Side Story 5
Three months had passed.
Here’s some shocking news: Irene had awakened.
Dun dun dun.
Everyone had been wondering why it hadn’t happened yet after she had already met the male lead of the original story, Daniel.
Questions like, “Why isn’t it happening? When will it happen? Will it even happen?” had just started to fade when it finally did.
The infamous awakening.
But instead of becoming a Guide, she suddenly… became an Esper.
An S-Class Esper, at that.
Along with the original plot, my sense of reality flew out the window.
Seriously, in this reverse harem Guide-centric world, the male and female leads are both S-Class Espers?
So who is Irene supposed to end up with?
Of course, if Irene put her mind to it, there’s no way she couldn’t find someone to date.
She’s not only the only female S-Class Esper, but also incredibly beautiful.
Even back when she was just an ordinary civil servant, Irene was well-known for her looks. If you mentioned “that pretty civil servant,” both Espers and Guides alike would say, “Ah, her?”
(For the record, I was “the tiny one with pink hair standing next to the pretty civil servant.”)
The only reason Irene wasn’t dating anyone despite her beauty was, of course, her personality.
It took only three regular guiding sessions before Irene was boycotted by the Guides.
What does that mean? It means that the Guides, both male and female, made a collective decision to never guide Irene again.
From what I’ve heard, the Guides who approached her to become her exclusive Guide came on too strong, trying to touch her without consent.
Irene, of course, crushed them with her sharp words.
She didn’t physically harm them, but verbally tore their spirits apart. I’m used to Irene’s sharp tongue, but the Guides, who were used to being treated like precious gems by Espers, couldn’t handle that kind of humiliation.
Thus, Irene became the first Esper to be boycotted by the Guides, even surpassing the notorious Esper Valan, who was constantly being reprimanded for sexually harassing Guides.
Now, as an S-Class Esper unable to receive any guiding, Irene’s temper only worsened. I didn’t think it could get any worse, but surprisingly, it could.
“Hah, what’s up with this weather…”
One afternoon, Irene muttered as she sat by the large window of a café, sunlight pouring in.
“If it’s going to rain, it should just pour. Dark, relentless rain… so it can drench all those people out there, make their dirty clothes cling uncomfortably to their bodies, and ruin their whole day with damp, miserable feelings…”
“…”
That’s pretty extreme… Unable to hold back, I asked her gently.
“Um, if it’s that bad, why don’t you ask the Center’s upper management for regular guiding? The Center’s Guides are obligated to assist Espers whether they like it or not.”
But Irene was firm.
“No. That would make me feel like an animal.”
Honestly, I understood how she felt.
I myself had once lived as a regular person, hiding the fact that I was a Guide for similar reasons.
No matter how much you needed guiding, not wanting to let someone you didn’t even like touch you wasn’t wrong.
What surprised me was that someone as cold and pragmatic as Irene had such romantic ideals.
But still, what could she have possibly said to the Guides that led to a full-scale boycott?
Thanks to that, Irene couldn’t even receive the standard regular guiding that even F-Class Espers could get.
Irene’s once-smooth forehead now had deep frown lines. It was a sight that wasn’t unfamiliar to me.
When I first met Claude, he had looked just like that—constantly irritable and on edge. Her head was probably throbbing with a massive migraine from the lack of guiding, and her body felt heavy.
It had been over a month since things got this bad.
Though, compared to Daniel, she was holding up pretty well… but if she kept this up, I could see where her future was headed.
Just as I was worrying about her, Irene, seemingly uninterested in continuing the conversation, changed the topic.
“Enough about that. Tell me about you. Any problems lately?”
As she asked, her gaze flickered briefly to my ankles, probably wondering how my recovery was going.
Rehabilitation was going smoothly, so nothing to worry about, but… Ah!
“There is a problem.”
“What is it?”
“Lord Claude hasn’t been… doing it with me lately.”
“What… Never mind, don’t tell me anything.”
Irene’s face contorted in disgust as she immediately grasped the omitted subject of my sentence.
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