Han Ju-oh looked down at Baek Seo-ha, who stood before him dressed in a hospital gown.
He’d been treated, sure, but from the amount of blood he’d lost, he should’ve been resting. And yet here he was—he’d ran out in that state. How did he even make it here without getting stopped?
“No matter what I say, it probably won’t make sense to you…”
He trailed off, frowning, and Han Ju-oh said nothing. He could tell what kind of resolve had brought Seo-ha here just from the look on his face. Whatever he was about to say clearly wasn’t simple.
“I’m not going to imprint with you.”
The problem was that he’d apparently come to that conclusion all on his own, and it was completely out of left field.
“I never asked you to imprint with me.”
Han Ju-oh shot back. He hadn’t confessed or anything, but now Han Ju-oh felt like he was being rejected, so his tone came out sharper than intended.
“Anyway, I want to raise my matching rate. Honestly, that’s been my lifelong wish. If someone told me I could boost my matching rate by offering up everything I owned, I’d do it without hesitation.”
Han Ju-oh quietly watched as Seo-ha rambled on. At some point, he regained his composure and crossed his arms.
“And how much is this everything you own worth?”
“Huh? Well, if we’re talking about everything, then there’s the house I live in…”
Seo-ha pointed at the company-provided residence. It probably amounted to about the cost of a house.
“So, about a month’s rent?”
“…If it weren’t for me, you’d be out on the street.”
“What are you talking about? Even if it wasn’t you, I’d have mooched off Moon Roi just fine. Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is, I was really desperate.”
Han Ju-oh’s eyebrow twitched as he looked at Seo-ha with a touch of disdain—though not entirely disapproving.
“Think about it. I was ready to give everything up and head back down. I didn’t see any hope left, so I decided to quit. But then you came along, clung to me, and stopped me—and now look where we are.”
“I clung to you?”
“You did. Don’t pretend you didn’t.”
Seo-ha said it like it was obvious, lifting his hand as if to cover Han Ju-oh’s mouth.
“I’m not done talking yet.”
Han Ju-oh raised an eyebrow, silently telling him to continue instead of nitpicking.
“You wouldn’t gain anything from me bumping up my Guiding rate by a few percent, so I figured I should just let you go. But I won’t. And honestly, it’s not because I’m being generous or selfless.”
Then, amid Seo-ha’s hurried, emotional words, something genuinely important slipped out.
“I want to see how much it’ll increase.”
There it was—Baek Seo-ha’s real desire.
“Then do it.”
Han Ju-oh replied flatly. That response left Seo-ha flustered; he started waving his hands in disbelief.
“That’s it? That’s all you’re gonna say? Don’t you have any thoughts about this?”
“What am I supposed to be thinking?”
“We’re not just going to be holding hands anymore. Shouldn’t you at least mentally prepare yourself?”
He looked like he had come ready for anything—but truthfully, Han Ju-oh didn’t have a single thing weighing on his mind.
“Are you planning to fall for me?”
Baek Seo-ha’s eyes widened in shock.
“What? Are you crazy?”
“If not, why would there be anything to prepare for?”
“…”
“You’re not really my type, so it’s not like I’m going to fall for you or anything.”
“You little—!”
Baek Seo-ha’s face flushed bright red.
“Didn’t you just say you’re not planning to imprint with me either?”
Han Ju-oh acted as if he didn’t see what the problem was, and Seo-ha’s blushing face slowly began to calm. Now that he thought about it, what he’d said could’ve come off pretty bad depending on how you took it.
“Fine. Let’s drop it.”
They’d each landed a hit. No point dragging it out. Seo-ha steadied his breathing, his expression back to normal. It wasn’t like he’d come here to fight with Han Ju-oh—better to move on to the next topic. Honestly, standing here yelling in a hospital gown was bound to make people think something was seriously wrong.
“You haven’t changed your mind, right? You’re not suddenly gonna back out now or anything?”
“I’ll do it.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Han Ju-oh’s more relaxed response prompted Seo-ha to stop pressing the issue. But now that everything had been said, the silence between them turned oddly awkward. Seo-ha smoothed his sleeves and glanced around. Then Han Ju-oh asked,
“Couldn’t this have been said over the phone?”
“Huh?”
“Or you could’ve told me to come to you. Showing up looking like that wasn’t exactly the better option.”
Han Ju-oh’s gaze shifted to Seo-ha’s head, and Seo-ha instinctively raised a hand—only to realize belatedly that he still had the cone hat on. A hospital gown and a cone-shaped party hat. The thought of people seeing him like that on the way here made his face burn with embarrassment.
“Moon Roi.”
He definitely must’ve seen him, but said nothing.
“Were you that eager for a guiding session that you came running like that?”
