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Gate Crashers and Heart Breakers || Lilia Vanrouge (1/2)

The world has dimensional gates that vomit monsters. This is somehow less horrifying than admitting that you fell hook, line and sinker for your Guide.

or: Guideverse au!

Part 2

The world sucked before the Gates opened.

Humanity had been doing a bang-up job of making life miserable all on its own. There were politicians who couldn't agree on whether water was wet, climate change deniers who thought melting glaciers were just ice cubes in God's cocktail, and someone had invented those automatic hand dryers that sound like a jet engine but have all the drying power of a asthmatic hamster wheezing on your wet hands.

Then the Gates showed up, as if the universe looked down at humanity's struggle and said, "You know what? They're handling things too well. Let's add dimensional portals that vomit monsters."

The Gates appeared literally overnight. One day, people went to bed worried about normal things like taxes and whether they'd left the stove on. The next morning, they woke up to giant shimmering doorways that looked like someone had installed the world's worst feng shui feature right in the middle of major cities.

New York's popped up in Times Square, which honestly improved the ambiance. Tokyo's appeared in Shibuya Crossing, and for about six hours, people just assumed it was some new experimental art installation until a creature that looked like a rejected Pokemon design crawled out and started eating vending machines.

The monsters were bad. The Gates themselves were worse if left alone.

See, Gates had this fun quirk where if nobody went in and cleared them out, they'd eventually say "screw it" and just open fully. And when a Gate opened fully, everything inside came flooding out like someone had just flushed the universe's most nightmarish toilet.

Cities got leveled. People got eaten. Insurance companies added a "dimensional monster invasion" clause and somehow made it even more expensive than flood insurance.

Humanity did what it does best when faced with extinction: it panicked, argued about whose fault it was, and then stumbled backwards into a solution.

Turns out, some people had developed powers. Nobody knew why. Scientists had seventeen different theories, all of which contradicted each other, and one guy on YouTube was convinced it had something to do with 5G towers and chemtrails, which was stupid but somehow got four billion views.

These powered people fell into two categories:

Espers were the damage dealers, the tanks, the heavy hitters. They could shoot fire from their hands, move objects with their minds, or punch things so hard the things stopped being things and became a fine mist with regrets. Espers were powerful, impressive, and about as stable as a Jenga tower in an earthquake.

Using their powers made them gradually lose their minds. The more they fought, the more their psyche fractured like a windshield meeting a brick. Without help, they'd eventually go completely bonkers and become just as dangerous as the monsters they were supposed to fight.

The government kept very quiet about the number of Espers who'd gone rogue and had to be "retired," which was a polite way of saying "put down like a rabid dog, except the dog could level a city block."

Guides were the support class, the healers, the people who kept Espers from turning into homicidal maniacs.

Guides could manipulate energy in a way that soothed Espers' fractured minds, basically acting as psychic Xanax. They couldn't fight worth a damn. Put a Guide in front of a monster, and the best they could do was maybe make the monster feel really calm about eating them.

But pair a Guide with an Esper, and suddenly you had a functional unit that could actually clear Gates without the Esper going full "The Shining" by the end.

Together, Espers and Guides became humanity's defense against the Gates. Governments set up agencies to manage them, match them, and deploy them. They called these agencies different things in different countries, but they all functioned the same way: bureaucratic nightmares that somehow kept the world from ending while drowning in paperwork.

The system worked. Barely. Gates got cleared, monsters got killed, and humanity continued its proud tradition of surviving through sheer spite and institutional dysfunction.

You knew you were a high-rank Esper when you sneezed during a particularly bad allergy season and accidentally launched your landlord's car into low orbit.

In your defense, the pollen count was astronomical, and your landlord had been riding your ass about rent being two days late. Still, watching his Honda Civic achieve escape velocity because your nose itched was the kind of thing that made you go "huh, that's probably not normal" followed immediately by "we're going to pretend that didn't happen."

You told your landlord it must have been a freak tornado. He bought it because the alternative was accepting that his tenant had sneezed his vehicle into the stratosphere, which would require paperwork he didn't want to deal with. The car came down three hours later in a neighboring city. You moved apartments the next week.

That was two years ago.

Since then, you've gotten very good at pretending you were absolutely, definitely, one hundred percent not an Esper.

You did not want to go to the Bureau. You did not want some government stooge in a cheap suit telling you where to go, what to fight, and how to risk your life and sanity for people who wouldn't even thank you for it. The Bureau loved to run those propaganda campaigns showing Espers and Guides as heroes, but you'd seen the news reports about the ones who burned out. The ones who went crazy and had to be put down. The ones who died clearing Gates while civilians complained that the street closures were inconvenient.

Ungrateful didn't even begin to cover it.

So you kept your head down, worked your dead-end job at a convenience store, and tried very hard not to sneeze near anything important.

Today, you were trudging home after almost getting caught up in a Gate that had opened in a farmer's market of all places. A farmer's market. What kind of cosmic targeting system put a dimensional hell-portal in the middle of a place where people were buying overpriced organic kale? Were the monsters trying to make a statement about sustainable agriculture?

Thank fuck you'd stopped outside the market to feed a raccoon. You'd been holding a ricecake, and this absolute king of a trash panda had waddled up to you with the confidence of a creature that knew it was adorable and wasn't afraid to weaponize it. You'd barely tossed it the food when the Gate opened two stalls down and all hell broke loose.

Raccoons really were the backbone of society. That little guy had saved your life with perfect timing and his unshakable belief that humans existed to provide snacks.

You'd gotten out of there while Bureau Espers showed up to handle it, feeling smug about your continued anonymity.

That smugness lasted approximately forty minutes.

You were cutting through an alley near your apartment when you spotted it: a monster that had somehow slipped out of some Gate, probably the farmer's market one. It looked like someone had asked an AI to generate "crab" but the AI had been drinking.

Too many legs. Eyes in places eyes had no business being. Claws that dripped something that was dissolving the concrete.

"Oh my god, bruh, you had ONE job," you muttered, glaring in the general direction of where you assumed the Bureau headquarters was. "ONE. Contain the monsters. That's literally it. How did this thing get past you? Did you all take a union-mandated coffee break at the same time?"

The crab-thing noticed you and made a sound like a garbage disposal trying to eat silverware.

You sighed.

You really, really didn't want to do this. Using your powers without training, without a Guide to stabilize you afterward, was like chugging expired energy drinks and then trying to operate heavy machinery. It was inadvisable, dangerous and likely to end with something exploding, and that something might just be your brain.

But the crab-thing was between you and your apartment, and you'd be damned if you let some interdimensional reject make you take the long way home.

You focused, felt the power coil in your chest like a spring wound too tight, and released it.

The monster didn't so much die as it ceased to exist in its current form. One second it was there, the next it was abstract art painted across the alley wall in colors that shouldn't exist in nature.

The recoil hit you immediately.

It felt like someone had taken your brain, put it in a blender, hit "puree," and then dumped it back into your skull while it was still spinning.

There was a noise in your head that sounded like if static could scream. Your vision went fuzzy at the edges. Your hands were shaking.

Somewhere in the back of your mind, a voice that definitely wasn't yours was suggesting, very reasonably, that eating drywall seemed like a great idea actually. Drywall probably tasted good. Drywall might solve all your problems.

"No," you told yourself, sliding down the alley wall to sit on the ground. "We are not eating the wall. We are not eating anything. We are going to sit here and breathe and not explode the block."

The screaming in your head ramped up. This noise made you understand why Espers went insane. This was what it felt like when your mind started coming apart at the seams.

You were trying to remember if spontaneous human combustion was a real thing or just something you'd seen on TV when someone tapped you on the shoulder.

The screaming stopped.

Just like that. The noise cut off like someone had hit a mute button on your brain. The drywall cravings disappeared. The feeling of your sanity slowly leaking out of your ears vanished. Everything went quiet and calm and blessedly, beautifully normal.

You looked up.

There was a man standing over you. A short man, probably five-foot-nothing, with a bob haircut that should have looked ridiculous but instead looked like he'd stolen it from a fashion magazine and made it better. It was a hairdo that made you think "no one else could pull this off, but somehow he makes it look like the only correct haircut that has ever existed."

And his eyes. Red. Not the creepy red of colored contacts or some edgelord anime character, but a deep, genuine red like garnets or really good wine. Pretty didn't cover it. His eyes looked like someone had bottled sunset and chaos and poured it into his face.

"Thanks, man," you managed to say.

Then you passed the fuck out.

You woke up expecting to be in the Bureau.

You'd seen enough conspiracy videos to know the drill. They'd have dragged your unconscious ass to some sterile white room that smelled like disinfectant and broken dreams.

You'd be tied to a chair—or at minimum, sitting across from some dead-eyed bureaucrat who looked like they'd given up on life sometime in 2003 and had just been going through the motions ever since.

They'd give you the speech about duty and honor and serving your country, conveniently leaving out the part where Espers had a median life expectancy of "not great" and a retirement plan of "hopefully you don't go insane and have to be put down like Old Yeller."

Instead, you were still in the alley.

The garbage smell had somehow gotten worse, which you didn't think was possible. You were still lying on concrete that felt like it was actively trying to give you tetanus. And there was someone sitting next to you, humming a cheerful little tune that sounded like it belonged in a music box owned by a creepy doll that came to life at midnight.

You cracked open your eyes.

Bob Cut Man was still there, sitting cross-legged beside you like he was at a casual picnic and not in an alley that smelled like the dumpster itsefl had died and was currently decomposing. He was examining his nails like he had all the time in the world.

"Oh, you're awake!" he said brightly. "I was beginning to think you'd hit your head on the way down. You dropped like a puppet with its strings cut. Very dramatic. I'd give it a six out of ten—points for commitment, but you didn't stick the landing."

You groaned and tried to sit up. Your body felt like someone had taken it apart, juggled the pieces, and put it back together using instructions written in a language they didn't speak. "Why am I not at the Bureau?"

"Why would you be at the Bureau?" He blinked at you innocently.

"Because I'm an unregistered Esper who just used powers in public and then passed out in front of a witness?" You squinted at him. "That's like, the exact scenario from their recruitment pamphlets. 'See something, say something, drag them to headquarters.'"

"Ah, but you see, I'd have to care about their recruitment policies for that to matter." He grinned, and it was the kind of grin that suggested he regularly broke rules just for the entertainment value. "Besides, where's your Guide? Surely they should be handling this."

