It felt like he was still trapped in that moment from the past. A barrage of horrific sounds resurfaced in his mind.
“Hyung… Yeon-woo hyung…”
Biting down hard enough on his lower lip to draw blood, he called out the name of his Imprinter. Even if everyone else hurt him, he alone had embraced him without causing pain. And so, even in his fractured state of mind, he instinctively sought him out.
Then—
“Kuhk!”
His chest tightened, and a cough burst out. An agonizing wave of pain surged through him, as though his insides were rotting away. His heart felt like it was being crushed.
“Huff, ugh…! Cough, cough!”
Before he could even register that an episode had started, his body was already writhing on the floor. Perhaps because he was suffering from extreme mental distress, the onset of the seizure was progressing much faster than usual.
He had no strength to lift himself, so he clamped a hand over his mouth while dragging his limp body forward with his other arm.
There were meds in the nightstand drawer. As long as he inhaled them in time, he could stabilize quickly. That single thought made him desperate—he just had to crawl a bit farther.
“You’re crawling like some filthy insect.”
It wasn’t a hallucination.
Han-gyeom, coughing violently, looked up at the man who had entered his room without knocking.
As always, Seo Won’s face radiated coldness—but this time, a strange smile twisted his lips.
‘Insect…’
So you see me just like they did, after all.
His emotions were in chaos, and he couldn’t stop the swell of resentment rising inside.
He knew Seo Won wasn’t like those pathetic, cruel researchers who’d used him as their only emotional punching bag in the lab. Seo Won was merely someone who hated having to be near a Guide, something he detested, just to survive.
He knew that. And yet, right now, he looked no different from the Espers at the research facility.
Watching him suffer—mocking him, looking down on him with disgust—Seo Won’s expression overlapped with theirs.
‘Why someone like you…’
There wasn’t a single part of Seo Won that resembled Song Yeon-woo. He was nothing but cold. So then why…
“Cough!”
Han-gyeom suddenly felt something hot rise up from deep within his throat. He reached desperately for the drawer, his hand slipping again and again as he fumbled for the handle. He yanked it open without even looking, blindly groping inside.
“Did you call for me, Director?”
The open door let in the sound of multiple footsteps and a familiar voice.
“Prepare for an immediate examination.”
Director Shin and several individuals in white lab coats stared at Cha Han-gyeom as Seo Won pointed to him.
He was coughing as if he might die at any moment. If it kept going, it wouldn’t just be his lungs or throat at risk—he could easily end up with broken ribs.
Just as Director Shin, his face tense, began giving urgent instructions to the doctors and nurses, Han-gyeom’s fingertips finally brushed against the smooth surface of the medicine vial.
But the moment he grabbed it, another hand snatched it away.
“Cough, why…! Ngh, cough!”
“So this is why you were clinging to that bastard, huh?”
“Cough! What are you… Give it back, cough! Give it back…”
Han-gyeom reached out desperately toward the vial in Seo Won’s hand. Seo Won looked down coldly at his flailing hand, then declared with finality:
“You won’t be needing this anymore.”
Han-gyeom’s tear-filled eyes blinked in confusion.
“Because from now on, I will be your medicine.”
Seo Won’s eyes curved in a strangely beautiful arc as he looked down at him.
A moment later, Seo Won hurled the vial behind Han-gyeom—straight into the wall.
Crash—
The glass vial shattered instantly.
Han-gyeom froze. Even his coughing came to a sudden halt.
Though the vial had once contained a dark liquid, only clear fluid clung to the point of impact. Even the shattered pieces scattered across the floor were coated in nothing but transparency.
Clear shards of glass. Clear liquid.
A small residue of black ash floated up from the remaining liquid, then disintegrated completely—leaving behind no trace.
There was no longer any of his “dark energy” left.
“Ah…”
A lifeless sigh escaped Han-gyeom’s lips.
“Han-gyeom.”
Through the loud downpour, a gentle voice echoed in his mind.
“If I die, will you at least gather my ashes?”
It was a conversation he could never forget.
The one he’d had with Song Yeon-woo the day before he died.
Naturally, Han-gyeom remembered how he’d answered.
“Don’t say things like that! You’re never going to die, I swear.”
It wasn’t because he was immortal.
It was because he was him. Because he was Yeon-woo hyung—there was no way something like that could happen.
I’m here.
Your Imprinter, Cha Han-gyeom, is still here.
“I said if, just if.”
For a statement meant to be purely hypothetical, Yeon-woo’s smile that day had felt off.
Bitter. Exhausted. Heavy with sorrow.
“I just want you to stay alive.”
Like someone who had already reached the end of the line.
“Even if I die.”
