Pretending to Be the Lover of an Esper C20

Chapter 20

“Yunseong, I heard you’ve been doing sensory sharing training lately?”
“Huh? Oh—yes.”

As I took a sip of water, Eunchae spoke up. Across from her, Yoonhwa was too busy chewing her salad to follow along.

“How’s it going? Any progress?”
“Well… not much so far. We’ve only really tried it seriously a handful of times. Failed every one, though.”

Since the end of our month-long training four days ago, Taeon and I had been half-absorbed in trying to locate the “switch.” The results weren’t promising. More complex and finicky than I’d expected—the kind of challenge that stubbornly refused to yield.

And now, with mission standby approaching, we were both overloaded—physically and mentally.

To make things worse, lately Taeon had displayed a noticeably low mood.
Even by his usual standards, he’d been more shut off and irritable, almost defensive.

“I think you’re the first person I’ve met who’s actually experienced that.”
“Well… yeah, it’s not exactly common.”
“What does it feel like?”

Her eager gaze made me reflexively answer more seriously than I intended. I started describing the sensations I’d personally felt. For a moment, I considered joking about how Taeon had acted like someone mildly drunk—but then thought better of it.

No matter how I framed it, that story couldn’t escape sounding a bit personal. I’d end up teasing him relentlessly instead of discussing the topic seriously.

So I stuck with describing the process.
“It’s like remembering the sensations from that time, pinpointing what feels slightly off, and fine-tuning your guiding energy through repetition—kind of like solving a puzzle piece by piece. Honestly? It’s just endless grind work.”

“Wow, that sounds exhausting. You have to do that every time you guide? Isn’t that right, Yoonhwa?”
“Mmh, yes. Controlling the flow of energy precisely takes immense concentration. It’s not easy.”

Wiping the sauce from her lips, Yoonhwa gave me a sympathetic look—the same one people give coworkers after a week of late nights.
“There’s a reason the standard method became just channeling the energy straight to the Esper. It’s faster, more efficient, and consistent.”

That was the basic, universal way: fast, stable, and requiring the least effort for solid results.

“Anyway, good luck. Fighting, fighting.”
Yoonhwa half-heartedly waved both hands in mock encouragement.

“By the way, things have been pretty quiet lately, huh?”
“Huh?”
“The west coast. Usually around early summer it’s chaos there from the Waves.”
“Oh… Now that you mention it, yeah.”

Her words reminded me that we were already in early June. The nonstop training had all but erased my sense of dates and time.

“It’s definitely strange.”
“Right? The east and south coasts usually get rough after typhoon season, sure, but the west coast should be starting up already. No alerts yet, though—it feels like the calm before the storm.”
“The calm before the storm, huh…”

Monsters didn’t appear according to human convenience. Depending on whether they were nocturnal or diurnal, their patterns varied, but their activity had nothing to do with human schedules.

Still, the periods and regions of their surges did show recurring trends—almost seasonal, like natural cycles.

In our country, spring brought Waves inland. Early summer—roughly two to three weeks long—belonged to the west coast. After typhoons swept through midsummer, the east and south coasts would erupt again along the storm’s path. That was when the Center hit peak workload, agents dispatched left and right across regional branches.
The only lull came in late autumn. Things stayed quiet through winter, until spring started the cycle anew.

“When they’re late, they always show up late. Combine that with typhoon season, and it’s hell on earth. We’ve got civilians to evacuate, beasts to fight, rain and wind slamming nonstop. By the end you look like a drowned rat, reeking of the sea.”

Eunchae shuddered dramatically. Yoonhwa, still chewing, looked over and added quietly,
“Four years ago was like that. Daecheon and Taean—complete warzones. Typhoon and Wave hit at the same time. Most divisions had to send extra personnel.”

She explained that she’d been a stationed Guide back then but got pulled into field support due to the severity of it. Even from the backlines, she said it had been a scene of utter chaos—one she could never forget.

I nodded with a faint smile, aware it looked wooden. The two women exchanged puzzled looks.

“You didn’t get deployed back then, Yunseong? Even Seoul sent people down.”
“My partner at the time was fire-based. Not much help near the sea, so I only got sent toward the end for cleanup and backline support.”
“Oh, so you didn’t get to see Taeon in action.”

