DPGR 26

“It might be dangerous to go alone.”

Dojin’s expression as he said that was serious. He wasn’t trying to tease Jiho or scare him—he was genuinely concerned.

Jiho let out a small, incredulous laugh.

Danger? At the Center?

What could possibly be dangerous here?

Before the regression, there had been a few espers who obsessed over Jiho’s guiding and stalked him.

But not anymore. These days, everyone in the Center knew that Jiho was Dojin’s Pair Guide.

After all, for the past few days, Dojin had been personally escorting Jiho to the training room every morning, making his presence well known.

[It’s not dangerous.]

Jiho scribbled the words and held them out to Dojin. Dojin stared at the note for a moment, then sighed and nodded.

“Don’t run around. If you trip, it could be serious.”

Nod, nod.

“And don’t bother taking the stairs. Use the elevator.”

Nod, nod.

“Even if someone offers you something tasty, don’t go with them.”

Nod, no—wait, what?

Jiho squinted suspiciously. He pouted and quickly wrote another note.

[I’m twenty years old. Not two.]

Faced with Jiho’s disgruntled protest, Dojin let out a soft laugh. He gently patted Jiho’s still-messy hair, wrapping up his string of warnings.

“Yes, I know. But I’m still worried, so please be careful.”

With that, Dojin checked the time and headed off. Even as he walked away with Sehun, he kept glancing back toward Jiho.

Jiho stood in place, waving his hand each time Dojin looked back, as if telling him to hurry along.

Only once Dojin disappeared from sight did Jiho finally start moving again.

I’m gonna be late. Choi Geonwoo and Lee Sena are probably waiting at the guiding training room.

He swung by the Dojin’s office to hang up his outerwear, then headed toward the Guides’ Wing. His pace grew increasingly brisk.

By the time he reached the lobby, it could barely be called walking anymore.

Jiho’s footsteps pounded against the floor as he ran—completely forgetting Dojin’s warning about not running.

Still, at this rate, he’d make it to the training room on time.

If only those voices hadn’t stopped him.

“What’s this? He’s alone today?”

“Maybe he got dumped? That’s Captain Baek, right? He’s picky about guiding—builds walls with the Guides.”

Jiho froze in place and turned his head toward the voices.

It was the mention of “Captain Baek” that caught his attention.

‘What now?’

At first, he thought the hostility was directed at him—but their looks suggested it wasn’t just about him.

And Jiho wasn’t wrong.

No matter how favorable Dojin’s reputation was, it didn’t mean he was free of enemies.

Some people took issue with Baek Dojin’s habit of minimizing guiding and keeping his distance from Guides in subtle ways.

Most of those critics were Guides who had approached him and gotten rejected.

They’d known from the start that they weren’t compatible with Dojin in terms of matching rate, so it wasn’t like they actually expected to be paired with him.

They were just curious—wondering what the usually gentle Baek Dojin might be like in bed—and were drawn in by his looks.

Since espers and Guides often ended up in sexual relationships due to guiding, many of them were more sexually open-minded than regular people.

The problem was, Dojin had lived like a civilian for so long—and his mindset was even more conservative than most his age.

He didn’t sleep with people he didn’t love.

“So what makes that Guide so special that he gets to stick to Dojin’s side?”

“Probably the matching rate. Or his rank.”

“I heard they faked the matching rate. Like, Dojin only kept him around as a Pair because of that.”

Someone whispered and started making gestures—one hand forming a circle, the other poking a finger through it repeatedly.

Crude to the extreme, but the group chuckled as if it were the funniest thing ever.

“He must be amazing in bed, huh? Even got the entire Alpha Team wrapped around his finger and scoring private training.”

One guy even sprayed spit as he laughed, glancing Jiho up and down as he muttered.

Normally, new Guides trained in groups with others who joined around the same time.

That’s how they built camaraderie and learned the unspoken rules of the guiding world.

Jiho’s case—getting individual training sessions from espers—was practically unheard of.

It had all started because of Dojin’s overprotectiveness, but from their perspective, Jiho receiving special treatment was just irritating.

