Hyukjin, who entered the test room, clicked his tongue when he saw Raon still standing alone in the middle of the test room.
“Are you okay?”
“Does this look okay to you?”
His complexion had gone beyond pale to blue-white like a sheet of paper, his expression completely stiff, and his voice was sharp and on edge—but Hyukjin didn’t care. It wasn’t unusual for Raon to be prickly, and when his condition was poor like this, he never hid his discomfort.
“You’re probably not okay, but you’re not going to die either. And everyone told you to rest well at home, but you’re not thinking about how you stubbornly crawled out to take the test? It’s not like you don’t know Aiden is already internally decided, and you confirmed it with your own eyes. That the two of them match well.”
“It showed perfect.”
At Raon’s words, spat out as he ran his hand through his hair, a small tremor appeared at the corner of Hyukjin’s mouth as he had been hiding his feelings and smiling smoothly.
“What are you talking about? I gave you more test time than other Guides thinking of you, but the highest was 13 percent…”
Hyukjin, who had been speaking calmly while hiding his agitation, couldn’t finish his sentence at the look in Raon’s eyes as he stared at him. Raon’s eyes, biting down hard on his lower lip as if suppressing his emotions, were redder than usual.
“Don’t be too disappointed, you expected this anyway.”
Hyukjin tried to moderately soothe the angry Raon. It was actually a good thing. Whatever the process, he could quiet Raon’s rampaging insistence on becoming a Guide based on the visible result values.
But contrary to Hyukjin’s expectations, Raon’s momentum changed in an instant—from hunching over in pain and trying to suppress his emotional turmoil. Before he knew it, Raon was standing in front of Hyukjin with his back and shoulders straight as usual, wearing that haughty and cold expression that looked like he placed everyone beneath his feet.
“I know I have no one on my side, but Choi Hyukjin. Don’t even think about deceiving me. If this were the old me, I wouldn’t have known what guiding or compatibility were, so I would have believed your words and believed in graphs and such visible things, but not now. Obviously it wouldn’t have stayed perfect continuously. But for 0.1 seconds. No, even if it was a briefer instant than that, it hit perfect. And what’s going on with Hwi’s stabilizer?”
As Raon, whose voice had become calm despite being highly irritated and on edge with a higher tone than usual, left the test room first while saying this, this time it was Hyukjin who had to make a troubled expression. Of course, Raon, who was walking ahead, couldn’t see his expression.
“I told you to tell me anytime you need my blood. It’s difficult right now because I’m taking medicine, but would three days work? I’ll try stopping the medicine starting now. Just tell me exactly from what day I can have blood drawn.”
Questions kept piling up one after another. Currently, Jaehwi had received radiative guiding from all Guides in the center who hadn’t formed a bond. And he didn’t show much preference or dislike for each guiding.
Rather, the Guides who had bottomed out their stamina after giving him guiding avoided him on their own. As a result, high-grade Guides mainly guided Jaehwi, and after Aiden contracted with the center, Aiden became Jaehwi’s main Guide.
The contract process with Aiden also had many dubious aspects for Hyukjin. At first, they almost contracted with Aiden as Jaehwi’s Guide, but both Aiden and Jaehwi refused a contract that would bind them to each other. Aiden made a comprehensive and general contract as a Guide of the center. Yet the two of them stuck together in a strange way.
Aiden checked Jaehwi’s training time and dungeon schedule to be ready to provide guiding at any time. And Jaehwi also looked for Aiden first when he needed guiding. When urgent, they did contact guiding to the extent of holding hands appropriately or light hugs, but most guiding was done radiatively. It wasn’t that he didn’t look for other Guides either. And both Jaehwi and Aiden seemed to have no complaints about that aspect.
It was also puzzling that such a strange relationship continued, but the biggest problem was Raon.
How many years had they known each other? During all those years, he hadn’t shown even the slightest interest in Guides themselves. He himself had also heard by chance that he was a C-grade Guide, but never once was conscious of Raon being a Guide.
Kang Raon is a Guide? Kang Raon, with his germaphobia who openly finds contact with others uncomfortable, would give someone guiding? But that absurd thing was happening right now. As if possessed by a ghost that died from inability to guide, he was making a fuss about wanting to guide an Esper who didn’t match in grade or compatibility and was 7 years younger than him.
