When he finally managed to open his mouth, his voice came out hopelessly cracked. It was practically an announcement that he was in pain.
Moon Woo-shin’s frown was noticeably clearer now. With eyes that were visibly better compared to yesterday, he scanned Hae-il from head to toe. Then he raised his wrist to check his watch — and immediately, both his gaze and expression hardened dangerously.
“You still don’t need guiding?”
His tone made it clear that if Hae-il said he didn’t, he was prepared to knock him out and force the guiding in anyway.
He’d turned off the watch notifications so there was no vibration, but judging by how his body felt, the readings must have looked just as terrible.
Hae-il exhaled a slow, heated breath and managed only to shift his eyes to check on Moon Woo-shin first. It was still dark around them, but his eyes had adjusted well enough to secure the visibility he needed.
He did look noticeably better than yesterday.
The moment Hae-il determined that a light guiding session wouldn’t be too much of a strain on him, he extended his hand. It was closer to lifting it lifelessly than anything else.
“I know how to separate work from personal.”
Refusing guiding inside a Gate they’d been pulled into without any preparation was no different from choosing to die together.
But Moon Woo-shin, who had looked a moment away from grabbing his hand, made no move at all. He just stared at Hae-il in silence, as if boring into him.
When I didn’t want it, he made a huge fuss about me needing it — and now that I’m willingly agreeing, he won’t do it. Is he trying to get us both killed or something…. His personality is seriously something else.
As his hazy mind slowly strung thoughts together, the strength drained from his outstretched hand and it began to drift downward. It seemed like he still had a little time before a Rampage, but it felt like it wouldn’t take more than a few minutes before he lost consciousness.
Just as his limp, drooping hand was about to sink back down to the floor, Moon Woo-shin finally moved — and roughly seized Hae-il’s hand. Fingers pushed between fingers and locked tight, palm pressed flush against palm without a single gap.
“Say that you need it.”
Unlike Moon Woo-shin’s hand, which felt comparatively cool against his skin, the eyes that met his burned with a vivid, dark warmth.
I thought there was still quite a bit left before I fully hit empty. Was I wrong. His throat felt like it was splitting open with thirst.
This is… I mean….
“…I need it. Guiding.”
Adding the subject belatedly, even now, was to be explicit. What he wanted right now was guiding. Nothing more.
He could faintly make out the tension pulling hard at Moon Woo-shin’s jaw.
At the same moment, guiding began without warning.
As the Wavelength settled over his skin, the guide’s emotions were the first thing to come through, raw and unfiltered. Moon Woo-shin seemed angry. Why? The question flickered through briefly — but before the thought could go any further, sensation swept in and took its place.
“Ah….”
A faint moan slipped out.
The Wavelength that had rushed in forcefully from the very start moved through Hae-il’s body without restraint, spreading rapidly to every corner. A calm that bordered on euphoria enveloped his throbbing fingertips and surged without hesitation up his arms and into his torso.
The sudden, sharp wave of stability was barely distinguishable from pleasure. A guide who fit too perfectly, a familiar Wavelength, and on top of that — contact guiding at an intense level of density. Every one of those factors made it all the more so.
When pleasure beyond a certain threshold hits without warning, what comes first is, surprisingly, unease and the urge to resist. It’s something you know instinctively. That if this kind of sensation continues, you’ll end up addicted. That every other guiding will lose all meaning, and you’ll find yourself conditioned to only one person — unable to do anything but cling to them blindly.
Under normal circumstances, the moment that thought surfaced he would have eased back and redirected to emission guiding — but today was different. The combination of guiding deprivation and a situation that made refilling absolutely non-negotiable pushed Hae-il into the comfortable shelter of self-rationalization.
His body swept the unease aside without effort and greedily absorbed the guiding, actively encouraging it to spread further. It didn’t take long for his body temperature, which had been spiking from pain, to begin burning hot in an entirely different direction.
“Ha…….”
