You can increase Guiding efficiency through steady Guiding and emotional exchange?
“We call this imprinting.”
Imprinting.
It was a word he’d never heard at Northern Light. Actually, he first heard it from Yuri after coming here.
“Imprinting usually occurs when there’s mutual consent, and if you retest the matching rate, it rises a lot from the initial value.”
“When I was at Northern Light, I saw all publicly available papers and research related to Guiding.”
Because he wanted to find the cause of the rejection he felt every time he received Guiding. Though he didn’t get any particular information, because he devoted himself to related investigation whenever he had spare time, Chris vividly remembered all the content he saw then.
“But I’ve never once seen research about a phenomenon called imprinting. Why exactly isn’t something called imprinting well known?”
At Chris’s question, Gwen rolled his yellow eyes.
“First of all… Espers become very mentally bound to that Guide. If they inevitably have to receive Guiding from a different Guide, the efficiency drops and depending on the sensitive Esper, they may feel nauseated. It’s a burden on the body. The stronger the imprinting, the lower the matching rate with other Guides.”
Chris recalled all the Guiding he’d experienced so far. When he met Luca or other Guides, he’d never once felt joy from the Guiding they gave. It was just like drinking muddy water to avoid dying of thirst.
If he was in a state imprinted on another Guide, it could explain the suffering he’d felt all this time.
‘Am I really… Danil?’
Chris Danil’s Guide was obvious without asking around.
Yuri Sobolev.
When Yuri insisted he was Danil, he’d half let it pass to avoid being brainwashed, but circumstantial evidence and situations gradually hit home. It felt like becoming Captain Hook. Chris also felt that anxiety of having his nerves gnawed away by the sound of the second hand heard every time the crocodile that swallowed the clock chased to devour him.
The truth he had to face was chasing Chris.
‘Then my fairy godmother is… Anastasia?’
He couldn’t even laugh hollowly.
Chris clenched his fist tight. Did Anastasia, who was said to have resurrection abilities, make his body be reborn? And give him the ability to transform into a wolf?
But this didn’t make sense. Though his memories were at the level of a three-year-old baby, he had an adult’s intelligence, thinking ability, and body.
He had a gut feeling that to know about himself, not just to become free, he ultimately had to find Anastasia.
Even while Chris was enveloped in shock, Gwen steadily continued his explanation.
“Above all, while Espers are bound by imprinting, it doesn’t apply to Guides.”
All the side effects of imprinting were borne only by Espers.
Would Northern Light, which had more Guides than White Night, not know about imprinting?
‘That can’t be.’
He said the conditions for imprinting were met when accompanied by Guiding and emotional exchange over a long time. Since matching rate also didn’t seem to matter much, the phenomenon called imprinting must have been observed at Northern Light where many Espers and Guides gathered. Because if you pushed Guides and Espers into one room, a chemical reaction had no choice but to occur.
The place with the most psychic-type Espers was also the June Continent headquarters, so there was an overflow of personnel to research this ‘imprinting’ phenomenon.
‘The higher-ups are intentionally blocking imprinting between Espers and Guides.’
According to Northern Light’s internal regulations, the Guide an Esper met was replaced at regular intervals.
He’d heard it was to prevent Espers from having excessive obsession with one Guide. But as the saying goes, if you imprinted with one Guide, the efficiency would be better. The Guide would be less mentally fatigued, and there would be no reason for the Esper to feel regret from Guiding deficiency.
But Chris finally realized it was a measure to prevent imprinting.
‘Why on earth?’
Chris’s fingers, lost in thought, tapped the table. Wasn’t efficient operation important the larger an organization was?
The more he thought about it, the stranger it seemed.
The Northern Light system Chris had known was generous to Guides. At least it was known to be. If there was a way to improve Guiding efficiency in a direction that put less strain on Guides’ bodies, there was no way they wouldn’t adopt it.
At Northern Light, Guides were thoroughly protected and lived peaceful lives, isolated from Espers who could suddenly turn hostile at any time. Though they couldn’t go outside the inner building, the Guide’s space surrounded by outer buildings had perfect amenities to the point where it wouldn’t be strange to call it heaven.
