“Sunbae!”

　　“Ah…”

　　Right. The squirrel toy. So much for making it to Seogok in peace.

　　Monan slid the compartment door shut, dragged himself back to his seat, and sank down with one hand clamped around his throbbing head. He dug through his pocket, pulled out a small pill bottle, and chased two tablets with liquor.

　　Psycho… what a total psycho… I blew past my med time, and that’s why I threatened to beat and fuck Mu Jeongwon’s little brother too.

　　“Sorry for blurting stuff out when I didn’t even have your name right. Earlier, that big guy… he said your name was Yoon something. Tell me again!”

　　“…It’s Yoon Monan.”

　　“Yoon, huh… Wait, you’re not from the Namgyeong Yoon Clan, are you?”

　　“…Just call me Dog Poop. That’d be better.”

　　“Is that a nickname? Like, the kind only close friends get to use? Sunbae, does that mean we’re close now?”

　　Monan honestly had no idea anymore. He could beat down a guy like Mu Guwon without blinking, but with kids like An Beom, he got weirdly soft. Those huge, shining eyes were kind of terrifying, actually. Where the hell did you have to grow up for them to get that big?

　　Even with Monan barely responding, An Beom chattered on just fine. It was all spectacularly useless information, like the makeup of his family or what his hometown was famous for. Before long, he even pulled out a stuffed animal and introduced it as his friend. The grubby, ragged rabbit doll had been squeezed and handled so much that the outer fabric was worn thin.

　　“This is my comfort toy. His name’s Chichi. My dad bought him for me…”

　　“Hey, An Beom.”

　　“Yeah?”

　　“How old are you again… and you’re still carrying around a comfort toy?”

　　“Twenty. But, sunbae, what is your venerable age…?”

　　“Save ‘venerable age’ for actual old men. We’re only five years apart.”

　　“Whoa. No way. Your record’s so impressive I figured you’d be way older. You’re younger than I thought.”

　　“…Hey, since you’re younger than me, I’m saying this like you’re my little brother. That Chichi or Chacha thing—if the other squad members catch you with it, they’ll mock you to hell and back. Hide it or toss it.”

　　“Ah… I know. A grown adult with a toy… yeah, it’s childish. But my dad gave Chichi to me right before he died…”

　　Dammit. Every time I open my mouth, some buried family sob story crawls out. How is a guy supposed to say anything when it’s this terrifying?

　　Monan groaned, then shut his eyes and pretended to pass out. He figured the kid would stop yapping if no one was listening… but whatever the hell was wrong with An Beom, he spent the next two hours narrating the entire heart-wrenching saga of Chichi to Monan, who was desperately fake-sleeping.

　　At several points, Monan genuinely almost blacked out, only to jolt awake at the wet little snuffles of An Beom sucking back tears. By the time they reached Seogok, he knew the kid so intimately he could’ve written his biography. This kind of stress was absolutely terrible for Monan, a patient with severe mental illness.

　　By the time they passed through the security gate at Seogok Station and arrived at the Center, Monan was in exactly the right mood to welcome some bastard picking a fight. He couldn’t exactly beat up small, fragile An Beom, so a sturdy punching bag like Mu Guwon would’ve been the cherry on top.

　　“NOO! Chichi!”

　　But disasters kept detonating, one after another, in all the wrong places. First, An Beom, who’d said his dream was to join the Rescue Corps, was suddenly assigned to the Combat Corps right after the induction ceremony. And the maddening incidents just kept coming.

　　For starters, despite his dazzling record, Monan had been stripped of the right to choose his team freely because of his long leave of absence and psychiatric history. Even setting that aside, of all places, he was assigned to Combat Corps Division 2 Team 7. The very team where three team leaders and five members had been beaten half to death by Mu Jeongwon’s little brother. To make matters worse, he had the misfortune of joining it alongside An Beom, Chichi’s hyungie.

　　Assigned to the Combat Corps, An Beom wailed the entire time about how much he hated it, then finally managed a smile once he found out he was on the same team as Monan. Watching him, Monan forced the corners of his mouth upward. Having both Chichi’s hyungie and the fanatic on his team was already enough to make him lose his mind. And now they wanted him to be the team leader on top of it.

　　The reason was obvious. Put an esper in the team leader’s chair and the fanatic, Mu Guwon, would just turn another one into a vegetable, so they’d been hunting for a guide to lead the team. And the unaffiliated guide Monan happened to fit the bill.

　　So late that evening, Monan headed for the barracks where his assigned team lived, hauling a full load of accumulated exhaustion. The entire way there, An Beom kept sniveling and fiddling with Chichi’s rabbit ears. He said it was the only thing that calmed him down. And of course, that was exactly when the Combat Corps Division 2 esper bastards, prowling for prey to use as cheap entertainment, caught him in the act.

　　“Hng, give him back! Please don’t! Sunbaes!”

　　Naturally, Chichi got snatched away.

　　Chichi was being used as a soccer ball, bouncing in every direction. An Beom chased after him, sobbing his eyes out as he scrambled up and down the barracks hallway. Watching the entire scene unfold, Monan’s handsome face wilted like a flower left too long in stale vase water.

　　“Dog Poop sunbae… Chichi… hng…”

　　“…Ha.”

