With hands that were meticulous despite their deliberately rough manner, he secured the bandage firmly around Moon Woo-shin’s head, then straightened up after hastily smoothing out his clothes.
Unidentifiable debris was scattered all around them. He had no idea how many things had fallen along with them, but it seemed unlikely that any civilian survivors would emerge — unless they happened to be ability users.
Hae-il extended his gaze, which had grown somewhat accustomed to the dark, further into the distance. As far as he could see from where he stood, there was nothing but jagged, uneven fragments in every direction. It was difficult to make out the terrain clearly in a place lit only by faint, dim light.
At least there was no sign of any monsters yet — that much was a relief.
Having finished his rough assessment, Hae-il looked down at Moon Woo-shin, who was still sitting on the ground.
“For now, let’s head toward the light. We’ll set up a shelter somewhere suitable along the way.”
Follow the light, and we’re bound to run into a monster eventually.
Moon Woo-shin, looking up at Hae-il from a lower position than usual, let out a quiet sigh.
“We move in five minutes.”
It was completely unlike Moon Woo-shin — both the words and the behavior. Hae-il, suddenly uneasy, fired off a string of questions.
“Why? Are you dizzy? Do you feel like you’re going to pass out? Let me check your head again.”
“I’ll be fine after a short rest.”
He answered calmly, then chose a flat section among the wall debris nearby and leaned his body against it. Even in the darkness, the faint outline of his slightly unsteady movement was visible.
It was the first time Hae-il had seen this man — someone who never showed the slightest sign of even serious injuries — leaning against something with such lack of strength.
Registering that fact anew… his heart beat with an anxious rhythm, pounding loudly in his ears.
This is just an instinctive reaction.
Hae-il forced himself to collect his thoughts. With his guiding nearly depleted, and the only guide in this space seemingly badly injured, of course he’d feel uneasy. It was a natural response for an Esper. There was no need to let it get to him.
Even so, he couldn’t take his eyes off him. Standing rooted in place, quietly watching Moon Woo-shin, Hae-il eventually moved without a word and sat down right beside him. The warmth radiating from their almost-touching bodies felt unusually, intensely hot.
Immediately, a gaze dropped onto him from the side. The wordless attention lingered briefly near his face before sliding away. There was no other reaction. No provocation. No mocking.
Hae-il, who had been keenly aware of Moon Woo-shin’s every glance and movement, let the tension drain from his body and went slack. It felt like the anxiety had eased, at least a little.
It had been like this before, too. Even back when they were entering and exiting Gates together as one team, strangely enough, having him nearby always seemed to ease the unease.
Sitting in the brief stillness and quiet, Hae-il found himself drifting into the past — but he cut himself off before the nostalgia could sink any deeper. He pushed away the feelings that had long since become useless, and filled the empty space with rational thought instead.
What do we do now.
A signal would have been sent to the Special Abilities Agency the moment the Gate appeared, so a Gate strategy team would be dispatched within a day or two at the latest. But waiting around with nothing to do until they arrived and then running straight into them head-on — that was too risky.
Having gone undercover and wiped all records from the database, the current Seo Hae-il would clearly appear to be an S-rank Esper with no affiliation anywhere — not even under state management — essentially a would-be criminal. And on top of that, Moon Woo-shin was a genuine criminal by status.
So the best option was to slip out as quickly and quietly as possible.
Hae-il ran his fingers over the tingling tips of his other hand.
An Esper running low on guiding, and an injured guide. Both S-rank, sure, but the odds of two people successfully clearing a special Gate they had zero information about weren’t exactly high.
A special Gate, like a regular Gate, required eliminating all the monsters inside before you could get out. He had heard of rare cases where a special Gate could be opened under different conditions, but he’d never witnessed one himself. That’s how low the probability was.
There was only one conclusion.
For now, hold out safely, get a feel for the situation — and if it looks like it won’t work, wait for the Special Abilities Agency’s strategy team and sneak out while staying hidden.
In other words, they had no choice but to improvise as the situation demanded.
He was steeling himself to at least cut back on ability usage and hold out as long as possible — when it happened.
From somewhere, the energy of guiding began seeping through the air. Was he so starved of guiding that he was hallucinating now? For a few seconds, Hae-il sat there dazed, passively soaking it in — then he realized it was real guiding, and he hastily covered his mouth and pulled away.
