Ordinary Person A

#1

Ordinary Person A

“Ah, the weather is really nice.”

A young man walking among people while carrying a brown briefcase suddenly looked up at the sky.

The extremely clear sky seemed particularly high and blue today. Amidst the office workers suppressing their fatigue on their way to work, he once again hurried his steps.

The world he lived in was ordinary.

In a world where those who betrayed that ordinariness also lived together, he was a mere speck in a corner of the world.

Espers with abilities beyond human capabilities and Guides who appeared in pairs with such Espers.

They were the first to face the monsters that suddenly appeared simultaneously all over the world.

Humanity struggled in the early stages when monsters appeared. Based on their solid bodies that were impervious to modern weapons, monsters tormented humans in various forms.

The human territory, which had freely occupied vast lands, narrowed to cities. The roads spread on the ground became shortcuts for monsters to quickly advance into cities.

The appearance of Espers with overwhelming power before those who thought they would perish helplessly was like the arrival of saviors or heroes.

People endlessly fought monsters, classified their ranks, and studied their ecology. With superior intelligence, they gradually reclaimed invaded lands, and civilization quickly recovered to pre-monster emergence levels.

It became a world where those who were not Espers could not leave the city, but there were few complaints about this.

The gradually stabilizing cities, reduced monsters, and the increased number of Espers over generations had now become quite familiar to people.

Espers integrated into daily life now performed various tasks in addition to hunting monsters in cities. Those wearing uniform coats in trench style with raised collars were still skilled hunters of monsters lurking outside the city. Moreover, they worked as police maintaining public order, worked in places inaccessible to ordinary people, managed and produced power required throughout the city, and worked as teams for exchanges with other cities.

As the turbulent era of chaos passed and peace came, the city’s system gradually revolved around ordinary people, who vastly outnumbered Espers.

The nation-states in the form of cities began to identify all Espers and Guides to prevent potential undesirable situations within them.

Mandatory Esper/Guide testing for children around 15 years old.

Espers would reveal their special abilities even without the test, but Guides were different.

The government did its best to find those who were well-hidden.

However, despite such efforts, the number of Guides was significantly less than Espers, and Guides became part of the management corporation without the right of refusal.

Still, some people wished to become Espers or Guides, as manifestation guaranteed lifetime employment with high income under national affiliation.

In a world where such special beings existed, Ho-woo, a young man on his way to work, was a being without any special aspects.

He considered himself to be such a minor character that if he were a character in a novel, he would be referred to as ‘Ordinary Person A’ and used like a disposable part.

This was because Ho-woo was neither an Esper considered to be beyond human, nor a Guide whom these incredibly powerful Espers revered like gods.

Just living as an ordinary office worker in a corner of this extraordinary society, Ho-woo, who had just been promoted to assistant manager, found small comfort in his meager salary that would increase in the future.

On the warm late spring commute, the mundane routine of being carried among unremarkable people on the rattling subway was quite precious to him.

At twenty-eight years old, while his daily life of being buried among the flood of people heading to work and correcting reports while listening to his team leader’s nagging continued, Ho-woo suddenly faced an extraordinary day for the first time in his life.

“Ah…”

Saliva dripped from the long snout of a pterosaur-like monster rampaging between collapsing buildings with a thunderous noise, corroding the ground. The massive monster with hard scales glittering in the sunlight, wings made of widely spread membranes, and sharp claws was moving between tall buildings, causing solid concrete masses that seemed impossible to fall to crash to the ground.

Amidst tearing screams and people running backward, Ho-woo hugged his bag to his chest, looking at all this as if he couldn’t believe it.

Even though his instincts whispered that he should flee from here, his stiffened legs wouldn’t move well. After being pushed by the running people, he finally moved his legs and turned to run, far too late.

Keeeeek-!

It was a chilling cry like scraping a metal plate. The monster, which he had never thought he would encounter in his lifetime and had only seen in textbooks, was there.

It was far too late to escape.

Espers from the management corporation who had already rushed to the scene were dealing with the monster. Huge flames were shot, and black shadows quickly floated in the sky. The impact caused building fragments to fall with heavy thuds all around.

The unremarkable Ordinary Person A ran desperately, hugging his bag tightly, trying to avoid these fragments.

Every time a shadow fell over his head, his heart pounded so fast it couldn’t beat any faster. The throbbing echoed in his ears. In the face of death that had come so close, the fear raised to the extreme kept urging his trembling legs to continue.

The stone fragments that an Esper could flick away with one hand were life-threatening entities to Ho-woo. That’s why when a fairly large fragment fell right in front of him with a heavy sound, he let out a silent scream.

Damn it! My life!

Cold sweat trickled down his deeply hollowed back. Although it seemed he had run quite far, fragments were still falling, and around him were ordinary people in the same predicament, spread out, crushed by those stones.

It was a horrific and terrible scene, hard to look at with bare eyes. Espers who were not dealing with the monster were pulling out ordinary people who couldn’t escape in time from the middle of the battlefield. Ho-woo gasped at the sight of an Esper quickly running away, carrying an ordinary person who had been fleeing like a bundle.

Someone, please…

His lungs, overworked in such a short time, ached to the point of soreness. When his legs, which were barely moving, finally couldn’t hold on any longer and stopped, Ho-woo let out a short exclamation at the huge shadow cast over his head.

“Ah.”

It was a sigh of despair, realizing he couldn’t avoid the fragment falling on his head, and a fear close to despair.

He hugged his bag tightly to his chest and squeezed his eyes shut.

Please let me die quickly.

Thinking it would be fortunate if he died before feeling any pain, Ho-woo kept his eyes closed for a while. When he felt nothing even after time passed, he gently opened his eyes.

“Are you alright?”

The first thing he heard was a soft, low-pitched voice. The Ordinary Person A suddenly raised his head at the unexpected voice.

A tall man dressed in pitch-black Esper uniform was looking down at him with a gentle smile.

His hair, slightly tidied and parted to the side, was half draped forward. Below his round, well-shaped forehead and strong, dark eyebrows, his slightly bluish eyes held a faint smile within gently curved eye lines.

With an appearance that anyone would praise endlessly as handsome, he lightly waved his hand. The sight of ice-blue frost instantly freezing along the tips of his fingers was terribly surreal.

Ho-woo belatedly rolled his eyes to survey his surroundings. He had clearly thought he was going to die from an unavoidable huge fragment falling on his head, but suddenly an Esper man appeared before him.

I… I survived.

With belated relief, his legs gave out and he sat down heavily. Although his bottom was very cold from the ice-covered ground, it was a small price to pay for saving his life.

“Aren’t you cold?”

“Uh… Pardon?”

Ho-woo stammered at the polite question, unable to produce words that could be considered an answer. This was because the fragile mind of an ordinary person was so shocked by the fact that he had nearly died that it couldn’t function properly. His dazed face stared blankly at the other person.

“I’ll escort you to a safe place for now.”

The Esper who had saved him politely extended one hand. Ho-woo, who had grabbed his hand in response to the consideration shown towards him sitting on the ground unable to get up, immediately gasped silently, his lips moving without sound, as extreme pain shot through his entire body.

“Huk!”

It felt like he was drowning, short of breath. Gasping for air as his lungs crumpled in pain, Ho-woo gripped the Esper’s hand tightly as if it were his last lifeline. He simply couldn’t come to his senses.

“Are you in a lot of pain?”

Unable to answer the polite question falling from above, Ho-woo lost consciousness. The last thing he felt was being held in very firm arms.