It had ceased to be surprising that Cha-hyeon might go berserk at any moment, because his guide matching rate was mercilessly low—bad enough to make even him click his tongue.
They’d tested his compatibility not only with S-class guides of his rank but all the way down through A-class and B-class, and the best result they ever saw was 7%—which said everything.
Of course, on the off chance, they also ran tests with every guide regardless of rank, and the Center had even checked—quietly—his rates with guides who already had pairs. Naturally, there was no miracle, not even a one-in-a-million. That was why he’d lived like this until now.
That was how unprecedentedly poor Sung Cha-hyeon’s matching rate was. It was better to rely on booster ampoules than to bother with guiding while shooting up those injections that supposedly raise compatibility.
Then—though he had no memory of it—Ji Se-min awakened as an S-class guide, and the test came back at 97%. For someone who would’ve had to die helplessly if he ever lost control, a shaft of light had finally broken through.
Yet Sung Cha-hyeon dug in with a strange stubbornness. When Se-min turned nineteen—the age he could legally guide—he should’ve jumped straight into sex guiding; instead, he insisted on nothing but radial guiding.
Idiot. No wonder the man who’d lived a screwed-up life even with a pair guide at his side was stunned by the effects of proper guiding for the first time.
Strictly speaking, they hadn’t gone all the way, so it might fall a little short of “proper.” Even so, he was in the best condition he’d been in for ages.
He hadn’t imagined his body could feel this light. Vitality surged through what had been a lethargic frame. The life coursing through him even lent him a reckless conviction that he could pull off the impossible. As if…
…as if. Cha-hyeon knit his brows. The alien blank in his memory felt like staring at a pristine white canvas.
Was that turn of phrase another memory tied to Se-min? Tempered by guiding, a gentler-hearted Cha-hyeon chose to turn his head instead of muttering curses. From the hospital bed, he looked at Se-min sleeping without so much as a whisper of breath.
“……”
His lips curved of their own accord. Even after that satisfying guiding, he’d spent the whole night using the cramped bed as an excuse to hold Se-min and rub their mouths together here and there. That warm body was perfect to cuddle to sleep, and—conscious of him—kept flinching, tense again and again. Maybe the reaction was so amusing he nuzzled him even more.
His pair guide—whose face and body were exactly his type—was downright adorable in bed, too. Playing a little coy to soothe him had been the right call. Granted, Ji Se-min’s obedient trust made him easy to soothe, but without that, their guiding might’ve been a one-off—or kept to a lower intensity for a while.
Feeling himself grow heavy below again, Cha-hyeon lifted his head. Regrettable, but he had to go soon, and he couldn’t wake a sleeping kid and pounce for another round.
He checked his phone. A message said the car was waiting downstairs and he could come down. A clear interview was fine, but why summon him at this hour? He clicked his tongue, displeased.
Before leaving the room, he naturally drifted over to Se-min. His hand moved on instinct. With his fingertips he gently rubbed that soft cheek so it wouldn’t hurt, and—like one does with something cute—he bent and pressed his lips to the boy’s cheek. A ticklish kiss, so light the touch might not even have been felt.
He admitted he’d gone more sentimental than usual. The first proper guiding he’d ever had seemed to have sent his heart floating.
Riding that high, he even did something he normally wouldn’t: he left a note for Se-min on the side table. He was the sort who didn’t care what the other party thought of his actions, but for someone worth the effort, he could spare at least this much.
After jotting the note in his smooth, elegant hand, he looked once more at the sleeping Se-min before stepping out.
Lover and pair guide, with marriage presumed. In a single day, the weight of those titles had changed drastically. He hadn’t expected that a single guiding session with Se-min would leave him this well.
Just imagining going back to how his body had been already made him angry. Fuck—if that’s how I have to live, I’d rather die.
He’d brushed off Se-min’s explanations and stuffed his own reasons into that blank in his head however he pleased, but whether those were true no longer mattered.
What mattered was that Se-min had defined the relationship with his own mouth first—and that Cha-hyeon had no reason to refuse.
But this wasn’t enough. “Pair partners,” something you could break whenever you set your mind to it, wasn’t sufficient. Leaning on the obvious affection of Ji Se-min, who practically dripped with it? That wasn’t solid enough either. Would a foolishly obedient faith really last forever?
Was there no way to bind Ji Se-min—virtually the only guide who could actually guide him—completely? How could he twist that boy’s ankle and make him fold and sit still…?
