“Both, obviously.”
Gyujin burst out laughing again at the shameless answer. He gently stroked Dajung’s hair and began guiding him.
Gyujin had only obliged the latter, and Kwon Dajung seemed quietly put out about it — he kept running his fingers over Gyujin’s wrist. Whether he did or didn’t, Gyujin finished the guiding and shifted his gaze back to the television.
“I love kids, personally. I’d want at least two someday. Three would be nice too.”
If he was going to have them at all — two daughters and a son. Three like that and what more could anyone ask for. Or adoption wasn’t bad either. He was smiling contentedly to himself, listening to the sound of children laughing on the TV, when—
“……Why would you have kids, hyung.”
The voice had dropped to something cold and sharp as frost. Gyujin glanced sideways.
The face that had been sprawled and affectionate like a well-fed cat just moments before was gone — Kwon Dajung’s pitch-black pupils gleamed with something strange. He sat up from where he’d been lying and yanked Gyujin’s wrist roughly toward him.
“Why, and how, and with who would you have kids? Were you planning to have them yourself?”
“No, I don’t mean I’d have them myself — later, if I got married or something…”
“Married?”
Kwon Dajung twisted his lips and fixed Gyujin with blazing eyes, like someone who’d just been gravely insulted. Gyujin had absolutely no idea what had rubbed him the wrong way this time.
“Why are you suddenly angry.”
“I’m not — ! Ha, forget it. Talking is just going to hurt my throat.”
Kwon Dajung chewed on his lips. All the while, the bright, carefree laughter of children kept trickling through the television. In contrast to those cheerful sounds, venom was slowly filling Kwon Dajung’s expression.
“You could die and come back and you still wouldn’t be able to have kids, hyung. And I, for one, fucking hate kids, alright? Even if you were to have them yourself, my feelings wouldn’t change. I hate kids. I hate them with everything I have. I don’t care — fucking hell — I don’t care if it has your blood in it, I’d kill it with my own hands. So don’t you ever bring up anything like that in front of me again. Understood?”
Nod if you got it. At the harsh command, Gyujin nodded blankly.
He almost told him that men couldn’t have kids in the first place, but let it go. When Kwon Dajung was this far gone and not thinking straight, the better strategy was to leave him alone until he burned himself out rather than trying to talk him around. And besides, Gyujin hadn’t meant anything particularly serious by the kids comment anyway.
But what he’d thought was a closed conversation would go on to haunt him for nearly a full year after that.
Just how much did he hate children — Kwon Dajung took every available moment to chant his mantra of “I fucking hate kids” at Gyujin. Then came the suggestion that since Gyujin couldn’t have kids anyway, he might as well get a vasectomy. And if he was scared to go alone, Dajung offered to come with him — at which Gyujin recoiled in horror. It took pleading and reasoning and eventually signing an actual written pledge that he would never bring up children again and would never have any — only then did Kwon Dajung’s prolonged chanting finally come to an end.
Maybe he should have had a more serious conversation back then. Or maybe he should have just given in and gotten the vasectomy when he had the chance. How could anyone have known he’d actually end up pregnant himself? And not with just anyone’s — with Kwon Dajung’s, of all people…
‘Even if you were to have them yourself, my feelings wouldn’t change.’
‘I hate kids. I fucking, absolutely hate them.’
Kwon Dajung never said one thing and meant another — he wouldn’t be taking those words back. That was why Gyujin didn’t particularly want to tell him about the child growing inside him. He hadn’t even decided whether he was keeping it, and he had no desire to blow things up before then. And he didn’t yet have enough courage to face whatever would come next.
What if he said “This baby is yours” and Kwon Dajung said he didn’t want it? What if the words “don’t have it” or “I don’t want to raise it” actually came out of his mouth — would Gyujin be able to come out of that without being devastated? He knew himself well enough to know he wasn’t that strong. He knew he was running away, and yet he couldn’t do anything but run. He wasn’t strong enough, or honest enough, for anything else.
Surfacing from his spiral of thoughts, Gyujin snapped his eyes open. He looked around with a dazed expression.
A stark white ceiling. Familiar furniture layout. The building across the way visible through the window. It took all of that before he registered that he was in a hospital.
“But I was definitely in the middle of guiding…?”
He looked down at his own palm. His last memory stopped at the moment he’d walked into the guiding room with Kwon Dajung. So how had he ended up in a hospital?
“They said you fainted while guiding Esper Kwon Dajung.”
Gyujin’s head snapped toward the voice at his bedside. Sitting hunched on the visitor’s sofa — he had no idea how long the man had been there — was someone playing a game on his phone. He rubbed at his bloodshot eyes and yawned.
“Because of that, the operation you were supposed to go on today got completely called off.”
Gyujin’s expression grew complicated at the follow-up explanation. He rubbed his forehead and let out a sigh.
