# Chapter 17
As for Guide Kwon Jihun, he’s still the same.
Dohyuk thought as he looked at the peacefully sleeping face. He had always struggled to wake up. Low blood pressure, was it? A person who was normally neat and tidy would act like a sloth that had lost its country when morning came.
“Good morniiiing!”
Ignoring Minseok’s belated morning greeting after he’d come to his senses, Dohyuk rummaged through his bag to find his mobile phone. He had turned it off and stuffed it away just before entering the dungeon.
Usually, when conquering dungeons, people leave their phones behind. This is because regular mobile phones, not made from byproducts, don’t get signals inside dungeons. There was no need to make phones from byproducts to carry them around, so apart from communication devices provided by headquarters, virtually no ability users carried phones in dungeons.
Dohyuk turned on the phone he found without much trouble.
“Oh, it’s 6:20 AM now.”
Then Dohyuk paused for a moment.
His messenger app, which he rarely used, was a mess with piled-up message notifications.
Although it seemed like he hadn’t properly checked his phone for about a week, it was strange. Even if he hadn’t checked for over three weeks, there shouldn’t be places contacting him. Dohyuk, who knew his limited social circle better than anyone, only felt puzzled.
Soon, the culprit Dohyuk discovered as soon as he checked his messenger was audacious.
♥SuperEsperJungSeah♥ +300 notifications
I’mnevergoingtotalktotheoldmanagain
Ah. He had been so absent-minded lately that he’d even forgotten about turning off his phone for a while. Seeing the last message, she seemed quite upset, which made Dohyuk a bit worried.
Seah was a promising Esper, and one of the reasons was her persistence. For an Esper who needed to be tenacious when hunting monsters, persistence was an essential virtue.
“Park Seungmin.”
“What.”
“What’s famous in Gapyeong?”
“Huh? Why suddenly?”
“I need to buy a gift.”
At that moment, Jihun responded in a faint voice.
“Pine nuts…”
His tone was still hazy, as if half-asleep. He must have struggled to share what he knew in response to Dohyuk’s question, driven solely by the peculiar desire to be helpful to Dohyuk even when he wasn’t fully conscious. Dohyuk felt a strange pity for Jihun as he slowly typed a late reply.
Choi Dohyuk
Sorry. I was late to respond because I was entering a dungeon.
Do you need pine nuts?
Feeling that sending only this to Seah, who had left over 300 messages, seemed heartless, Dohyuk hastily sent another message.
Choi Dohyuk
They say it’s famous.
After dealing with one person, other messages were also an issue.
Of course, it was much better than Seah. He had only left three messages. Compared to Seah sending over 300 messages, it was refreshingly concise.
But this message didn’t seem entirely straightforward either. Perhaps it’s because he didn’t expect someone to contact him so casually.
Dohyuk pondered with a twitch of his eyebrow.
S-class Guide Yu Junseo +3 notifications
Return safely *^♡^*
***
“Yu Junseo. Are you into business now?”
Sangjun, with a disgusted expression, frowned as he looked at Junseo. Next to Junseo, Gapyeong’s fresh pine nuts, elegantly wrapped in a cloth, shone brilliantly. If it were someone else, they might have looked like a street vendor with 15 years of experience, but perhaps due to his face, Junseo looked closer to being Gapyeong’s promotional ambassador despite his appearance.
“Shut up.”
“I’ve been hearing widespread rumors about you doing strange things lately. Hyung was worried.”
At those words, his face, pale as if bloodless, tilted slightly, eyes deeply sunken while only the corners of his mouth lifted faintly. Facing such a strangely lifeless expression, Sangjun felt a chill.
Just yesterday, that bastard had conducted guiding for about 30 minutes with that face, automatically inducing nausea.
S-class Esper Ji Sangjun, who had hunted in an S-class dungeon for 10 days and suffered an additional 5 days to acquire that dungeon’s core, could confidently say that the past 15 days were happier than the 30 minutes spent with Yu Junseo. Even though his matching rate with Junseo was only about 12%, that guy’s guiding was beyond excessive.
Sangjun would gulp down ion drinks all day due to the persistent nausea he felt whenever he received Junseo’s guiding. It was to the point where he thought it fortunate that A-class and B-class Espers only fainted, considering that even he, an S-class, felt this way.
