Chapter 47
Yuwon came to his senses at the sound of the alarm ringing regularly. He still wanted to sleep more, but he couldn’t ignore the noise that loudly assaulted his ears.
His eyes were more swollen than usual and felt stiff. When he barely opened his eyes and turned off the alarm, silence finally settled in the room.
Yuwon, who had placed his arm over his forehead, gathered his hazy mind. After breathing evenly for a while, he tried to turn his body, but his waist throbbed sharply.
“Ah…”
Along with the electric-like pain flowing down his spine, yesterday’s events vividly came to mind. Jeonghyeok’s movements that were rougher than usual, the more persistent stimulation, and…
‘Say you like it. Say you like me.’
The low voice that had demanded he say he liked him.
Jeonghyeok, who had thrust as if to pierce through his lower abdomen, buried his lips in Yuwon’s ear and repeated the same words. Those words muttered at the moment of climax were practically close to pleading.
“Ha.”
Pleading. The person who had tormented him to the point where it was hard to move had quite the nerve to plead with him. Yuwon sneered as he sat up.
On his phone, which he checked belatedly, there was one message from him.
[Call me when you wake up]
So he went to work. After doing this to someone…
Yuwon, who let out a deep sigh, swept up his fallen hair. He didn’t check the message and just turned his phone face down. Right now, he didn’t want to hear ajeossi’s voice.
Honestly, he couldn’t understand what Jeonghyeok had done to him last night. He had arbitrarily misunderstood and gotten frighteningly angry, then roughly stripped off his clothes. Even though he had clearly said he didn’t want to, he forcibly pushed his cock inside and told him to like him. No matter how much he thought about it, nothing made sense.
In the midst of all that, the sex had been so intense that his buttocks still stung. The wrists and ankles that had been held down also hurt. Most of all, his throat was completely hoarse from screaming too much.
Being conscious of his throat condition made him suddenly feel thirsty. Thinking he should drink water, Yuwon got down from the bed. As he was about to leave the bedroom with slow steps, the phone he had thrown on the bed rang. Wondering if it might be Jeonghyeok, he looked and saw an unknown phone number displayed.
Yuwon tilted his head and answered the phone.
“Hello?”
No sound came from the other side. When he checked the screen, the call time was running.
“If you don’t speak, I’ll hang up.”
After speaking politely, he was about to hang up when a familiar voice came through the receiver.
—Hyung.
“……”
In an instant, the strength completely left the hand holding the phone. Though he didn’t drop the phone to the floor like in movies or dramas, he had to grasp the device that had slipped down his palm again.
Hyung. Just hearing that one word, Yuwon immediately recognized the owner of the voice. It was a voice he had heard countless times, so he couldn’t not know it.
It’s been really long. Nice to hear from you. How have you been? There were many things he wanted to ask, but his mouth just wouldn’t open.
Yuwon froze with the phone against his ear. Then the person on the other side spoke.
—Yuwon hyung. It’s me, Minhyeon.
***
The moving car was filled with acrid smoke. At the stinging cigarette smell, Taeju tactfully opened the window. His expression as he looked at Jeonghyeok sitting in the back seat through the rearview mirror was quite serious. Did something bad happen? His worried feelings were clearly revealed.
And for good reason—Jeonghyeok had been continuously smoking cigarettes while looking down at his phone. More accurately, it would be more appropriate to say he was glaring at it.
“Hyung-nim. Should I go to where we’re heading alone?”
When they stopped briefly at a traffic light, Taeju subtly asked Jeonghyeok. If there was some serious problem, he wanted to help even a little. Jeonghyeok, still keeping his gaze fixed on his phone, moved only his mouth to speak.
“Why.”
“Ah… you don’t seem to be in good condition, hyung-nim.”
“When have I ever not worked because I wasn’t in good condition?”
At the sharp question, Taeju momentarily lost his words.
“It’s not like that, so don’t worry about it.”
At the low voice that followed, Taeju had no choice but to answer, “Yes.”
As Jeonghyeok said, he wasn’t someone who skipped work because he wasn’t in good condition. More precisely, he had never been in poor condition at all. Jeonghyeok was someone who had never even caught a light cold, to the point where one might ridiculously suspect he was made of steel.
Had he really never been sick even once during all that long time? Taeju tried to recall the past.
