Chapter Text
Sae celebrated his nineteenth birthday at a small bar close to his apartment. He made sure to pick a place that was always quiet on a Wednesday night, all the people usually gave him a headache escape when he was a little tipsy.
He only had three people with him to celebrate. His younger brother Rin and Rin’s friend/rival Isagi. Sae could never tell what those two actually had going on with eachother. Rin was only a year younger than Sae so it was perfectly legal for him to have a drink but he decided to stay sober since he was on call with his job.
In fact everyone except Sae was on call that night, it was going to be a very dry celebration but it didn’t matter, Sae wasn’t much of a drinker anyway.
Sae also brought along his roommate Alexis Ness. Sae had found him on line only six months before since they were both looking for someone to share rent with. Ness had come all the way from Germany, his job had brought him to Japan for reasons that Sae didn’t care to ask about.
In fact he wanted to hear as little as possible about their job.
If Sae had know that Ness was a guide working for the association when they first met he would have never agreed to move in with him but by the time it came out they were already sort of friends and Sae didn’t have the heart to get rid of him.
Everyone working for the association had the option to live in their main building to most chose to live close by so they could try to have some semblance of a normal life when they were off the clock. The other two also worked for the association, Isagi and a guide and Rin as an Esper. This little get together was one of the rare times that guides outnumbered Espers in a room.
Guides were far rarer than Espers and yet they were just as vital when it came to fighting the creatures that came out of risks. If Guides weren’t there stabilise and filter the mana of Espers after fights then toxicity would build up causing them immense pain and destabilisation.
The other three always made sure to never mention their jobs around Sae though sometimes it seemed like they were actively dancing around the subject. They knew that he wanted nothing to do with that life any more and they respected it.
Before coming to the bar they all met up in Sae’s apartment to have a small private get together. Espers and Guides who worked for the association were on massive salaries so they probably could have afforded to go somewhere nice for Sae’s birthday but he had insisted on doing something small. He just wanted to spend the time with the people he cared about.
Sae had told them that he didn’t want any presents that year but they all got him something anyway. Rin got him the next book in the series he was reading and Ness got him the jacket that he had mentioned liking when they were out shopping a few weeks before.
The navy blue jacket was of high quality and cost far more than Sae was ever willing to spend on himself. When he held the jacket close to him after ripping of the paper he caught faint scent of Ness’s own mana. It was warm and comforting and smelt faintly of cherry.
While the mana of Espers was often big and violent smelling of ozone and smoke Guides often had an individual scent that helped them calm down Espers who were going into overload.
They all sat comfortably around a small table sipping at their drinks. Ness had come back from a raid only two days before so he was probably glad to let off some steam. Overload presented itself differently for each Guide who experienced it. Some felt really hungry after while other got unbearable migraines that lasted for hours.
Ness always got tired when he was in overload often sleeping for nearly a full day after a big raid. For Sae overload always caused him to become violently ill for a few days depending on how many Espers he guided that day.
They all chatted quietly about nothing in particular as the clock ticked closer and closer to midnight. When they eventually all parted ways to go home Sae and Ness would probably watch a film in their living room together before going to sleep. Sae didn’t need to sleep early that night anyway since e he didn’t have work the next morning.
Sae worked in a small independent clothes shop a couple of miles from his apartment, close enough to walk. It was the only place willing to hire someone with very few qualifications as long as he didn’t cause them any problems.
After two years of keeping his head down and working hard he had built up a pretty good relationship with the old couple who owned the shop so he knew that he wasn’t in any risk of being fired anytime soon.
It didn’t pay all that well but it didn’t matter since they lived in a cheap area, people weren’t exactly chomping at the bit to move into a place famous for rifts. The basic idea was that if a place had an official association building then it probably wasn’t all that safe for normal people.
Less than one percent of people ever awakened as a Guide or Esper and most of the people who did ended up being pretty low ranked making them pretty useless on most higher ranked raides. Rin, Isagi and Ness were all A ranked according to the association. They were some of the most powerful awakened since only the very best of the best were S ranks.
Just as Sae was finishing up with his drink a loud alarm sound assaulted his ears. He cringed as he watched all of his companions whip their phones out of their pockets to check the alert. The alert was only sent out to people who worked for the association when they needed to call people in who were off the clock for a raid.
