Ghost Apple

Jae-woo’s mouth felt bone-dry, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he’d just heard.

“Starting now, you’ll receive 100 million won at the end of every month.”

“F-For real?! Seriously?! Hyung, did you hea—…! Ahem, I mean, did you catch that?”

Sitting side by side with Han-gyeom on the couch, Jae-woo had shot up in excitement before quickly lowering his voice. Fortunately, Han-gyeom didn’t comment on the sudden outburst. He was simply focused on reading through the contract, which was stuffed with all kinds of dense legal jargon.

After finally reaching the end and gazing down at the signature line, a natural question surfaced in Han-gyeom’s mind.

Every contract should have an expiration date—so why was there none to be found here?

Are they expecting me to guide him for the rest of my life?

It really did feel like a slave contract, but at the same time, he couldn’t say it wasn’t reasonable. As long as the imprint existed, he was probably the only person who could guide Seo Won for the rest of his life.

Calmly skimming through the terms again, Han-gyeom suddenly flinched.

The Guide must provide consistent, uninterrupted guiding whenever the Esper desires. To that end, the Guide must wear a guiding control device at all times and may not remove it without the Esper’s explicit permission.

The moment he saw the words guiding control device, his fingertips turned cold.

That merciless collar he’d never been allowed to take off until that place was destroyed—it was written here again, plain as day.

Guiding, at its core, was only possible when the Guide consciously wanted to guide an Esper. Just as Espers used their abilities through their own will, so too did Guides choose to guide through theirs.

But this so-called guiding control device bypassed that will completely, trampling on personal autonomy—an artifact of a more barbaric era.

It was originally developed for a small number of Guides with Hyper-Reactive Guiding Syndrome—those whose powers flared uncontrollably in response to emotional stimuli, preventing them from guiding properly. Back then, it had been praised as a breakthrough.

But in the wrong hands, the device allowed anyone wearing it to be forcibly triggered into guiding at any time. All it took was for a nearby Esper to want it strongly enough and send that desire through a point of contact.

The backlash from Guides had been so severe that even the American Ability Association—the developers—had destroyed every last unit. Officially, anyway. Unofficially, the devices still circulated on black markets or were quietly used in the shadows of institutions.

And this man… had slipped that very thing into the contract like it was nothing.

Han-gyeom unconsciously rubbed his right wrist.

Years had passed, and there were no visible marks anymore. But up until that day five years ago, the device had clung to him like a second skin, choking the life out of him. And now he was being told to wear it again. Of course he recoiled.

Seo Won spoke indifferently, as if Han-gyeom’s feelings didn’t matter in the slightest.

“As your exclusive Guide, you won’t have to go crawling back to that cramped, rat hole you used to work in. And your broker—he’s out of the picture now, too.”

“You can’t just cut him out like that! No way!”

Jae-woo furrowed his brows in a childish pout.

“Hyung and I are a package deal! We started together, and when we quit, we’ll quit together.”

He declared it proudly, but the icy glint in Seo Won’s piercing blue eyes turned on him. That single look radiated such silent pressure that Jae-woo instinctively clutched Han-gyeom’s sleeve and swallowed hard.

“L-Look, I mean, the fact that you kidnapped me too and sat me down here must mean I’m needed, right? Like for managing schedules or taking care of Hyung or something…!”

“You’re not here because you’re a guiding broker.”

Seo Won’s voice dropped low, its weight laced with menace.

“You’re here as a hostage.”

“H-Hostage…?”

Jae-woo blinked with wide, stunned eyes.

While this was going on, Han-gyeom had finished reading the contract from beginning to end. He extended a hand toward Seo Won.

“Give me the pen.”

“Hyung! You’re going to sign?!”

Jae-woo practically lunged at his arm in disbelief.

“Don’t be hasty! Just stop and think about it for a second, okay? I mean, no matter how much money they’re offering, don’t you think it’s weird to get a billion won a month just like that, on top of the signing bonus?!”

Unaware of the imprint between Seo Won and Han-gyeom, Jae-woo couldn’t help but find the offer suspicious. Any conglomerate with this kind of wealth could have dozens of Guides at their disposal, receiving all the guiding they could ever want—so why go through the trouble of kidnapping them and pushing this contract?

But for Seo Won, who was in a state where he could only be guided by Han-gyeom, the price was more than worth it.

Han-gyeom accepted the elegantly designed fountain pen Seo Won offered him, then gestured toward Jae-woo, who was still clinging to him.

“Let him go.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to sign with him here?”

“Let him go, and I’ll sign.”

“Alright.”