You let out a laugh that sounded like a car trying to start in winter. "Oh, I accidentally lost mine."

He stared at you.

Then he burst out laughing, the kind of genuine delighted cackle that made him sound slightly unhinged. "Lost? You LOST your Guide? Like a sock in the laundry?"

"It was a whole thing," you said flatly. "Very emotional. There may have been a musical number. I don't want to talk about it."

He looked at you like you were the most entertaining thing he'd seen in years, which was either flattering or concerning. Possibly both. "Oh, you're fun. I like you. You're ridiculous."

"Thanks, I grew it myself."

"I'm Lilia Vanrouge," he announced, as if introducing himself in an alley next to what used to be a monster was perfectly normal. He even did a little gesture with his hand that was almost a bow. "Charmed, I'm sure."

You told him your name, wondering if you should be more concerned about the fact that he seemed to be enjoying this whole situation way too much.

"Delightful," Lilia said, and you genuinely couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic. "Now, as entertaining as this whole 'rogue Esper speedrun to insanity' situation is, you need to be Guided properly. That little power usage earlier nearly turned you into a cautionary tale. If I hadn't been passing by, you'd have either eaten that wall or achieved spontaneous human fireworks. Possibly simultaneously."

"Why though?" You frowned at him, your brain still feeling like it was operating on dial-up internet. "You were enough. I'm fine now. Crisis averted. We can all go home."

Lilia went very still.

He stared at you with an expression you couldn't quite read—something between surprised and confused and maybe a little bit touched? It was hard to tell with the way his face seemed to cycle through emotions like a slideshow.

"I... helped?" he said slowly, like he was testing out the words.

"Yeah? You touched me and the screaming stopped." You said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "The voice telling me drywall was a valid food group just... stopped. That's Guide stuff, right? I'm not hallucinating this?"

For a second, Lilia looked almost vulnerable. Then his expression shifted back to amused so fast you almost got whiplash watching it.

Without warning, he reached out and grabbed your hand.

Oh.

OH.

You'd been Guided once before, by your friend after your first awakening when you'd accidentally discovered your powers. That had felt nice. Pleasant. Like someone had given your brain a gentle pat and said "there there, stop being a mess."

This felt like your nervous system had just discovered what relaxation was after spending your entire life tensed for a fight you didn't know was coming.

Every muscle you didn't know you'd been clenching unclenched. The weird staticky feeling that had been buzzing in your skull like angry bees just... evaporated.

Your brain, which normally felt like a browser with 47 tabs open and 32 of them playing different music, suddenly felt organized. Like someone had gone through and closed all the tabs and organized your mental bookmarks and maybe even cleared the cache.

You could feel him Guiding you—actually feel the energy smoothing out all the jagged edges your power had left behind, like someone running a sanding block over rough wood until it was polished.

He was GOOD. Suspiciously good. "Did you go to some kind of Guide university or something" levels of good.

You relaxed so much you probably looked like a boneless cat. "Oh damn," you mumbled, your words slurring slightly. "I'm gonna fall asleep on you if you keep this up. This is a threat and a warning."

"Please don't," Lilia said, sounding amused. "I just got this jacket cleaned, and you smell like alley."

"You're in the alley too. You also smell like alley."

He was still holding your hand, still Guiding you, and everything felt so stupidly comfortable and warm that when he said, "Come with me," in that cheerful tone, your brain—which was currently the consistency of warm honey—just went "yeah okay sounds good."

"Sure," you said, letting him pull you to your feet.

Somewhere in the distant background of your mind, the tiny part of your brain that was responsible for self-preservation was screaming. It was jumping up and down waving red flags.

It was pulling out the PowerPoint presentation from that assembly in middle school about stranger danger and secondary locations and how this was EXACTLY how people ended up on true crime podcasts.

But that part of your brain was very far away and very easy to ignore when you felt this relaxed.

So you followed Lilia out of the alley like a baby duck that had imprinted on a particularly chaotic mother duck who probably had a criminal record.

"Where are we going?" you asked, stumbling slightly as you tried to keep up with his surprisingly quick pace.

"Somewhere more comfortable than an alley," Lilia said cheerfully. "I have standards, you know. If you're going to pass out on me again—which you might—I'd prefer it happen somewhere that doesn't require a tetanus shot afterward."

"That's very considerate of you."

"I'm a very considerate person," he said, grinning over his shoulder at you. "Also, we should probably have a conversation about how you've been functioning as an Esper without a Guide, because that's either incredibly impressive or incredibly stupid. I'm leaning toward stupid."

"Why not both?"

"I like the way you think."

Behind you, the monster remains continued their dissolving process, leaving behind a stain that was going to confuse the hell out of the Bureau cleanup crew and possibly require a hazmat team.

Ahead of you, Lilia was humming again—some tune that sounded vaguely like a lullaby but with ominous undertones—and leading you through the streets with confidence, like he had done this before and found it hilarious every single time.

You were definitely making terrible decisions.

But you were making them while feeling the most relaxed you'd felt in two years, so really, who was the winner here?

Lilia got you ice cream.

He steered you into a convenience store like you were a traumatized kindergartener who'd just scraped their knee, pointed at the freezer section, and told you to pick whatever you wanted.

Who were you to say no to free ice cream? You grabbed something with an unreasonable amount of chocolate and possibly some cookie chunks. Lilia got one that was bright green and probably melon-flavored, which felt very on-brand for someone wearing a jacket with more zippers than seemed structurally necessary.

You sat on a bench outside the store, eating your feelings and your ice cream, while Lilia swung his legsand hummed between bites.

"So what's up with you?" you asked, gesturing at him with your spoon. "Do you just... pick up strays on the regular? Is this a hobby? Should I be concerned that you're running some kind of alley person collection service?"

Lilia laughed, bright and a little bit mischievous. "Something like that! I've always had a soft spot for lost things. Stray cats, confused Espers having existential crises next to dumpsters—really, is there much difference?"

"I feel like there should be."

"And yet here we are!" He took another bite of his aggressively green ice cream, looking perfectly pleased with himself.

When you finished, he pulled out his phone and handed it to you. "Put your number in."

You blinked at him. "Why?"

"So you can call me if you use your powers again," he said, like this was obvious. "You nearly turned yourself into a vegetable back there. Next time you might not be so lucky."

"There won't be a next time," you said firmly, typing in your number. "Jesus Christ, that was horrible. I'm never doing that again. I'm going to live a peaceful, power-free life and die of old age like a normal person."

Lilia's smile was indulgent in the way of someone watching a child promise they'll never eat candy again while still holding a lollipop. "Of course. I'm sure you'll be very successful at that."

"I will be. I'm very committed to this."

"I can tell."

You fucked up approximately one hour later.

You got home, exhausted and still a little loopy from being Guided. You kicked off your shoes, shuffled into your apartment, and immediately spotted it.

A HUGE spider, one so nasty that made you question whether God had favorites and you definitely weren't one of them. It was on the wall next to your kitchen, just sitting there with all its horrible legs, probably plotting your demise.

You screamed and powers activated on instinct.

Fire shot from your hand like you were some kind of discount flamethrower.

The spider was obliterated. So was a chunk of your wall. And your security deposit.

"No no no NO—" You stared at the scorch mark in horror, then at your hand, then at where the spider used to be.

The recoil hit you like a truck filled with smaller trucks.

Your brain immediately started doing that thing again where it felt like it was coming apart at the seams. The screaming started up. Somewhere in the static, a voice cheerfully suggested that maybe if you just stuck your head in the freezer, everything would be fine. Cold fixed computers, right? Probably worked on brains too.

You grabbed your phone with shaking hands and texted Lilia.

You: alley person here You: so You: funny story You: i may have used my powers again You: in my defense there was a spider You: a HUGE spider You: i have no other defense

The reply came back almost immediately.

Lilia: I'm disappointed but not surprised. Lilia: Where are you?

You sent him your address, then sat on your floor and tried very hard not to eat your couch cushions because they were starting to look oddly appealing.

Lilia showed up to your apartment in less than ten minutes, which seemed impossible given where the convenience store was, but you weren't going to question it.

He took one look at you sitting on the floor with your back against the wall and sighed. "You lasted less than an hour. I should start a betting pool."

"There was a spider," you said weakly.

"I'm sure it was terrifying."

He reached down and touched your shoulder.

Instant relief. The screaming stopped. The weird cravings vanished. Your brain remembered how to be a brain instead of a malfunctioning appliance.

You slumped against the wall, exhaling hard. "Oh thank god."

Lilia still looked shocked—genuinely surprised that his powers were working on you. His eyes were wide, and there was something almost melancholy in his expression before he smoothed it away into his usual amused mask.

You didn't dwell on it. He'd been nice enough to help you twice now. Who were you to interrogate him about why he looked surprised his Guide powers worked? Maybe he was having an off day. Maybe he usually worked with different Espers. Maybe you were just weird.

"Come on," you said, standing up. "I owe you dinner at least. It's the least I can do for making you run across town because I'm afraid of spiders."

You led him into your kicthen, trying not to look at the scorch mark on the wall. He looked at it anyway, tilting his head like he was examining a piece of abstract art.

"You really don't like spiders," he observed.

"In my defense, it was huge."

"I'm sure it was a terrible monster. Truly fearsome."

You ordered delivery because cooking was beyond you right now, and you sat cross-legged on your floor while Lilia perched on your couch.

"So," he said, pulling apart his chopsticks. "Why don't you want to go to the Bureau?"

You looked at him like he'd just asked why you didn't want to stick your hand in a blender.

"Are you serious? The government SUCKS." You gestured emphatically with a piece of chicken. "They'd own me. They'd tell me where to go, what to fight, when to sleep. I'd be a tool. A weapon. They don't care if Espers burn out or go crazy or die—they just care that the Gates get cleared and they look good on camera. Have you SEEN their propaganda videos? They're so bad. The acting is terrible. The one guy looks like he's being held hostage."

Lilia laughed, bright and genuine. "He probably is."

"Right?! And the benefits are garbage. I looked it up once. The health insurance doesn't even cover therapy, which seems like something Espers would desperately need? And the retirement plan is just 'hope you last long enough to retire.' No thanks. I'll take my chances with the spiders."

