His heart pounded wildly. It felt as though the world, which had never once shown him any mercy, had suddenly turned toward him with a radiant smile.
Yoon Gyujin’s child. His child.
As Kwon Dajung turned those words over and over in his mind, something hot and overwhelming surged through his chest.
He could not stay still any longer. Leaving Yoon Palsik behind in the middle of whatever he was saying, Dajung spun around and ran.
He wanted to see Yoon Gyujin right now.
There was so much he wanted to tell him. He would beg and beg again—say he was sorry for misunderstanding, sorry for making Gyujin agonize over it, promise that he would never leave him alone again. He would tell him honestly that everything he had said back then had been a lie, that if it was a child Gyujin gave birth to, he could even lay down his life for it.
Then he would hold Yoon Gyujin.
He would pull him tightly into his arms and whisper that he loved him.
Ah, how did something like this even happen?
He had been certain that Yoon Gyujin was the one and only stroke of luck his life would ever give him, and yet, like a miracle, there was suddenly one more—
“Kwon Dajung.”
Dajung stopped dead just as he reached the entrance to the hospital room. His thoughts froze as if someone had dumped ice water over his head.
Ko Hyeguk had been leaning crookedly against the corridor wall. When he noticed Dajung, he straightened. His arms were folded, and the eyes fixed on Dajung gleamed coldly.
“We need to talk.”
Hyeguk jerked his chin toward the opposite end of the hall.
Without answering, Dajung looked toward Gyujin’s room. Hyeguk immediately understood what he was thinking and shook his head as if to say, Not a chance.
“Yoon Gyujin is asleep right now. And if you refuse to cooperate, he might stay asleep forever.”
The warning came in a flat, chilling voice.
Hyeguk pulled something from his pocket. Inside the small pill bottle in his hand, yellow tablets rattled softly.
“And before you misunderstand, no, I didn’t do anything to him. It’s because the bullet that hit Yoon Gyujin just happened to be made by that person. Honestly, it feels ridiculous explaining all this in detail. You know more about abilities than I do.”
Hyeguk swept a hand through his hair and sighed. He slipped the bottle back into his pocket, then slowly folded his arms again.
“Those five people were all your former teammates, weren’t they? Four of them are dead. The only one who survived isn’t exactly doing well either... You should have known this was the kind of outcome you’d get if you kept acting like this.”
Hyeguk stared straight through him.
“I warned you, didn’t I? Dawn was never going to give up on you. You ignored me and stayed here, and now Yoon Gyujin ended up like that.”
Dajung ground his teeth.
At the murderous glare aimed at him, Hyeguk’s sigh deepened.
“So talk to me. Unless you actually want to watch Yoon Gyujin die.”
“Why should I? Couldn’t I just kill you and take it?”
Tilting his head, Dajung pointed at Hyeguk’s pocket.
If Yoon Gyujin needed it, then Dajung could simply kill Ko Hyeguk and take it from him.
Hyeguk was a Guide. No matter how capable he might be, he could never be a match for Kwon Dajung.
“No. If you kill me here, the next person to follow me is guaranteed to be Yoon Gyujin. You know what I’ve been holding back, and who I’ve been protecting him from.”
Hyeguk rubbed between his brows like a man faced with an unbearable headache. Exhaustion clung to every movement he made.
When he spoke again, it sounded less like a threat and more like pleading.
“So please. Just talk to me. Let Yoon Gyujin live, and let me live too.”
***
Now you’re alone.
Gyujin was very familiar with those words.
He had lost his parents so young he could barely remember them and had been passed from one relative’s house to another. Then he had gone to school, manifested as a Guide, and entered the Center.
When he looked back over the path his life had taken, Yoon Gyujin had been alone at nearly every moment.
The reality he encountered after becoming a Guide only painted his world in even deeper shades of gray.
Over a span of time that could be called short or long depending on how one looked at it, countless Espers passed through his life.
When someone died, another person stepped into the empty space they left behind, and the exhausting cycle of existence repeated itself again and again.
Sometimes, it made him unbearably sad.
Even then, Gyujin had been alone.
Lonely because he was alone.
Sad because he was alone.
But that belief shattered completely when he met nineteen-year-old Kwon Dajung.
“Life is fucking lived alone. What kind of spoiled bullshit are you talking about?”
Dajung’s utterly unfiltered rebuke made Gyujin momentarily forget that he was in the middle of guiding him.
Despite his insolent attitude, nineteen-year-old Dajung had even buttoned his school uniform neatly all the way up to the tie. He launched into a full-fledged attack on Gyujin.
“Maybe the refined and noble Guide Yoon Gyujin doesn’t know this, but people live their lives alone. Even if it fucking sucks, you grit your teeth and keep going. What else are you expecting? So what if you’re alone? What, are you going to whine that you don’t want to die alone and have someone buried alive beside you when you go?”
