When I learned she was Jeong Seyeon’s younger sister, my quietly raging anger cooled with surprising speed. I still found her annoying, but not as infuriating as before.
“I’ll take responsibility for my sister’s mistake.”
“Hyung, you didn’t tell your sister to harm me. So it’s not your responsibility. Well, wandering the mountains without clothes will be a memory I’ll never forget, but it’s not like my life was threatened. Besides, you found me quickly.”
Honestly, I was able to smile and say it was fine only because Jeong Seyeon had found me early. Otherwise, the situation wouldn’t have allowed for such lightheartedness. Still, the outcome wasn’t bad, and my only desire was to quickly resolve this awkward face-to-face with Jeong Seyeon.
“Let’s talk about this tomorrow. I feel very uncomfortable having wandered around naked. I want to clean up and get dressed properly, would that be okay…?”
Even though he’d already seen everything there was to see, actually verbalizing my situation made my face burn with embarrassment. By the end, I was speaking in a voice as quiet as an ant crawling, glancing up slightly from the ground to check his face.
Jeong Seyeon seemed to have heard me. His gaze moved down to my bare legs clearly visible beneath the shirt, then back up.
“I’ll help you.”
His usual expressionless face was a bit more rigid, but he got up, offering to guide me to the bathroom, and I quickly rose to follow him.
“Oh?”
But maybe because I had been kneeling for that short while, my leg cramped as soon as I stood up, and I tumbled forward. All sorts of thoughts rushed through my mind as I fell.
‘I’m not wearing pants, so if I fall face down, won’t my butt show? Should I cover my butt with my hands? But wouldn’t that look even more ridiculous?’
Unable to decide, I was getting closer to the floor when fortunately, Jeong Seyeon caught me in an embrace, preventing an undignified fall.
“Are you alright?”
I was genuinely grateful, almost to the point of tears. I nodded as I answered.
“My leg cramped.”
I tried to pull away from Jeong Seyeon’s embrace, but fearing another fall due to my trembling legs, I obediently leaned against his solid chest.
“I think I’ll be fine if we stay like this for a moment.”
After I said that, the atmosphere became strange. Wondering if I had said something wrong, I reconsidered and realized I could have just sat down to rest instead of staying in his arms.
‘This makes it seem like I’m hitting on him because I want to be in his arms.’
That wasn’t my intention at all, but looking at it from his perspective, it was a situation ripe for misunderstanding. As I hurriedly opened my mouth, suddenly my body was lifted up. Startled, I wrapped my arms around Jeong Seyeon’s neck, feeling his arm supporting the back of my knees and his hand firmly holding my back.
“Hyung?!”
“Didn’t I say I would help you?”
“Y-yes, but I’m heavy.”
“You’re not heavy. So please lean comfortably.”
Wow, this is crazy.
Even as a child, I don’t think I was ever carried like this by my father, and now as an adult, I’m being princess-carried.
When the Center Director carried me like this on Quardo Island, I was unconscious, so I could quickly forget about it, but now the situation was completely different. I was stone-cold sober, wearing only a shirt, and pressed against Jeong Seyeon’s bare torso. If it were a guiding situation, I would understand, but it wasn’t, which made it more embarrassing. Yet even in this state, my nose reacted sensitively to his scent, which was so close due to our proximity, and I felt strong curiosity.
‘I’ve been wondering where that nice smell was coming from—it’s hyung’s scent.’
Even while having the silly thought of whether this was the “flesh scent” I’d only heard about, I discreetly brought my nose closer to his nape and inhaled slightly. It felt a bit perverse of me, but his scent was somewhat similar to the energy I felt when he guided me. It was refreshing and not sharp—a scent that seemed like it would be cool to the tongue.
‘His body temperature seems higher than mine, how interesting.’
The parts of me that touched him felt hot, as if a heating pad had been turned on just for those spots. Perhaps because of that, even though I had received plenty of guiding earlier and shouldn’t have been feverish, my face felt warm. I thought it was all due to the heat Jeong Seyeon was emitting.
‘Maybe it’s because I’ve never been carried like this by anyone, but all sorts of thoughts are running through my mind.’
Trying to rein in my thoughts that kept straying in strange directions, we arrived at the bathroom in no time.
“Is your leg okay?”
Jeong Seyeon asked as he set me down in the bathtub. I slightly bent my knee and raised my toes to wiggle them. Unlike before, there was no tingling sensation like an electric current.
‘It’s fine now.’
It was puzzling why a cramp, which had never occurred since my awakening as an Esper, happened at that moment. But considering I had been resting continuously since returning from Quardo Island, along with the mental damage from the sudden incident and the strenuous mountain trek, I understood that my body had been shocked.
“I’m fine.”
I turned to look at him, but Jeong Seyeon’s gaze was still fixed on my legs, not my face.