At his name, curiosity pricked immediately.
“Mr. Lee Taeon?”
“Yep. Think about it: tons of water, and he’s an electricity Esper. Perfect match. It was unreal.”
“Hmm, I think I’ve heard bits about that.”

It had been four years ago, and though I hadn’t seen it firsthand, the story was famous enough that it reached even nonparticipants.

“Right, didn’t he—what was it—unleash lightning for an hour straight, practically boiling the sea?”
“More like forty-five minutes, I think. It felt like the end of the world.”

Eunchae laughed softly. As a fellow Esper, she must’ve witnessed it much closer. Awe flickered faintly in her brown eyes.

“Even in the briefing, the first strike was assigned to him. His range and power were perfect for handling the initial surge. The plan was—if he electrocuted the first wave hard enough, we’d buy at least ten minutes. The storm slowed evacuations, so even ten minutes was precious.”
She paused briefly.
“None of us expected him to hold the line solo, though.”

Before striking, Taeon had ordered everyone—including Espers and Guides—to retreat beyond a stated range.
He began only when the area was completely clear.

The thunder came down like crashing spears, one after another. The sky flared endlessly, bright as dawn, monsters shrieking through roars of cracking light. Their scales and hides, normally impervious, melted before the storm. Steam and blood filled the air.

The horizon became pure flashfire—death in motion. The shrieking waves surged upward again and again, and yet through it all, nothing broke past the coastline.

“So that’s what an S-rank looks like. Impressive, but terrifying.”

Eunchae’s tone softened, almost nostalgic awe slipping into her words.
“The crazier part? He walked back after all that perfectly steady—completely fine.”
“You’re kidding. Not even tired?”
“Didn’t look it. His overload rate came out low, too. Anyone else would’ve collapsed, or never managed that output to begin with. He’s a monster.”

She laughed, half disbelieving. Entranced, I nodded automatically before hesitating to ask what had quietly been itching in my mind.

“What about his Guide? The one who handled his guiding after that fight—were they okay?”
“Huh? Oh—yeah, no issues that I heard. Someone said it only took ten minutes total.”
“That’s… unbelievable.”

It was, honestly.

If an Esper used that much power for that long, their Guide would usually pay the cost in equal measure—mentally and physically drained. The bigger the wound, the longer the healing.

But if Taeon had maintained that barrage for forty-five minutes and both he and his Guide had walked away unscathed, then it wasn’t just about skill. It was something innate—his entire physiological makeup.

That wasn’t idle speculation. I’d had first-hand evidence.
Even through hellish daily training with him over the past month, my own guiding load barely spiked at all.
High resonance might explain some of it, but compared to other teams with similar rates, ours was abnormally low—by margins of two to ten percent.
Even during sensory sharing practice…

“Wait.”
“Hm?”
“No, nothing. Just thought of something. Anyway, he’s basically a human Energizer, huh.”

Eunchae burst out laughing.
“Not inaccurate! I’ve never seen him exhausted. Even during long operations—well, sure, he slows down, but who wouldn’t after half a day? The guy’s built different.”
“Exactly. But then… why would someone like that…”

Need a partner Guide?

“Anyway, it’s almost time—we should go, right?”

Checking her phone, Yoonhwa spoke urgently, snapping the thought from my mind. I stood, brushing off the lingering question.

Eunchae started packing her things and asked,
“Oh, right—are you heading underground with Yoonhwa? You’ve got that Guiding safety course today, right?”
“That’s at three, so I’ve got a little time. I’ll stop by the guiding room first—need to check something.”
“Ugh, can the weekend come already? I can’t believe it’s only Tuesday. If the Wave’s gonna hit, it better wait till next week!”

We bantered easily as we left the cafeteria together.

Outside, the June sky stretched high and vividly blue. The sun was sharp enough that we instinctively veered toward the shade of the trees.
Our walk back to the Center was filled with casual chatter—topics bouncing everywhere, looping sometimes back to where they began: the delayed Wave, and inevitably, Lee Taeon.

I had to force myself to keep up with the flow; my mind kept sticking on details, but when someone mentioned that, after Taeon’s flashy display four years ago, people jokingly called the west coast The West Sea Club because it “sparkled for days,” I couldn’t help but laugh.