A few days passed.
“Mr. Suhyeon, this part right here. Like this—”
Crrrk—.
“Mr. Suhyeon? You’re holding the gun wrong. Let me help. Stay still, put your thumb up and…….”
Whish, zzzap!
“Mr. Suhyeon, that…….”
Whoosh—!
The training sessions were the very embodiment of the war Asher Delveron had provoked.
Suhyeon’s posture was often slightly off, and every time it was, Asher would approach to personally adjust it.
His behavior—smiling softly while lingering close—was a blatant declaration of: ‘I am extremely interested in you.’
Thanks to this, every time Suhyeon trained, Hajin didn’t go anywhere else.
He staked out a spot on the bench to monitor them.
He radiated a terrifying aura from a distance, remorselessly firing off flames whenever Suhyeon and Asher’s bodies touched.
Of course, after seeing Suhyeon flinch at the sudden attacks, Hajin changed tactics, waiting for the exact moment Suhyeon stepped away from Asher to send blue light surging between them.
“Hmm, Mr. Suhyeon, you see. This is how you do it.”
Even for the usually stoic Suhyeon, the constant contact with Asher was becoming distracting.
Asher Delveron would smile as if trying to seduce him the moment their eyes met, and because of that, Hajin looked ready to explode at any second.
—Can’t you give me some guiding?
—Mr. Suhyeon, please form a pair with me.
Whether it was a romantic interest with impure motives or the persistent, soft-eyed begging for guiding he’d done over the last few days, Asher’s goals were transparent enough for even Suhyeon—not just Hajin—to notice.
“Kueeeeeeek!!”
Bang, bang!!
The virtual reality, which made it feel as if a real monster were right in front of him, shattered like glass upon being shot.
“Mmm, well done. We can raise the difficulty a bit. Next time we raise it, then…….”
Asher Delveron, who naturally took the gun while smoothly grabbing Suhyeon’s hand as he stood at the console, gave another pretty smile today.
“……Mr. Delveron.”
Ultimately, Suhyeon had no choice but to sigh and call out to him.
Even at this moment, he could see Hajin’s eyes fiercely fixed on Asher.
He also saw how, the moment Suhyeon took the initiative to call Asher, Hajin’s gaze wavered with a flicker of piteous light.
“Yes, Mr. Suhyeon. Just call me Asher.”
Even in this situation, the flamboyant man looked at him with a beaming smile as if he knew nothing.
They say it’s hard to spit on a smiling face; Suhyeon hesitated for a moment at the man’s radiant, dazzling good looks, but…
“……It’s uncomfortable.”
“……Eh?”
In the end, there was no way around it but to be direct.
Asher’s smiling face froze. He could feel the intense, silent glare of Suhyeon’s displeased lover.
“……Um, sorry. Was it uncomfortable? I didn’t mean for it to be like that…….”
After a long silence, Asher trailed off with a somewhat dejected expression.
His artificial pout suggested he didn’t actually think he had done anything wrong.
Suhyeon took a long breath.
Since the Association President had personally assigned him, it was awkward to ask for a replacement immediately, and explaining the reason felt like a hassle.
Above all, despite only meeting for a few days, this man’s eyes sparkled with such tenacity that it didn’t seem like he would stop appearing elsewhere even if the training Esper was changed.
Since the situation was unavoidable, Suhyeon laid down the law.
Unlike when he was with Hajin, saying this out loud was quite embarrassing.
And since stating this reason felt like admitting he was conscious of Asher Delveron, it felt unpleasant.
“I am in a relationship with Mr. Hajin, so your actions feel somewhat burdensome to me.”
He didn’t want Hajin to keep worrying.
He also wanted to focus on his training.
“……Oh,”
Suhyeon, who was prepared to be even firmer if the man didn’t give up, looked up at the dazed voice that followed the silence.
Asher blinked.
“……Ah, really?”
The man’s green eyes looked at Hajin in the distance, then back to Suhyeon.
“Uh…… oh, wow.”
Ding!
While Asher was still making strange noises, a short chime rang out indicating that the reserved training time had ended.
Almost simultaneously, Hajin appeared in front of Suhyeon.
He moved at a speed that would make one believe he was a teleportation Esper like one of his colleagues.
“Let’s go, Mr. Suhyeon.”
They say an Esper’s five senses are more than twice as sharp as a normal person’s.
Having heard the entire conversation between Asher and Suhyeon from across the room, Hajin hugged Suhyeon with a rare look of satisfaction on his face.
“That’s right. We’re lovers.”
A soft voice descended for the first time in a while.
Hajin’s familiar chin tickled Suhyeon’s shoulder gently, like a cat purring with contentment.
“Let’s go, Mr. Suhyeon.”
Hajin, who usually left the training room only after engaging in a battle of nerves or tossing a sharp remark or curse at Asher, didn’t give Asher a single glance.
He simply wrapped his arm around Suhyeon and urged him to leave.
Asher, regardless of Hajin’s display, just muttered to himself with a dazed expression.
Seeing Asher seemingly out of it, Suhyeon felt a momentary, baseless sense of guilt, but he soon turned his attention back to Hajin, who was nuzzling his neck and purring.
Seeing how satisfied Hajin was, Suhyeon wondered if he should have said it sooner.
He wondered if the instructor would change again.
Suhyeon gave a small nod to Asher—who barely acknowledged the goodbye—and left the training room with Hajin.