“He’s that high-and-mighty S-rank, isn’t he? Probably easy for someone with a big energy reservoir to handle three or four espers at once.”

Snickers.

Their resentment—believing Jiho was being treated differently—fused with the hostility they already felt toward Dojin.

And it just so happened to explode now, when Jiho was alone.

“Hey, quiet down. He might hear you.”

“So what if he does? Can’t even talk, right? Who’s he gonna tell?”

Just then, as Jiho silently studied their faces, his eyes widened in realization.

Nearly half of them were familiar.

The short, scrawny guy and the tall, freckled one—he’d seen them in an illegal facility.

And the two men and one woman next to them? They’d been part of Team 1, the unpaired guides he’d worked with before the regression.

The men from the illegal facility went silent and looked away guiltily when they noticed Jiho staring.

But the Team 1 members and the others grinned, as if amused that Jiho had acknowledged them.

“What? You gonna cry or something?”

Their eyes, fixed on Jiho, gleamed with lowly anticipation.

They were expecting him to burst into tears, or go pale and run like a coward.

But Jiho didn’t flinch.

He was used to violence. Childish taunts like these—weren’t going to hurt him.

He had only stopped to observe the two from the facility.

‘They look okay.’

The peers Jiho had grown up with had long since been dragged to the “Disposal Room” and discarded.

These two boys had come in after that.

After losing his friends, Jiho had cut off all contact with others.

There was no telling who would die next—it felt meaningless to form bonds under such circumstances.

So there had been no connection between him and these two.

Even so, some buried sense of shared experience stirred within him.

Even though they’d just been mocking him, Jiho’s gaze toward them remained warm.

Seeing this, the Team 1 guides started whispering.

“Look at that, they said—he’s got no change in expression, like a psychopath.”

“Didn’t he grow up in some facility? Probably turned into a psycho from being locked up so long.”

“What’s there to like about that blank-faced weirdo? Guess that S-rank label really is all it takes, huh?”

Their insults were ramping up again—

“HEY!”

Suddenly, a small girl came sprinting from the distance. Jiho and the guides all turned, startled.

“Who do you think you are, saying crap like that to him?!”

She barreled into the group, throwing herself at the much larger guides.

“Aaaah!”

“Ah! Guide Lee Sena!”

It was Lee Sena—Yulchan’s Pair Guide.

“W-wait…”

Jiho started anxiously hopping in place at the sudden chaos.

Sena headbutted the man who had said “psychopath,” ramming her forehead into his gut.

Then she turned and slapped the guy next to him, the one who had been laughing.

Her small, clenched fists were surprisingly strong.

The man she hit tumbled to the ground, screaming in pain.

“AAAAAGH!!”

“Th-this crazy…!”

If only things had ended there.

“HEY!”

Unfortunately, one of the fallen man’s friends grabbed Sena by the hair.

Not to be outdone, Sena grabbed the woman’s hair in return and started yanking.

“KYAA!! AAAH!!”

The woman screamed like a banshee, while Sena clenched her teeth and glared furiously at the rest of the group.

It all happened in just a few seconds.

Then one of the male guides grabbed Sena’s arm and twisted it sharply.

Overpowered, Sena lost her grip on the woman’s hair and was shoved hard against the wall.

“……!”

The man pinned her like he was arresting a criminal, yelling at the top of his lungs.

“Are you insane?! What the hell are you doing?! Have you finally lost it?!”

Profanities slipped in between his shouts.

Sena screamed right back, just as loud.

“Do I look sane to you? Your eyes broken or something?! Yeah, I lost it—so what?!”

She was shouting so many curses, even Jiho had never heard most of them before.

Then, the man raised his hand like he was about to hit her.

Alarmed, Jiho ran at him, grabbing his forearm. But he wasn’t strong enough to stop the man.

Whoosh—!

The man swung his arm, causing Jiho to stumble. Jiho held on tighter, but someone yanked him back by the collar from behind.

Jiho lost his balance and was thrown to the ground.

Thud! Crash! A loud noise echoed through the hallway.