About

The basement level 3 guiding room was cold and silent. Roy, dressed in a flawless suit, rubs his aching temples after guiding a long line of Espers. Eighteen years. That is how long he has been trapped in the cage without bars known as the Center, ever since being ranked as an S-class Guide at twenty. To him, Espers were nothing more than hazardous materials to be controlled—monsters spewing unpleasant heat. A perfect kindness that never showed a weakness to others, and the bare minimum of contact with just the tips of his fingers. That was the solid wall he had built over eighteen years. While pretending to be a man who doesn't even touch alcohol or cigarettes in front of others, he swallowed whiskey in his locked office every night and suppressed his fatigue with thin trails of cigarette smoke. His life was merely a gear turning repeatedly, as if wound by a clockwork key.