Whether due to the careful touch or serious expression, the series of actions looked like a ritual.
Someone knocked on the door. Yuri, who roughly gauged who it was from that frivolous speed, opened his mouth.
“Come in.”
What revealed itself from beyond was the electric-type Esper, Chase Dalton. Appearing with an armful of documents, he began skillfully sorting the papers on the table.
Watching this, Yuri put the cigar that had begun to burn in his mouth. Inhaling once, a thick scent filled his mouth. A heavy body lingered on the tip of his tongue.
“The east wing reeks of guiding smell—looks like you’re planning to thoroughly pickle him.”
Chase shook his head saying Danil might become a pickle at this rate. Their master was a guide, but belonged outside the norm in various ways. Chase had learned through Yuri that guiding could be a terrible torture device.
“I have to make sure he never thinks of leaving again.”
Exhaling cigar smoke, Yuri replied leisurely. Though his mind and body were tired from even looking after his runaway dog’s heat, hadn’t he already known that one means wasn’t enough to bind him?
Chris’s reaction, unable to hide his surprise the moment his member was gripped, was more interesting than Yuri had vaguely thought.
“An ordinary Esper would cum their pants just stepping foot in there. Or go crazy.”
Though it was widely known common knowledge that no matter how much guiding overflowed it was insufficient, in reality it was slightly different. Chase, an executive of Yuri’s organization ‘White Night,’ was one of the few people who shared that secret.
“That’s why I told you to properly control entry. I’m taming a dog.”
Yuri said while turning his head toward the cigar holder.
The cigar holder made by carving black marble gave off a dull luster. As soon as Yuri set down the cigar on it, Chase, who had stood up, brought glasses and cognac from the display case. He’d skillfully found the alcohol that paired with the cigar Yuri usually enjoyed.
Yuri, who achieved his purpose without even having to move himself, lifted the glass. As Chase held the bottle and tilted it, amber liquid filled it.
Though he had a slippery personality, Chase, who had keen perception, was on the strong side in terms of loyalty. Chase, who served his master without ever flaunting this even once, was one of the few subordinates Yuri trusted.
As he brought the glass to his lips and lightly moistened them, Chase’s head turned. He’d noticed signs of people with the distinctive senses of an Esper. A step later than him, a knock sounded from the door. In an organization gathered with reckless people, if it was such a proper knock, it could only be one person.
“Come in, Logan.”
The door opened and a man with black hair revealed himself. Logan, who had a good physique and an imposing impression, was a man who often served as Yuri’s double because of that hair color.
“A problem has occurred.”
“Speak.”
“The detained prisoner has escaped.”
Yuri’s hand paused briefly.
“He broke the cable ties and left. It appears he moved through the ventilation duct.”
Lightly moistening his lips with the glass containing amber liquid, Yuri muttered.
“I never thought of him as a rat bastard when he’s a dog bastard……”
Yuri clicked his tongue. Thinking of Chris who must have rolled around through the dirty ventilation duct, displeasure naturally welled up.
If he’d stayed put, he would have let him out of there before long. Yuri’s purpose wasn’t to shut himself and Chris in that dim space but to return him to his original state.
“So the tracking?”
“Seeing that he wasn’t caught on surveillance footage, it seems he went out through a place like a bathroom. As a result of checking all the nearest bathrooms in order connected to the ventilation duct, we discovered an organization member locked up unconscious in one of them. All of that organization member’s outerwear and ID card were stolen, and a record exists of him leaving through the main gate thirty minutes ago.”
He thought how well he’d slipped out in that short time. Having released a lot of guiding, Yuri had ordered not to frequently check the video monitoring Chris. Having terrible germophobia, he didn’t like his dog receiving others’ gazes.
Much less in a state of heat…….
“……I thought he’d stay put.”
Though it was his own words, it was quite a stupid thing to say. Even if the other person was Chris Danil, he had no memories. The choice a human in a position of being dragged here and detained makes is ultimately escape.
The current Danil doesn’t move according to the principles Yuri knows. Hadn’t the previous Danil also gone missing by deviating from the methods he knew?
