Vicious Darling

[13]

Thud.

The blonde Esper’s body collapsed.

Yuri looked at him with incredulous eyes.

This Esper had literally crushed Rosenhauser’s subordinates.

Yet he fainted after receiving just one guiding.

It was so absurd that Yuri’s tension actually eased.

He nudged the golden beast with his foot, but it didn’t move at all.

‘At least we’ve left the forest surrounding the ruins.’

Only after confirming that the Esper was completely unconscious did Yuri stand up and look around.

There wasn’t a single house in sight.

As soon as the beast lost consciousness, the flesh-biting wind started blowing again.

To make matters worse, the cold intensified as the night deepened.

Given Rosenhauser’s nature, no one would be living in this area. He would have driven them to a place as inconspicuous as possible, since it was an operation to capture a rampaging Esper.

After risking his life to calm down the rampaging Esper, now he was left only with the prospect of freezing to death.

The pager at his waist flashed. Yuri stared at the light demanding a response, then removed it and crushed it in his hand.

‘This is madness.’

Even as he did it, Yuri knew exactly what he was doing.

He had just destroyed his only lifeline.

In such an unpredictable situation, if he wanted to live, he should crawl to his godfather’s feet and lick his shoes.

‘That’s why I couldn’t bring myself to destroy it right after escaping.’

But by choosing this Esper, Yuri had thrown himself into a somewhat uncertain future.

Giving in to impulse was something he had always despised.

He thought he would surely regret it. Yet at this moment, what Yuri felt was not despair, but a sense of liberation.

He never wanted to return to that cage again.

Even if this choice would lead to him freezing to death.

After taking a few steps into the empty snow field, Yuri suddenly turned his head.

He saw the Esper collapsed on the snow. Snow was already quietly piling up on him.

If a little more time passed, even that shape would become blurry.

The face of the one covered by this night and winter as a blanket was extremely peaceful. It was hard to believe that he had mercilessly broken the necks of the hunters who had pursued him with emotionless eyes.

“…Sleep well.”

Yuri walked away without looking back.

***

“What a perfect day to die.”

As the body slung over his shoulder slipped to the ground again, Yuri irritably brushed back his hair.

How many things had he done that he’d never done before?

Yuri had turned back before taking even a few steps, as if possessed by something.

As he pulled the snow-covered figure, he thought.

This was a kind of insurance.

Rosenhauser, having failed to capture the Esper and lost his subordinates, wouldn’t let Yuri go easily.

So Yuri needed something to protect himself too.

‘He was in a rampaging state, but if I provide enough guiding…’

He shuddered at the thought that suddenly occurred to him.

He had caught the Esper because he wanted to live through the ruins in the snow field, but in fact, Yuri hated guiding.

Even more so after uncovering the truth that Rosenhauser had targeted him and disposed of his parents. He loathed the Esper kind, and what was even more horrible was that he himself was born a Guide.

His godfather had demanded that Yuri become his exclusive Guide after coming of age, for the sole reason that he was a Guide.

‘Such a disgusting human…’

If, apart from being an Esper or Guide, a godfather made his godchild do such things, it would be a crime deserving death by stoning.

But Rosenhauser was confident.

He was an Esper, and wanting a Guide suitable for himself was just common sense to him.

Suppressing the urge to retch, Yuri got up again.

He needed to go as far as possible while the blizzard covered his tracks.

He had no intention of waiting idly until Rosenhauser caught up.

But even just readjusting the man of similar build on his shoulder was burdensome.

His legs dragged on the ground, and they both tumbled down after just a few steps.

Originally, Yuri preferred reading and research over physical training. If his parents were alive, he might have followed in their footsteps and become a researcher. But now he suddenly had to carry a man as big as a house through the snow.

Erasing these useless thoughts, Yuri moved on.

Luckily, Yuri found an intact house.

The outer walls had mostly collapsed, and the interior was cold and dusty from long disuse.

Yuri threw the Esper onto the creaking bed and brought firewood to start a fire.

As he poked at the fireplace with a poker, perhaps relieved by the warmth, he dozed off.

“…!”

In the dim dawn, Yuri felt his heart sink as he opened his eyes.

Less than a hand’s width away, blue eyes were staring at him.

‘I almost hit him by mistake.’

It wouldn’t be difficult to hit him, but whether his hand would be intact afterward was another matter. Generally, Espers possess stronger bodies than ordinary people or Guides.

In other words, Yuri would be the one in pain if he tried to hit him.