"The government does have its flaws," Lilia agreed, something twinkling in his eyes. "But the Bureau isn't as bad as you think it is."

You looked at him skeptically. "Are you a recruiter? Is this a recruitment pitch? Because I gotta tell you, the free ice cream already happened. You can't get me twice."

"Not a recruiter," he said, grinning. "Just someone with experience. The Bureau has its problems, certainly, but there are benefits too. It gives you access to Guides who can keep you from barbecuing your apartment every time you see an insect."

"I'm doing fine on my own."

"You needed me twice in one day because you almost went insane."

"...Okay but besides that."

Lilia's expression went soft, almost fond. "Come with me tomorrow. Somewhere interesting. I think you'll be surprised."

You should say no. Technically, this dude was still a stranger. You'd known him for less than a day. He could be anyone. A serial killer. A organ harvester. A time-share salesman.

But there was something about the melancholy in his eyes when he'd touched you, when he'd looked so surprised that his powers worked. Something genuine and a little bit sad and entirely trustable.

"Fine," you said. "But if you're a serial killer, I'm going to haunt you so hard. I'll be the most annoying ghost. I'll move your furniture two inches to the left every night. I'll make your milk spoil early. I'll hide one sock from every pair."

Lilia laughed, standing up and reaching over to ruffle your hair. "Duly noted. I'll pick you up at ten."

He left, and you sat in your apartment with a scorch mark on the wall and a strange man's number in your phone and the distinct feeling that your life was about to get significantly more complicated.

Lilia took you to a Gate.

No, not the general vicinity of a Gate. He took you RIGHT to a Gate, close enough that you could see the weird shimmer of it, like heat waves rising off asphalt in summer except the asphalt was a tear in reality and the heat waves were dimensional energy that probably caused cancer.

There were Guides waiting outside.

You could tell they were Guides by the way they were standing around looking nervous and checking their devices obsessively and doing that thing where they pretend they're not worried while being EXTREMELY worried.

One was pacing back and forth so much they were going to wear a groove in the sidewalk. Another was hiding behind a trashcan—fully committed to the hiding, crouched down with just their eyes peeking over the top—and you respected that level of dedication to anxiety management. A third was absolutely SCREAMING at another Guide who looked sheepish and kept trying to explain themselves.

"—APPLE JUICE? You filled the first aid kit with APPLE JUICE instead of stabilizers?!"

"In my defense, they're both liquids—"

"THAT IS NOT A DEFENSE. THAT'S NOT EVEN CLOSE TO A DEFENSE. DO YOU KNOW WHAT APPLE JUICE DOES FOR PSYCHIC OVERLOAD?"

"...Provides vitamin C?"

"GET OUT OF MY SIGHT BEFORE I STRANGLE YOU."

You looked at Lilia. "What are we doing here?"

He grinned, all mischief and secrets, and motioned for you to sit down on a nearby bench.

You sat.

"Usually civilians aren't allowed this close," you pointed out, eyeing the perimeter that you were definitely inside of.

"Usually," Lilia agreed, settling next to you like he didn't have a care in the world.

Nobody said anything. Not the Bureau personnel managing the perimeter. Not the Guides. Nobody even looked at you twice.

Lilia apparently had the kind of pull that made people just... accept his presence. And by extension, yours.

You filed that information away under "things that should probably concern me but don't because I'm too committed to this poor decision."

"We're watching," Lilia said simply. "Just watch."

So you watched.

The Gate shimmered. Pulsed. And then Espers started stumbling out.

Some were walking on their own, relatively stable but with that look in their eyes like they were holding themselves together through sheer willpower. Others were stumbling, barely keeping upright, their movements jerky and uncoordinated like puppets with tangled strings.

The Guides moved immediately.

Some ran to their Espers, catching them before they fell. Others waited, arms outstretched, as their Espers made their way over on shaky legs.

The Guide who'd been hiding behind the trashcan suddenly found their courage and sprinted to catch their Esper, who collapsed into their arms with the kind of trust that comes from knowing someone will be there to catch you.

You watched as connections happened. Skin-to-skin contact. The immediate relaxation in the Espers' postures as they were Guided. The relief on the Guides' faces as they confirmed their Espers were alive and relatively intact.

It made you feel... lonely.

Which was stupid. You'd chosen isolation.

You'd chosen to hide your powers, to avoid the Bureau, to keep yourself separate from all of this. You'd made that choice specifically to avoid getting caught up in this system, to avoid becoming another tool for the government to use and discard.

But watching someone wait for their Esper, watching them catch them before they fell, watching the way they held each other like they were the only solid thing in each other's worlds...

That made something in your chest ache.

Your powers had made you isolate yourself. Fear of hurting others. Fear of getting caught. Fear of losing control. You'd cut yourself off from people, kept yourself small and hidden and alone, because it seemed safer than the alternative.

But safe was also lonely.

And watching these pairs—watching the way they moved together, supported each other, trusted each other—made you realize how much you'd given up by choosing to hide.

Lilia tapped your cheek gently, pulling you out of your thoughts.

He pointed toward the Gate entrance.

The final Espers were stumbling out, and with them came civilians—regular people who'd been caught in the Gate when it opened, trapped inside with the monsters until the Espers could clear it and get them out.

They were crying. Thanking the Espers. Hugging them. One old woman grabbed an Esper's face and kissed their forehead while sobbing about how she thought she'd never see her grandchildren again.

The Espers looked exhausted and uncomfortable with the attention, but also... proud. Like they knew they'd done something that mattered.

Like they'd made a difference.

You felt something shift in your chest.

Your dead-end convenience store job had never made anyone cry with relief. You'd never saved anyone from monsters. The most impact you'd had on someone's life was probably giving them the correct change and not judging them for buying weird snack combinations at 2 AM.

This... this was different.

"So," Lilia said softly, his voice losing some of its usual playfulness. "What do you think?"

You were quiet for a moment, watching the last civilian get escorted to a waiting ambulance, still thanking every Esper they passed.

"I think..." You swallowed. "I think my job sucks and I've been wasting my life."

Lilia laughed, warm and understanding. "Many people feel that way. But you have a choice now."

"The Bureau—"

"Has its problems, yes. We've established this." He turned to look at you fully, those red eyes serious despite his smile. "But it also has purpose. Structure. Training. People who will catch you when you fall." He paused. "And if you want to resign and run away after the first week, I'll help you hide. I know some excellent hiding spots. Very dramatic. One of them is in a cave."

"A cave?"

"I have eclectic tastes."

You looked back at the Gate. At the Guides helping their Espers toward the medical tent. At the civilians being reunited with worried family members. At the Bureau personnel coordinating everything with practiced efficiency despite the apple juice incident.

It wasn't perfect. It was bureaucratic and messy and probably full of paperwork and annoying rules.

But it was also... something. Something more than hiding and pretending and living in fear of sneezing wrong.

"Okay," you said.

Lilia blinked. "Okay?"

"Yeah. Okay. I'll give it a shot." You looked at him. "But you have to help me. I don't know how any of this works. I don't know what I'm doing. I've been avoiding this my entire life."

His smile was softer than you'd seen it, almost proud. "I can do that."

"And if it sucks—"

"Cave. Very dramatic. Possibly some bats."

"Perfect."

You sat there for a moment longer, watching the organized chaos of a successful Gate clear, feeling like you were standing on the edge of something huge and terrifying and maybe, possibly, worth it.

Lilia stood up, offering you his hand.

You took it.

"Come on then," he said cheerfully. "Let's go ruin some bureaucrat's day with paperwork."

"Is that fun for you?"

"Immensely."

You followed him away from the Gate, toward whatever fresh hell you'd just agreed to, and tried not to think about how your entire life had just changed because of a spider, an alley, and a short man with excellent hair and mysterious government connections.

Lilia waited outside while you got tested.

The testing room looked like someone had combined a doctor's office with a sci-fi movie set and then given up halfway through decorating. There was a glowing orb on a pedestal in the center that looked like it had been stolen from a fantasy game.

The walls were that specific shade of beige that only existed in government buildings, and there was a motivational poster featuring an Esper punching a monster with the caption "TEAMWORK MAKES THE DREAM WORK" that had clearly been put up by someone who had never actually been inside a Gate.

You expected a solid A-rank. Maybe B.

You'd sneezed a car into orbit and barbecued a spider through a wall, sure, but that didn't necessarily mean you were anything special. Lots of Espers could do property damage. It was kind of their whole thing.

The recruitment videos were basically just montages of Espers breaking stuff in increasingly impressive ways while dramatic music played.

The Bureau person overseeing your test—a tired-looking woman with glasses held together by tape and a clipboard that had seen better days—gestured at the orb like she was explaining how to use a microwave for the ten thousandth time.

"Put your hand on it," she said in the tone of someone who had said this exact phrase 5,000 times and had lost all will to live around iteration 364.

You put your hand on the orb. It felt warm and tingly. It was like touching a TV screen with static electricity, except the TV was a metaphysical representation of your soul's power level and also possibly judging you.

The orb glowed brighter, which seemed normal. Then it glowed even brighter, which seemed less normal. Then it started making a noise—a high-pitched whine that sounded like a kettle screaming its last dying breath.

The woman looked up from her clipboard, eyes widening as her pen clattered to the floor.

The orb flashed brilliant white, bright enough that you had to squint, and spat out a holographic display with letters so large you could probably see them from space: SS-RANK

You stared at it. The woman stared at it. You stared at the woman. She stared back, and her expression transformed from tired bureaucrat to kid on Christmas morning who just got the exact toy they wanted so fast you got whiplash watching it happen. Her entire face lit up like someone had flipped a switch.

"Oh my god," she whispered, and you started backing up slowly because you recognized that look. That was the look of someone about to make your problem their entire personality.

"OH MY GOD!" She lunged for a phone on the wall with the speed of someone who had been waiting their entire career for this exact moment. "WE HAVE AN SS-RANK! I REPEAT, WE HAVE AN SS-RANK! THIS IS NOT A DRILL! SOMEONE GET HR! SOMEONE GET EVERYONE! SOMEONE GET THE GOOD COFFEE FROM THE EXECUTIVE BREAK ROOM!"

You backed up faster, eyeing the door. The door burst open before you could reach it, and approximately seven people in Bureau uniforms rushed in like you'd just announced free pizza in the break room.

