Chapter 10: The Unavoidable Choice

Sa-yoon offered the medicine with a hesitant hand.

His body moved stiffly, knowing this was wrong, yet having no other choice in the situation.

Han Do-hoon accepted the pill meekly, blinking slowly. Then, without a moment’s hesitation, he swallowed it.

“……”

Han Do-hoon’s blinking eyes gradually unfocused, soon becoming vacant and hollow.

“…Wow.”

Witnessing the transformation, Sa-yoon was so dumbfounded that a laugh almost escaped him.

He was utterly speechless at Han Do-hoon’s unexpected actions. To swallow that medicine without a single moment of thought, even knowing what state it would leave him in.

Sa-yoon leaned his back against the wall and crouched down. Han Do-hoon lay sprawled like a corpse, utterly motionless.

The heat in Sa-yoon’s fingertips slowly faded, replaced by a chilling sensation. It was an unfamiliar feeling, this helplessness and guilt, which coiled around him after so long, reminding him of his utter uselessness.

The ring he had put back on, before descending to meet Han Do-hoon, now pricked his finger.

In this moment of crisis, Sa-yoon’s selfishness, his inability to remove it, tightened painfully around his digit.

“This is insane. Why are you making me so miserable?”

Sa-yoon muttered forlornly to the unconscious man, who couldn’t hear him.

Han Do-hoon had charged forward as if there were no other option, but the truth was different.

There had been other choices. Had Sa-yoon removed the ring sooner, had his selfish deliberation been shorter, this outcome would never have occurred.

“……”

Sa-yoon and Han Do-hoon were in similar predicaments, yet their choices had diverged.

Sa-yoon’s mind raced.

This potent drug, which effectively killed a person while they were still alive, allowed them to return to normal with no major side effects if an antidote was administered within an hour of ingestion.

However, exceeding that hour meant brain cells would slowly begin to dissolve, leading to a complete vegetative state after two hours.

One hour. While it might seem long, to Sa-yoon, it felt fleeting, like a mere instant.

Han Do-hoon’s condition couldn’t be resolved by simply giving him the antidote.

If he regained consciousness and rampaged, all their efforts would be in vain. Guiding him had to be completed before the antidote could be administered.

Sa-yoon scanned his surroundings.

The ground around them was already a chaotic mess, ravaged by bombs and flooding.

‘Could I minimally disturb the ground, get to the surface, receive guiding, and administer the antidote, all within one hour?’

He didn’t need to ponder the question for long. It was impossible.

There was only one option to guide Han Do-hoon and administer the antidote within that precious hour.

“Damn it…”

A curse spontaneously escaped Sa-yoon’s lips.

Though a part of him wondered if he should just let Han Do-hoon die, the image of him leaving without hesitation to prevent the flood kept resurfacing.

Sa-yoon irritably ruffled his hair and unbuttoned the suffocating collar of his shirt.

Sa-yoon roughly tore off his right glove.

Ignoring the white glove that fell onto the dirt floor, he pulled off the ring he always wore and tossed it aside.

The sight of his bare, unadorned hand made him hesitate for a moment, wondering if this was truly the right course of action.

Sa-yoon looked at his smooth palm and let out a laugh.

“You truly are selfish, Sa-yoon.”

He recalled what he had thought the moment the first bomb exploded, when he had debated whether to remove his ring.

As Han Do-hoon vanished to stop the Han River from overflowing, Sa-yoon, for a brief instant, had felt relieved that his ringless hand hadn’t been noticed.

This was in stark contrast to Han Do-hoon, who, even while unconscious and tormented by the precursors of a rampage, had swallowed the medicine without a second thought.

‘I’m going to be a righteous person.’

Why was this old memory suddenly resurfacing?

The voice, remembered after such a long time, lingered in Sa-yoon’s eardrums as if spoken right beside him.

Sa-yoon’s lips twisted, then he let out a bitter laugh.

Righteousness. It was a word he hadn’t thought of in ages. To be forced to revisit the concept of justice, which he had believed only existed in his naive childhood, at such a moment was truly ironic.

“Mr. Han Do-hoon. You’re truly righteous to a fault. Thanks to you, I know how to live.”

Sa-yoon grabbed the collar of Han Do-hoon, who was slumped against the wall, and roughly threw him to the ground.

There was only one way.

Fortunately, Han Do-hoon’s belongings included a Pentosamic antidote.

Therefore, Sa-yoon simply needed to guide Han Do-hoon, administer the antidote, and then take him to the surface.

Sa-yoon placed his hand on Han Do-hoon’s firm chest. Feeling the fierce pounding of his heart beneath his palm, he looked at Han Do-hoon’s face once more.

Having received guiding himself over the years, Sa-yoon understood the basic methods of a Guide.

First, contact guiding: holding hands or embracing to gauge the other person’s reaction.

Even with his gloveless hand pressing on Han Do-hoon’s chest, there was no change in the pained furrow of his brow.

This was to be expected. For a C-rank Guide like Sa-yoon to calm an S-rank Esper like Han Do-hoon, this level of contact was utterly insufficient.

