# Chapter 20
Kwon Jeonghoo rose smoothly without fixing his disheveled clothing and casually asked Yeo Dowoon’s back, which seemed deeply disheartened.
“What do you like about him?”
“……”
“Cha Haseong, that guy. What is it about that bastard that you like so much?”
The sound of buttons being inserted into holes rustled peacefully.
Yeo Dowoon stood still for a moment and dissected his memories that were piled up like a sandcastle.
If he were to examine the reasons, he could easily explain more than a hundred of them, but time was too short and his motivation was severely lacking for that.
Grasping the doorknob that Cha Haseong’s hand had touched, he tentatively imagined the fragrant scent of flesh. That man’s unique refreshing and cool fragrance.
“Sometimes I get confused… but if you look closely, his softness and kindness are noticeable.”
It was a scent that pleased his nose so much that he wanted to find out the product name if it was a perfume and imitate it.
Yeo Dowoon continued speaking, reminiscing about the time he had been thoroughly immersed in that fragrance.
“When Espers have seizures, they’re terrifying and monstrous like monsters. Blood spurting from every orifice, vomiting, joints breaking, and some bastards even have their skin tearing.”
Because of this, he privately suspected that if one were to trace back the origin of Espers, they would undoubtedly find monsters.
Though it was a minor personal conspiracy theory, anyone who had encountered Espers going berserk would surely nod in agreement.
“Sometimes they’re more revolting than clay crushed in children’s hands.”
It was the duty of a Guide to embrace and calm those hideous lumps of flesh that were neither human, nor beast… nor monster.
So anyone witnessing that scene for the first time would inevitably run out unable to hold back their nausea, but Cha Haseong showed a truly peculiar reaction.
Without even blinking an eye, he embraced the Espers and soothed them like a sacred nature. Sharing his warmth freely and whispering.
‘It’s okay. Not terrifying at all.’
Someone might retort that one has to make a living so of course they would act that way, but when faced with that situation, things usually changed.
Delta’s Espers find it more difficult to accept gazes that don’t treat them as monsters than those that do.
Before being national heroes protecting the Korean Peninsula from dungeons and gates, they were non-human life forms belonging to the “superhuman” category as named by academia.
So since they could never blend in normally, they just wanted to live together with society, even if it meant having their feet tied to the base.
Yeo Dowoon carefully chose his words and continued.
“Even to me, another Esper, it’s incredibly disgusting, but Guide-nim…”
On the surface, they might look glamorous, but Espers were beings whose cores were not like that at all. They all were festering inside, which is why they so desperately craved a Guide.
Awe is inevitably accompanied by light and shadow.
Who would understand the loneliness of having to forcibly stand up even in front of monsters that tear off arms and legs while conscious, and chew on one’s own flesh?
“Guide-nim is always unchanging.”
That’s why it was fascinating. Cha Haseong, who neither offered inadequate comfort nor tried to hide his instinctive contempt.
He was simply as still as a forest and as quiet as the sea.
While never approaching first, he also never distanced himself. He neither looked down on them nor idolized them; that precise distance actually became a destination of rest.
And he was one of the little ones who was desperate to touch such a person, even just once more.
As Yeo Dowoon sighed as if newly realizing something, Kwon Jeonghoo, who had already fixed his own clothes, lifted his slender legs and got up. He spoke in a particularly bored tone.
“It’s important. Being unchangingly upright.”
But Yeo Dowoon could quickly perceive that his superior wasn’t particularly fond of the previous remark. Kwon Jeonghoo, who was searching his pants pockets as if looking for cigarettes, pulled out a filter and placed it on his rough lips. A simple sentence was uttered.
“Relax your expression. I won’t smoke in front of you.”
Vaguely recalling, Yeo Dowoon had never witnessed Kwon Jeonghoo doing anything but holding a filter between his teeth. The incoming image suggested he couldn’t be a heavier smoker.
If he wanted to emphasize a reliable aspect, it was unfortunately misplaced. Regardless of his smoking status, Yeo Dowoon boldly revealed his impulse and requested.
“Can’t you just give me one too? It’s nice to smoke together.”
“I have no intention of sharing a smoke with someone showing addiction symptoms.”
“…That was so long ago.”
