“How are you feeling?”
Da-woon parted his lips, eyeing Ryu Tae-ha warily as the man wore his usual sort of smile.
“...I'm fine.”
His head ached and his body felt heavy from not having received any guiding, but it was bearable. The fact that he wasn't dizzy or coughing up blood was enough for him to consider himself in decent shape.
“Does he not know what ‘fine’ means?”
Yeo-ul, his chin resting in Da-woon's palm, grumbled under his breath. He found Da-woon's attitude thoroughly displeasing, the way he kept parroting that he was fine throughout the examinations at the annex.
“Da-woon-hyung bled out a whole bucket. He nearly got eaten by some Alpha bastard while healing him.”
“Eaten? Eaten by what?”
Da-woon made as if to pinch Yeo-ul's chattering mouth shut. If anything, he'd let the Alpha take in his pheromones; it wasn't as though he'd been overpowered helplessly.
“I heard about it.”
Ryu Tae-ha, who'd been watching Da-woon and Yeo-ul sit pressed up against each other, spoke up as if he already knew everything.
“Looks like you were dead set on getting yourself hurt.”
He'd been briefed on the scene on his way over. He'd heard, in full detail, how Da-woon had nearly come to ruin while treating an agitated Alpha. He also knew the circumstances of how Da-woon hadn't avoided the Alpha but had instead released his own pheromones.
“Guess life's gotten boring for our Da-woon lately. Look at him straining so hard to wreck his own body.”
This time too, Da-woon kept his mouth shut. Since it amounted to admitting he'd acted recklessly, there was nothing else for him to say.
“So he does know he did wrong. And here I was worried his head had broken too.”
“Hyung, stop it.”
Ryu Jin appeared, grabbing Ryu Tae-ha by the arm, his face thoroughly tear-streaked as he held him back.
“That's not what matters right now.”
Ryu Jin gestured with his eyes toward the researcher standing by the door. The researcher, who'd been looking for the right moment to announce his presence, cleared his throat and came in.
“Since the Guildmaster has arrived as well, I'll go over the examination results.”
Another researcher who came in after him pulled up the test results on the monitor. Two graphs filled the wide screen.
“The one on the left is a graph showing the body's response curve during guiding, and the one on the right is the wavelength reading graph.”
Each graph had lines in several colors. Even without listening to the researcher's explanation, the nearly flat lines on the right told them everything about Da-woon's condition.
“As you can see, the guiding is having no effect whatsoever on Da-woon's wavelength.”
The wavelength, which should have dropped the longer the guiding was maintained, held perfectly still in the same place. If anything, as time passed, the stress index among the body-response curves on the left even climbed gradually higher.
This was the textbook response of an Esper suffering from guiding rejection syndrome.
“Guiding rejection syndrome?”
Da-woon, who'd been listening calmly, suddenly cut in. It was a term that had nothing to do with him, so the question slipped out before he realized it.
“Yes. Honestly, it's not that rare a response. It easily occurs in cases where there's trauma associated with guiding, or a clear reason the Esper can't open up to their Guide.”
At the researcher's reply, Ryu Jin bit his lip. His small face was full of guilt, as if he thought this whole situation was his fault.
“No, I don't have anything like that. Ryu Jin and I get along fine, and there's nothing uncomfortable about it when I receive guiding.”
Da-woon denied it firmly. To let Ryu Jin know that none of this was his fault, he deliberately put weight on every single word.
“And when you receive guiding from a different Guide, are the results similar?”
This time Ryu Tae-ha asked.
The researcher adjusted his glasses, nodded, and pulled up another graph. It was the graph from when the guiding test had been done with a different high-rank Guide, not Ryu Jin.
The curves of the lines weren't much different from the previous ones. Even when receiving guiding from a seasoned, veteran high-rank Guide, Da-woon's wavelength held at the same readings.
It meant the cause of the guiding rejection wasn't Ryu Jin.
“The wavelength of an Esper suffering from guiding rejection syndrome either pushes the guiding away or shows no response at all. And they feel a strong aversion to the very act of contact with a Guide.”
The researcher continued his explanation, showing the other Esper's graph alongside.
“Da-woon, you said you don't feel any significant discomfort from contact, but when we raised the level of contact slightly, as you can see...”
When the researcher enlarged the monitor screen, the wavelength graph became visible in even greater detail.
At the moment the guiding intensity rose from holding hands to an embrace, the wavelength readings, which hadn't budged at all, began to shift faintly. And in a bad direction, at that.
The wavelength, which by all rights should have dropped, had instead risen. The difference was slight, but its meaning was clear.
Da-woon's body was plainly rejecting the guiding.
“There's no reason for that, though...”
