‘Where could I find Do In-ho?’
After some thought, Ho-eun headed straight to the cafeteria without hesitation. The company cafeteria served breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and operated until 10 p.m. Thinking like the Kwon Ho-eun he was, he figured that since Do In-ho was human too, he would definitely show up here eventually.
He stopped by his dorm to grab his laptop, then made his way to the cafeteria. Taking a seat where the entrance was clearly visible, he spent his time organizing notes on today’s training and the conversation he’d had with Hosoo, occasionally glancing toward the entrance.
But Do In-ho didn’t show up, not even by the time the cafeteria closed at 10.
“A Korean skipping a meal? Unthinkable.”
Was he sick or something? For Ho-eun, the idea of skipping a meal was simply beyond comprehension.
Just as he was starting to wonder if something was physically wrong, he noticed something strange—there were noticeably few people wearing black employee badges coming into the cafeteria.
‘Do espers not eat much?’
Taste is one of the five human senses. Maybe espers’ heightened sense of taste made eating food uncomfortable. Even so—this is Korea, and meals are practically sacred here.
“It’s Wednesday today, and the internship training ends next Friday. I’ll probably run into him at the cafeteria sometime this week.”
There were still no nutrient pills available that could replace full meals, so he decided the best move was to keep hanging around the cafeteria. He made up his mind to come back tomorrow.
***
After returning to his dorm, taking a shower, and lying in bed, instead of sleep, anxiety began to creep in.
Ho-eun still didn’t understand what it truly meant to be a Guide. Sure, he was learning the theory, but trying to cram all these entirely new concepts into his head felt impossible.
He’d been told he was unconsciously performing Broadcast Guiding, even though he felt no different than usual. If it had some visible form, he might be able to tell whether he was doing it right—but without any tangible signs, there was no way to know.
“Guess I’ll just reread the manual.”
He quickly flipped through The Sensible Guide Life, which he had left on the bedside table. While it summarized what he’d learned in training, the densely packed text at the beginning was too much, and he skimmed past it in seconds.
At the very end was a chapter on sexual education—The Sensible Sex Life.
The guide outlined step-by-step contact, starting from holding hands and moving onward to more intimate actions. The final chapter, which covered penetrative acts, was a bit unusual.
The idea that a Guide and an Esper might have to go beyond what lovers typically do made Ho-eun want to look away. But what stood out even more was how the last stage deviated from the usual assumptions—there were instructions for women leading men, women with women, men with men, all sorts of gender combinations.
“The person who made this guide clearly doesn’t believe in stereotypes.”
Worried someone might see, he shut the book quickly. Penetrative acts were described as the highest tier of direct Guiding. The instructor had said that progressing all the way to that point was entirely the Guide’s choice—if they didn’t want to, even a kiss, the stage right before that, was considered sufficient for Guiding.
He sighed at the thought—after all this effort to land a job at the corporation, was his main duty really going to be fondling espers?
Just before falling asleep, Ho-eun decided to check YouTube, where notifications had been piling up. He’d been putting it off, anticipating that he’d need to mentally prepare himself.
“Is this a bug or something?”
Ho-eun had never had a video break a thousand views before, so the number 400,000 made him rub his eyes in disbelief. Apparently, the last video he uploaded had somehow gotten picked up by YouTube’s mysterious algorithm.
“What the hell is going on??”
He’d thought maybe just the view count had exploded, but there were also hundreds of comment notifications.
‘Did I mess up somehow?’
A wave of dread crept over him as he clicked into the comments—but to his surprise, most of them were love-struck reactions.
“So vlogs are what’s hot these days.”
Unable to stop himself from grinning, Ho-eun scrolled quickly through the comments.
[HiddenStrength ▶5:27 What?! Show your face more. Why would you only give us one second of that face!!!!]
[Hi ▶How dare you hypnotize us like that and then drop your last video??? Rage quitting!]
[kkk ▶Your eating habits are just like mine, but what’s with that body? How do you eat so much and still look that fit?]
[BreadBoy ▶Congrats on the new job ^^. Your videos really brought me a lot of comfort—gonna miss them. Please come back once in a while after you settle in. I’ll be waiting.]
Reading through the comments, he quickly figured out the reason. He must’ve messed up during the final edit and left in a shot of his face.
It was only about a second, but the fact that so many comments were about his looks meant that clip must’ve turned out pretty well.
Like he always did, Ho-eun gave a heart to BreadBoy’s comment—the first subscriber to his channel and someone who’d commented on every video.
‘I’m going to miss it too, BreadBoy.’
After replying, he tossed his phone onto the bed.
“Ugh… Even if I’m getting popular now, what’s the point if I can’t upload videos anymore?”
He’d always planned to stay anonymous until he made it big as a YouTuber. He never imagined his face would be revealed this way—and that the video would blow up because of it.
Since his parents still didn’t know about his channel, he reached to delete the video—but froze.
“Well, it’s the last one anyway…”
Now that he had a real job, it wouldn’t be a problem even if his parents found out.
“Guess I should just go to sleep.”
***
Tossing and turning all night, Ho-eun woke with a haggard face.
‘It’s only Thursday? Why do weekdays feel endless?’
He hadn’t even been employed for a full week, but he was already settling into the life of a working adult.
Unlike his foggy mind, his body woke dutifully at 6 a.m. After a quick wash and a change into his training clothes, Ho-eun left his dorm to get in his morning workout, just like the day before.
