“To start with, you barely ever talked to me. Honestly, today’s the first time I’ve heard your voice…”
“…”
“And we were never this close, physically. Speaking of which, could you tilt your head back a little?”
I waved my hand to shoo him back, but Cha Gweonwoo didn’t budge. Guess he’s been stubborn since he was young. With no other choice, I stretched my own neck back like a giraffe.
Whether he cared or not, he narrowed his eyes, murmuring in disbelief.
“I was like that?”
Whatever he was thinking, his gaze went murky.
A jolt of fear ran through me.
Was I too blunt?
Seeing him confused, I panicked inside, but kept a straight face. Before he could think any further, I grabbed his hand.
“I’ll do a quick guiding before bed.”
I tapped the back of his hand and pattered away like a hawker at a highway rest stop trying to sell sun visors in midwinter.
“Okay, empty your mind. Best not to think about anything. Don’t let your thoughts wander somewhere weird. Empty your head, please.”
Only then did his eyes regain their sparkle.
During guiding, he stared straight at my face.
Why the hell is he looking at me like that. Why at me like that.
I swear he wouldn’t even examine fruit this carefully at the supermarket produce section. I was screaming inside.
Why are you looking at a person like that!
Maybe twenty-eight-year-old Cha reading during guiding had actually been… courtesy? A silent, do your job and go so neither of us would die of embarrassment.
Wow. Never thought I’d be reassessing Cha Gweonwoo in my lifetime. Gives me goosebumps just thinking it. That’s how much he’s driving me crazy. Why does he keep looking at me with those eyes!
I deliberately looked away, but his straight, unwavering gaze didn’t waver.
Wait a second…
Did I brush my teeth after eating? Did I wipe my mouth? Do I have toothpaste on me? Is a nose hair sticking out? Hold on—how do I usually breathe? Do my nostrils always flare this much? Does my chest rise and fall this much? And is my breathing always this loud?
Trapped in his gaze-hell, my brain filled with every stupid worry.
With my shoulders tensed and my grip tight around his hand, he finally murmured in a drowsy voice:
“Ah. This feels really good…”
He cracked his eyes open to slits, adjusted his hold on my hand, and kept marveling. Since his levels were extremely unstable, I guess it was working even better than usual.
He’d never reacted like this during guiding before. The old him was always busy glaring at me to grab tighter.
Those already bright eyes now shone glossy, like a go stone polished on sandpaper. Watching him turn my hand over this way and that with curious eyes made my heart sink.
It brought back the eyes of twenty-eight-year-old Cha—always lifted in a grim scowl like a reaper come to fetch the dead, that clouded, dead-fish stare.
Gweonwoo. Twenty-eight-year-old Gweonwoo…
Where did you lose these eyes, and how? Were you really this clear a person? Is being an esper such a dangerous job that it can strip someone’s vitality away?
I was privately grieving for one Cha while the other sat right in front of me, when—
“Guide Kim Doweon.”
A gentle voice brushed my ear.
“I’m curious.”
Still full of curiosity, he looked down at our hands, cradled together. Carefully, like something precious.
“If hands feel this good… I wonder how much better other things are.”
Other things?
I blankly replayed his words—then our eyes met. A bad feeling prickled down my spine.
***
That night, I had a truly awful nightmare.
Guide Kim Doweon…
The setting was Room 305 at the Center, where we often went. Smiling sweetly, Cha Gweonwoo clutched me and begged:
I’m curious how effective other kinds of guiding are. Please? Just once. Could you please do it just once? Your guiding is the best, okay?
Wheedling with a sly smile like a nine-tailed fox. No, no, no… I resisted, but—
If you did mucosal guiding just once, I think my memories would come back.
With him begging like that, I finally said this: Fine. You punk. Put your mouth right here. I grabbed his cheeks in both hands to go in with gusto—
—and the smiling face flipped in an instant to the twenty-eight-year-old Cha.
“Fuck!”
My heart screamed like I’d jumped from a hot bath into an ice plunge.
Frozen, I couldn’t move. He glared, my hands still on his face.
He didn’t speak, but I knew exactly what would be running through his head.
Fuck, you dare touch me?
I yanked my hands away and stumbled back for dear life—but he snatched my wrist and hauled me in one go. I fluttered like a sheet as he slammed me into his bed.
No! I can’t die like this!
I tried to roll forward and escape on the strength of my childhood taekwondo classes, but he climbed onto me as if it were nothing. Veins standing out, he wrapped his hand around my neck and spoke in a chilling voice:
Kim Doweon, you’ve learned too much about me. You’ll have to die now.
“Gasp…! Gasp!”
When I jerked up like I was having a fit, it was 4:44 a.m.
I tore the quilt I’d wrapped around my neck away and gulped for air.
“I can’t do it. Doctor, I can’t do it.”
And I called her at dawn.
Please give me back my stone axe. My stone axe was the best esper. I’ll never call my esper a dogsper again. I was an ungrateful bastard who didn’t know how good I had it. I’ve learned a great lesson from this experience: don’t complain about the esper you’re given! I actually prefer an esper who has zero interest in me. This is all The Truman Show, right? Please end it. I’m not entertaining.
She answered in a firm voice, the way you soothe a picky child over side dishes.
—Calm down, Guide Kim Doweon.
The one who lost his memories was fine, and I was the one suffering—how baffling must this be for her.
—This can be very confusing, but you need to treat Mr. Cha as comfortably as possible, as if nothing happened.
Hello? How am I supposed to be comfortable when I’m uncomfortable. That’s like standing in front of a door that says PULL, not opening, and telling me to keep pushing. Huh?
The face of the twenty-eight-year-old Cha, saying like a movie villain, “Kim Doweon, you’ve learned too much about me. You’ll have to die now,” was still vivid before my eyes.
I lowered my voice to a whisper, in case he was listening outside the door.
“What if I act all casual and later, when his memories come back, Cha Gweonwoo says he’s going to kill me, doctor?”
I called her teacher without meaning to. That’s how desperate I was. Teacher, I’m scared. Save me.
—That won’t happen, but if anything like that did occur, we’ll take responsibility and protect you.
Yesterday I got tossed around in his hands like laundry on the washer’s spin cycle. The ache all over my body like it happened yesterday is not in my head. This is definitely a prophetic dream.
—If the amnesiac state persists, both you and Esper Cha will become more confused. So please guide diligently to help his memories return quickly…
Whatever the angle, her advice was: guide diligently.
—Start mucosal guiding as soon as—
“…I’ll hang up now.”
She sounded exactly like my mom used to, who’d diagnose everything sight unseen with “That’s because you don’t listen to your mother,” whether it was my stomach, head, or knees that hurt.
Mucosal guiding—what even.
***
“You can do this. Kim Doweon, you can do this.”
Before opening the door, I took a long, deep breath.
If you think you can’t, think of the money hitting your bank account. Think of your future if you quit guiding and have nothing else lined up! You think you can make a living off music?
With my resolve screwed on tight, I stepped out—and the whole house was saturated with the savory smell of oil.
What is that smell?
Like a cat catching a whiff of fish, I drifted after it in a trance.
Maybe because I’d arm-wrestled Cha in last night’s dream—I mean, got steamrolled—I was starving, stomach stuck to my spine again.
At the table, Cha Gweonwoo sat studying a tablet with a serious face. I flinched; he heard me and turned, smiling bright as sunlight.
“Did you sleep well?”
You’ve learned too much about me. You’ll have to die now.
It was a warm morning greeting I could not reconcile with the same person who’d climbed on top of me with a face that looked capable of chewing through a root of kudzu and shouted that line.