Chapter 4
Squeak—
With a small sound, the door opened. As fear washed over him, Raon gently pushed the slightly ajar door wide open. And then he saw it. Everything was flying around.
The first thing he saw was a toothbrush, with toothpaste beside it. A cup was visible in the distance. There was also a white blanket, and a chair was floating halfway up.
The chair, which had probably been pushed under the desk, couldn’t rise completely and kept hitting the desk. Unable to believe what he was seeing, Raon blinked repeatedly.
Crash—
A loud noise occurred as all the objects floating in the air fell to the floor simultaneously. Was this the sound he had been hearing all along?
“Is anyone there?”
Raon’s voice echoed in the quiet space. The toothbrush and toothpaste that had been thrown to the floor fluttered about. Looking around, he couldn’t see anyone. With his fist tightly clenched, he slowly entered the room.
He heard the sound of something metal scraping against the floor. Raon quickly looked toward the source of the sound. There was a metal chain attached to the bed leg. Raon stopped in front of the bed.
There was a person in the extremely narrow space between the bed and the wall.
How a person could fit into such a tight space was incomprehensible. Raon stretched out his arm and pulled back the heavy curtain. Instantly, moonlight and the illumination from the center’s garden lights brightened the room.
Just as he was wondering how someone could be there, a small head slowly moved. The tiny figure was curled up into a ball, skinny arms wrapped around his legs, crouched in that narrow corner.
The light from outside shone directly on that person. Ungroomed bangs seemed to cover the entire face. As his head slowly lifted, Raon faced the most profound darkness he had ever seen. It was incredibly large and frighteningly dark.
It might have appeared that way because of the long shadows cast by the long, thick lashes.
It was a child.
A child crying silently was there. His red lips were tightly closed. With each blink of those large eyes that had captured Raon, perfectly round tears like glass beads fell straight down.
The child was wearing black clothes. The tears weren’t visible as they spread; the dark clothing absorbed them all.
“I’m sorry… I’m sorry.”
Raon couldn’t do anything. He just stood in front of the bed, watching the child.
Suddenly, Raon was startled by something grabbing his ankle. Without realizing when it happened, the child was now kneeling and bowing before him. There was another clanking sound.
Raon’s eyes grew wider than ever before. A shackle was fastened around the child’s thin, exposed ankle. It was attached to the bed leg, and the bed was fixed to the floor.
Flat on the cold floor, with his head against the ground and holding Raon’s ankle, the child begged.
“Ah…”
Raon covered his mouth with both hands. Then he turned his head to look at the open door. He couldn’t think of what to say or how to say it. His mind just went blank. It felt like he had opened a forbidden box.
“It hurts… it hurts so much.”
Raon’s gaze, which had been looking at the corridor outside, turned back to the child. The child was crying, and between his sobs, intermittent words could be heard. One word pierced Raon’s ears.
“I won’t do it. I’ll be careful. It hurts too much…”
The child’s voice was so faint it was almost inaudible, but the words expressing pain lodged in Raon’s heart. Raon slowly lowered his body. He moved as carefully as possible so as not to startle the child.
For some reason, his hands trembled uncontrollably. His shaking hand came to rest on the child’s shoulder. He almost withdrew it when he felt the bony frame that seemed devoid of any flesh.
“Are you okay?”
A voice as small as the child’s escaped his lips. He felt the other sharply inhale. He applied pressure to the hand on the shoulder, raising the child’s upper body. As the child lifted his torso, the hand that had been holding Raon’s ankle moved away.
The child’s face was fully revealed as he tilted his head back. Raon closed his eyes briefly, then opened them slowly. I’m not sure if I should say this, but the child was beautiful. His forehead revealed as his hair fell back, his dark eyebrows. And his tear-filled eyes sparkled in the light. His soaked face and cheeks reddened from crying. Even his lips, slightly parted as he tried to steady his breath.
The young child was an angel. Or perhaps a demon.
It was his jet-black hair, eyes, and black clothes that gave that impression. Above all, Raon couldn’t break free from their locked gaze.
