TSBIRBV Ch 213

Chapter 213. Exposure (8)

Did I nod off for a moment?

Yegyeol blinked awake. The reason he had told Sarmang he wanted to soak for a while was not mere words of fatigue—it had been genuine.

Though Sarmang had kept her nerves taut, Yegyeol himself had been wound tight in many ways.

One slip, one misstep, and he could be gravely hurt.

Even if he was S-rank, he was not a body-strengthening Esper; facing hardened martial artists was no simple matter.

In game terms, Yegyeol was not a warrior unit, but a mage. His role was to let a tank stand at the front, while he prepared a single great spell behind, to strike lightning upon his foe.

The saving grace was that Yegyeol was not truly a “mage” but an Esper. His physical abilities towered far above an ordinary human. And though he had never been deployed in live combat, he still knew, at least to some extent, how to face other people.

Never thought the training I once received would prove useful like this.

Above all else, the simple fact that he could see—that was a massive advantage.

Leaving the bathhouse, Yegyeol wiped himself down carelessly and pulled on his clothes. His hair was still damp, but it was short, and would dry on its own.

What weighed on him more was the drowsiness that crushed his body, leaving him limp as though he would sink into the floor. Thinking clearly was almost impossible.

When Haryang comes back, he’ll dry it for me.

The pleasant thought brought a bright smile to his face as Yegyeol ambled along.

In his sleepy daze, he retraced the familiar path without realizing, and before long arrived at Haryang’s old bedchamber. Yet he noticed nothing amiss.

It was not illusion but habit.

With half the furnishings removed, the room seemed bleaker than before. But dozing as he was, Yegyeol sensed nothing more.

“Hot.”

He drifted toward the open window, stretching a hand toward the courtyard beyond. Overhead, a blue moon hung. He had returned at dusk, but now it was deep into night.

Then it struck.

“Huh…?”

His outstretched hand seemed refracted, as though plunged into water. Distorted more and more, like broken graphics on a failing screen. Cold shock poured through him like a douse of icy water.

And only then did Yegyeol recall Haryang’s words.

‘I will be rearranging the formations connecting the courtyard and the bedchamber. Be cautious in the meantime. Objects will be temporarily displaced, and if you misstep, you may find yourself trapped within the array.’

Reality and past blurred, their boundary warping before his eyes.

Yegyeol looked down at himself. He wore yellow clothes with a chick emblazoned upon them, utterly harmless attire. Even the cap upon his head had been snugly fitted by his mother, who gazed down at him.

“This is run by the state, so they’ll accept you here, Yegyeol.”

It was the reason for their rare trip outside the neighborhood.

…Why does this suddenly feel unfamiliar?

Tilting his head, Yegyeol nonetheless followed behind.

The kindergarten windows were decorated with little stickers—chicks, bears, rabbits, elephants. Through them, a child peered curiously at him. His mother noticed where he was looking and said brightly,

“Our Yegyeol, if you come here, you can meet that friend too. Isn’t that nice?”

Yegyeol nodded silently.

In my past life I wasn’t sociable either. This could be troublesome.

Stepping into the bright, cheerful building, Yegyeol swept his gaze around. His father hoisted him up and whispered, pointing at children stacking blocks,

“Yegyeol is good at blocks too, right?”

A fleetingly warm moment.

By the time his parents finished consulting with the director, they had worn bright smiles. Yegyeol dangled his feet from a bench painted with chicks, pretending to be restless. Not out of genuine playfulness, but to mimic normality—what was expected of a child.

A long wait later, the door opened. His mother returned with her face cruelly contorted.

“If a director claims, for reasons undisclosed to parents, that they cannot accept our child—then we do not wish to send him here.”

Hm. Denied again.

Lowering his eyes, Yegyeol thought: it did not matter to him. To mingle with peers his own age, he ought to be in university, not kindergarten.

“Honey.”

As they left, his father tried to slip an arm around his wife’s shoulder. She shrugged it off sharply and strode ahead.

Yegyeol, hand clutched in his mother’s, walked on, pondering. His wrist ached a little from her grip, but he paid it no mind.

How much more ordinary must I become?

He had given up ball games and running—they drew too much attention.

Instead, he turned to puzzles, Lego, reading. But those, too, became tedious quickly. The toys and picture books meant for his age group were too simple for him.

He had already learned to read and write; he understood the structure of language, and Korean, laden with Sino-Korean words, differed only slightly. Pronunciation was the hardest, but hearing it daily made him adept in time.

By their measure, Yegyeol could already speak a foreign tongue at native level.

It’s stifling.

Not unbearable, but like wearing clothes that did not fit.

Suddenly, his mother halted in the street.