He should just say he’s a physical-type Esper instead. That would be easier to imagine and accept.
After searching for years like looking for a lost family member or lover, he fearlessly jumped into a rampaging dungeon. Unlike Jaehwi, who recognized him as someone he briefly knew 10 years ago, Raon was desperately clinging to him.
Then he suddenly started receiving guiding coaching and entered dungeons alone. He picked up a Gem Kitten somewhere and carried it around like a pet, and recently almost died a tragic death in a dungeon he entered alone. Like that, Raon was continuously doing things he would never normally do.
An Esper who openly disliked specific people’s guiding and a Guide who recklessly demanded to do guiding without considering compatibility, ability, stamina, or anything else. The most amazing combination in the world was right before his eyes.
In that brief moment when Jaehwi practically embraced Raon to help him as he staggered, the graph hit exactly perfect. As Raon said, it hit perfect for an instant and then fell back to the numbers it had shown at first.
And regarding that incident, the Esper warned with a straight face that it was an error, while the Guide who couldn’t even check the numbers was certain it was perfect.
“Kang Raon. There really is something between you two, isn’t there?”
Sticking close to Raon’s side and following him, Hyukjin muttered in a small voice.
“Yeah.”
And at the immediate answer that came back, he let out a breath in helpless frustration.
As they left the test room, Jay, who had been waiting, tried to approach. Raon signaled Jay with a small gesture to keep his distance, allowing only himself to be by his side.
“Instead of asking things like that, answer what I just said. And I asked for materials on bonding too, what happened with that?”
“If you give me a proper explanation, couldn’t I get a quick answer?”
At Raon’s appearance deliberately creating space and time for just the two of them to talk, Hyukjin didn’t miss the opportunity.
“I don’t have time to play word games with you right now.”
“It showed. Perfect.”
To get the answer he wanted, Hyukjin leaked one piece of information.
“Of course it did. What am I supposed to do with that damn stubborn troublemaker who won’t listen. Who exactly is it that won’t listen to whom? Min Jaehwi. If it’s like this, I’m in trouble too.”
The corners of Raon’s mouth, snorting and shaking his head lightly, were curved up softly, different from a moment ago.
“It was such a brief moment it was processed as an error.”
“Whatever. So when can I have the blood drawn?”
“No. Why does it have to be your blood—you know that, not me? If you’re business side, aren’t I the actual person on the research side? I have more information and knowledge than you…”
“That’s why I’m telling you to look into bonding. No matter how much I think about it, that’s the only answer. However time got twisted and flowed, whether past, future, or now, at some point without either me or Hwi knowing, we must have bonded. Either 10 years ago or just a few months ago.”
“You’re saying you bonded with Nox right now? That you slept together? Did you even have time for that? Say something that makes sense…”
Hyukjin, who had been standing close to Raon’s side as they walked along the corridor, having a quick conversation in low voices, stopped what he was saying. Since there was no one passing by around them with Jay following behind, no one nearby would hear, but there were always ability users in the center. Although eavesdropping was basically prohibited, so many things had been happening simultaneously recently that he found himself thinking twice about everything.
“Say whatever you want. Hwi will filter it out anyway. Probably no one else can hear our conversation right now, but Hwi is listening.”
“What?”
“He’s extremely curious right now. About what I’m going to do from now on. Until now, he’s been bound by social frameworks and images like team leader, hyung, life senior, things like that, but I’m really not going to do that anymore. Min Jaehwi. Try running away wagging your tail so hard like that. Let’s see what the result is. You know, Choi Hyukjin, that I’m actually much nastier, more selfish, and more self-centered than our Hwi thinks. Don’t you?”
Raon, who had stopped in front of the elevator and rattled off words that were hard to properly understand, raised his hand and pushed against his chest. Hyukjin stepped back several steps in surprise.
“I’m going to take care of some work before I leave. Prepare those materials I mentioned earlier so I can take them when I leave today. Team Leader Choi.”
Hyukjin, who had been standing in front of the elevator where the door opened, Raon and Jay boarded, and the door closed again, stiffened his expression in an instant. They had clearly conversed, but he hadn’t heard a single answer to what he was curious about, and instead only had more questions piled up.
