[169]
Chris was tense.
He wanted to run away from this place, wanted to hide.
Above all, he wanted to lie.
“They tried to brainwash me,” Chris said honestly instead.
“Espers become vulnerable to mental attacks when their Guide is dead or critically injured.”
Yuri remained silent.
Chris tried to read Yuri’s thoughts from that quiet gaze, but with little success.
He continued speaking.
“Furthermore, they said I was some kind of key.”
“Key?”
“It seems they need me to open an ancient ruin… or research facility in the frozen wasteland.”
This was clearly connected to Chris’s past before meeting Yuri.
Nevertheless, Chris didn’t look particularly curious.
He was simply relaying the information he had acquired at face value.
Yuri, who had been staring at Chris, suddenly spoke.
“You’re absorbing guiding energy faster than usual.”
“…Yes.”
“Are you hurt, Chris?”
Yuri’s hand, working its way through Chris’s hair, pulled him closer.
“Did they? Harm you?”
His purple eyes were burning brightly.
“…I’m fine. It’s true I took a hit, but I’m in perfect condition now.”
No sooner had he finished speaking than he regretted it.
He felt he shouldn’t have added that last part.
As Chris anxiously watched for Yuri’s reaction, he tensed his shoulders at Yuri’s short sigh.
“Alright. I understand.”
But unexpectedly, the reprimand or anger he anticipated didn’t come.
While Chris was blinking in surprise at this unexpected situation, Yuri pulled back his blanket and gestured.
“Come in.”
“…Pardon?”
“Lie down beside me.”
As if entranced, Chris crawled onto the bed.
The mattress creaked under the weight of the two men.
Chris, unconsciously tense, swallowed hard. Though he never paid much attention to this sound during sex, he couldn’t understand why it now sounded so clear.
As he carefully lay down next to Yuri, he saw the vivid purple eyes close by. Yuri extended his arm and wrapped it around Chris’s waist.
“It seems like we should do proper guiding, but for now, we’re both patients.”
It was a dry joke without any humor. Chris didn’t laugh, but he felt his stiff body relax a little.
“…Aren’t you angry?”
“You did what you had to do, Chris.”
Apart from the hand around his waist, Yuri’s other hand was playing with Chris’s platinum hair.
“I was the one who wasn’t there.”
Was it his imagination that those words, uttered in a low voice, sounded like an apology?
Chris kept his mouth shut.
He realized anew that Yuri was the most severe on himself.
He had never been affectionate in the way others were. Honestly, Chris had never expected Yuri to be even slightly gentler.
Still, the guiding energy transmitted through their touching skin was gentle and soft. It felt like he would have a very peaceful dream if he closed his eyes now.
But Chris forced his eyelids to stay open, fighting off drowsiness.
He wanted to look at Yuri, lying across from him, for as long as possible.
“Go to sleep now. No matter how much you stare, I don’t intend to do anything more.”
“…I wasn’t going to urge you either.”
Yuri chuckled at those words.
Chris could almost hear a whispered “As if.”
He didn’t mind.
Yuri had just woken up. The fact that Jessica had left suggested he was on the road to recovery.
But for Chris, an Esper, the pace seemed too slow.
‘It’s not the first time Yuri’s been shot right in front of me.’
During the long struggle in the winter continent, assassination attempts targeting Yuri were frequent.
However, it had never been this dangerous before.
‘We let our guard down too much.’
Looking back, they seemed to have become careless.
In the past, didn’t Yuri always move around with an invisible veil in case of attacks?
They had been too successful lately.
There were too many ‘ifs.’ It was fortunate they survived by chance. But Chris shouldn’t expect such luck a second time.
Because he had something to protect.
‘I’ll think about it when I wake up in the morning.’
But his complicated mind wouldn’t even allow that.
Despite trying to sleep with his eyes closed, he remained awake for a long time.
Chris lay stiff as a stone, unable to actually fall asleep.
He was too conscious of the person lying across from him to turn over.
At every moment, he was aware of the feeling of the sheets wrapping around his legs, the breathing felt so close it almost touched him.
Yuri also couldn’t fall asleep while holding his breath.
Even just by listening to the regular repetition of inhalation and exhalation, one could tell he was awake.
Yuri probably knew Chris was awake too.
How long did this standoff, which wasn’t really a standoff, continue?
It was Yuri who first revealed he was awake.
“…Go to sleep now.”
A low voice emanated. Though it didn’t sound sleepy, it was deeper than usual.
