Instead of murderous intent, a name that had been buried deep in the corner of his mind beneath layers of dust slowly floated to the surface.
Choi Tae-hoon.
Ji Gwan-young instinctively knew that the owner of that painfully common name was the man standing in front of him. He was also certain that ‘Choi Tae-hoon’ was a Guide. That certainty only became stronger the moment they clasped hands.
The instant their hands touched, ‘Choi Tae-hoon’ reacted with a low groan.
Because of that, Tae-hoon thought afterward that Ji Gwan-young must have found him strange, but in truth, Gwan-young himself hadn’t had the luxury to think about anything else.
The moment he held that long, elegant hand, everything in his vision changed completely from what it had been before. The world, which had always looked like nothing more than fragmented data, suddenly surged to life as scenery filled with meaning and substance.
It was the ordinary world he was seeing again for the first time since Awakening as an Esper at twenty-one.
Every nerve in his body focused entirely on the person who had breathed life back into him.
Instinctively, Ji Gwan-young locked eyes with Choi Tae-hoon, who sat only a few steps away, and listened closely to everything he could perceive about him. Even the sound of the man’s heartbeat—faster than that of an average adult male—was pleasing to hear.
And the way he vanished in a fluster immediately after receiving the autograph and shaking hands, almost like someone who’d been set on fire, somehow gave Ji Gwan-young the certainty that his own name had appeared on Tae-hoon’s body as well.
The moment the Esper arrived back at his mansion, he tossed his coat aside carelessly and connected to the network.
To buy information brokers.
He needed everything about ‘Choi Tae-hoon.’
Desperately enough to seem obsessive, he gathered information on Tae-hoon. Accessing the records inside the National Esper-Guide Research Center was difficult since they were heavily protected by information-type Espers working there, but learning everything else was easy enough.
Within just three days, he had uncovered the rough outline of the kind of life Choi Tae-hoon had lived and the values he’d grown up with. Gwan-young slowly reread the top line of the report in his hands as though engraving it into himself.
‘Eldest of six siblings. Twenty-eight years old. Awakened as a Guide at age five. No matched Esper.’
That was fortunate.
If Choi Tae-hoon had already been guiding someone else, Ji Gwan-young would have gladly killed that Esper. At least this meant the difficult life Tae-hoon had endured had finally gained some value.
The monster waited for the right moment to approach the Guide he had found.
He could have approached him immediately, but one detail bothered him: Choi Tae-hoon had spent years undergoing Guide matching tests while rejecting the life of a Guide.
No need to provoke pointless rejection first.
The Esper disguised the fear he himself didn’t recognize—the fear of being abandoned by his Guide—and interpreted it that way instead. His waiting resembled a predator carefully observing its prey, waiting for the moment it let its guard down.
During that time, he also heard something interesting.
Choi Tae-hoon had discovered that the name engraved on his body was Ji Gwan-young’s.
Of course, he had also learned that Tae-hoon didn’t realize it was that Ji Gwan-young and was instead running around investigating completely unrelated people with the same name.
It was cute.
But at the same time, irritating.
Surely, just as Ji Gwan-young had felt that violent stirring, Choi Tae-hoon must have sensed something strange when they met too. No matter how ordinarily he’d lived, there was no way he wouldn’t notice.
Ji Gwan-young grabbed random Guides to replace ‘Choi Tae-hoon’ and fucked them more violently than before. But it did nothing for him. Once an Esper had already come into contact with their true Guide, partners with mediocre compatibility rates only left behind an unbearable thirst.
And just as Ji Gwan-young was slowly approaching his limit, it happened.
An Esper rampage erupted in the middle of Gangnam.
That day, Choi Tae-hoon had simply gone out briefly to meet a friend.
It was the kind of perfectly ordinary day anyone would believe without question was no different from any other.
But that belief shattered completely the moment a massive building split in half before his eyes and collapsed, sending chunks of concrete and twisted steel pipes raining down from above.
