“AJ, what on earth does it mean when a guide says they ‘like’ someone?”
Heichi clearly remembered how Lee Heewoo, overjoyed while eating jjajangmyeon, had said to him in an utterly cute and lovable way, “Heichi-ssi, I like it……” By that point, Heichi thought that Heewoo had completely accepted him.
No, he had misunderstood.
When Heewoo invited Heichi into his shelter—a space he had never dared allow anyone into before—Heichi’s misunderstanding became a bit more severe.
Seeing the small room that was, with slight exaggeration, about the size of Heichi’s own bed, Heichi thought he’d been invited into the inner bedroom of this uniquely structured shelter. If Heewoo hadn’t been fidgeting around trying to serve him after taking off his shoes, Heichi would have immediately snatched him up and laid him down.
Realizing that this wasn’t a bedroom or a small “room” concept but rather Heewoo’s entire home, Heichi responded calmly. He grabbed hold of Heewoo’s hand, which he’d been dying to touch since earlier. He thought the atmosphere would naturally form from there.
“What is it this time, Captain?”
“He clearly said he liked me, but then said I wasn’t his pair.”
The end of Heichi’s voice trembled faintly with anger as he confided to AJ about what had happened. Didn’t a guide confessing that they liked an esper generally mean they wanted to become pairs? Having learned about interactions with guides solely through documents and AJ’s fragmentary education, Heichi had thought quite simply.
And AJ demolished the worldview Heichi had lived with—that ‘liking’ = ‘confession’ = ‘pair’—with just a single sentence.
“Eh, that’s not it.”
When AJ shrugged his shoulders in denial, Heichi’s eyes flashed with murderous intent. Heichi’s mind filled entirely with the desire to refute AJ’s words.
“What do you mean, ‘not it’?”
“Liking that esper is one thing, but you can become pairs with someone else.”
“Does that make any sense?”
“Why doesn’t it make sense? These days there’s even a term called ‘open guideship.'”
……Open guideship?
Heichi’s eyebrow twitched at the unfamiliar term. As if expecting that Heichi wouldn’t know the word, AJ added an explanation.
“It’s a term used among the new generation espers these days. It refers to a relationship where you have a separate pair, but you distribute guiding to multiple espers. That’s what the young ones call it nowadays.”
“Is that even plausible?”
Heichi immediately frowned and offered a negative opinion. Having recently come to painfully understand just how obsessed espers become with their guides, it was an unimaginable relationship for Heichi.
“I knew you’d say that, Captain. How old-fashioned can you be?”
“What about you, AJ? Does it make sense to you?”
“Well…… They’re young people, after all. And this is a term mostly used by guides. Honestly, there probably isn’t a single esper who would tolerate that kind of relationship.”
AJ also briefly imagined Kzar one day claiming ‘open guideship’ with him, and a flame the size of a matchstick flared up from his fingertips. Though AJ wouldn’t admit it, he was just as old-fashioned as Heichi when it came to his own guide.
“So. My guide is doing that, what was it, ‘open guideship’ or whatever?”
“That might be—gack. Khack! Please calm down. Why can’t you control your ability these days?”
“……”
Heichi didn’t answer, his face full of dissatisfaction. What was he supposed to do when his ability went off on its own the moment anything involved Heewoo?
As his contact time with Heewoo had recently increased, Heichi occasionally felt his ability activating contrary to his will. Until now, he’d been using his ability while shaving away his lifespan, but once quality guiding began, power was already returning to him ever so slightly, like rain falling on a parched desert.
For instance, Heichi had regained one of his abilities that he’d lost. To be precise, it wasn’t a lost ability, but rather one of the techniques that had been reduced in power due to lack of guiding, rendering it unusable.
“Anyway, I’m saying it ‘could be possible,’ not that your guide is actually like that, Captain. As I mentioned before, Korea in particular is a country where Confucian thought still remains, so their romantic values are similar to ours.”
Heichi, who had been imagining slicing off the neck of any esper Heewoo might seek out while claiming ‘open guideship’ or whatever, felt inwardly relieved.
“Don’t be too hasty. It’s not like you’re a newly awakened esper.”
“AJ, I think my situation is far better than the crazy things you did to Kzar.”
“……Why are you bringing up something that’s all in the past again……”
AJ irritably rubbed his face, recalling the old days. At that time, Heichi had been in the early stages of lethargy syndrome and hadn’t cared what AJ did, but he remembered one thing. He had no choice but to remember it. Because AJ had jumped off a battleship that was voyaging through space.
“What did you say before jumping? That you’d rather die than have a guide who wasn’t yours?”
“Captain!”
“Come to think of it, I wonder if Kzar knows. That if you’d really intended to die, burning to death would have been faster than jumping off the battleship.”
