“Doyun!”
Anna patted the seat next to her in welcome. It was Doyun’s return to the training facility after nearly two weeks away. Noticing everyone was seated on the floor, he looked around in puzzlement, and Anna pointed to the hologram projected on the wall and explained.
“Apparently the matching rate test results are in. Looks like we’re all analyzing our combat strength together today.”
Anna nudged Doyun in the side and whispered.
“Don’t worry about your matching rate with the Colonel. The maximum anyone gets with him is around 50%.”
Up at the front, Kapu looked at the results sheet again with an expression of disbelief, then let out a humorless laugh. She had reviewed the data multiple times already for the unit’s combat analysis, but it was still hard to believe even seeing it.
“No matter how I look at it, isn’t this an error?”
Kapu slowly raised her head to look at Odin. Odin himself appeared calm.
The figures displayed on the hologram panel were simple. Name, rank, matching rate. Yet the training facility was growing increasingly restless.
「Odin Quaid (S) — Ahn Doyun (S): Matching Rate 97%」
「Kapu Adim (S) — Ahn Doyun (S): Matching Rate 84%」
「Margo Timberly (A) — Ahn Doyun (S): Matching Rate 71%」
「Fred Winber (A) — Ahn Doyun (S): Matching Rate 77%」
「Anna Meidil (S) — Ahn Doyun (S): Matching Rate 81%」
Anna was the first to exclaim at the number.
“97%?”
The murmuring behind them grew louder.
“Are you sure the results didn’t get swapped with someone else’s?”
“Has the Colonel’s matching rate ever gone above 50%?”
“No, it’s basically fixed. Always in the high 40s…”
Anna turned to look at Doyun, eyes wide.
“Doyun, are you the Colonel’s family or something?”
Fred reached over from beside her and pinched Anna’s nose at that. But even he kept glancing back and forth between Doyun and Odin’s faces, unable to believe the number.
Even for Doyun, whose matching rate with every Esper he tested exceeded 70%, 97% was a staggering figure. A matching rate wasn’t a simple measure of compatibility — it was an indicator of how precisely an Esper’s wave frequency and a Guide’s stabilization range interlocked with each other.
97% was theoretically a figure approaching near-total synchronization.
Kapu cleared her throat to settle the charged atmosphere, and everyone’s attention shifted to Odin. They were all waiting for him to say something.
Odin simply stood with his arms crossed, looking at the panel. In truth, having already received the results in advance, he had requested a retest at the medical center, which was why the official announcement had taken an extra week. Two tests had been run, so the chances of the figure being wrong were zero.
A 97% matching rate was a number every Esper had imagined at least once. On top of that, an average Guide matching rate of 82% across the board — that was a figure no colonel of any unit could conjure up even in their wildest dreams.
With that kind of combat strength, a single asteroid or a low-tier civilization could be turned on its head independently in actual combat. Odin’s gaze shifted, almost imperceptibly. Desire crept into his eyes behind the mask of curiosity.
“Starting today, I’ll be joining training for a week as well.”
The training facility went dead silent at the Colonel’s sudden announcement. Odin held back a smile at the team’s reaction and looked at Doyun.
“My maximum efficiency has been around 50%, so my output has been calibrated to that. Before the first mission, I need to recalculate the output.”
Fred swallowed. Anna, too, exchanged looks with the other team members with an expression that said they were in trouble.
Only Doyun stared blankly, his gaze caught by Odin’s eyes — blue and piercingly cold. At the edges of a gaze that had always been severe, something like amusement now lingered.
“Last night, the Major and I completely rebuilt the recon formation and strategy centered around Corporal Ahn Doyun. Training hours will also increase by three hours compared to usual, so clear your afternoon schedules.”
Kapu activated the simulator, and a spherical space enclosed by safety walls rose up like a stage. She called for Doyun and Margo.
Doyun got up from his seat and stepped up onto the central stage of the training facility, placing his hand on the surface of the sphere, which looked almost like a hologram. The translucent wall felt cold as metal.
Margo, with her caramel skin and a bright red dot on her forehead, cracked her neck the moment she stepped onto the stage. She looked a few centimeters taller than Doyun.
Without a word, Margo pressed a button. The translucent walls darkened in color, cutting off the view from outside. Doyun, caught off guard, straightened his back tensely.
Margo began using her ability on the empty space in order to raise her Rampage gauge. She was a neural-substance Esper who primarily worked with toxins.
Wind began to blow in one direction, and the wall on one side — everywhere except where Doyun was standing — started filling with an unidentified purple gas.
「Margo Timberly (A): 40%」
「Margo Timberly (A): 59%」
「Margo Timberly (A): 70%」
「Margo Timberly (A): 85%」
「Margo Timberly (A): 93%」
Doyun’s biowatch began going off like crazy. Caught off guard, he backed up without thinking.
Then Kapu’s voice came through the speaker.
“We’re now going to practice adjusting an Esper’s output, so the new recruit will attempt radiant Guiding, contact Guiding, and mucous membrane Guiding in that order.”
