Pretending to Be the Lover of an Esper C16

Chapter 16

“Are we wrapping up for today, or do you want to go another round?”
I raised the question while glaring at the bleak training room wall as if it were an enemy. I found myself counting the scratches and dried paint marks scattered across it—meaningless, but distracting enough. Who’d made those, anyway? They looked like random strokes in an abstract painting.

“What do you want to do, Guide Ji Yunseong?”
What? Me? Why are you suddenly asking for my opinion?

After a moment of silence, Lee Taeon asked again, his tone softened noticeably. The unexpected gentleness sent chills creeping up my arms. I scratched at my forearm reflexively.
Normally, I would’ve adjusted the difficulty or parameters and kept going, pushing for a bit more movement—but somehow, I didn’t feel like doing that today. My focus kept slipping toward things I didn’t want to think about.

“Well, uh, since we’re done anyway, let’s just clean things up and head to the guiding room. Maybe it’s thanks to the sensory sharing, but training went by fast today. We’ll just do a quick data check and handle personal training after?”

Without realizing it, my body jerked slightly as I turned to leave—without waiting for his answer.
I had no room in my head for the usual post-training chores—submitting reports about the four indoor robots we wrecked or verifying performance logs and other tedious details.

“Mr. Lee Taeon, take care of the rest yourself—I’ll head out first! See you in thirty—no, an hour!”
“Guide Ji Yunseong!”
I heard him call my name quietly behind me, but muttering something about wanting to shower off the stickiness, I bolted from the room without looking back.

My brisk pace turned nearly into a run by the time I reached the showers—only for me to realize I’d left my change of clothes in the locker.
Would they still be there?
After pacing around for a useless ten minutes, I went back. Fortunately, Taeon was gone.

I brushed my side where his hand had gripped me earlier.
“He’s definitely going to be embarrassed about this later.”
That thought made me snicker despite myself.

Even after staying under hot water longer than usual, I still hadn’t received word from Taeon about which room he was in. Once again, I entered the guiding room first.
After a brief hesitation, I texted him the room number and opened the door.

The guiding rooms worked on an open-availability basis: tapping one’s ID card on the lock automatically registered the occupant and lit the “in use” indicator.
The interior details varied slightly from room to room, but structure and equipment were standardized.

As always, I headed for one of the armchairs facing the glass wall. This particular room, being at the far end of the hall, had a clear view of the rolling mountain ridges outside the window.
The diffuser here gave off a faint cotton scent. I usually preferred green or herbal notes, but this was pleasant enough.

The heat lingering from the shower kept my body comfortably warm.
Settling into the chair, I let the calm seep in; my head cleared, and a light, buoyant feeling rose with it.
In other words, the flustered thoughts I’d had about a “sensory-sharing-high” Taeon were slowly transforming— from discomfort into a mild, amused curiosity.
One couldn’t stay dumbfounded forever by an unusual sight, after all.

“Soft Lee Taeon…”
The phrase itself was absurd, and the reality even more shocking. Still, when I looked past the immediate absurdity, I realized it was an opportunity I couldn’t ignore.

“Mr. Lee Taeon, you turned out to have quite a lively and… proactive side. That’s the ideal attitude for a partner.”
At the very least, I deserved one good chance to tease him about it.

Besides, even if it was for tactical synchrony, wrapping his arm around my waist like that technically breached our signed agreement. And he’d done it first. He was probably screaming internally with regret by now.

His potential reactions were limited and easy to predict: he’d either scowl openly, complain aloud, or pull some overt display of irritation.
Sure, I might look like I was picking a fight for no reason—and that wasn’t entirely wrong—but still. It’d serve as a small, fair payout for all the times he’d subtly mocked me.
Yes, maybe I was partly at fault before, but still… a little petty revenge wouldn’t hurt.

“Anyway, that aside.”
I decided to postpone the teasing and instead savor this unexpected free time with full enthusiasm.

