[168]
The entire lodging was turned upside down in the middle of the night.
Jessica rushed over thinking something had happened to Yuri, only to find him holding Chris in his arms.
“There was some strain on his body, but he’s recovering. The blood he coughed up earlier was just expelling dead blood.”
After checking the examination results, Yuri nodded calmly at Jessica’s words.
But his hands were still firmly holding onto Chris, who had not yet regained consciousness.
‘Both master and servant are pale, this is just…’
Jessica inwardly clicked her tongue. During the height of the mafia conflicts in the Winter Continent, she hadn’t been part of Baekyah but had worked as a doctor in the back alleys.
Therefore, it was the first time she’d seen these two become patients side by side.
‘Just one at a time. One at a time.’
Ideally, having no patients at all would be best.
Jessica was about to slightly relax her tense shoulders but stopped.
A doctor showing fatigue would only make patients anxious.
“Dead blood, you say?”
“Well. He had to use his abilities quite a bit.”
Jessica, who had heard some details from Fortuna, rolled her eyes.
Nobody wants to get involved in a lovers’ quarrel.
“Still, it would be best not to take your eyes off Mr. Danil for a while.”
How to put it… he was truly a self-destructive person.
“He probably didn’t want to take his eyes off you, Mr. Sobolev, but he kept moving constantly, taking care of the aftermath. He likely didn’t even realize he was pushing his body too hard.”
Yuri would feel this more acutely than Jessica.
Perhaps due to the sound of their conversation, Chris’s eyelids twitched.
Yuri, who noticed this first, raised his hand, and Jessica fell silent in response.
“Ah…”
Finally, Chris opened his eyes, and their blue met Yuri’s.
Yuri filled those blue eyes, still hazy like a foggy sea.
The corner of the man’s mouth, who had been lying limp, turned up weakly.
“Is this a dream?”
To see Yuri, who had been lying as if dead, looking at him with an angry expression.
This must surely be a dream.
Chris blinked repeatedly, trying to fall back asleep.
Recognizing his intention, Yuri scolded him:
“Don’t close your eyes. I said don’t close your eyes.”
Who gave him permission to lose consciousness again?
Insults like “idiot” naturally rose up, but Yuri barely swallowed them.
He knew this wasn’t anger but anxiety. And that anxiety stemmed from fear.
The Chris that Yuri knew was a strong being.
This doesn’t mean he never caught a cold or wore short sleeves in midwinter.
Literally, he had never been bedridden.
Even when Yuri had killed Chris, hadn’t he returned alive?
This situation and the worry rising from within were all unfamiliar to Yuri.
“…It doesn’t feel real. Is this not a dream?”
Chris mumbled incoherently.
His voice was still partially floating, lacking strength.
But Yuri heard that whispered question clearly.
“This is reality, Chris. Wake up.”
Because that’s what I want.
As if under a spell, Chris was freed from the heavy yoke of sleep that had been pinning him down.
Opening his eyes, he checked on Yuri first.
“Are you, alright?”
The cracking voice was quite unpleasant to hear. At least to Chris’s ears, his voice sounded like noise.
“I’m fine. You’re the problem.”
“Me?”
At that moment, a third voice that Chris hadn’t yet registered cut in:
“You coughed up blood. And according to Mr. Sobolev, you fainted immediately afterward.”
It was Jessica.
‘Oh dear.’
They weren’t the only ones in this room.
‘Is my condition really that bad?’
He had opened his eyes thinking it was a dream, but he hadn’t even noticed the presence of another person.
Nothing had entered his vision except Yuri’s face, which he saw as soon as he opened his eyes.
Chris belatedly studied Jessica’s expression.
Fortuna must have said something, but it seemed she hadn’t told Yuri the truth.
Jessica, who was staring at Chris, flipped her chart. Something was written in tiny letters on the back page, small enough that only an Esper could read it.
Flip. The chart turned one more page.
Flip once more.
It was the scariest threat Chris had ever seen.
When his expression hardened, Yuri reacted sensitively:
“What is it? Are you feeling pain?”
“No, not at all.”
Chris firmly denied it.
This situation was awkward. All of it.
Starting from the awakened Yuri who had collapsed. Even the situation of him worrying about Chris felt like a dream.
Maybe he was still asleep at the foot of his bed, not yet awake?
“It’s just… I can’t believe Yuri has really woken up.”
“Idiot.”
Yuri clicked his tongue.
He readily reached out and cupped Chris’s cheek.
“Look at me.”
Focus only on me.
With those words, gentle guiding energy seeped in from the hand on his cheek.
The guiding energy spreading through his weary body was incredibly sweet.
