“Of course I would. They’re an Esper.”
Da-woon answered at once, without hesitation. It was so obvious he didn’t even need to think about it.
“I mean mucous-membrane guiding. Not kissing. Sex.”
Meow?
The cat, which had been quietly lapping at its water, looked up at Da-woon as if something felt off.
Da-woon gently took the cat as it nestled into his arms and wiped the water from its whiskers. At that, Yeo-ul pressed him again, impatient.
“Answer me first, hyung. I asked you first.”
“I already answered. I said I’d do it.”
At Da-woon’s reaction, Yeo-ul’s eyes wavered.
“If guiding doesn’t work through simple contact, then I have to try something. There’s no other choice.”
Da-woon knew full well that the guiding Yeo-ul was talking about was different from the light contact-guiding he’d received until now, yet he answered without a moment’s hesitation. As far as he was concerned, it wasn’t a matter where he had any real choice.
“Still, I’m not going to do it right away. A little later... I’ll watch how things go, and if it looks dangerous, then I’ll try it.”
An Esper had to spend their whole life keeping their wavelength stable. If your wavelength count climbed too high and you went berserk, it didn’t just end with you dying alone, it dragged everyone around you into danger too.
The one saving grace was that Jung Da-woon wasn’t an attack-type Esper. Healers and Barrier Users fell into the category with a low risk of going berserk.
Grateful that he was a Healer, Da-woon resolved to be even more careful about managing his wavelength from now on. It was a problem that would resolve itself once enough time passed anyway. The reason guiding wasn’t working was clear.
He just had to keep a calm mind and adjust to his ability and the unfamiliar environment.
He’d been told the adjustment period was three months, so if he could just hold out two more months, the problem would solve itself. Two months would pass in no time.
“Could you have sex with a stranger, hyung?”
“Hey, that word...”
Da-woon, who’d nearly grabbed Yeo-ul by the collar at the sudden blunt question, let out a heavy sigh. He couldn’t very well hit this dangerous kid.
“What am I supposed to call sex if not sex?”
Yeo-ul lowered his eyes, his expression bold and yet full of complaint.
“There’s a thing called ‘being intimate.’ And don’t focus on the sex part, call it mucous-membrane guiding.”
“It’s the same thing either way, putting it in and going at it. Does saying it differently make it different?”
“...Fine, do whatever you want.”
Da-woon turned his head away with a worn-out look. His head ached, and it was hard to keep the conversation going.
Maybe because he’d spent a day that felt unusually long, his body ached all over. He thought he might be running a slight fever too.
Da-woon stroked the cat’s soft belly and leaned into its cozy little body. Held quietly in his arms, the cat listened to the back-and-forth with a calm gaze unbefitting a kitten.
“I’ll look for another way.”
Conscious of Da-woon’s tired complexion, Yeo-ul immediately loosened his grip. Then, as if pinning down Da-woon’s withdrawing hand with his gaze, he clung to him.
“Don’t force yourself. You could get stressed out and end up feeling worse.”
“Yeo-ul.”
Da-woon opened his mouth as he wrapped his arms around the cat’s warm little body. Thanks to the cat’s warmth, he found a little strength to speak.
“Everyone has things they don’t want to do, and we all just put up with them within reason. You can’t live a life that’s nothing but comfortable.”
He explained it gently, meeting Yeo-ul’s eyes so it would land properly.
“If it’s a situation where I absolutely have to, then I’ll do it. I put my life on the line for work, so what couldn’t I do?”
“...Why put your life on the line for anything.”
“Anyway. Even if I don’t want to, I’ll grit my teeth and do it. And I won’t get stressed enough over it to make my health worse.”
Focused on Da-woon’s calm voice settling into his ears, Yeo-ul fell silent for a moment. His blue eyes bored into Da-woon as if conveying his thoughts in place of words.
“Would you do it with the leader’s brother too?”
“No, not with Ryu Jin.”
After a brief silence, at the follow-up question, Da-woon shook his head and denied it firmly.
If mucous-membrane guiding became necessary, he’d find a different Guide. He had no intention of escalating physical contact with Ryu Jin beyond a hug.
“Why? Because he’s the leader’s brother?”
“That... uh, right. And Ryu Jin’s too young.”
Another silence followed. Yeo-ul, who’d shut his mouth again, wore a curiously displeased look.
“What’s your standard for ‘too young’? If someone’s younger than you, you don’t feel like having sex with them?”
Yeo-ul snatched away any chance for Da-woon to answer and poured out his words alone.
“But if it’s a situation where you absolutely have to, you’d do it, right? With no other choice. Because that’s what you said.”
“No, the... Ryu Jin’s kind of...”
“You said you’d grit your teeth and do it even if you didn’t want to. You just said that yourself.”
Da-woon’s lips fumbled open and shut, and in the end he let out a sigh of assent. Wanting to end this dizzying conversation whose purpose he couldn’t fathom, he gave his answer quickly.
“If Ryu Jin were the only one who could guide me... then I’d have to. As long as Ryu Jin agreed to it first.”
Da-woon deliberately stressed that the opinion of Ryu Jin, the Guide, mattered above all else.
In case Yeo-ul fell for Ryu Jin, it was a good moment to drill in the obvious truth that if the other person refused, he had to back off cleanly.
But Yeo-ul didn’t take in a word of it. He just kept doggedly pressing his questions with a look like he was fixated on something.
“So you’re saying that if the other person’s willing, you’d do it. In a situation where you have to, with no choice, even with a stranger.”
“Yeah, I would. If the other person agrees, and it’s a situation where I absolutely, definitely need guiding, then I’ll do it.”
Having answered clearly enough to leave no wiggle room, Da-woon decided the conversation was over and was about to turn away.
“Then do it with me too.”
