Chapter 10
It’s useless against a clone.
A clone was tethered to the real body. That connection was exactly what made indirect guiding possible—energy flowed through an invisible pathway linking the clone back to the source. But the instant Cha Hangyeom tried to disrupt the clone with harmful guiding, the connection would snap shut before the damage could ever reach the real body.
So in the end, all he could do was raise his hands in surrender before a clone he could have shattered with a single touch.
“What do you want?”
Instead of answering, Seo Won simply looked at him. His gaze made it clear he didn’t think an answer was necessary.
“Why did you do it?”
Again, Seo Won didn’t respond right away. He glanced at the two people standing behind him. Reading the signal to give them privacy, they bowed slightly and stepped out.
The moment the door clicked shut, he finally spoke.
“Because it’d be a waste.”
“What would?”
The corners of his mouth curved into that same vivid smile from the last time they’d met. Back then, half his face had been hidden under a hat and sunglasses, so it hadn’t left much of an impression. But now, with his face fully bared, Cha Hangyeom realized the man had the kind of looks that could bewitch just about anyone.
Seo Won didn’t answer the question. Apparently he wasn’t the type to explain himself.
Instead, he laid out something absurd—something that showed zero regard for what Cha Hangyeom actually wanted.
“From now on, this place is your home. And a fairly comfortable prison.”
Cha Hangyeom’s face twisted instantly. The revulsion that single word—prison—stirred in him closed around his throat like a fist.
“As of today, all your time belongs to me. You don’t need any other clients.”
“Says who?” Cha Hangyeom tilted his head defiantly and shot him a glare, bristling at the sheer arrogance of it.
“If you want guiding, book an appointment through Song Jaewoo. Don’t kidnap me and threaten me like this.”
“An appointment?” Seo Won murmured, then let out a soft, amused huff. “Is that really necessary? Your guiding exists for me anyway.”
The man in front of him, Cha Hangyeom thought, was lost in some ridiculous delusion.
Espers sometimes rambled on about feeling a sense of destiny with a particular guide, all because their wavelengths synced up and the guiding ran smooth and efficient.
This one’s definitely my guide. I don’t want anyone else touching them. That sort of thing.
Driven by a greed to always have the best guiding, more than a few of them ended up fixating on imprinting. From the very start—Ability User Association-registered or unregistered, it made no difference—every esper carried the same monstrous obsession with whatever guide gave them top-tier work.
How childish.
Cha Hangyeom decided the arrogant delusion needed correcting.
“My guiding exists to make money. Not for anyone in particular.”
It was the kind of thing a low-rent guide would say—one who sold his guiding to whoever paid, just to keep food on the table.
“Money, huh…” The smile slid off Seo Won’s face, and a chill crept into his blue eyes. “For someone who says that, there was a man you let imprint on you. No charge.”
The moment the words landed, Cha Hangyeom’s eyes shook violently.
Thud, thud. He could hear his own heart slamming against his ribs, his skull throbbing in time with every beat.
A surge of panic rose fast and swallowed his whole body.
His already pale skin went ashen, and his fingertips trembled.
“What… what are you—”
His voice cracked pathetically as it forced its way out. Through the gaps in it, he felt like a clot of blood coiled somewhere deep inside was about to rupture and pour out.
“I’ll say it again. Your guiding exists for me.”
He said it like he was carving it into Cha Hangyeom’s mind, then turned and walked toward the door. At the click of it opening, Cha Hangyeom’s shoulders jerked.
Beyond the door Seo Won had opened stood a man who looked exactly like him. Everything about his clothing was identical, save for the black shirt—without that one detail, telling them apart would have been impossible.
For any ordinary person, anyway.
That one’s the real body…
Even though the two were mirror images, Cha Hangyeom knew at a glance the one in black was real. He could feel a subtle, invisible ripple of ESP flowing from him toward his white-shirted double.
Something feels wrong.
His heart was thrashing, dangerously erratic. In step with it, a prickling sensation ignited between his shoulder blades and kept widening its reach.