In such a situation, it was ridiculous that he unconsciously expected Chris to stay put.
In the end, Yuri had been intoxicated with learned complacency toward Chris.
“Should I capture him?”
Chase asked.
“No.”
Without even looking at him, Yuri replied while lifting the cigar cutter and snipping off the end of the cigar with a snap.
He’d planned to leisurely burn through one until the next guiding session, but since Chris was calling him, shouldn’t he go personally?
“I’ll go.”
***
One last block remained before arriving at the tram station. There were still no signs of pursuit. Mixed in with the crowd, Chris moved his steps quickly. In any case, there were several people hastening their steps in this area afraid of missing the tram, so that much didn’t stand out.
At this rate, it was an escape no different from boarding a smoothly sailing ship. However, Chris’s chest felt stuffy. It felt like a heavy stone had been placed on it.
He barely suppressed the desire to look back several times. The leash Yuri had fastened was invisible yet difficult to escape. His guiding, the ecstatic pleasure that had rushed through his entire body, had breathed hesitation into Chris.
If not for the unwavering sense of purpose that he had to return to Northern Light, he might have collapsed right there. No, perhaps he might have begged on his own two feet at the entrance to the abandoned factory zone to be taken away.
When he thought of Yuri’s guiding, it seemed he could kiss the top of his foot. Just recalling that time sent shivers through his whole body.
Shame and humiliation, embarrassment and joy, pleasure and the ecstasy that came from it…….
The sensation of being repeatedly shoved to the extremes of all emotions and then pulled back up wasn’t something easily forgotten.
Swallowing a sigh, Chris moved his steps.
The tram station was near.
He just needed to keep moving forward, yet the reason for such impatience was because he was on the November Continent. As long as Yuri Sobolev overlapped him with Danil, it would be wise to leave the Winter Continent as quickly as possible.
The noise that had filled the surroundings was erased in an instant. Even though his senses weren’t as taut as usual from receiving proper guiding, why on earth would senses more sensitive than an ordinary person’s become completely dead?
Chris staggered. An invisible, intangible energy was rushing into this space. That power, which had completely dominated the block where Chris stood, pressed down on Chris’s shoulders as if swept up in an avalanche, fixing his ankles in place.
How should he describe this overwhelming sense of pressure, as if being trampled by a giant?
Chris gasped for breath while surveying his surroundings.
The people busily moving their steps and brushing past Chris looked like masses of indistinct color, as if covered with noise.
‘Can no one else feel this?’
Though there were some who irritably bumped into his body as the path was blocked, no one stopped as if nailed to the ground. Cold sweat was rising. Even when he opened his mouth to call someone for help, no voice flowed out.
Why couldn’t anyone else notice these angry waves? The fierce torrents that would sweep away such feeble humans in one go.
‘I need to run away.’
His legs trembled. He even felt a sense of powerlessness that it might be better to just sit down like this, kneel, and humbly accept the fate coming to him.
“Did you enjoy your runaway?”
Words he’d heard before.
At the voice heard from behind, Chris slowly turned his head. Only one person stood still in the middle of it all.
A man stripped of color.
Like when he’d seen him on the street before, Yuri stood there looking at Chris, wearing a black coat with leather gloves on, hands thrust into his pockets. That white, beautiful face reminiscent of Snegurochka couldn’t be mistaken for anyone else.
Chris was captivated by those violet eyes that wouldn’t bloom even in the land of winter.
Among the numerous passersby of various colors, Chris couldn’t understand at all why this human entirely achromatic except for purple eyes pierced into him so piercingly.
It seemed as if only the two of them remained in this world.
For someone who’d come to catch the runaway Chris, he moved his steps lightly as if out for a stroll. He looked like someone who didn’t worry at all that Chris would run away. Like a leisurely master slowly chasing a dog that had run ahead in excitement at a rare outing.
“Y-you. Were you an Esper?”
Before he even realized it, his body was trembling. He wanted to scream for help, but not a single word of that kind came out.
Could one be both a guide and an Esper?
It was confusing. However, Yuri, who was exercising power that restrained only Chris throughout this area, didn’t show even a trace of struggling.
“It’s guiding.”