At Yeo-ul’s earnest voice coming from behind him, Da-woon’s body went stiff.
“...What did you say?”
“I said let’s do it with me too.”
Pfft. A small snort like a stifled laugh slipped out briefly. It was the cat that had made the sound.
The sound was so faint, matching its tiny body, that neither Yeo-ul nor Da-woon noticed it. Too absorbed in each other, the reaction of the cat observing them didn’t even register.
“You said if it’s a situation where you have to, it doesn’t matter who you do it with. So do it with me.”
“You... do you know how to guide?”
“No. Of course I can’t.”
Right. Of course not. He was an Esper, same as me.
Da-woon stared at Yeo-ul, who was suddenly spouting nonsense, with a dumbfounded face.
“I’m not talking about guiding, I mean sex.”
Yeo-ul’s added words only piled on more questions instead of any understanding.
Why would I do that with you?
When Da-woon asked it with his expression, Yeo-ul slowly drew his hand down his lower jaw and cleared his throat.
“When your heat comes, hyung, you need a partner, right?”
The words he spat out in a composed voice left Da-woon even more confused. Unable to keep up with the conversation jumping from guiding to heat, Da-woon just blinked rapidly.
“You said if you had to, you could have sex with a Guide you don’t even know. So you could do it with me too.”
“Why would you, with me...”
“Because I’m an Alpha. And you’re an Omega.”
Somehow, the longer the conversation went on, the more his comprehension seemed to drop. He couldn’t begin to guess what Yeo-ul was getting at, suddenly bringing up his heat and secondary genders.
Hold on, don’t tell me this kid...
“Suppressants are bad for your body. And you’re already weak as it is.”
“...”
“When your heat comes, call me from now on. Don’t go looking for the leader.”
At Yeo-ul’s confession that followed, Da-woon realized that the “don’t tell me” had hit the mark.
“Give me a chance too.”
After adjusting the room temperature with the air-conditioner remote, Ryu Tae-ha drew the curtains.
He covered Ryu Jin, asleep on the Guiding Room sofa, with a blanket, and set a bottle of water within his reach.
Ryu Jin’s eyes were red as he lay with his head on the sofa cushion. After crying for a long while, he’d worn himself out and fallen asleep; Ryu Tae-ha checked to make sure he wasn’t running a fever, then pulled the blanket up over him.
Ryu Jin had felt guilty, saying Da-woon’s guiding-rejection seemed to be his fault. He’d been distraught, blaming his own inexperience for not noticing Da-woon’s condition sooner.
No matter how many times Tae-ha told him it wasn’t his fault, he just kept crying. In the end, Ryu Jin had even said he’d leave the guild, and only after a long while of soothing him had Tae-ha finally gotten him to sleep.
He must have been badly shaken that his guiding didn’t work.
Ryu Tae-ha knew better than anyone that his brother took his role seriously.
He recorded the guild members’ wavelength counts and conditions every single day without fail. With his strong sense of responsibility and his fondness for being praised, he took extra training every day even when no one told him to. He lived diligently, day after day, saying he wanted to become a capable Guide who would never be a burden to the guild.
For something like this to happen on top of all that, it was no wonder his heart had crumbled.
Ryu Tae-ha was also well aware of the talk that when a Guide’s assigned Esper had guiding problems, the Guide’s mental state shrank into itself.
Hoping that soft-hearted Ryu Jin wouldn’t fall ill too, Ryu Tae-ha stroked the reddened corner of his eye. One sick person, Da-woon, was already enough.
Stepping out of the Guiding Room, Ryu Tae-ha read the email file that had been sent to his phone. It was the Guide list Yeo-ul had thrown together.
A few new Guides had been added to it. They were Guides famous enough that even Ryu Tae-ha knew them. Not merely at the level of knowing their names.
Exchanging light nods with those passing through the Guiding Room corridor, he placed a call to the department in charge.
“This is Ryu Tae-ha.”
Along with saying he’d received the Guide list, he relayed a new request.
“Looking it over again, there are a few Guides mixed in with bad reputations. Please filter those out in the first round, and give me only solid, reliable Guides.”
“Ah, yes. I apologize. We’ll go through and narrow it down again carefully.”
“And one more thing.”
“Yes, please go ahead.”
Perhaps conscious of the people passing by, he paused for a moment and then wrapped a thin membrane around himself. After blocking the sound so the contents of the call wouldn’t leak, he briefly added a condition.
“You understand what I mean, don’t you?”
“Of course. Don’t worry. I’ll search just as you’ve described.”
“Yes, I’m counting on you.”
Having finished the call, Tae-ha checked the locations of the guild members.
Da-woon was at the lodgings with Yeo-ul. If he went now, he’d obviously run into Yeo-ul again. For the sake of Da-woon’s mental health alone, it was better not to make him witness that.
It would take time to get the new Guide list anyway, so he’d talk with him again tonight. Or tomorrow, if it came to that.
Tae-ha wanted to resolve Da-woon’s guiding problem as soon as possible. Da-woon was a Healer, but because of his rare ability, the burden that built up in his body was heavy. His was a body that needed guiding steadily and often.
He was already weak, and now a guiding problem on top of it. Anticipating that Da-woon would surely start aching from tonight, Tae-ha intended to head straight back to the field to wrap things up quickly.
Bzzzt.
But just then, an incoming call caught him by the ankle. Today of all days, his phone was buzzing especially busily.
“Yes, what is it?”
“Guildmaster Ryu Tae-ha. I think you’ll need to come out for a moment.”
It was a call from the team leader overseeing a danger zone designated within a civilian area.
Had another gate appeared outside? If so, the team leader’s voice wasn’t urgent enough for that.
The reason he’d called was something else.
“We’ve found a Beastman.”
