TGIC Ch 1

Chapter 1

A blizzard rages.

The wind is so strong that it’s difficult even to stay upright, and I’ve long since lost all feeling in my hands and feet. Every breath I take feels like it’s slowly freezing my lungs.

The path I walk is a thorny road made of ice.

A wind that seems to carry all the chill in the world roars savagely. With each step forward, sharp frost cuts into my skin, and the blood that flows from the wounds turns into bright red crystals, scattering into the storm.

Even so, I pushed forward with everything I had.

The reason I couldn’t stop here was because, at the end of this damned road, my esper was waiting.

“Vasily Kairov!”

I screamed his name at the top of my lungs, toward the faint silhouette in the distance.

An esper who had locked himself within a massive glacier. When his rampage began, everything around him started turning into ice in an instant.

Even monsters couldn’t approach him and were frozen solid. And yet, seeing how I, his guide, was still alive, it was clear that some fragment of Vasily’s consciousness remained.

I clenched my teeth and forced myself to take another step forward.

Vasily Sergeyevich Kairov.

A Russian S-class esper and an ice-type ability user. From the very first day he was recruited to Korea, he had set a monstrous record by clearing dozens of open gates single-handedly. In a situation where the increasing number of gates was overwhelming, people hailed him as a savior, praising him like a ray of hope.

But reality was different.

Vasily was a cold-blooded man whose emotions had frozen over. Corpses always surrounded him, and wherever he stayed reeked of blood. The ice created by his fingertips destroyed everything indiscriminately.

He eliminated any obstacle in his way. Civilians, espers, even association personnel. Just counting those I knew of, dozens had died by his hand.

The only reason I had survived by his side until now was likely because I was the only guide capable of withstanding his waves. But to him, I was just a disposable tool. A cheap expendable that would eventually break.

Perhaps that’s why he always dragged me into the gates with him. He forced weapons into my hands and made me fight monsters, and when the raids were over, he would pressure me with merciless guiding. No matter how much I refused, fled, or resisted, the result was always my defeat.

I couldn’t understand him, and he couldn’t understand me. We would never understand each other for the rest of our lives and would only hate each other. I was certain of that.

As always, I accompanied him to attack another gate today, tense as ever.

The atmosphere was colder than usual. It wasn’t hard to guess why his mood had soured. It was because I had informed him that I would quit being his guide after this gate.

Vasily dismissed the words as if they were nonsense, but in his mind, he was surely recalling all the past attempts I had made to terminate our contract. Perhaps that’s why the ice attacking the monsters was unusually violent today.

As always, Vasily froze the entire gate in an instant and eventually defeated the boss located at the lowest level. I barely pulled myself together after exhausting myself fighting the monsters.

“…Kwon Gidam, Guide.”

A voice called softly from afar. His tone was even colder than usual.

“Are you really going to quit being my guide?”

Instead of answering, I slowly raised my head and looked at him. From my silence, Vasily read the answer and murmured quietly.

“I see. So that’s how it is.”

With those words, he fell silent. As he stood still, the waves around him began to flicker unstably. By the time I realized something was wrong, his rampage had already begun.

“Ugh…!”

The closer I got to Vasily, the more violent the storm became.

As his rampage began, a snowstorm raged with the force to freeze the entire world. It was fortunate that we were inside a gate. Had it not been isolated from reality, the entire Earth would have been frozen over.

I barely managed to reach him and collapsed to my knees. I couldn’t withstand the ever-intensifying cold, and it felt as if all sensation had left my body.

But I couldn’t give up after coming this far. I used the last of my strength to stretch my arm forward.

Tap. My fingertips touched the ice.

‘…I wonder if guiding is possible through ice. I can’t feel anything.’

I raised my head and thought.

If guiding worked, maybe Vasily would regain consciousness. With that faint hope, I looked at him, but the one frozen within the ice did not open his eyes.

