I acknowledged the official with just a look and nod before turning my head to the man standing beside him.
“Nice to meet you. I’m Yang Garam.”
As if he had been waiting for me to look at him, Yang Garam greeted me.
His youthful face, having just turned twenty, was small, and his puppy-like bright eyes and cheerfully smiling lips had a charm that made anyone who saw him smile back naturally.
It was an even more sparkling image than the Yang Garam I remembered from the past. Wondering if this was what youth looked like, I smiled back and offered my hand to Yang Garam.
“Nice to meet you.”
I reached out my hand unconsciously, then briefly wondered if I was acting too much like an old man at just 22. For a moment, I considered withdrawing my hand, but fortunately, Yang Garam took it without hesitation. However, the way he held it was slightly different from the handshake I had expected. Yang Garam carefully wrapped both his hands around the one I had extended.
“Can I call you Jeongjae hyung?”
The hand I had offered for a simple handshake seemed to have given him some special meaning. Faced with his affectionate response like a puppy meeting its owner, I nodded without thinking.
“I’ve been wanting to meet you ever since I awakened as a Guide.”
Receiving such a straightforward show of affection from a stranger for the first time, I couldn’t help but reveal my flustered expression. I felt a warm, soft energy spreading from the hand Yang Garam was holding. Due to the increased pressure of his grip, I couldn’t pull away from his arm, but he was currently guiding me. The feeling of my entire body relaxing against my will gave me a languorous sensation like being buried in a soft cloud without a thread of clothing.
“How is it?”
Yang Garam asked me with an innocent expression. While waiting for my answer, he was intensely searching to see if his energy was compatible with me. Since I had only received Joo Seolhyeon’s guiding a few times, just before I was about to go berserk—that is, right before I lost my mind—I had never experienced this strangely languid yet comfortable feeling before. What I felt when Joo Seolhyeon guided me was merely relief at being alive and an endlessly sinking consciousness, nothing more.
“Does it feel good?”
“Ah.”
A slow, almost admiring sigh escaped me at Yang Garam’s gentle urging. It felt exactly like having received a full-body massage and being completely relaxed. No, it was hard to express, but the sensation of something gently stirring inside me was strangely thrilling. Rather than disliking that feeling, I shook my head and pushed away his energy out of resistance.
“Stop.”
But contrary to my words, my voice had become languid, unlike before, and was slightly hoarse, like someone who had just woken up.
“Oh, did I make you uncomfortable?”
Surprised by my rejection, Yang Garam’s eyes widened like a startled rabbit’s before he drooped his eye corners.
“I’m sorry. I got too excited.”
Despite being just a temporary Guide, not an exclusive one, he was particularly sensitive to every expression and tone of my voice. Just like how I acted in front of Joo Seolhyeon. Suddenly, as I realized the meaning of my own thought, my face flushed hot.
The idea that Yang Garam might like me—even though I hadn’t said it aloud, just thinking it to myself made me incredibly embarrassed.
Unaware of my thoughts, Yang Garam must have thought I was blushing from anger, as he drooped his eye corners and shoulders, making his large frame appear smaller as he watched me cautiously.
“I didn’t dislike it, that’s why I reacted that way.”
I spoke to clear up the misunderstanding, but Yang Garam’s mouth fell open. As if the pitiful and fragile appearance he had just shown with his whole body had all been an act, he recovered his original demeanor with my single statement. Sparkling eyes and a 100% pure smile. He grinned prettily and asked me:
“Even though our matching rate is low, I’m quite useful, aren’t I?”
I had thought guiding only worked after an Esper used their abilities, but to think it worked even when I was completely sober and my wavelengths were perfectly normal.
The reality I had momentarily forgotten due to embarrassment suddenly hit me. Despite living under the same roof with my exclusive Guide for five years, this was something I learned for the first time today.
If it felt this good with Yang Garam, who had the lowest matching rate with me, I wondered how much more of a new world Jeong Seyeon and Do Wonjin, with their higher matching rates, would show me. Now I was beyond excited—I was actually scared. It felt like those five years had been wasted, and only now was I finding a proper Guide.
“Ye, yeah. Th-that’s right.”
Trying to answer while thinking made my words come out jumbled.
Thankfully, I had regressed to being 22. Otherwise, I might have shown the embarrassing sight of a man seven years older stammering in front of a 20-year-old.