“Let’s eat. Yegyeol, do you want pork cutlet?”

He nodded. Greasy foods were not his taste, but good children did not fuss.

In my last life, I couldn’t eat meat even if I wanted…

That was a far-off memory. Since his rebirth, food had always been plentiful.

His parents gave him unease, but also a glimpse of safety: no need to worry where he would sleep, what he would eat that day. That alone changed much.

They entered a bean sprout soup restaurant, open early and advertising children’s meals.

“Welcome.”

“One pork cutlet, and two bowls of soup.”

The owner, in a red apron, rose from watching the TV and went to the kitchen.

When the food arrived, the screen switched to the news—politics, bankruptcies.

“Good children eat broccoli too.”

His mother said this as she cut the pork cutlet into tiny pieces, even separating meat from breading. Yegyeol pouted deliberately; he knew this would make her smile. And indeed, she did—faintly. He felt pleased.

Then the anchor frowned.

[Breaking news. An Esper awakening rampage has resulted in a wing of ○○ Elementary burning down. Thankfully, there have been no casualties—]

“Tsk. End times. They should just close the gates.”

The owner clicked his tongue as the broadcast showed the scorched building.

“Always the same. Living off taxes. One day civilians will die en masse before the government wakes up. Those monsters should be chained and caged.”

Though muttered, in the near-empty restaurant it rang clear.

Yegyeol’s mother shredded the cutlet, hands trembling. His father ventured softly,

“Shall we leave?”

“No.”

Gripping the tiny fork and knife, she answered stubbornly.

“We’ll finish eating. You too—eat. Your soup’s getting cold.”

Every bite she took, she muttered: Why. What’s wrong with my son.

By the end, she had ordered soju, downing it in harsh gulps.

“…Our child is ordinary.”

On the way home, his father carried her on his back, Yegyeol’s hand in his own.

“Mom, are you sad?”

“Your mother, she just…”

Seeing his child’s earnest brown eyes, the man hesitated.

“She just wants to be ordinary.”

Exhaustion etched deep in his face, but he smiled anyway. It felt strange, watching it: as though he were clutching at reality desperately, keeping it from shattering.

He’s not fine. He only pretends to be.

“Isn’t being special good?”

“Your mother once had a family. More than just you and me.”

“But bad people took them away.”

Yegyeol understood: those “bad people” were Espers.

Taken far, far away… that means killed.

No matter how the man softened his words for a child, Yegyeol’s mind was nearly grown.

“That’s why she worries.”

His father adjusted the sleeping woman’s weight on his back. Yegyeol glanced at her tear-streaked face.

She had once had a family, destroyed by Espers. And now her son was showing signs of awakening.

Even aside from his reincarnation, Yegyeol knew he was special. A beggar boy in his last life could never do the things he could now.

“Does Mom hate ‘bad people’?”

“No, no. Yegyeol.”

Sensing the depth of the child’s words, his father bent low, despite the burden on his back, to meet his eyes.

“Your mother loves you.”

But the boy did not believe it.

Yegyeol gasped raggedly, clutching his chest.

I need to get out…!

But fog swirled around him, nothing else. He knew now he was trapped in the formation, but that was all. He had heard of wards and arrays, but never studied them closely.

Before he could think of an escape, the past surged up once more.

Fever burned his head. When his eyes opened, the world screamed at him.

Yegyeol tried to shut down his senses. Since rebirth, this had happened now and then: wracked by unknown fevers, waking to senses shrieking at overload.

As if the world was telling him—this life is not yours.

It is mine.

He clutched the blue blanket with its star patterns. Something bumped his hand: an exhausted woman, asleep in a chair beside his bed.

His mother, this lifetime.

Around her lay ice packs and water bottles. The damp towel on his forehead slid off.

Yegyeol drew ragged breaths. He should tell her he was better, tell her to sleep in her room. That was what he thought—until he saw her phone screen, still on.

In the search bar, the cursor blinked. Above it, the recent search history:

〈Esper awakening accident〉

〈Esper pre-awakening symptoms〉

〈Esper awakening signs〉

〈How to bring down a fever〉

〈Best fever reducers for children〉

Reading upward, his eyes grew hot. He blamed the fever.

There’s nothing I can do about this.

He looked at his sleeping mother. Thought of her heart, which had once clung to the frail hope of an ordinary child, and how that hope must have warped with time—first convincing herself it was just a common fever, then bargaining, and at last succumbing to fear.

She would change. For now she poured water into a cracked pot, but one day she would stop. Discarding a flawed object was always easy.

At first he had thought to wake her and send her to bed. Instead, Yegyeol grasped her hand tightly, then turned onto his side.

In truth, he did not want to let go.