Only a few seconds were enough to turn everyday life into hell.
The artificially created fog spread by the Esper completely blocked visibility, while foul odors began rising from everywhere. Loud sirens and broadcasts urging surrender echoed through the area, but they offered no comfort whatsoever to people paralyzed by endless terror.
Only another Esper could stop an Esper who had gone berserk.
Judging by the scale of the attack, ordinary high-rank Espers wouldn’t even dare approach. The rescue teams clearly hadn’t arrived yet. Espers were still human, after all, and there were several incidents they hated being dispatched to more than anything.
One of them was the scene of an Esper rampage caused by losing their Guide.
A fight where reason and logic no longer worked—a battle of raw power against raw power—carried enormous risks. Most people outright refused to be deployed into situations like that.
No further explanation was needed.
For the first time in his life, Choi Tae-hoon’s teeth chattered from sheer terror.
He had never imagined he would end up inside an Esper terrorist attack he’d only ever seen on television.
The first thing that came to mind was his family.
Then came the despairing realization that he himself was a Guide.
What did being a Guide matter when he couldn’t even control one insane bastard?
Tae-hoon trembled before the fog so thick he couldn’t see even an inch ahead.
A burning heat spread across his forehead, his eyes stinging painfully. It seemed a piece of concrete had cut him and blood was running down. Through the pale haze, the crying groans of other people drifted around him. The entire place was such chaos that it became hard to tell whether he himself was alive or dead.
And then—
“Close your eyes.”
A low male voice spoke beside his ear. The man added in an oddly gentle tone,
“You could get hurt.”
A large hand radiating warmth covered his eyes.
Without realizing it, Tae-hoon asked blankly, “Who are you?”
But the other man didn’t answer.
He simply pulled the Guide against him from behind.
Tae-hoon was dragged into his embrace almost helplessly. Despite being a tall man over 180 centimeters himself, for some reason he felt protected like some powerless doll. The arms of the unknown man were warm.
And strangely enough, they gave him a sense of stability completely at odds with the situation.
Apparently, the man felt the same way, because a languid voice followed with something like a sigh.
“……Don’t be afraid.”
With his eyes still covered, Tae-hoon gave a small nod.
But that relief didn’t last long.
Because suddenly, screams far more horrifying than the small sobs and groans from before erupted around them.
The ghastly shrieks sounded enough to tear apart his ears, and Tae-hoon unconsciously grabbed tightly onto the arm wrapped around him from behind. In response, he thought he heard a faint laugh.
The man—Ji Gwan-young—curled the corners of his lips upward slightly as he looked at Choi Tae-hoon trembling in his arms. The experience of finding a fully grown man shaking like this cute rather than pathetic was unfamiliar to him.
But it wasn’t unpleasant.
At the moment, Ji Gwan-young was slightly excited.
Ever since realizing that the more he used his abilities, the thirstier and sharper he became, he had always strictly controlled his power usage.
But now, Gwan-young felt no hesitation whatsoever in using his power.
The monster pressed light kisses beside the Guide’s ear in his embrace.
After nothing more than that frustrating handshake, for them to meet again under circumstances like this—it almost felt like some absurd tragic comedy.
Every time he kissed Tae-hoon’s ears and hair, blood from large and small wounds smeared onto cheeks that had once been spotless, but Ji Gwan-young didn’t care at all. He greedily buried his face against the man in his arms, breathing in his pleasant scent deeply.
At that moment, someone’s agonized screams suddenly stopped.
The pale fog couldn’t obstruct the monster’s vision.
Ji Gwan-young twisted and broke apart the limbs of the Esper who had dared injure his Guide before slamming him into the exterior wall of a building.
As the man’s life faded, the artificial fog filling the streets slowly began to thin.
People who had shrunk back in terror at the spine-chilling screams cautiously looked around with tear-streaked faces at last. They rejoiced simply to be alive.
But the first thing the survivors saw was not the image of some magnificent hero who had saved them.