Regardless, Kwon Jeonghoo snorted mockingly and walked over with large, proud strides.
Creeak, after opening the hospital room door himself, he wrapped around Yeo Dowoon’s waist like a snake. After pressing his lips against the kiss mark on the back of the neck that was certainly made by Cha Haseong, he murmured in a solemn tone.
“If someone more unchanging appears, switch to them, Dowoon.”
“……”
“You’re quite a decent guy.”
Soon after, Kwon Jeonghoo released him cleanly and pushed his frozen back.
“Go now.”
Thanks to this, Yeo Dowoon, who left the hospital room alone, still seemed dazed and stared at the tightly closed door for a long time. All while rubbing and cleaning his nape where Kwon Jeonghoo’s lips had touched.
The discomfort he wanted to deny completely once again blocked his chest.
But Yeo Dowoon tried consciously to erase the question.
“I don’t know, fuck…”
Because it felt like if he dug deeper, a truly uncontrollable situation would occur.
It was already at the point where the pieces of his heart were being layered to fit into the framework called Cha Haseong, to care about anything else. What else would a puzzle be if not a puzzle?
From the moment the frame is set, the shape doesn’t change, and the answer can only be predetermined.
Yeo Dowoon moved his feet, ignoring the emotion that sharply pierced a corner of his heart. Right now, the priority was to find that dog of an Esper bastard and reach an agreement.
But before going far, he came to regret his hasty decision.
“Do-Dowoon-ssi…”
Damn it. He should have known from the moment the wavelength examination room was uncharacteristically noisy.
‘I should have dawdled a bit more before coming.’
Aside from the devastated state of the examination room, the researchers, whose complexions had turned pale as if they were about to faint, all turned to look at Yeo Dowoon as if by appointment. Eyes that looked like they had discovered a savior.
Yeo Dowoon clicked his tongue, tsk, so that they couldn’t hear.
To think that in all his life, he would encounter a crazy bastard who smashed up the examination room and ran away.
“I’ll catch him,” he declared, like an announcement, while flipping through the documents with Yoon Minoh’s examination results.
“But it’s okay if I half-kill him, right?”
As he had somewhat anticipated, Yoon Minoh was indeed an S-class physical-type Esper. He mainly utilized centrifugal force, but his manifestation pattern showed energy similar to telekinesis, placing him in a quite unique category.
The possibility of going berserk maintained an average of around 20%, like typical S-class Espers.
Yeo Dowoon left the examination room, loosening his shoulders as if it was fortunate. Probably many Espers besides himself would be desperately trying to catch Yoon Minoh.
But as far as Yeo Dowoon knew, there wasn’t a single person at the base who could handle an Esper with this level of ability except for Kwon Jeonghoo and himself.
-Come to the plaza.
Although it was quite unsatisfactory that he hadn’t been able to change out of his hospital clothes yet, Yeo Dowoon responded stoically to Kwon Jeonghoo’s simple order to assemble.
“If you catch that bastard before I do, don’t knock him out.”
Had he said he wanted to do pair activities? If so, he would teach him properly this time.
“I have a lot to talk about with that bastard.”
The immutable truth that if a green kid climbs up without knowing his place, he has no choice but to get beaten up and come to his senses. It was good timing as he had been accumulating stress with his retirement path blocked.
Yeo Dowoon smiled, recalling the excellent tattoo of “resignation letter” he had engraved on Yoon Minoh’s back.
This time, how about adding his 8-digit phone number on top of it?
It seemed like a rather wise plan, as it would be quite troublesome if they were to lose this valuable person again.
***
Yoon Minoh resisted, gritting his teeth. He was basically an Esper who freely controlled the range of his abilities while cleverly being able to deflect others’ attacks.
I don’t know where he had been rolling around, but it was a very rare case that he could demonstrate such capacity without even going through formal training.
Because of this, Yeo Dowoon felt a slight regret even as he mercilessly threw a fireball that had risen from his hand.
-If you drive him into a corner, Baek Seonwoo will surround him. His flank is weak, so attack from that side.
It was because if he really wanted to escape the base, he shouldn’t have allowed them to watch such a flashy one-man show.
As if the high-ups didn’t already have their eyes on him, what kind of reaction would it cause if footage of him single-handedly holding off Delta was broadcast?