After Yang Garam’s guiding, I thought I was fine, but mentally, there was a screw loose. In that state, the temporary Guide contract proceeded, and the official watched our contract from beginning to end, offering to notarize it.
“……”
Even though the contract was finished, Yang Garam didn’t seem to want to leave. He appeared to have something he wanted to tell me but kept moistening his dry lips, attempting to speak before stopping repeatedly.
Looking around for the official to help break this situation, I found him already standing by the door we had entered through, bowing his head to me.
‘Have a good time.’
I could only see his lip movements, but I understood his meaning perfectly. I had no choice but to, given how suggestive his face was. It might be an exaggeration, but he looked exactly like someone who would go around saying, “I arranged a blind date, and they turned out to be soulmates.”
“Hyung, actually…”
Just as Yang Garam gathered his courage to speak, the official quickly opened the door and fled. I turned my gaze from the now-closed door to look at Yang Garam. He was speaking to me with a very tense expression.
“As soon as I became eligible to work as a Guide, I checked my matching rate with you first. It was much lower than I expected. Plus, I heard your matching rate with S-class Guide Joo Seolhyeon was incredibly high, so I thought I’d never get a chance. But when I got the call from your matching coordinator, I was so surprised, and also…”
Yang Garam spoke incoherently before covering his flushed face with both hands. Wondering what he was trying to say, I watched him intently, my shoulders tensed.
“I’m your fan.”
Yang Garam suddenly produced a paper and pen from somewhere and thrust them at me.
“Please give me your autograph.”
Instead of a heartfelt confession of love, it was a confession of fan admiration, which made me burst out laughing unexpectedly. It was such an unexpectedly delightful situation. I had thought I’d forgotten how to laugh, having never laughed out loud since meeting Joo Seolhyeon, but apparently that wasn’t the case. I laughed so hard that I held my stomach, to the point where it might have been embarrassing for anyone watching.
“Hyung.”
If Yang Garam hadn’t spoken that one word while watching me laugh with the paper and pen in hand, I might have continued laughing uncontrollably.
“Would you like me to guide you?”
I didn’t use my ability, did I? Again?
For a moment, as I was about to ask “What?” with my laughing face at his question that seemed out of place, he took my hand and pulled me into his embrace. The thin thread of his energy that flowed in when our hands touched became an unstoppable flood into my body as the contact area increased when I was pulled into his arms.
“Ngh.”
I let out an unconscious moan. Unfamiliar sensations I had never felt before swirled gently throughout my body. My toes curled, and every place Yang Garam’s touch reached felt electrified. Just as my reason was completely flying away and I was starting to think I wanted to surrender my body to Yang Garam’s touch—
Ring, ring—
“W-wait.”
Thanks to the sound of my phone placed beside the contract, I barely managed to regain my senses and block Yang Garam’s lips, which had come right up to my face, with my hand.
“Alright.”
Yang Garam, smiling with his eyes, kissed my palm without removing my hand. That look in his eyes wasn’t the 100% pure one I had seen earlier, but I was too distracted by the phone to find it strange.
I escaped from his embrace, and he let me go willingly. With my body lacking any strength, I barely managed to reach out my arm and grab the phone, seeing a familiar number.
I had deliberately decided not to look at it and hadn’t even saved the contact, but because Joo Seolhyeon hadn’t changed his phone number once in five years, I could immediately recognize who it was.
“Hyung, aren’t you going to answer?”
As I kept gripping the phone without answering despite the continued vibration, Yang Garam suddenly appeared behind me and examined my face.
“…Hyung.”
And then called me in a heavily subdued voice.
“Huh?”
The phone had gone quiet again, and Yang Garam’s voice was clear in my ear.
“Why are you making that expression?”
I had no idea what expression I had made while looking at an unsaved phone number that had caused Yang Garam’s face to darken so quickly. The truth was that I was too shocked and surprised at the moment to focus on his question and expression.
Someone who had never contacted me first, not even once, had reached out to me first after just three days of meeting?
“Who is this person?”
“Joo Seolhyeon.”
I answered the question unconsciously in my confused state, then covered my mouth, thinking “oops.” I said something unnecessary. With the water already spilled, I half-gave up and turned to look at Yang Garam, who asked me with eyes that had gone beyond darkness to emptiness:
“Do you like that person?”
Ridiculously, I couldn’t answer that question.
As if my lips had been glued together, they wouldn’t separate, and I realized my own feelings again. Like blood seeping from an unhealed wound, the process was too painful, and I was angry at myself for my own disappointment.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
