“That place is my hideout. There’s nowhere better when I’m ditching work, so sometimes I hide in there and take a nap.”
Song Youngju spoke around a mouthful of sandwich. His words were badly muffled because he was talking while eating, but not enough to make him impossible to understand. Gyujin took a napkin and vigorously wiped the sauce from the corner of Youngju’s mouth.
“Slow down. You’re going to choke.”
He pushed a carton of orange juice toward him. Youngju gave him a grateful look and sucked noisily through the straw.
Youngju fainting right after Gyujin’s haphazard confession had taken all the wind out of the moment. Gyujin had waited until he regained consciousness, then brought him to the cafeteria. With Yoon Palsik called away for work, Gyujin explained everything that had happened so far himself.
Youngju had remained paler than a corpse throughout the entire story. Gyujin had started worrying he might faint again, so he made him eat something. Only then did some color finally return to his face.
After finishing another piece of his sandwich, Song Youngju cleared his throat.
He fidgeted with his fingers, cautiously watching Gyujin’s expression.
“So…… you really did that, Team Leader?”
Apparently unable to bring himself to say the word pregnant, Youngju settled for the vague “that” while sneaking glances at Gyujin’s stomach.
Gyujin idly stirred his own drink with the straw.
“Yeah. It just sort of happened.”
Youngju’s mouth fell open at his casual response.
He stammered and pressed a hand to his forehead.
“Holy shit…… This is insane…… Completely fucking insane…….”
It wasn’t a misunderstanding.
It wasn’t some mistake.
Yoon Gyujin really was pregnant, and Kwon Dajung was the father.
No matter how many times Youngju heard it repeated, he still couldn’t believe it. He violently mussed his own hair, then scrubbed both hands down his face.
“You know, I genuinely thought nothing else in my life could ever shock me as much as monsters appearing or people suddenly manifesting abilities. But I’m serious, hearing that earlier was the single most shocking moment of my entire life. Monsters make more sense than this. This is…… this is just…… No. Seriously, no!”
“Palsik fainted too, so…… Anyway, apparently it’s possible, just extremely unlikely. Something like a side effect of guiding dependency syndrome.”
Song Youngju muttered hollowly,
“What kind of fucked-up side effect is that……?”
Gyujin couldn’t exactly blame him for feeling that way, so he merely sipped his drink.
After agonizing over it for quite a while, Youngju slowly raised his head and looked at Gyujin.
Dark circles seemed to have appeared beneath his eyes in the span of that single conversation.
“So you’re going to have the procedure? The, uh…… the one where you terminate it?”
“I should. So don’t tell Dajung either. Don’t even act like you know anything. There’s nothing good that’ll come from him finding out.”
“No, but Team Leader, I really don’t understand. Why can’t you just tell Kwon Dajung the truth? He might be a fucking lunatic, but are you seriously worried he’d hate your baby?”
Would Kwon Dajung ever hurt Yoon Gyujin?
Absolutely not.
If he learned his own child was inside Gyujin, he was far more likely to burst into tears of joy than hate it.
“I could understand him getting pissed because you didn’t tell him you were sick, but……”
“I talked to Dajung yesterday before I decided.”
“What did you talk about?”
Gyujin silently picked up his drink.
As the orange juice steadily disappeared, Song Youngju’s nerves burned away at about the same rate. He waited anxiously for Gyujin to speak.
What he eventually heard was unbelievable.
“He thinks I slept with another Esper.”
“……What? Why? How did that even happen? Just suddenly, out of nowhere?”
The more Youngju thought about it, the more absurd it seemed.
There was no way Yoon Gyujin would ever do something like that.
Courtesy and consideration were practically ingrained in his bones. He would never do something so morally fucked.
Hell, even if Yoon Gyujin deliberately set out to meet someone else, it would probably be impossible.
It took two people to have an affair, and there wasn’t an Esper alive who didn’t know Kwon Dajung was watching Gyujin like a hawk. What kind of lunatic would dare lay a hand on him?
“Kwon Dajung might be crazy, but he’s never been paranoid about you cheating. What the hell did you two even talk about for him to end up there?”
Kwon Dajung was petty in an impressive variety of ways, but he had never particularly complained about Gyujin guiding someone else.
He knew perfectly well that Gyujin’s contact guiding with other people never went beyond a handshake. More importantly, he was absolutely certain Gyujin allowed only him anything beyond that.
In truth, it was mostly smug superiority over receiving special treatment, but either way, Dajung had never openly made an issue of Gyujin guiding other people.
So why the hell would he suddenly misunderstand something like that?
