The Way to Love in the Place of Dead Chapter 16

The conversation made no sense, and it was also torture that the laughter of someone he hadn’t thought of once all day kept ringing in his ears for some reason.

— When I get back, I’ll show you around outside the Center, so stay put. Promise?

— Aran!

Only after a fairly weighty shout was heard did the man seem to stir himself to get up.

— Sleep well.

Even at this late hour, to the man who was still on the move, Kay couldn’t bring himself to say, ‘You too.’ Not knowing how to properly end a phone call, he hesitated, and in that moment, the call disconnected. The light of the bracelet dimmed.

Aran stared at the bracelet whose light had gone out, then stepped outside the barracks. The soldiers already in formation and Legion Commander Tato were waiting for him.

“Don’t glare at me like that. You’re the one who sent a person who didn’t even have to go to the academy in the first place, Commander.”

“I sent you to hold an induction ceremony, not to go all the way to Willamere and back.”

“Thanks to that, I secured the S-rank esper you’d been longing for, didn’t I? Shouldn’t you be thanking me?”

“He’s still from Willamere. If anything, he’s a risk factor.”

Aran took out gloves from the inner pocket of his uniform coat and put them on as he spoke.

“Don’t worry. That guy won’t betray anyone. Or maybe I should say he can’t.”

“No one knowingly lets themselves be betrayed.”

Pulling the black gloves onto both hands and tugging them down to the end, he grasped a spear made of white light and faced the legion commander.

“Commander, you love your wife, don’t you?”

At the sudden question, Legion Commander Tato’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. Since they had a mentor-student relationship stretching back to the military academy, Aran’s attitude was nothing new.

“You still love her, even though she’s dead?”

Everyone at the site awaiting deployment sucked in a breath. But the commander himself, the one actually asked the question, answered without wavering.

“Always. Why do you ask?”

“If a person who looked exactly like your deceased wife appeared, would you love that person too?”

“No. Because neither people nor love can be replaced.”

“You sound confident.”

Aran twisted his lips into a smile and asked again.

“But if that person who merely resembled her were in danger of dying on the battlefield… you’d save her, wouldn’t you?”

“Naturally.”

“Before a complete stranger who doesn’t even look like her?”

Amid the suffocating tension, only the two of them paid no mind to the eyes of others.

“You know full well that’s an inappropriate question.”

“Of course I do. But if I don’t ask now and then die without ever asking, what then?”

One who acts knowing he’s being rude is of far worse character than one who acts without knowing. Yet Aran’s attitude was that of one who knew he would be forgiven regardless. In that context, he was the worst of the worst.

“If you tell me, I might get motivated and fight harder than usual?”

At Aran’s flippant gesture of exaggeratedly covering one ear against the mechanical sounds spreading from the ridge beyond the line, the ears waiting for the legion commander’s answer grew as wide as cymbals.

“Saving civilians on the battlefield is a soldier’s duty, and there are no personal feelings involved.”

“But instinctively, unconsciously, you might choose one person, might you not?”

“If I am condemned for it, then I will bear it.”

Even at the exceedingly textbook answer, Aran raised the corners of his mouth and smiled as if amused.

“You can’t deny it outright, can you?”

“You’ve gotten your answer, so fight harder than usual.”

Thud. Raising his head at the hand tapping his back, Aran thought to himself as he headed toward the barely visible <Citadel> in Sector H.

‘That’s what makes it irresistible force, I suppose.’

Even knowing they merely look alike. Even knowing they are a complete stranger. Even believing there is no connection whatsoever. The foolishness of inevitably giving your heart away in the end.

Aran smiled faintly, thinking of the one who would struggle against that very foolishness.

∞ ∞ ∞

In the Center, where grades were assigned to ability users and those grades were everything, there was no place that displayed rank quite as thoroughly as the Residential Complex. The lower floors housed D to F-rank ability users and professionals with exceptional skills but no esper abilities; the middle floors housed C to A-rank civilians or Willamere natives. The upper floors were occupied by those of A-rank and above, as well as the children of the powerful.

And currently.

“Fuck, it’s so damn tight.”

