Episode 44: I Don’t Believe, I Don’t Buy, I Don’t Do (15)

Three hours had passed since Juyul neatly organized his thoughts and moved forward with renewed clarity.

Meanwhile, Sodam had finally managed to collect her scattered wits, though she was barely standing as she staggered through the door of her apartment.

The very first thing she did upon entering?

She took off Juyul’s jacket, carefully hung it up… and then proceeded to pull every single expensive piece of clothing from her wardrobe, piling them onto the floor.

“Why is there so much?! I already got rid of a ton, but it looks even worse now!”

Of course, the number of clothes hadn’t changed. What had changed was her perception of them.

She had laughed off the idea as absurd, but now, it was undeniable—the ridiculous truth about the Association staff member had revealed itself in the most ridiculous way possible.

“I mean, sure, technically he is a staff member… since he’s an Esper. But what the hell does that have to do with me?!”

Admitting the truth one moment, then immediately rejecting it the next—this mental tug-of-war was exhausting, and so was her body.

Her head started to throb. Groaning, Sodam pressed her fingers against her temples before turning her attention to her previously overturned desk. She hastily propped it back up, grabbed an empty notebook, and flipped it open with a dramatic swish.

“Alright, let’s get some facts straight. What the hell even happened today?”

She clicked her pen and began scribbling.

– Baek Juyul returned a full week earlier than scheduled.
– Instead of Han Dalam, I was summoned for guiding.
– …Baek Juyul seems, uh… very unhinged.

She tapped her pen against the paper, unsure how to properly describe Juyul’s off behavior. In the end, she just wrote his name and stabbed the page with a few aggressive dots.

It was then that a faint ache bloomed deep inside her.

She knew exactly why.

Her cheeks instantly flushed red, and before she knew it, she was rubbing them furiously.

Her body felt ice-cold, yet her face and the nape of her neck burned.

She had fully intended to only hold hands today. That was the plan.

But when she saw him after two weeks, the feeling of relief had been stronger than she’d expected. And somehow, that led to… everything else.

Now, just thinking about it made her remember the feel of his hands on her—

“Nope! Absolutely not!”

Sodam slapped her own cheeks, hard.

A small cough escaped her lips as she forced her mind back on track.

Normally, she would’ve been dazed for much longer after something like this. But she pulled herself together quicker than usual, because she didn’t have the luxury of getting distracted.

Frowning, she pressed her pen against her lips and muttered,

“…Is this really okay?”

Juyul returning a full week earlier than in the original timeline?

That, she could at least understand.

As minor as it was, she had been guiding him with everything she had.

In the original story, after Maeng-so-and-so Guide died, Juyul had barely held on, teetering on the brink of complete corruption.

And despite that, he still managed to carry out everything.

So with Maeng-so-and-so—aka, her— still alive and actively guiding him, an early return was actually reasonable.

Even if he hadn’t completed his mission, it was possible he had returned to Korea just for guiding.

“The real idiot here is me for not seeing that coming. Ugh, I was too busy obsessing over my damn debt…”

Just thinking about the mountain of debt on her shoulders—and Baek Juyul—was enough to make her forehead throb.

Pressing down on the wrinkles forming between her brows, Sodam sighed and crossed out the note about his early return.

– Baek Juyul returned over a month earlier than scheduled.
– Instead of Han Dalam, I was summoned for guiding.
– …Baek Juyul seems very, very unhinged.

“The real problem is these two.”

The fact that she had been summoned instead of Han Dalam… that had led to that.

“I seriously thought I’d never have to go all the way again…”

Sodam’s tiny apartment—no, her single rented room—had been without gas for ages, yet her body still felt unusually warm.

Her predictions were usually spot-on, assuming no major variables threw things off.

And in this case, her logic should have been correct. Juyul had always talked about taking responsibility, but when it came down to it, he had never actually touched her below the waist.

But what she hadn’t accounted for was the unexpected variable of Juyul coming to terms with his own feelings.

Now, her predictions were completely useless.

She fanned her burning face with both hands, trying to push away the memory of his body, before taking a deep breath to steady herself.

“Baek Juyul came back a week early, which means Han Dalam didn’t have enough time to build up credibility. That’s the real issue here.”

If Sodam hadn’t bothered studying this world after possessing this body, she wouldn’t have been able to make sense of any of this.

According to the “common knowledge” she had dug up, newly awakened Guides were required to work for the Association for a set period.

The duration varied from person to person, but the average was three weeks.

After that, they could choose their own path—join a private guild, become an official Association employee, work as a freelance Guide, or even give up guiding altogether and return to civilian life.

In other words, the three-week period was essentially a trial phase where the Association observed and evaluated the new Guides to determine whether they were trustworthy.

“No matter how many non-disclosure agreements they make people sign, there’s no way they’d hand Baek Juyul over to a rookie who just walked in yesterday. Fine, that part makes sense.”

“But what doesn’t make sense is that crazy line he dropped about me never taking off my heat packs again!”

BANG! CRASH—!

“Oh, for f—this damn desk!”

She had tried to reinforce it with extra books, but having already collapsed once before, the desk crumbled again under her frustrated punch.

Watching her notebook slip uselessly onto the floor, Sodam let out a long, exhausted sigh. At this point, she couldn’t even bring herself to care anymore.

Slumping back into her tiny chair, she muttered to herself.

“Why? Why did he say that?”

Her eyes rolled lazily toward the ceiling as she replayed the sequence of events leading up to it.

He had asked why she was waiting in the guiding prep room, so she told him.

He had worried about the quality of his guiding, so she reassured him.

Somehow, she had ended up mentioning how she almost died and how she suspected Samuyeon.

So now, all the reasons to suspect her of being a spy or some kind of alien lifeform were completely gone.