　　How many times have I sighed today? Monan gave up counting. Since they had to work as one team anyway, he needed to make something crystal clear to An Beom. With a spine that weak, the kid was guaranteed to die on his very first mission. Monan got a firm grip on the crying kid—who was basically a squeaky squirrel toy—and calmed him down first. Then he spoke clearly, putting weight behind every single syllable.

　　“An Beom, Chichi isn’t what matters. Let him go now. Focus on your training and keep your head screwed on straight. That’s the only way you survive here.”

　　Monan gripped An Beom’s shoulders and settled the energy surging wildly through him. Every so often, An Beom glanced toward where Chichi was, but the guiding must have had some real effect, because he stopped crying. If it had ended there, it probably would’ve been a genuinely decent day.

　　If only someone hadn’t suddenly erupted in a burst of flame at the far end of the hallway, right where the Chichi soccer match was in full swing, and started screaming his head off.

　　“Hey, you fucking bastards! Why the hell are you raising hell outside my room in the middle of the goddamn night!”

　　Everything genuinely could’ve been fine. Right up until Monan realized the star of that commotion was Gyeong Haeguk, a third-year esper at the very bottom of the Division 2 Team 7 roster.

　　Dongsan Gyeong Clan. Gyeong Haeguk.

　　Dongsan, the Gyeong stronghold, was a land of brutal, jagged mountains, and the people packed in there had earned themselves a nickname: bandits. Rough, pugnacious, and hopeless at playing the game, the Gyeongs might’ve been one of the five clans on the Peninsula Council, but they were far better suited to swinging axes at chunks of wood than dabbling in politics.

　　Monan recalled the special note on Gyeong Haeguk he’d seen through his team-leader access privileges. As if living up to the reputation of the so-called bandit clan of Dongsan, a single phrase had been written there: Intermittent explosive disorder.

　　“Fuck, what is this nasty rag of a doll?”

　　In his first year as an esper, this guy had flown into some extreme rage and used his flame ability to burn his own left cornea in an act of self-harm. As a result, he had completely lost sight in that eye. With his depth perception wrecked by the disability, Haeguk had grown more and more savage, gone out into the field, committed pointless arson, and was currently on disciplinary probation.

　　And so, locked up in Seogok Center, Haeguk, instead of fixing his temper, had teamed up with fellow member Mu Guwon to beat the other team members… and, claiming he couldn’t stand the sight of a single hair on those annoying bastards, had even set fire to the barracks. If he hadn’t been from one of the five corrupt clans, he’d obviously have been a lock for dishonorable discharge.

　　…If I put in for leave again, would they grant it?

　　Team leader of a team with these three. Mu Guwon, An Beom, Gyeong Haeguk. If the Mother Goddess really existed, this shouldn’t be allowed. For Monan, who’d lost his twin brothers in battle and then spent three years in long-term psychiatric care wrestling with post-traumatic stress disorder, this was the worst-case scenario.

　　When he returned to duty, he’d sworn that as far as his power allowed, he would kill every last one of the Trances who had killed his brothers. Then, once he’d killed as many Trances as he could, Monan planned to kill himself.

　　He had no desire to keep dragging around pointless chains like the Namgyeong Yoon Clan or the family name, and no desire to be haunted by the ghost called guilt over his dead brothers. Life was agony to him, which made death salvation. Paradise. For now, though, that paradise had to be deferred.

　　“Hey, you fucking pieces of shit, I asked what this nasty rag of a doll is. Fuck, whose is it!”

　　“…It’s Gyeong Haeguk!”

　　“Whichever bastard showed up to the Combat Corps lugging a doll, I’m roasting your head. Get out here right now.”

　　Deferred, at least, until he finished dutifully playing team leader for this ragtag Combat Corps outfit.

　　While Monan was pulling himself together, the first half of the Chichi soccer match ended in a pathetic anticlimax. The espers from the other teams went pale at the sight of Haeguk’s rampage and started slinking away one by one. Of course, in their place, the second half of Chichi soccer, starring Haeguk in a one-man show, was now unfolding right before his eyes.

　　What if, carrying on like this, he torched not just a cornea but this whole place to ash? Monan himself had no attachment to living, so fine. But what crime had An Beom committed?

　　His father had been a fisherman, and when An Beom was five, he’d been hunted down and killed by a Trance that had turned into a sea monster. The kid had said it ate at him that his father had been devoured by a Trance, that they couldn’t even recover the body, that they’d been too poor to give him a proper funeral. There was no way Monan could let him burn to death here.

　　With the skill Monan had possessed as a guide three years ago, he obviously could have subdued Haeguk and set his mind straight without any direct contact. But now, with his ability greatly dulled by medication, he couldn’t guide without touch. If he didn’t take the meds, he couldn’t function in daily life, so he had to choose, and the authorities had advised him to stay on the medication.

　　Granted, it only knocked him down from genius to ordinary, but how was he supposed to guide Haeguk in a situation where getting close meant getting flame-grilled?

　　Eyes rolled back in his head, Haeguk gave Chichi one last kick, then stomped off down the opposite hallway, huffing and snorting. Monster of a bastard. How the hell has he held out this long without turning into a Trance? Monan snatched the bawling An Beom up by the scruff of the neck with one hand and grabbed their scattered luggage with the other, yanked open the door to Room 307 in a single motion, and went in.

　　It was the shared quarters of Combat Corps Division 2 Team 7, the very place Haeguk had come bursting out of earlier. There was no one inside.

　　“Chichi—!”