A tiny, choked hum slipped from Seo Yuan’s throat—a sound so minute it was meant exclusively for the ears of the man pinning him down.
The auditory cue acted like a physical anchor, forcing Yoon Seoho back to his senses.
He methodically clamped a tight lid over the explosive, murderous intent rolling through his veins, his aura smoothing out into its usual deceptive calm in a fraction of a second.
Taking notice of the hyper-vigilant, anxious looks Seo Yuan kept darting his way, Yoon Seoho seamlessly altered his posture, wrapping his arm around the youth to guide him toward the exit.
Every single pair of eyes in the hall tracked their progress as they moved toward the heavy doors.
It wasn’t a conscious act of defiance on the congregation’s part; it was an absolute, biochemical compulsion.
The pristine, stabilizing frequency radiating from the Cult Leader was a drug their starved systems simply couldn’t look away from.
Having already had his mood thoroughly poisoned by the display, Yoon Seoho found the parasites’ lingering stares exceptionally grating.
He had fully anticipated a reaction of this caliber the moment he conceived this grand debut.
Yet, bearing witness to the raw, visceral manifestation of their hunger right before his eyes left an intensely foul, wretched taste in his mouth.
“Hyung…… are you alright?”
The low, hesitant murmur drifted up from his side, causing Yoon Seoho’s lips to reflexively curl into a smooth, practiced smile.
He turned his head to find a pair of beautiful, deeply concerned eyes staring back up at him.
‘Even in a chaotic clusterfuck like this, your first instinct is to check on my well-being.’
It was almost comical how remarkably foolish and naive this creature was.
Yet, it was precisely that uncorrupted, pliable nature that made Yoon Seoho adore him more with each passing second.
“Yeah, I’m perfectly fine. Was our Yuan worried about his Hyung?”
Yoon Seoho dropped the velvet whisper against the youth’s ear before pulling the heavy doors shut behind them, instantly severing the suffocating weight of the crowd’s gaze.
As a dead, profound silence reclaimed the private corridor, the razor-sharp tension coiled tightly within Yoon Seoho’s muscles finally began to slacken.
His wrist reflexively rotated, checking the face of his smartwatch.
[Guilt / Corruption Level: 8%]
“Ha.”
A breathless, dry chuckle slipped through his teeth.
He had been the singular entity who deployed his ability to neutralize the crazed initiate lunging at Seo Yuan moments ago.
Though the engagement had lasted only a fraction of a second, he had driven a catastrophic, high-density mental blast straight into the parasite’s cranium—an engineered telepathic stroke meant to systematically liquefy the neural pathways until the brain shut down entirely.
Naturally, executing a lethal mental execution of that caliber demanded a massive, heavily concentrated expenditure of supernatural energy compared to standard, passive suggestion.
Under normal parameters, a single high-tier strike like that should have caused his corruption metrics to experience a steep, volatile spike.
Yet, the resulting metric sat at a measly, pathetic 8%.
There was only one definitive, mathematical explanation for a number that low.
“……Ah. Seriously, what the hell am I supposed to do with you? Hm? What should I do, Yuan?”
Yoon Seoho’s pupils were thoroughly glazed over with a thick, ecstatic glaze of pure euphoria.
As Seo Yuan blinked up at him with an expression dense with confusion, Yoon Seoho let out a ragged, hot exhale.
His groin was already painfully engorged, the fabric of his trousers straining against a sudden, violent surge of arousal.
Leaning his entire weight heavily against Seo Yuan’s fragile frame, pinning him against the wall of the quiet hallway, Yoon Seoho slipped a dark, raw whisper against the boy’s cheek.
“Should we go do something that feels incredibly good again? Hm?”
“Hyung……?”
Seo Yuan blinked rapidly, his features tightening into a mask of pure bewilderment.
He looked entirely incapable of parsing the sudden, volatile shift in the older man’s behavior.
To Yoon Seoho’s senses, that glaring cognitive disconnect was the ultimate, most exquisite aphrodisiac.
Every single Esper walking the face of this earth—himself included—was practically clawing their own skin off, dying a slow, agonizing death from cellular decay, yet the literal source of their salvation stood right here, entirely oblivious to the reality of the cataclysmic power running through his veins.
That total lack of self-awareness gave the youth an uncanny, distinctly non-human allure.
It was a subtle, pervasive sense of wrongness.
The boy mimicked human emotion flawlessly, yet his pristine, unvarnished innocence was so thoroughly misplaced in this wretched world that it felt alien—a definitive proof that verified, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Seo Yuan was a literal deity descended from a higher plane.
The evidence supporting this conclusion was practically hemorrhaging from every interaction.
For instance, there was the glaring reality that his absolute telepathic commands still failed to register even a single scratch against the boy’s consciousness.
The very first action Yoon Seoho had taken after securing the youth inside his private residence was an attempt to slide a permanent, total hypnotic lock into his cerebral cortex.
Operating on an unconscious subject normally made the process of rewriting neural pathways effortless.
He had just successfully scavenged a literal miracle capable of extending his terminal lifespan; it would have been an absolute lapse in basic survival logic to harbor such an anomaly without snapping a proper safety constraint around its neck.
Yet, that afternoon, Yoon Seoho had run headfirst into a bizarre, entirely unprecedented anomaly.
His absolute telepathy—a power that had never once met an equal—simply slid right off the youth’s mind like water off glass.
For a single, rare fraction of a second, the total failure of his ability had left Yoon Seoho uncharacteristically rattled.
He had known from the outset that the creature he was dragging home wasn’t human, but he hadn’t anticipated his own psychic baseline would be rendered entirely obsolete against him.
It was a definitive dent in his schematics; if he couldn’t embed a mental lock, he couldn’t ensure absolute, total ownership over the asset.
But the panic had vanished as quickly as it had arrived.
If supernatural manipulation was off the table, he merely needed to utilize raw, physical conditioning.
The creature was entirely stripped of its memories and possessed a remarkably docile, malleable nature; it would be simple enough to seduce and groom him into a state of permanent submission.
It would require a bit more manual labor, certainly, but it was an objective easily achieved without the aid of a psychic core.
Yoon Seoho let his fingers slowly trace down the smooth curve of Seo Yuan’s pale cheek, trailing a heavy, deliberate stroke down to his chin.
Simultaneously, he shifted his hips forward, firmly grinding his throbbing erection against the youth’s lower abdomen.
“Why? Do you dislike it?”
A dangerous, predatory glint flashed deep within his pupils, sending an immediate jolt of instinctual panic through Seo Yuan’s frame.
The youth exhaled a tight breath, rapidly shaking his head in denial.
“Good. That’s my boy. There’s no way our Yuan would ever dare to say no to his Hyung, right?”
His hand slid down, his palm sticking against the sensitive skin of Seo Yuan’s throat with a heavy, damp pressure.
Registering the gorgeous, pink flush that was beginning to bleed rapidly across the youth’s cheeks, Yoon Seoho leaned in, dragging his tongue in a slow, wet stroke up the edge of the boy’s earlobe.
“Let’s head back to our room now. Time to have some real fun.”
“Mmmh…….”
“Yeah. Such a good boy.”
Without bothering to offer the illusion of choice or solicit a verbal confirmation, Yoon Seoho scooped the youth’s frame completely off the floor, cradling him securely against his chest.
Offering a few soft, practiced coos to soothe the startled boy, he pivoted on his heel and strode directly toward the private, heavily fortified sector of the estate—an exclusive zone where access was strictly limited to the two of them.
He moved forward with absolute confidence, entirely oblivious to the sharp, calculated train of thought running behind the quiet, passive eyes of the youth resting against his shoulder.
