal to go on a business trip to another branch and observe the suspects for an extended period, but with Han-gyeol as both Yugeon’s and my captain, it was difficult to move around with a proper external excuse.
“Are you sure about this?”
“Espers are surprisingly simple and slow-witted most of the time.”
“I mean, yeah, I know that, but…”
Yugeon and I were on the rooftop of a three-story shopping complex near Branch B. We had been waiting for hours for one particular person to pass by.
“There he is.”
At Yugeon’s words, I looked down to see one of the names from Gukhyeon’s list. A C-Class mental-type Esper from Branch B—Moon Seo-hyung.
He didn’t live in the dormitories, so he was on his way home after work.
“You think he’ll go berserk?”
Yugeon asked with slight concern.
“He won’t.”
“Still… this should be enough, right?”
“If you’re that worried, just throw something nearby.”
Yugeon glanced at a flower pot the size of his forearm before opting for a much smaller one.
“He still needs to feel a real sense of threat for his creature form to be forced open.”
“Yeah, but…”
Our first plan was this:
I would use clairvoyance from a distance to check if he had a core. If I couldn’t find one, we would create a situation threatening enough to trigger his creature form—just in case.
The chosen method was dropping a flower pot from above.
However, since an Esper would immediately go berserk if their vital areas—like the head or heart—were significantly damaged, I wasn’t entirely comfortable with the idea.
Will this be okay…?
But we couldn’t just sit around and wait for the culprit to come to us.
I hesitated as I focused my clairvoyance on him.
“The core? Does he have one?”
“No.”
“Then I’m dropping it.”
“Wait.”
I grabbed Yugeon’s forearm just as he was about to release the pot. He frowned, questioning me with his eyes.
I took the mini flower pot from his hands and replaced it with the larger one.
“If we’re doing this, we need to be thorough. Get closer. Avoid the head. The height alone should be enough to create a strong enough threat to force his creature form open.”
Yugeon let out an exasperated chuckle.
Then, without hesitation, he dropped the pot.
For a brief moment, I felt his wavelength shift—it was connected to the falling pot.
Time seemed to slow down. The pot, which had been falling directly toward his head, suddenly veered slightly off course.
BANG!
“What the hell?!”
The flower pot landed right in front of the man’s foot. Had it been just a little closer, it could have caused serious injury.
We quickly ducked as the suspect snapped his head up in alarm.
“Who the hell did that?! Come out!”
“Oh my, what happened? Are you alright?”
“Some lunatic—!”
His furious voice echoed as the concerned murmurs of the surrounding crowd grew louder.
Yugeon glanced at me and shook his head, confirming that the creature form hadn’t activated.
If it had, people would already be screaming and running away.
Calmly, I drew an X on his name on the list.
“Doesn’t seem like it’s him. Who’s next?”
“There are two in Branch C. One lives in the dorms, the other doesn’t. It’s not far, so should we head there today?”
As we discussed our next target, heavy footsteps pounded up the stairwell leading to the rooftop.
It seemed the Esper we had just targeted was furious and coming up to confront us.
“Time to go.”
“Yeah.”
Without warning, Yugeon grabbed me—one hand on my shoulder, the other under my knees—and lifted me into his arms.
I instinctively wrapped my arms around his neck as my body began to float.
Yugeon was using his telekinesis to carry me.
Effortlessly, we drifted toward the adjacent building.
Even though we had traveled this way before to find a good vantage point, I still wasn’t used to the position.
If it were nighttime, I could just transform and run myself.
But at my age, being carried in a princess hold like this was beyond embarrassing. My face heated up involuntarily.
“We’ve gone far enough, put me down. This position is uncomfortable.”
The Esper below us seemed to have lost our trail.
There was nothing obstructing my view, and being so close to the sky made the crimson sunset sting my eyes.
“It’s uncomfortable because you’re tensing up.”
Yugeon gazed at me quietly before adjusting his hold lightly. I relaxed as he said and leaned into his embrace.
“Hold on tight to my neck. You might fall.”
He chuckled, his throat vibrating. Being pressed against him, it felt like the false thirst that had persisted for some time was being satisfied.
The clear sound of his heartbeat assured me that it was right beside me. I didn’t know why it felt so comforting.
* * *
– “So? What happened?”
“He dropped it right in front of his feet. Looked like he used telekinesis to adjust the trajectory. Pretty impressive.”
– “Wow. He managed to hit the mark from that height? Yugeon’s really something.”
I was at home, eating a salad while talking to Emily on the phone. Our relationship had been a bit strained recently due to a misunderstanding, but chatting like this was something I had always been used to.
“But there’s something I wanted to ask you.”
– “What is it?”
I hadn’t called just to talk about everyday things today.
“My body feels strange lately. I keep feeling thirsty, like a Cremon suffering from blood deficiency. I can’t sleep properly, and every time I see people, my mouth waters.”
