The sauna course that followed immediately after bathing gave Heichi a strange sensation. The temperature was similar to when he’d been to Piraen, a planet of flames slightly hotter than Earth, and he was concerned whether Lee Heewoo, who had a weak constitution, would be able to withstand this heat—setting aside himself, who was resistant to both heat and cold.
However, his guide endured the hot temperature better than expected. He did need help like drinking cold sikhye to cool his insides and wetting towels with the cold water he’d brought to drape over himself, but he managed fairly well nonetheless. Watching him, Heichi found himself vaguely imagining that it would be fine to bring Lee Heewoo aboard the battleship.
The battleship of the 1st Strategic Unit was the advance team that went out first among all of Epsilon’s forces. When arriving at an unknown planet, they would land and survey it first, then guide the 2nd Strategic Unit, 3rd Strategic Unit, and so on to that planet. Because of this, they often had to stay on planets with all sorts of new environments.
Of course, Heichi wouldn’t expose Lee Heewoo to an environment so harsh that even he couldn’t endure it, but still. Still, it would be better to have high adaptability rather than low…
“This is where I sleep best.”
Following Lee Heewoo into the sleeping room, Heichi looked at the sleeping cave he was guiding him to and thought it resembled an unusually shaped pod.
Heichi had been confined in a pod for a long time when he was young. The reason was that it couldn’t be helped since he was a suddenly emerged Prime-grade Esper, but that memory wasn’t a particularly good one even in Heichi’s mind.
If it had just been about enduring inside without anyone touching him, he would have lasted a week or even a month, but that wasn’t the case. Every so often, all sorts of liquids, gases, even fire or vacuum states would enter the cylindrical pod where young Heichi was confined. It was to increase Heichi’s adaptation to space environments, as he would later become a captain leading an exploration team.
So Heichi didn’t like being confined in environments like these narrow pods. That was also why he, who had long been in a weakened state, preferred his own quarters rather than the recovery room. He liked normal-shaped beds that even Earthlings commonly used.
“Lee, Heewoo-ssi.”
Though he entered inside and lay down side by side at Lee Heewoo’s invitation to come in, Heichi felt somewhat suffocated. If the one requesting hadn’t been Lee Heewoo, he would have run out immediately and then some.
Even though it wasn’t a vacuum state where he couldn’t breathe like in the laboratory pod, nor an environment accompanied by physical pain, Heichi kept finding it hard to breathe, causing him to speak haltingly each time. Heichi, who had been flinching repeatedly without realizing it, wanting to go outside, finally couldn’t endure it and spoke to Lee Heewoo.
“May I… hold you?”
The absurd thought came to him that if he held Lee Heewoo, all this maddening suffocation would be resolved. For the first time, Heichi requested not for guiding, but simply with the desire to confine him in his arms and have him hold him back.
“May I… hold you and sleep?”
There was no way Heichi, who had high vigilance as a soldier, could sleep comfortably in such an exposed environment, but even so, Heichi asked while pretending to be comfortable. And before even hearing Lee Heewoo’s answer, he stretched out his arms and pulled him into his embrace. The moment he did, his breath opened up with a click.
Like suddenly realizing how thirsty you were from just one sip before drinking water, the moment Heichi held Lee Heewoo, he realized how parched he had been for him. And he felt all the sensations similar to phantom pain that had been tormenting him disappear completely.
It was ridiculous. To think that everything felt resolved the moment he held Lee Heewoo.
“Are you… okay?”
Lee Heewoo, held in his arms, squirmed and raised his head to look up at Heichi. He held Lee Heewoo tightly so there was no space left between them and asked.
“About what?”
“You, you didn’t look okay… If you’re uncomfortable, we can go out and sleep there.”
Outside, there was a space made for lying side by side besides this cave-type sleeping room where they were currently lying. Heichi knew that place would be more comfortable than here, which reminded him of his past.
But then he couldn’t even imagine lying down embracing Lee Heewoo like this. In a spacious place, the reason to embrace him would disappear, and Lee Heewoo would also position himself at some distance from him. Heichi pretended not to notice his past trauma because he disliked that.
