From somewhere, I heard Myeong Eunha’s voice. My senses, which had been running wild anyway, wholly captured only Myeong Eunha’s existence alone. I felt like I was happy, and I also felt like I was angry. My condition was such that it wouldn’t be strange if I died soon, yet you, a C-rank, clearly couldn’t stop the rampage—so why were you here?
While thinking such thoughts, my consciousness that had been sinking below the surface gradually rose. My body still wouldn’t move.
However, I could feel Myeong Eunha clumsily conveying guiding and trying to make contact with the source of the rampage. Not only did my waves voraciously devour this, but they also tried to pull it out by the roots.
“Ha, wait, just wait…!”
In the end, Myeong Eunha, unable to endure, pushed me away. Unlike the body that wouldn’t move as intended, my clearly thinking mind detected this.
While feeling that Myeong Eunha’s choice was appropriate, impatience and thirst arose. The presence of Myeong Eunha gasping for breath through the lips that had been touching further incited this. As death approached, it became meaningless that I had rejected Myeong Eunha until now.
I wanted to live.
Trapped in a body that wouldn’t work as intended like being caught in sleep paralysis, desire flashed in the moment of thinking. And then, pure guiding flooded into my mouth.
In an instant, my mind became alert. It was like pushing out water filling my lungs and drawing my first breath. My heart beat rapidly, and guiding like sweet rain passed over my cracked, hoarse throat and filled my empty stomach. Before I knew it, focus returned to my eyes and Myeong Eunha was caught in my vision.
“…Myeong Eunha?”
Drip, simultaneously with my call, blood flowed from Myeong Eunha’s mouth. Only then did I realize how I had consumed his guiding.
I had truly “eaten” it.
And as soon as I realized this, an inexplicable satisfaction and fullness arose. Even though I was clearly insane, I couldn’t stop thinking.
“Esper! Are you conscious?!”
I even thought that smiling awkwardly while covered in blood was pretty. The sight of him covered in my blood, giving his own blood to save his pair Esper, made my chest ache.
I was still afraid to define my feelings, but right now I didn’t want to think about anything. I just wanted to capture Myeong Eunha in my eyes. So I did as I wanted.
But.
“……”
What the hell is this dog-like Esper’s wave?
Just like that, Do Ganghyun’s consciousness that had barely returned completely evaporated.
***
“Wa-, wait a moment—!”
The words I cried out like a scream were swallowed and disappeared by the Esper before my eyes. The moans that burst out afterward weren’t much different. Do Ganghyun, who had seemed to regain his reason while calling my name, had only regained the look in his eyes while remaining in a beast-like state. Rather, raw anger that revealed itself more clearly than before surged through his waves.
“Please, get a grip…”
I frowned and struggled to push him away when our eyes suddenly met. The moment I saw Do Ganghyun with both eyes glistening with an unidentifiable light, my entire body froze. It was a kind of intuition. That I absolutely couldn’t handle what was about to happen.
I couldn’t get a sense of what had changed his atmosphere like this. However, I could tell that I needed to give an answer without delay to his waves that seemed to interrogate while enduring deeply.
And as if responding to this, my waves also jumped wildly. It was as if my entire body was thrusting itself to share guiding to soothe my Esper. It was difficult to suppress the guiding that surged up overwhelmingly like backflow along with bloody water.
I felt each other’s waves entangling over our touching skin. Do Ganghyun, feeling this was insufficient, gripped both my arms with one hand and violently pulled them up. My body fell backward and the cold floor touched my back. As my clothes soaked in bloody water clung stickily and were pulled up, Do Ganghyun settled down on my lower abdomen that was slightly exposed. It happened in an instant.
Even if I struggled to lower my arms, it was impossible to overcome an Esper with a guide’s body. Rather, following my movements, our groins pressed together and I could starkly feel Do Ganghyun’s erect penis. My face flushed red with the slight arousal rising along with embarrassment.
“…You.”
Just then, Do Ganghyun opened his mouth with difficulty. However, unlike his active movements of pressing our bodies together, he couldn’t readily continue his words. With each breath he took, I could see his combat uniform being pulled taut and then loosening.
“Who is it.”
“What? What do you mean…?”
I didn’t understand the intention of the question. He had clearly called my name and revealed the emotion of anger, yet asked who. I couldn’t help but ask again in bewilderment.
