“Isn’t that just how Espers are. When they’re starved for Guiding, there’s nothing they can’t… not a dig at Espers, so don’t take it that way.”
“No, hold on.”
While Chalice hitched his trousers back up, roughly straightened his twisted tie back into place, and fastened the buttons of his suit jacket to cover himself in place of his ruined shirt — Rodeo, feeling the somehow awkward shift in atmosphere, turned his head back around.
“The kiss too?”
“What do you mean, the kiss too?”
“I mean — did you really just go ahead and kiss an Esper who lunged at you like that? I’ve never heard of you doing anything beyond contactless Guiding.”
“It’s not something that happened often. Just now — you did throw it in my face first, asking if I could even do it… in a situation like this there’s no point holding back, and it’s not like it costs anything—”
Rodeo refused to be brushed off by Chalice’s evasive attitude and shifted to face him, pressing the same question again with persistence.
“No, I mean — if someone had just asked you, let me kiss you once, would you have done it?”
“…If they looked like they were struggling, you’d do what you had to. As you said yourself, kiss Guiding wasn’t uncommon back in our day…”
“Again?”
“…I don’t remember every detail from back then.”
“Why can’t you remember — what else did you do besides kissing?”
With only useless non-answers coming back at him, Rodeo lost patience and grabbed Chalice by the waist, pulling him over. Sitting turned away and trying to get his clothing sorted out somehow, Chalice had no defense against the slick leather of the brand-new car seat and slid right along with it.
In the end, Chalice let out a sigh with the face of someone who had a headache, and began to confess something of his past experience — and with every word that left Chalice’s mouth, Rodeo’s expression crumpled further and further.
“…It wasn’t so different from what just happened. Touching the upper body… s-sucking on it… touching the backside.”
“What?”
“There were Espers who specifically needed that kind of Guiding to get their stability down, and I didn’t attach any particular meaning to it—”
“Pulling tricks like that—”
“…Tricks, you say.”
Rodeo ground his teeth and muttered it, and Chalice looked back at him with a grave expression.
“You believed that all this time?”
At the sight of Chalice blinking at him with that composed, unreadable face, Rodeo let go of his waist and took his own head in his hands instead.
It was a story he had never heard before. Even the argument that had just happened had been rooted in the assumption that Chalice only did contactless Guiding — that he was a Guide supremacist who not only refused traditional methods but avoided any contact with Espers entirely — and this was something he had truly never known, never even imagined.
“No wonder something felt off… that’s why all those perverts were drawn to you…”
“…So then — you didn’t do it for that reason either?”
Chalice asked in a voice that was lower and more subdued than before. Rodeo’s mouth closed, slowly.
“…This needs an explanation. I… had the feeling that words alone weren’t enough for you to trust me, so I chose to Guide this way even though it goes against what we agreed — and the rest of it… I put it down to Esper instinct and let it go, but are you saying that’s not what it was?”
“Hmm, I could gladly take a light throw — but a full flip over the shoulder is a bit much…”
“Rodeo!”
The expression pressing him for an answer looked less like anger and more like humiliation. Dodging the question had apparently been answer enough. But Rodeo still couldn’t wipe the look of incomprehension from his face.
“…So — you did all of this, and yet you really had no partner? Even as you are, I’d think you’re not so oblivious as to mistake all of that for just Guiding.”
“…….”
“Unless you were deliberately avoiding it.”
“Didn’t I say it. Because I did things like this, of course an Esper could get the wrong idea. I don’t blame them for that. When you get swept up in it… even I wasn’t without a physical response.”
“…….”
“But there aren’t many Guides foolish enough to confuse work with feelings. You couldn’t survive that way.”
Rodeo gave a final, hollow exhale of a laugh, and went quiet.
The two men left the parking garage with a subtly shifted air between them and walked side by side toward the elevator — but there was not a single word exchanged. The one maintaining this silence with surprising steadiness was, unexpectedly, Rodeo. When Chalice seemed visibly uncomfortable under the eyes of strangers, Rodeo would quietly step in and drift in front of him to block the view with his body — but beyond that, he walked without a word, without any particular action, and was now staring a hole through the closed elevator doors.
Ding —
At last, after the long silence, the elevator arriving from below opened its doors — and a look of dismay flickered across Chalice’s face.
Oh no…
There were already five or six people inside. There was room enough for two more, but the expressionless group’s gazes were raking very openly over the two men. Two conspicuously striking figures — particularly Chalice, just barely concealing his shredded shirt — found the situation unbearably uncomfortable.
But the strangers already inside the elevator had no choice in the matter. The broad-shouldered man who had appeared when the doors opened had done his best to fasten every button of his fitted suit jacket — but it still couldn’t fully hide the shirt torn to pieces beneath it, and worse, the full, heavy curve of his chest was visible pressing through the gaps in the ragged fabric, threatening to spill out if pushed any further.