“The Esper Bureau is going to have something to say about this…”
Team 1 was already notorious for not following orders. He could practically hear the Bureau Director’s complaints ringing in his ears already.
Special Operations Team 1, made up of four Espers including Kwon Dajung, caused a disproportionate amount of trouble relative to its size. Managing Kwon Dajung alone was enough to give him a headache — and the remaining three were all roughly the same level of impossible to handle. Because of that, while most teams operated with around seven or eight Espers, Team 1 functioned with just four.
The man currently sitting in front of Gyujin, Song Yeongju, was one of those four troublemakers. He looked, on the surface, like an ordinary gaming addict — but Song Yeongju had once been called a “mental disruptor.” Chronically starved of guiding and wound tighter than a spring, he had been exerting direct and indirect influence on the minds of everyone within a five-meter radius.
Song Yeongju’s ability was telepathy — and in its hypersensitive state, it had forcibly gifted everyone around him with horrific auditory hallucinations. At his worst he’d had to be confined to an isolation room, but from the moment he met Gyujin, that problem had been resolved. Their matching rate was decent, and Song Yeongju’s guiding satisfaction was exceptionally high.
After joining Team 1, Song Yeongju no longer heard himself being called a “mental disruptor.” But the memories of that era had been so vivid that people still instinctively gave him a wide berth. Not that it mattered — in Gyujin’s eyes, Song Yeongju was still just a little kid.
“Is the Esper Bureau really the problem right now? Kwon Dajung looked like he’d completely lost it.”
The cheerful beeps of the phone game rang out indifferently. Gyujin bowed his head heavily. He was already exhausted before he’d even heard the full story.
“What’s gotten into him now.”
“What do you mean, what’s gotten into him. You fainted right in front of him — of course he snapped. Even I would’ve lost my mind.”
Song Yeongju set down his phone and looked over at Gyujin. Now that he was paying attention, Gyujin could see the worry written all over his eyes too.
“So what’s actually going on? Why did you collapse out of nowhere while guiding? Team Leader, are you sick?”
“It’s not like that.”
“Doesn’t really seem like it’s not like that, though? All of last week you were falling asleep in the middle of operations, falling asleep while guiding — that’s not nothing. You are sick, aren’t you?”
Gyujin quietly averted his gaze. That was… well, true. That was the whole reason Yoon Palsik had dragged him to the hospital in the first place. He’d assumed it was just chronic fatigue at the time, but…
“It’s not a big deal, you don’t need to worry.”
“How am I supposed to not worry?”
Song Yeongju shot back, clearly put out. Gyujin genuinely appreciated the concern — but given that the answer ultimately boiled down to “turns out I’m pregnant,” he didn’t really have much to say for himself.
“Munguk and Seonwoo are already on their way here, by the way.”
“What? Why are they coming?”
“Why do you think. You’re making me repeat myself.”
He got up from the sofa and came over to Gyujin’s side. He perched on the edge of the bed and looked Gyujin over from every angle. Unease crept steadily into Song Yeongju’s eyes.
“There really isn’t something wrong, is there? If you’re hurting, you can say so, Team Leader. Stop bottling everything up.”
Gyujin snorted softly and ruffled Song Yeongju’s hair with abandon.
“Our Yeongju has really grown up. Worrying about people and everything.”
“Team Leader, I’m the same age as Kwon Dajung, you know? You don’t think I’m a kid, do you?”
“You and Dajung are both still kids to me. I still remember the two of you walking around in school uniforms.”
“That was ages ago. It’s been five whole years.”
Even as he said it, Song Yeongju didn’t pull away — he didn’t seem to mind the petting. Gyujin offered something that wasn’t quite a defense.
“They say first impressions last a lifetime. Same goes for Munguk and Seonwoo. All four of you in school uniforms back then — that just left too strong an impression.”
The same year Kwon Dajung had joined, Song Yeongju, Moon Munguk, and Choi Seonwoo had all joined too. The timing had staggered by a few months each, but all four were the same age and had been the youngest at nineteen — young enough that Gyujin remembered them clearly.
“To think those snotty little kids grew up so fast…”
He said it and immediately felt his conscience jab at him. Because one of those snotty little kids was the reason he was now pregnant — which, when it hit him fresh, was genuinely shocking. How had things ended up this way? Had he had a thing for runny-nosed kids all along without knowing it?
“You two look awfully cozy.”
The hand that had been stroking Song Yeongju’s hair faltered to a stop. Gyujin turned his head toward the laughing voice — and there was Kwon Dajung, slouched crookedly in the doorway of the hospital room. He flashed a wide smile and let the twisted words pour out.
“No loyalty whatsoever — stroking some other man’s hair. Anyone watching would think you two were imprinted on each other or something. Yeah? At this rate you’ll be rolling around in that hospital bed next, won’t you?”