Like saliva pooling under the tongue when eating ripe fruit. The tickling sensation at the fingertips when stroking a baby animal’s fur. The carefulness of a lover’s whisper touching the ear.
Chris gathered all the good things he knew, but they were insufficient to express this sensation.
“Yuri.”
You really woke up.
At this call, wet with quiet joy, Yuri nodded as if he had finally been relieved.
“Yes. You certainly know how to make people worry.”
He had never been particularly obedient, but for Yuri to come back from death only to see Chris coughing blood.
Yuri thought he might have stepped into hell after dying.
“Jessica.”
He turned his head to look at the doctor.
Realizing what Yuri wanted from her, she adjusted her glasses.
“The recovery trend is faster than expected, so I think he’ll be fine from now on.”
“That’s good.”
But Jessica’s words weren’t over yet.
“However, come to the infirmary regularly to check your physical condition. Understood?”
Chris unconsciously tensed his shoulders.
He couldn’t help but recall Jessica’s not-so-subtle threat.
It seems he’ll have to play the role of a diligent patient for a while. At least until Jessica forgets.
“Just provide consistent guiding to enhance his self-healing ability.”
After giving her final prescription, Jessica inwardly clicked her tongue.
‘I said it myself, but it really sounds like quackery.’
If she told an ordinary patient, “He’ll get up by himself, just hold his hand often,” she might be involved in a medical lawsuit for being an irresponsible doctor.
However, this was the correct prescription for an Esper.
No medicine works properly no matter what is used. It’s because their bodies don’t respond well to medication.
It was fortunate that their self-healing ability was excellent.
Wounds healed by themselves without needing stitches, and even in cases of internal injuries like now, they would quickly recover after proper rest and receiving guiding.
The more Jessica observed Espers, the less they seemed like normal humans.
‘Seeing their bodies produce fever shows they have inflammatory responses. They clot blood like normal people, just faster. But extracting an Esper’s cells and applying them to civilians doesn’t make their recovery faster. With such rapid regeneration rates, what happens in cases of diseases like cancer? But there have been no reported cases of Espers coming in with diseases rather than external injuries.’
They say Espers don’t get sick. It sounds like a myth, but it was actually true.
However, Jessica’s thoughts were slightly different.
‘…Most Espers probably die before they can be diagnosed with a disease.’
Originally, almost no Espers lived out their full lifespan due to guiding deficiency or going out of control.
Jessica swallowed a sigh.
Various curiosities welled up, but she wasn’t about to write a thesis or earn a degree. Jessica stood up.
“I’ll be going now. Rest well.”
Left alone, Chris silently stared at Yuri.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“It still doesn’t feel…”
Chris mumbled quietly and hunched his shoulders.
He felt embarrassed for mistaking it for a dream even though Yuri had properly woken up.
“What happened to the prisoner?”
It was a question asked with absolute confidence that they had captured the Thorns Order Esper who had been impersonating Abigail after he was shot.
“We interrogated her and learned her true intentions. It turns out that even being captured by us was part of her plan.”
“A Trojan horse, eh?”
Yuri muttered.
He was speaking calmly, but his hands trembled when he wasn’t paying attention.
“Trojan horse?”
Chris blinked innocently, as if he didn’t know what that meant.
It might seem inappropriate to describe an Esper who could tear off a person’s head with bare hands as innocent, but that’s how he appeared to Yuri.
“It’s a story from an ancient war. Two forces were fighting, and the besieging side pretended to surrender, leaving behind a huge horse statue before withdrawing. The defenders brought it inside their gates.”
“Ah.”
“But enemy soldiers were hiding inside it. That’s the story.”
The city fell and they lost the war, Yuri explained briefly before staring at Chris and abruptly saying:
“To use the same trick to deceive them. Well done.”
It’s usually more painful for the one who intended to ambush but got ambushed instead.
“I just… thought that’s what Yuri would do.”
It was something he had said so easily to Peter, but confessing it in front of the person in question was embarrassing.
“I wouldn’t have done that.”
Yuri firmly denied it.
Why would he put Chris inside and expose him to danger?
Yuri would have solved it by injecting the guiding drug they had secured, then either mobilizing Fortuna or using reverse guiding.
‘Perhaps he would have used both.’
“So this was your doing.”
“Thank you…”
Chris flinched unnecessarily. Somewhere in his chest that he couldn’t scratch felt itchy.
“You’re clever. Well done.”
The touch stroking his hair made his body languid.
Maybe it was because of Jessica’s prescription, but Yuri was infusing guiding energy into his fingertips.
“By the way.”
Yuri whispered to Chris, who had relaxed his tension.
“What was the purpose of the captured prisoner?”
Yuri’s cold purple eyes were staring at Chris.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