It must have been a big one if they needed all three of them. Sae sighed as he set his glass down slightly disappointed that his night was being cut short. Three pairs of eyes flicked to him all showing varying expressions of regret and pity. Sae just waved his hand and leant back in his chair staring up at the ceiling. “It’s fine, go do what you have to do”
As soon as he was finished giving his permission all three of them jumped from their seats leaving the bar as quickly as possible. Sae sat alone in silence for a few minutes before deciding that there was no point in stretching things out, he just got up to pay the tab so he could go home early and get to bed.
He had no idea when the raid would end so there was no point waiting up for Ness. The other boy had his own key so he would be able to get back into the apartment on his own once his work was done.
Of course Sae understood that their work was incredibly important but that didn’t stop him from being upset. Of course it was the one night they went out that the association would actually need them while they were on call.
Sae sometimes wished that his brother wasn’t so busy, they had only been able to get back into contact a couple of years ago afterall. Sae was part of the very first group of awakened coming into his powers as a guide at only eleven years old. He had been shipped off to Spain only a few weeks after his awakening since the government didn’t have near enough adult guides to deal with the influx of overloaded Espers they had to take whoever they could find.
Sae hadn’t been allowed to have any contact with his family at all while overseas so he had ended up missing a massive chunk of Rin’s childhood. Once the law changed and Sae was finally able to leave he rushed back to Japan but he would never be able to regain the years he lost.
Things had changed a lot since the first rift but that didn’t mean that Sae would ever be willing to place his life back into the hands of the association ever again. Nowadays it was nearly impossible to avoid news of rifts since most powerful Espers were seen almost as celebrities by most people so the news was constantly following them around trying to get interviews.
Sae just made sure to always change the channel whenever something popped up. He was more than happy to keep his head buried in the sand.
When he got back home he didn’t bother to turn on the main light in his apartment instead deciding to just traverse the dark with his phone torch. After taking his shoes off and changing his clothes he face planted straight into his bed curling up into the duvet.
He didn’t like sleeping alone when Bess was out at work during the night. During his time in Spain he spent his days living in dorms with other Guides so he had grown used to never being alone. Most of the Guides he had once shared rooms with were long dead by this point but they still lived on in the deepest parts of his brain.
At the start there were even less Guides than there were now and they were forced to take far more than their systems could handle every single day. Most of their stay couldn’t take it and the built up toxicity ended up eating away at their bodies and minds until they died.
Sae was lucky to get out when he did, by the time he left his body was already beginning to fail him in more and more noticeable ways. It was weird when he got back home to Japan, he had spent so long being ill that he had completely forgotten what it felt like to be well. He almost cried from relief the first time he managed to go a whole day without throwing up.
Of course whenever he touched his brother he ended up accidentally guiding him but that didn’t bother him. It was in small enough doses that it didn’t even affect him it was just enough to bring his younger brother some comfort after long days.
When Sae woke up the next morning he walked into the small kitchen to see Ness sat on the counter drinking a cup of coffee with far too much milk in it. “Hard night?” He asked walking past the other boy to get the bread from the cupboard to make a sandwich.
“oh not too bad, it ended up being less serious than they thought so I didn’t have too much work to do” Sae nodded “that’s good”. He always hated it when Ness came home too tired to even walk in a straight line. It worried him when he slept for hours and hours on end. He was scared that one day he wa gonna walk into his bedroom to find him dead from an overload.
He had seen it happen enough times before to make it something that was always playing on his mind.
When Sae sat down Ness walked over to rest his chin on his head. “I’ll make it up up to you for last night ok” Sae just shrugged “you don’t have to, I didn’t mind” Ness took the seat next to him cradling his coffee so he could catch his eye. “I want to, I felt bad leaving you alone like that”
“It’s fine, really… the only thing that matters is that you come home safe” Ness went quiet after that. Ness had only awoken as a guide a couple of years ago after all the Guide protection laws had been put in place. Though Sae had explained his fears to him before Ness just couldn’t understand it.
Though he knew that Sae was telling the truth he had never actually met a Guide who died from overload since Guides had a far higher tolerance than Espers. Ness had never really gone to work with the fear that he would never come back, he though that all the dangerous stuff was just for Espers.
It was only after meeting Sae that he realised just how badly a lot of Guides used to have it. Sae was one of the very few living Guides who had actually been inside of a rift alongside Espers back before they realised that it was easier for Guides to regulate Espers when they weren’t stood on a highly dangerous battlefield.
