“One-sided Imprint? An Incomplete Imprint? Hm. So basically, Esper Seon Juho imprinted on Tae-rim, right? Since it’s called ‘one-sided,’ that must mean Tae-rim didn’t imprint back.”
Kim Hyo-il summed it all up in an instant—quick and to the point. Seon Juho, at a loss for words, could only nod.
“Wow… I didn’t even know that kind of imprint existed. That’s wild.”
“Ohhh… so that’s why Esper Seon Juho only gets Guiding from Tae-rim. That’s what you were trying to say, right?”
Seon Juho nodded so hard it looked like his head might fall off. Lee Tae-rim could feel everyone’s scattered attention locking right back onto him and instinctively wanted to go find Ah-yeon. But before he could say a word, the entire situation had already been neatly unraveled without him.
“No, wait, I mean…”
This was supposed to be a secret—for the sole reason that Seon Juho wasn’t supposed to know. And now he did. Tae-rim felt utterly deflated. Honestly, he could probably bet his entire savings that thanks to the people currently present, this news would be spreading in real time.
“I wasn’t supposed to know, since it might make the imprint permanent if I found out… but oops, I found out anyway.”
Seon Juho said it with a bright, innocent smile as he gently pulled Tae-rim’s hand away from his mouth. The other three all nodded with understanding.
“Ahh, I see.”
“Makes sense.”
“Right, that explains it.”
“Ha… I mean, come on…”
“Tae-rim.”
“…Yeah?”
“Even if Esper Seon Juho hadn’t found out, I doubt the imprint would’ve broken. That’s just my take.”
“Yeah, you really think a 90% Matching Rate with an S-rank is just gonna dissolve like that?”
Their serious expressions and matter-of-fact tone hit like a slap. Tae-rim fumbled to explain himself.
“No, I mean—it was just the shock from his first Guiding session!”
“And it still ended up with a 90% Matching Rate?”
“Ah, Jae-hwa hyung!”
“So that’s why no one mentioned his Matching Rate. Makes perfect sense now.”
Wait, why is everyone acting like this is normal?! Tae-rim was speechless.
“Hyung. Do you want my imprint to break?”
“J-Juho…”
“You’re the only one I’ve got, you know. That’s so cold.”
“No, I just thought… maybe there could be someone out there with an even higher Matching Rate…”
“Higher than 90% with an S-rank?”
Every jab from the side chipped away at him until Tae-rim completely crumbled.
“I mean… yeah, that’s probably unlikely, but still! Isn’t it safer to have more than one Guide you can get Guiding from…?”
“So what—you’re saying you want me to get Guiding from someone else?”
“No, that’s not what I meant—”
“Tae-rim, that’s exactly how it sounds to everyone else.”
The cold, hard facts kept coming from every direction, leaving him with nothing to say. Tae-rim buried his face in his hands.
There wasn’t a single person on his side.
***
As expected, the rumor spread like wildfire across the entire Center.
Min Se-ah got chewed out by her parents—not even because of the enormous fine, but because she’d been reassigned from District 1 to District 3. Apparently, she got scolded so badly she couldn’t even tell them the whole story.
Tae-rim honestly got it. Her family had moved all the way from District 7 to District 1, backed by government support, only for her to be shipped off to one of the most dangerous districts in the blink of an eye. From a parent’s perspective, she must’ve seemed less like a daughter and more like a walking disaster.
The one who sent her to District 3 was Lee Yeong-jun. Tae-rim had recently learned that Lee Yeong-jun’s father was some sort of minister or government official—meaning his influence within the Center ran deep. For someone like him, transferring a single problematic trainee to District 3 was nothing.
Lee Yeong-jun might have had a calm and gentle demeanor most of the time, but when it came to work, he was ruthlessly decisive. After reviewing both Min Se-ah’s history and her involvement in the latest incident, he lost his temper. His solution? “If she’s not enough of a person yet, then we’ll make her one.” And just like that, she was sent packing to District 3.
She might not realize it yet, still being a student and all, but give it three years—she’ll understand. Living and surviving in the field is grueling work. She’d kicked her own fortune to the curb without even realizing it.
The only way Min Se-ah could escape District 3 was if there was no one else available to Guide Kwon Hae-beom—either because Tae-rim imprinted on him, or because of some emergency. If her luck really turned sour, another Guide might show up before that even happened. In that case, she’d be stuck grinding away in District 3 for good. That’s what it meant to fall out of favor with the higher-ups.
For the record, the A-rank Guides were praying—desperately—for someone else to show up who could Guide Kwon Hae-beom. They were begging the heavens never to see that brat again.
Kwon Hae-beom himself couldn’t have cared less whether his Guide changed or not. He had exactly one goal: take down Molt. That’s why he kept coming to Tae-rim for Guiding without a word of complaint.