‘But.’
He hadn’t seen, heard, and confirmed it with his own two eyes.
Every quarter, Northern Light conducted Guide protection campaigns and dispatched Esper teams to escort Guides discovered on underdeveloped continents to bring them to this safe paradise.
They could refuse Guiding with Espers they didn’t like, and Northern Light didn’t demand more than contact Guiding. If an Esper molested a Guide, they were strongly sanctioned.
Some Espers were dissatisfied with the higher-ups who only cared about Guides.
‘If in the end they’re trying to divide Espers and Guides… am I overinterpreting?’
Even trying to draw the whole picture, the outline was vague and his head throbbed.
What broke Chris’s reverie then was a man who approached the table where he and Gwen sat facing each other.
“Wow, it really is Danil.”
A man laughing frivolously was shining his yellow eyes brightly. His appearance wasn’t just similar to Gwen but almost identical. Just the impression being the complete opposite from the calm-looking Gwen made it not difficult to distinguish he was a different person.
“You ran well last time?”
Rather than literally a greeting, it was a voice that felt competitive. Gwen Dalton grabbed his hand.
“Hyung, not now.”
Gwen, who had used polite speech even with Tanya, was speaking quite casually to his hyung.
“Okay. But Danil with such a stupid face, isn’t that interesting.”
The man looked this way with yellow eyes shining.
The same color as when being hunted.
Though he was acting lightly, it wasn’t difficult to notice the other person was a beast.
‘I broke that man’s limbs?’
It would be possible if fighting barehanded. But the other person was an electrokinetic ability user.
What could he do against an Esper who sent electric current toward Chris from that far distance besides running away?
Chris Danil with telekinesis might have been able to, but right now it was hopeless. He might be able to if he took Gwen hostage, but Chase was deliberately standing firm between his younger brother and himself.
Realizing the other person was wary of him, his blood boiled strangely. This was definitely more to his taste than being treated like prey.
Before his belligerent personality he didn’t even know about suddenly raised its head, it was Gwen who mediated.
“Hyung, Mr. Danil lost his memory. You should introduce yourself properly.”
“My name is Chase. Chase Dalton, the twin hyung of Gwen here.”
Chase shrugged his shoulders.
That was all for the self-introduction. Chase, who turned his body as if he’d finished his business with Chris, grabbed his younger brother’s hand and advised him to definitely take sick leave and rest if he had a fever or if his head hurt. He even added not to forget to take medicine, like an old grandfather worried about his grandson.
Gwen, who received his hyung’s worries with an almost enlightened saint-like appearance, opened his mouth.
“Hyung, why did you come all the way here? You’re usually working at this time.”
Hadn’t he come to see Gwen?
Chris frowned slightly.
“Ah, right.”
Chase, who had been checking his younger brother’s condition in detail, turned his head. The way his gentle expression instantly turned thorny was chilling.
“Yuri wants you brought. Danil.”
Chris, who reflexively tried to say he wasn’t Danil, obediently stood up thinking it would only hurt his own mouth to bicker with Chase. It was also largely because his belief in his own identity was starting to shake.
Gwen greeted him.
“See you again next time.”
Chris nodded awkwardly.
“Then.”
***
Yuri strode along. He’d met with Campbell but there wasn’t much nutritious talk.
Though he’d brought it thinking it was decent information, it was content Yuri already knew. He already knew that Aurum City’s mayor was walking a tightrope between Northern Light and himself. Otherwise, there was no way Rosenhower’s dogs could have secretly entered the November Continent.
Thinking he’d wasted time for nothing, Yuri returned to the addict section where he’d guided Chris.
When he brought him here, Chris seemed quite shocked to see the addicted Espers. Unsuited to his blunt personality, he’d been soft-hearted from before. Decisive depending on the occasion, but to Yuri’s eyes, excessively soft.
Yuri hadn’t shown even thirty percent of the hell he knew to Chris, who was shocked by just this much, to feel sorry for him.