They all looked at you with identical expressions of barely contained hysteria. Then at the orb, which was still displaying SS-RANK in letters that seemed to be getting bigger out of spite. Then back at you. Their expressions were terrifying in their enthusiasm, like a pack of very professional wolves that had just spotted a very valuable sheep.

You were about to make a break for the window—second floor be damned, you'd survived worse—when someone from HR materialized out of nowhere and physically blocked your escape route.

How did a HR person move that fast? Was there some kind of special HR technique they taught where you learned to sense when someone was about to flee? The HR person was slightly out of breath and clutching a contract so thick it could probably be used as a weapon.

"WAIT!" they shouted, holding up both hands like they were trying to calm a spooked horse. "Wait wait wait, don't run, we have BENEFITS!"

"I'm good actually—" you started, still edging toward the window.

"INSURANCE!" they interrupted desperately, and you could see the fear in their eyes that you were going to bail. "Full coverage! Medical, dental, vision! We'll include DENTAL! Do you know how rare dental coverage is? It's VERY rare! People write poems about dental coverage!"

You hesitated. Dental was expensive. You'd been using the same retainer for three years because you couldn't afford to replace it.

"We'll pay your rent!" another Bureau person chimed in, jumping on your moment of weakness like a shark sensing blood in the water. "Full coverage, any apartment within city limits! You want a penthouse? We'll get you a penthouse! You want a place with a balcony? DONE! You want one of those fancy buildings with a doorman who judges everyone? WE'LL MAKE IT HAPPEN!"

"We'll assign you a high-level Guide immediately!" someone else added, practically climbing over their colleague to be heard. "Top tier! The best! S-rank minimum! They won't fill the first aid kit with apple juice, we promise! That was ONE time and he has been reprimanded!"

The HR people could sense your flight instinct was still on full throttle. They were throwing benefits at you like someone trying to lure a feral cat with treats, getting increasingly creative and increasingly desperate. "Pension plan! Hazard pay! Access to the executive cafeteria, which has the GOOD coffee, not the break room sludge that tastes like someone strained it through a gym sock!"

"Paid time off!" another voice called from somewhere in the growing crowd.

"Gym membership! With the pool! The nice pool, not the one where someone saw a rat!"

"Free therapy! Which you'll need! We're very upfront about that! The job is stressful! We have EXCELLENT therapists! Some of them have only mild stress-related disorders themselves!"

You were being cornered by increasingly frantic Bureau employees listing benefits while you calculated whether you could fit through the air vent in the ceiling. It looked narrow, but you were motivated.

"A week off every month," you said desperately, playing your trump card because you were running out of wall to back up against.

Everyone went silent. The HR person's eye twitched. Someone in the back whispered "is that allowed?" and got immediately shushed.

"That's... that's excessive," the HR person said weakly.

"SS-rank," you pointed out, gesturing at the orb which was still helpfully displaying your rank like the world's most obnoxious scoreboard. "According to your glowing ball of judgment. I could probably sneeze this building into the sun if I wanted to. Accidentally. I have a history of sneezing things into orbit. Ask my old landlord."

You watched them do the mental math. You could practically see the calculations happening behind their eyes: cost of benefits versus value of SS-rank Esper versus likelihood of this person actually sneezing the building into the sun versus how badly they needed an SS-rank on their roster versus how much paperwork it would be if you escaped through the window.

"Deal," the HR person said, slapping the contract down on the nearest surface with the force of someone who had made a decision and was committed to it even if it killed them. "Sign here, here, and here. Initial here. Blood type here—that's for medical, not a ritual, I know it looks suspicious with the red ink but I promise it's normal paperwork. We just ran out of black pens and nobody wants to go to the supply closet because it's haunted."

You signed. Your hand was shaking slightly, and you weren't sure if it was from nerves or from the dawning realization that you'd just agreed to the exact thing you'd been avoiding for years or from the fact that the HR person had just casually mentioned their supply closet was haunted and nobody had questioned it.

But hey. Dental.

You stumbled out of the testing room in a daze, clutching your copy of the contract like it was a life preserver and you were drowning in a sea of poor decisions.

The past thirty minutes had been a whirlwind of glowing orbs and enthusiastic Bureau employees and benefits negotiations that had felt more like hostage negotiations.

Lilia was leaning against the wall outside, looking perfectly relaxed and completely unbothered by the muffled shouting that had definitely been audible from the hallway. He was examining his nails again, because apparently that was his default state of being. He grinned when he saw you.

"How'd it go?" he asked cheerfully, like he didn't already know the answer based on the fact that you looked like you'd just survived a natural disaster.

"SS-rank," you said numbly, still not quite believing it yourself.

His eyebrows shot up, genuine surprise flickering across his face before settling into something that looked almost like pride. "Oh my. That's exciting."

"They offered me dental."

"Well, that's just good sense. Dental is important. You should take care of your teeth."

"I signed my life away for dental and a week off per month."

"The week off is clever negotiating. I'm proud of you." He pushed off the wall with the easy grace of someone who had never been awkward a day in his life. "You'll do well here. Try not to sneeze any buildings into orbit. I imagine the paperwork for that would be extensive."

You grabbed his sleeve before he could walk away, your fingers clenching in the fabric with perhaps more desperation than was strictly dignified. "Be my Guide."

Lilia blinked, his expression cycling through confusion and then carefully controlled neutrality. "What?"

"Be my Guide," you repeated, more firmly this time. "They said they'd assign me a high-level Guide but I don't want a stranger. You're good at it. You made the drywall cravings stop. Twice. That's a 100% success rate. That's better statistics than most medical procedures."

Something flickered across his face—surprise, then something softer and sadder that made him look older than he should. "I don't work here."

You stared at him. Blinked. Stared some more. Your brain made the sound of a computer trying to process an error message and failing spectacularly.

"You... what?"

"I don't work for the Bureau," he said simply, like this was a perfectly normal thing to drop into conversation and not information that recontextualized your entire interaction.

"What does that MEAN?" You grabbed his shoulders and shook him, which was difficult because he was sturdier than he looked. "Are you in another branch? Are you a foreign Guide? Are you freelance? IS THAT A THING? CAN GUIDES BE FREELANCE? Why were you in that alley? Why did you help me? Why did you bring me here? EXPLAIN!"

"Stop shaking me, you'll give me whiplash and then who will Guide you through your inevitable breakdown?" Lilia said, looking more amused than concerned about being physically rattled like a snow globe.

You stopped shaking him but kept your hands on his shoulders, fixing him with your most intense stare. The one that usually made convenience store shoplifters confess immediately. "Explain. Now. Use your words. Complete sentences."

Lilia sighed, and that melancholy you'd glimpsed before crept back into his expression like fog rolling in. His usual playful mask slipped just enough that you could see something raw underneath. "I lost my Guide powers years ago."

You felt your stomach drop somewhere into the vicinity of your feet. "What?"

"An injury. An incident. A very exciting story that I don't particularly enjoy telling." He looked at you with those red eyes that suddenly seemed much older than they should be, ancient in a way that made you want to ask questions you weren't sure you wanted answered.

"The details don't matter. What matters is that I haven't been able to Guide anyone in a very long time. Somehow, you're the only one I can Guide. I don't know why. You're an anomaly. A statistical impossibility. Probably a clerical error in the universe's filing system."

That explained everything. The shock on his face every time he touched you and it worked. The surprise, and the nostalgia. The way he looked at you like you were something precious and impossible. The melancholy that crept in around the edges when he thought you weren't looking.

He'd been a Guide. Probably a good one, based on how effective he was with you. And then he'd lost it, lost that fundamental part of himself, and had been living without it until you'd stumbled into an alley and passed out at his feet.

"Be my Guide," you said again, quieter this time but no less firm.

"I don't think that's a good idea—"

"I came here because of you," you interrupted, and you weren't above guilt-tripping him if that's what it took because you'd already signed the contract and you were committed now and the idea of doing this with anyone else made your chest tight.

"You took me to that Gate. You showed me those people, those Espers and Guides working together. You showed me the civilians they saved. You convinced me this was worth trying, that maybe I could do something that mattered instead of just hiding and working a dead-end job and pretending I was normal. How can you just leave me here alone after all that? That's so cold. That's heartless. I thought we had a bond. I thought we were friends. I'm going to cry."

"You're not going to cry."

"I might! You don't know! I'm very emotional right now! I just found out I'm SS-rank, which I'm still processing, and I signed a contract that's probably going to ruin my life, and there was SO much paperwork, and one of the sections mentioned the haunted supply closet very casually, and I think I'm having a crisis!"

Lilia looked at you for a long moment, his expression unreadable. Then he started laughing—that genuine, delighted laugh that made him seem younger and less mysterious and more like a person who enjoyed chaos for its own sake. "You're very convincing. Has anyone ever told you that you'd make an excellent lawyer? Or possibly a con artist?"

"Is that a yes?"

"That's a yes." He gently removed your hands from his shoulders and patted your head like you were a particularly amusing puppy who had just done a trick. "Fine. You win. I'll be your Guide. But when you inevitably regret this decision, I want you to remember that you literally begged me."

"I'm fine with that. I'll write it down. I'll get it notarized."

"Let's go ruin HR's day twice in one afternoon," he said, walking toward the HR office.

You followed, feeling like you'd just won something but weren't entirely sure what. You could hear muffled sounds from other rooms—someone yelling about proper Gate procedure, someone else crying, the distant sound of what might have been a small explosion or just someone dropping something heavy.

The HR person looked up when Lilia walked in, saw exactly who it was, and their expression cycled through confusion, recognition, shock, horror, resignation, and finally the blank exhaustion of someone who had given up on understanding their life.

They looked like they aged ten years in five seconds.

"Vanrouge," they said weakly, and there was so much history in how they said his name. Exhaustion. Exasperation. This was someone who had dealt with this particular person before and knew exactly what was about to happen.

"Hello again!" Lilia said cheerfully, giving a little wave like he was greeting an old friend at a coffee shop and not walking into a government office to upend someone's afternoon. "I'd like to register as a Guide."

"You... your powers..." The HR person looked like they were trying to figure out how to phrase this delicately and failing. "You haven't been able to Guide anyone in years."

"Apparently they work on our new SS-rank friend here." He gestured at you with a flourish, like you were a prize on a game show. "So we may as well make it official, don't you think? It would be a shame to waste such a miraculous recovery. Very inspiring. You could probably make a motivational poster out of it."

