The Unspoken Benchmark

The next day, Seo-ah found herself puzzled by the changed atmosphere at the Management Bureau.

Even on the walk to her private office, people's gazes kept snagging on her. There was something in their eyes that looked almost like pity, and it was hard to simply ignore.

Did I do something wrong? Or is something bad about to happen?

It would have been so much easier if someone would just come up and talk to her, but they only kept giving her meaningful looks from a distance, and it was honestly suffocating.

As if on cue, a coworker rose from her desk and quietly approached Seo-ah. It was the guide who had walked her through her duties on her first day.

"Guide Lee Seo-ah, are you all right?"

Seo-ah's eyes lit up. She'd spent her days at the center lonely and ignored, with no one ever coming near her. But the moment Guide Park Ah-reum registered that look, she shuffled backward a step.

Her instincts had picked up on danger. The kind of wrongness you feel when you realize you're standing in front of someone who is, in some fundamental way, not normal.

Seo-ah, however, was far more delighted that someone had spoken to her at all than curious about why Ah-reum had approached.

"Yes, I'm fine with anything. A guide actually came up to talk to me — I don't think I'll ever forget today."

"……I'm sorry, what?"

"Nobody ever approaches me, so I was getting a little intimidated."

"Oh……"

The guide listened, took a moment to choose her words carefully, glanced around, and let out a long sigh.

"I think people find it hard to approach you because of your rank. But are you really okay? I heard they assigned you two espers."

Whatever she might say, Seo-ah knew perfectly well it wasn't the rank that kept people away. A rumor like that had been circulating, after all — no one wanted to get tangled up in it.

"Ah, I'm fine."

"Even with high-rank espers, it must be exhausting. I just worry you're pushing yourself too hard……"

Pushing myself? Seo-ah thought of the other guides. Plenty of them never became dedicated guides at all, getting assigned to one esper after another instead.

And with their low ranks, they were often forced into much more intimate contact to make the guiding work at all.

Aren't they the ones to pity?

If Seo-ah didn't feel like doing more, holding hands was enough to guide. Her matching rate was high and her rank was high, so nothing about the job ever drained her.

Two espers, yes — but both were high-rank, which meant the pairing was essentially an efficiency play, nothing more.

"Wouldn't it be easier to guide only S-rank Esper Shin Woo-jin? For your body's sake, I mean."

She had a point — an S-rank was best served by an S-rank guide. But Seo-ah was not the sort of person who pursued efficiency.

"Are you worried I'll struggle because there are two of them? It's fine. If the high ranks get tiring, holding hands is more than enough."

"Ah……"

Ah-reum's expression turned strange. This isn't it? Then if she didn't come over out of pity for me guiding two espers, what was it for?

Seo-ah racked her brain trying to read Ah-reum's intentions again.

"Oh, right! I heard you and Esper Kang Eun-chan are childhood friends. Doesn't that make things awkward?"

"……Hm. Awkward, yeah. Very awkward."

Before we had sex, at least. Afterwards, it had been better than she'd expected. But nothing had really changed, either.

It was just sex for work, after all.

"Right?! So, about that…… would it be all right if I guided Esper Kang Eun-chan?"

Now what is she on about?

Seo-ah blinked at her. They'd been matched and she'd become his guide, that was all. And she wasn't even his dedicated guide — so why was this woman asking for her permission to become his guide?

"That's not up to me. If you want to, talk to the Team Leader. I'm not a dedicated guide, so I don't mind at all if another guide does the guiding."

Eun-chan could raise both hands and both feet in welcome for all she cared, but Seo-ah wasn't keen on letting multiple guides into the arrangement. If Kang Eun-chan ever accepted a different guide, Seo-ah planned to simply stop guiding him altogether.

Hm, is that a bit hypocritical of me?

Oh well. Nothing to be done. Seo-ah decided to be a little selfish. Guiding was at her discretion — and if it ever came to the worst, she could just not sleep with Eun-chan.

She had Woo-jin as another partner, and her matching rate with him was the highest of all, so the odds of another guide being attached to him were low.

"You're really okay with it?"

"Yes. I can guide with the lightest contact anyway."

Guiding a man who'd mixed bodies with another woman? That she couldn't stand.

