Home/For some reason, the male leads avoid my guiding/ch 3

Chapter 3. There Was Never a Grade G (3)

At the single word "found her," reporters swarmed in an instant.

Sua, terrified by the sudden crowd pressing in on her, stepped backward.

"Wh-why are you doing this..."

She tried pleading in a trembling voice, but it was of little use.

Instead, the reporters immediately fired off a barrage of questions.

"Is it true that you awakened as Grade G!?"

"You look young—are you a student? How old are you?"

"What abilities does Grade G possess?"

Wait, why were they suddenly asking for her personal information?

Her vision spun as if caught in a whirlwind. Instinctively, she thought she had to escape.

Sua looked at the reporters blocking the entrance to her apartment building, then took a backstep and bolted in the opposite direction.

A commotion erupted behind her, but she didn't stop running.

And then the next day.

After finishing a leisurely breakfast—

"Pfft-hahaha!"

Baek Cheol-yeon was sprawled on the sofa, laughing as he looked at his smartphone.

At a glance, a news article was displayed on his screen.

The image at the top of the article had a familiar background.

The place where Sua ate every day, slept, and found herself before and after school.

The apartment complex registered under her aunt's name where Sua lived.

In front of that apartment complex stood a figure. The person's face was pixelated.

The only things discernible were that the person was a small-framed woman with long black hair.

But the person in question and those who saw her every day would recognize her immediately.

That was because the hoodie Sua was so attached to hadn't been pixelated at all.

It was a basic gray hoodie, but with a small yellow chick design on the chest.

Sua wasn't particularly interested in fashion, but this was one of the few clothes she'd bought because she'd fallen for that small, cute chick.

As much as she was attached to it, the sense of betrayal was just as great.

'I never thought you'd do this to me.'

For the first time, Sua felt resentment toward her hoodie.

While Baek Cheol-yeon was laughing uncontrollably, she found herself at a loss for a retort.

Because even she found the article hilarious.

[The First Grade G! What Is Its Ability?!]

[The Birth of a New Grade]

[After F Comes G]

Especially the phrase "After F comes G" was absurd.

Grade F occupied the very bottom of the seven ability grades—the weakest.

And the alphabet positioned right after F was G. It was a reasonable inference.

"It fits you perfectly. A complete weakling."

Baek Cheol-yeon wiped the corners of his eyes as he spoke.

Sua didn't even feel like arguing. She just retreated to her room.

But the teasing didn't end there. She thought she'd escaped Baek Cheol-yeon, but then—

Buzz, buzz, buzzzz.

Messages started pouring in from everywhere.

At a glance, they were from people she wasn't even that close to.

Sua threw her smartphone aside and flopped down onto her bed. The sudden surge of attention was nothing but burdensome.

"Ugh...!"

In just a few days, spring break would be over.

She'd have to go back to the academy.

She'd never once in her life wanted to go to school, but this time she really, really didn't want to go.

If only she could, she wanted to skip the academy.

"I really don't want to go. I wish something would just happen."

So she had such immature thoughts.

Something had already happened, and now she was wishing for something even bigger to cover it up.

But that wish would come true.

Not long after, Sua would be involved in a very serious traffic accident.

---

---

She was in a traffic accident.

A rather serious one at that.

Sua had been crossing the crosswalk on a green light, but there was no avoiding the accident.

A car turning the corner and another driving the wrong way collided—and she happened to be caught between them.

Fortunately, she hadn't been standing at the exact center of impact, and the cars grazed past each other, so she was only clipped.

But by an ordinary person's standards, even being grazed by a car was extremely dangerous.

Sua lost consciousness immediately after the accident and opened her eyes a month later, learning that she'd undergone major surgery.

Her pelvis had been displaced, she'd suffered minor internal organ rupture, and a couple of ribs had been broken.

But thankfully, the surgery had been successful, and Sua was now fine. Her mind, however, was anything but.

'Her name was Hong Yeon-jin. On her high school graduation day, she was walking across a crosswalk while reading a web novel and died in a traffic accident.'

She hadn't even fully processed that the "Grade G" she'd thought was just a dream had become her reality, and now she'd recalled a past life.

And this past life was vastly different from the world Bong Sua lived in.

In her past life, there were no rifts or demonic beasts.

Likewise, there were no Awakened individuals who had to fight those demonic beasts.

There, people didn't fear sudden apocalypse, and those who spoke of doom were dismissed as insane fantasy-lovers.