He looked down at his palm, which had never held anything but a fountain pen. Though he didn’t dislike exercise and enjoyed horseback riding, so his physical condition wasn’t bad, he lacked the ability to beat someone up.

Now that he thought about it, he wondered if Rosenhauser had deliberately arranged things this way.

“The… the fire’s gone out.”

Yuri turned his head away from him and checked the fireplace.

The interior had already become quite chilly.

As Yuri tried to lift the poker to stir the remaining embers, he shook off the Esper’s hand that reached for his wrist.

“Don’t touch…!”

The golden beast, roughly pushed away, showed no sign of being hurt and looked out the window.

The blizzard had stopped, and people approaching the house were visible outside.

Oh no.

Smoke must have risen from the chimney when he lit the fire because it was cold.

It wouldn’t be strange if Rosenhauser’s dogs, searching for Yuri or this Esper, had spotted the smoke.

‘Why didn’t I think of this?’

Yuri bit his lip.

He looked anxiously at the Esper. He was still fixated on Yuri.

“We need to get out before they arrive.”

Yuri moved busily, poker in hand.

Not knowing where they could rest next, he needed to gather useful items.

As he packed blankets, oil lamps, and canned food with some unidentifiable fish on the label, Yuri asked the Esper,

“Are you just going to watch?”

Frowning slightly as if something displeased him, the man followed Yuri as he went out the door. He didn’t even pretend to help with the luggage, but Yuri wasn’t particularly disappointed.

He couldn’t complain when the heaviest load was moving on its own.

‘For now… we can’t go towards the forest we came from last night. But where should we go to find a populated area?’

If they fled in this vast plain, they would be caught before long. They needed to hide among crowds in a city before that happened.

When Yuri started running, the Esper ran alongside him.

But before they could go far, the ground suddenly gave way. The earth had moved. As Yuri slipped with the ground disappearing beneath his feet, the golden beast caught him.

‘Did they deploy Espers on that side too?’

Yuri, standing unsteadily on two legs, glared at the person moving his hands at the forefront of the black-clad group.

In an instant, the ground moved, isolating the area where the two stood like an island.

Judging by the ability to move the ground, this wasn’t an ordinary level Esper.

‘It’s not the kind of ability user he could mobilize just through connections…’

Imagining what excuse Rosenhauser might have used to bring an ability user from the Union, Yuri couldn’t help but sneer.

In Rosenhauser’s fabricated excuses, what kind of despicable person had he become?

A murderer? Or a spy who leaked confidential information?

Either way, it was just ridiculous.

A chilling tension crept up his back.

Yuri felt self-loathing at the fact that he was a Guide, not an Esper.

Was it really impossible for him to get out of this situation alone?

The same paralyzing helplessness he felt on the night he first heard the news of his parents’ death filled his chest.

Would he be caught like this? If caught and taken back, he would surely be dragged to the hidden laboratory Rosenhauser had prepared.

Even if he tried to move the Esper, he did nothing but follow him around, so he was truly cornered.

That’s when it happened.

The man who had caught Yuri before he slipped frowned as if those people were bothering him.

He stretched his hand towards the pursuers.

Woong-

Under the sun, a snowstorm caused by a single individual danced like a storm of gem dust.

It was a sight both marvelous and terrifying at the same time.

It was a miracle impossible to create both naturally and artificially.

Something only an Esper could do.

Yuri opened his mouth, trembling as if frozen by the cold.

“Kill them, kill them all.”

As if that was the signal, the ice firmly frozen in the frozen earth cracked and rose into the air with an invisible force.

The sharp winter fragments aimed at the pursuers shot through the air at the man’s gesture.

The attack was so violent that the enemy scattered in all directions to avoid it. However, it was nearly impossible to dodge all the ice shards rushing through the snowstorm.

Death lodged in their feet, arms, and sometimes necks and faces.

It was a horrific sight, but Yuri watched them closely without averting his eyes.

He wasn’t sure if the Esper had done as he wished, but he was certain that he had wanted their deaths.

Yuri instinctively felt it.

Everything would change from this day forward.

As the last person’s breath was cut off, blood splattered onto the white snow.

The man nonchalantly called back the ice shards that had been used for their deaths. A bridge formed from where the two were standing to the other side.

Yuri looked at him. The blonde man’s face showed no awareness that what he had done was terrible.

Instead of contorting his face in horror, Yuri gestured to the Esper.

“…Let’s go.”

He didn’t look back again.