Seo Won agreed without protest. The clone—already in sync with the main body’s thoughts—reached out and yanked Jae-woo to his feet without warning.

“Wait, hold on! Hyung!”

“Shut up, Song Jae-woo.”

“Ack—sorry… No, I mean—come on, let me stay too! Hyung!”

Jae-woo’s desperate cries were cut short by the sound of the door slamming shut. Even the faint echoes that had trailed off disappeared completely, as if the clone had taken him far away.

As soon as Jae-woo was dragged out, Han-gyeom toyed with the pen in his hand and asked,

“That imprint. What happened?”

His gaze landed squarely on Seo Won’s left chest.

The black vein marking Seo Won’s body was completely hidden beneath his black dress shirt and charcoal gray vest. Even the buttons at his neck and cuffs were done up meticulously tight, suffocatingly so—there wasn’t a single exposed trace of the vein’s end anywhere in sight.

“Why do you have that imprint? That person clearly…”

“Died—reduced to black ash.”

Han-gyeom bit down hard on his lower lip, swallowing thickly.

He had witnessed the imprinted one’s final moments with his own eyes. The memory of it made his chest ache unbearably; his throat tightened with the urge to sob.

Whether he knew or not, Seo Won continued in that same cold, emotionless tone.

“From what I’ve heard, he supposedly had the ability of ‘immortality’ when he was alive.”

When he was alive—and immortality.

Two completely contradictory ideas forced into the same sentence.

But just as Seo Won said, the previous imprinted Esper—rumored to possess immortality—was dead. Nothing had been left but charred remains, like a pile of black ash.

Han-gyeom recalled the imprinted one’s final smile, a bright expression directed at him just before the end. His throat clenched, and he bit the inside of his cheek to stop the tears threatening to spill.

Seo Won’s hand moved, pressing lightly against his own left chest.

“Fortunately, the heart had been preserved separately for donation, so even after he went berserk, it remained perfectly intact.”

The hand holding the fountain pen began to tremble violently in Han-gyeom’s grip.

‘Fortunately?’

That faint smile, the one from just before the berserk episode, flashed through his mind again.

What the hell is so fortunate about that?

The image of that gentle face turned pitch black in an instant—twisting grotesquely, morphing into something monstrous as a primal roar exploded from its mouth. In the same moment, phantom screams echoed in Han-gyeom’s ears, as if countless others were still dying all around him.

“So… you’re saying you had that heart… transplanted?”

Even getting the words out was a struggle; his breath hitched uncontrollably.

While Han-gyeom squeezed his eyes shut, reeling from the dizziness in his head, Seo Won answered.

“That’s right. It was the only heart that matched mine.”

Organ transplants for Espers were notoriously difficult.

Unless the donor was also an Esper, transplants simply weren’t possible. ESP channels were embedded in their organs, and organs from regular humans—those without channels—were completely incompatible.

Even beyond that, compatibility wasn’t just about species. The donor’s and recipient’s ESP grades—the strength and frequency of their inner energy flow—and the entire layout of their internal ESP pathways had to align perfectly. One small mismatch, and the organ would reject.

There were healing-type Espers, sure. But their abilities only extended to temporary injuries or boosting natural regeneration—they weren’t omnipotent miracle workers who could fix everything like gods. So, no matter how powerful an Esper might be, once they fell victim to a serious illness, all they could do was watch helplessly as their body declined.

Which meant that Seo Won finding the one perfectly compatible heart—and successfully transplanting it—was nothing short of a miracle.

Especially when that heart belonged to an S-rank Esper, one of the rarest in the entire world. It was a treasure beyond any conceivable price.

But for Seo Won… it had been a curse.

No one had expected that the heart was imprinted.

An imprinted Esper can only receive guidance from the Guide they shared their imprint with. If that Guide is already dead, then even with a heart transplant, it would be meaningless—Seo Won wouldn’t have survived long.

The proof was etched into his body: about six months after the transplant, the signs of the Black Vein had begun to appear, and now, it had crept all the way up to his neck.

For someone with Black Vein symptoms this advanced, he was essentially a walking time bomb. Any Esper who laid eyes on him would immediately recognize the signs and report him to the Association. Once that happened, no amount of status or power could protect him. He’d be forcibly quarantined, locked in a sterile room until he lost control, went berserk, and reduced himself to ashes—and he would never be allowed to leave.

That’s why, whenever there was any need to show himself outside, he sent a clone. One to handle external affairs, and the other—always masked—roamed the underground, relentlessly hunting down unregistered Guides.

No one knew that the heart’s previous owner had been an imprinted Esper. But that didn’t mean there was no information at all about the original Guide.