The wistful timbre of Yeon-woo’s voice was swallowed by the crash of thunder, and at the same moment, blood trickled from Han-gyeom’s lips amid another fit of coughing.
“Kuhk, haah…”
His condition deteriorated rapidly—Han-gyeom curled in on himself, vomiting blood again and again.
It felt like his insides were being shredded to pieces. Every organ in his body twisted violently, as if explosions were going off inside him one after another.
The muscles throughout his body screamed in agony. The pain was so overwhelming, he wondered if his bones would soon follow—crushing into dust.
“Ah, ugh…! Kuhuk!”
What had started as watery blood now came out in thick, dark red clots.
“Director Seo, it’s too dangerous. Please, we need to—”
Despite Director Shin’s anxious voice urging him to act, Seo Won didn’t move.
He simply stood there, silently watching Cha Han-gyeom writhing at his feet.
Tears streamed endlessly from Han-gyeom’s eyes, twisted in agony.
But were they born from physical torment—or from the despair of losing even the last fragment he had left?
‘Either is fine.’
Seo Won’s lips curled into a perfectly crooked smile.
He knelt, lifting Han-gyeom’s face, now soaked in blood and tears. And yet, the expression on that ruined face was simpler than expected.
The loss of salvation.
The fragile sliver of hope Han-gyeom had been clinging to now looked utterly pathetic.
Did he really think he could survive just by holding on to some remnants of ash?
“Cling to me, Cha Han-gyeom.”
Seo Won’s fingers leisurely wiped the blood from Han-gyeom’s lips. His face was colder than any blade of frost.
“From now on, I’ll be your salvation.”
Just like himself, humans would do anything to survive.
And Cha Han-gyeom was no different.
The man who should’ve died long ago had endured, clutching the ashes of his former Imprinter. Now, it was time to cling to something new—Seo Won.
Han-gyeom, his face deathly pale, stared up at him through blurred vision. The blue eyes that met his looked like those of a demon—smiling with wicked delight.
Song Yeon-woo’s face overlapped with Seo Won’s.
“Stay alive, Han-gyeom… please.”
Yeon-woo’s final words echoed through his mind, overpowering all else.
The hand that once scattered into black ash reached out, merging with Seo Won’s cold fingers.
‘You bastard.’
Not even knowing who he was cursing, Han-gyeom swallowed down the words—then, finally, he took Seo Won’s hand.
The moment their skin touched, he felt it—Seo Won’s dark energy.
It wasn’t gentle, but it was familiar.
It had the same resonance as Song Yeon-woo’s. Fierce, violent even—but unmistakably real. It surged toward him, devouring every trace of his own red aura as if to consume him whole.
The instant he felt that familiar energy, everything he’d been holding back collapsed.
The walls he’d fought to maintain shattered, and the broken, fragile Cha Han-gyeom came rushing out.
“Hhk, it hurts… I’m in so much pain… Aah!”
Han-gyeom, who had never once said it hurt even as he vomited blood, now sobbed like a child in Seo Won’s arms, overwhelmed by the onslaught of his energy.
“It… hurts… huuh… Please… it’s too… hic too much…!”
Though he wasn’t coughing as violently as when the seizure had started, the suffering had not lessened in the slightest.
Seo Won didn’t push Han-gyeom away as he clung to him—instead, he embraced him.
The way Han-gyeom rubbed his tear-streaked face against Seo Won’s shoulder and neck was deeply satisfying.
It was a side of Cha Han-gyeom he had never seen before.
The Han-gyeom he’d known was cocky yet quiet, rebellious yet obedient.
Always caught in the grip of their contract, like something trapped in his grasp—yet at the same time, he felt impossibly distant, always looking elsewhere, beyond reach.
A contradiction that made no sense.
But now—it was different.
Han-gyeom clung to him, stripped bare of everything, desperately holding on in order to survive.
His eyes saw nothing but Seo Won.
The only person he could reach for now—the only one he could collapse into—was Seo Won.
In this moment, Cha Han-gyeom belonged wholly to him.
And that fact alone stirred a monstrous possessiveness within Seo Won, an ecstasy so profound it bordered on madness.
“Look at me, Cha Han-gyeom.”
Supporting him with one arm, Seo Won grabbed Han-gyeom’s chin and forced their eyes to meet.
Tear-drenched, Han-gyeom’s dark eyes trembled as they slowly rose to meet Seo Won’s.
“The one who’s going to save you isn’t that dead bastard—it’s me.”
Han-gyeom’s eyes quivered violently, and his bloodstained lips parted.
“Seo… Won…”
It was the first time he had ever spoken his name.
And from that single word, Seo Won felt a flood of unspeakable satisfaction.
