Even through the elevator ride down, Chalice’s mind was too tangled to sort itself out — he thought for a moment, then ultimately reached for the steering wheel again. This time, Rodeo said nothing either, as though he hadn’t expected otherwise, and simply settled into the passenger seat, turning his body halfway toward the window and staring outside — doing his part to make the air in the car suffocating.
The bodyguard work ahead is going to be very exhausting.
Chalice sank into thought in the quiet that stretched between them. The fact that Rodeo kept seeing him as an Esper-hater wasn’t entirely without cause on Chalice’s own part — so even Chalice, for whom lecturing was half an occupational habit, had nothing to say and no intention of complaining. But a client who bristled and lunged at everyone he encountered… was, to put it plainly, exhausting work for a bodyguard.
Was he always like this. Before that incident, he was still fairly…
Now, even when he tried to reach back and recall, there were hardly any memories of Rodeo around this age — and what few existed had grown hazy — leaving Chalice with no usable data. He couldn’t stop his thoughts from drifting further and further back toward clearer memories, and pressed his fingers to his temple with a frown.
“As I remember it, your relationships with peers were actually quite good… Every time I checked your training records, there was always a note about exceptional teamwork.”
“…?”
“Of course, I never personally witnessed that side of you during actual missions — but that was unavoidable given the history between us…”
Rodeo snapped his head around to look at Chalice — but Chalice was frowning at the road ahead, too absorbed in pulling fragments of memory to the surface to notice.
“Every time you came in, your stability level had dropped terribly — but your simulated mission performance was in the top tier. And if I recall correctly, you were skilled not only in combat but in intelligence operations as well.”
Rodeo’s face was growing gradually, visibly redder — but Chalice, intent on tracing those distant memories one by one as though trying to get his hands on a thread, remained focused entirely on the recollection.
“It wasn’t a mission we shared, but I also reviewed footage of you deceiving a target through acting and extracting our side’s spy… You weren’t someone who struggled to control your expressions or emotions…”
“…What do you mean — why would you have seen that—”
“Then why did it end up like this?”
The face asking the question looked for all the world like a professor confronted with one of the world’s great mysteries or an unsolvable mathematical theorem — filled with nothing but pure curiosity and academic hunger. Rodeo stared at him, having done nothing but look away until just minutes before — then, when Chalice turned his head, averted his own gaze and turned away again.
“Can you explain why you show the same hostility toward your friends, toward facility officials, as you do toward me?”
“What hostility… I—”
Rodeo stumbled over his words, visibly flustered.
“It was meant to be our first meeting as a team, in a sense… In other words, with two key members sitting right there, you openly implied they disliked each other, called it pretense, drove a wedge between them. You said you wanted to help — yet your words and actions don’t match. That part doesn’t add up.”
The traffic light changed, and Chalice pressed the accelerator, beginning to list the problems one by one with calm freedom.
“Wasn’t this a mission with its own plan and greater purpose? Time that could barely be enough to seriously discuss the steps to achieve the objective — spent, instead, blaming someone for past failures. And directing that at an old friend who has helped you more than anyone.”
“……”
“For that to be a normal relationship… Carousel looked just as bewildered as I did.”
Rodeo endured the sensation crawling up his back as he was slowly cornered. There was only one reason he could point to. A single reason only Rodeo knew.
“Right — standing in some strange competitive stance… without even being in training together.”
“…That’s not it—”
“You were the same way with Evan hyung. Someone who is, by all accounts, a facility official with no reason to be disliked — and someone you’ll only have to see for a month.”
Jealousy.
“Evan hyung?”
“…The disproportionately strong reaction to the word ‘hyung’ stands out as well.”
The reason Evan irritated him was clear, too. The blatant words, the contact — flaunting his closeness to Chalice so openly. Even though the intent was obvious, it provoked Rodeo to a degree he couldn’t pretend otherwise. As if inviting him to be as jealous as he liked. As if wanting to watch him be jealous.
But more than his behavior — more than any provocation — what Rodeo couldn’t ignore was Chalice’s gaze. The quality of it. In all the time Rodeo had known Chalice, he had never once worn a face like that. To a degree that made it impossible to simply stay still and pretend it meant nothing — Rodeo was jealous.
There was nothing he could do about it. He felt pathetic and suffocated by himself — but to a degree even he couldn’t control, to a degree where it was a wonder he hadn’t already been caught showing this childish, petulant jealousy, he was plainly jealous of everyone Chalice’s gaze passed over. And this despite having tried to restrain himself not so long ago.
If asked to explain the reason, he could do so in a single breath — every action of his was transparent to the point of being obvious, the cause and effect unmistakable. But Rodeo, unable to confront even in his own mind what he couldn’t admit in front of the very person it concerned, only opened and closed his mouth without a sound, then turned his head away.
