For the first few days, Heeyoung was fine too. And no wonder, Shinyul had left like a general going off to war, and Heeyoung himself was busy taking his own brutal education.
But even after one week passed, then two, with neither Shinyul nor the team members showing so much as a strand of hair, he found himself bothered for no clear reason, and wondering whether a war really had broken out, he took to keeping up with the news, though there was no special report.
On a certain day when Heeyoung, finding it somehow wounding to his pride to be the one looking for them first, was pretending not to care, while he was reading a book alone (spacing out) because Haram had something to do and said he'd be staying out overnight, the watch he'd left on the shelf beside him blinked and beeped like an emergency. Checking it urgently, he saw the words Guiding Level 10% glowing red.
Thanks to the rote education that had progressed to a mind-bending degree, Heeyoung had grown sensitive to the levels, and he shot up without realizing. From the time Shinyul's absence had started quietly nagging at him, Heeyoung had checked the watch now and then, but every time it recorded low numbers like 25, 19. Sometimes it would shoot up to 80, and seeing that, Haram had said offhandedly, Looks like he took guiding meds.
Didn't he say he hated guiding meds? Still, if he's going to take meds, take enough to fill it to 100%... At the muttering, he'd heard, Guiding meds max out at 80%. I explained this before... Would you like to open the book again, Heeyoung? and freaked out.
Clutching the watch that rang out so noisily, Oh lordy! What is this! What do I do with this, what now! dithering this way and that, Heeyoung soon felt a great wave of relief, in spite of himself, at the guiding level shooting right back up to 50% in an instant. Did he... take meds? Thank god... Even as he thought it, he soon stared blankly at the number dropping precariously again.
Maybe because he'd been learning about guiding in depth recently, Heeyoung flinched in spite of himself at the steadily dropping number, unable to take his eyes off the watch. Just the other day he'd learned the reason they fretted over the precursor to going berserk to such a nervous degree. Because once it dropped below 7%, from then on the guiding level kept falling even without using any ability.
When an esper was going through the precursor to berserk, guiding meds didn't work either, and you had to guide endlessly, like pouring water into a bottomless jar, until the level stabilized through a guide's guiding and stopped dropping. If it filled slower than it fell, going berserk eventually progressed, and once berserk, the esper couldn't control their ability, squandered it recklessly, and self-destructed.
And maybe because, of all things, he'd just heard about a tragic incident caused by an esper going berserk, it left a bad feeling. Being able to confirm, in real time and from a distance, that the life of someone whose face he knew was hanging in the balance was more unsettling and nerve-wracking than he'd expected.
No matter how busy he is, still, with the guiding level in that state. Will he drop by today, even briefly? It usually didn't get this bad. Today if he comes I'll really ask whether he went off to war. And whether that, coital, coitus guiding, whatever it is, is working out too. Wow, listen to me, I really sound like a guide now. Fuuuck, education is genuinely terrifying. Han Shinyul, that bastard, ought to be grateful to me, for real.
Muttering all sorts of stray thoughts to himself, Heeyoung fumbled the watch onto his wrist and picked up the book. As he read in the silent hospital room, every nerve stolen by the number beeping and swinging wildly up and down all on its own, Heeyoung realized that he'd never once waited for someone like this. He wasn't a person who waited. If anything, he was the one who solved things on the front lines and reported back. Waiting is harder than I figured. Heeyoung thought it calmly.
But through the lengthened winter night, in the end, even as the day broke, Shinyul didn't come to find Heeyoung. Along with the brightening morning sunlight, the watch still beeped lonesomely, and Heeyoung glanced again and again at the hospital room door that wouldn't open.
Two more weeks passed from then, and only after Heeyoung's arm and leg had fully healed and even the casts came off did the hospital permit his discharge. Outpatient treatment would do, why keep a person locked up this long? Is this the teacher's scheme too...? With a slightly fed-up face, Heeyoung looked at Haram, who came out smiling brightly.
“Heeyoung, the center sent a staff member. Let's go.”
“Yeah, yeah...”
Even though he himself had been fully healed for ages, Haram had held out without being discharged, driven by the single-minded resolve to teach Heeyoung. Isn't he a faker? Is that even allowed? Heeyoung had thought, looking at the shamelessly entrenched Haram with a sour expression. Say what anyone might, surely that obsession was a disease. He needs to go to psychiatry too.
The center staffer who'd come to pick up Haram and Heeyoung courteously opened the car door. Heeyoung climbed in obediently and swallowed a sigh. The guiding matching-rate analysis sheet tucked in his inner pocket felt strangely abrasive. It was embarrassing, like he'd worked himself up alone for nothing at his age, and mortifying, like he'd put on a one-man show.
A month was both a short and a long stretch of time, but for Heeyoung it had been an especially long one. The only thing he could do at the hospital was the hellish, spartan rote education with Haram, and Heeyoung, who knew nothing and no one, had nothing to do during that time but wait for Shinyul, of whom he didn't even know whether he was dead or alive. It was a completely different kind of time from the days when Shinyul would cling to him to death the moment they met and cause unimaginable, outlandish incidents that kept him in a whirl.
The waiting was dull, sometimes infuriating, and sometimes he wanted to quit it, but Heeyoung, who'd just learned to wait for the first time, hadn't yet learned how to stop waiting, so he'd fallen into the habit of keeping up with the news and checking the watch constantly.
“We'll be departing.”
