Choi Taehun was reluctantly turned around with his shirt completely removed. He let out a deep sigh as the gazes of his younger siblings pierced his back. Seungyu, the most foul-mouthed among the six siblings, couldn’t hide his shock and shouted.

“Shit. It’s huge!”

“Seungyu, watch your language!”

“So big…”

Taehun’s younger siblings began poking at the Name etched onto his well-defined back muscles. They even pressed their faces close enough to feel hot breath as they examined it, causing a commotion. Taehun, who was trained in the responsibilities of being the eldest in a large family, knew he had to stand still until his siblings’ curiosity subsided, so he gave up on resisting.

After a while, Jeongmin, who had been staring at his older brother’s back, suddenly spoke up as if an idea had just come to him.

“Hyung, what if the person connected to this Name is a guy?”

“…Hmm, I don’t know.”

Taehun flinched a little at the unexpected question from his youngest sibling, something he had been privately worrying about. But it was the other younger siblings who reacted more dramatically to Jeongmin’s question.

“Ahhh, shit! Is hyung going to be gay?!”

“Hey, the name hasn’t even come up yet!”

“Oppa, what if it really is a guy? Are you going to date him?”

“I don’t even know who it is! Stop jumping to conclusions. There’s no rule that people with the same Name have to meet.”

In truth, Taehun was worried too.

“What if the person connected to my Name is a guy?” he had wondered a hundred times the night before. After looking into the community, he found out that many people who had lived their whole lives straight suddenly found themselves becoming bisexual after connecting with a same-sex individual with the same Name.

Of course, there were also cases where people lived like sworn brothers or sisters, though those cases were fewer in number.

Taehun unknowingly sighed quietly to himself.

The whole concept of Names was a strange phenomenon. The sensation of having someone else’s name suddenly appear on your body and then becoming obsessed with finding them felt like a kind of mental paralysis.

“What if I just want to stay friends with this person, but they like me?” Taehun thought to himself, before dismissing it as crazy. But now, his younger siblings were poking at the very scenario he had tried to ignore.

In fact, when it came down to it, the Name itself didn’t force any kind of connection. There was no obligation to report it to authorities, and it could easily be dismissed as a trivial occurrence.

—Except, of course, for Taehun’s ‘special’ circumstances.

If not for that, there would be no need to worry about it. He remembered the thought of an Esper who had been unable to find their matching wavelength for over ten years. He was sure that the person wasn’t on this Earth anymore, and thus the mere sharing of a Name wouldn’t lead to anything like this—nothing like becoming involved with that kind of man.

Taehun comforted himself, trying to reassure himself.

“I want to kill him.”

Ji Gwanyeong thought this the moment he saw Choi Taehun.

No, to be more precise, he thought he had thought it. He believed that the surge of all his senses, rising with intensity, was a form of hostility or disgust. But of course, that was strange. The man before him had a body that was far more ordinary and well-developed than his, and he had never been in a proper fight. The calluses formed from tightly gripping writing tools and some muscles from a little exercise were all he had.

No matter how many times he looked again, it was clear that this was not someone who should cause the unease he was feeling—someone who had never made him feel disturbed since his Esper abilities first awakened.

In the middle of the signing event, with his gaze fixed on him, Ji Gwanyeong found himself instinctively thinking about strangling the man’s neck, which was within reach if he extended his hand. But as he hesitated, the man in front of him looked completely unaware of what was going on in Ji Gwanyeong’s mind, his expression one of surprise.

But when the man opened his mouth and “said his name,” Ji Gwanyeong’s desire to kill him completely disappeared. To be exact, he realized that he didn’t actually want to kill him.

The name that had been buried in the back of his mind as an Esper suddenly floated up.

“Choi Taehun.”

Ji Gwanyeong instantly knew that the man before him was the owner of that incredibly common name. He also became certain that “Choi Taehun” was the Guide. That confidence only grew clearer when he held Taehun’s hand.