“I can’t fall asleep.”
Yuri was silent for a while.
Opening his eyes, Chris saw purple eyes looking at him.
“Why. Does that key thing bother you?”
Surprised by the unexpected question, Chris felt confused.
In fact, he hadn’t given much thought to the “key” statement.
But he sensed that Yuri was more conscious of it.
‘Otherwise, why would he bring up that “key” topic first?’
“Does it bother you, Yuri?”
An S-class Esper whose birthplace and source of such strong power nobody knew.
He had no memories and could barely remember his own name.
While Chris might accept it as it was, Yuri might find it unsettling.
He had been an ordinary human.
Chris was an Esper. One outside the norms.
For Yuri, Chris would always have been an outsider. An uninvited guest who barged into his life.
A mangy dog he had to accept because there was no way to drive him away.
Moreover, Yuri despised Espers. That much was Rosenhauser’s fault.
The problem was that Chris was like a time bomb that could go off at any moment.
How did Yuri feel as he reluctantly provided guiding to an Esper on the brink of going berserk?
‘What kind of face did Yuri make back then?’
It would be nice if he could recall at least that much. But no matter how much he searched his mind, he couldn’t remember.
And now, to make matters worse, his roots might be in ancient times.
If the words of Kalmia, the Thorns Order Esper, were to be believed.
‘Perhaps what others called a monster might be the truth.’
Chris thought somewhat indifferently.
“It does bother me,” Yuri answered in a low tone.
“Because it means you might have a past.”
Chris tilted his head.
“Do I need such a thing?”
“You will need it.”
Yuri whispered.
“Because it’ll allow you to live without me.”
Chris answered without hesitation.
“Then I don’t need it.”
Just as winter consists of bitter cold, blizzards, and a muffled silence,
Chris consisted of Yuri.
Having nothing, he was empty. He decided to fill that space with what he loved most.
Everything else might be forgotten and distorted, but the emotions he felt upon meeting Yuri were real.
That’s how Chris anchored himself in the winter sea.
“Don’t talk nonsense.”
Yuri took a small deep breath.
“…I’m not telling you to leave. I’m just asking you to think about it once. What were you like in the times before me, and how did you live?”
Yuri’s fingers slowly caressed Chris’s hair.
“That’s what you need to know.”
“I don’t quite understand what you mean.”
“Without me. What are you?”
The man whispered with an expressionless face.
“A dog without an owner? An Esper without a leash?”
Yuri’s whispers continued.
“Will you still be alive after I die?”
Chris thought of Susanna. She didn’t look particularly unhappy, but she didn’t look happy either.
Life doesn’t necessarily have to progress in one direction.
But Chris found it difficult to imagine himself living without Yuri.
“Why do I need to make such an assumption?”
It was an uncharacteristically defiant tone.
“It’s important. Because you don’t make decisions that exclude ‘me’.”
He had never tried to make such decisions.
“If you don’t understand. Think of it as an order.”
“I refuse.”
Chris reached out and embraced Yuri.
Since Yuri was already holding him with one arm, it felt like they were embracing each other.
“It’s already enough… enough.”
Chris curled up tightly.
In the instant Yuri fell with the gunshot, how many countless thoughts had flashed and faded away?
If someone were to open his chest, they would probably find a heart burnt black.
For the first time, Chris resented Yuri for giving such an order.
At that moment, Yuri grabbed the wrist of Chris, who was holding him tightly.
Though Chris initially resisted, he eventually surrendered his hand to Yuri.
Yuri brought Chris’s hand to his chest.
Over the bandaged area.
Chris, who had unconsciously tensed up, felt Yuri’s hand overlapping his own.
“Here. In the moment when I felt a sensation as if a flame had pierced through me, I thought, thank goodness.”
“The position wasn’t bad,” Yuri muttered as if talking to himself.
Chris kept his mouth firmly shut.
For the first time, he hated Yuri for saying such things in front of him.
Because it was too painful to endure without thinking such thoughts.
“You know, Chris, I wasn’t someone who particularly feared death.”
There were times when he even thought he wanted to take a very long rest.
Yuri deliberately didn’t voice that part.
“…Yuri.”
Chris opened his mouth.
It seemed like it would be less painful to cut open his chest with a knife than to hear these words.
“So, there was another reason why I thought I should live even after my revenge was complete.”
Yuri gazed silently at Chris.
He had been deceiving himself all along, but no matter how he thought about it, there was only one reason.
It had always been just one.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