Looking back, there was exactly one time he had requested fever reducers. At first, thinking Jeonghyeok was sick, he had hurriedly bought fever reducers and gone to him, but when he actually arrived at the house, there was an unexpected young man there. That young man was also the one who needed to take the medicine.
The part-time worker from the pork belly restaurant, lying like dead on hyung-nim’s bed. Taeju recalled Yuwon’s clear face. He had forgotten about it for a while, but why exactly was that young man at hyung-nim’s house back then?
“……”
He wanted to find the answer to the question that suddenly flashed through his mind, but looking at Jeonghyeok’s face beyond the rearview mirror, it seemed he should postpone satisfying his curiosity.
The light happened to change. Taeju erased his thoughts, took his foot off the brake, and smoothly pressed the accelerator.
Even while Taeju was being mindful inwardly, Jeonghyeok, with a cigarette in his mouth, pressed his temple hard while staring only at his phone screen.
It had already been 2 hours since he sent Yuwon a message to contact him when he woke up, but there was no reply. No matter how late he slept in, Yuwon would wake up by 9 o’clock, and even if he was busy with housework, he would faithfully reply within 30 minutes. This was the first time contact had been so sparse.
Was he feeling unwell? He wasn’t groaning alone with a fever like before, was he? Or… was he deliberately avoiding my contact?
Having committed a sin, bad suspicions raised their heads. He belatedly regretted forcibly embracing the guy who said he didn’t want to.
He hadn’t intended to be so rough from the beginning. He just wanted to be intimate as usual. The image of Yuwon being held by another man kept coming to mind, and he wanted to forget that dirty memory.
But the moment the word “no” came from Yuwon’s mouth, his rationality snapped. He couldn’t control his surging emotions. He could only think about immediately entering Yuwon and having him acknowledge that he belonged to him.
He came to his senses when he woke up at dawn and looked at Yuwon sleeping like a corpse. Yuwon, who was breathing small breaths in various colors, had dark circles under his eyes. On the body visible under the half-covered blanket, red bite marks and yellow and blue bruises were scattered everywhere. It was all his doing.
He was afraid of Yuwon opening his eyes. What would he say seeing his body in such a mess, what words would he spit out while glaring at him? He didn’t even want to imagine it.
So he fled the house like escaping. He knew it was cowardly, but he couldn’t bring himself to face Yuwon.
What an idiot.
Jeonghyeok, who had been self-deprecating, exited the messenger app and pressed Yuwon’s number. Usually when he was with Taeju, he contacted him by text, but if he held back any longer, his anger would explode.
When he made the call, the boring connection tone repeated several times. If he was avoiding even phone calls… When his worries piled up like a mountain, Yuwon’s voice was heard.
—Hello.
Only then did he feel like his blocked breathing was finally opening up. Jeonghyeok spoke as gently as possible.
“What are you doing that you didn’t check your message?”
—I slept a bit, I was sleepy.
For that being the case, there wasn’t a trace of sleepiness in his voice. Was he lying? Suspicion that rose without reason confused Jeonghyeok’s mind.
“You’re at home, right?”
—Of course. I just woke up not long ago.
Then take a picture and send it to me. Jeonghyeok barely swallowed the words that had risen to his throat. Was he really going crazy? No matter how suspicious he was, he didn’t want to do such an unseemly thing.
“Are you… okay? Your body?”
—Well… it’s not the worst.
Awkward silence hung between the words. Yuwon’s voice, which seemed subtly subdued, bothered him, but he hoped it was just his imagination.
Jeonghyeok rubbed his face with his palm and said.
“Rest and get ready to come out by 5 o’clock.”
—Why?
“We’re eating dinner outside.”
He wanted to feed him something delicious at a nice place. He wanted to see that face filled with food in those small cheeks, smiling brightly. Come to think of it, whenever they ate outside food, they always ordered delivery or takeout; they had never properly dined out.
“Is there anything you want to eat?”
—Anything is fine.
“Let’s eat the meat you like.”
—Okay.
Hearing the obedient answer finally put him at ease.
“I’ll contact you.”
After leaving his final words, Jeonghyeok hung up. The call time blinked on the screen before changing. As he was about to turn off his phone, just in case, he checked the message he had sent in the morning. It still wasn’t marked as read.
Fuck, really.
Jeonghyeok chewed on the curse word that popped out. Unfamiliar anxiety spun round and round in his head.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