In Room 4701, an orgy had been underway since morning.

“Ha-ut, ngh. Ah!”

Smack—the sound of slapping a buttock and the sound of thighs colliding and grinding. Amid the slick, sticky mixture of gel and semen and the endlessly flowing moans, men gathered, shaking their cocks, making the bed creak. But one of the five sat in a rocking chair, idly toying with the back of his hand where gauze was affixed.

“Nngh. Gr-Gray… aren’t you… going to do me?”

“Ho. Looking for another man while you’re in bed with us?”

“Suck this. And focus.”

The esper, impaled from front and back, let out a stifled moan, surrendering his body and enjoying the pleasure that had continued since the guiding session that ended in the early evening. While the two took their pleasure in tandem, a roommate who had just finished ejaculating discarded his condom, shook off his hand, and approached Gray.

“What, you got erectile dysfunction or something?”

Shaking a cigarette pack to fish out a remaining cigarette and put it in his mouth, the man slung an arm around Gray’s shoulder with a smile that was somehow amused.

“Yeah. Just not feeling it, somehow.”

At Gray’s words, who had snatched the cigarette from his mouth, the esper impaled on the cocks wailed in an even higher pitch, as if spurred on.

“Too bad. Looks like he wanted to do it with you.”

His blue eyes disinterestedly located a lighter rolling around anywhere. Watching the small flame flicker as he lit up the cigarette, he was reminded again of those red eyes from yesterday.

“Black hair and red eyes, they said.”

“Huh?”

“The esper Aran Rapperd brought. That one.”

“Ahh. The S-rank? So I’ve heard.”

“Know anything else?”

His roommate, who had lit his own cigarette with a kiss, fell into thought.

“Hmm… just a ton of rumors.”

“Tell me, even if it’s rumors.”

“Well, first off, he’s really short.”

The roommate gestured around his own waistline.

“And they say he looks young. Though whether he just looks it or actually is young, nobody knows.”

‘Guess it’s true then.’

He’d been half-skeptical, but it seemed that young man he’d seen yesterday was indeed the protagonist of the rumors floating around everywhere. He hadn’t expected it, since for someone who had supposedly blown away an entire building during the induction ceremony, he had looked far too quiet and composed.

— If you don’t cool it down quickly, you’ll get a burn.

Those eyes that had fixed on him directly had been unwavering and intense; it felt like the first time in a long while that he’d properly looked at someone. The very moment he recalled those sharp eyes, the blood-red irises beneath the pitch-black lashes, the esper on the bed, having reached his peak, burst out a moan and trembled all over.

“Haa…”

Just as a hot breath trailed out, the esper half-turned his body and whispered toward Gray.

“What. You wanna pounce on him?”

Having rubbed the semen that had splattered even onto his face against the sheets like a cat, he raised the corner of his lip while still sprawled out.

“He’s totally your type, I’ll grant. Small, strong, pretty-faced. But then again, who knows… Rumors are also flying around that he’s in that kind of relationship with Aran Rapperd.”

“Oh, really?”

Though he let the words slide by indifferently, Gray’s eyebrows arched up.

“Can’t be helped, I guess. Espers are wired to be drawn to strong guides. It’s instinct, pure instinct. The very design of the brain is inevitably made that way.”

While espers were treated as the strong for leveraging abilities others lacked—whether physically, mentally, or otherwise—they were vulnerable when it came to protecting themselves. And instinctively, they sought to resolve that vulnerability through guides.

And so, espers become obsessed with guides, restrain them, and try to monopolize them. That was the counsel of those who had failed to resist their instincts. Asking them to become theirs, for the sake of perfect existence.

“You know that, too, which is why you like strong espers. The strong, proud, haughty-looking ones begging at your feet.”

“We only give to you guys without ever receiving anything. We should at least get that much pleasure out of it.”

It had been an eye-catching back. A lean body, rare within the Center, which was packed with hulking muscle-heads. Admiring the line of the uniform falling from the neck to the shoulders, waist, hips, and thighs, he wondered what kind of skin would wrap around his hands if he stripped it off.