Stretching my legs onto the footstool, I slouched deeply into the armchair.
“I swear, these chairs get more comfortable every time…” I thought, a familiar wave of admiration washing over me.

The gentle lighting, the clean cotton aroma, the green landscape framed in the window—it really did feel more like an afternoon in a luxury hotel than part of our facility’s work environment.
My mind began to drift in pleasant stillness.

When I blinked my eyes open again, the room was still silent and serene.
The clock on the wall said he was already ten minutes late.
“He’s late.”

It didn’t matter, of course—and part of me had even hoped he’d be late—but now that he truly was, it started to nag at me a little.

He couldn’t have gotten lost on the way. Maybe the shower took longer… cleanliness is important, I suppose. Or maybe—

“Maybe he’s busy being mortified,” I said aloud. It sounded perfectly plausible once spoken.

If he had any self-awareness at all, he must remember exactly what he did. It wasn’t as though he’d still be riding the high of sensory sharing now.
“It’s been forty minutes since the session ended, after all.”

He was probably wallowing in self-conscious misery, mortified that of all people, I had been the witness to his lapse.
My lips curled upward at the thought.
If it were me, I’d die of shame on the spot. Truly.

“When’s he coming?”
Oddly enough, my earlier wish for him to be late turned into the opposite—I now wanted him to hurry up, even by a minute or two.

Would he come in looking sulky? Avoid eye contact altogether? Either way, for once, I was on the more composed side. He was the one with something to be sheepish about.
The balance had flipped, however briefly, and I fully intended to enjoy this fleeting moment of power.

Just wait, Taeon. I’ll make sure to rub it in.

…That hope crumbled to dust five minutes later.

“…”

When he finally entered, hair still damp, the atmosphere that followed him was far darker than I’d anticipated—several times over.
His expression was frigid—utterly impassive—and his eyes, though silent, were sharp enough to slice through steel.

Touch him now and you won’t even find your bones, my instincts warned. Danger signals screamed through me.

“Uh—here, sit here.”
I hastily patted the armrest of the chair beside me, tail practically tucked between my legs. Taeon glanced between me and the chair before finally taking slow, deliberate steps forward.

“I was delayed,” he said.
“Oh, no, it’s fine. We don’t have any more afternoon briefings, right? I was just relaxing.”

As he drew near, the faint grassy scent of his body wash drifted over. Too fresh, too clean.
I shrank back, burying myself into the seat like a barnacle clinging to rock. The sound of him sitting down beside me followed moments later.

“There seems to have been a problem with the showers—the water cut off temporarily.”
“Oh, really.”

He explained it plainly, not as an excuse but as a matter-of-fact statement—his tone so dry and stiff it felt like he was reciting a math solution.

“Well, uh… anyway. We still need to do the daily numbers check, so, shall we start guiding?”
I reached for the device between the armchairs. Whether or not his story was true didn’t really matter—I didn’t want to think about it either way.

Right. Let’s test the guiding load rate first—
“Mr. Lee Taeon?”

He didn’t answer.

When I looked up, he sat with one hand pressed to his forehead, exhaling heavily—an expression tangled with visible inner turmoil.
So he was mortified, even more than I thought.

I couldn’t help it—that thought stirred a strange, undesired sympathy. I shook it off quickly with a deep breath.

Seeing him like that, truly unpleasant with himself, my petty urge to tease faded naturally away. You can’t spit on a smiling face, after all—and mocking someone who’s already down wasn’t exactly graceful.

Still, my mouth itched to say something. It wasn’t that bad, maybe. But saying that out loud would be like pouring gasoline on a fire. No, best to keep quiet and stay neutral.

“Is it…?”
“Yes?”

“When you go through sensory sharing, does it… always feel like that?”

Of course. Just when I’d decided to act mature, he was the one to break the unspoken rule first. His question startled me so hard I nearly jumped.

“F-feel like what? Like that?”
“…”

The look he gave me said it all: You know exactly what I mean.