Zero Point

#002

#1

What is life?

Lee Eunseok thought as he sat in a relatively quiet café, sipping his iced Americano. Despite his calm, expressionless face, his eyes were intently tracking every movement within his field of vision. It was a habit from his five years of rigorous training as an agent.

Only after surveying all the terrain, objects, humans, and living beings in his surroundings did Eunseok relax and lower his gaze back to his laptop.

Eunseok’s eyes began to scan through search results about Espers and Guides without pause. However, a part of his mind was occupied with other thoughts.

About 20 years ago, gates opened almost simultaneously across the world, pushing humanity to its limits. If some humans hadn’t awakened as ability users to deal with the gates, the entire world might have been devastated by now.

Eunseok, now twenty-five years old, was one of those caught in this massive historical whirlwind and experienced tragedy. He lost his parents and older brother to the gates. While Eunseok survived by chance, the exponential increase in orphans became a significant social problem. As a stopgap measure, private orphanages sprang up like mushrooms, and Eunseok was admitted to one of them and grew up there.

The harsh upbringing and various abuses among the children are not worth mentioning now. Eunseok, who was inherently tough and combative, recklessly confronted all unfair treatment, eventually becoming someone ‘troublesome to mess with’. Although this led to loneliness, it was certainly more advantageous for survival than violence.

Orphans with bleak prospects have limited choices, especially those from private orphanages with little government support. Among these, there was one place that fed, housed, and paid them. A place where one could rise to a certain social status if they worked hard enough. That place was the military. Naturally, Eunseok enlisted in the army immediately after graduating high school and was selected for the Special Task Force of the Defense Intelligence Command while in basic training.

‘Once we bite, we finish it.’

Like the motto of the Special Task Force, the training Eunseok received for nearly a year, almost confined in a safe house, was harsh and intense. Many peers who were selected as candidates dropped out during the process. But Eunseok liked these processes that rigorously trained him for free. Fortunately, his talent followed suit. Thanks to this, he was now considered an elite in the unit, which wasn’t bad at all.

However, Eunseok couldn’t feel satisfied. The grueling training process and intense missions were enjoyable, but perhaps he had worked too hard. As Team Leader Hong said, Eunseok was being tacitly designated as the next team leader and gradually pushed away from field work. If things had continued that way, he would have become a team leader leading a team in about three years. For Eunseok, who loved being in the field, this was truly not a good prospect.

It was for this reason that he turned his eyes abroad. A place where life and death intersect at every moment. A place that makes adrenaline surge to the extreme. That’s exactly what Eunseok wanted. So he chose the French Foreign Legion as a candidate. Eunseok’s plan was to spend three or four years in the French Foreign Legion, then move to an international mercenary company to continue working in the field.

Of course, all of this became futile when he was discovered to have awakened as a Guide during a mandatory health checkup.

The Special Task Force, which couldn’t afford to lose an elite agent they had invested billions of won and years of effort into to a foreign country, and the Ability User Management Bureau, which couldn’t allow an S-class Guide to leave the country, were in complete agreement. Despite Eunseok’s thorough preparation with high-priced lawyers, all he got was an honorable discharge. In exchange for retroactively applying his 5 years of service in the Special Task Force, he was exempted from mandatory service in the Ability User Management Bureau, but Eunseok now couldn’t leave South Korea voluntarily. Well, to add to that, he was now an unemployed person with restricted freedom of movement.

Guide.

To put it unpleasantly, another human mutant that regulates the wavelengths of Espers, human mutants influenced by the gates.

The search results for Guides were harmoniously plastered with praise, envy, mockery, and sexual harassment. When he turned on the video media, which he rarely watched, it also deeply implied romantic or sexual relationships between Espers and Guides.

The Ability User Management Bureau was desperate. According to them, there were only three S-class Guides in the world. No, now four including Eunseok. They had an S-class Guide in their hands and immediately lost him, so it was understandable. Even after losing the lawsuit that lasted nearly half a year, they persistently clung to Eunseok, tempting him with an annual salary and all sorts of benefits unimaginable for a soldier.

Of course, material abundance was one of the things Eunseok desired. But no matter how abundant, if that life was filled with boring routines, it would truly be a life without joy.

If he had awakened as an Esper instead, he would have quietly followed his fate. No, he would have embraced it gladly.

He had to watch with his own eyes as his family was torn apart by monstrous life forms. During his time at the orphanage, Eunseok also dreamed of someday awakening as a hunter and avenging his family himself. He prayed every day. For someday to awaken as an Esper and be able to kill all the monstrous life forms.

His desperate prayers were not answered, and Eunseok, beaten by reality, had turned away almost obsessively from everything related to that dream. But fate is truly ridiculous. To become a Guide instead of the Esper he dreamed of. Of course, if he couldn’t be an Esper who could tear apart monstrous life forms with his own hands, he had no desire whatsoever to step into that world.

‘Is sneaking abroad, getting a new identity, and working as a mercenary the only way?’

Eunseok’s mind, trained in various intelligence missions, immediately mapped out the route.

First, illegal entry into China by boat. After getting a new identity, it wouldn’t be too difficult to join a shady mercenary company that accepts anyone as long as they’re skilled. Of course, that method wouldn’t work now.

Since becoming unemployed with a travel ban after the legal battle ended with his discharge, Eunseok’s movements were being strictly monitored. His phone probably had real-time location tracking, and there were likely listening devices in his house. The laptop he was using now was almost certainly being hacked in real-time, and every word coming out of Eunseok’s mouth was probably being eavesdropped on in real-time.

It was quiet because Eunseok was quietly living an unemployed life, but if he showed even the slightest sign of trying to flee abroad, they would immediately create some law to take away his personal freedom. This was all too obvious to Eunseok, who had worked hard as an intelligence agent for several years.

Tired of the repetitive information, Eunseok took his eyes off the laptop. Glancing to the side, he saw the notification light on his phone blinking. He picked up the phone he had turned face down on silent mode, feeling it hot enough to burn his hand. The phone, which had been 100% charged, was now less than 10% after hours of incessant calls and text messages.

Eunseok briefly frowned as he skimmed through the list of incoming calls from various places and text messages filled with sweet proposals.

If he had known it would be this annoying, he would have somehow managed to keep the legal battle confidential. The fierce legal battle between the Ability User Management Bureau and Eunseok and its results had spread through various media, and now all sorts of companies, guilds, Espers, and headhunters from abroad were swarming around Eunseok, an S-class Guide who was still free, like bees to honey.

‘Should I go hide in the mountains for a while?’

Eunseok seriously considered.

Crawling into the deep wilderness of the mountains and becoming self-sufficient without proper equipment was one of the essential skills of an intelligence agent. With just a few days’ worth of simple food and a knife, Eunseok had the ability to crawl into the mountains, leaving all civilization behind, and survive for years.

‘But that’s no fun.’

Eunseok immediately erased that option from his mind.

Moving mechanically for survival was too easy and boring for Eunseok.

He needed something more fierce, intense, and bloody. Moments and daily life where life and death pass right before your eyes, making adrenaline race wildly through your veins. Born with an inherently combative nature, Eunseok found the joy and meaning of life only in such stimulating moments.

‘Adrenaline junkie’

That nickname he was called in the unit was something even Eunseok acknowledged.

But he couldn’t crawl back into the unit either. The Special Task Force is also a public servant receiving government pay. If they used rank to pressure him, it was only a matter of time before he would be forcibly transferred to the Ability User Management Bureau.

In the end, no answer came today either.

Eunseok swallowed a sigh as he closed his laptop and stood up from his seat.