The HR person looked at you with an expression that clearly said "why would you choose this?" Then at Lilia, who was radiating innocence in a way that was deeply suspicious. Then at the ceiling like they were asking for divine intervention or possibly checking to see if God was watching and judging their life choices.

"I don't get paid enough for this," they muttered, pulling out another contract from a drawer that seemed to contain nothing but contracts and disappointment.

"You know what? Fine. FINE. Today is clearly a day where nothing makes sense and the universe has decided to mess with me personally. Let's just... let's just do this. Do you have any idea how much paperwork this is going to be? Do you? Because it's a LOT. There are FORMS. So many forms. Forms about forms."

"I love paperwork," Lilia said, absolutely lying.

You and Lilia exchanged glances. He winked at you, eyes glinting with mischief and something that might have been genuine happiness. You tried not to smile and failed spectacularly, your face breaking into a grin that probably made you look slightly unhinged.

This was either the best decision you'd ever made or the worst, and honestly, you were fine with either option as long as it came with dental and Lilia's terrible sense of humor and the possibility that maybe, just maybe, you'd found something worth staying for.

The HR person began aggressively stapling papers together like they were taking out their frustrations on office supplies.

This was fine.

Everything was fine.

The Bureau had decided, in their infinite wisdom, to immediately introduce you to your new colleagues.

Because apparently "letting you process the fact that you just signed away your life" was not on today's agenda. The HR person who looked like they'd aged a decade in the past hour led you down a hallway, muttering something about "team integration" and "collaborative synergy" and other corporate buzzwords that made you want to throw yourself out a window.

Lilia walked beside you, humming that creepy music box tune again, looking far too entertained by your obvious distress. His eyes were practically glittering with mischief, which should have been your first warning that whatever was about to happen was going to be deeply unpleasant for you and extremely entertaining for him.

"You'll love them," he said cheerfully, which was exactly the kind of thing people said right before you met people you would absolutely not love.

"I don't love anyone," you muttered, trying to mentally prepare yourself for whatever fresh hell awaited.

"Not even me? I'm wounded. Devastated. I may never recover from this betrayal."

The HR person stopped in front of a door, took a deep breath like they were preparing for battle or possibly their own execution, and opened it. "Your new team," they announced, gesturing inside with all the enthusiasm of someone introducing you to a root canal performed by a dentist with shaky hands.

You stepped inside and immediately wanted to step back out, directly into traffic, which would probably be safer.

There were two people in the room, and they were possibly the most contrasting pair you'd ever seen. One of them was half asleep standing up—actually standing there with his eyes closed, arms crossed, somehow maintaining perfect posture while clearly unconscious.

His hair was silver and fell across his face in a way that should have looked messy but instead looked like he'd stepped out of a shampoo commercial. He had the kind of ethereal pretty-boy look that belonged in a boy band or a fantasy novel about sad elves. He was breathing slowly and evenly, and you were genuinely impressed that someone could sleep standing up without falling over.

That took skill. Or possibly narcolepsy. Or maybe he was dead and just really committed to staying upright.

The other one looked like he was vibrating with righteous fury, like someone had taken all the rage in the world and compressed it into one human-shaped container that was about to explode.

His hair was aggressively green, styled in a way that seemed to defy both gravity and good sense. His eyes were wide and intense like he'd been waiting his entire life for something to be angry about and had finally, finally found it.

He was staring at you with an expression that suggested you'd personally insulted his entire family, his ancestors, his ancestors' ancestors, and possibly his favorite breakfast cereal.

You raised your hand in what you hoped was a friendly, non-threatening wave. "Hi, I'm—"

"HOW DARE YOU!" the green-haired one exploded, his voice reaching decibels that probably violated several noise ordinances and possibly the Geneva Convention.

You blinked. "What?"

"HOW DARE YOU CASUALLY TOUCH MASTER LILIA!" He pointed at you with a finger that was shaking with emotion, his whole arm trembling like he was physically restraining himself from attacking you.

His face was turning red, which clashed spectacularly with his green hair in a way that made him look like a very angry Christmas decoration. "DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHO HE IS? THE AUDACITY! THE SHEER DISRESPECT! AND YOU—A HUMAN?!"

You stared at him, your brain struggling to process what was happening. "What does that even mean? We're all human here. That's—that's just a fact. Basic biology. Are you okay? Do you need to sit down? Do you need a paper bag to breathe into? Are you having a medical emergency?"

"I AM PERFECTLY FINE!" he screamed, somehow getting even louder, which you hadn't thought was physically possible. "YOU ARE THE PROBLEM! YOU WALTZ IN HERE, AN UNREGISTERED ESPER WHO PROBABLY DOESN'T EVEN KNOW PROPER PROTOCOL, AND YOU DARE TO—TO MAKE MASTER LILIA SIGN A CONTRACT? TO BECOME YOUR GUIDE? THE PRESUMPTION! THE ARROGANCE! THE—THE—"

Something in you snapped. Maybe it was the stress of the day. Maybe it was the fact that you'd just signed your life away for dental coverage. Maybe it was because this guy was yelling at you for reasons you didn't understand and hadn't even introduced himself first and you'd had about enough of today already.

"LISTEN HERE, YOU SENTIENT HIGHLIGHTER!" you yelled back, matching his volume and possibly exceeding it. "I DON'T KNOW WHO YOU THINK YOU ARE, BUT I JUST HAD A VERY STRESSFUL DAY! I FOUND OUT I'M SS-RANK, WHICH IS INSANE! I SIGNED A CONTRACT THAT'S PROBABLY CURSED! THERE'S A HAUNTED SUPPLY CLOSET SOMEWHERE IN THIS BUILDING AND NOBODY WILL EXPLAIN WHY!"

"THAT'S NO EXCUSE FOR YOUR BLATANT DISRESPECT—"

"DISRESPECT?! I LITERALLY JUST MET YOU! I DON'T EVEN KNOW YOUR NAME! YOU COULD BE ANYONE! YOU COULD BE KEVIN FROM ACCOUNTING FOR ALL I KNOW!"

"I AM NOT KEVIN FROM ACCOUNTING! I AM SEBEK ZIGVOLT, ELITE ESPER AND—"

"WELL GOOD FOR YOU, SEBEK!" You were fully panicking now, words just falling out of your mouth with no filter. "I NEED TO BUY EGGS! AND MILK! MY REFRIGERATOR IS EMPTY! I HAVEN'T DONE LAUNDRY IN TWO WEEKS! I'M WEARING MY EMERGENCY UNDERWEAR! DO YOU KNOW HOW STRESSFUL THAT IS?!"

Sebek faltered, looking confused. "What—"

"AND ANOTHER THING!" You were on a roll now, your brain completely divorced from reality. "I THINK I LEFT MY STOVE ON! DID I TURN IT OFF? I CAN'T REMEMBER! WHAT IF MY APARTMENT BURNS DOWN?! I JUST RENEWED MY LEASE! THE DEPOSIT WAS SO EXPENSIVE!"

"THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH—"

"I ALSO NEED TO RETURN MY LIBRARY BOOKS! THEY'RE THREE WEEKS OVERDUE! THE LATE FEES ARE GOING TO BE ASTRONOMICAL! DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH LIBRARIES CHARGE?!" You were gesturing wildly now, completely unhinged. "AND I NEVER CALLED MY MOM BACK! SHE'S GOING TO BE SO MAD! SHE ALWAYS ASKS IF I'M EATING ENOUGH VEGETABLES AND I ALWAYS LIE!"

"STOP SPOUTING NONSENSE—"

"IT'S NOT NONSENSE, IT'S MY LIFE, SEBEK! MY LIFE IS NONSENSE! I SAW A RACCOON YESTERDAY AND IT JUDGED ME! A RACCOON! I COULD SEE IT IN ITS LITTLE RACCOON EYES! IT KNEW I WAS A MESS!"

"WHAT ARE YOU EVEN TALKING ABOUT?!"

"I DON'T KNOW! I'M HAVING A CRISIS! MULTIPLE CRISES! A CRISIS SANDWICH! AND YOU'RE YELLING AT ME ABOUT TOUCHING LILIA WHEN HE'S THE ONE WHO GRABBED MY HAND FIRST! I DIDN'T ASK FOR THIS! I DIDN'T ASK FOR ANY OF THIS! I JUST WANTED TO LIVE A QUIET LIFE AND MAYBE ADOPT A CAT SOMEDAY!"

Sebek looked like his brain was short-circuiting trying to process your increasingly unhinged yelling. "YOU—YOU CAN'T JUST—"

"I ALSO THINK I'M LACTOSE INTOLERANT BUT I KEEP EATING CHEESE ANYWAY! IT'S A PROBLEM! I HAVE MANY PROBLEMS! CHEESE IS JUST ONE OF THEM!" You were fully spiraling now. "AND DON'T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON MY STUDENT LOANS! DO YOU HAVE STUDENT LOANS, SEBEK?! BECAUSE THEY'RE TERRIBLE! THEY FOLLOW YOU EVERYWHERE! IT'S LIKE BEING HAUNTED BY DEBT!"

"MASTER LILIA DESERVES BETTER THAN—"

"BETTER THAN WHAT?! SOMEONE WHO NEEDS TO BUY EGGS?! SOMEONE WHO'S BAD AT RETURNING LIBRARY BOOKS?! I'M DOING MY BEST HERE!" You threw your hands up. "I DIDN'T EVEN WANT TO BE AN ESPER! I WANTED TO BE A MARINE BIOLOGIST! BUT NO! I HAD TO SNEEZE A CAR INTO ORBIT! DO YOU KNOW HOW HARD IT IS TO EXPLAIN THAT?!"

Sebek's eye was twitching. He looked like he couldn't decide if he wanted to continue yelling at you or just give up on the conversation entirely. "YOU'RE COMPLETELY UNHINGED!"

"YEAH, WELL, YOU'RE YELLING AT A STRANGER ABOUT TOUCHING SOMEONE WHO GRABBED ME FIRST, SO WHO'S REALLY UNHINGED HERE?!"

That's when you noticed it—static. Visible static electricity gathering around his hands, crackling in the air like he was a human Tesla coil who'd decided you needed to be deleted from existence.