The fact that he couldn’t take his eyes off them even after I said I was fine wasn’t because he didn’t trust my answer, but rather…
‘Is he feeling regretful?’
For some reason, his face seemed to express regret. Of course, Jeong Seyeon’s expression remained consistent throughout, but that’s how it felt to me.
“…That’s good.”
Jeong Seyeon answered half a beat late, as if he’d become aware of my gaze. He bent over to lift the lever opposite me and adjusted the water temperature. Instead of leaving immediately, he lingered as if he had something to say, but when our eyes met, he just gave a slight nod and left the bathroom.
“It seems like he had something to say just now.”
Comfortably leaning against the bathtub, I unbuttoned the shirt while reflecting on Jeong Seyeon’s reactions. He had found me lost, given me his clothes to wear, comforted me when I was trembling in fear of ghosts, and safely brought me to his home. He even carried me to the bathroom when my leg cramped. Just from the description, he was nothing short of a child caretaker.
“If I had said my cramp hadn’t gone away, would he have offered to help me bathe too?”
If he were truly a child caretaker, he would have done that, right?
I couldn’t help but laugh at my own thoughts. The image of Jeong Seyeon attending to my bath with his stoic face was ridiculous. I shook my head. Though his image made it hard to imagine, I was certain that he was more attentive and kind than I had thought.
‘Hyung seems like the type who would take charge of childcare if he had a child.’
He cooks well and takes good care of others.
I wished his emotionally deficient gaze was a bit more human, but thinking about it, that was an issue that would naturally be resolved once he found someone he liked.
Suddenly, I recalled that Jeong Seyeon’s gaze had been becoming increasingly varied when looking at me recently.
“Huh?”
While massaging the leg that had cramped as water filled the tub, I froze in that position. The muscles I had worked to relax tensed up again, and I gaped in shock.
“Did I just think that hyung might like me?”
I unconsciously mumbled aloud, and the content was so appalling that I quickly covered my mouth.
‘No matter how well he treats me, how can I make such a misunderstanding when I’m not even a teenager?’
My whole body heated up in embarrassment at my own thoughts.
Moreover, this was about Jeong Seyeon, of all people. Among the guides, he was the one with the biggest age gap from me, and from a social standpoint, he would see me as just a young Esper in need of care. I dunked my head into the rising bathwater.
‘Let’s not cross the line, no matter what.’
To me, whose heart had been impoverished by a long-term unrequited love, the current guides were certainly more than I deserved. They had never once rejected me, who was particularly obsessed with guiding due to memories from before the regression. Instead, they were the ones who reached out to me when I was afraid.
But I wasn’t too young to distinguish between kindness and affection, and it was hasty judgment to think that their feelings would be the same as mine just because they treated me well. Even excluding Yang Garam, who directly expressed affection for me.
‘I’m already receiving more than enough guiding, wanting more would be unconscionable.’
Besides, they weren’t dedicated guides, but temporary ones. Although Espers typically have the upper hand in contracts, I had no authority to interfere with them.
Repeating to myself that this was the right approach, I lifted my head from the water. I finally felt like my mind had cooled a bit.
“Ah, the water’s overflowing.”
As my thoughts cleared, I noticed the water had been spilling over the sides of the tub for some time. I hurriedly turned off the faucet and caught my breath. My body, which had been tense from using my abilities, relaxed languidly in the warm water. I leaned back comfortably in the tub and gazed lazily at the ceiling.
‘I’ll definitely have to sleep here tonight.’
Although I had already received sufficient guiding earlier, the thought of sleeping alone in a strange place made me feel dismayed.
‘If I ask him to sleep together, would he dislike it?’
Compared to Do Wonjin, who pushed boundaries with sly persistence, and Yang Garam, who approached without self-awareness, Jeong Seyeon was refreshingly devoid of physical contact beyond guiding. So my first concern was what if he refused when I asked to sleep together. But no matter how much I thought about it, sleeping alone and having nightmares was scarier.
‘Even if he says no at first, if I keep asking, he won’t be able to refuse.’
After finishing my bath and wrapping a towel around me, I found clothes and underwear laid out in front of the bathroom door. The underwear was brand new, still in its packaging, and the T-shirt looked obviously large, but once I put it on, I could immediately tell who it belonged to.
‘This T-shirt must be hyung’s?’
The length, which came down to my thighs just like the shirt, was definitely Jeong Seyeon’s size. Plus, the fluffy cotton T-shirt not only had the scent of fabric softener but also carried a faint trace of his body odor.
“The pants are too big.”
I could tell at a glance that they weren’t my size, but since they were given to me, I put them on.
“Uncomfortable.”
While I could fold the dragging pantlegs, the waist didn’t fit, causing them to constantly slide down, so I couldn’t take my hands off the waistband for even a moment. Still, it didn’t seem proper to walk around someone else’s house in just underwear, so I returned to the room, awkwardly holding onto the waistband.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