Junseo’s guiding was embarrassingly substandard to even be called guiding, and Sangjun always ground his teeth, hoping for a new name to be attached to his guiding. Something like “Squashing.” If such an intuitive name was attached, perhaps those damned headquarters guys would isolate that crazy Guide from poor Espers. In fact, after receiving his guiding, it was even doubtful whether the choker’s light had turned green due to his severely poor condition.
“Strange things?”
His mouth still held a smile as if painted on. The damp, cold eyes that didn’t match his expression gave Sangjun the creeps.
“They say you’re partnering with an A-class? The news of your application being submitted under your name is widespread. How much must you hate someone to keep them close just to torment them?”
At Sangjun’s scathing words, Junseo blinked slowly. Though not as much as Sangjun, even the hint of a smile that had remained on his face, which had turned pale without any color after the recent guiding, completely disappeared. It was enough to make even Sangjun, who had been cautiously prodding Junseo, unconsciously close his mouth.
In fact, Junseo had been in a good mood until coming to work today.
Partner
Yes. Thanks to you, I returned safely.
The stiff greeting felt as straightforward as a man. It was Dohyuk’s first reply.
Partner
If your time allows, could I visit you today? I have something to tell you.
For this short message that followed, Junseo waited for him every 5 minutes all day long like a little fox from “The Little Prince.”
What did some poet say? When waiting for someone, even the rustling of leaves feels like the sound of footsteps. All the sentences he had read fleetingly until now wriggled and rose. Junseo became increasingly filled with expectation as the waiting time lengthened.
Today was finally the day he would welcome Choi Dohyuk as his partner.
When they meet, should he offer to guide him lightly to commemorate becoming partners?
To Junseo, Dohyuk was an entertaining game console found at the end of a tedious daily routine. Junseo wanted to put everything else aside and persistently conquer only Dohyuk until he got bored. Every moment that his neat, orderly expression changed was fascinating and pleasing.
The day they first met, his face, which was crying streams while trying to suppress his excitement as much as possible, was already regrettably blurry.
He wanted to see it again. He wanted to meet his body once more, to examine him thoroughly to the bottom, filling his overflowing curiosity.
Also, Junseo frankly admitted at the point of excitement during guiding. His curiosity towards Dohyuk also included sexual aspects.
Theoretically, Guides have lower satisfaction from guiding than Espers. If guiding is like eating dessert when hungry for Espers, for Guides, it’s like eating dessert when already full.
Yet, their compatibility was so good that even Junseo, a Guide, was impressed, so Dohyuk must have felt it was twice as fantastic as Junseo did. Moreover, hadn’t Dohyuk reached climax just by mixing energies with Junseo without any other explicit contact?
As proof, when they met again in the examination room, Dohyuk pleaded with Junseo with a face flushed red. For an Esper who was originally self-centered and rude to be that conciliatory was an explicit expression of interest.
Junseo was convinced. It was obvious that he too must desire him. He could picture the face that would be secretly pleased upon hearing the news that he had prepared the partner application documents.
But the moment Dohyuk came to visit Junseo, he realized that everything had been vain arrogance.
“I got rejected.”
What Dohyuk, who appeared after waiting and waiting, gave him was that damn big cloth-wrapped bundle and an apology.
‘…An A-class Guide is enough for me.’
Apparently, partnering with Junseo wouldn’t be efficient because his own rank was too low. He elaborately wrapped that statement politely and went on at length, but to summarize:
I’m too inadequate for you, so it won’t work. Find someone better than me.
What kind of line is this, something even a third-rate romance novel wouldn’t use? Until now, for Junseo, all efficiency was about his own mood. Unlike Dohyuk, who argued that he was an inefficient person for Junseo, every nerve cell in Junseo’s body screamed that letting go of an Esper who matched so well just because he was A-class was the true inefficiency.
Moreover, after guiding Dohyuk, Junseo vomited while guiding Sangjun at Director Park’s plea.
Sangjun also felt wronged as he dry-heaved, but that wasn’t Junseo’s concern. After tasting the 88% compatibility, guiding the 12% was as disgusting as eating garbage. He had just realized that he had been living as if a trash can were a rice cooker. Having already tasted the ecstasy provided by high matching rate guiding, Junseo had no confidence in going back to how he was before guiding Dohyuk.