However, Do Ganghyun, as if he had no intention of giving an answer, placed his remaining hand on my navel, then swept it up thickly and removed my clothes. I hurriedly shrank my body in confusion, but he paid no heed and passed my chest line, approached as if to strangle my neck, then firmly gripped and blocked my lower face. Rip, riiip, my front flap tore open following where his touch had passed. When the cold air touched my exposed upper body, my nipples stood erect.
“Whose wave is that wrapped around your body, Myeong Eunha.”
Do Ganghyun pressed with bloodshot eyes. While greedily craving guiding with an impatient voice, his words were calmly delivered without highs and lows, giving me chills.
“No. You don’t have to answer. It doesn’t matter what it is. Anyway, I’m going to—you here—.”
The rest couldn’t be heard. Do Ganghyun, with a face reddened as if drunk and dazed eyes, kissed the back of his own hand that was blocking my mouth. That was the signal.
He, whose reason had blurred and only instinct toward his guide remained,
“It’s okay to do it. You don’t have to hold back. The ones casually pointing cameras, the bastard noisily chattering, those lightly moving their fingers—they’re all not here.”
“……”
“Myeong Eunha, you’re not a C-rank, you’re my guide.”
He began imprinting in the worst way possible.
***
When I came to my senses, two full days had passed.
In the meantime, the emergency order issued throughout the entire center had been lifted, and everyone had returned to their daily lives. Since the incident had concluded in 2 hours, most people considered it a simple happening.
I didn’t know what internal circumstances there were, but the atmosphere was mainly one of hushing up and keeping mouths shut. And that silencing included my current condition admitted to the hospital room.
“…So we intend to change the direction of the clinical experiment going forward.”
The Research Director, who delivered all that news, came all the way to the hospital room and spoke about the clinical experiment he couldn’t give up on. The problem was that the news he delivered was quite significant to ignore what he’d been saying until now.
“I’m sorry, but what did you say?”
‘I think I must have misheard.’ I politely requested an explanation again. There wasn’t a single word I could understand except the statement that two days had passed since I lost consciousness.
‘Clearly I kissed Esper Do Ganghyun whose eyes had rolled back and my clothes…’
As I recalled my last memory to understand the Research Director’s words, my face instantly flushed hot.
He, who had revealed intense anger and lost his reason, held ferocity like before, but accurately knew that the one before his eyes was a guide and what he could do, how far he could go.
In that sense, the relations with him that I’d had for the first time in a while had nothing okay about the situation or place, but in terms of results alone, it was excellent in that everyone was safe.
“I said that imprinting has been achieved with Esper Do Ganghyun, so we should change the direction of the clinical experiment.”
No, let me correct that. Not all results were excellent.
“Imprinting?!”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“But we…”
I trailed off. However, the Research Director would have properly understood what I wanted to say.
Imprinting drug.
Imprinting sounded nice, but imprinting was actually the act of forcibly binding a guide and Esper through drugs. Of course, it was something possible only when various conditions besides drugs were met, but the minimum condition was precisely that drug.
And clearly in my memory, Do Ganghyun and I—
‘We never took it!’
We had never taken the imprinting drug.
Noticing this doubt of mine, the Research Director opened his mouth again with a rigid attitude as if reciting set facts.
“To be precise, it’s not imprinting using drugs but natural imprinting that has been achieved. Naturally, it’s a rare case that hasn’t been properly reported until now!”
However, as he spoke, he gradually revealed signs of excitement. He seemed to have completely forgotten how he had acted during the contract renewal in the past, as if natural imprinting was something that could naturally occur and was a tremendous merit to me. If he got that excited, it was as good as announcing that he himself hadn’t believed the story he brought up to persuade me before.
‘Or this matter is important enough to ignore such things.’
In any case, the more that happened, conversely, my mind kept going blank.
‘Natural imprinting?’
That absurd dream and poisoned chalice?
It was even a word that had been mentioned heavily enough for Hyun Yoonseo to warn me about recently.
‘He clearly said he’d never seen a case where the ending turned out well.’
In reality, what he had said was to be careful of natural imprinting because results weren’t good when there was a large difference in feelings between the Esper and guide, but it was all the same.
Above all, wasn’t it said that natural imprinting had already been achieved?
