Even then, he hadn’t thought Chris might have had some other intention. Chris Danil was a ‘dog’ in many ways. His faithful yet blind beast who would do anything Yuri ordered.
“Then one day, you never returned. What I found at the lodging I arrived at after tracking was the corpse of the drug dealer Anastasia and a pool made of your blood.”
Since no body was found, one might think Chris Danil was alive. However, at the same time, if he were alive, it was strange he hadn’t returned to Yuri Sobolev’s side. Hadn’t the story of the loyal dog Danil spread to other continents, even to Northern Light at the heart of the June Continent?
“Find that woman. Find her and confirm whether she really has such an absurd power as resurrection ability.”
How could he find someone already dead?
Unlike Chris Danil, hadn’t Anastasia’s corpse already been confirmed?
Thinking this might be the madness of a master who’d lost his dog, Chris bowed his head.
This wasn’t the June Continent. It was the winter land dominated by the man before his eyes. Having been kidnapped, his life was as good as in Yuri’s grasp.
In this situation, making statements against the kidnapper’s will would only heighten wariness and lower the probability of escape.
“I can’t find anyone while tied up here.”
Chris said while showing Yuri his hands. The arms bound layer upon layer with cable ties looked painful beyond frustrating.
“Since I can’t just release you, I’ll have to put the leash back on.”
Yuri slowly removed his gloves. His face looked unwilling, as if dealing with overdue homework he found disagreeable.
His hands, which he’d had no opportunity to see despite wearing out the Magnolia threshold, were slowly being revealed. Half submerged in darkness, half containing light, he couldn’t take his eyes off the pure white skin.
Chris felt his mouth going dry. Though he didn’t even know what that could do to him, his body was reacting first. His spine tingled and his toes curled involuntarily.
He had to run—
But why?
Naive instinct responded to reason’s scream.
Since he was tied to this spot unable to move anyway, he had no choice but to give up. Chris was certain Yuri had already caught his body’s abnormal reaction.
Yuri’s extended hand gripped Chris’s chin and lifted his head. Perhaps because light was extending from behind the other party, it was dazzling.
However, there was a sense reacting more intensely than sight.
The moment Yuri’s hand made contact, a torrent flowed through his entire body. It resembled pleasure yet was simultaneously helplessness, relief yet simultaneously intense fear.
“Ah, ah, ah…!”
Chris only recognized the moan flowing from his involuntarily opening mouth after hearing it with his ears, then clenched his teeth.
What kind of sensation was this?
Tears flowed down his cheeks. It felt like being told he could suddenly stop and rest after endlessly running and running without pause.
Sweet dew was moistening parched earth. The single drop of water finally permitted after prolonged thirst was closer to pain than quenching. Nevertheless, it felt like he couldn’t live without gulping it down.
If it had been before knowing this sensation, perhaps not, but now it was impossible.
‘Is this… Guiding?’
Chris internally cursed his Northern Light colleagues. Just having his liver or gallbladder extracted wasn’t reassuring enough. He wanted to hand over his heart to Yuri’s hands.
Even if it was a sensation lasting only while receiving Guiding, it felt like being completely subordinated.
Even the slight displeasure he’d felt until now couldn’t be felt.
The real thing overwhelming the scent he’d felt from Guiding drugs was here. Yuri’s Guiding was incomparable to that cheap synthetic drug.
Chris finally opened his eyes.
It seemed an entirely new world had unfolded before him. The senses that had always stood on edge, scraping and scraping at his nerves, contained Yuri.
His appearance, seeming to be overlaid with all kinds of ecstatic colors, was imprinted in his eyes. Like an imprint. The fragrance that had hazily drifted in the Magnolia Antiquarian Bookshop became several times deeper, so that every breath felt like Yuri’s body scent filled his lungs. Even the sound of eyelids blinking slightly while looking at him was heard so loudly that his head spun.