Ah-reum's face visibly brightened.

"To be honest, I really liked Esper Kang Eun-chan. Our matching rate isn't bad either…… and with a rank gap that size, I figured I could cover for it."

"……You like Kang Eun-chan? Ah, right."

Seo-ah pictured Eun-chan's face. Well, of course — none of them knew about the terrifying equipment he was packing below the belt. Having known him since childhood, she'd honestly never thought much about whether he was handsome or not.

"Not interested in Esper Shin Woo-jin, then?"

"I'm sorry? Ah…… it's not that, exactly. It's just that an S-rank would be too much for me to handle."

Tsk tsk.

You have no idea. You'll regret it, without a doubt.

She clearly didn't understand that an unscratched lottery ticket always shines brightest. And on top of that, Woo-jin seemed to be the same breed as her — the odds he'd never once touched a woman were extremely high.

Isn't brand-new better than secondhand?

Ah-reum's behavior was odd, sure, but personal taste deserved respect, so Seo-ah nodded along as if she understood.

What she didn't realize was that Ah-reum accepting Kang Eun-chan as a partner — and going so far as to guide him — was, in everyone else's eyes, proof that he was quite the catch.

Kim Han was in a bind.

Out of nowhere, guides kept coming to his office demanding to be partnered with Kang Eun-chan. If it had been just one, he might have shrugged it off — but once it passed three, he got suspicious.

"I don't get it. Why does everyone suddenly want Esper Kang Eun-chan?"

That lunatic wasn't exactly a catch either.

He was handsome, built, treated everyone well — sure, the appeal made sense. But with the man already matched to Guide Lee Seo-ah, why on earth were they lining up to ask him for a partner reassignment?

Kim Han clutched at his aching head.

"With an S-rank guide on the roster, why are all the guides in an uproar?"

"Team Leader, you're not asking because you genuinely don't know, are you?"

Ina, Kim Han's direct junior, said it breezily without even looking up from her typing. He was already drowning in work, and the sudden flood of guide requests had him tied in knots, slowing everything down.

Why is he wringing his brain over something this simple?

"That Guide Lee Seo-ah went all the way to actual guiding with him."

"……So? A guide guides. What's the problem?"

"If that Lee Seo-ah — with those standards — accepted him as a partner and still guided him? Case closed."

Kim Han frowned at Ina's words. So what exactly did she finish— oh.

A rumor he'd forgotten came rushing back to him.

Right. There was that rumor.

"Come on, since when do guides size each other up over something like that?"

"They couldn't compare, and they couldn't know in advance — that's the problem. Wanting it was probably always the same."

Kim Han felt his headache double. So that's why they're all falling over themselves to volunteer.

"Guide Lee Seo-ah said it wasn't her department, didn't she? Isn't that just her way of saying she's fine with it?"

Technically, since she wasn't his dedicated guide, it was none of her business. Only her unusually high matching rate with Seo-ah made the pairing special; it wasn't as if he had zero compatibility with other guides.

The guides who'd come by today mostly sat above the forty percent mark. Not stellar, but hardly a low matching rate — greedy was an understandable look for them.

'They've already been assigned partners through the center, dedicated or not. This kind of maneuvering is a problem.'

Maybe it was awkward for her, being childhood friends. She hadn't said a word after the guiding session, but things between them couldn't be as easy as before.

'Though they did look pretty comfortable with each other afterwards, actually.'

It mostly looked like Eun-chan trailing after Lee Seo-ah one-sidedly, but it hadn't seemed strained.

Then again, knowing Seo-ah — a childhood friend she couldn't refuse might leave her enduring things in silence even if they bothered her. She was a girl with a deep heart for serving her country; of course she'd suck it up.

And the other guides must have known he was desirable, yet backed off anyway.

Considerate of her. Honestly, with him being high-rank, guiding two espers probably wouldn't even tire her out.

Kim Han scratched his head.

"There's still no reply. Maybe they haven't checked it yet?"

Kim Han opened his mail. The read receipt was there.

"They read it?"

Read, but no reply. He'd sent it at nine o'clock sharp, and the read receipt was stamped nine o'clock sharp.

Then why the silence?

A vague, nameless unease settled over Kim Han.