Honey-Coated S-Class Guide — Chapter 2
“Nice to meet you. I’m Czerny.”
“Yes, it’s nice to meet you. But could you move your face back a little—”
“Can I call you hyung?”
Czerny cut him off completely, asking only what he wanted to know. Resigned, Jin Hyoseop nodded.
“…Call me whatever you like.”
“Hyoseop hyung, are you really an S-class guide? Seriously?”
“I can show you my classification certificate if you’d like.”
“Whoa. That’s incredible.”
Czerny’s eyes sparkled. His hair sticking out in every direction and his mischievous expression seemed to say a great deal about his personality.
“I can’t believe it. Honestly, our guild leader hadn’t found us a guide in two years, so I figured he wasn’t even planning to.”
“…I see.”
“Right? Then he finally brings someone in, and it turns out they’re S-class. How am I supposed to believe that?”
Czerny glanced at Ahn Dante.
“Boss, does a guild like ours even deserve someone this talented?”
“He wants to be here. Who am I to turn him down?”
Czerny’s already large eyes widened even further.
“You said you wanted to be here? You weren’t recruited?”
“That’s right.”
“Why? What could an S-class guide possibly be lacking to come to a guild this utterly worthless?”
“Czerny.”
A neatly groomed man among the guild members behind him quietly called his name at the blunt remark. It wasn’t nearly enough to shut Czerny up. Narrowing his golden eyes, Czerny gave Jin Hyoseop a sly once-over.
“Are you a spy?”
“Czerny. Why would a spy come to an utterly worthless guild?”
Ahn Dante kept grinning, apparently amused by Czerny’s choice of words.
“Okay, you’ve got a point there, boss… But then, what’s the reason?”
Everyone turned to Jin Hyoseop.
Had he not told the guild members why? Jin Hyoseop glanced at Ahn Dante, but the man still showed no intention of speaking.
“I’m not sure whether you’ve heard, but I had a condition.”
“A condition? What was it?”
“That I wouldn’t do anything beyond contact guiding.”
Czerny’s smile turned mischievous.
“Aha. So you didn’t want to go any further than kissing?”
Jin Hyoseop felt the back of his neck grow hot. Guiding might be a job, but it was still rather embarrassing that saying, “I won’t do anything beyond contact guiding,” essentially sounded like, “I don’t want to have sex.”
“But why don’t you want to? Most guides go crazy for it when they have sex with an esper during guiding.”
“…”
Jin Hyoseop pressed his lips shut. As discomfort surfaced on his otherwise impassive face, Ahn Dante clicked his tongue softly and intervened.
“Czerny. Enough with the rude questions on his first day.”
“What’s the big deal? We’re both men.”
“Even if you’re both men, espers and guides are different.”
“What’s so different? Are guides not men? Men all think more or less the same way.”
“That’s something only a shameless esper like you would think.”
“Tch.”
Czerny stuck out his lower lip, but he did listen to Ahn Dante.
“Then, another question! Of all the C-class guilds, why did you pick ours? Most guides don’t like our guild. They say we have no potential.”
He blinked like an entirely innocent boy.
“Of course, some people were interested because they only wanted to do that. As you can see, pretty much everyone in our guild is good-looking.”
But Jin Hyoseop wasn’t one of those people either, Czerny pointed out, looking genuinely baffled.
“So what’s the reason? Come on, I’m curious.”
“…There’s no particularly significant reason.”
Avoiding their eyes, Jin Hyoseop looked at the floor and spoke evenly.
“I simply don’t like dangerous places.”
“Huh?”
Everyone, Czerny included, merely blinked. Not one of them seemed to understand his answer.
Should I really say this?
Jin Hyoseop cautiously elaborated.
“I thought it would be easygoing here. There wouldn’t be any extreme situations where I’d be forced to provide guiding… And there wouldn’t be any danger.”
At those words, a dangerous gleam entered every guild member’s eyes.
“So you mean you thought this would be the safest place to work as a guide?”
At Ahn Dante’s question, Jin Hyoseop nodded, his gaze still fixed on the floor.
“Ahaha.”
Ahn Dante gave a quiet laugh. For some reason, he sounded amused.
Worried that his answer might have offended them, Jin Hyoseop cautiously raised his head. Thankfully, contrary to his fears, Ahn Dante was smiling gently. Apparently, there hadn’t been anything particularly objectionable about his answer.