And yet… somehow, things escalated that far.

And when she finally came to her senses, Juyul had already disappeared after spouting that completely insane line.

At what point had he gotten so offended that he decided to say something so unhinged?

“…Seriously, what the hell? Was it because I kept talking back? If that pissed him off, then maybe he shouldn’t have started the conversation in the first place!”

Sodam was deep in thought when a certain possibility struck her.

Her eyes widened.

If—if—her theory was right, she was going to hate herself for opening her big mouth.

She hesitated, then hesitated again, before finally whispering in a tiny voice,

“…Could it be because of Samuyeon? But come on, the guy’s the protagonist. He’s a good person. Would Juyul really decide to ‘protect’ me by demanding we meet every day just because of that…”

She trailed off.

Because yes. Yes, he absolutely would.

The moment she said it out loud, she felt a sharp, stabbing sensation in her chest.

She wanted to scream until her vocal cords snapped, but unfortunately, she lived in a rental unit with thin walls.

So instead, she settled for grabbing fistfuls of her own hair and yanking.

She shook her head so violently that the room spun. It felt eerily similar to the dizziness she’d experienced after guiding Juyul earlier.

And at the same time, the memories flooded back—his hands wiping her down, his body pressing so tightly against hers that she could hardly breathe.

And his eyes…

Not just hungry for her body, but gentle in a way that didn’t make sense.

She retraced her thoughts, going back to when she first mentioned Samuyeon.

His reaction at that moment.

The way his entire demeanor had flipped in an instant.

The way his expression and tone had twisted when he mistook Samuyeon for her lover.

All of it jumbled together in her mind, swirling into one frustrating mess.

“What does he even want from me…?”

If she ignored the fact that she was a possessor and Juyul was the original protagonist, then the answer was painfully obvious.

If she removed all subject names and described the situation to her past self, she would have answered without hesitation:

“Oh, that guy’s totally into you. He’s already fallen, no doubt about it! He’s even getting jealous—it’s over for him!”

But the moment she inserted Possessor Maeng Sodam and Protagonist Baek Juyul back into the equation, the whole situation warped into something incomprehensible.

She had already thrown out the assumption that “he’ll act according to the original novel” the moment his return schedule got messed up.

Something as small as her going all-out for guiding had drastically altered the main storyline.

She no longer had the right to claim, “That’s not how things happened in the original!”

“Still… his personality should be the same. Unless I suddenly develop superhuman endurance and go through hell to ‘prove’ myself, Baek Juyul shouldn’t be opening up this easily.”

She absentmindedly rubbed her arm beneath the thick layers of clothing.

There, on her forearm, was the round brand from her first oath, accompanied by three or four fine cracks trailing up her skin.

Whatever restrictions they had placed on her the first time must have been so extreme that the Association never forced her into any additional non-disclosure agreements.

And honestly? Sodam had zero intention of voluntarily agreeing to another one.

No matter how much she had loved Juyul as a character in Nasfer, her own safety was the top priority.

“There’s no way he’d fall for a Guide with no determination, no affection, and who only cares about money. Yeah, impossible.”

Sodam, of course, was completely unaware that she had already been crushed under the weight of her own conscience, prompting her to voluntarily offer Juyul proper guiding.

Not to mention, showing up regularly for guiding sessions—without fail—was already a testament to her perseverance.

To her, it wasn’t effort or determination—it was simply following the flow of daily life.

And she had completely overlooked the fact that the number of times she had guided Juyul far surpassed the so-called determined Han Dalam.

Oblivious to these rather crucial details, Sodam continued to wrestle with pointless thoughts.

Right now, her mind was fixated on the idea that Juyul liked her.

Not necessarily in a romantic sense, but at the very least, he clearly had a favorable impression of her.

Just look at the expensive pile of clothes and the freshly applied heat packs—his goodwill was practically overflowing.

If she completely erased Samuyeon from the equation (because that guy was a walking malware infection), then wasn’t she just filling Han Dalam’s role in the original?

“Hmmm… but I don’t remember him ever caring this much about Han Dalam.”

Han Dalam—an E-rank rookie Guide with good overall reviews and a solid reputation within the Association.

And Maeng Sodam—an F-rank with a terrible reputation, numerous enemies, and practically zero potential.

Logically, if Juyul were going to openly show trust in someone—going so far as to specifically request them in front of others—it would make far more sense if it were the latter.

Even the staff member who picked her up today… Given a little more experience, they definitely wouldn’t have acted so politely next time.

Because an SSS-rank Esper and an F-rank Guide? No one in their right mind would take that combination seriously.

“…Still, it was pretty funny seeing everyone in the guiding room staring at me with their jaws on the floor.”

For a moment, she understood why people were so obsessed with Cinderella stories—it really was a ridiculous sight.

But Sodam had never cared for Cinderella.

She had always preferred the Ice Queen—a woman who used her power to carve out her own success.

Of course, her own power was far too tiny and insignificant to make her an Ice Queen, but her ambitions? Those were certainly big enough.

And the perfect way to soothe her bitter mood?

There was only one cure.

[Deposit: 50,000,000 KRW]
Esper & Guide Association → Personal Account (1999)

A sum so large it wasn’t just satisfying—it was life-saving.

Like a miracle tonic that instantly erased all stress and worries.

She stared at the numbers for so long it was a wonder her phone screen didn’t wear down.

Then, finally, a smirk tugged at her lips.

“Hah… Maybe I looked too pitiful after struggling so much. Should I pile on the pity act and slather on some luxury pearl lip balm next time?”

Sodam was completely at ease now.

All burdens, all doubts—gone.

She exhaled, leaning back in her chair as she murmured,

“Eh, there’s no way he’d call me again after paying me this much for a single guiding session. He’s gotta have some concept of budgeting… right?”

 

 

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