TGIC Ch 12

Chapter 12

So it really is Vasily, after all. True to his monstrous reputation—having cleared dozens of gates in a single day the moment he was recruited to Korea—the gate was swiftly conquered. I glanced at my phone to check the time. Barely an hour seemed to have passed…

I quietly checked the situation outside. It seemed Vasily hadn’t come out yet.

Since an S-class Esper like Vasily had gone in, he must have handled most of the beasts alone. That would mean there were no injuries, and no one would be requesting temporary guiding either.

If I just guided Vasily, today’s work would be over. I’d hold him for a moment and send him off quickly. Then I’d be heading home, too.

“P-Please, I need guiding…”

Just as I clenched my fists and made up my mind, an Esper came into the waiting room asking to be guided. I glanced over, thinking it was Vasily, but it was a face I’d never seen before.

I quickly turned my gaze away. I’d need to conserve my strength for when I guided Vasily soon.

“Um… I think my matching rate is low… Is there anyone who can guide me?”

But it seemed the temporary guide who volunteered didn’t match with the Esper. I glanced at the other guides, who were clearly annoyed, and let out a long sigh.

I had planned to save my energy… but since Vasily hadn’t come out of the gate yet, and I was the youngest here—well, I had no choice.

“I’ll do it.”

Reluctantly volunteering, I stood up.

As I walked closer, I saw that the Esper was breathing heavily. He wasn’t injured, but he really did seem to need guiding.

From the looks of it, he must’ve already been in bad shape before entering the gate… Surprised he managed to hold on until the end. I held his hand briefly to test the connection, and thankfully, it seemed we were a match.

“Our match seems good. I’ll guide you.”

After sending the lingering temporary guide away, I held the Esper briefly in my arms. Judging by how quickly his waves were stabilizing, he would probably calm down soon if I guided him just a little before Vasily arrived.

Or so I thought…

‘…This bastard.’

A hand slid around my waist and began groping me persistently. Worse, he even tried slipping his hand under my clothes.

Sometimes, Espers in a bad state would lose themselves like this during guiding. I held back and held back, but as I turned my head to issue a warning, I saw him trying to press his lips on mine. My fist moved before I knew it.

Thwack!

Crash!

With a sharp sound, the Esper fell backward. The loud crash drew everyone’s attention.

The moment I caused an incident, a rush of regret hit me. What if the furious Esper jumped up and came at me? Instinctively, I braced myself for another attack—but the Esper didn’t move at all.

Looking closer, I realized he was unconscious. Of all places, I must’ve hit a bad spot.

“Ha…”

Looks like it landed squarely on the face. Damn it…

This was already turning into a headache. Strictly speaking, I wasn’t the one who caused it, so it probably wouldn’t escalate too badly, but the thought of having to deal with complaints already made my head throb.

Just then, I heard a voice from behind me.

“I was going to help…”

I turned around hastily at the cold, sunken tone.

“Seems like you didn’t need my help after all.”

Vasily.

He faintly lifted the corners of his mouth in a smile, but his gaze—fixed on the unconscious Esper lying on the floor—was icy enough to freeze the air.

Frozen at the sight of Vasily’s cold expression, I stood still as he walked past me and grabbed the Esper’s hair. The unconscious Esper was lifted limp in the air.

Blood dripped from the Esper’s nose. I averted my gaze slightly.

“So, what should I do with him?”

“Huh? What do you mean…?”

“Should I just freeze his head? Or smash it?”

Hearing his casual tone as he posed the question sent a wave of cognitive dissonance through me. It took me three full seconds to process what he’d just said—and then I was horrified.

“W-What are you saying…?”

I quickly looked around, my face stiff. Thankfully, the noise caused by the Esper getting punched and falling had stirred up enough commotion that no one else seemed to have heard Vasily.

I rushed over to him and spoke in a quiet voice.

“Are you insane? There are people watching—are you seriously thinking of killing him?”

