AAGULT Ch 118

Chapter 118

Aiden shot up from his seat with a loud screech of his chair. Then, before Jaeha could say anything, he rushed out of the meeting room as if fleeing. The door to the meeting room slammed shut with a loud thud a moment later.

“Uh… A-Aiden-ssi?”

Jaeha also jumped to his feet. Should he go after him? Or not? But the break would be over soon, and the meeting would resume.

It hadn’t been long since the conflict between the Association President and Aiden had begun. Jaeha was worried that Aiden might get targeted because of this incident, so after a brief hesitation, he yanked open the meeting room door and followed after him. A long hallway stretched out before his eyes. Aiden had moved so quickly that he was already at the end of the hallway, turning and heading down the stairs.

“Aiden-ssi!”

Jaeha hurried his pace. At first, he took long strides to catch up quickly, but soon realized he wouldn’t reach him in time and began to run. When he reached the stairs and grabbed the railing, Aiden was already going down.

“Aiden-ssi! The meeting starts again in five minutes!”

Jaeha called out in vain, but the sound of Aiden descending the stairs did not stop. Even in that moment, like crumbs left behind by Hansel and Gretel, the fragments of Aiden’s thoughts fell into Jaeha’s mind.

[This is bad.]

[What do I do?]

[I feel like throwing up. I’m dizzy…]

It felt like his heart dropped. Was Aiden ill? Jaeha tried to rush down the stairs to catch up, but Aiden had already gotten too far for his thoughts to be readable, and the distance could not be closed. In the end, Jaeha gave up and called out loudly.

“You have to come back soon!”

Come back soon! Soon! Soon! His flustered cry echoed down the stairwell like a reverberation. With a sliver of hope, Jaeha gripped the railing tightly and called out for him somewhere below, but there was no answer.

“Haah…”

Eventually, Jaeha let out a deep sigh. The suddenness of the situation left him dumbfounded, his shoulders slumping. That could only be described as running away.

Scratching his cheek, he turned back toward the meeting room. It was on the 15th floor, and somehow he had come down to the 10th. He had to go back up.

And just as Jaeha turned around,

“……”

“……”

He found a foreigner standing there, staring at him blankly with the stairwell door still open.

[Ist dieser Mann Esper von Aiden?]

“Is this man an Esper from Aiden?”

And then Jaeha realized something he had never known even after awakening as an Esper.

Right. Foreigners must think in foreign languages too.

And for the record, Jaeha’s English was limited to something like, “Hello. How are you?”

Suddenly struck with a foreign language anxiety he didn’t even know he had, his vision wavered slightly.

It turned out the man was an Esper named Lukas, dispatched from Germany. Like Jaeha, he was also a mental-type Esper and had been assigned to Team 3 for the same gate mission.

The only reason Jaeha was able to understand this was, fortunately, because the man was wearing a translator device.

“Ich muss in 5 Minuten an einem Meeting teilnehmen, aber ich habe mich verlaufen. Ich weiß nicht wo der Besprechungsraum ist. Ich habe sogar meinen Manager verloren!”

“I have to attend a meeting in 5 minutes, but I got lost. I don’t know where the meeting room is. I even lost my manager!”

-5 minutes. Meeting room. Lost. Manager lost! Missing child.

Though the device provided a translation, it came out like that, so it was clear the translator wasn’t very high-quality.

“Ah… I know where it is. I’m attending that meeting too! I’ll take you there.”

-Translation not possible. Please speak louder.

“Uh, um… Meeting room! I know! I’ll take you!”

Yelling in broken, simple words made Jaeha feel a little stupid. But the Esper seemed to understand and nodded with a bright expression. The handsome blond man smiled warmly, reminding Jaeha of a golden retriever.

So, as they climbed the stairs together, they had a brief, light conversation. Since it was rare for Jaeha to talk to a foreigner, he had been nervous at first, but he gradually relaxed and even smiled faintly.

The translator, too, began picking up on his speech more clearly without needing him to speak loudly, as if it had some kind of self-learning gate byproduct embedded inside.

“Wow, you’re 28? Same age as Aiden… I’m 26.”

-You are handsome.