Margo turned around. Her expression, with her Rampage gauge elevated, was far more abrasive than before. Curiosity flickered in the gaze she directed down at Doyun — she clearly wanted to see just how capable this talked-about new recruit actually was.
“Begin.”
Doyun drew a deep breath and broadened his senses. Radiant Guiding was straightforward. Set the target’s coordinates, feel the wave pattern, stabilize the Esper. It was a technique even A-rank Guides could perform.
But Doyun’s Guiding was a little different. Fred, who had already experienced Doyun’s Guiding once before, watched the interior of the hologram sphere with an expression that said he wasn’t going to miss a single moment.
Inside the training facility equipped with a special device that visualized Guiding wave patterns, a pale light spread out. Doyun’s radiant Guiding didn’t work the way other Guides’ did — it didn’t radiate outward in a single circle centered on the Guide.
Instead, dozens of minute wave patterns branched out in different directions. They converged on Margo from all sides as if enveloping her, and just like that, her Rampage gauge began dropping rapidly.
「Margo Timberly (A): 15%」
In less than a minute, the gauge had fallen — and the murmuring inside the training facility grew louder.
“What was that?”
“Is that actually radiant Guiding?”
Kapu’s expression hardened. Even among the Guides known for exceptional skill up until now, they had all spread out a parameter distribution wide enough to wrap around the entire sphere. What she had just witnessed was something entirely new.
“Is that kind of precise control really possible with remote Guiding?”
As Kapu murmured to herself, Doyun inside the training facility gritted his teeth. The more his concentration wavered, the more sharply his efficiency dropped.
「Margo Timberly (A): 3%」
When the Guiding ended, a peculiar heat remained in the training facility. The team members’ eyes were bright. A combat-specialized Guide. A Guide with the kind of ability they had only ever imagined in their heads had actually appeared.
Kapu swallowed and gave the next instruction.
“Next — contact Guiding.”
Margo’s expression brightened the moment after the radiant Guiding ended. The instant an Esper felt stabilized, dopamine flooded through the body and an instinct to destroy something whole surged up. Margo used her ability again without hesitation and drove her Rampage gauge back up to 95%.
Doyun waited until the wind had dispersed all of the toxins, then approached Margo. After a brief hesitation, he placed both hands lightly on her back.
「Margo Timberly (A): 3%」
Barely twenty seconds. Exclamations broke out among the team members who had been timing it. An energized Margo burst into a wide laugh and turned to look at Doyun.
“This guy’s completely insane.”
Watching Margo’s expression — entirely different now from just a moment ago — Doyun gave a slight flinch and waited for the next instruction. Her eyes were lit up with a gleam.
“Next. Mucous membrane Guiding.”
Margo drove her ability up to nearly 90% like she was letting loose. It was as though she now had complete faith that he would bring her back under control no matter what.
The purple vapor slowly settled, and the time for mucous membrane Guiding had come. Fred quietly covered Anna’s eyes.
Doyun approached slowly, looking at the corners of Margo’s eyes — flushed red from the heat — as though this kind of situation was familiar to him. He bent one knee. Carefully, so as not to agitate her in her excited state, Doyun took Margo’s palm in his hand and pressed his lips to the back of it.
A breathless silence fell over the training facility.
「Margo Timberly (A): 0%」
Without lips meeting lips, with just a simple mucous membrane contact, the Rampage gauge plummeted in an instant. Margo looked down at the hand held in his and was at a loss for words for a moment. Color rose in her cheeks.
“…My.”
At Margo’s barely audible murmur, Anna — who had pried Fred’s fingers wide open — let out a shriek.
“What was that, he’s like a prince!”
Doyun released Margo’s hand and exhaled a beat late. He looked around, trying to gauge why the training facility had gone so quiet.
Cough — cough–
Caught in the lingering afterglow of the unexpected scene, Odin accidentally swallowed his water wrong.
“Are all people from Earth like that?”
He wiped the corner of his mouth and murmured to himself. The more he replayed the moment, the more striking it was.
Beside him, Kapu produced a monocular without any pretense and peered into the sphere, answering him with perfect composure.
“My, I once read a paper arguing that old humanity is more conservative about physical contact than we are. Seems it really is true.”
Kapu continued without taking her eyes off the stage. The moment his Guiding was complete, Doyun had stepped back about two paces from Margo and stood there.
“New humanity’s skin sensory receptors and the supplementary nervous system developed excessively during evolution. We evolved so that physical stimulation translates directly into autonomic nervous system stabilization.”
“And?”
“Thanks to that, even light physical contact rapidly elevates oxytocin and serotonin secretion, which makes suppressing stress and Rampage signals far more efficient. That’s why for us, mucous membrane contact is perceived as simply ‘efficient Guiding’ — whereas…”
Kapu gave a quiet smile.
“Old humanity’s connection between those two is weaker, so they assign greater emotional significance to the same stimulus. A kiss between strangers would have been too much. Thanks to that, we got to witness a scene you’d only see in a classic romance…”
Kapu readjusted the focus on her monocular and sighed.
“Romantically speaking — full marks.”
