← The Resurrected Guide Wants to Live Quietly
Yi-yeon’s eyes wavered. When he was very young, Yu-geon would fling his little arms wide and beg to be held, but once puberty hit he wouldn’t let anyone lay a hand on him. No —he’d even stopped coming back from the training dormitory, as if he couldn’t stand to look at him.
And yet now the face of the Yu-geon holding his waist and stroking his cheek and ear wore a bright smile. Softly curved eyes, slightly parted lips — a smile warm as sunlight breaking through morning.
"Ah…"
How long had it been since he’d seen Yu-geon smile? Yi-yeon had loved Yu-geon’s smiling face so much. Back in the bleak days when he’d filled his whole life with nothing but pitch-black vengeance, it had been, it was no exaggeration to say, almost his only light and joy. Especially when he smiled at him, his chest would warm and fill with happiness.
"I… really… all this time, you, how much I…"
But why? Yu-geon’s face quickly crumpled. Tears streamed down both eyes. As Yu-geon’s cheeks grew wet, Yi-yeon’s face colored with panic. Asking why he was crying, he hastily cupped his cheeks and wiped the tears — and suddenly the face was close. His vision filled with Yu-geon’s face; their breaths drew near. Before he could even think something was wrong, their lips met.
Soft, warm lips. Lips dampened a little with tears rubbed against his.
Reflexively he pressed his lips shut just before they met and tried, belatedly, to pull away, but a guide could never overpower an esper. However hard he pushed, it was like pushing against a huge wall — his body only slid back. And with his waist held, there was no escape anyway.
Like that, Yu-geon’s lips parted. A hot tongue licked at his lips.
Yi-yeon was bewildered. Why was this happening? He wanted to ask why he was doing this, but he couldn’t even speak, afraid the tongue would push into his mouth at any moment.
Having stubbornly licked the lips of Yi-yeon, who was trembling from tensing so hard, Yu-geon whispered, "Open… your lips."
Hearing the sulky voice, like a child whose tasty snack had been snatched away, Yi-yeon finally understood. Ah, right. To Yu-geon, he wasn’t "Seon Yi-yeon," his guardian — he was "Lee Ha-neul," and Lee Ha-neul was a guide. So what Yu-geon wanted might not be a "kiss" — it might be mucous-membrane guiding.
Contact guiding had reached its limit, but mucous-membrane guiding would be different. And certainly, the odds of finding someone willing to volunteer to guide the still-unstable Yu-geon in "Blaze’s territory" were near zero, so it might be better for the one person who could to do the most.
But… of all people, it was Yu-geon.
"W-wait— Mmph. Nnngh…"
He tried to ask for a moment to prepare himself, but it was too late. Before he could get even a few words out, Yi-yeon’s small mouth was filled in an instant with the thick flesh.
Eight years.
He’d kept the child who’d once fit snugly in his arms by his side until he’d grown far bigger than him and could carry him on his back. Standing in for a father, at times for a mother, hoping he’d never feel the absence of his parents, he’d tried to give him the greatest love. Cherished him like a son, a nephew, a younger brother. There were years after he entered the training facility when he couldn’t even see his face, but not for a single moment had Yi-yeon abandoned his heart as Yu-geon’s guardian.
And so "kissing" Yu-geon, his ward, was something he’d never dared imagine. It was something that mustn’t happen. Wasn’t it utterly shameless?
"Ah, aah. Um, should I, should I not— should I, uh, help…?" Hearing Oh Yeon-seo’s voice, creaking with fluster at the shocking scene unfolding, Yi-yeon lifted his trembling eyelids. She sounded seriously torn between stopping them or prying them apart by force.
Hearing the stranger’s flustered voice actually calmed his mind. He gave a small gesture and a smile so the bewildered Yeon-seo could feel at ease.
A "kiss" was out of the question — but "guiding" was different. It was a necessary act. Something that absolutely had to be done to keep Yu-geon’s esper body from breaking down, from rampaging — and right now he was the only one who could do it. He decided not to read strange meanings into it, and to give it everything he had, as precious as Yu-geon was to him. Even if it cost him his body.
He’d never done mucous-membrane guiding — he’d never even rubbed lips with anyone —so he had no confidence he could do it properly, but if it helped even a little, he wanted to try.
"S-sorry. If you hate it…"
"No. Let’s do it."
Perhaps worried because he’d gone completely rigid and frozen since the tongue entered his mouth, Yu-geon loosened the arm around his waist and drew his face back.
But it was fine now. He was prepared.
