* * *
When the stretching finished and it was time to get on the treadmill, the trainer followed along excitedly.
This was because the Esper from before was currently undergoing rehabilitation training near the window where the treadmills were located.
The trainer pushed Haeram onto a treadmill that was uncomfortably close to him.
“Teacher, you’re being a bit too honest about your desires.”
“Hah, what do you mean? Let’s just start with walking for now.”
Despite his words, Haeram also found himself glancing over repeatedly.
Even though he had seen a few Espers while drifting in and out of Building E since the Mind Training course was established, he could never quite get used to them.
It was impossible not to feel curious about beings who possessed supernatural powers.
Haeram found it difficult to move even while wearing thin clothes and sneakers; who wouldn’t find it fascinating to see someone exercising while draped in black metal?
“……!”
After glancing over for a while, their eyes met.
Startled, Haeram nearly had an ungraceful fall on the treadmill, even though it was set to the lowest speed.
He tried to act nonchalant while clutching his pounding chest, noticing that the noisy crowd was gradually moving away.
It seemed the Esper had finished his training and was leaving.
“I’m increasing the speed.”
As soon as the Esper left, the trainer returned to her duty and began focusing on Haeram.
Nagging words flew toward Haeram as he hurriedly caught his breath and corrected his posture.
“Haeram, you need to work out hard now so you won’t lack physical strength after you awaken. That’s the only way you’ll be able to keep up with Espers and do your job as a Guide well.”
Her words were so right that he had no retort.
“You said that Esper hurt his arm, right?”
“Yeah. I heard the area where it was severed was so messy that the surgery was a real struggle. Apparently, he doesn’t have a Guide with a high enough matching rate to form a pair. That’s why his recovery stalled, and he had to have surgery three times. What was it? They had to reattach the blood vessels, then the bones, then the muscles…… they had to put everything back. A normal person wouldn’t have been able to use that arm again.”
“But why is he doing rehab with weights attached to his injured arm?”
“Oh, those are restraints. It’s because he’s unstable due to the injury. They can’t risk his powers leaking out by mistake while he’s around civilians.”
“Huff, huff…. That must be so heavy….”
“Well, we can’t have people getting hurt. Okay, now, let’s stop running. Time to stretch again.”
The trainer handed a towel and water to the panting Haeram.
She spoke of the rumors she had heard, claiming that those kinds of restraints were nothing compared to the real deal.
“The real ones are embedded inside the body. So you can’t even take them out. I heard they look like nails.”
The whispering was so grim and the content so horrific that Haeram’s eyes widened.
“Doesn’t it hurt?”
“Of course it does. Their sense of pain is the same as ours.”
“How can a person live with something like that hammered into them?”
“Oh, please.”
The trainer made a loud sound and waved her hand dismissively.
“Is an Esper even a person?”
The expression she wore as she spoke so casually was utterly ordinary.
She tossed out such a terrible statement as if it were common sense that everyone agreed upon.
Haeram could already sense that he was going to hate exercising even more from now on.
“Harder. Try to grip it tight. Is Haeram a baby? You have no strength in your hands.”
Seo Jungwoo nudged Haeram, who was struggling to concentrate, by shaking his hand.
It seemed Haeram was the only one walking on eggshells just because they had exchanged some unpleasant words.
Feeling a bit resentful, Haeram gripped Seo Jungwoo’s hand tightly, almost pinching it, with an expressionless face.
He applied enough pressure to make his own fingertips turn white, but Seo Jungwoo didn’t even blink. In fact, he actually laughed.
“I can’t grip it properly because you’re wearing rings,” Haeram said, glancing at the ring on Seo Jungwoo’s left ring finger.
“Rings? Ah, what should I do? I can’t take these off.”
Haeram disgruntledly lifted their interlaced hands.
Seo Jungwoo’s hands, wearing a total of three rings, rose with his.
One on the left ring finger, and one each on the right index and ring fingers—he wore quite a few.
Seo Jungwoo smiled thinly and gave Haeram a slight tug.
“Those are restraints, too, aren’t they?”
Haeram had seen him use restraints often, so it wasn’t particularly special, but the sight of what he had seen at the rehab center yesterday was stuck in his mind, prompting him to bring it up.
The black, smooth metal that seemed to absorb light was extremely alien.