He wetted his lower lip.
***
Before Grandma passed away, when Sung Cha-hyeon carved time out of his packed schedule to visit her in the hospital, his favorite topic was stories from Se-min’s childhood. Every time, the two of them would paint Se-min like a baby who’d just learned to toddle, and the listening Se-min would bristle.
But back then, Se-min had been five or six. Contrary to the usual assumptions about little kids, he was old enough to express himself with fairly clear pronunciation. And like anyone else, when something left a strong impression—even from very early on—he remembered it vividly.
For example: how the neighbor hyung he’d only recognized in passing suddenly came to live with them.
Grandma hadn’t explained the details then. Only later did he learn about Cha-hyeon’s situation and come to understand Grandma’s choice. At the time, he was simply delighted by the news that he, too, would have a big brother.
The reason kindergarten-age Se-min was thrilled to have a big brother was largely because he could finally play with “siblings,” like his friends did.
As an only child, he was always bored at home. Grandma couldn’t play with him the way other parents did, and before he lost his parents… before that—he’d been too young to remember.
At any rate, even with the sudden arrival of a stranger, he felt nothing but excitement. The thought of playing with a brother ten years older, who took the bus to a faraway school, had him so keyed up he could hardly sleep.
Contrary to his expectations, though, the big brother who moved in was rather taciturn. With that vacant gaze, he drifted through the house like a ghost, and the atmosphere he gave off was so forbidding that Se-min didn’t even dare speak to him.
He wanted to get close, but being shy at the time, he’d just hover and fidget. Whenever he loitered near Cha-hyeon, the older boy would only look at him indifferently, and after a few rounds of hesitation, Se-min would toss whatever he had—like a piece of candy—and run off. It happened more than once.
“…….”
“…….”
Then one day, five-year-old Se-min hung a toy stethoscope around his neck, a toy syringe in one hand and a toy thermometer in the other, and planted himself in front of Cha-hyeon.
Sprawled on the living room floor with his fingers laced over his chest like Snow White, that empty gaze slid to little Se-min. His eyes were fierce by nature, so he looked scary even at rest, but Se-min chose to plop down in front of him.
“…Wanna play hospital?”
Just like when he tried to join a fun game at kindergarten, he opened his mouth first—before getting the other party’s consent—and stuck the stethoscope in his ears. Cha-hyeon neither agreed nor refused; he only looked at him.
“Where does it hurt?”
“It doesn’t.”
No one had ever answered him like that, so five-year-old Se-min’s lips clamped shut as if he’d swallowed honey. Flustered, he only mouthed noiselessly for a moment before whispering, tiny.
“…You’re supposed to say you have a fever, hyung.”
“……”
With a slight lift of one eyebrow, Cha-hyeon seemed to say, What kind of creature is this? But Se-min was too young to read body language and pressed on stoutly.
“Say, ‘I have a fever.’ Hurry.”
“…I have a fever.”
Cha-hyeon roughly repeated what he was told. Color returning to his face, Se-min nodded and launched into a convincing diagnosis.
“I see. Then I’ll take your temperature.”
A small hand brought the cool toy thermometer to Cha-hyeon’s ear. He flinched at the touch and knit his brows, but already immersed in play, Se-min solemnly announced the result.
“Oh my. Aigoya—your fever is seventy degrees.”
“……”
Cha-hyeon’s gaze grew even more dubious. Mimicking Grandma’s little exclamations verbatim, Se-min set the thermometer down.
“If you get a hundred shots, you’ll be fine.”
“…Sounds like I’ll die.”
Either die of a seventy-degree fever, or die of shock from a hundred shots.
Maybe because it was so absurd, it was the first retort from Cha-hyeon that sounded like a proper answer—but at the time, Se-min just giggled, “Hee-hee,” finding it hilarious. Children who wailed like the world was ending over a single injection loved giving someone else a hundred toy shots.
Once he started laughing, he shed his shyness. Mischief bright on his face, he forgot he’d ever been scared of Cha-hyeon and threw himself into administering shots.
“Say, ‘Ow, it hurts. Ow.’”
Still sprawled limply, Cha-hyeon watched with a look of disbelief as Se-min jabbed his arms and legs with the toy—more poking than injecting. Beaming, Se-min prompted him again.
“Hyung, say, ‘Waaah, it hurts!’”
