← How a Guide Copes with the Loss of an Esper
Prologue
“It really is you….”
“Then who would it be, if not me?”
The pair esper he had believed dead had returned.
If he let him go, Jang Jaewan would never appear before him again. All Nayun could do was hold him with his body, keep him from going anywhere.
Jang Jaewan bit down on Nayun’s chest through his clothes. At the stinging pain, Nayun let out a short, bitten-off moan. Jaewan’s tongue lapped at the bitten spot. As his chest grew damp, Nayun squirmed his hips. Beneath the wet fabric, his nipples stood out, stiff and erect.
“You still have that biting habit of yours.”
“Hm?”
“No — just thinking some things never change.”
Nayun felt a strange, unnameable bitterness rise alongside the amusement. There was still a dull, throbbing ache lodged in one corner of his heart.
It felt as though the Jang Jaewan he had known had died that day, and he was facing an esper who merely resembled his old pair — but learning that some things had not changed drained the strength from him.
Nayun couldn’t help a dry little laugh. This was starting to look like pining for an ex and chasing his traces in someone else.
“What are you thinking about, smiling like that?”
Jaewan asked with his mouth still pressed to Nayun’s chest. There was a note of petulance in his voice, as if he’d been caught thinking of something else.
Unease rippled through eyes full of lust. Nayun met those eyes and closed his mouth. Jaewan promptly bit his nipple.
A sharp ache bloomed.
“What were you thinking? Hm? What’s so funny? Why?”
“I was thinking espers are all like this.”
“Like what — which bastard?”
“One I used to know.”
Jaewan’s eyes went wide and furious.
Then, catching himself, he softened his voice and asked who it was. It sounded like simple curiosity, but his gaze was murderous.
“You’ve been seeing him while I was gone?”
“Yeah. Whenever I got lonely.”
“Was he good to you?”
“No. He was a bastard.”
A hand that had been kneading his lower back slid to his waist, and Nayun arched naturally. Jaewan, about to pull his trousers down, looked up at him.
Eyes that had gone hazy with wanting turned pitch black in an instant. For all his easy compliance, he couldn’t stand the fact that Nayun had been with another esper.
“Why was he a bastard?”
“He never listened to a word I said. Everything I told him not to do, he’d do even if it killed him, and anything I asked for, he’d refuse even if it killed him.”
“Why’d you see a guy like that?”
“Beats me.”
Jaewan’s jaw tightened and jutted. He didn’t even know who the man was, yet he looked ready to tear his throat out the moment he found out.
The trousers came down, then the underwear. At the hand reaching for his bared lower body, Nayun flinched back with a start.
“An esper I know?”
Jaewan drew a breath and asked, a quiet, firm pressure in the grip around Nayun’s cock.
“You might know him. Or you might not.”
“So you won’t tell me, or you don’t know?”
“Hmm….”
Nayun answered vaguely on purpose, letting his words trail off. Jaewan’s face darkened abruptly, jealousy spreading across it.
“What did you like about him so much?”
His voice, asking again, was cold.
“Not going to answer? How was he, I asked?”
“That’s the last question.”
A prickling silence passed. Jaewan seemed to decide to focus on something else. The hand holding Nayun’s cock began to move up and down, fast.
Calloused skin scraped over the surface. Nayun writhed at the rough stimulation, pushing at the sheets with his feet.
Jaewan didn’t even blink, staring into Nayun’s face. The sexual stimulation was one thing, but meeting those eyes sent a chill from the crown of his head down.
This was different from simple lust. It was the gaze of an esper who wanted to strip his guide bare to the marrow and devour him.
How had they ended up like this? All kinds of tangled feelings churned in Nayun’s chest.
Even now, Nayun could close his eyes and see that day play out behind his lids. He’d been assigned as the pair of Jang Jaewan, an S-rank esper, and, not wanting to be his pair, he’d made an absurd bet.
A hundred blue roses, delivered over a hundred days. That was the condition. The last of the gifts had arrived at Jang Jaewan’s funeral, right on time. Maybe it had all gone wrong from the very first meeting.
1. The Rose’s Guide
Before he was ever assigned a pair, Jang Jaewan was already famous as one of the country’s few S-rank espers.
Nayun, by contrast, had neither the talent nor the record — a rookie guide fresh out of trainee coursework.
They’d passed each other at a distance any number of times, but he’d never been in a position to exchange a word with him, nor had the chance arisen. Nayun thought idly,
“Me and him will never have anything to do with each other.”
That was before the compatibility test drew a match curve with an S-rank esper the likes of which had never been seen.
“We got the results of the randomized matching test with the Center’s espers, and, um, this is strange —”
“What? Is something wrong?”
“You’ll probably need a full workup. Nayun-ssi, your wavelength readings are spiking abnormally.”
The researchers who came crowding around suspected even a machine malfunction. Overnight, he’d recorded a fantasy-level match rate with an S-rank esper. It wasn’t that he’d had no fantasies about a first partner — but this was over the top.
“Nayun-ssi, the internal review of the matching test is done…. You’ve been assigned as Jang Jaewan the esper’s partner.”
“Me? Why?”
Is this a dream?
Becoming the guide of a celebrity esper like Jang Jaewan — it had never once crossed his mind, and he was left dumbfounded.
The burden outweighed any joy. He was simply in no position to refuse.
At their first meeting, Jang Jaewan stood there with an objectively handsome face, radiating a sharp aura, the rims of his eyes tinged a deep blue.
Nayun’s legs trembled. What is he staring at so intently?
“I’m sorry, but I can’t do this.”
“Why not? You heard our match rate.”
“I’ve never even considered an S-rank…. Honestly, it’s too much pressure. I can’t.”
Jaewan’s face twisted.
To be rejected at the very first meeting — it shattered an esper’s pride to pieces. Jaewan couldn’t accept it and demanded a reason.
“Nayun-ssi, you’re my guide.”
“Not yet, I’m not.”
“What do I have to do to change your mind? If there’s anything you want, I’ll bring it to you.”
To an esper, a guide was the one and only savior who could erase the pain they were doomed to carry for life. No esper would give up a being like the only living thing in his heart — and Jang Jaewan was no different.
“Tell me if there’s something you want.”
“Anything I name, you can get it?”
“What is it?”
Jaewan’s eyes lit up as he asked. He tried to hide it, but his longing for a guide was written all over him.
“Anything, he says….”
It was like a male bird bringing food to win his mate’s favor when mating season came.
An esper offering a luxury apartment, a foreign car, a watch — that was so expected it counted as thoughtless.
Nayun had no interest in expensive lumps of metal. There was nothing else he wanted either. Outside the protected zones, monsters swarmed anyway.
“I think roses would do it.”
“Roses?”
“Blue roses. About a hundred.”
With the monsters’ arrival, the world beyond the zones had become a place where life could barely survive. The earth rotted away, and ordinary plants withered yellow and died.
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