“Because he thinks I have guiding dependency syndrome. You know it usually happens when someone keeps guiding Espers whose ranks don’t match theirs. So I guess he decided I must be seeing someone else.”
“Ohhh……! So he thinks you’ve been secretly guiding another Esper behind our backs? And if you were repeatedly guiding them enough to actually get sick, he jumped to the conclusion that you must’ve been doing other stuff with them too. That’s what you mean, right?”
Looked at that way, Kwon Dajung’s reasoning did have a certain logic to it.
The circumstances were certainly misleading enough.
It just happened to be completely wrong.
“No, wait. Then that’s even more reason to tell him the truth, isn’t it? You’re not actually seeing anyone besides Kwon Dajung. Are you seriously going to just let him keep believing that?”
“I just…… don’t know. Dajung said something to me yesterday. He said he didn’t care whether the baby had my blood or not. If a child was born, he said he’d kill it with his own hands.”
Song Youngju’s mouth dropped open.
He stared at Gyujin in disbelief before demanding again,
“Kwon Dajung said that? Why the hell would he say that? Has he finally lost it completely? Are you sure you heard him right? Maybe he didn’t say he’d kill it. Maybe he said he’d feed it? Like, feed it baby food or something? You’re sure?”
“I didn’t mishear him. He threatened to kill it. And after that, even if I told him it was actually his baby, I doubt he’d believe me now. I’ve already decided to terminate the pregnancy anyway, so I think it’s better to just bury the whole thing. That’s why I want you to keep it secret too, Youngju.”
Gyujin took Song Youngju’s hand as he spoke.
Faced with the plea in Gyujin’s eyes, Youngju nodded without resistance.
How could he refuse when his Team Leader was asking him this earnestly?
Besides, if Kwon Dajung and Yoon Gyujin had fought, there was a two-hundred-percent chance it was Kwon Dajung’s fault.
Song Youngju siding with Yoon Gyujin was simply one of the natural laws of the universe, as inevitable as the sun rising in the east.
“I’m great at keeping secrets. Just trust me, Team Leader.”
At his spirited answer, Gyujin smiled faintly.
He hadn’t intended it, but somehow he had ended up gaining an ally.
Song Youngju enthusiastically clenched his fist.
“For the time being, I’ll personally escort you everywhere. If the others bother you, just tell me. Got it?”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
Gyujin vigorously ruffled Song Youngju’s hair.
Youngju’s cheeks reddened shyly, and he subtly leaned closer as though asking for more.
“But Team Leader, hasn’t your phone been vibrating for a while? Aren’t you going to answer it?”
Song Youngju pointed at Gyujin’s pocket.
At first he had thought he was imagining it, but looking closely, he could see the faint vibration.
There was no way Gyujin hadn’t noticed it.
Yet he showed no reaction.
“Leave it.”
“Why? You’re seriously not going to answer?”
Gyujin withdrew his hand and silently leaned back against the sofa.
His expression looked much the same as usual, but there was a subtle streak of stubbornness beneath it.
Song Youngju’s eyes darted sideways.
He really is pissed.
What the hell did those two say to each other for him to get like this?
No matter how unhinged Kwon Dajung was, Youngju still found it hard to believe he had actually stood in front of Yoon Gyujin and started talking about killing someone.
Sure, the bastard was crazy, but he normally had enough sense to at least pretend to behave himself around Gyujin.
Besides, Kwon Dajung was terrified to death of being hated by Yoon Gyujin.
There was no way he would casually say something that provocative.
There must’ve been some kind of misunderstanding between them.
Still, if Kwon Dajung really had run his mouth and said something that awful, then he had effectively blown up his own final lifeline with his own fucking mouth.
Knowing Yoon Gyujin, there was no chance he would change his mind halfway through after hearing something like that.
Once Gyujin decided something was a no, it stayed a no until the bitter end.
If he had decided to keep the truth from Kwon Dajung, then no matter what happened, that truth would never leave Yoon Gyujin’s mouth.
It was already too late to undo what had happened.
But leaving everything exactly as it was made Youngju uneasy too.
Whenever those two had a lovers’ quarrel, the people who ultimately suffered were everyone around them.
As their teammate, Song Youngju knew that better than anyone.
Please, just this once, let this end peacefully…….
Is that even possible?
The longer he thought about it, the more Song Youngju’s eyes gradually lost focus.
He couldn’t see the future, but this time he could picture it with perfect clarity.
An absolute shitshow.
Total chaos.
A complete fucking disaster.
A broken-family catastrophe.
And every other variation of everything going straight to hell.