“Why didn’t you wake me up?”
Jiwon, who had been focusing on guiding again, suddenly asked Seo Gangwoo something that came to mind.
“…….”
Silence flowed. At Jiwon’s question, Seo Gangwoo couldn’t answer.
“You were in so much pain you were even groaning, you should have woken me up.”
Not knowing what to say, Seo Gangwoo just looked down at Jiwon leaning against his shoulder.
In truth, he had become so accustomed to enduring and suppressing pain alone that he couldn’t even think of asking someone for help.
Moreover, since he had recently reached his limits so often, this level was familiar pain he could handle, so he didn’t want to wake Jiwon who was sleeping soundly.
“If you need guiding, tell me right away. You can wake me up even when I’m sleeping.”
Jiwon waited for Seo Gangwoo to answer his words, but there was still no response, which frustrated him. To prevent this situation from repeating, he had to correct it right now.
“Do you perhaps not trust me?”
“!!”
“Like, because I’m a novice Guide who just manifested not long ago…”
“That’s not it.”
Only then did Seo Gangwoo urgently speak, cutting off Jiwon’s words.
Jiwon rolled his round eyes and glanced at Seo Gangwoo’s rigidly hardened face, then stuck out his lips in a pout.
“If that’s not it, then don’t endure it and tell me you need guiding. It actually makes me more upset if you don’t tell me.”
Seo Gangwoo’s eyes widened as if hearing something he never expected.
“I didn’t know you’d think that way. I didn’t wake you because I thought this level would get better with time.”
“It’s not okay! You heard what the Research Director said together with me. Even if Esper Seo Gangwoo endured well before, now you’ve reached your limit and no one knows how your condition might suddenly change, and he said not to use your abilities. You need to be more careful than before.”
Every single word Jiwon said was right. Seo Gangwoo admitted he had been complacent. Moreover, if he went berserk, Jiwon beside him would also be in danger.
“I’m here now, you know. That’s what pairs are for.”
Jiwon’s firm yet gentle words bored into Seo Gangwoo’s ears. His pupils slowly wavered as if wandering.
“What do you mean, I’m still a pretty skilled A+ rank Guide. Center 1’s promising talent! Does it make sense for a pair Esper who needs guiding to just endure when you have such a Guide next to you?”
Jiwon deliberately made a sulky expression while praising himself to the fullest.
“That…”
“If you need guiding, don’t endure it alone, and tell me first that you need guiding. You must!”
Flustered, Seo Gangwoo couldn’t continue his words.
After becoming an Esper, he had always lived with a guiding shortage, and that was the same even after getting a pair Guide. Seo Gangwoo, who hadn’t placed much meaning on having a pair Guide, found Jiwon’s words unfamiliar.
His previous pair, Choi Hyerin, had said from the start that she would guide him when she wanted to. So regardless of Seo Gangwoo’s condition or gauge status, all that happened was Choi Hyerin calling out Seo Gangwoo and guiding him according to her own needs.
Perhaps because of that, Jiwon’s words—to request guiding by waking him even when sleeping, that he was right beside him, that’s what pairs are for—didn’t immediately make sense to his head or heart.
In a way, Jiwon might have just said something natural.
It was nothing special, but to Seo Gangwoo, it was an unnatural statement, words that weren’t permitted, words he had never even had a glimmer of hope for in his life.
He was used to enduring alone while suffering from low matching rates. Even before becoming an Esper, Seo Gangwoo had never asked anyone for help.
It wasn’t that there were no moments when he needed help. From trivial things to somewhat significant ones. But even when he hoped for help and spoke the words out loud, nothing came back.
It had always been that way.
Rather, each time, only the sense of loss from being rejected with indifferent glances grew larger.
The results were always miserable.
And that too from an age when he should have been protected. He had been rejected by those close to him who should have been the safest and warmest refuge.
Occasionally his mother tried to look after him, but that too didn’t mean much. His mother was someone clumsy at the role of a mother. Having lost her parents in a sudden accident when very young, and growing up alone moving between various social welfare facilities until awakening as an Esper, she didn’t know well how to be a parent.
Even then, when she went out for gate conquests, she often left the house empty for days at the shortest, weeks at the longest, and when she returned home, she was busy watching the face of his father, who was a Guide.
From some point on, Seo Gangwoo naturally came to not expect help from anyone.