“Oh, it’s because of the people? Don’t worry. No one will hear about what happened here. I’ll just mark it down as a death inside the gate.”

The way Vasily casually treated people like objects and spoke so nonchalantly brought back old memories.

He was right. Vasily had committed countless murders, and yet not once had any of it come to light. The Association and the government had thoroughly covered it up themselves.

Just like he’d said now, most of the victims he killed were listed as accidental deaths inside the gate. With the annual death toll inside gates steadily rising, no one questioned the deaths of Espers supposedly killed by monsters.

If this kept going, I was sure someone would die. No—Vasily might kill the Esper and then slaughter all the temporary guides here to cover it up.

I hastily grabbed Vasily’s arm and tried to stop him.

“That’s enough! Nothing serious happened, so just let it go!”

“Nothing serious? From what I saw—”

“Put him down! Now!”

“How disappointing.”

Thud.

Vasily let go. The Esper, released from his grasp, fell limply to the floor.

Haa…

I felt a bit of relief that I had at least prevented a murder, but then I saw Vasily staring at the Esper like he was vermin. His silvery-gray eyes had gone stone cold.

Yes, this was who Vasily really was. A walking killing machine who regarded human lives as nothing more than ants. I had briefly forgotten that, lulled by our recent civil conversations. But he was not like me. He was no different from the monsters inside the gates.

That’s why I had gone out of my way to avoid Vasily. Even as his guide, I had always been nothing more than a disposable tool to him.

“Well, we can deal with this later… Want to grab dinner together?”

Smack.

Before I realized it, I had slapped his hand away. In that moment, the Vasily from my memories overlapped with the one standing in front of me. When he reached out to touch me, a chill crawled up my spine, and my body reacted instinctively.

“…Guide Kwon Gidam?”

Vasily seemed a little surprised that I had brushed off his hand. But I was too busy trying to calm my trembling body to care about his reaction.

I barely managed to speak.

“Don’t touch me.”

My voice trembled pathetically. If the Vasily from six years later had heard it, he’d probably have sneered with a cold look.

“I’d appreciate it if you stopped coming to me for guiding as well.”

I couldn’t even meet his eyes as I said it.

Silence fell, and the atmosphere grew increasingly tense around me. I could feel a chill slowly radiating from Vasily’s body. I stiffened and swallowed hard. It was a sign that his mood was sinking.

After a long silence, he asked,

“Why are you angry?”

“…”

“I don’t understand why you’re mad at me, Guide Kwon.”

Of course he didn’t. He probably never even knew what it was like to have normal human emotions.

I had learned that in the six years I served as Vasily’s guide. No matter how much I tried to change him, his cruel nature never disappeared.

Just like his ability to freeze everything without mercy, Vasily’s personality was cold and brutal. He didn’t feel sympathy or compassion. He couldn’t empathize with others’ pain. As if he lived in this world completely alone, he’d always drawn a line between himself and others.

After returning to the past, I had foolishly let myself hope while having normal conversations with him. Since I’d already experienced him once, maybe I could change the Vasily from before our match. That’s what I had thought…

But now I realized it had all been wishful thinking.

The man standing before me was one who could take lives without blinking. I could see the Vasily from six years in the future overlapping with him—the one who froze everyone who got in his way without hesitation. I wanted to believe he wasn’t like that, but that was the true Vasily.

Unable to meet his eyes, I forced myself to stay calm and opened my mouth.

“You’ll never understand. Not now, not ever.”

And with effort, I added one more sentence.

“So please, never appear in front of me again.”

Barely managing to get the words out, I turned around. A sharp gaze pierced into my back, but I never looked back and stepped out of the tent.

A cold wind brushed against my face, the chill seeping into my lungs. And that’s when I realized—I was trembling, pitifully so.

Hugging my shaking body tightly, I looked up at the sky. For some reason, it was especially clear today, without a single cloud.

I quietly closed my eyes.

A deep, inexplicable sense of disappointment wrapped around me.