He swayed as the strange feeling and a rolling wave of nausea crashed over him all at once. The real Seo Won—the one in black—shrugged off his suit jacket and handed it to the clone. Then he unbuttoned his vest and lifted his fingers to the top button of his shirt.
“I’ve sent clones to plenty of other guides before. Not once did the guiding ever reach me.”
When a clone received guiding, the connected body was supposed to feel it too, its internal ESP flow shifting in response. It should have been a given that the guiding reached him—yet he spoke of it like some small miracle.
Undoing the last of the buttons, Seo Won pulled the shirt wide open.
Hah?!
Cha Hangyeom stumbled backward, clapping a hand over his mouth. His eyes blew wide, trembling.
Only then did he understand why Seo Won had been wearing black.
His torso was densely covered in dark veins branching out from his heart. Spreading in every direction like a spiderweb, the black lines had crawled all the way up to his neck.
The Black Vein.
The phenomenon commonly known as the precursor to a rampage.
Espers who went without proper guiding were slowly consumed by the dark energy rooted inside them—their ESP. The worse the condition got, the more the writhing, swollen ESP channels forced their way to the surface of the skin. Bit by bit, the Black Vein seized control of the body and rotted its host from the inside out.
Starting at the heart, the Black Vein spread more and more distinctly across the whole body as time passed. And once the black tendrils reached the brain and devoured the host’s sense of self completely—that was when a rampage began, and a monster was born.
If the Black Vein had already climbed as high as his neck, there was no telling when he might suddenly lose control.
Maybe the smallest flicker of a negative emotion would be enough to let it seize his brain overnight.
His condition was that dangerous—which meant he’d have gone to desperate lengths to keep it hidden.
Because any ability user, esper or guide, could recognize the Black Vein at a glance.
If anyone caught him like this, he’d be branded a rampage-in-waiting, and the Association would have thrown him into a high-security solitary cell for special containment.
“I’ve had more guiding than I can count. And this is still what I’ve got to show for it.” Seo Won looked down at his own body, wrapped in the Black Vein, and let out a hollow, self-mocking laugh.
There wasn’t a rank he hadn’t tried, from the lowest D-rank guides all the way to A-rank. Every single time, he’d let himself hope, just a little. And every single time, the result was the same.
The Black Vein, spreading relentlessly with each passing day, chewed through his sanity and his patience without mercy.
I can’t die like this.
Not after everything it took to bring me back.
With a desperation that felt like coughing up blood, he’d clawed to stay alive. He’d poured astronomical sums of money and mobilized an endless stream of people, all to learn what was causing this and how to stop it.
Among them, an S-rank guide from the Association—one he’d met through a discreet, back-channel arrangement—pointed to his heart and said:
“No matter how gifted a guide might be, no one will be able to guide a man with that engraved on him.”
The guide had been looking at something beyond the Black Vein.
“There’s only one person in the world who can guide you.”
Only then did he understand there was something fundamentally wrong with his heart.
Seo Won looked down at the left side of his chest, where his heart lay. Where nothing but the Black Vein had been visible before, a red pattern was now surfacing.
When he lifted his gaze to Cha Hangyeom, the man’s face had gone deathly pale, like he might crumple at any second.
“So you can see it after all.”
Seo Won smiled faintly, as though he’d expected exactly that.
A red, flame-shaped mark that not even the Black Vein could hide had fully surfaced, vivid and complete, over the left side of his chest. And more than that—his heart was beating with a swollen, joyful rhythm unlike anything he’d ever felt, almost as if it knew Cha Hangyeom’s eyes were on it.
Cha Hangyeom was probably feeling the very same thing.
After all, he and the original owner of this heart had been imprinted on each other.
Just as Seo Won suspected, Cha Hangyeom’s heart was pounding so hard he could barely draw breath.
“Your back would be a good spot for the imprint.”
Cha Hangyeom dragged in a ragged breath as the voice of his dead imprinter—the one already turned to ash—rose in his memory. The silent resonance of an imprint between two ability users began gnawing viciously at the inside of his skull.
“Something like a pair of little wings, torn off without mercy.”
The gently whispering hallucination closed in on him, cruel and inescapable. Hidden beneath his clothes, the red imprint resonated like it was screaming.