Sa-yoon moved his reluctant body.

As he leaned over the prostrate Han Do-hoon, a sudden surge of indignation rose within him.

The thought of simply letting him die surfaced dozens of times, only for his conscience to argue, just as many times, ‘How could a person do that?’

‘Right. I won’t die from this. As long as I don’t get caught…’

Since Han Do-hoon’s mind was clouded, he wouldn’t remember being guided.

Therefore, if Sa-yoon guided him only until just before a rampage and then gave him the medicine, the chances of being discovered would be minimal.

Han Do-hoon’s nose, prominently straight, seemed unnecessarily high.

Sa-yoon pressed down on Han Do-hoon’s lips, parting them.

He shuddered once more at the hot, soft sensation of feverish skin, then inserted his finger into the opened mouth.

If epidermal contact wasn’t enough for guiding, only mucous membrane contact remained.

He briefly quelled the rush of impulsive emotions.

Sa-yoon bravely reached for Han Do-hoon’s lower body.

He gently tugged down the pants, whose buckle he had already unfastened, and they slid down without resistance.

“Right. That’s how it was.”

The sheer size of Han Do-hoon he had once glimpsed beneath his pants now came back to him.

He had braced himself to endure this unsightly situation just once, but this was a size that couldn’t be resolved by mere determination.

He couldn’t bring himself to reach for the thick, rising weapon, even through the briefs.

“Envi… no, I’m in big trouble.”

Taking another deep breath, he extended his hand toward Han Do-hoon’s member.

He bit his lip tightly at the substantial fullness and high body temperature.

Sa-yoon knew well that his current choice was the best one.

Despite his despairing emotions, his hand moved mechanically.

Peeling back the briefs like a rind, he grasped the exposed member.

Its weighty fullness filled both his hands, and he ran his tongue over his parched lips. He only hoped his mouth wouldn’t tear.

Sa-yoon extended his tongue and bit the thick tip.

Skillfully, he licked down the indented ridge beneath the glans and along the shaft.

Perhaps it was his imagination, but Han Do-hoon’s pelvis, surely unconscious, seemed to twitch.

Sa-yoon rubbed the tip with his tongue, then took Han Do-hoon’s member into his mouth.

Using his soft palate, he pushed it deep into his throat.

‘If I’m going to do this, I might as well get him fully aroused and finish quickly.’

With that thought, he rolled his tongue.

For guiding efficiency to increase, the Esper needed to touch the Guide’s mucous membrane.

Ultimately, he would have to take this ignorant brute inside him.

As Han Do-hoon’s member slowly grew firmer, becoming too much to handle, Sa-yoon lifted his head.

Instead of the member that had filled his throat, a sudden rush of cold air made him cough violently.

He spat the saliva collected in his mouth onto the ground.

Han Do-hoon’s member, already enormous before, had now become a size that made Sa-yoon frown in dismay upon erection.

He would actually have to shove *that* into his body.

“……”

‘Surely, even now, if I drag Han Do-hoon up the shortest route and receive guiding…’

No matter how he thought about it, completing that plan within an hour was impossible.

Sa-yoon removed the clothes he was wearing and neatly arranged them beside him.

Even the aftermath had to be perfect.

He couldn’t leave any evidence that he had guided Han Do-hoon.

Sa-yoon opened the first-aid kit and squeezed a palmful of ointment.

He frowned at the slippery feel of the cream, then sent his hand downwards.

Thanks to the ointment, his finger smoothly penetrated his posterior.

The sensation of invading his own rear sent shivers down his spine.

“Ugh…”

A breathy groan escaped him involuntarily.

He only wanted to finish this roughly and quickly. After all, this wasn’t something he had started for pleasure.

He just needed to ensure he didn’t tear or bleed, as that would be problematic.

With a pale, expressionless face, Sa-yoon pushed Han Do-hoon, who was leaning against the wall.

Undeterred by the sound of him falling onto the ground, Sa-yoon approached and gripped the still-erect member.

Should he, perhaps, consider it fortunate that the unconscious man was so well-erected?

Sa-yoon hid his fear with such absurd thoughts and climbed onto Han Do-hoon’s stomach.

‘This is merely a medical procedure. This is simply an act of saving someone.’

With his resolve hardened, Sa-yoon gripped the warm member and aligned his body over it.

‘Don’t think of anything else. I am currently saving Seoul.’

The member, touching his narrow opening, was impossibly massive.

Its tip had barely brushed him, yet fear and revulsion made his thighs tremble violently.

He calmly placed his hands on Han Do-hoon’s abs for support and pressed his body down.

He squeezed his eyes shut at the vivid sensation of his opening stretching.

“Damn it…”

It hurt. Trying to insert such a colossal thing into his barely prepared rear felt like his body was splitting in two.

Sa-yoon struggled to calm his pelvis, which convulsed with pain.

With tension seizing him down to his toes, he lowered his taut body further.

The thickest part, the glans, pushed into him, following Sa-yoon’s weight.