Before he knew it, Yuri had removed his hand and put on gloves again, but the sensation he’d left behind still existed on his chin. Unconsciously savoring the afterglow of that soft skin, Chris looked up at Yuri as if beholding the god of a new world.
Yuri Sobolev was a Guide.
The moment he realized that fact, Chris gasped for breath, bowed his head and panted.
Chris, swept through by a round of Guiding, felt like his mind had become ruins. Like a storm sweeping through a house with barely the framework erected, all the thoughts and ideas he’d established after awakening were shaking.
Others might find Chris ridiculous for being shaken by just one Guiding. Even his fellow Espers who’d paid hundreds, thousands of Credits wanting to hold a Guide’s hand had never said their foundations were shaken because of Guiding. They’d simply desired Guides.
But Chris was different. He had too little compared to others. For others, the years of seeing, hearing, feeling, and experiencing in life became solid walls, but Chris didn’t have those ramparts. Chris’s ego, having barely laid the foundation due to amnesia of unknown cause, didn’t have the strength to withstand this storm.
Most of all, this was the first time he’d received ‘proper’ Guiding. He hadn’t known Guiding that didn’t feel repulsive rising from within could exist.
Chris felt tears flowing down his cheeks. It wasn’t because of sadness or joy. It was because he was captivated by Guiding without even the leisure to be drunk on such emotions.
These were just physiological tears flowing as senses that had been rigid for so long relaxed.
“Danil.”
Chris’s head was forcibly lifted with his hair grabbed. Yuri was scrutinizing his face with a transparent gaze.
The moment their eyes met again, his chest rose and fell roughly.
With some unknown emotion, not fear. In fact, since all kinds of emotions had been overwhelming from before, he could hardly gauge what he was thinking.
“You don’t seem to remember, but we have debts to each other.”
A gentle explanation for someone for whom everything was ambiguous.
“You’d better give up thoughts of running away. I have the personality to chase debts to the end and collect them.”
Chris panted without answering.
Yuri’s lips, stubbornly calling him Danil, still looked like a delicate craft.
Their lips were so close they might touch. It felt like their breaths might mingle.
Yuri’s face was extremely expressionless.
Looking into those darkly sunken violet eyes, Chris suddenly realized. This sensation that remained only as ecstasy for him had been merely a terrible thing for Yuri.
‘Why?’
Weren’t there no side effects when a Guide performed Guiding?
However, thinking back, even though he was an Esper, he’d suffered terrible repulsion every time he received Guiding. There was no reason exceptions wouldn’t exist for Guides either.
Just the thought drained strength from his body. What occupied the place where joy receded was faint self-reproach.
Right now, he wasn’t normal. He should be angry at his kidnapper and thinking of running away from him, yet after one Guiding session he was worried about him. Guilt even surged up from the fact that what he’d experienced was elation at the moment Yuri felt pain.
In a sense, it was worse than Stockholm syndrome.
“You seem to have Guiding deficiency, so I’ll drop by often. Wait obediently.”
Yuri rose cleanly to his feet. The violence he’d anticipated when first kidnapped didn’t exist. Only the Guiding that had shaken his mind even more existed.
If this repeated, he didn’t think he could endure it. No, what Esper in this world could withstand it?
He couldn’t attach a single word, but Yuri was already going outside. Toward the open door, the only place light entered this dim warehouse.
In his gaze directed at the floor, Yuri’s long shadow rippling away was caught.
“Why…”
Chris, who’d barely caught his breath, moved his lips weakly.
“Why did you treat me like a customer you were seeing for the first time, on the day we first met?”
Yuri’s long shadow stopped. Chris felt his heart lurch at the fact that his question, even if Yuri didn’t answer right away, had enough weight to hold his feet for a moment.
“…Because life has never been kind to me.”
He inadvertently wanted to comfort the man who’d expected nothing, but Chris ultimately closed his mouth.
Because now he knew what tinged Yuri’s voice wasn’t kindness but tender contempt.