A bizarre change was happening in my body. At first, it just felt like mild thirst, but the symptoms had been getting worse.
– “Maybe it’s just that time again? You know, when you need to drink blood?”
“I drank Baek Yugeon’s blood last week. I’ve been like this ever since.”
– “What exactly are the symptoms?”
I listed them out for Emily in detail—insomnia, yawning, sneezing, anxiety, and nausea.
But the most prominent symptom was the constant thirst. Not for blood, but the false thirst—the craving just to feel the warmth of another person.
– “That’s really weird. You’re not lacking blood, so why would you feel thirsty? And you don’t even want to bite anyone?”
Emily sounded just as confused. It seemed like she didn’t have an answer either.
– “Honestly, aside from the thirst, this sounds like withdrawal.”
“Withdrawal?”
– “I’ve been quitting smoking lately, right? It’s not exactly the same, but it feels kind of similar.”
As soon as she said it, it made an unsettling amount of sense.
I had seen people quitting smoking before. They got anxious, irritable, and constantly fidgeted, stuffing their mouths with snacks out of restlessness.
“But I don’t smoke.”
– “Not cigarettes. Is there anything else you were doing regularly that you suddenly stopped?”
“Not really… I cut back on coffee because I wasn’t sleeping well. Could that be it?”
– “Maybe. But quitting coffee doesn’t usually make people thirsty. Does drinking it help?”
“It does. But that thirst isn’t the same as this thirst.”
The relief from drinking water or coffee was just the satisfaction of hydrating. But the Cremon’s thirst was something more—something primal and urgent.
If left unchecked for too long, it led to a state of confusion, pain, and disorientation—a kind of delirium where one’s own body felt foreign.
“Have you ever seen another Cremon go through this?”
– “Hmm… I don’t think so. But I have a Cremon friend who’s a doctor. Want me to ask them?”
“Would a doctor even understand this? They probably only know about human bodies.”
– “Nah, this guy is a Cremon intelligence-type. He’s really into medical research on our kind. He even dissects his own body for study.”
Just hearing that made my skin crawl.
“…Doesn’t that hurt?”
– “He says it’s fine with anesthesia. But honestly, he’s not normal, even for a Cremon.”
“Are all intelligence-types like that…?”
They had superior brains, but sometimes, their thought processes and desires were incomprehensible.
Always challenging the unknown, drawn to uncertainty.
There was someone in my life lately who fit that exact description.
As if reading my mind, Emily giggled.
– “You’re thinking about that Ian guy, aren’t you? I want to see his face. You said he was good-looking, right?”
“I never said that. I just said he looked normal.”
– “If you say he looks normal, that means he’s handsome.”
Emily always said I had high standards. I never thought much of it, but given how long I’d been around Awakeners at the Center, my aesthetic standards might have been unconsciously raised.
“He looks fine, but he’s insufferable when he opens his mouth.”
Emily burst into laughter.
Even though my parents were researchers, they still had common sense, ethics, and morality. But intelligence-types who gained their abilities through awakening… it made me wonder if something in their brains just broke in the process.
Did intelligence-types have to trade their moral compass for knowledge?
Thinking about Ian, the idea didn’t seem that far-fetched.
A while ago, I had sent a message to the phone number on the business card Ian gave me, telling him to stop watching me from afar.
He had told me to contact him if anything happened, yet even now, there was no reply.
Did he see it and ignore it? Or had he not checked it at all?
I just wanted him to say something.
Lately, Yugeon had been with me whenever I was outside, so I felt safe.
But whenever I was alone at home, an inexplicable unease crept in.
The feeling of being watched never left my mind.
The house felt unusually vast and cold.
I set my salad aside and went into my room.
With each passing day, I felt like I was turning into a coward.
* * *
I sat alone on a bench in front of the main building for the first time in a while.
The plaza was a space for Awakeners to relax, with a massive tree standing at its center.
Every branch of the Center had one of these trees.
We called them Guardian Trees, believing they protected their respective regions.
Creating a Guardian Tree was both simple and difficult.
By grinding the core of a gate boss into powder and spreading it into the soil before planting a tree, it would grow up to 50 meters tall in less than six months.
The ancients believed that these trees protected the land and that cutting them down would bring disaster.
But that was just superstition, with no scientific basis.
Back in the day, before people understood mana stones, they relied on myths like this.
Nowadays, the Center used mined mana stones to reinforce buildings and generate a disturbance field against gate waves.
So, while these trees had lost their purpose, cutting them down served no real benefit either.
Thus, they were simply left alone.
Regardless, on a warm, sunny day, a tree this large made for excellent shade.
Awakeners often ignored air-conditioned cafés and instead lounged around here to rest.
“Hello.”
I was looking at my tablet, deciding which suspect to track next, when someone greeted me.
“Mind if I sit here?”
It was an exceedingly polite tone.
I looked up.
It was Ian.