“Because Heewoo-ssi is holding me, I’m okay now.”
“Ah…”
At Heichi’s words, Lee Heewoo nodded as if he understood. Because he kept squirming in his embrace, Heichi had to suppress the desire to hold him tightly enough to break his limbs so Lee Heewoo would stay still. That was a very instinctive thought for them, so even if he didn’t act on it, he couldn’t stop even the cruel thoughts.
“Grandmother… long ago, when I was little, she held me here.”
“Your grandmother, you mean.”
“Yes. …She was originally a really blunt person, but it was strange. That day, she must have felt sorry for me.”
Lee Heewoo continued as if embarrassed.
“Father was drunk that day and just, like this, beat me up badly. So the front door fell off too… I, I couldn’t sleep at home so I came here to the jjimjilbang.”
That day was a very cold day, he said. So cold that they couldn’t spend the night outside. Lee Heewoo and his grandmother came to take refuge at this 24-hour charcoal kiln jjimjilbang, fleeing from his father who was drunk and violent. It was just after Christmas, so there were unusually many people at the jjimjilbang, he also said.
“Because there were so many people at the jjimjilbang, unlike home, it was really hot and warm… But when I came in here, it was c-cold. Strange, right…”
Hearing that, Heichi suspected whether the temperature control device in the jjimjilbang had been broken. Of course, that thought didn’t continue further and was cut off by Lee Heewoo’s next words.
“I, I guess I realized that all the other kids my age were sleeping holding hands with their mom, or with their dad, and I was the only one with no one.”
The grandmother who went with him was a different gender so they couldn’t bathe together, and because of that, Lee Heewoo had to sit alone in a corner of the jjimjilbang until his grandmother came out. The warmth of heart that couldn’t be filled at that time made Lee Heewoo cold even in the hot jjimjilbang.
“Then Grandmother knew I was here and came to find me and held me.”
“…I see.”
“At that time… it was really warm.”
Lee Heewoo said that and smiled bashfully under the soft lighting. Then he squirmed his body again and nestled even closer into Heichi’s embrace. It was enough to make Heichi momentarily stop his entire body stiffly in surprise.
“Heichi-ssi too, if you sleep holding me like this, you’ll be okay…”
“Yes.”
“You’ll become… warm…”
Lee Heewoo, who muttered a few more words after that, eventually couldn’t resist his drooping eyelids and fell into a deep sleep. Heichi watched Lee Heewoo fall asleep without blinking even once. The muscles around his mouth gently relaxing, his long eyelashes fluttering and finally their vibration decreasing, the fine hairs that had been standing up falling down one by one.
Lee Heewoo’s words were right. Just from holding him in his arms and watching him fall asleep, Heichi couldn’t remember any of the past memories that had filled and tormented his mind. When he held Lee Heewoo, everything became okay. Even the lack of guiding that still tormented him.
Though sleeping Lee Heewoo faintly transmitted guiding to him, it wasn’t better than when his eyes were open. Nevertheless, Heichi felt like his wavelength, which had endured for decades broken and torn, was finally falling asleep.
Perhaps the ‘warmth’ Lee Heewoo had spoken of had been transmitted to him as well.
* * *
“Captain.”
“…”
“Captain!”
After parting with Lee Heewoo and returning to the battleship, Heichi felt the severity of his condition and called for AJ. However, he collapsed on the floor without even hearing AJ, who had rushed in, calling him. AJ, startled, approached and supported him.
“What on earth is this… Did something happen with your Guide?”
“It seems guiding overload has come.”
“What? You received guiding?”
Heichi’s wavelength, which had received guiding weakly but for a long time while holding Lee Heewoo all night, couldn’t follow the rapid change and experienced an overload. This was a phenomenon that commonly occurred when an Esper who had been in a weakened state for a long time suddenly received a large amount of guiding.
“Yes, all night long.”
“But… wait, isn’t that a big problem?”
The problem wasn’t just simple overload. The big problem was that a wavelength meeting change would itself change to match the guiding received at that time. Weakness, overload, and the end was mostly a predetermined conclusion.
“It would be imprinting.”
Heichi said as if spitting it out.