Smiling, Yi-yeon rose lightly onto his toes and wrapped his arms around Yu-geon’s thick neck. When Yu-geon’s pulled-down lips parted, he didn’t miss it and pressed his own to them. As if he’d been waiting for it, Yu-geon opened his mouth, and Yi-yeon too extended his tongue to meet him.
The soft, hot flesh overlapped.
"Nnngh…"
The moment their tongues touched, the darkness pouring into his body made Yi-yeon’s mind go hazy and his waist tremble.
But it was fine. He could do it. He had to.
He poured strong resolve into the arms around Yu-geon’s neck…
It was the start of a very, very long mucous-membrane guiding. Chapter 3 First Kiss, First Mucous-Membrane Guiding, and After
It was only when his jaw ached and even his legs and waist were trembling that Yi-yeon could finally escape Yu-geon’s arms.
They said mucous-membrane guiding was so effective that usually a minute or so was plenty — yet astonishingly, it had taken thirty minutes.
Truthfully, Yi-yeon had wanted to stop midway. Doing prolonged mucous-membrane guiding outdoors — not even a private room, not even a guiding room, but in a gate situation — didn’t seem right. That was true for Lee Ha-neul, but Yu-geon was a celebrity; he didn’t want to start any gossip. When he figured they’d done enough and tried to stop and slip out of his arms, Yu-geon refused to allow it. Every time he tried to part their lips, Yu-geon clung like a baby, and indulging him had made it go on far too long.
"Haa… good… work…"
"Wh-why you…? I clearly… No, no. That couldn’t have been it from the start…"
"…Huh?"
"Damn it. What did I just do. Fuck."
"Is something wrong?"
"…No. Nothing. I’m sorry. Thank you for guiding me. I’ll wrap up the situation and be right back."
After the guiding ended, for some reason Yu-geon’s face went pale with shock. Yi-yeon’s heart dropped for a moment, wondering if he’d misjudged something — but in the end it had been the right call. As if making up for the time lost receiving guiding, Yu-geon cleared the gate right after at incredible speed. It probably took less than ten minutes. The other espers had worked hard while he was being guided, but honestly, more than half the credit was Yu-geon’s.
Whether it was because his body felt much better, Yu-geon used his ability to a degree incomparable to before, and seeing the many faces of "S-class esper Han Yu-geon" was like a blessing to Yi-yeon.
"You worked so hard today! Thanks to you we got past a dangerous stretch. If you hadn’t come with us, who knows how bad it could have gotten."
"No, I’m the one who had a great experience thanks to you. Thank you."
"Oh, come on… we’re the ones who are so, so grateful."
When he greeted her first, Yeon-seo bowed repeatedly, flustered.
"And I’m sorry too… I should have paid more attention. I meant to keep you safe, and I failed. I’m really sorry."
"No, it’s fine. I never expected them to pull something like that either."
"About the attack on you today — the culprits weren’t affiliated with any particular guild. We think they did it to curry favor with Blaze. We’ll get the lawsuit ready right away. If you just sign a power of attorney, we’ll handle all the costs and procedures on our end, so you won’t have to do a thing. This time we won’t burden you at all."
"Ah… you don’t have to do that."
"Huh? You don’t want to?"
"The odds of winning are low anyway. You don’t need to go through the trouble for me. I wasn’t hurt badly, and the potion healed me — I’m fine now."
Why was attacking fellow humans, with monsters as the real enemy, not such a rare madness? Because people rarely got punished for it. The damage was hard to prove. Monsters and espers alike interfered with electronics, so the field was full of factors that made leaving evidence hard. If there was a way to leave evidence, it was using expensive artifacts — but with no way to know when or where an incident would occur, bearing that cost every time was too much, so in the end you had to rely on circumstantial evidence. And that had its own problem: operations were usually guild-based, so testimony mostly came from within the same guild, which invited suspicion of collusion.
With so many things working against it, and since espers were generally sturdy anyway, people usually just buried it unless the damage was substantial. Or the guild took its own revenge separately.
He’d already landed a hit of his own, so that was enough — Yi-yeon figured he’d made the optimal call for everyone’s happiness. But Yeon-seo looked anything but convinced.
"Why would you say that? You should do it even if the odds are low. People who pick on the weak need to experience being the weak one themselves. Even if we lose in the end, they’ll feel plenty along the way. Of course, we’ll do our best to win."
"Ah, but…"
"This is also about Seonyeon’s honor. You were only temporary, but you joined this mission as a member of Seonyeon, so targeting you is the same as targeting our guild. If one of our own gets attacked and we act like nothing happened, how can our members trust the guild?"
"Of course your opinion matters most, so if you really say no, we’ll drop it. What do you think? Would it be too much of a burden? We’ll do it really well. We won’t cause you any trouble."
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