Little sparks jumped between his fingers, making a sound like angry bees. The lights flickered ominously. Your hair started standing on end, which was just great because you already looked like a mess and now you were going to look like a mess who'd stuck their finger in an electrical socket.

Oh.

Oh no.

He was an Esper. Obviously. You were in the Bureau.

But he was an Esper who was currently furious at you for yelling about groceries and library books and was generating what looked like enough electricity to power a small city or possibly just electrocute you to death, and you'd really prefer the first option but suspected you were going to get the second.

You started backing up quickly, hands raised in surrender, your survival instincts finally kicking in. "Okay, okay, let's just calm down! Let's all take a deep breath! No need for the lightning! I'm sure we can talk about this like rational adults! I take back the highlighter comment! Your hair is very—it's very green! That's a neutral observation! Actually, it's nice! Very vibrant! Really pops! Makes a statement!"

"NEUTRAL?! MY HAIR IS MAGNIFICENT! IT'S A TESTAMENT TO MY DEDICATION AND—"

"YES! MAGNIFICENT! EXACTLY WHAT I MEANT! VERY MAGNIFICENT! EXTREMELY MAGNIFICENT! THE MOST MAGNIFICENT HAIR I'VE EVER SEEN! PLEASE DON'T ELECTROCUTE ME! I STILL NEED TO BUY THOSE EGGS!"

"WHY DO YOU KEEP TALKING ABOUT EGGS?!"

"I DON'T KNOW! I'M PANICKING! THIS IS HOW I PANIC! I THINK ABOUT GROCERIES! IT'S A COPING MECHANISM!"

You backed up directly into something solid—someone solid—and stumbled. You immediately started apologizing because your mother had raised you with manners even if everything else in your life was currently a disaster movie. "Sorry, sorry, I didn't mean to—I'm just trying not to get electrocuted—very sorry—"

You looked back to see who you'd bumped into.

And up.

And further up.

And even further up because this person was unreasonably tall.

There was a guy with horns on his head. Actual honest-to-god horns that curved back from his temples like he was part dragon or demon or some kind of mythological creature that had decided to take human form and join the Bureau.

He was tall—impossibly tall, and made you feel like a small child looking up at an adult, except worse because you were an adult and he was just absurdly, unfairly tall.

His presence felt heavy, like gravity worked differently around him, like the air itself was bending to accommodate his existence. His eyes were green and sharp and ancient, looking at you with an expression that was either curiosity or the prelude to you being smited, and you weren't sure which would be worse.

He was wearing a Bureau uniform that somehow looked formal and elegant on him instead of like sad government-issued clothing, like he'd personally upgraded the dress code through sheer force of presence alone.

You knew this guy.

You'd seen him on the news. Multiple times. Usually with headlines like "STRONGEST ESPER CLEARS S-RANK GATE SOLO" or "MALLEUS DRACONIA SAVES CITY, CAUSES MINOR EARTHQUAKE" or your personal favorite from last month: "PLEASE STOP ASKING THE STRONGEST ESPER IF HE'S SINGLE, SAYS INCREASINGLY DESPERATE BUREAU SPOKESPERSON."

This was Malleus Draconia. The world's strongest Esper. SSS-rank, technically only one level above you, except he's been SSS-rank for years and actually knew what he was doing and probably didn't yell about grocery lists when confronted.

He could level mountains. He'd once accidentally caused a three-day thunderstorm because he was in a bad mood. There were rumors that he'd solo-cleared a Gate that had been designated "certain death" and came out without a scratch, looking mildly annoyed that it hadn't been more challenging.

Other rumors suggested that monsters sometimes just gave up and left when they sensed him coming.

You were stuck between a guy who wanted to electrocute you for unclear reasons involving touching Lilia and the world's strongest Esper, and you had the sudden, horrible certainty that you were going to die here.

On your first day. Before you even got to use your dental benefits. They'd find your body and the HR person would sigh and add you to some statistic about "new recruits who didn't make it past orientation."

This was it. This was how it ended. Death by angry colleagues in a room that smelled like industrial cleaner and broken dreams.

You opened your mouth, possibly to apologize or possibly to scream, you weren't sure.

To your complete and utter surprise, Malleus looked at the green-haired lightning generator and said, in a voice that was calm and deep and somehow made the air feel heavier, like his words had physical weight, "Sebek. Stop."

The effect was immediate and honestly kind of scary.

Sebek went completely still. The static crackling around his hands vanished instantly like someone had flipped a switch or unplugged him from whatever rage generator he'd been connected to.

His expression transformed from righteous fury to something that looked like a kicked puppy trying very hard to maintain dignity and composure in front of someone they desperately wanted to impress.

"But Young Master—" Sebek started, and his voice had completely changed, going from screaming banshee to something almost pleading.

"Stop," Malleus repeated, and there was no room for argument in his tone. His tone said "this discussion is over and we both know it."

Sebek stopped. He even stepped back, though he continued glaring at you with the intensity of someone mentally cataloging all your flaws for a future report that would probably be seventeen pages long and include citations.

You looked up at Malleus, and words started tumbling out of your mouth before your brain could stop them. "Thank you, thank you so much, I really appreciate it, I don't know what I did to make him angry but I'm sure we can work it out, I'm new here, first day actually, just signed the contract like an hour ago, still processing everything, definitely didn't mean to cause problems, thank you for not letting me get electrocuted, I really value not being electrocuted, it's like my third favorite thing after not being on fire and having all my organs on the inside where they belong—"

You were rambling. You were definitely rambling. But you couldn't stop because the alternative was silence and silence meant thinking about how you were trapped between two very powerful Espers and had somehow made enemies within the first five minutes of meeting your colleagues and your life was spiraling out of control.

Malleus tilted his head slightly, regarding you with what might have been amusement. His expression was hard to read, ancient and knowing in a way that made you feel like he could see directly into your soul and was finding the experience mildly entertaining. "You're the new SS-rank."

"That's me! Surprise! I'm just as surprised as everyone else! The orb thing said SS and I thought maybe it was broken or having a technical malfunction but apparently not! Apparently I'm just very powerful and had no idea! Cool! Great! Wonderful! Totally not terrifying at all!" You were still talking too fast, words running together. "I also still need to buy eggs! That's still a thing! The eggs situation hasn't resolved itself!"

"Interesting," Malleus said, and you couldn't tell if that was good interesting or "I'm going to study you like a bug" interesting or "I'm going to crush you like a bug" interesting.

You decided not to find out.

"Well, this has been great, really great, lovely meeting everyone, very educational, we should do this again sometime when I'm less likely to die, okay bye!" You ducked around Malleus with the agility of someone whose survival instincts had finally, finally kicked in after being on vacation for the past ten minutes, and ran for the door like your life depended on it.

Behind you, you heard Lilia's delighted laughter, bright and genuinely entertained. Sebek was sputtering something that sounded like more yelling mixed with protests and possibly the beginning of another lecture about proper respect.

And the silver-haired guy was apparently still asleep through all of it, which was honestly impressive. You'd just had a screaming match with someone who'd tried to electrocute you and he hadn't even stirred. That was commitment to napping.

You burst out into the hallway, pressed your back against the wall, and tried to remember how to breathe normally. Your heart was racing. Your hands were shaking. You were pretty sure you'd just had several years shaved off your life expectancy.

The HR person was standing there waiting for you, looking completely unsurprised by your dramatic exit. They didn't even look up from their clipboard.

"How'd it go?" they asked in a tone that suggested they already knew exactly how it went.

"I almost died," you gasped out, still trying to catch your breath.

"Yeah, that's pretty normal for meeting Sebek." They checked something off on their clipboard with a pen that looked like it was barely holding on to life. "You lasted longer than the last new recruit though. He ran out crying after two minutes. You made it almost five. That's a new record."

"That's—that's not comforting! That doesn't make me feel better! Why is that the standard?!"

"Wasn't trying to be comforting. Just factual." They started walking down the hallway at a brisk pace that suggested they had places to be and new recruits to traumatize. "Come on. I'll show you to your office. Try not to freeze anything or electrocute yourself or anger any more of your colleagues."

"I don't have ice powers!"

"Yet," they muttered ominously, like they knew something you didn't.

"What does that mean?! HEY! WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?!"

They didn't answer, just kept walking, and you had no choice but to follow while wondering if it was too late to get your old convenience store job back.

You decided that yes, it probably was, especially since you'd told your manager you were quitting by text message with the words "I HAVE FOUND MY TRUE CALLING" followed by seventeen exclamation points and three emojis you'd selected at random because you were having a crisis.

This was fine.

Everything was fine.

Today was your first Gate.

You'd spent the past week in what the Bureau called "accelerated training," which was a fancy way of saying "we're going to throw information at you until you cry and hope some of it sticks."

There had been lectures about Gate classifications, monster types, proper combat formations, emergency protocols, and a truly baffling presentation about why you shouldn't try to pet anything that came out of a Gate, no matter how cute it looked. That last one had apparently been added after an incident that everyone referred to as "The Fluffy Incident" and refused to elaborate on.

You'd also been avoiding Sebek, which was harder than it should have been because he seemed to have a sixth sense for wherever you were and would show up to glare at you while muttering about proper respect and protocol.

The silver-haired guy—Silver—had woken up long enough to introduce himself politely before falling asleep again mid-sentence. Malleus had nodded at you once in the hallway, and you'd nodded back at him really hard because you were trying not to offend a natural disaster in human form.

Now you were sitting in the briefing room, choking on your coffee because Lilia had just told you that yes, you were going into a Gate today, and no, it wasn't going to be a small one.

"B-rank," you wheezed, coffee going down the wrong pipe. "You're sending me into a B-rank Gate? On my first day? In the field?"

"It's not your first day," Lilia said cheerfully, smacking your back repeatedly with more force than seemed necessary. Each hit felt like being hit with a small hammer wielded by someone who thought physical therapy meant causing pain. "You've had a whole week of training! You're practically a veteran!"

"A week!" you coughed out, your lungs trying to remember how to process oxygen instead of coffee. "That's—that's nothing! That's not even—" Another cough. Another concerningly hard smack from Lilia that made your spine crack. "Can you please stop hitting me?!"

"I'm helping you breathe."

"You're helping me develop internal bleeding!"

"Don't be dramatic," Lilia said, giving you one final smack that nearly sent you sprawling forward onto the table. "You'll be fine. You're SS-rank! You've got this! Probably!"

