Chapter 7

　　Even if Kim Hyeseong pulled in a decent amount of cash working the shadows, calling her a chaebol, one of Korea’s ultra-rich elite, was a stretch.

　　“…Guiding peddlers. Figures.”

　　The corner of the man’s mouth curled into a strange smirk. He looked amused, but also faintly irritated, like something had rubbed him the wrong way.

　　Hangyeom didn’t care for the sneer, but he deliberately let it slide. Espers who looked down on guiding peddlers were a dime a dozen, and running into people who wore that attitude out in the open came with the territory. Reacting to every last one of them was a waste of energy he couldn’t afford.

　　Face carefully blank, he set a ten-minute timer on his phone and prompted him.

　　“Just take my hand already.”

　　The man clasped it without hesitation.

　　Instantly, Hangyeom flinched at the chill radiating through the contact.

　　Why is he so cold?

　　The hand was icy, as if the man had spent the entire winter out in the frost alone. Yet, strangely, his skin carried the same healthy color as anyone else’s. If anything, Hangyeom’s own hand—warm to the touch—looked far paler by comparison.

　　The flicker of curiosity didn’t last.

　　Aware of the man watching him steadily from behind those sunglasses, Hangyeom refocused on their joined hands.

　　Just as guides always did when they slipped into guiding mode, his eyes soon bled to red. A soft, mist-like current followed, seeping gently from his hand into the man’s body.

　　His guiding was no different than usual.

　　If anything set it apart, it was that—this being a first-time client—he concentrated on mapping the pathways of the man’s body, tracing the dark currents of ESP wherever they ran.

　　Exactly ten minutes later.

　　BEEP, BEEP, BEEP—

　　The timer he’d set went off.

　　“Time’s up.”

　　The man had let his eyes fall shut somewhere along the way, drunk on the way the guiding wrapped around his body like something intoxicating. If not for the sunglasses, Hangyeom might have caught the way his eyes snapped wide, startled by his own reaction.

　　His own eyes already back to their usual black, Hangyeom moved to withdraw his hand without a second thought. The man caught it again on reflex, and Hangyeom’s fingers, now completely swallowed in that large grip, stilled with visible displeasure.

　　“I told you. Ten minutes max for the first session.”

　　The man remained silent.

　　Unable to hide his disappointment, the man reluctantly released him. Hangyeom shook out his tingling hand a couple of times—the grip had left his already pale skin looking bloodless.

　　“I’ve got a question for you.”

　　Falling into his usual post-guiding ritual, Hangyeom pulled out a cigarette and tucked it between his lips. He leaned back against the desk, dragged the ashtray closer, and picked up his lighter.

　　CLICK, CLICK.

　　The damn thing was acting up again.

　　The lighter was nearly out of gas, and the sputtering flame grated on his nerves. After a few tries, he finally coaxed the cigarette to life.

　　He drew the smoke deep into his lungs, then let a long stream of gray drift out past his lips. And then he asked the question that had been sitting on his tongue for the entire session.

　　“Why send a clone instead of coming yourself?”

　　His dark eyes settled on the man, cold and level.

　　The man seemed genuinely caught off guard.

　　Just as Hangyeom had guessed, the figure in front of him was a clone the man had conjured. But almost no one alive would have been able to tell.

　　The face, the gait, the gestures, the color and response of the skin, the play of muscle, the small unconscious habits, the voice, the speech, the eyes, even the scent—all of it identical to the original. It could even absorb a guide’s guiding without a hitch.

　　The only real tells were that its body temperature ran significantly colder than a living person’s, and that—regardless of the original body’s condition—the clone was always generated in perfect health.

　　Beyond those two things, its form and every sensation had been rendered with such exacting precision that no one would ever think to question whether it was real.

　　The man let out a quiet laugh at Hangyeom, who’d seen straight through him.

　　“When did you know?”

　　“The second I started guiding you.”

　　His interest clearly piqued, the man pressed on. “How?”

　　“Because I’m a guide.”

　　An answer as short as the question.

　　Hangyeom didn’t feel the need to say more. It was simply the truth—if he weren’t a guide, it would have slipped right past him.

　　He’d caught it the moment the red current he’d fed into the man circled through and came back to him wrong.

　　The dark ESP pathways threading through the man’s body were so pristine that Hangyeom half-wondered whether he needed guiding at all. He’d worked his way through every channel, smoothing each one, and turned up nothing more than a handful of faintly uneven spots—so subtle they barely registered.

　　And yet, strangely, no matter how much guiding he poured in, that unevenness never resolved. More precisely: even after he’d cleared a path clean, a faint distortion would creep back in the instant he returned to it.

　　As if the man were actively using his ability in real time.

　　But Hangyeom hadn’t seen him do anything. Even with the sunglasses on, there should have been a trace of the dark current that always bled out when an esper activated a power—there was none. And the whole time their hands were joined, the man had stayed perfectly still.

　　That was when it clicked.

　　The man was somewhere else entirely, spending his ability just to hold this body together.

　　And the way the ESP flow shifted in real time made it unmistakable—this was a clone, tethered to the original.