“?!!”
As soon as he opened the front door, a sharp metallic stench struck his nose, and he winced instinctively.
His sense of smell caught it first—a fishy tang of iron. Then his eyes confirmed what his nose had warned: blood. Red smeared across the hallway floor.
A chill swept over him at the sight of so much blood—enough that it could only have come from a human.
‘What the hell is this? Am I still half-asleep?’
A morning at the dorm shouldn’t be drenched in blood. It made no sense.
He forced his feet to move, hesitating as he noticed the door to the neighboring unit was ajar.
‘Surely this isn’t a murder… If not, then someone in that unit must be hurt?’
But if they were injured, why come home instead of going to the hospital? That didn’t make sense either. In movies, the overly curious character always dies first in situations like this. Ho-eun squeezed his eyes shut in frustration and groaned.
“Haa…”
The open door seemed to lure him in, silently beckoning him forward. Meanwhile, the intensifying scent of blood screamed for him to stay away.
He gnawed on his lip, torn. Eventually, he made up his mind and stepped inside.
Cautiously entering, he saw a trail of blood leading from the entryway to what looked like the master bedroom. From inside, ragged breathing could be heard.
‘They’re still breathing. That means they’re alive.’
Once he grasped the situation, Ho-eun rushed toward the room without hesitation, even forgetting to take off his sneakers.
The stench of blood made his heart race. His breaths grew erratic. There was no way someone could be okay after losing that much blood—but even so, he hoped the person inside was still alright.
BANG!
When he threw open the door, the first thing he saw were medicine bottles scattered across the floor.
“Medicine? Don’t tell me he was trying to survive on these?”
The floor was soaked in even more blood than the hallway. The white bedsheets wrapped around the man lying on the bed were so stained that their original color was unrecognizable.
The sheer volume of blood loss pointed to something critical—this had to be severe hemorrhaging.
As Ho-eun approached the man, he stepped on a few of the scattered pills.
Crack, crunch—soft but distinct, the sounds of the pills breaking underfoot echoed in his ears, sending a chill down his spine.
“Hey!”
He pulled back the bloodstained sheet. The man was dressed in black, which made the injury hard to spot at first. But once the shirt was lifted, the damp fabric clung with blood around his abdomen.
Lifting the shirt further, Ho-eun found a faint wound on the man’s stomach—like a scratch from something sharp.
‘How could a wound this small cause so much bleeding?’
With hands trembling, he let go of the shirt. A cold sweat ran down his back.
“Are you alright?”
He shook the man by the shoulder. The tightly shut eyelids fluttered, and the man’s eyes slowly opened.
“……!!”
His golden-amber eyes—like looking into a crystalized drop of sunlight—caught Ho-eun’s gaze, unwilling to let go.
It was Do In-ho. The very person he had been searching for so desperately now looked back at him with unfocused eyes.
“Do In-ho…?”
He’d wanted to find him, yes, but not like this. In-ho’s eyelids twitched again before sliding shut. It must have been a moment of unconscious reflex.
Ho-eun lifted his shirt again to examine the wound. But now there was no trace of an injury—just firm, well-toned abs.
“His body’s… impressive…”
Ho-eun’s hand slowly glided over the abdominal muscles, only to catch himself in the act and slap his own cheek hard.
SMACK.
The sound echoed through the room.
He glared at the unconscious man, furious with himself.
‘Seriously? Now? What’s wrong with you?’
Sure, it had been indulgent, but even now, the skin felt completely smooth. No sign of any wound, anywhere.
“This doesn’t make sense.”
From the hallway to the soaked bed, there was enough blood to paint a horror scene, but not a single injury remained.
Ho-eun began checking In-ho’s body more thoroughly—not for pleasure this time, but to figure out where all the blood had come from.
“It definitely looked like abdominal bleeding.”
“He’s an Esper. Self-healing ability.”
“!!”
A voice from behind made Ho-eun jump and whirl around with wide, startled eyes. He hadn’t sensed anyone else in the room, which made the sudden voice all the more jarring.
“We meet again.”
Following the sound, his eyes landed on Hosoo—the same man he’d seen yesterday by the vending machine, now radiantly gorgeous as ever, greeting him with a smile.
The wing-shaped earring Hosoo wore sparkled faintly. That had to be the source of his teleportation ability—how else could he have entered the room without a sound?
“Stupid guy tried to handle it with pills.”
Hosoo picked up the fallen medicine bottle and placed it on the shelf next to the bed.
Ho-eun, still guarding Do In-ho instinctively, watched Hosoo’s every movement.
“They’re substitute pills for Guiding.”
“Huh?”
“He’s surviving off those because he doesn’t have anyone to guide him.”
“……!!”
“No need to look so shocked. I told you, unless their Ability Core is damaged, Espers don’t die. Even if they bleed like this, they’ll recover soon thanks to their self-healing.”
“So… In-ho will be okay?”
“This idiot’s self-healing isn’t functioning properly because he hasn’t received proper Guiding. He just needs some sleep to fix any external damage. The real issue’s internal.”
“I-Inside…?”
Ho-eun’s hesitant voice, clearly struggling to keep up, made Hosoo frown.
“You slipped in here like a sneaky little cat, so I figured you were planning to do some black-market Guiding or something.”
Hosoo took a step forward and tilted Ho-eun’s chin up with a finger.
“But it turns out… you’re just a curious little kitten, huh?”