As for the news about Seon Juho’s Incomplete Imprint—it spread through the Center exactly as Tae-rim had feared. Once it got out that Seon Juho had instinctively and unilaterally imprinted on Tae-rim to survive, all the people who used to criticize Tae-rim for “hogging” the S-ranks suddenly disappeared. That part, at least, was deeply satisfying.
Seon Juho, of course, was on cloud nine. He kept saying Tae-rim was the only one who could take responsibility for him, practically glowing with happiness.
Tae-rim, on the other hand, had complicated feelings. At first, he’d wanted the imprint to break quickly. He’d finally started pulling his own weight, and when his Guiding didn’t seem effective, he’d gotten anxious.
Then came the moment Seon Juho caught his pheromones. That had thrown him into complete shock. Not just because he was emitting pheromones at all, but because Seon Juho could detect them. It was beyond anything he’d been ready for. He hadn’t wanted to believe it.
In transmigration stories, the whole “your second gender from your past life reappears” thing was the most overused cliché imaginable. And of course, the protagonist always ended up suffering for it. Tae-rim had desperately wanted to deny it—to scream that he wasn’t going to fall into that ridiculous trope.
But the trope had come for him anyway.
Because of it, Seon Juho awakened as an Alpha. Not even a year had passed, and the kid was already evolving from a newly awakened Alpha into a fully matured one.
What made it worse was that while Tae-rim still couldn’t control his pheromones, Seon Juho could. If his body had fully manifested as an Alpha, things were going to get complicated. There were no suppressants in this world. The last thing Tae-rim needed was a Rut.
Even though Tae-rim’s physical body was technically Beta, the reality was this: he and Seon Juho were the only Omega and Alpha in this entire world. And Seon Juho had awakened because of him. He was a victim of that damned trope.
Maybe that’s why, somewhere deep down, Tae-rim started to feel—just faintly—that he needed to take responsibility for this kid. But it was just that: faint. He’d never really thought about it in concrete terms.
To him, Seon Juho had always been more like a younger brother he needed to raise right. Honestly, if he were being brutally honest, he thought of him more like a puppy. And seriously, who has those kinds of thoughts about a puppy? All he’d wanted was to take care of him properly.
So all of this still felt distant. Like something that had nothing to do with him. But then everything changed between them—thanks to the kidnapping.
Tae-rim had spent over a month in a cramped, white room with bars on the windows, barely sleeping, just waiting for Seon Juho every single day. He’d been pushed so far past his limits that thinking clearly had become impossible. Looking back, he was probably only half-sane at best.
He’d assumed Seon Juho had been in the same state—mentally drained and unable to think straight. That’s why he hadn’t questioned the fact that Seon Juho couldn’t control his pheromones. He just hadn’t had the capacity to think about it.
But then Seon Juho escaped—easily. Sure, he’d awakened a special ability, but he’d seemed far too calm. As if that wasn’t enough, he went on to spend nearly twelve hours hunting monsters nonstop. Even with Guiding in real time, that kind of physical toll should’ve been overwhelming, yet he bounced back after a single good night’s sleep.
Watching all of that made Tae-rim reevaluate. Wait… was this kid even suffering at all?
He was doing better now, but right after returning to the Center, Tae-rim had really struggled. If his door was closed, he’d feel suffocated. If he was alone, he’d leave videos running in the background just to avoid the silence. And at night, he couldn’t sleep unless Seon Juho was there.
But Seon Juho? He seemed completely fine. Whether he truly was or was just pretending, Tae-rim couldn’t tell. Outwardly, he looked totally normal. The dark circles under his eyes that Tae-rim had thought were exhaustion? Gone overnight. It made Tae-rim all the more suspicious.
He started wondering if this was just how Espers were, so he asked Jung Jae-heon. But even he didn’t know. He said he’d never been in a similar situation, but guessed that he could probably go about two weeks without sleep if necessary.
Seon Juho had said he couldn’t sleep well without Tae-rim. He was being experimented on during the day and only got chances to sleep at night. In terms of total rest, he’d probably gotten less sleep than Tae-rim.
But if Jae-heon could go two weeks without sleeping, then what about just barely dozing here and there for over a month? Jae-heon admitted he had no idea. He’d never gone through something like that. Still, Tae-rim couldn’t shake the doubt.
Did that little bastard release his pheromones on purpose?
And yet, even if that was true, Tae-rim couldn’t fully blame him. Because of those very pheromones, he’d been able to fall into a deep sleep—if only for a short while—after Seon Juho left. If Seon Juho’s scent hadn’t lingered on his clothes and in his sheets, Tae-rim might’ve completely broken down.
He was angry—but he couldn’t bring himself to yell. The whole thing was too complicated, too tangled.
All he could do was sigh. Again and again.