“Hello, Mr. Suhyeon?”
The next day, Suhyeon saw Asher greeting him with a refreshed, nonchalant face.
While he hadn’t expected the man to disappear instantly, he hadn’t expected him to act so unaffected, either.
It was only natural that the face of Hajin, who came with him, twisted in irritation.
The training that followed was…… so clean it made Suhyeon’s nervousness and Hajin’s watchful eyes seem pointless.
The behavior of crossing lines to initiate contact and constantly pushing his face forward as if to seduce had vanished.
It was the same the next day, and the day after that.
He no longer touched Suhyeon blatantly or fiddled with his fingers as he had before.
He stopped wearing clothes with deep necklines or subtle exposure, and the heavy gaze that looked like a predator scouting prey was gone.
His lips, which used to curve brilliantly with dangerous emotions, now only wore a simple, innocent smile.
His vivid green eyes looked at Suhyeon with pure intent.
Suhyeon blinked at the total transformation.
—Mr. Suhyeon, won’t you give me guiding just once?
—I want to receive your guiding. Just the guiding, okay?
Of course, if Suhyeon let his guard down even slightly, Asher would bluntly voice his desire for guiding, but it remained strictly verbal.
He didn’t push any further than that.
—Well, I didn’t know you were lovers. I thought at most you were his dedicated Guide.
At the clean explanation, Suhyeon felt a bit like he’d been tricked and proceeded with training in a daze before snapping out of it.
A few more days passed.
The “new” Asher Delveron was a better teacher than expected.
Correction: he was a quite good teacher regardless.
Suhyeon had no choice but to upgrade his evaluation of Asher.
Even if it was just a simulation, whenever Suhyeon’s gaze wavered unsteadily while holding the pistol, Asher would point out the direction he needed to fix his eyes.
Whenever Suhyeon froze in front of a monster, Asher would sense it immediately and shout for him to move, snapping him back to reality.
It wasn’t that the previous training Esper hadn’t done those things, but… it felt as if someone with more animalistic instincts was watching over him.
“You mustn’t tremble. And you mustn’t turn your back.”
Most of all, there was more content in the lessons.
Even to the inexperienced Suhyeon, it was clear that Asher Delveron was someone with a wealth of experience.
If he had been learning the basics until now, Asher’s training felt like it was making him see beyond that.
He was drenched in sweat and exhausted every time, but because of that, it felt like even purer training.
‘He’s a decent instructor.’
In Suhyeon’s mind, Asher was upgraded from “someone to avoid” to “actually a pretty okay person.”
Instead of avoiding him by using formal titles, he started calling him “Mr. Asher.”
Even Hajin, who had always been on high alert with bared teeth, calmed down slightly.
One day, Hajin even let Suhyeon go to training with Asher alone while he went off to do something else, even though he hissed while doing so.
It was the first time Hajin was completely absent, but Asher’s attitude remained the same as it had been since his change.
“Let’s begin.”
Thus, Suhyeon faced the simulation monster while holding the gun, just like any other day.
Because the difficulty had been raised, the monster approaching with thumping vibrations in front of a massive gate—unlike anything he had seen before—was extremely realistic.
Bang! Bang!
The gunshots echoed inside.
However, perhaps because he was nervous today, Suhyeon’s bullets missed the monster entirely.
Kueeeeeeek—!
The bullets grazed past, and the wounded monster let out a furious roar.
Tentacles began to thump toward Suhyeon at a rapid pace.
A virtual reality session doesn’t end until the monster is killed.
Faced with the hyper-realistic scene, Suhyeon froze and raised his gun again, but there was only a click—no bullet fired.
The magazine was empty.
Thump! Thump! Thump!
The monster, now right in front of him, looked like it could crush Suhyeon to death with a single step.
‘If this were reality—.’
Suhyeon’s face turned pale.
Bang! Bang-bang-bang!!
“You have to concentrate.”
Just as the monster was about to swing a massive, horrific tentacle at Suhyeon, Asher scooped him up and fired his gun while dodging.
His movements were agile, as if he had done this hundreds of times.
Asher must have been watching Suhyeon from the console, yet Suhyeon hadn’t even seen him approach.
Bang-bang!!!
Kueeeeeee……!
With a grotesque cry, the monster’s form flickered, and soon the gate scene that had filled the room shattered, accompanied by a notification that the training had ended.
Suhyeon remained frozen for a moment before slowly exhaling.
It had been over two months since he started training, but he still hadn’t gotten used to a monster being that close to his face.
Of course, they said this would never happen in reality, but still.
“Mr. Suhyeon.”
“……Ah,”
Suhyeon, who had been dazed, looked up at the sound of Asher’s voice so close to him and paused.
Asher’s medium-length blonde hair fell smoothly right before his eyes.
Arched green eyes looked down at Suhyeon, who was held in his arms.
The flamboyant man’s face was far too close.
As Suhyeon scrambled to his feet, Asher—who had remained in the kneeling position he’d taken while holding Suhyeon—let out a soft laugh.
“I wouldn’t have minded staying like that a bit longer.”
“Again, really.”
“Oh, no. I just meant it would have been nice.”
As Suhyeon’s eyes narrowed, the green eyes simply crinkled as usual into a smile.
As soon as afternoon arrived, Hajin appeared immediately and whisked Suhyeon away to go home.
In any case, a peaceful daily life continued.
For now.
