-21-
Standing in front of that person, the flow of air felt strangely different, and even the cloudy weather reached him as a pleasant coolness.
‘……?’
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Around that time, something kept knocking on his heart, but perhaps it was wrong to dismiss it as unimportant, thinking it was some emotion other than love.
By the time he realized it, he had already fallen irreversibly deep. The moment Kim Bunhong became aware of his feelings was that day, through the sincere conversation he shared alone with him in the studio.
‘What do you want to do?’
After already showing his broken state once, Jeong Ido was unusually gentle, different from his usual self. He rested his arm on the machine in the studio, propped his chin on it, and asked while looking back at Bunhong.
Bunhong, who had been leaning gently against the music equipment next to him, facing Ido side by side, hesitated for a moment at the sudden question before eventually stammering out an answer.
‘Huh? Me……’
‘……’
Bunhong placed his head on his arms and looked up at the empty air for a while. After thinking like that for quite some time, he answered Ido.
‘……I wish I had a lot of money.’
‘Really?’
At that, Jeong Ido lifted the corners of his expressionless mouth, saying it was quite a satisfactory answer that pleased him. It was the first praise he had ever received from him.
So this is what his expression looks like when he smiles. Ido was famous for not smiling even in front of fans. Because it was unfamiliar, Bunhong stared intently at that face for a long time.
Ah, it was an emotion he was experiencing for the first time. Something like paint was spreading across his chest. Because it was so precious, Kim Bunhong placed both hands over it and felt his heart beginning to race.
As if that vibration had transferred to his palms, soon his entire body began to beat violently.
He slowly closes his eyes now, wanting to remember that resonance in this moment.
‘You,’
Perhaps because he had just finished showering, unlike usual, his damp hair fell neatly down, covering his forehead. It was surely a mistake, but the appearance of Jeong Ido that Kim Bunhong saw that day felt exactly like a boy in love. Fresh and also sweet.
‘……?’
‘I’ve thought this for a while, but you’re pretty.’
What? Kim Bunhong blinked at the sudden confession.
‘I was also concerned about you, hyung. So that’s… hyung,’
Fingers that felt particularly longer than others’ cautiously approached and fiddled with the lips of the flustered Bunhong who was rambling about something.
Kim Bunhong saw the face of the person touching him in his dazed gaze. His lips were heated like his earlobes.
Was the face that Jeong Ido saw that day the same? It was like a dreamlike moment.
When there was no resistance, unlike the hesitant touch of his hand, his lips approached without hesitation. Before he could show any reaction, cold yet thin lips settled on Bunhong’s lips. A hand that slipped between his hair pulled Bunhong’s head closer to him, and
‘……!’
At the same time, lips that penetrated deeper. Both his first kiss and first experience happened right there in Ido’s studio that day.
‘The soundproofing wasn’t installed for this……’
Ido, who opened his eyes the next day, muttered as if devastated. Bunhong, who was just waking up next to him, rubbing his eyes, also had the same thought while still half asleep.
It was a mistake.
But the mistake didn’t end with just once. So now it wasn’t a mistake anymore.
Naturally, there was no talk of dating, and the two occasionally slept together. Whenever they craved each other’s warmth and breath. Since the dorm was a space shared with other members, whenever they had relations, it was always in Ido’s studio.
First love was like that. Painful and painful, yet… as if trapped in sub-zero cold, it made him live in an illusion where even that aching pain felt like pleasure.
Kim Bunhong opened his closed eyes. Looking at his legs shaking frantically in his field of vision, he let out a wet moan. When he lifted his head to look ahead, he could see various machines that Ido used for work.
For Bunhong, they were equipment he couldn’t touch at all, not even a little, but since he came to his studio every time he met Ido, he naturally became familiar with them.
Unlike his usual realistic and cold appearance, the songs he wrote were always beautiful. Even though others didn’t appreciate them, only Bunhong knew. Even if they weren’t songs made to fit popular codes, within the world that Jeong Ido created, following his perspective, Bunhong could discover countless sparkling stars within it.
He wanted to have it. So,
……his heart.
Ido, realizing that Bunhong wasn’t focusing on their intimate moment, nibbled on his nape.
But the stars were too far away. Too far, beyond reach.
