I hastily covered his mouth and blurted out in a panic.
“W-w-w-what…! What are you saying that will make people misunderstand! You fell asleep while being guided and I just left, that’s all!”
“Misunderstand? I only told the truth.”
Vasily’s lips curled up playfully.
Ha… He’s obviously doing it on purpose. Clenching my teeth as I pictured the ridiculous rumors that would spread, I asked through my molars.
“So, what did you come here for?”
“To ask for guiding.”
“You need guiding again?”
“I spent the whole weekend running around Gates.”
“Is your assistant Guide still busy?”
Vasily answered with a quiet smile. He still avoided the topic whenever I brought up the assistant Guide.
“I already put in a designated guiding request, so check it.”
I eyed him suspiciously, turned on my computer, and checked the work system. One unchecked notification: There is a designated guiding request…
“It’s real…”
Seeing Vasily’s name listed as the applicant, I let out a shallow sigh at the monitor.
Mondays have more people waiting for guiding than usual, so Temporary Guiding runs nonstop without breaks. If I step out, someone else has to cover my share, and it felt like I was making my teammates even busier because of me.
“I’ll step out for a bit. Sorry for leaving my seat when it’s busy.”
“No, Gidam. Designated guiding is our job too.”
I exchanged farewells with Jo Wooyeon and turned, then halted when I caught a flash of frost in a pair of eyes. To others, he probably looked the same as always, but having lived closest to him for six years, I knew. That was a face put out by something.
Out in the hallway, I shot him a sidelong glance and gauged his mood again. He still didn’t look great, but after leaving the office he seemed a little better than before.
Ha, even after coming back to the past I have to tiptoe around Vasily’s mood. Lamenting my wretched lot, I said to him,
“Please refrain from coming to the office. You’re a disturbance to others.”
“Then will you give me your number? It’s more convenient to call.”
“Don’t contact me either. You can just put in a designated guiding request.”
“How coldhearted…”
If he wanted to, someone like Vasily could easily dig up a mere Guide’s number with his authority. Even so, the reason I wouldn’t give it to him was because he’d obviously use it as an excuse to contact me every day.
“So, where are we doing today’s guiding?”
“How about my private room? It’s better than a cramped guiding room.”
“Hm… The sofa there is comfortable, so let’s go to your private room, Esper.”
The venue was decided unanimously.
Vasily and I walked in silence. His private room was across from the Guide Association, at the Esper Association. We took a quiet back route with little foot traffic, and soon reached his room.
Thankfully, the heater’s off today. Relieved that I wouldn’t have to sweat through it like yesterday, I stepped inside.
We started guiding as usual, and not long after I asked him,
“Esper Vasily.”
“Why are you calling me?”
“Why aren’t you sleeping today?”
“Hm?”
“You’ve been falling asleep every time you get guided lately.”
That was true. Recently, as soon as guiding started, Vasily would sleep so deeply he wouldn’t notice if someone carried him off, but today he didn’t even look drowsy. Since I’d come along expecting him to nod off quickly, this was an unwelcome development.
“…Yes, I did.”
He agreed readily, as if he remembered he’d been dozing off.
“You must be tired from going to Gates, so don’t mind me and go ahead and sleep.”
I put on a kind voice as if I were being considerate. Honestly, I wanted to tell him to stop pointlessly staying awake and just sleep already, but if I said that, he’d only force his eyes open harder.
It was uncomfortable when he was awake. Even without any conversation, the fact that he could sense my tiniest movements and breaths felt prickly.
After a stretch of silence, Vasily spoke first.
“I have insomnia.”
His tone tossed the words out lightly, like it was nothing, but having lived beside him for six years, I knew full well his insomnia wasn’t something to brush aside.
Because of his insane sensitivity, Vasily didn’t fall asleep easily. Sometimes, feeling movement at dawn, I’d go out to the living room and run into him sitting on the sofa, eyes like bare blades flashing in air gone cold as ice. The longer his sleepless nights stretched, the rougher he became toward me, so I couldn’t just ignore it.