He solved things on his own, and what couldn’t be solved, he just endured. It was the only self-defense young Seo Gangwoo, who didn’t want to be hurt, could do.
After his mother, who couldn’t receive guiding from his father, began suffering from side effects, he closed his mouth even more.
Like that, for Seo Gangwoo who had no occasion to request help from anyone, no occasion to receive help from anyone, Jiwon was telling him as if it were natural to hope for his help.
“Yes? Please answer me.”
Jiwon separated his leaning body and faced Seo Gangwoo, urging him as if determined to hear a clear answer.
Whatever he was thinking, Jiwon felt anxious about Seo Gangwoo who had no reaction for a while.
Though they hadn’t known each other long, Jiwon, who had never once heard him ask for guiding first even though he was in a dangerous state enough to go berserk, really wanted to hear Seo Gangwoo’s answer.
Jiwon was responsible and had a personality that didn’t put off things he had to do. Even if he didn’t request it, he would take care of his pair Seo Gangwoo’s gauge and guide him on his own.
But there would surely be moments he missed. Like now when he was sleeping.
When such situations came, he hoped Seo Gangwoo would request guiding first. Not to groan and endure the pain. Didn’t he now have a pair with a high matching rate?
Why try to handle everything alone…
If that’s how it had been until now, Jiwon wanted to let him know that he didn’t have to do that anymore. That if he approached first and requested, he would guide him as much as needed anytime.
The area around the eyes of Seo Gangwoo, who was silently just looking at Jiwon with an expressionless face, reddened slightly, but Jiwon didn’t notice because he had the mood light and such behind him.
“Hm? Your answer.”
Jiwon hung on Seo Gangwoo’s neck and pressed him to answer.
“…I understand.”
It was a voice that had sunk lower than usual.
Jiwon, thinking it was just because it was late at night, smiled like a fully bloomed flower after finally hearing the answer he wanted.
Seo Gangwoo felt some emotion surge up from deep in his chest.
From the moment his memories began, Seo Gangwoo had never shed tears.
Not when his father treated his family coldly and ignored him, his own child, as if he were invisible, nor when he brought home affair partners, changing them out.
Even though she was a mother who couldn’t properly fulfill the role of guardian, when he could only watch his mother endure pain alone, when helplessness filled his entire body because of it.
When he sometimes quelled the anger that suddenly surged up alone in his room, or when his mother was dragged into a dungeon gate along with the loudly ringing watch sound.
Even when holding a funeral with his mother’s photo in front of an empty coffin because even her body couldn’t return, Seo Gangwoo’s tears didn’t come.
But why he felt like crying at the trivial words of the small Guide before his eyes, he couldn’t know the exact reason.
His heart just ached.
He swallowed dry saliva.
Just one small spark had been accidentally thrown, but a huge flame rose up and covered everything. Perhaps it was even more so because his heart was like thoroughly dried fallen leaves.
There was no way to stop the spreading flames.
While his heart lurched in the relentless waves of fire, anxiety sprouted.
What if time passed and Jiwon changed?
Could he be unaffected…
Wouldn’t he be disappointed in his pathetic self who had nothing to show except being S-rank and break off the pair? What if suddenly someone else better came along?
He felt ridiculous yet afraid of himself shaking like this over just one statement.
Probably…
Even if that happened, even if Jiwon’s attitude toward him changed.
He could no longer easily give up on life and leave as before.
Though it had only been a few days, Seo Gangwoo had a premonition that he couldn’t return to a time when he didn’t know Jiwon’s warm body temperature, kind tone of voice, and the emotions that touched deep places.
Like an illusion, an invisible red thread coiled around him. Seo Gangwoo, who hadn’t even feared death, felt fear toward his future fate.
But that too was momentary.
Captivated by the sweetness of the brown eyes looking straight at him, he drew closer. Jiwon’s gently closing eyes were lovely, and Seo Gangwoo’s heart ached.
It was a completely different pain from the pain caused by ability use and guiding substitute drug addiction.
Seo Gangwoo’s lips softly settled over Jiwon’s closed eyes. Jiwon’s long eyelashes trembled at the sensation of lips felt on his eyelids.
Jiwon’s face instantly flushed bright red at the kiss on an unexpected area. His body shrank and he drew in a shallow breath at the tension rising from his toes.