Flushed, unsteady breaths escaped on their own, though he couldn’t properly register them. His consciousness was chasing nothing but the sensation coming through the guiding.
The hands clasped together tightened with force. Without realizing it, he had been pulling their joined hands steadily toward himself — but he wasn’t aware of that either.
Moon Woo-shin seemed to have interpreted the movement in the opposite way. As trying to pull away from the guiding. He furrowed his brow and said firmly:
“Stay still. There’s more to do.”
He tightened his grip in turn, locking their hands in place in the space between the two of them.
No matter how much he pulled, the guide held firm and wouldn’t budge an inch, and it drove him mad. Even as the guiding was clearly filling him rapidly, a body that had gone without proper guiding for so long kept insisting it wasn’t enough.
More. I need to get closer.
Bracing against the hand gripping his, Hae-il pushed himself upright. A moment ago he’d barely been able to move a finger, but his body, beginning to recover, felt almost weightless now. Even so, his mind was consumed by one thought only — getting closer to the guide right in front of him.
Moving toward that single goal meant he naturally failed to keep any sense of distance. He steadied himself with a slight stumble — and suddenly Moon Woo-shin’s face was right there, directly in front of him.
Their eyes met exactly.
“…….”
“…….”
Moon Woo-shin’s eyes held something unexpected — a trace of surprise. He had always seemed like someone who never knew what it meant to be moved.
If I got just a little closer, I could probably see more clearly. His eyes. His Wavelength.
Their clasped hands, suspended between them, bumped lightly against each of their chests. Fingers interlaced, the hand resting over the back of the other’s pressed gently between their palms and their bodies.
Hae-il propped his other hand on the ground to barely keep his balance and leaned his body a little further forward. Shoulder bumped against shoulder, and their noses came close enough to almost touch.
Still not enough. Just a little more….
Hae-il turned his head to close the remaining distance. Cheek grazed cheek with a ticklish brush — then slipped down past Moon Woo-shin’s jaw and came to rest against his neck, like settling into a lean. Hae-il lowered his chin onto his shoulder and slowly exhaled a warm breath.
Their upper bodies were nearly pressed together entirely. He liked how much more concentrated the guiding had become.
But the body of an Esper that knew no such thing as satisfaction moved on to the next want almost immediately.
The wanting was constant. Something that remained unfilled kept nagging at him. If I could just get a little closer…. But how, from here?
He was turning it over vaguely in his mind when the guiding suddenly drew back. Moon Woo-shin had pulled away.
“Why….”
He tried to close the distance again immediately — but before he could, a hand reached out first and caught him by the jaw. There was too much force in it. His jaw ached, but none of that mattered at all. The craving for guiding was so much greater that he barely registered it.
He was about to force his way past that grip and press forward again —
His body was pulled forward before his own will could act, and he was drawn deeper into Moon Woo-shin’s arms than before. But unlike a moment ago, it didn’t simply stop at being close.
Moon Woo-shin’s face was right there in front of him. Eyes looking down caught his gaze, and their noses touched lightly. When Moon Woo-shin tilted his head to the side, a soft, brushing sensation swept long across his nose.
A ticklish breath drifted across his lips. It seemed like the very corners of their lips had made brief contact. The sensation blossoming from deep inside him was unbearably ticklish — and the moment he parted his lips, they were caught.
“Mm.”
Hae-il’s startled eyes trembled almost imperceptibly. Moon Woo-shin’s dark eyes, so close they filled his vision, were looking at him clearly and directly — the complete opposite.
Even with his reason half-gone, a faint thought surfaced that this was wrong. Doing this with Moon Woo-shin, of all people….
No. If this goes on, again….
The moment he tried to pull his head back, the hand gripping his jaw only pulled him in tighter. Now there was barely any space left to find between them.
The lips pressed together deepened into each other, and a warm, damp breath slipped through parted lips first. Goosebumps spread all the way to the tips of his hair from contact alone, without anything more. Guiding several times denser than anything he normally received came crashing in.