Hong Yeon-jin of that past life had died in a traffic accident while crossing a crosswalk. Reading a web novel, no less.

The novel's title was "Grade G Is a Guide," and oddly enough, the novel's world was remarkably similar to the one Bong Sua now lived in.

Rifts appeared in midair, demonic beasts emerged from them, and there were Awakened individuals—Espers—who could deal with them.

And the female lead was the second Grade G. Before she appeared, the first Grade G—Bong Sua—dies.

'Yeah, no way.'

That couldn't be.

'Me, a character in a novel.'

And not just that—a side character who dies soon after. She was only nineteen, in the prime of her youth.

'But I died at nineteen in my past life too...'

"Did you not sleep well yesterday?"

The nurse's voice cut through her train of thought.

"Yes. I was binge-watching a drama."

It wasn't a lie. She'd watched it because she couldn't sleep due to the past life that had suddenly come flooding back after the accident.

'Past life, novel, first Grade G, human guide, extra, death from overwork...'

With these thoughts repeating endlessly, there was no way she could sleep.

In particular, the "death from overwork" part was the catalyst for Sua's death as an extra.

The novel's content that came to mind in sentence form was as follows:

'But why did the first Grade G die?'

'...From overwork?'

'Huh. Because she guided too much?'

'Probably?'

'What? Why don't you know?'

'I wonder...'

A conversation between some characters in the novel.

She inferred that the one asking was the female lead, and the one answering was probably the male lead.

She wished it had given her a bit more concrete clues, but she couldn't be picky about memories that came to her by chance.

Besides, even a rotten rope is still a rope.

Knowing she might die was an incredible stroke of luck in itself. At least she could prepare for the possibility of sudden death.

So Sua focused on the "overwork" mentioned in those sentences and formed one hypothesis.

'She must have died from guiding too much.'

Human guiding was a truly revolutionary ability.

The more Espers used their abilities, the more their internal energy became twisted. If left unchecked, they could go into rampage, so they were always desperate for guiding.

Until Grade G appeared, this was resolved through guiding machines or items modified from magic stones.

But Grade G could untwist the tangled energy through mere "contact" without any machine.

Furthermore, Grade G could guide in areas that machines couldn't reach. In other words, the quality of guiding was completely different.

It was only natural that Espers who'd tasted human guiding couldn't go back to machines.

So people who learned of the first Grade G's existence must have pushed her to use her ability to its limits.

After all, even before the traffic accident, just being Grade G had become news.

If it became known that this Grade G could also guide, the repercussions would be even greater.

'So I absolutely must not let my guiding ability be discovered.'

Since there was no clear evidence, grasping at straws was only human nature. Sua steeled her resolve.

"If you're tired, the IV insertion might hurt more than usual."

A nurse's voice broke through her thoughts.

Immediately after, she felt a sharp sting at her wrist and shed a few tears.

Watching the IV drip slowly, she felt almost like a tragic heroine.

Even though in reality she was just an extra.

'What if she didn't die from overwork but from a rare disease...?'

Oh, that was also a possibility.

Just as Sua was adding that to her list of possibilities—

"Still, your recovery speed is fast. You'll be discharged soon."

"...Really?"

Sua quietly eliminated the "dying from disease" possibility.

"Yes. Maybe it's because you're young? ...Well, your guardian was also proactive in hiring a healer—that played a part too."

"Ah..."

Sua swallowed at the newly learned fact.

'So that's why there's almost no surgical scar.'

Healers are Espers who awakened with healing abilities.

Combat-type Awakened are common, but healing types are quite rare, making their services expensive.

'The commission fee must have been no joke...'

Her aunt had said it recently: you're this family's backbone-breaker.

She'd thought that referred to the hospitalization fees, but it was actually the healer hiring costs. Well then, she'd have to admit she did break the bank.

Sua nodded to herself in understanding.

"There might not be no lingering effects at all, but at this rate, you should be able to be discharged in about a week."

"Hmm... Okay."

Sua answered hesitantly.

She wasn't even sure if being discharged in this situation was a good thing. Unlike her past life, this world was dangerous outside.

Of course, that might be due to rifts and demonic beasts, but Sua was focusing on something more specific.

'If I make contact, guiding starts.'

It would probably be unavoidable. So Sua devised a plan on her own.

'I must never touch anyone.'

That was the plan, and it was nothing more than an impossible measure to prevent the unavoidable.

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