AJ, one of the highest-grade espers, possessed the ability to control fire, which had particularly high lethality. So if he’d truly wanted to die, incinerating his own body would have been cleaner and faster, leaving no corpse behind.
Yet the reason he’d specifically jumped off the battleship was probably because Kzar was an Ekarian accustomed to spacewalking. As if to support this, Kzar had immediately used a zero-gravity propulsion device to rescue AJ the moment he jumped.
“You try standing in front of your guide and hearing them say they can’t be your pair, Captain! And if you then see them flirting with another esper, losing your mind is just a matter of an instant!”
* * *
As if AJ had precognitive abilities, Heichi soon had to experience literally ‘losing his mind,’ just as he’d said.
Heichi had long since determined that his guide, who left for work at dawn, worked at a 24-hour convenience store far from home. Heewoo worked there for roughly 6 hours each time, and during those periods, Heichi would wander around looking for restaurants within a 1km radius of that convenience store without straying beyond it.
The reason his range of activity was limited to 1km was because that was precisely how far Heichi could hear, see, and smell. He could hear up to 10km maximum if he concentrated, but when too many stimuli mixed together, even Heichi found it difficult to distinguish them.
At 11 AM, when Heewoo finished his convenience store shift and came out, Heichi planned to take him to a restaurant with good atmosphere and delicious food that was popular on Earth.
Heewoo had once asked what he did while Heewoo was working part-time, and Heichi had answered that he was working. Of course, he didn’t think it was a lie. This was a matter related to Heichi’s very survival, so it was actually more important than work.
“……There’s simply no place I like.”
However, within a 1km radius of the convenience store where Heewoo worked, there weren’t any restaurants that particularly appealed to him. After the convenience store shift ended, they needed to finish eating within an hour and even get to the next workplace, so when considering everything, there was always some flaw somewhere.
At that point, Heichi contemplated whether he should provide his ability to Heewoo instead. ‘Transportation’ was an ability Heichi was confident in. After all, even the battleship that defended and navigated the entire universe moved thanks to Heichi’s ability.
His continuing thoughts eventually reached the point of making Heewoo quit all his jobs. The work seemed arduous, so wouldn’t it be better to have him wrap up everything he was doing and just bring him to his battleship……
If AJ had heard this, he would have been appalled. He always advised to approach slowly, without being burdensome, and naturally. Otherwise, the guide might run away.
Eventually returning to square one, having failed to find a restaurant he liked, Heichi expanded his range a bit more, limiting it to 2km. That’s when it happened, as he was searching for restaurants in the vicinity with all his nervous system focused entirely on Heewoo.
<N-no. Ugh…… This, let go of this, please…….>
Heewoo’s anguished voice brushed dully through Heichi’s brain. Though there were hundreds, thousands of stimulus responses coming from ahead, only Heewoo’s voice pierced through everything and was heard clearly. In that instant, Heichi sliced through the space before him and ‘crossed over.’
The space that had been some alley on the street changed to between the display shelves of the convenience store where Heewoo worked the moment Heichi stepped forward. And Heichi witnessed it.
“You’re above Brown grade, aren’t you? Fuck, no wait, what’s Brown, with this much you’re almost……”
His guide, pitifully caught by a huge esper and struggling desperately to get away.
Only then did Heichi viscerally understand what it felt like for his rationality to snap. Before he could even think, his body moved first. He severed all the muscles in the scapula and femur connecting the arms and legs of the bastard who had been holding Heewoo and wouldn’t let go.
Instantly, the bastard’s limbs drooped down like a puppet whose strings had been cut. At the same time, Heewoo, having regained his freedom, tumbled forward as if rolling out.
However, Heichi’s fury didn’t end there. He had to punish this bastard for arbitrarily stealing his guide’s guiding, for forcibly suppressing a body that Heichi himself hadn’t even been allowed to touch, and for making him hear vile curses he had no need to hear.
Heichi’s ability, which he’d been suppressing as much as possible due to not receiving adequate guiding until now, explosively burst forth in that moment. Soon he began slicing the bastard’s entire body thinly from the soles of his feet up, like a single lump of meat.
As Heichi, having lost his rationality and begun to abuse his ability recklessly, stopped restraining himself and released his wavelength, it burst out in an instant up to a 100km radius. It was perhaps only natural that AJ, sensing that wavelength, came rushing from the battleship.
“Captain! Captain, please……! Your guide is watching!”
Within his scattering rationality, Heichi unconsciously turned his head slowly at AJ’s voice. Then, within the completely disheveled and destroyed convenience store, he saw Heewoo crouched down, trembling violently as he looked at him.
Ragged breathing, dilated pupils, heart rate exceeding 160 beats per minute. All those reactions were saying only one thing.
Heewoo was afraid of Heichi.