Dajung snapped viciously at him and squeezed Gyujin’s hand tighter.
Judging by the fact that he still refused to let go of the hand they were holding even while spitting knives with every word, he apparently intended for Gyujin to keep guiding him.
“That’s how you fuck up your life, depending on people like that. Do you seriously want to spend your whole life with someone else holding your leash? I thought you had something important to say, and instead you’re sitting here drowning in pointless self-pity.”
Hearing a nineteen-year-old lecture him on the truths of life, Gyujin finally burst out laughing.
Apparently displeased that Gyujin was doing nothing but laugh, Dajung raised an eyebrow.
“Don’t laugh at me. You’re the delicate-lily type, so I’m graciously educating you.”
“So you’re saying I look like a lily? That’s a new compliment. No one’s ever told me that before.”
At the shameless reply, Dajung visibly trembled.
“Fuck! It wasn’t a compliment, so stop getting the wrong idea! Are you insane? Tone down the fucking ego, seriously!”
Dajung kept barking at him for quite a while after that.
Yet no matter how angry he became, Gyujin only found him adorable.
Dajung would carefully say “Guide Yoon Gyujin” every single time, throwing up a wall between them, but after exchanging only a few words, he would expose what was really going on inside him.
Kwon Dajung could spit out nine cruel things and then erase all of them with one single adorable act.
Maybe that was why.
Other people said Kwon Dajung was frightening and difficult to be around, but Gyujin could never agree.
No matter how viciously a yapping puppy misbehaved, it was still a puppy.
Dajung got angry. He threw tantrums. Sometimes he became violent.
But none of that was what he truly meant.
Other people might misunderstand him, but Gyujin knew.
And once Gyujin understood someone, forgiving them came easily.
In that sense, Yoon Gyujin forgave everything about Kwon Dajung far too easily.
Perhaps that was a talent.
Or perhaps, seen another way, it was fate.
No matter what Kwon Dajung did wrong, Yoon Gyujin had no choice but to accept him.
Because a bond forged like fate would remain binding in the past, the present, and the future.
Even if, in the end, Kwon Dajung betrayed him and destroyed him.
“Gyujin.”
Gyujin’s eyes snapped open through the haze.
His thoughts, still unformed, tangled chaotically together. His senses swayed between reality and unreality before very slowly settling back into place.
Gyujin stared blankly around him.
It took him a long time just to remember where he was, what he had been doing, and why his body felt so unbearably heavy.
Once he realized he was in a hospital room, his memories began returning in sequence.
They had gone out on an operation.
They had been attacked.
Then he had been taken away in an ambulance.
Hadn’t he?
Gyujin reflexively reached toward his side.
Before he could even check the wound, someone seized his wrist.
“Feeling more awake?”
Gyujin turned toward the familiar voice.
When he recognized the person sitting there, he asked in a somewhat dazed voice,
“Why are you two...?”
Kwon Dajung and Ko Hyeguk were standing side by side at the edge of his bed, staring at him.
The sight was so unfamiliar, so awkward, that Gyujin briefly wondered whether he had opened his eyes only to find himself inside a dream.
That was how bizarre the combination was.
Both Kwon Dajung and Ko Hyeguk were precious to him.
But there was no universe in which he could claim, even as empty flattery, that the two of them got along.
For reasons Gyujin did not understand, Dajung disliked Hyeguk, while Hyeguk was deeply uncomfortable around Dajung.
Getting the two of them together should have required deliberate effort, and even then it might not have worked.
Yet here they were, together all on their own.
There’s no way.
Confusion came before happiness.
“Want some water? Your mouth feels dry, doesn’t it?”
Hyeguk held out a bottle of water along with the vaguely worded question.
Before Gyujin could take it, Dajung snatched it away in an instant.
Then, as mercilessly as if he had been handed a bottle of poison instead of water, he tossed it straight into the trash.
A sharp silence followed.
Hyeguk let out a quiet sigh.
“What a fucking personality...”
Gyujin forgot all about his pain as he glanced uneasily between them.
They definitely don’t look happy to be standing together. So how did this happen?
“Well, I guess you can get your own water... Anyway, I’ve seen that you’re awake, so I’m leaving. And Kwon Dajung, watch yourself on the way home tonight.”
Whether it was concern or a curse was impossible to tell.
With that, Hyeguk immediately turned to leave.
Gyujin hurriedly tried to sit up, but Dajung quickly stopped him.
Only after confirming that Hyeguk had stepped out and shut the door behind him did Dajung speak.
“You shouldn’t overdo it when you’re not the only one your body has to worry about.”
“...What?”
Gyujin froze halfway through sitting up.
Kwon Dajung’s eyes locked onto him.
“You’re going to terminate the pregnancy, aren’t you?”