"PROBABLY?!"

You sent a prayer to anyone listening—God, Buddha, the universe, that raccoon you'd fed last week who seemed wise beyond its years and had probably seen some things.

Please let me survive this. Please let me not die in a horrific monster-related incident on my first actual mission. Please let me at least get to use my dental benefits once before I perish horribly. I haven't even scheduled a cleaning yet.

The Gate loomed in front of you like a cosmic wound, shimmering and pulsing with colors that shouldn't exist in nature or anywhere else.

Your team was assembled: Malleus looking completely unbothered like this was a casual day, Silver somehow napping while standing upright with his weapon strapped to his back, and Sebek vibrating with barely contained energy and shooting you looks that suggested he was mentally planning your funeral and had already decided on an unflattering eulogy.

There were other Espers but they weren't really doing anything of note.

Lilia stood next to you, checking his equipment with practiced ease. He wouldn't be going in—Guides stayed outside Gates. That was the rule. Espers went in to fight, Guides waited outside to stabilize them when they came back out.

Sending a Guide into a Gate was like sending a medic into active combat without weapons. Stupid, dangerous and a waste of resources.

"Remember," Lilia said, adjusting his gloves even though he wouldn't need them. "Stay with the group. Don't run off alone like some kind of action movie protagonist with a death wish. If you see something that looks friendly, it's not. If you see something that looks like it wants to kill you, it definitely does. And try not to use too much power at once. You're still new to this, and burning yourself out would be inconvenient."

"Inconvenient," you repeated flatly. "That's the word you're using. Inconvenient."

"Well, it would be inconvenient for me. I'd have to Guide you back to consciousness, and you get very clingy when you're half-conscious. It's adorable but also somewhat embarrassing in front of the other Guides."

"I'm not—you know what, never mind." You looked at the Gate, then back at Lilia. "So you'll just... wait out here?"

"That's how it works, yes. I'll be right here when you get back." He patted your shoulder. "Try not to die. It would ruin my perfect record."

"What's your perfect record?"

"None of my Espers have died yet. I'd like to keep it that way. It looks good on my resume."

"That's very comforting. Thank you."

"You're welcome!"

Sebek stomped over, looking agitated. "ARE WE GOING OR NOT?! SOME OF US ARE READY TO DEMONSTRATE PROPER ESPER PROTOCOL!"

"We're going," Malleus said calmly, and everyone immediately started moving because when the strongest Esper in the world said it was time to go, you went.

You took one last look at Lilia, who gave you an encouraging thumbs up and a grin that was probably meant to be reassuring but looked slightly manic.

Then you stepped through the Gate.

The sensation was like being turned inside out and then put back together slightly wrong. Your stomach lurched. Your vision went weird. For a moment, you couldn't tell which way was up, and then suddenly you were standing in what could only be described as a cosmic horror's idea of interior decorating.

The space inside the Gate was warped. Gravity didn't work right—you could see "up" curving back around to become "down" in the distance.

The sky was the wrong color, a sickly purple-green. Everything felt wrong, like reality had given up and decided to try some experimental new directions that violated several laws of physics and possibly good taste.

And the monsters.

Oh god, the monsters.

They were viscerally, aggressively ugly. Genuinely upsetting to look at ugly, the kind of ugly that made you want to apologize to your eyes for making them perceive this.

There was one that was basically a mass of too many mouths in places mouths shouldn't be, all different sizes, making sounds that made your teeth hurt and your skin crawl.

Another looked like someone had taken the concept of "legs" and decided to apply it about forty times to a body that could only support maybe six, skittering around with the coordination of a drunk spider having a crisis.

A third was just eyes. So many eyes. Blinking independently. Watching you. Judging you. Some of them had teeth. Eyes shouldn't have teeth.

You wanted to close your eyes, but that seemed like a bad survival strategy when surrounded by things that wanted to eat you.

You smacked monsters. A lot of monsters. You were venting a week's worth of frustration—the confusing paperwork that made no sense, Sebek's constant yelling about everything, the haunted supply closet that you'd accidentally opened and immediately closed when something inside had whispered your name, the cafeteria's mysterious "meat" that nobody could identify and everyone was too afraid to ask about, all of it channeled into your fists and your powers as you absolutely demolished everything in your path.

A mouth-monster lunged at you, all its mouths opening at once in a chorus of terrible sounds. You grabbed it and threw it into another monster with enough force that they both exploded into gore that thankfully vanished into sparkles because apparently Gate monsters didn't leave bodies. Thank god. The cleanup would have been nightmarish otherwise.

A leg-monster skittered toward you on its forty horrible legs. You didn't even think, just released a burst of power that sent it flying into a crystallized wall hard enough to shatter both the monster and the wall. The wall screamed. You didn't know walls could scream. You wished you still didn't know that.

It felt good. Really good. Cathartic. This was better than therapy. This was better than that stress relief room where you could break plates. This was—

Your powers went haywire.

You felt it the moment it happened—the control you'd been carefully maintaining just slipped like a wet bar of soap. The power you'd been using suddenly surged, wild and uncontrolled, crackling around you like lightning that had gained sentience and decided to have opinions.

Your vision started to blur at the edges.

The familiar screaming started up in your head, the one that suggested increasingly unhinged things like "what if you just released all your power at once and saw what happened" and "the walls here look even better than drywall, more crystalline, probably taste amazing, you should definitely try them."

Something smacked the back of your head. Hard. Like someone had just slapped you with a brick wrapped in anger.

"OW! WHAT—"

"YOU ABSOLUTE FOOL!" Sebek's voice, right behind you, loud enough to probably be heard in the next dimension. "YOU'RE GOING TO BURN YOURSELF OUT! DID YOU LEARN NOTHING FROM THE TRAINING?! WERE YOU SLEEPING?! WERE YOU THINKING ABOUT EGGS AGAIN?!"

Before you could respond—and you had a great response prepared, probably—he grabbed your arm with a grip like a vice and started dragging you backward, away from the monsters, toward the Gate exit, while simultaneously lecturing you at a volume that was probably attracting more monsters through sheer noise pollution. "RECKLESS! COMPLETELY RECKLESS! YOU CAN'T JUST USE YOUR POWERS WITHOUT REGARD FOR YOUR OWN SAFETY! WHAT KIND OF ESPER DOESN'T MONITOR THEIR OWN OUTPUT?! A STUPID ONE, THAT'S WHAT KIND! THE STUPIDEST! I'VE SEEN CIVILIANS WITH BETTER SURVIVAL INSTINCTS!"

"I was—I was doing fine—" you tried to argue, stumbling as he pulled you along like a particularly troublesome suitcase.

"YOU WERE ABOUT TO COLLAPSE! I COULD SEE IT! EVEN SILVER COULD SEE IT AND HE'S ASLEEP HALF THE TIME! YOUR POWER OUTPUT WAS SPIKING LIKE A GRAPH DRAWN BY A TODDLER!"

Sebek dragged you past a cluster of confused monsters who seemed unsure whether to attack the guy yelling or just let him pass because he seemed really committed to his lecture and interrupting felt rude. "MASTER LILIA ENTRUSTED YOU TO THIS TEAM AND I WILL NOT LET YOU DIE BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE SELF-PRESERVATION INSTINCTS OF A PARTICULARLY SUICIDAL LEMMING WITH A DEATH WISH!"

He hauled you through the Gate—that same inside-out sensation but worse because your brain was already malfunctioning—and suddenly you were outside again, back in normal reality where the sky was the right color and the ground didn't scream.

Lilia was right there, waiting exactly where he'd been when you left, like he'd never moved. His expression shifted from relaxed to focused the moment he saw you stumbling out with Sebek dragging you.

Sebek shoved you toward Lilia with more force than necessary, like he was delivering a particularly disappointing package. "THEY'RE AN IDIOT WHO DOESN'T KNOW WHEN TO STOP!"

You stumbled forward and Lilia caught you smoothly, like he'd been expecting this exact scenario, probably because it happened a lot with new Espers who didn't know their limits yet.

"There we go," Lilia said warmly, his hands immediately moving to check you over with practiced efficiency. One hand on your forehead, checking for fever and power backlash. The other on your wrist, checking your pulse which was probably concerning. His eyes scanning your face for signs of serious damage. "Let's get you sorted out, shall we?"

The moment his hands touched your skin, the relief was immediate and overwhelming. The screaming in your head cut off like someone had severed a wire.

The wild, chaotic energy thrashing around inside you like a trapped animal smoothed out, calmed down, settled back into something manageable. Your vision cleared. Your breathing evened out. Everything stopped feeling like it was about to fly apart at the seams.

You slumped against him, basically cuddling him at this point, too exhausted and relieved to care about dignity or professionalism or the fact that there were other Guides nearby watching this with various expressions of amusement.

He was warm and solid and most importantly, making your brain work like a normal brain instead of a malfunctioning appliance that wanted you to make terrible decisions.

Sebek was still standing there, his arms crossed, trying to look stern and unbothered but you could see the concern in his eyes that he was desperately trying to hide.

"Thank you," you croaked out, not opening your eyes, but making sure your voice was loud enough for Sebek to hear. "Thanks, man. You saved my life. Probably."

There was a moment of silence. You could feel Sebek's internal conflict from here. Then he sputtered, "W-WHATEVER! I WASN'T DOING IT FOR YOU! I WAS DOING IT BECAUSE LETTING YOU DIE WOULD REFLECT POORLY ON THE TEAM! DON'T GET THE WRONG IDEA! IT WOULD MAKE THE YOUNG MASTER LOOK BAD! AND MASTER LILIA WOULD BE DISAPPOINTED! THAT'S THE ONLY REASON!"

You could hear him stomping off, his footsteps loud and aggressive. In the distance, you heard a voice—definitely his Guide, a stressed-looking person who'd been pacing the entire time—say something like "Are you alright, Sebek? Do you need Guiding?"

"I'M FINE! THEY'RE THE ONE WHO'S NOT FINE! RIDICULOUS HUMAN WITH NO SENSE OF SELF-PRESERVATION! NO RESPECT FOR PROPER PROTOCOL!"