Instead, they stared blankly upward at a man impaled high against a building, dark-red blood pouring from his mangled corpse.
Ji Gwan-young struck Choi Tae-hoon’s vital point, forcing him into temporary unconsciousness.
His Guide should not see something like that.
He didn’t want him hearing the retching and trembling screams breaking out all around them either.
As he lifted the limp, slender body into his arms, Gwan-young inhaled deeply in satisfaction.
The man carrying his name engraved across his back was lovable.
Yes. He found him lovable. Truly lovable.
…It was an incredibly strange feeling.
The thin skin of his closed eyelids looked especially soft, and when Ji Gwan-young lightly pressed his lips there, a pleasurable sensation prickled through him strongly enough to raise goosebumps. He absentmindedly brushed his fingers against Tae-hoon’s still pale face as though teasing him.
It felt like they could stay like this forever.
Of course, that was only assuming no one interrupted them.
Only then did the monster finally speak, as if he’d just remembered something.
“…….Really. You didn’t have to come looking so frightening.”
The ones startled by Ji Gwan-young’s words were the armed special forces soldiers slowly surrounding him with guns raised.
They simply couldn’t believe the sight before them.
No matter how many times they asked themselves whether the person who had killed the terrorist responsible for this horrific scene in such a brutal way was truly that man, the answer never changed.
The actor they adored had ended the catastrophe—which even other Espers had been too afraid to enter—as casually as if it were child’s play.
There was no doubt that the dead man hanging there with every joint twisted grotesquely, even his fingertips ruined beyond recognition, was the terrorist who had caused all this.
Vomiting erupted everywhere at the horrifying corpse displayed without concealment.
But even that wasn’t the end of the shock.
If they performed an autopsy on the dead Esper, they would discover that every single internal organ had been shredded beyond repair and would be horrified all over again.
Ji Gwan-young looked at the armed soldiers in black tactical helmets one by one, smiling softly as though he could see straight through them.
And in truth, he could.
The monster could clearly see the fear filling the eyes of everyone staring at him.
[Ji Gwan-young. XXXX Year XX Month XX Day. Classified as an SSS-rank dangerous Esper. Emergency arrest authorized.]
***
Not only The Center, but the entire military was drowning in misery.
The reason was simple.
They couldn’t publicly announce that that Ji Gwan-young was the one who had executed and displayed the terrorist responsible for the Gangnam attack.
If it became known that the beloved national superstar who had remained ranked number one in public favorability surveys for months was actually an Esper capable of creating horrifying massacre scenes, no one could predict how a public already shaken by terrorism would react—even if the victim had been a criminal.
The fact that someone every citizen recognized had actually been an Esper completely outside state supervision would immediately expose the government’s incompetence.
The monster obediently allowed himself to be detained and dragged deep into The Center.
Well, “obediently” wasn’t exactly accurate.
Not when it came to handing over the man in his arms.
When the soldiers pulled Tae-hoon away a little too roughly because they were afraid Ji Gwan-young might suddenly do something, the Esper who had seemed so relaxed and composed immediately showed his displeasure.
And the method he used was fairly violent.
In barely one or two seconds, sharp chunks of concrete formed a circle around the soldier holding Choi Tae-hoon, while a jagged piece of metal scraped across the surface of his black helmet with a sickening sound, leaving behind a terrifying gouge.
The soldiers hurriedly aimed their guns at the Esper, but Ji Gwan-young’s gaze remained fixed solely on the trembling man clutching Tae-hoon’s limp body.
“Please……. take good care of him. Be careful of the wound on his forehead too.”
Despite the violent situation, those were the only words Ji Gwan-young spoke.
When the soldier carefully adjusted his hold on the Guide, Gwan-young smiled faintly again before shattering the concrete fragments that had been surrounding them like they might crush their throats at any second.
The oppressive force of the drifting dust no longer felt restrained.
Once again, the soldiers realized that the man standing before them was the very one who had created that horrific scene on the building wall.