Even he, though, did fall asleep on rare occasions.
It was when he’d emptied all the cold inside his body against monsters in a high-grade Gate, then came out and got guiding from me. From my perspective, it wasn’t guiding so much as one-sided torture… After days of that kind of guiding, I’d pass out—and when I opened my eyes, Vasily would be asleep beside me.
Lately, he’d been dozing off even during simple guiding, so I thought he was fine. From what he said, he did have insomnia, but if he could fall asleep easily, then at least it wasn’t as severe as in the future.
“For someone with insomnia, you sleep awfully well.”
“Maybe because I got guided—sleep finally came for the first time in a while.”
I raised an eyebrow. With the suppression chip, proper guiding shouldn’t be possible. And he falls asleep from just that? Even if his insomnia had eased, it didn’t make sense.
I kept guiding a little longer, but he still showed no sign of sleep. It shouldn’t be the case, but if he was forcing himself to stay awake, I’d better nudge him.
“If you’re sleepy, you can sleep.”
“I don’t know—like I said, I’ve got insomnia. If the guiding were a bit stronger, I feel like I could doze off…”
Vasily trailed off. I narrowed my eyes at him. So he meant the guiding was too weak for him to get sleepy.
Can’t be helped. Guiding wouldn’t truly work anyway, but I decided to maximize contact.
I slid my palm over the back of Vasily’s hand lying still. It had been a while since we’d touched. It was only the back of his hand, but the moment I felt that ice-cold skin, goosebumps crawled over me. Usually I guided through layers of clothing; with skin-to-skin contact, he seemed quite pleased.
“What’s gotten into you, being so proactive about guiding today?”
“I’m not. You’re imagining things.”
“Oh my, I’ll have to hit more Gates, then. That way Guide Kwon Gidam will put some thought into guiding me.”
“Just this once. There won’t be a next time, so don’t try anything stupid.”
“My, my…”
He let out a light sigh. Then, as if he’d pretend not to notice my true intent, he quietly accepted the guiding.
Ice-cold skin. A body temperature that would never warm felt inhuman, and it repulsed me. Enduring the cold flowing through our hands, I kept going.
Despite all my effort, Vasily didn’t fall asleep in the end.
***
I went to the Guide Association for work as usual today. I headed toward a guiding room to wait for the flood of clients that would soon arrive, when someone blocked my way.
“Guide Kwon Gidam.”
Who? Judging by the business attire, he didn’t look like an Esper; he seemed to be Association staff.
“What is it?”
“The Executive Office has called for you. Please come with me.”
“The Executive Office?”
Startling news for the morning. Without even hearing the exact reason, I followed the staffer for now.
The place we reached wasn’t an ordinary conference room, but the exclusive meeting room used by Association executives. I sat there all alone, sweating bullets.
Three executives sat across from me. As their eyes bored into me like they were inspecting something, my mind raced nonstop.
It’s because of Vasily, of course. I wanted to march straight to him and demand what the hell he’d done. But staff stood blocking the exit, watching my every move. They were keeping an eye on me to make sure I didn’t try anything funny; there’d be no escape.
Damn it, Vasily. This is all your fault. What the hell did you do that they’re acting like they’re going to interrogate a mere C-class Guide?
“Guide Kwon Gidam, don’t be nervous. Just answer our questions truthfully.”
“…Yes.”
“Is it true that Esper Vasily recently filed designated guiding requests for you?”
“Yes. That’s correct.”
When I answered meekly, the executives stirred. I quietly cried invisible tears. Of course it was because of Vasily. Looked like the designated requests he’d been submitting day after day had finally been noticed.
“A 4 percent match rate—low…”
One of them murmured while staring at the document in front of him. Not missing that line, I quickly brightened and lifted my head.