‘How long do we have to stay in the darkness?’
Will there be an end to this endless waiting-?
‘I want to succeed quickly and live with hyung. I’m sick of being poor.’
Bunhong, whose eyes welled up with tears at the sudden feeling of emptiness, changed his position entirely to embrace him and kissed him deeply.
I want to be alive. I’m lonely. I want to breathe. Instead of words, it was a rough kiss as if craving something, as if stealing the other’s breath.
Ido silently looked into the eyes of Bunhong, who was clinging to him like a child. His amber-colored pupils, lighter in pigment than others’, truly held moisture like jewels, and the eyelashes covering them were long.
Stimulated by that sight, he this time kissed Kim Bunhong’s eyes.
‘Well…… Maybe it’s only possible in the next life. That.’
A hot kiss. But instead of a love confession, along with a somewhat deflated remark.
* * *
It was after that when he found out there was another woman in his life. So Bunhong had been deceived.
At that moment, why did the feeling of being deceived come first? He and Ido had no relationship at all, right?
They had just slept together a few times out of necessity. By mutual agreement.
So he consulted Duho about this matter while hiding that it was his own story. He said that one day they impulsively slept together, had relations several more times after that, and neither of them mentioned dating. Then Duho asked.
‘Under what circumstances did you mainly have sex?’
Even though he was the one who brought up the topic, his face flushed when the other person casually brought up such a direct word. After thinking carefully, Bunhong answered.
When he felt sexual desire, often after drinking, out of loneliness, ……just because.
At that, Duho at the time, not suspecting at all that it was about his naive younger brother, giggled and gave advice. Probably thinking it was about some third party whose face he didn’t even know, he spoke directly without filter.
He said that for adults, a one-night stand is just a small happening in life.
‘……!’
Ah, was that it.
‘Hyung and I had a one-night stand relationship.’
Hearing those words, Kim Bunhong was greatly shocked. He had lived in Korea where one learns the theory that intimate relations are usually between people in love, and at that time, even adultery laws hadn’t been abolished yet…… It was a time when ethical standards were that high.
‘I definitely thought our hearts connected that day……’
If that was the case, what was the conversation the two of them shared in Jeong Ido’s studio that day?
Seeing the flustered Bunhong, Duho drove the final nail in.
‘If there was no talk of dating, then you’re just nothing special to each other.’
Bunhong was puzzled.
‘Does it have to be like that? Must love have set promises? Do lovers really need such things?’
‘Of course. Then how should one confess? If you liked a girl, what would you say?’
‘If it were me……’
If it were Bunhong, instead of saying “let’s date,” he would have pleaded with Ido like this:
‘Show me your feelings, hyung. Your love for me, for my sake. Write me a song. Please give me language. So I can sing in your language, please make a song for me.’
Unable to reveal such inner thoughts, Bunhong decided to change the subject and begged him to continue the consultation.
When Bunhong said, ‘The friend’s partner even had a separate lover,’ Duho teased his adorable and innocent younger brother, saying that even if someone has a lover, they might relieve their desires with someone else when urgent, speaking like men do when making crude jokes among themselves.
It was when Duho was roughly stroking Bunhong’s head. Kim Bunhong was so deeply lost in thought that he didn’t notice someone was touching his head.
‘What are you two doing?’
Just then, Ido, who had come out to the dorm’s living room, saw them. His usual pale face stared at them expressionlessly.
‘Bunhong should know what he needs to know now. I was giving him sex education,’ Duho said, thoroughly messing up Bunhong’s hair.
The actual person involved, Bunhong, was in shock without any particular thoughts, not rejecting those touches, when suddenly Ido reached out and made Duho remove his hand from his head.
‘Ah! It hurts!’
Duho screamed, massaging his own wrist.
‘Don’t make a fuss in front of me.’
Leaving only those words, he went to the kitchen, took out bottled water from the refrigerator, then leisurely walked back into his room. Duho grumbled toward Ido’s retreating figure.
‘Geez, everything bothers him! Look at this, neighbors. The leader is picking on a member!’
Then Kim Bunhong, at Duho’s expression “bothers him,” recalled his own two legs that had been shaking helplessly in Ido’s studio that day.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
