The Espers Who Regretted Losing Me Chapter 30

Just like their creaking, broken relationship, Geumgang Unit Two failed to produce any meaningful results.

If one were to make excuses—
Compared to other units, they were understaffed.
None of the three were particularly diligent.
And worst of all, their abilities were too outstanding.

Even when they charged into gates without a plan, they somehow managed to brute-force their way through. No one ever felt the need to strategize.

Still—

Every time Hyea and Dogyeong traveled by car, speeding tickets piled up.
Every time they were inside headquarters, Dogyeong and Shinra got into fights.

Eventually, the director summoned them again and again, practically begging.

“I’ll be assigning an esper with extensive leadership experience soon. So please—please—behave yourselves until then.”

Dogyeong and Shinra naturally assumed he meant Eunhwi.

But the name that came out of the director’s mouth belonged to some no-name nobody they’d never even heard of.

Hyea hadn’t known—she’d only been informed later—but Dogyeong and Shinra had heard the news a month in advance.

Every night, they set out a bowl of water and prayed.

Please don’t let him come.
Anywhere but here.

Perhaps their desperation reached someone, because right before the assignment, that nobody was sent—not to Geumgang Unit Two—but to the newly formed Graphite Unit instead.

After that, the two of them threw childish tantrums, insisting that it had to be Cha Eunhwi.

And then—

One year later.

The four of them were finally reunited.

Truthfully, they had hoped.
They’d been so close once—maybe they could go back to how things used to be.

But even after Eunhwi returned, Hyea was unchanged.

She didn’t smile like before.
She was distant.
She sighed every single day.

And so—even Eunhwi, whose personality had already shifted—absorbed Dogyeong and Shinra’s methods.

The three of them began saying cruel things to Hyea. Again. And again. And again.

Every day, they thought, We shouldn’t do this.

But they hated her—
No.

…No. That was a lie.

That was complete bullshit.

They had never once hated Yoon Hyea. How could they?

They all knew the truth.

They knew how petty and cruel they were being toward her.

The problem wasn’t Hyea.
It was them—something broken, something missing inside themselves.

Even animals repay kindness.
Maybe they were worse than animals.

And yet—knowing all that changed nothing.

They were afraid.

Afraid that if they said first, We’re sorry. We were wrong. This is all our fault—
Hyea would answer, If you know that, then please let me go.

They knew the path they were walking was wrong.
But they couldn’t bring themselves to turn back.

Separate from loving her, they understood this relationship was twisted, abnormal. They knew continuing like this wouldn’t magically make things better.

And yet—

When they found out Hyea had tried to quit dozens of times—

“Are you sulking? Is quitting being a guide really that easy for you, noona?”

They wanted to hurt her the same way.

“Yoon Hyea, you’re really good at making people angry.”

They wanted her angry too.

“I think we’ve been giving Guide Yoon Hyea far too much special treatment. If we’d treated her like any other guide, she wouldn’t have pulled things behind our backs.”

They wished—hoped—she would snap. Explode. Spill everything she’d been holding inside.

Cowards that they were, they wanted her to say it first.

Then—then they would’ve dropped to their knees instantly.

They would’ve begged her to stay. Promised to change. Right away. Anything.

And somewhere in their rotten hearts, they harbored the nauseating hope that because Hyea had nowhere else to go—just like them—she would accept them.

But even then, Hyea said nothing.

Her face looked like it might shatter as she took a deep breath.

And once again—she endured it.

“I’m sorry.”

“…Is that all you can say, Guide Yoon Hyea?”

“It’s true that I tried to resign. And you seemed angry about that. You’re saying whatever you want—what am I supposed to say here?”

Her flat voice erected a wall.

And with the words she added, resignation heavy in her tone, they finally realized what they had been refusing to see.

To her, they were no longer worth scolding.
No longer worth persuading.

Hyea’s unusually depressed expression kept replaying in their minds.

Why hadn’t they thrown away their worthless pride back then?
Why hadn’t they stayed together?

They shouldn’t have ignored the unease they felt before entering the gate.

This was punishment.

If she truly had been a gift sent by God, they should have cherished her more.

They hadn’t.

Hyea was swallowed whole by the gaping jaws of a colossal serpent that burst from the earth.

They killed it desperately, tried to tear open its stomach—

But the three of them were expelled from the gate.

No matter how they clawed at the rift, no matter how they begged, they couldn’t go back.

When the torn space vanished, they collapsed to the ground, digging with their hands—as if there might still be a door beneath the soil.

Even when their fingernails were ripped away, the rift didn’t reappear.

Hyea didn’t either.

A full day later, another unit arrived to search for them.

The absence of the guide who should have been there told everyone exactly what had happened.

They felt like living corpses.

Regret surged in like a tide—then drained away just as fast.

What remained was a hollow filled with loss and guilt.

They had only wanted to stay together.

And now—

They could no longer remember Hyea’s smile.

The gate didn’t kill her.

They did.

 

 

*****

 

 

 

How am I supposed to tell them this…

Director Jung Sigeom pressed his aching brow as he stared at the report on the gate that had appeared in Zone A-3 early that morning.

[ A–3 Zone Gate Report ]

—Integrated Gate: The Reclaimed Strange Paradise
(Fire and Ice Lands + False Paradise)

—Maximum Capacity: 10 (+1 [Estimated])

—Connection Count: 2

—Named Monsters:
Fire Dragon
Ice Dragon
Guardian of Paradise (Serpent)

[ Special Notes ]

Location where Guide Yoon Hyea went missing (June, last year)

—Body not recovered. Confirmed alive at time of clearance, but gate closed while she was inside the Named Monster’s body.
—Chance of self-escape: extremely low. Even in the unlikely event she exited the monster, survival probability within the gate environment is 0%.

—Defeating the Guardian of Paradise forcibly expels all participants from the gate.

“…Hah.”

After reading only the first page, he set the file down and let out a heavy sigh.

In some parts of the world, A-rank espers were called those favored by the heavens.

Perhaps there was some truth to that.

For the exact same gate to reappear in the exact same location—

Because its wavelength matched perfectly with the one from a year ago, investigators concluded it was the same gate that had swallowed South Korea’s only S-rank guide at the time.

Yoon Hyea.

Which meant—

It had been exactly one year since her disappearance.

After that day, her espers had half-lost their minds.

Despite never having formed an imprint, all three behaved like espers who had lost an imprinted guide.

If they hadn’t been expelled, they would have stayed inside that gate with her.

Headquarters does not recover bodies from inside gates.

Or rather—they cannot.

Allowing it would mean more people choosing to remain behind, and that would be an unacceptable loss to the nation.

And yet—

The same gate had appeared again.