As soon as “Choi Taehun” grabbed his hand, he let out a low, strained sound. Ji Gwanyeong thought Taehun probably assumed he was acting strangely, but in fact, as an Esper, he didn’t have the luxury to do that.

The moment he held the Guide’s hand, everything he saw came into sharp focus, in a way that was completely different from before. The world, which had always seemed like a mere piece of data, suddenly came alive with meaning and purpose. It was like seeing the ordinary world again for the first time since awakening as an Esper at the age of twenty-one. All his senses were now fully attuned to Taehun, who was breathing deeply in front of him.

Instinctively, Ji Gwanyeong sat down on a chair a few steps away, his attention completely fixed on Taehun, listening intently and making eye contact with him. The sound of the Guide’s heartbeat, which was beating far faster than a typical adult male’s, was soothing to his ears.

The moment he received the autograph and shook hands, the man seemed to panic and quickly disappeared from Ji Gwanyeong’s sight, as if he had been set on fire. Ji Gwanyeong had an odd certainty that his name had probably come to Taehun’s mind, too.

When the Esper returned to his mansion, he casually threw his coat aside and connected to the network. He was gathering information to buy off the information brokers.

Everything about “Choi Taehun” was necessary.

He desperately gathered information on Taehun. The information about Taehun at the Esper-Guide National Research Center was one of the most tightly guarded data by the research center’s information Espers, making it difficult to access, but finding other details was not hard.

In just three days, he could learn everything about the life Taehun had lived and the values that guided his existence. Ji Gwanyeong slowly read the first line of the information he had received, as if engraving it into his mind.

“Firstborn among six siblings. Twenty-eight years old. Activated as a Guide at the age of five. No matched Esper.”

That was a relief.

If Taehun had been someone else’s Guide, Ji Gwanyeong would have willingly killed that Esper. Thanks to that, the Guide’s life had a little value, despite the hardships.

The monster waited for the right time to approach the Guide Ji Gwanyeong had found.

He could have approached immediately, but what caught his attention was that Taehun had long refused to live the life of a Guide, despite undergoing numerous Guide matching tests.

“There’s no need to provoke unnecessary rejection first,” Ji Gwanyeong thought.

He had unknowingly wrapped up his own fear of being abandoned by the Guide in a way that he couldn’t even realize. The waiting was like a cautious observation, akin to a beast waiting for its prey to let down its guard.

Meanwhile, he had heard an interesting piece of news.

It was that Taehun had realized that the name etched on his body was Ji Gwanyeong’s name. Of course, he didn’t think it was “that Ji Gwanyeong” and had been searching for other people with the same name.

It was both cute and, in a way, infuriating.

Clearly, just as Ji Gwanyeong had felt a tremor, Choi Taehun must have sensed something strange when he met me. No matter how ordinary his life had been, he couldn’t have missed it!

Ji Gwanyeong grabbed any Guide who could replace “Choi Taehun” and, in a more reckless manner, had rougher sex. However, that didn’t really help him. An Esper who had already been in contact with their own Guide felt an overwhelming thirst when matched with a partner with poor compatibility.

Just as Esper Ji Gwanyeong was reaching his limits, the incident occurred. It was an Esper’s rampage in the heart of Gangnam.

That day, Choi Taehun had gone out for a quick visit to meet his friend.

It seemed like any other ordinary day, one that gave no reason to suspect anything out of the ordinary. But that belief was shattered when, in the blink of an eye, a large building in front of him was split in two and collapsed, with chunks of concrete and twisted steel pipes raining down like a storm.

It only took a few seconds for everyday life to turn into hell.

The fog created by the rampaging Esper completely blocked his sight, and a foul stench began to spread. Loud sirens and broadcasts urging surrender could be heard, but they offered no comfort to those terrified by the endless fear.

The only way to stop a rampaging Esper was another Esper.

Given the scale of the attack, even a moderately ranked Esper wouldn’t have dared to intervene. It was clear that rescue teams had yet to arrive. Even Esper’s, as people, had certain situations they feared, and one of the worst was dealing with the rampage of an Esper who had lost control after losing their Guide.

