* * *
A few days of precarious yet peaceful time passed.
On a sun-drenched afternoon, Suhyeon entered Hajin’s room alone.
As he opened the door, he unconsciously rubbed the back of his pale hand, feeling a strange sense of novelty at the fact that no IV lines or needles were dangling from it anymore.
With Yihan’s permission, he no longer had to carry around bags of saline, painkillers, or various IV drips.
Judging by how Yihan’s expression always brightened during check-ups, it seemed he didn’t have to worry about coughing up blood every day anymore.
In fact, Yihan told him not to worry, and his chest no longer throbbed.
He hadn’t lost consciousness, either.
For an ordinary person, these were things they wouldn’t have to worry about in the first place, but for Suhyeon, they were milestones.
Feeling a brief pang of bittersweetness, Suhyeon let out a breath and climbed onto Hajin’s bed.
Since Hajin had left the house, Suhyeon was alone in the room.
He sat on the plush mattress clutching a cushion, then eventually flopped over onto his side.
The scent of fabric softener mingled with Hajin’s unique fragrance, drifting around the tip of his nose.
Ever since the day he first woke up here, Suhyeon spent quite a bit of time in Hajin’s room.
Entering this space, which was filled with the man’s subtle scent, made him feel as if Hajin were right there holding him.
He wasn’t sure when he had started finding such comfort and relief in Hajin’s scent, but now, almost like he’d been tamed, being in this room made him feel good.
Hajin also seemed secretly satisfied that Suhyeon spent time in his room, occasionally sending him languid, pleased glances.
Lying in the quiet room, Suhyeon watched dust motes sparkling in the sunlight.
Then, he pulled his phone out of his pocket and entered a search site out of habit.
Guide.
His pale fingers tapped the screen.
His search history was already full of terms he’d been looking up for days: “Guide,” “Dedicated Guide,” “Association,” “Role of a Guide,” and so on.
‘What is a Guide?’
‘Guide: Salvation for the Esper……’
‘Signed a dedicated contract with a domestic A-class Esper……’
The results ranged from casual influencer posts to news articles and academic papers.
As he hit enter, posts he had already viewed multiple times—indicated by their purple text—lined up on the screen.
‘Dedicated Guide.’
Searching once more, Suhyeon scrolled down quickly as the same posts he’d seen before occupied the screen.
‘A-class Esper Do Yejun and Dedicated Guide Lee Jaeram. Opened in the middle of Seoul……’
An article he had scrolled past many times popped up, and Suhyeon quickly swiped past it with clouded eyes.
Through his searches, he had unintentionally learned what had happened to Do Yejun, but Suhyeon decided not to think about him anymore.
His finger kept scrolling down and down.
After quite some time had passed, Suhyeon finally let out a heavy sigh.
There was a limit to the information about Guides one could find via an internet search.
The volume of information was small to begin with.
Even when searching for “Dedicated Guide,” the results were only about who was a dedicated guide for which Esper, or which famous Esper had signed a contract with whom.
Only basic common-sense information about what a Guide is and what they do was available; there wasn’t much beyond that.
The one additional thing he learned was that S-class Guides were truly rare.
While it seemed common for one or two S-class Espers to appear in each country, it was said there were only three S-class Guides in the entire world. And even those were all foreigners.
—Congratulations on becoming Korea’s second S-class Guide!
He remembered the Association President saying something like that when they first met, so he looked into it further.
When Suhyeon realized the true meaning of those words, he was stunned.
He hadn’t realized that “second” meant the second in the entire history of the country.
Suhyeon frowned as he imagined his name being added to the list of only three S-class Guides.
The pressure was immense.
On top of that, he saw a few chilling posts.
Unlike Espers, Guides had physical abilities no different from ordinary people, making them frequently exposed to danger.
Suhyeon let out another sigh after seeing a post about how some high-ranking dedicated Guide’s name was on a hit list on the black market with a bounty. He tossed his phone onto the bed.
—Suhyeon caused a rampage at the Association, and a high-ranking Guide like Suhyeon is a target for other Ability Users just by existing.
The words he heard from the President a few days ago felt real once again.
It seemed there was no more information to be gained from searching.
Suhyeon, who had been lying blankly, sat up abruptly.
It didn’t feel real yet, but Suhyeon wasn’t the kind of person to be so complacent as to ignore potential dangers.
—You can contact me here anytime. Time and date don’t matter, seriously, anytime!
Rubbing the business card given to him by the President as he was practically being chased out of the house, Suhyeon stepped out of the room.
Suhyeon still thought a dedicated Guide position was better than being an Association Guide.
If possible…… it would be even better if he were Hajin’s dedicated Guide.
He had wanted to ask several times over the past few days, but for some reason, the question wouldn’t come out easily.
To be precise, he was worried about how Hajin would react.
Suhyeon wasn’t exactly the type to walk on eggshells, but since Hajin hadn’t brought it up either—even though the President had visited—he felt even more hesitant.