“If that’s why you chose us, then you’ve come to exactly the right place.”
Ahn Dante placed a hand on Jin Hyoseop’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze.
“Of all the guilds in the world, this one will be the safest. I guarantee it.”
Espers. People who possessed supernatural powers.
Depending on the strength of their abilities, they were divided into six classes: S, A, B, C, D, and F.
F-class espers were technically superpowered, but their abilities merely made everyday life a little more convenient. They could, for example, warm food with their palms or possess unusually high stamina relative to their physical strength. Essentially, they were ordinary people with a drop of extra convenience and usefulness added in. Naturally, they couldn’t enter dungeons.
One rank above them, D-class espers possessed abilities that were much more recognizably supernatural. Still, they couldn’t enter dungeons either. Most were responsible for clearing away debris or tidying up dungeons that had already been cleared.
Those from C-class through S-class were called true espers, capable of entering dungeons. However, since they couldn’t clear those dungeons alone, espers banded together to form guilds.
Guilds were divided into S, A, B, and C classes.
S-class guilds consisted of internationally renowned S-class espers and A-class espers with unusual abilities. There were only a handful of them, and they were deployed to high-level dungeons befitting their power.
Next came A-class guilds. Their leaders were S-class, but most of their members were A-class. Many were every bit as impressive as the few S-class guilds.
Below those were B-class guilds, which had no S-class members and consisted primarily of A- and B-class espers. They typically operated within a single country.
At the very bottom were C-class guilds. Usually active in provincial areas, they consisted of B- and C-class espers.
Unlike the higher-ranked guilds, there were an enormous number of C-class guilds. Their work, skill, and abilities varied just as widely. Some operated almost like B-class guilds, tackling low-level dungeons. Others had established themselves as guilds without ever setting foot in one.
Noapi, the guild Jin Hyoseop had just joined, fell squarely into the latter category.
A C-class guild known as the bottom of the barrel.
“…”
Sitting alone on the sofa, Jin Hyoseop watched the espers sprawled around the office. Their deeply ingrained laziness was on full display.
They had said this would be the safest guild in the world, and they had meant that quite literally. From the moment he finished introducing himself to the seven espers on his first day to today, an entire week later, Jin Hyoseop had consistently had nothing to do.
The espers were no different. Four of the seven had announced they were going abroad and walked out immediately after the introductions on his first day, dressed in Hawaiian shirts and straw hats. The remaining three had spent the whole week lounging around the office, doing absolutely nothing.
One lay on a bed in the corner, enjoying naps all day long. Another had been reading for four hours straight without moving.
The guild leader, who was supposed to be managing them, never took his eyes off his computer screen. His expression was so serious that on the first day, Jin Hyoseop had assumed he was doing something important. Only recently had he discovered that the man was engrossed in matching tiles in a game of Shanghai Mahjong.
The sheer extent of their inactivity was astonishing. Watching them, Jin Hyoseop privately sighed. Even an unemployed layabout would probably put more effort into life than this.
The scene made it abundantly clear why they hadn’t hired a guide for two years. Espers who did nothing wouldn’t accumulate toxins.
In other words, Noapi had no reason to pay a guide a salary.
…That’s a problem.
He began to worry that if he carried on sitting around like this, they would fire him as useless before the month was even out. Eventually, deciding he had to do something, Jin Hyoseop cautiously began tidying up around him.
As he quietly bustled about, the lounging espers began looking over at him one by one.
“Hyung, what are you doing?”
Czerny, who had clearly been taking a nap, was watching him with his chin propped on a pillow.
“I was tidying up a little.”
“Why? Oh, are you a clean freak?”
“No.”
“Then why are you doing it?”
Jin Hyoseop couldn’t very well say, Because I’m afraid I’ll get fired if I keep sitting around, so he fumbled for an answer.
“I’m just… doing it because I’m bored.”
“Bored?”
Czerny sprang up.
“Then want to go out on a date with me? I know this neighborhood inside out, from the best restaurants to the cafés.”
“But we’re working right now.”
“Oh, come on. Everyone’s taking a break anyway.”
“Even so, I can’t.”
Faced with a firmer refusal than he had expected, Czerny pouted as though Jin Hyoseop were no fun at all.
ravanerk-nxqod 