A battle driven purely by force, with no reasoning or common sense, was full of risks. Most people would refuse to be sent to such dangerous scenes, making it clear how perilous the situation was.

For the first time in his life, Choi Taehun faced a fear he had never known.

He never imagined he would be caught in an Esper terrorist scene that he had only seen on TV. The first thing that came to his mind was his family’s faces. The realization that he was a Guide soon followed, a desperate thought.

So what if he’s a Guide? He couldn’t control that crazy bastard. Taehun trembled in front of the fog that obscured his vision.

He felt a hot, burning sensation on his forehead, and his eyes stung. It felt as though his wounds were bleeding from the concrete fragments. In the hazy fog, he could hear other people’s cries and groans, a chaotic mix of sounds that made him question whether he was even alive or dead.

Then, it happened.

“Close your eyes.”

The low voice of the man echoed in Choi Taehun’s ear. He added, with a feigned tenderness, “You might get hurt.”

A large hand, radiating warmth, covered his eyes. Choi Taehun, in a daze, asked, “Who is it?” But the man didn’t answer. He simply pulled the guide into his arms.

Choi Taehun was pulled into the man’s embrace. Despite his towering height, reaching over six feet, he felt like a helpless doll being protected. The man, whoever he was, was warm. And he provided a strange sense of security that didn’t seem to fit the situation.

The man, as if sharing that same feeling, let out a sigh, like a languid whisper.

“…Don’t be afraid.”

Taehun, with his eyes covered, nodded slightly.

But that sense of security didn’t last long. A terrifying, gut-wrenching scream, far more intense than the faint whimpers and groans he’d heard before, began to pierce the air.

The scream, so chilling it felt like his ears were being torn apart, caused the guide to instinctively grab the man’s arm, which was wrapped around him from behind. Then, he heard a sound that seemed like laughter.

The man, Ji Gwanyeong, slightly lifted the corner of his lips as he watched Choi Taehun trembling in his arms. He found the sight of a grown man shaking not pathetic, but rather, quite endearing. It was a new experience for him, but he didn’t mind it.

Ji Gwanyeong was slightly aroused.

Ever since he discovered that using his powers made him thirstier and more volatile, he had always carefully controlled his strength. But now, Gwanyeong had no qualms about using his power.

The monster gently kissed the guide’s ear.

After that brief, tantalizing encounter, to meet again in such a tragicomic situation… he wondered if it would ever happen again.

With every kiss on Choi Taehun’s ear and hair, blood from the large and small cuts stained his flawless cheeks, but Ji Gwanyeong didn’t care. He greedily inhaled the pleasant scent of the man in his arms, burying his face in his chest.

At that moment, the screams of someone writhing in agony ceased.

The hazy smoke-like fog couldn’t obscure the monster’s vision. Ji Gwanyeong twisted and broke the limbs of the esper who dared to hurt his guide, then flung him against the building’s exterior wall.

As the esper’s life ended, the artificial fog that had filled the streets gradually thinned. People who had cowered at the hair-raising screams, finally relieved, looked around with tear-stained faces. They were alive.

But the first thing the survivors saw wasn’t the image of a handsome hero who had saved their lives. They stared blankly at a man, his body pierced and lifeless, lying in a pool of crimson blood in the middle of a towering building.

The esper had stabbed Choi Taehun’s vital point, causing him to fall into a temporary sleep. His guide couldn’t see such a sight. Ji Gwanyeong, hearing the retching and trembling screams coming from all directions, carried the limp, slender body in his arms.

The man with his name etched on his back was beautiful.

Yes, he thought he was beautiful. He truly found him beautiful. …It was a truly strange feeling.

The thin skin of his closed eyelids seemed especially soft, and when he lightly brushed his lips against them, he felt a tingling sensation that was both exhilarating and unsettling. Ji Gwanyeong gently stroked Taehun’s still pale face.