Lilia patted your head gently, his fingers running through your hair in a soothing motion that made you want to fall asleep immediately. You could feel him actively Guiding you, that warm, comfortable sensation flowing through you, fixing all the damage you'd done by being reckless and stupid. "Good job," he said softly, and there was genuine pride in his voice. "You did well for your first Gate. Very impressive. Lots of property damage. Several monsters completely obliterated. You made that one wall scream, which I didn't know was possible. And Sebek had to save you, which he secretly enjoyed even though he'll never admit it."

"Mhm," you managed, burrowing closer to him because he was comfortable and you were exhausted and your brain was shutting down now that the immediate danger was over and you were being Guided.

"You know, you're supposed to stay conscious after your first Gate," Lilia continued, still patting your head like you were a sleepy cat. "There's paperwork. A debriefing. Usually some light celebration that involves terrible cafeteria cake."

"Don't care. Sleeping now," you mumbled against his shoulder.

You passed out right there, slumped against Lilia while he Guided you, surrounded by the sounds of other Espers exiting the Gate and their Guides rushing to stabilize them.

You could hear Malleus's deep voice reporting something to a Bureau official. Silver asking someone if the Gate was clear yet so he could take a nap somewhere more comfortable. Sebek still yelling in the distance about proper protocol and rookie mistakes.

Lilia just sighed fondly, adjusted his grip on you so you wouldn't fall over, and continued Guiding you while making a mental note to add "passes out after Gates" to your growing list of concerning habits.

"Kids these days," he muttered affectionately, even though you were an adult and he looked younger than you. "No stamina at all."

One of the other Guides walked past, saw you unconscious and drooling slightly on Lilia's shoulder, and raised an eyebrow.

"New recruit?" they asked.

"SS-rank," Lilia said cheerfully.

"Ah. That explains it. Good luck with that."

The Gate shimmered behind you as the last Espers filed out, and then it collapsed in on itself with a sound like reality sighing in relief. The raid was over. Successful. Everyone survived, even the stupid rookie who'd nearly burned themselves out on their first mission.

You slept through all of it, guided and safe and completely dead to the world.

The training got better. Well, "better" was a generous term. More accurately, you stopped almost dying every single time you used your powers, which was a low bar but one you were proud to clear.

You could now fight for more than ten minutes without your brain trying to convince you that eating construction materials was a valid life choice. Progress.

You'd gone through countless drills, practice sessions, and controlled exercises that involved you shooting targets while someone monitored your power output and yelled at you when it spiked. That someone was usually Sebek, who had appointed himself your personal training supervisor despite nobody asking him to.

He would stand there with a monitoring device and scream things like "YOUR OUTPUT IS FLUCTUATING! STABILIZE IT! DO YOU WANT TO EXPLODE?! BECAUSE THIS IS HOW YOU EXPLODE!" which was very motivating in a deeply stressful way.

But gradually, slowly, you learned control. You could feel when your power was about to spike and pull it back. You could maintain steady output instead of swinging wildly between "barely functional" and "catastrophic."

You could fight monsters without Sebek having to drag you out of Gates like a disappointed parent removing a child from a grocery store.

You'd also come to a truce with Sebek. Well, "truce" was very generous considering the truce mostly consisted of you hiding behind Lilia whenever Sebek looked like he was about to start lecturing you about something.

Lilia thought this was hilarious and would sometimes deliberately step aside so Sebek could continue his rant, the traitor. When Lilia wasn't around, you hid behind Malleus, who was tall enough that you could completely disappear behind him if you stood in the right spot.

Malleus turned out to be actually a really nice guy. A little out of touch socially—he'd once asked you if people still used carrier pigeons for communication and seemed genuinely surprised when you said no—but nothing too bad.

He had this habit of appearing silently behind people and scaring them half to death, not because he was trying to be creepy but because he genuinely didn't understand that suddenly materializing next to someone was startling.

He'd invited you to his "gargoyle appreciation club" three times now, which apparently was just him looking at gargoyles and talking about their architectural significance. You'd gone once. It was actually kind of peaceful, if weird.

He also eventually found his own guide. You thought they were adorable together even if they weren't a couple yet.

Silver was still asleep most of the time, but when he was awake, he was unfailingly polite and also surprisingly good at combat. You'd seen him go from dead asleep to fighting a monster in about two seconds flat, dispatch it efficiently, and then sit back down and immediately resume napping. It was impressive and also slightly concerning from a medical standpoint.

Things were going well. You were adapting. Learning. Becoming a functional member of the team instead of a liability that had to be rescued every five minutes.

And then you found out Sebek hadn't been bullshitting when he called you "human" like it was a specific category that didn't include him.

It came up casually. You were all in the break room after a successful Gate clear, and someone made a comment about Malleus's horns—asking if they ever got in the way when he wore hats. Malleus had replied very seriously that he didn't wear hats because human fashion wasn't designed for fae anatomy.

You'd laughed, thinking it was a joke.

Nobody else laughed.

"Wait," you said slowly, looking around at the faces that were all completely serious. "What?"

"Fae," Sebek said, like this was obvious. "Young Master is fae. As am I. As is Master Lilia. Did you... did you not know this?"

You stared at him. At Malleus. At Lilia, who was watching you with barely contained amusement. "You're serious."

"Very serious," Malleus confirmed. "Did you think the horns were decorative?"

"I thought they were... I don't know, an Esper thing! A mutation! A really cool headband!" You gestured wildly at his horns. "I've seen people shoot fire from their hands and teleport and explode things with their minds! Horns didn't seem that weird in comparison!"

"That's actually fair," Lilia said thoughtfully. "We probably should have mentioned it earlier."

"PROBABLY?!"

Silver, who had just woken up from a nap in the corner, blinked sleepily. "Oh, are we telling them about the fae thing? I thought we did that already."

"YOU DID NOT!"

You sat there, processing this information. Fae. Which meant... which meant a lot of things, probably, but your brain was having trouble getting past the initial revelation.

You'd seen so many impossible things these past few months. Gates that opened to other dimensions. Monsters that violated the laws of physics and biology. Your coworker who could nap standing up. The haunted supply closet that whispered. The cafeteria's mystery meat that you were now 60% sure was some kind of Gate monster being served as "chicken."

You know what? Fine. This was fine. Better to accept it without questioning too deeply. That way lay madness, and you were trying to avoid madness. It was better for your sanity to just go "okay, fae exist, cool, moving on" rather than have an existential crisis about the nature of reality.

"Okay," you said.

Everyone stared at you.

"Okay?" Sebek repeated. "That's it? Just 'okay'?"

"Yep. Okay. You're fae. Got it. Makes sense. Explains the horns and the..." you gestured vaguely at Lilia, "...everything about you, honestly."

"I'm not sure if I should be offended or complimented," Lilia said.

But then a thought occurred to you. If they were fae, and fae were from like, fairy tales and folklore, then they were probably... old. Potentially very old.

You grabbed Lilia's sleeve. "Wait. How old are you?"

Lilia's grin widened, red eyes glinting with mischief. "That's not very polite to ask," he said teasingly.

You groaned. "I'm serious!"

"So am I. Didn't your mother teach you not to ask people their age?"

"Lilia."

"Hm?"

"How. Old."

"Old enough to know better, young enough to do it anyway," he said cheerfully, and you knew—you KNEW—you weren't getting a straight answer out of him.

You groaned louder, letting go of his sleeve and slumping in your chair. And then immediately forgot about it because honestly, who even cared? Did it matter? He could be a hundred years old or a thousand years old and it wouldn't change anything.

This was your Lilia either way.

The one who'd found you in an alley. Who'd convinced you to join the Bureau. Who Guided you and patted your head and made terrible jokes and saved your life on a regular basis by keeping your brain from eating itself.

Your Lilia.

You had to pause.

Your brain just called him "your Lilia." Like you'd already assumed he was yours. Like somewhere along the way, without you noticing, you'd justn claimed him in your head. Decided he was yours and you were his and that was just how things were now.

Oh no.

Oh no no no.

This was bad. This was a revelation you were not prepared for. You had feelings.

The kind of feelings that made you want to do stupid things like hold his hand for reasons that weren't just "I'm about to pass out from power exhaustion."

The kind of feelings that made you smile when he laughed and feel warm when he praised you and get irrationally jealous when you saw him talking to other Espers even though that was literally his job.

You sat there, frozen, while your brain exploded with the sudden realization that you had a crush on your Guide. Your significantly-older-than-you-but-you-didn't-know-by-how-much fae Guide who was way out of your league and probably thought of you as a particularly entertaining pet project.

You needed to sit down. You were already sitting down. You needed to sit down more somehow.

You stood up abruptly, walked over to where Malleus was standing by the window looking at the gargoyles on the building across the street, and leaned on him. Put your full weight against his side and closed your eyes.

Malleus looked down at you, tilting his head slightly in that way he did when he was trying to understand human behavior. He saw something in your expression—probably the desperation, the internal screaming, the look of someone having a crisis—and made a decision.

He didn't say anything. Just shifted slightly to better support your weight and let you have your breakdown against his shoulder.

This was why Malleus was great. He didn't pry. He just let you exist in your misery.

"Are you alright?" he asked after a moment, his voice quiet.

"No," you said honestly.

"Would you like to talk about it?"

"Absolutely not."

"Understood." He paused. "Would you like to hear about the gargoyles on that building? They're from the neo-gothic period and feature some fascinating water spout designs."

"...Yes please."

And so Malleus told you about gargoyles while you leaned on him and tried not to think about the fact that you had feelings for Lilia.

He went into detail about the architectural significance, the historical context, the different styles of craftsmanship. His voice was soothing in its monotone enthusiasm. It was exactly what you needed—something to focus on that wasn't your own emotional crisis.

Across the room, Lilia watched this with an expression that was hard to read. Amused, certainly. But there was something else there too. Something softer.

Sebek looked between you and Lilia and made a disgusted sound. "THEY'RE BEING WEIRD AGAIN."

"They're always weird," Silver mumbled, already half asleep again.

"I KNOW, BUT THIS IS WEIRDER THAN USUAL."

Lilia just smiled and said nothing.

You continued to lean on Malleus while he explained the difference between grotesques and gargoyles, which apparently was a thing, and tried very hard not to think about red eyes and knowing smiles and the way Lilia's hands felt when he Guided you.

This was fine.

Everything was fine.

(It was not fine. You were having a crisis. But at least you were learning about gargoyles while having it, so that was something.)