At the staffer's courteous voice, Heeyoung looked at the number in the watch out of habit, then turned his gaze out the window. Honestly, his feelings were complicated. What were we, such a tender pair, that I'm fretting all month? And the time I've seen his face and the time I haven't are about even now, so honestly it's a little awkward at this point, and going back to the house we lived in together in that state is mortifying too.
The short stretch of time they'd squabbled and roughhoused in that house felt so far away. Sunk in untimely sentiment, Heeyoung frowned. This is why people shouldn't get old.
“Haa...”
At Heeyoung's sigh, Haram watched his mood. The longer the period that esper Han Shinyul didn't come around stretched on, the more Heeyoung grew quiet and the more his blank, spaced-out stretches increased. During lessons or conversation he still used the gruff, dogged old-man speech and seemed unbothered, but the time he spent looking at the watch grew, and the time he spent looking out the window or at the hospital room door grew even more. It being the matter of a pair, and an S-class pair at that, made it hard for Haram to look into properly, and above all, since Heeyoung didn't ask first, for Haram to step forward and do something would be overstepping.
Of course, it wasn't that Heeyoung hadn't thought of asking the staff what the situation was. He too was terribly curious about the circumstances behind everyone's contact cutting off all at once, and he had a bucketful of things he wanted to ask, like how long they'd be busy, and whether the guiding they wanted wasn't needed at a time like this.
But in the end he didn't reach out. Reach out and do, do what. Demand to know why they're not making me guide? It's not like I'm going to whine like a kid about how they shoved me in a hospital and what's keeping them all so busy.
They were things an ordinary guide would naturally have demanded, but Heeyoung, who'd learned the knowledge yet still had the mindset of an ordinary middle-aged man, found such things terribly unfamiliar and difficult. In the end, without knowing what he ought to do, the waiting just kept on, and the time slipped helplessly by until now.
Will I meet him now? Or is he still too busy to meet? What do I even say if we meet. Fuck, I'm not some twenty-year-old kid on a blind date, what is this.
As Heeyoung watched the scenery flick by, the by-now-familiar sight of the center revealed itself, and the car soon stopped in front of his quarters, but Heeyoung hesitated and didn't get out.
“...Heeyoung?”
“Huh? Uh, yeah. I'll head in first, yeah. Go on in.”
Not even noticing his dialect, suddenly thicker out of nerves, Heeyoung hurriedly got out of the car and went into the quarters. The same old scenery and passcode.
...Is he inside, I wonder.
Clunk.
“...You here?”
Unlike himself, hesitating, he poked just his head through the gap in the front door and surveyed the inside. Not a trace of a person, of course, and the house, with all sense of lived-in warmth gone in that one month, was filled only with desolate, silent air.
“Said he was busy, guess he couldn't even come home...”
Heeyoung grumbled in an awkward tone for no reason and looked around the house. The cleaning must've been kept up, since it was tidy, but the inside of the house, bleak to the point of cold, was exactly the same as before he'd left. The same wardrobe, the colorful clothes that were Heeyoung's share, the huge bed, bigger than king-size, where two grown men could lie comfortably. At the sight of nothing having changed, an indefinable hollowness and irritation washed over him.
While a churning, complicated heart rose up unbearably, the watch beeped cluelessly. 23%. It was recording a low number, as usual. Haa... Letting out a deep sigh, Heeyoung watched the rapidly lowering number, then irritably undid the watch and tossed it onto the bed. The flung watch bounced and slid right into the gap between the pillow and blanket, buried.
“Is there any food?”
The moment he tossed the watch onto the bed, Heeyoung's face turned refreshed, as if he'd escaped from something. Even humming a tune, he opened the fridge, but as expected, it was bare except for water, so he clicked his tongue and opened the delivery app Shinyul had set up before. The address was set and a card was registered, so he could eat whatever he wanted just by ordering, but when the two of them were together, Shinyul always cooked or ordered the food, and Heeyoung, the type to eat whatever he was given, never had occasion to order anything himself, so this was the first time he'd opened it.
“What to eat. Ah, sss... stir-fried pork? Pork cutlet...? Why are there so many shops. They all deliver this far?”
After much deliberation, having finally picked and ordered food, Heeyoung set aside his phone, which had gloriously died as its final act after the order with its battery nearly drained, turned on the TV, and put on a variety show instead of the news. Celebrities he didn't know on a program he didn't know were on the air, but it was just funny, and he burst out laughing for the first time in a while, and lying back to wait for the food was leisurely for the first time in a while.
“Oh, it's here, it's here. Aigoo, I'm starving to death.”
At the sound of the delivery driver pressing the doorbell, Heeyoung dashed out to receive the food, set it up neatly, then laid it all out on the little table in front of the sofa where he could see the TV and took a big scoop.
Beep beep. Clunk!
“Heeyoung? Heeyoung, are you here?”
“Aght, fuck! You scared me!”
“You were here! No, why do you have your phone off! The watch, did you not get the alarm?”
“What, huh?”
Assistant Manager Seong rushed in and, seeing Heeyoung with a spoon in hand, collapsed into a crouch as if falling.
“What, what happened? A war?”
“No, it's bigger than a war! Heeyoung!”
Looking at Assistant Manager Seong's face, which seemed to have lost a little weight in the meantime, Heeyoung said, What's the matter, and put the spoon he was holding into his mouth for now. Well, war or not, you've gotta eat. Only then can you run like hell, at least.
“Shinyul, esper Han Shinyul is right on the verge of going berserk! He needs emergency guiding! Intercourse guiding!”
“...”
What kind of thing is that to say to a person in the middle of eating his sundae gukbap?