No words were exchanged between them. Raon sat on the floor and pulled the small child onto his lap, embracing him. The skinny body, nothing but bones, fit perfectly in his arms.
“It’s not your fault.”
Raon murmured. Though he hadn’t been attending classes properly due to his laziness, he guessed that this child was an Esper. An Esper with the ability to move objects at will.
He pulled the child’s head to his chest. As one of the child’s ears and cheek touched his chest, Raon wrapped his arm around those shoulders and covered the exposed ear with his other hand.
He had heard that Espers had all their senses sharper than ordinary people. Touch, hearing, sight—everything was enhanced, and sometimes this was said to be painful.
That’s why most people manifested as Guides or Espers after puberty, between the ages of fifteen and twenty. If a child was exceptionally sensitive before that, they would undergo testing, which could sometimes confirm the potential for manifestation.
There were many theories, but the accepted one was that they manifested after puberty because their bodies needed to be developed enough to handle the power they would acquire. Additionally, guiding between Espers and Guides involved sexual contact. There was radiative guiding and simple physical contact like handshakes or hugs, but in terms of efficiency, sexual intercourse was the most ideal.
“I’ll make sure you don’t hurt anymore.”
It was a whisper so soft his lips barely moved, but the child’s crying was subsiding. Raon held the child tightly. Although he had manifested as a Guide, he didn’t know how to guide.
It was content included in the mandatory curriculum, but Raon had always run away during those times. There was no reason to learn abilities he would never use.
He regretted not having attended classes properly. He had ended up saying empty promises to a young child when he couldn’t do anything.
In that moment, he felt something leaving his body. It was a very subtle and small flow. If they hadn’t been in a quiet space, focused only on each other, he wouldn’t have noticed it. The flow neither increased nor decreased.
Raon leaned back and sat against the storage unit. He stayed like that until the child in his arms stopped crying, until the sobs turned into even breaths.
For the first time since his manifestation, Raon was guiding someone. And for the first time since his manifestation, the young child was accepting guidance.
***
“What happened?”
Raon met Sunwoo again exactly twenty-four hours later. Was it always this easy to meet someone high up who was supposedly difficult to see even once?
If yesterday’s atmosphere had been gentle, today it was extremely rigid and uncomfortable. Far from a subtle smile, Sunwoo was frowning, and his voice was close to interrogation.
“Pardon?”
“E1101S Min Jaehwi.”
Only upon hearing the code name did Raon realize who he was talking about. It wasn’t something he could easily explain. Last night, he had found a crying child and comforted him.
And when he opened his eyes, it was morning. He had been lying on the floor, with the child asleep in his arms.
His back ached from the cold floor, but he felt good. He also thought that sharing body heat with someone while sleeping was quite nice. He had put the still-sleeping child on the bed, covered him with a blanket, and left.
Thanks to waking up early, he had even participated in the morning run he always skipped, and he had managed to have breakfast too.
“Is that kid’s name Min Jaehwi?”
The moment he heard the code name starting with E, he knew the boy was an Esper. And when he heard the S following the numbers, the corner of Raon’s mouth slightly turned up. He had suspected the child wasn’t ordinary, but he hadn’t known he was S-class.
Esper codes started with E, Guide codes with G, and the numbers in the middle represented the person’s birthday. The alphabet at the end indicated their rank.
“Did you do the guiding?”
Raon’s question echoed in the void, but what came back was another question.
“No.”
Raon answered simultaneously with the question. That ticklish, subtle sensation might have been guiding. It wasn’t something he had unilaterally emitted. It was as if a very thin spiderweb-like thread was densely connected between them. It seemed like the child was finding what he needed from Raon on his own. It wasn’t unpleasant or disagreeable, and since Raon himself felt languid and comfortable, he had just stayed that way. But his mouth had already denied it.
“Okay. Explain the situation.”
Sunwoo’s stiff expression softened, and his voice became a little milder. Was guiding that important to them?
Raon spoke honestly. He had been trying to sleep and was woken up by the noise. Then he found a crying child in the next room and comforted him. He only omitted the subtle feeling between them.
Because it wasn’t something that could be explained in words.
Because he didn’t know if the child had felt everything he had felt.