And he was not the only one in a state. Standing conspicuously right beside him was a door-sized man, one cheek bearing a vivid blue bruise, face scrunched deep in thought, curly hair in complete disarray.
It was not an easy thing to look away from such a sight the moment the elevator doors opened — the kind of sight you almost never saw.
“Ahem.”
In the midst of the collective bafflement, Chalice let out a dry cough. The elevator had opened and Rodeo was still standing there staring at the same spot, lost in thought. Chalice stepped in first and, feigning it as an accident, nudged Rodeo’s arm with his shoulder — and only then did Rodeo blink once, move his long legs, and board the elevator.
Reaching out as casually as he could manage, Chalice quickly pressed the button for the floor they both lived on. At the same time, his eyes squeezed shut. A silent scream. Every button already lit up was set for a floor higher than theirs. If the people here saw the two of them — looking like this — getting off on the same floor together, talk would inevitably spread.
Rodeo, noticing Chalice’s expression growing incrementally more strained, surfaced from his thoughts and looked around. It was nothing more than the stares of people eyeing two men with undeniably conspicuous appearances — and yet Chalice looked deeply, visibly agitated.
Ding —
Fortunately, no one else boarded, and it didn’t take long before the elevator opened again. Chalice stepped out quickly. Rodeo followed without delay — but Chalice didn’t wait. He walked briskly ahead, opened his own front door, and slipped inside alone.
Rodeo, left standing alone below the corridor light, let out a self-deprecating laugh, as though he couldn’t believe it.
The elevator doors closed behind the back of his head, and the bewildered gazes of those inside vanished with them. Left suddenly alone in the space, Rodeo stood frozen like a stone statue, staring at the closed door. The door showed no sign of reopening, only adding weight to the silence.
“…….”
Some time passed — and as the corridor light clicked off, the last trace of a smile faded from Rodeo’s shadowed face. Without a word, he walked in long strides and disappeared into his own apartment — and the light that had briefly come back on soon went dark again.
On the other side of the closed front door, Chalice’s face was anxious.
Surely no one would have thought they’d just come back from a Guiding session looking like that.
His face as he stared at the front door was full of worry. He let out a long, deep breath, then undid the tightly fastened buttons of his jacket one by one and stripped off the ruined shirt, tossing it aside. Only then was his broad, powerful torso freed from where it had been pressed stiffly beneath the jacket.
But the body’s owner looked anything but relieved. Chalice pressed a hand to his temple and exhaled heavily.
Just standing there like that.
It was clear Rodeo still didn’t know much about how society had changed. Getting stirred up over something as simple as a kiss and pressing himself forward like that. Not even understanding that contact Guiding itself was the problem — and equally so, losing his temper over whether a kiss was possible. Chalice had gone along with it to build trust that had hit rock bottom — but if anyone had seen, it would have been a serious problem.
Of course, on a personal level, Chalice was also sufficiently thrown off by what had happened with someone he hadn’t expected. But regardless — that act had also been part of work he had carried out over many years in the past, and no matter how long it had been, he didn’t find himself feeling a fresh sense of resistance toward something he had braced for and handled over decades.
The problem was other people’s eyes.
In the present world, Guiding that progressed through deep physical contact was no longer accepted as normal behavior. It may still have been occurring somewhere — but broadly speaking, it was regarded as something depraved, a bizarre act of indecency carried out by perverts. And with the events of just the day before having made Rodeo and Chalice recognizable to many more people — if it came out that a Guide and an Esper had been spending time together in this way…
As the thought grew heavier, Chalice dragged his large palm down from his forehead to the tip of his chin, roughly scrubbing over his face. A Guide has nowhere left to fall anyway. And among Guides, Chalice in particular had nothing left to lose.
But an Esper was different. Even for someone like Rodeo, social ruin was as clear as day. On top of that, with ten years Time Warped and adaptation urgently needed — if anyone saw them walking side by side looking like this, talking, and going into the same building together—
Before long, it would come out that Chalice was Rodeo’s dedicated Guide. And if something like this were discovered at the same time the nature of their relationship became known — setting aside the bigger picture — the damage to Rodeo’s personal life alone would be severe.
This can’t go on.
Chalice kneaded the long, thick back of his neck beneath his close-cropped hair, did a brief stretch, and set his face into something resolute. In the dim light of the entryway, his blue eyes deepened.
Keep Guiding short. Efficient and simple. No more indulging his tantrums.
It was the same expression he wore right before throwing himself into a mission. Like running through mental preparation before entering a battlefield — Chalice repeated it to himself with firm conviction, as though conditioning his own mind.