“Ha… haha…”

A laugh escaped in despair. The ice at my fingertips began to engulf my arm, as if refusing to let me go. My legs were already frozen and couldn’t move, and my numbed hands no longer even felt the cold.

My body froze quickly. Starting from the fingertips, the ice crept up my arm and spread to my chest. The chill seeping deep into my lungs suffocated me. My blood vessels froze, and my heart gradually slowed.

My vision blurred. My body no longer obeyed me. Time itself seemed to freeze, and the world felt as if it had stopped.

“Vasily…”

In the fading consciousness, I thought.

If I could go back in time, I would never become that bastard’s guide again.

“Hngh!”

I gasped loudly and opened my eyes wide.

As soon as I regained consciousness, I first checked my body. I could clearly feel my once-frozen hands and feet. The snowstorm had stopped, and the cold seemed to have vanished. When I inhaled, warm air filled my lungs.

It was warm. As if spring had come.

‘Where am I?’

Remaining on my stomach, I cautiously raised my head.

“Ah…”

Though I was tense and alert, what entered my view was a familiar studio apartment. A mixture of relief and emptiness washed over me, and the strength drained from my body. But soon after, I felt a sense of wrongness.

When did I escape from the gate? There should have been no way to be rescued. And this was the studio apartment I lived in before awakening as a guide.

— Beep beep beep.

As my tension faded, a loud beeping next to me reached my ears. What I’d thought was a warning turned out to be my smartphone alarm.

I picked it up to silence the distracting noise and immediately noticed something was off. It was the model of phone I used years ago. And when I turned off the alarm, the lock screen displayed a date that was…

“Six years ago?”

My brows furrowed instinctively.

That’s when I realized. This was a dream. Waking up in my old apartment long after I’d moved out, the phone reverting to an old model, the strange date on the screen—everything was a hallucination I was having as I neared death.

It must be because of the wish I made right before losing consciousness. This was the kind of thing people called a life-flashing-before-your-eyes moment. Once I understood, all the strength left my body.

“Haha…”

A hollow laugh escaped. Even if I had vowed never to become Vasily’s guide again if I went back in time, nothing would change just because I acted differently in a dream.

I would die alongside Vasily inside that gate. Once I died in reality, this dream would naturally end, and my family would have to hold a funeral with an empty coffin, never even finding my body.

“So this is how I die after all…”

I muttered, brushing my trembling hand across my face.

Ha, my life was really pathetic. To suffer so much and die because I got paired with a lunatic like him.

Before awakening as a guide, I never imagined my life would turn out this way. I was a normal twenty-year-old Korean guy who had just started college. If I had known my life would fall apart after awakening, I would’ve done anything to avoid ever meeting Vasily.

“There’s no point in regretting it now.”

I was already Vasily’s exclusive guide, and I was currently dying inside a gate.

I always knew I would die because of that bastard someday. Vasily was a madman who insisted on dragging his guide into the gate, and I was the only guide who actually followed him inside. I could still remember the horrified looks people gave me whenever I entered a gate.

“But this dream is way too vivid…”

Lying on the bed, I glanced around the room. The laundry carelessly strewn about, the half-cleaned kitchen, even the worn-out pajamas I was wearing.

“…”

This is really strange.

I bolted upright.

No matter how realistic a dream, could it really be this vivid? Every item I used to own was in exactly the same place, and all my senses were unusually sharp. When I pinched my cheek, I actually felt pain.

Could it be… I really went back in time?

From a certain point, gates began appearing all over the world. Espers awakened with special abilities, and guides who kept them from losing control. Unscientific phenomena completely beyond the scope of modern technology became commonplace, so it wasn’t entirely impossible.

I furrowed my brow, deep in thought. No matter how crazy the world had become, no one had ever claimed to go back in time. After spending so long with Vasily, I had overheard plenty of secrets—I was sure of that. But if I was the first person to regress?

And there was something unique about me that no one else had.

I was the first guide to die inside a gate.