　　First time I’ve guided a clone directly.

　　It was common knowledge that espers with cloning abilities could receive guiding secondhand, so long as the copy stayed linked to the main body. The method was inefficient by nature, being indirect—but used well, it meant a guiding session at any hour without having to stay physically glued to a guide.

　　If he can pull this off, he’s at least A-rank… probably higher.

　　The clone was fine-tuned enough to absorb indirect guiding without the slightest hitch. By the Association’s ranking scale, the esper behind it had to sit somewhere near the very top.

　　Hangyeom combed his memory, trying to count how many people in the world could produce a clone this flawless—one indistinguishable from the genuine article. As an unregistered ability user, the man wouldn’t turn up in any public record, but by lining him up against espers of comparable caliber, he could make a rough guess.

　　Behind the sunglasses, something flickered in the man’s gaze.

　　“Other guides never caught it. Even after guiding me for a good while.”

　　Which figured.

　　The flaw Hangyeom had picked out was too minute for any ordinary guide to detect. It was only possible because his sensitivity as a guide had been forced on him since childhood—an average guide would have missed the anomaly in this exquisitely made clone entirely.

　　Hangyeom absorbed the man’s expectant stare through the dark lenses without flinching.

　　“Guess sensitivity varies from guide to guide.”

　　He tossed it off like it was nothing, tapping ash from the cigarette into the tray.

　　“You don’t have to answer my question if you don’t want to.”

　　His gaze dropped to the ashtray, long lashes casting soft, slanted shadows over his lowered eyes.

　　“Are you just paranoid enough to be careful even meeting a washed-up guiding peddler like me? Or…”

　　His sharp eyes lifted, fixing on the man.

　　“Is it that you couldn’t move yourself, even if you wanted to? …Just curious.”

　　The words drew a slow smirk from the man.

　　“It’s a test.”

　　“A test?”

　　The moment the word landed, Hangyeom couldn’t stop the flicker of distaste that crossed his face.

　　“A test of what?”

　　The man only answered with a low, quiet laugh.

　　Then, as if their business was done, he rose without hesitation.

　　“Cha Hangyeom.”

　　He turned the name over in his mouth—a name Hangyeom had never once given him—and braced both hands on the desk Hangyeom leaned against. As he tilted forward, his back to the overhead light, his long shadow spilled across Hangyeom’s face and drenched it in dark.

　　“Don’t forget what I said earlier.”

　　Boxed in against the desk before he knew it, Hangyeom exhaled a thin stream of smoke and forced himself to look unbothered, turning his eyes away.

　　“What was that?”

　　The man closed his hand over the one holding the cigarette. Hangyeom’s fingers fit into that firm grip like they’d been measured for it.

　　“That we can do more than this. If you want.”

　　Hangyeom looked at him, puzzled.

　　Meeting Hangyeom’s look, the man smiled—brilliant and clear. Even with half his face hidden, the smile was so striking, like something lifted out of a painting, that even Hangyeom lost himself in it for a beat.

　　After the man left the studio apartment, Hangyeom stood staring at the door he’d walked through. He only tore his eyes away when the cigarette burning between his fingers began to eat into the filter.

* * *

　　A few days passed.

　　—“Jaewoo, what do we do…? Another no-show, I think.”

　　Jaewoo’s voice sounded dejected over the phone. Hangyeom’s own face went slack, a faint crease pulling between his brows.

　　From this morning right up to now, with dusk closing in, that made seven cancellations.

　　For people to book sessions and then bail one after another, like they’d coordinated it in advance—it was strange. Way too strange.

　　“Something going on today? We’ve never had a whole day of no-shows like this.”

　　“You sure the Association didn’t put people out?”

　　“No, their side’s been quiet all day too. And unless they get a direct report, they only move during the quarterly sweeps.”

　　The first month of every quarter was when unregistered ability users had to keep their heads down.

　　The next sweep was still two months out, so, just like Jaewoo said, there was no reason for the Association to be stirring things up this early. Unless, of course, all seven clients had been reported and were on the run right now.

　　But they had nothing in common—nothing beyond being Hangyeom’s regulars.

　　“Should we seriously start taking deposits?”

　　“Forget it. What deposit?”

　　“But we take bookings with no collateral, so they figure they can flake without a second thought, right?”

　　Jaewoo had a point, but squeezing advance deposits out of unregistered ability users who lived off the grid was never going to be easy. There was a reason Hangyeom stuck to cash, in person.

　　“We already agreed—anyone who cancels more than twice gets cut from the list. That’s enough.”

　　“Yeah, I guess, but…”

　　“Don’t lose sleep over it. Next booking’s Hyeseong noona anyway. No way she flakes.”

　　“Mm…”

　　Aside from that one time she’d sent some stranger in her place, Kim Hyeseong had never missed a single appointment.

　　So he told Jaewoo not to worry, trusting she’d show right on schedule. She was the last client of the day, too—once they wrapped, maybe the three of them could go grab dinner.

　　But today, it seemed, really was one of those days.