“Are you out of your mind?”
He couldn’t even move right away and had to take a break first, and now he’s actually doing guiding? He must actually be insane. In a state of serious injury, guiding was naturally a physical strain on a guide’s body too.
He tried to block it immediately, but Hae-il wasn’t in peak condition either, and he’d just spent a tremendous amount of ability energy during the fall moments ago, so it wasn’t easy.
The guiding drifting through the air, pricking and poking at his skin again and again, was unbearably tempting. Hae-il barely managed to resist the instinct screaming at him to just give in — repeating to himself, that person is a patient right now, several times over — before he finally succeeded in blocking out the guiding.
“…You don’t want it even in a situation like this?”
“No, right now—!”
Hae-il had been about to argue back — look at the state you’re in — but the moment he lifted his head, he stopped short. Because the face dimly visible before him looked nothing like what he’d expected.
An awkwardly stiff set to his mouth, and an expression in his eyes that was entirely unfamiliar. It looked almost like… a person who had been hurt. Whether he was seeing what he wanted to see, or whether it was a genuine emotion showing through, he couldn’t be certain — but in that moment, it truly looked that way.
In the very next moment, however, the voice that came was exactly the same as always. Hard and cold.
“Keep business and personal separate, Seo Hae-il. Getting out alive comes first.”
Hae-il, who had gone still, felt something that had been swelling inside him deflate limply. He couldn’t even clearly name what it was, yet the energy drained right out of him.
Of course. Moon Woo-shin, hurt? There’s probably no more mismatched pairing of words than that.
Hae-il curled his fingertips tightly inward again and shot back in a similar tone.
“I am keeping them separate, thanks. Your head’s practically split open and you’re thinking about guiding? I’m still fine, so instead of wasting time worrying about useless things, save your guiding for when it matters.”
Even with darkness spreading between them, for some reason he felt even more reluctant to face him directly. Hae-il stood up from where he’d been sitting and gave his clothes a rough brush-off.
“Seems like five minutes have passed. Let’s get moving.”
Pretending to focus on scanning the area around them, he let his eyes drift this way and that — and in that time, Moon Woo-shin slowly rose to his feet and came to stand beside him.
Hae-il, subtly stealing glances at him from the side while pretending not to, allowed himself to breathe a small sigh of relief. At least he was standing steadily, with no sign of swaying. The red stain on the shirt tied around his head hadn’t spread any further, either.
Even if he seemed all right for now, moving around a lot today would be pushing it. First, they needed to quickly find somewhere safe to rest.
The two of them stood a hand’s width apart, one in front of the other, and began to move carefully, keeping watch of their surroundings.
***
It was a Gate with a strangely absent presence of monsters.
They continued their search, alternating between slow walking and resting, but couldn’t find a single clue that pointed to any monster activity. Not even the smallest trace of one. Having personally entered all manner of Gates as a Special Abilities Agency Esper, and having studied every other known case without exception, this was still a Gate unlike anything Hae-il had ever encountered.
It was fortunate, at least, that there wasn’t much need to use abilities — but the prospect of finding a way out of here had grown all the more bleak.
In the end, they opted for an early rest on the first day, having barely covered any ground. They’d come away with nothing, but given the state of both their bodies, it seemed better to rest and then move.
They found a pit of suitable size to hide in, piled up obstacles around it, and lay down side by side inside. It had been years since Hae-il had roughed it like this, yet he felt not the slightest discomfort and passed out instantly.
Then, a few hours later, early morning.
“Wake up.”
The moment he was roused by a hand tapping at his arm, he knew instinctively.
I’m in trouble.
He had never felt guiding deprivation this vividly before. His heart was beating excessively hard, spreading pain throughout his entire body, and the sensation — crackling and electric, as if about to explode — ran all the way to his fingertips and the tips of his toes without end. Heat simmered along that same path without ceasing. Even though he’d slept and rested for a fair stretch of time, his condition seemed even worse than the night before.
Hae-il lay there with his eyes barely open, staring blankly up at nothing — and Moon Woo-shin furrowed his brow and leaned down toward him. Their faces met squarely, with a fairly short distance between them.
“Seo Hae-il, get up already.”
“……Five more minutes.”