…Sometimes the translations came out oddly, causing Jaeha to clear his throat in embarrassment.

In any case, by the time they reached the 14th floor, the gentle-looking man opened his mouth to ask:

“Du bist ein Esper von Aiden, oder?”

-You’re Aiden’s Esper, right?

“Uh…”

The sudden question put a damper on Jaeha’s previously lifted mood. How should he answer that? Well, they were scheduled to be paired together, so he nodded honestly. The man responded with a sympathetic frown.

-Jealous. S-rank guiding. But you two—beautiful love. I support.

“…We’re not exactly dating. It’s more like I like him one-sidedly.”

As they exited the stairwell and began walking down the corridor, Jaeha laughed awkwardly. Objectively assessing and putting into words the state of their relationship was more painful than expected. But he had been so preoccupied lately trying to figure out the strange changes in Aiden’s mood that it was bearable.

-That can’t be true.

They stopped walking mid-hallway. The man looked at Jaeha with an expression of disbelief. Jaeha, who had also stopped near the meeting room, turned around to look at him.

“Yes?”

-I saw Aiden’s guide when he came to Germany. He wasn’t like that.

“Ah… it’s probably because of the gate this time.”

There were things like how he didn’t want to enter this gate, or how, as a child, he barely survived entering a double-gate and became sensitive about related topics… All of that was confidential and too close to someone’s weakness to disclose, so Jaeha offered a vague excuse. He had other guesses too, but didn’t see the need to say them out loud.

Then the man tilted his head. He stared closely at Jaeha and asked,

-You’re a mental-type Esper, right?

“Yes.”

-What’s your ability?

Should he say it? He hesitated briefly, but since they were about to enter the same gate and attend the same meeting, he answered honestly.

“I can… read people’s thoughts.”

The man flinched.

-Did you hear me admiring your looks earlier?

“…No. I don’t understand German.”

-Have you ever read weird or inappropriate thoughts from people on the subway? And then heard them get all guilty and think, ‘No way someone here can read minds, right? Nah.’ right after?

“…Yes.”

-Damn it!

“……”

He was quite the character. Jaeha stared at him curiously, but the man avoided his gaze with a whistle. Still, he couldn’t block the thoughts, the memories, flowing into Jaeha’s mind. You know how it is—when you try not to think of something, you end up thinking about it even more.

So Jaeha ended up reading the man’s series of minor embarrassing moments.

Like when he tried to buy a drink from a vending machine but didn’t have enough coins, so he awkwardly looked around before crouching down to feel under the machine. Or when he didn’t know how to use equipment at a gym he went to alone and tried to secretly look up a YouTube video, only for a weird ad to blast loudly and draw everyone’s attention. Or when he set up a camera on timer to take a photo alone, only to trip and fall while running into position…

Jaeha felt genuinely sorry. He shut his eyes in hopes of pretending he didn’t see anything, but that didn’t stop him from reading them. What was already read couldn’t be unread.

-…You read it, didn’t you?

“…I’m sorry…”

-……

[Ich will einfach nur weg……]

He had no idea what that meant, but it probably translated to something like “I want to disappear from embarrassment.” The man groaned with his face buried in his hands, but surprisingly, he recovered quickly and lifted his head. When their eyes met, he smiled sheepishly and said:

-The conversation kind of got sidetracked… but I can read people’s… um, feelings or instincts, you could say.

“Oh, really?”

Jaeha already knew he was a mental-type Esper, but he hadn’t expected him to share his ability in such detail on their first meeting, so he was a little surprised.

-It’s sort of like a lie detector. I don’t know how useful that’ll be in this gate, but anyway.

He tilted his head, rolled his eyes, then spoke again.

-I don’t intend to recklessly judge or speak aloud about others’ emotions… Um, and I have no intention of meddling in anyone’s conflict either.

He paused. After checking their surroundings to see if anyone was coming, Lukas lowered his head and whispered to Jaeha. The sharp pronunciation of German paired with the indifferent tone of the delayed mechanical translation stirred Jaeha’s heart.

-He’s clearly afraid of being hated by you.

Jaeha denied it inwardly.

Because that was the kind of thought only someone in a vulnerable position—someone like him—would have.