During these past few days, Hajin hadn’t mentioned a single word about Guides or the Association President.
He simply spent time quietly holding Suhyeon as if nothing had happened and nothing ever would.
Since Suhyeon didn’t know much about the relationship between Guides and Espers, it was even harder to bring up.
Phew.
Suhyeon let out a breath. He walked down to the second floor and knocked on the door of Yihan’s lab.
—Ah, come in!
When he opened the door, he saw Yihan tidying up his workspace amidst the bitter smell of medicine.
“Are you hurting somewhere? Or did Shin Hajin say something?”
Yihan, who finished tidying up in an instant with various clinking sounds, dragged over a stool and tapped it, telling Suhyeon to sit.
Suhyeon shook his head as Yihan habitually tried to check his pulse and examine him.
Yihan’s finger, which was about to press a button on a testing device, paused.
His eyes turned slowly, looking at Suhyeon with disbelief, but also with sparkling anticipation and excitement.
“No way, did you come here because you missed me?”
‘Well, it feels a bit different than that.’
However, since it was true he had business with Yihan, Suhyeon gave a nod for now.
“My goodness, is that so……”
The corners of Yihan’s mouth twitched upward; he looked excessively happy.
“Um, I have something to ask.”
Suhyeon hurried to start his sentence, as Yihan’s body was leaning further and further forward as if he were about to suddenly hug him.
“Ask away, ask away! If it’s a complaint about Shin Hajin, even better!”
Yihan grinned broadly, adding a strange comment.
“Well……”
Suhyeon hesitated for a moment before finally asking.
“How does Hajin receive Guiding?”
“Oh, uh, well……”
Yihan raised his eyebrows and made a strange sound as if it were an unexpected question.
“Usually he receives Radiation Guiding…… but I know he takes Contact Guiding when it’s dangerous. I’m sure he doesn’t want to go into a rampage either.”
Words he had vaguely heard before. Suhyeon pulled some Guiding concepts he’d found through his search from his memory.
Radiation Guiding literally meant releasing Guiding wavelengths to fill an Esper’s Guiding levels, and Contact Guiding meant filling them through physical touch.
He also knew that Radiation Guiding was less efficient than Contact Guiding.
“But he hates it so much that he throws a fit. You know how he has that germophobia? That happened because of a bad memory he had about Guiding when he was very young.”
Suhyeon was about to ask if he could Guide Hajin, but he froze at Yihan’s next words.
Yihan continued, failing to notice the change in Suhyeon.
“Well, his body is so strong that there hasn’t really been a Guide who could sufficiently fill his Guiding levels anyway.”
‘A bad memory.’
Did Hajin have something like that too?
For it to result in germophobia, it couldn’t have been a minor incident.
Could the reason he hadn’t brought up the fact that Suhyeon had to choose to be a Guide be because Guiding itself was unpleasant for him?
Thinking of it that way, it made sense why it wasn’t mentioned.
Suhyeon and Hajin were lovers, and Hajin allowed Suhyeon many things, but they didn’t actually know everything about each other.
At the mention of a “bad memory,” Suhyeon associated it with the kind of trauma Do Yejun had caused him.
His heart thudded.
“Are you worried about the dedicated Guide thing? But you don’t really have to worry— ah.”
Ring!
“Wait, ah, I’m sorry. This is an urgent call. Let’s talk again later.”
Yihan tried to say something but showed his phone screen and scrambled out of the lab.
Suhyeon returned to Hajin’s room feeling somewhat heavy-hearted.
‘Had I been trying too hard to do everything with Hajin, trying to solve things too easily?’
Now that he’d heard this, he didn’t think he could ask Hajin.
Suhyeon felt that he wouldn’t be very happy if Hajin pried into his past or things about Do Yejun.
He absolutely didn’t want to say something stupid and make Hajin dislike him.
Suhyeon liked this quiet yet fluttering daily life with Hajin.
Suhyeon sighed.
If he couldn’t be Hajin’s Guide, he couldn’t be a dedicated Guide. He didn’t want to be one either.
He would have to perform Contact Guiding, and he couldn’t do that with someone who wasn’t his lover.
Wouldn’t that be no different from Do Yejun and Lee Jaeram?
Sighing and agonizing over what to do for a long time, Suhyeon gathered his courage and picked up his phone.
The recipient was the number on the business card: the Association President.
—Hello, this is Chae Suhyeon.
Tap, tap.
The sound of typing echoed loudly in the exceptionally large room.
—OH!!!!! Have you decided!!
Suhyeon blinked at the reply that came back in less than ten seconds after the message was sent.
The slanting sunlight shone on his light brown hair.
Suhyeon failed to notice someone entering the room.
—I would like to sign a contract as an Association Guide, perhaps if—|
Having written that much, Suhyeon sighed again.
An Association Guide who has to provide Guiding to an unspecified number of people for a set amount of time.
‘Is this right?’
“……Suhyeon.”
At that moment, Suhyeon’s shoulders jerked violently at the voice heard right above his head.
* * *