It was a mysterious metal made from by-products of the Gates rather than materials from Earth; it was pitch black because of its property of absorbing light to control an Esper’s power.
Looking into it felt like staring into a black hole.
“Yeah, they’re tedious.”
Seo Jungwoo pulled his hand away from Haeram and held it out.
The rings were plain metal bands, flat on both the front and back, with no decoration whatsoever.
“Does it… does it hurt you too, Teacher? I heard it hurts when an Esper wears these.”
Haeram, who had been gently turning the ring while pulling on the man’s hand with his fingers, spoke hesitantly.
“Do I look like I’m in pain?”
Seo Jungwoo looked down at Haeram, who was fidgeting with his hand.
A few strands of hair rising from Haeram’s rounded crown brushed softly against the tip of Seo Jungwoo’s nose.
A person who is always sick usually becomes dull to the pain of others, yet Haeram would often worry about him in these sudden bursts.
Even though an Esper was not a being that deserved worry.
Haeram nodded his head in affirmation.
“Yes. I think it would hurt. You’re wearing these because you’re unstable somewhere too, right?”
Even if it wasn’t at the level of plastering heavy chunks of iron all over his body like that Esper from yesterday, the fact that he was wearing restraints meant his condition was unstable.
Suddenly, the story about Seo Jungwoo being on leave due to an injury flashed through Haeram’s mind.
He had heard that around the time he himself was very sick, Seo Jungwoo had also suffered an injury serious enough to leave aftereffects.
At the time, he had let it go in one ear and out the other, but now he suddenly worried if it had been a major injury that ruined his body to the point where he had to wear restraints indefinitely.
The fact that Seo Jungwoo had been wearing those restraints during the entire year Haeram had known him made his heart feel even more uneasy.
“This doesn’t hurt much.”
Whether he knew Haeram’s complicated thoughts or not, Seo Jungwoo gave a short laugh and spoke dismissively.
“So you’re saying it does hurt, then?”
Unlike Haeram, whose eyes were wide with worry, Seo Jungwoo actually laughed out loud.
“It really doesn’t hurt. It’s nothing.”
“What happens if you take them off?”
The question popped out without a second thought.
They were put there to restrain an Esper’s power, but he was suddenly curious about why someone with such power would wear something so cumbersome purely of their own free will.
Seo Jungwoo met Haeram’s eyes, which were reflecting him like a mirror, and smiled slowly.
“Boom.”
Seo Jungwoo closed his ten fingers and then playfully spread them out.
When he whispered that he would just explode, his eyes were devoid of light, looking as if it were someone else’s business—like someone watching a fire across a river.
Haeram frowned deeply.
“Don’t make jokes like that. You’re the one who tells me to never say the word ‘die’.”
Haha, Seo Jungwoo burst into laughter.
“You’re right, that was my mistake. I’ve been getting scolded by Haeram constantly these past few days.”
An Esper’s instability is resolved through a Guide.
Haeram briefly wondered if Seo Jungwoo didn’t have a Guide.
It was a problem as simple as addition and subtraction.
A man famous enough to be on TV wouldn’t be wearing such small restraints because his rank was low; it was likely something that could be solved just by receiving Guiding.
“Then…….”
He should have said, ‘Please receive Guiding.’ But suddenly, he was at a loss for words. Why?
Seo Jungwoo quietly observed Haeram, whose face suddenly crumpled into a grimace mid-sentence.
Right now, Haeram’s expression resembled the one he made every time he received confirmation that he had failed to awaken as a Guide.
“Shall we continue our Mind Training?”
Seo Jungwoo caught Haeram’s fingertips and shook them gently, smiling.
Whenever the man crinkled his black eyes, which flickered with strange colors, and acted like a gentle puppy, Haeram was helplessly shaken.
Why was a powerful being who lacked for nothing being so kind to him?
Even as a sudden suspicion flared up, the tickling sensation rising from their joined hands caused Haeram to quickly forget the question once again.
After the three-hour training session ended, Haeram, who was walking sluggishly, decided to head down toward the central hall on the first floor of the ward building instead of returning to his room.
There was still plenty of time before dinner, and since the noisy Seungjoon wasn’t in the room anyway, he knew being there would only add to his gloom.
In fact, his mood had been improving ever since he changed direction, so Haeram quickened his pace.
* * *
