Only My F-Rank Touch Calms the S-Rank Hunter novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Wrist
At the collapsed Gate 7 in Songpa the S-rank hunter Cha Ji-seok flares, four guides fail, and the Bureau shoves F-rank Si-woo forward as expendable; he grabs a wrist and the flare dies, and Ji-seok says "Him. Only him." while Si-woo's palm burns.
The asphalt at Gate 7 was splitting in a circle around a man, and Nam Si-woo was the one carrying the stretcher past him.
That was how his career as a guide began.
Si-woo was twenty-six, F-rank, and paid by the hour to haul the wounded out of Songpa.
Behind the police tape, the gate was still collapsing in on itself, a black tear going grey at the edges.
In front of it, Cha Ji-seok was on his knees in the road.
Everybody in Korea knew his face from the news.
Captain of Strike Team One, S-rank, the man the Bureau sent when a gate was too big for anyone else.
Right now his hair had come loose from its tie.
The veins in his neck glowed gold.
The windows of the bank across the street burst one by one.
"Back up!" a medic screamed. "He's flaring, everyone back!"
Si-woo put down his end of the stretcher.
He didn't back up.
He didn't know why.
Maybe it was the man's hands.
They were spread flat on the ground, fingers white, pressing into the road.
Ji-seok was not hurting anyone on purpose.
He was holding the whole street up with his own two arms.
Four guides had already tried.
An A-rank woman sat against the Bureau van, holding her burnt hands out in front of her.
Two B-ranks were being walked away by medics with their eyes rolled back.
The fourth lay on the curb, breathing, which was the best that could be said.
"Get me another one," said a soft voice behind Si-woo.
Section Chief Eom of Dispatch stood with his hands folded over a tidy grey suit.
He looked at the line of guides left in the tent, and every one of them looked at their shoes.
Then he looked at Si-woo.
He smiled kindly.
"You," Eom said. "Nam Si-woo, isn't it? Songpa cleanup."
"I carry stretchers, sir."
"You're a guide, aren't you? Registered?"
"F-rank."
"Perfect," said Eom, and he put a hand between Si-woo's shoulder blades and pushed.
It was a small push.
Eom had done it to other people before, Si-woo thought.
It moved him three steps toward the circle of cracked road, and then the pull of the power took over.
It felt like standing too close to an oven.
Gold light climbed Ji-seok's forearms.
Concrete dust lifted off the ground and hung around him in a slow ring.
"Captain Cha," Si-woo said, and his voice came out thin. "I'm a guide. I'm going to touch your hand."
Ji-seok did not look up.
"Don't," he said, in a voice scraped raw. "Go away. I'll hurt you."
"Probably," said Si-woo.
He knelt down in the broken road in front of him.
Ji-seok's left wrist was right there, huge and rigid, the tendons standing up.
Si-woo took it in both hands.
For a second nothing happened except that it hurt.
It felt like grabbing a live wire.
The heat ran up Si-woo's arms and into his chest, and he thought, so this is how the other four felt.
Then the heat turned.
It poured into him, and he kept hold of it, because he had never learned to do anything else with it.
Ji-seok drew in a deep, shuddering breath.
The gold went out of his neck.
The ring of dust dropped to the road all at once, and the last bank window finished falling.
Silence.
Somewhere behind Si-woo a medic whispered, "That's an F?"
Ji-seok lifted his head.
His eyes were grey-green, with a thin ring of gold still burning around each pupil, and a scar ran through his left eyebrow.
He looked at their hands, and then at Si-woo's face, for a very long time.
He did not let go.
"Captain," Eom said, coming up with a pleasant voice. "We have a better guide on the way. This one is only a stand-in."
Ji-seok turned his head, very slowly, to look at him.
The gold flickered once in his eyes.
Eom stopped talking.
Ji-seok turned back to Si-woo.
His thumb moved over the inside of Si-woo's wrist, and Si-woo felt it all the way down his back.
"Him," Ji-seok said.
"Captain, protocol requires..."
"Him," said Cha Ji-seok, to the street, to the Bureau, to the whole shaking morning. "Only him."
Si-woo's palm was burning where Ji-seok had held it.
He turned his hand over.
There was a faint line of gold under the skin.
He closed his fist before anybody could see.
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