Han Ju-oh’s deadpan tone didn’t even flinch as he spoke, and Seo-ha nearly choked up. He was in a rush, sure, but it wasn’t so much that he was excited for the guiding—it was more that he was hoping the matching rate would go up. Feeling wronged by the misunderstanding, Seo-ha suddenly remembered his place.
“I wasn’t actually coming to see you. I was heading home. I was just going to tell you if I saw you along the way.”
Maybe it was too obviously an excuse, because Han Ju-oh didn’t even bother to respond.
“See you later.”
Feeling awkward, Seo-ha cleared his throat and turned quickly toward his apartment, retreating like it was his safe zone. As he hurriedly keyed in his door lock code, he could feel the heat rising again.
The code was wrong.
He tried again—wrong again. It was so obvious that Han Ju-oh had shaken him up that he didn’t know where to look. Then, a hand appeared from behind him.
Seo-ha froze like ice as Han Ju-oh reached over and entered the code.
“It’s not 1234. It’s 4321.”
“Ah…”
Apparently, his mind was so full of Han Ju-oh that he’d accidentally entered his passcode. Mortified by the mistake, he couldn’t bring himself to look at him.
“Try guiding me. Now.”
Han Ju-oh’s breath tickled his ear, and his heart started pounding like crazy.
‘This is just because he startled me,’ he told himself. It was just reflex—he’d appeared so suddenly.
But in that moment of rationalizing, Han Ju-oh’s hand slid right under the hospital gown. As his fingers brushed along his spine, Seo-ha flinched.
“Go on.”
Han Ju-oh didn’t give him time to collect himself—he pressed forward without hesitation. Guiding? Right here, right now?
‘Calm down,’ Seo-ha told himself.
He squeezed his eyes shut and began the guiding. Not focusing on the hand, but rather on the Esper’s body heat radiating against his back, he followed the energy flow and counted silently.
One.
If the match rate goes up, that should make him happy.
Two.
He’d wished for this change his entire life.
Three.
Just this once, he wanted to be selfish…
Four—
“Huh?”
The energy flowed deeper and longer than it ever had before. Seo-ha opened his eyes and stared straight ahead. He couldn’t see Han Ju-oh, but it didn’t matter. He knew now that this moment was real.
“It increased.”
He didn’t need to look at the value on his watch—he could feel it. And clearly, Han Ju-oh could too.
“It went up to six percent.”
“Wow…”
Double. Twice the amount of energy he’d ever successfully transferred before had just flowed into Han Ju-oh’s body.
“This is kind of fun.”
There was laughter in Han Ju-oh’s voice.
***
In the end, he didn’t even get one foot inside the house. Because Moon Roi snitched about him leaving the hospital, Guild Leader Kim Mi-yeon had found out and came to pick him up herself.
“You didn’t have to come in person, ma’am… I was going to head back on my own.”
Seo-ha fiddled awkwardly with the cone hat he’d taken off his head, but Kim Mi-yeon shot back without a hint of mercy.
“You were hospitalized right after joining my guild. How could I not get involved?”
“Still, coming all the way out here is a bit…”
“Less talking, more getting in.”
She nodded toward the car, and Seo-ha trudged toward it like a calf to slaughter. He obediently sat in the passenger seat and waited for her. Just then, Han Ju-oh spoke up.
“His matching rate’s going up.”
“That’s good news. Then let me tell you something too.”
Kim Mi-yeon held up her phone so Han Ju-oh could see. The photo on the screen was taken from a distance, so the face wasn’t clear—but it was unmistakably Seo-ha, in a hospital gown, wearing the cone hat.
“You wouldn’t want a photo like this floating around, right? You or Guide Baek…”
It wasn’t so much that she’d come as Guild Leader. Rather, she’d shown up personally because this kind of photo had started circulating—and she revealed that to Han Ju-oh, not Seo-ha. She didn’t want Seo-ha to know and be humiliated.
But Han Ju-oh’s response was unexpected.
“It’s cute.”
“This is cute?”
Kim Mi-yeon looked utterly dumbfounded, but Han Ju-oh calmly took her phone and saved the photo to his own. Then he deleted every copy from her device and handed it back.
“Do your best.”
Kim Mi-yeon accepted her phone and looked at Han Ju-oh. It was her way of cheering on a friend who had always lived with the threat of losing control, as if balancing on a blade’s edge.
Her opinion of Seo-ha had changed too. She’d once thought he wasn’t worth partnering with because of his low match rate. But Han Ju-oh had thrown his body into danger to save him, and Seo-ha had dragged himself across the ground to guide him.
Because she understood what had happened, Kim Mi-yeon chose not to interfere in their relationship any further.