Ness had a lot of respect for Sae for that. He could never imagine going into a rift even though he spoke with Espers every single day who did it like it was nothing. When Ness first met Sae he couldn’t understand why he was so against doing his duty as a Guide it was only after learning not about his childhood that he actually understood his reasoning.
Ness leaned deeply into Sae’s side soaking up the faint scent of ice and cinnamon. He shivered a bit when he came into contact with his frigid skin. Apparently a side effect of spending so long in severe overload was that he couldn’t properly regulate his body temperature leaving him freezing cold even in the height of summer.
It almost felt as though his Mana had completely frozen over like a pond in the winter. The thick ice on the surface kept a bubble of heat in the water below protecting the fish from frost and allowing them to survive until the spring when everything thawed out.
“come on” he pressed “we can go into town and get lunch and look around the shops or something, celebrate your first full day being nineteen”. Sae stayed quiet for a moment thinking over the offer before relenting. “Sure, why not”. Ness smiled and squeezed his shoulder getting up from his seat to put some better clothes on.
The centre of town was pretty quiet that morning since most people were still wary of running into the after affects of the previous nights rift opening. The quit was good, it meant they could look around wherever they wanted without anybody getting in the way or trying to sell something to them.
They walked around a small food shop picking of some things for dinner before going home. When they left the shop bags in hand Sae genuinely started to think that he had started hallucinating due to some kind of mental break.
The advert of a bus stop across the road showed the face of some S class Esper. That wasn’t the weird part. The thing that confused Sae was that he swore he could see the exact same guy on the advert stood just a few feet from the bus stop.
Sae froze in place and furrowed his eyebrows doing a few double takes. Ness, confused what he was doing followed Sae’s eye line till he saw the same thing. Instead of being confused like Sae he instead decided to call out to the man waving over to him from across the road.
Sae whipped his head around to face Ness “what the hell ate you doing” he hissed watching as the random guy started making his way over to them. Ness just smiled “that’s Kaiser my friend, we came here from Germany together”
Sae nodded stiffly. Definitely not hallucinating then he just had a famous S class guide sauntering up to him and his roommate. The other man stopped infront of them with a wide smirk on his face. “Hey Ness… who’s this?” He asked motioning to Sae. Ness just kept on smiling “oh this is Sae my roommate, I’m sure I’ve mentioned him before”
“Oh yea that rings a bell… nice to meet you Sae” he said turning his attention to him. Sae who was still in shock was only able to stare at the other man unable to force out an awkward greeting. Ness squeezed his hand “don’t worry about him, he’s just shy”
That snapped him out of his stupor as he snapped his head to the side to give Ness an offended look. Eventually he turned back to Kaiser who was still staring at him expectantly. “Hmm nice to meet you too” he mumbled half heartedly sticking out his hand to shake Kaisers.
In that moment Sae forgot that any physical contact between an Esper and a Guide automatically started a stabilisation process. When Kaisers fingers brushed the icy cold palm of Sae’s hand he felt a warmth like he had never felt before rush through his body.
His eyes went wide and his knees turned weak nearly buckling as all the built up toxins that hadn’t been removed the night before instantly leaked out of him causing him to feel light as a feather. It was possibly the first time ever in his life since awakening as an Esper that his mana actually fully settled down.
Usually it bubbled just beneath the surface of his skin threatening to explode out in a burst of violence at any given moment. It was almost unnerving how calm he felt the faint scent of ice and cinnamon lowering his heart rate to a dull throb when usually it pattered in his chest in a constant state of adrenaline and paranoia.
He looked up into Sae’s cool sae green eyes. The younger man seeming hadn’t even noticed the impromptu guiding session. Kaiser closed his fingers slightly tighter around Sae’s small hand not caring about the icy cold. “Your a Guide too?” He asked.
It was at that moment Sae finally realised what he was doing. He gasped slightly and his eyes widened as he yanked his hand back from Kaisers grip. “Ness, were going home” he said leaving no room for argument. He turned on his heel and stormed off expecting the other to follow soon after.
“huh… oh bye Kaiser I’ll catch you later I guess” With that he hurried off down the road after his friend leaving Kaiser to process what just happened. He tried to call down the street to stop them but the pair were already too far away to hear him.
It didn’t matter Kaiser would just have to interrogate Ness on this mysterious new Guide the next time they had work together. Kaiser was one of the highest ranking Espers in the entire world. If he wanted something he always got it and what he wanted now was to be regulated again by the Guide with deep green eyes and mana far warmer than his pale skin.