Chalice gave a brief glance to the one who offered no answer, then looked ahead again and opened his mouth. Meanwhile, Rodeo stared persistently at a distant point outside the window — determined that not even a fleeting moment of eye contact would occur — hiding his unease. Gritting his teeth, he watched Chalice’s every move from the back of his head. This Guide cannot see this. This desire I don’t even fully understand myself — he cannot catch it like this.
Whether Chalice was gathering his thoughts before speaking, or whether it only felt that way because of Rodeo’s own near-panicked internal turmoil — the moment from when Chalice opened his mouth to when sound came out felt agonizingly slow. A long pause of searching for words — and just as Rodeo squeezed his eyes shut —
“Is it a Time Warp side effect?”
Chalice swung and missed entirely, in all seriousness. Rodeo, who had been breaking into a cold sweat, silently dragged his palm down his face. He barely managed to pretend not to notice Chalice making a thoughtful hmm sound and sinking back into his thoughts, and exhaled a long, deep breath.
“If a strength in communication has flipped completely to its opposite… it may not be a simple matter of mood — it could be something outside your control.”
“…I see.”
When Rodeo responded evasively as though in agreement, Chalice — seemingly forgetting the moment before in what appeared to be unexpected delight at the response — continued his analysis in a slightly elevated tone.
“Right — like that time you collapsed during training with an Esper who used ultrasonic waves and developed sleepwalking afterward. Given how sensitive you are to other people’s abilities on top of your stability, it’s possible. Are there any other changes you’ve noticed in yourself?”
At that, Rodeo paused — then slowly turned to look at Chalice. Chalice, still facing forward, glanced briefly at the silent Rodeo.
The earlier details could have reached him unintentionally — passed along through word of mouth or through records that had filtered down to him somehow — and Rodeo had kept quiet on that assumption. But the sleepwalking incident was something only a very small number of people knew about. Rodeo began to let out the words he had been holding back.
“…Chalice.”
“If there are any, it would be best to describe as many as possible.”
“Inter-Esper combat training, intelligence training… those are part of the training curriculum from age seventeen onward.”
“…Ah.”
Chalice’s head turned back toward the road mechanically, like a robot. Even Rodeo’s pointedly short response carried no particular warning in its tone.
“The position where Chalice could access a trainee’s information — that also came after we stopped speaking to each other, didn’t it?”
“……”
“The spy extraction operation — that was even from when I was twenty-four.”
Chalice’s face had gone pale, only the tips of his ears burning red.
“That was after the incident that made it impossible for us to work missions together.”
“……”
“It couldn’t have been an era when you had enough time to review all trainees that thoroughly.”
Rodeo observed with unhurried eyes as the muscle along that firm jaw tightened. The lips pressed shut pale enough to drain of color drew his gaze. The desire to know the truth ran deep — but watching that expression, somehow, he didn’t want to force an answer. And yet, letting a rare opportunity like this slip by wasn’t something Rodeo would do.
“I wonder what it was about me that had you concerned. Enough to look all of that up.”
“……”
When Chalice didn’t deny it, Rodeo raised an eyebrow and asked again.
“Keeping tabs on me? Or…”
“What’s there to keep tabs on with a kid—”
Chalice snapped back, sounding almost flustered, and Rodeo laughed as though genuinely amused.
“Then what — after all that, broadcasting with your whole body that you despise me — why would a Guide like you keep paying attention to an Esper like that?”
“……”
“Words like ‘regularly meeting partner’ you’d find vulgar — so were you perhaps marking me down as something like a ‘lover’? A particular taste? Did you develop a private hobby of enjoying humiliation and contempt without anyone knowing?”
Chalice turned for a moment and shot Rodeo a sharp glare, then looked forward again. A short, breathlike laugh — ha — escaped Rodeo’s lips.
“I was joking.”
“Why on earth would you joke like that.”
“For it to be a tremendous rudeness on my part — it wasn’t entirely without basis. Guides like that.”
“What?”
“Regardless of age, gender, or rank. There were so many Guides who openly flirted with any Esper whose abilities stood out even a little. Among them — Guides with particular tastes? It’d be harder to find one without.”
Chalice answered in a low growl, his voice rising slightly.
“Those who exploited the emotional confusion Espers inevitably experience — they existed everywhere. It doesn’t surprise me.”
“…Confusion?”
“So — did you let yourself get used? You wouldn’t have not known.”
Rodeo’s lips pulled up — forced.
“I wonder. Should that be called being used?”
“So you did.”
Rodeo didn’t deny it, and the quiet sound of Chalice clicking his tongue echoed softly in the silence.
“From start to finish, nothing about the Guiding experience is any different for a Guide than usual — but it’s different for Espers. Emotions getting confused is common enough. Calming down an Esper who comes at you driven by that confusion is also a Guide’s work…”
Chalice shook his head slowly, and the smile Rodeo had forced onto his lips gradually faded.
“Anyone who exploited that… if I caught them, every one of them was grounds for disciplinary action.”
“And here I had the nerve to say something like ‘lover’ to someone like you.”