Da-woon muttered, feeling wronged. He hadn't given the guiding test much thought while taking it. Holding hands and embracing under a researcher's watch had been embarrassing, but that was all.
He hadn't felt anything like displeasure or reluctance to receive it. He'd only felt tired and hungry for something to eat.
“And if you raise the contact intensity all the way?”
At Ryu Tae-ha's remark as he gazed at the graph, everyone's eyes converged on him. He alone calmly looked at Da-woon and went on.
“Da-woon, you've never gone past a kiss, right? Take this chance and go all the way.”
“Leader, are you deaf? They just said there's an aversion.”
Yeo-ul rose from his chair, shielding Da-woon with his large frame. The researchers, flinching at his fierce energy, each took a step back.
“It might just be fear from never having tried. You never know anything until you give it a go.”
“If he'd had any intention of receiving it, Da-woon-hyung would've done it long ago. You think every Esper is crazy for mucous-membrane guiding like you, Leader?”
Yeo-ul's voice rose. And the wavelength radiating from his body grew just as sharply edged.
“Why are you getting so worked up?”
Ryu Tae-ha laughed faintly and laid a hand on Yeo-ul's shoulder. At the same time, a thin barrier like a film of glass wound around Yeo-ul's body.
“You need to draw a proper line between business and pleasure. I'm not recommending mucous-membrane guiding to Da-woon for fun right now.”
Lightly tapping the barrier film he'd wrapped around Yeo-ul, Ryu Tae-ha requested the Guide list from the researcher.
“Pull only Guides ranked A or above, with over five years of experience, and show me right away.”
Then he added detailed physical criteria, including age. It might seem excessive, but there was a clear correlation between fondness and guiding. For that reason, plenty of Espers went looking for a Guide close to their ideal type.
“Yes, understood.”
The researcher, who'd been reading Yeo-ul's mood, followed Ryu Tae-ha's instruction for the time being.
“Hyung, are you going to do it?”
Yeo-ul leaned down toward Da-woon, who sat on the bed. Da-woon had been pressing a hand to his forehead, which had gone feverishly warm, as he listened to the exchange.
“If you don't want to, don't force yourself. I'll find another way.”
“Yeo-ul.”
Ryu Tae-ha chuckled and called out softly to the endlessly serious Yeo-ul.
“You shouldn't go throwing around promises you can't keep.”
At the tone, gentle as if teaching a child, Yeo-ul's gaze turned even colder. Before Yeo-ul could move from radiating his wavelength to actually unleashing his ability, Da-woon caught hold of him.
“Um... that guiding rejection syndrome, does it ever just happen on its own?”
The researcher, who'd been swallowing dryly at the ominous mood of Sawoo Guild, answered hastily.
“No, Da-woon. It's absolutely not a symptom that appears without a cause. Apart from the reasons I mentioned earlier, it's very rare, but it does sometimes show up in newly awakened Espers in the early stages of manifestation.”
Among new Espers, there were occasionally those who couldn't accept their own bodies now that they'd become ability users. They generally suffered from mild depression or guiding rejection syndrome.
“In those cases, the main cause wasn't an aversion to guiding itself, but an inability to accept a body that had become that of an ability user. In most cases, the symptoms eased naturally once they passed through the ability-adjustment period.”
Everyone but Da-woon, Ryu Tae-ha and Ryu Jin and Yeo-ul, let the rest of the explanation pass them by. It was a topic unrelated to Da-woon, who'd already manifested as an Esper more than four years ago.
“How long is the ability-adjustment period?”
Only Da-woon listened intently and dug in for details.
“It varies, but about three months. Some new Espers adjust in as little as two months, but most need three months to grow accustomed to it. The body's responses change, and above all, they've gained power they never had before, so the psychological burden is considerable too.”
It was a story that they, as Espers, would know better than anyone. The researchers, too, had given the explanation on the assumption that it was a case separate from Da-woon's.
To say it again, Jung Da-woon had manifested more than four years ago.
“...”
That it had been a mere month since Da-woon transmigrated into the novel was a fact known to him alone.
Da-woon quietly lowered his head and rested his forehead against his clenched fist. A fever was trying to creep up little by little on his throbbing brow.
“I've printed out the Guide list.”
Just then a quick-footed researcher arrived with the list of Guides.
As Ryu Tae-ha had instructed, it had been narrowed down to people of moderate height, with neat looks and soft impressions.
All of them older. Since Da-woon was on the younger side, picking someone older was unavoidable anyway just to meet the experience requirement.
“Good. Da-woon, you read it over too.”
Ryu Tae-ha, who'd looked the list over first, handed the file to Da-woon.
Yeo-ul intercepted it midway and flung the still-warm paper, fresh out of the printer, onto the floor.
