# 64
When Jin-ha pressed his lips against Riyekan’s himself, Riyekan embraced Jin-ha’s waist as if he had been waiting and began deeply intertwining their tongues. The wet sounds, deliberately not concealed, gnawed at Jin-ha’s ears. Jin-ha flinched at the sensation, responding to the kiss for a moment before pushing Riyekan away with trembling hands.
“Is that, enough now?”
“Hmm… yes, for today.”
“For today?”
Jin-ha glared at Riyekan in disbelief. Unlike Jin-ha, who was upset at having fallen for Riyekan’s tricks again, Riyekan seemed extremely satisfied.
He rested his forehead on Jin-ha’s shoulder and giggled.
“The point is this. If Hunter Lee Jin-ha doesn’t come to me despite my efforts, then that can’t be helped. But don’t take me off the stage.”
“The stage… you say?”
“Yes.”
Deep desire lurked in his eyes, which were tinged with laughter. A greedy beast that would devour up to the elbow if Jin-ha reached out his hand intending to give just a little.
The “stage” clearly referred to this relationship. It was an expression of his firm refusal to go down to where friends, colleagues, and children stood—down from this stage where Jin-ha tried not to yield while Riyekan tried to make him yield.
When Jin-ha looked at him again with an incredulous face, Riyekan laughed while pecking Jin-ha’s neck with his lips.
“Think about me, Hunter Lee Jin-ha. Be curious about me, wonder what I want, and contemplate what brings me joy.”
“…Ha.”
The man making these absurd demands had an excessively refreshed face.
Though it frustrated him, Jin-ha was already doing his best not to fall for the man. He tried to see Riyekan’s flaws. He vividly imagined how painful a relationship would be with this unpredictable, irritable man by his side, and how painful it would be after such a capricious relationship ended.
Yet despite all this, Jin-ha was already unable to control the flutter in his heart from just one kiss accompanied by strange threats. The flutter was swelling up, about to turn into excitement. Jin-ha deliberately pressed it down into a box and buried it deep.
“I under, stand.”
Jin-ha’s lips trembled as he answered, turning his head away to avoid eye contact. He seemed afraid that Riyekan might force himself on him again.
Watching this scene, Riyekan moistened his lips with his tongue due to a sudden thirst. Some desire, a fierce desire he hadn’t felt for a long time, heated his heart.
The man before him had clearly expressed his unwillingness to have a deep relationship with him. He said it was all just due to the pull of a lost soul, and he wouldn’t fall for it.
But Riyekan was in a position where he didn’t have to accept someone’s rejection.
If he wanted to, that is.
“Shall we go now?”
Riyekan gave a final audible kiss on Jin-ha’s Adam’s apple before cleanly stepping back.
There was only one reason why he was withdrawing politely now. Because it was obvious that even if he obtained Jin-ha by force, it wouldn’t be very satisfying. As he had realized in the forest when he first met Jin-ha, he needed to make Jin-ha want him of his own accord. He knew it wouldn’t be easy because Jin-ha was a conventional man. It would take time.
Even that pleased Riyekan.
He wanted to enjoy the creature before him for a very long time. If possible, he wished he could do so for 2 or 3 years, surpassing his longest record of 1 year. For that, he couldn’t act forcefully. Rather than devouring Jin-ha all at once, he intended to melt and consume him bit by bit, starting from the edges.
As Riyekan began to move with their hands firmly interlocked, Jin-ha followed behind, secretly breathing a sigh of relief.
* * *
The birdcage didn’t stop at the 17th floor where Riyekan’s room was, but went up one more floor and stopped. Beyond the open door stretched a space filled with trees and grass, like a botanical garden in a southern country.
“There’s a portal to the Fairy Garden here. This place is like this due to its influence.”
The implication was that the influence of the portal connected to the Fairy Garden was so strong that the portal had to be placed at the top of the tower, with Riyekan’s quarters establishing a boundary with the lower floors.
There was no further explanation, but Jin-ha guessed that the portal’s location was also related to the Fairy Queen, the owner of the contract that Riyekan couldn’t talk about.
“Now, from here on, never let go of my hand.”
“Yes.”
Holding hands tightly, the two crossed the portal into the fairy realm. Unlike exiting a dungeon after completing a conquest, the two advanced to the other side in just a few steps.
[Attack! Attack!]
[Why are you here again? You bad person!]
[I don’t like him. Uh-huhuung…]
The fairies with delicate voices fluttered noisily. Startled by the shouts of attack, Jin-ha tried to step back, but Riyekan grabbed his waist and pulled him closer.
“You troublemakers! Did you think I would come without any preparation?”
A fierce whirlwind erupted from beneath Riyekan’s feet. Soon, purple burning flames mixed with the strong wind, and a huge pillar of fire threateningly charged toward the fairies.
[Let’s run away!]
[Tsk, I’ll get revenge later by enchanting all the magicians!]
[Yeah, we’ll take all the ones on the third floor and go play in the dungeon!]
[Sob… Queen, Queen…!]
The small fairies flapped their wings roughly, trying to avoid the pillar of fire, but the fire split into five or six columns and instantly engulfed the fairies.
[Hueee…]
And a moment later, a fairy who had been spinning like laundry in a washing machine inside the pillar of fire was spat out and crawled on the ground.
“They didn’t… burn?”
“What do you mean, burn? That’s not even real fire. It’s just fairy-intoxicating powder mixed with wind.”
“Fairy-intoxicating powder, you say?”
Subsequently, fairies who came bouncing out staggered as they walked, then were rescued by other fairies who had skillfully avoided the whirlwind.
[You wicked Master of the Magic Tower!]
[Let’s run away! Quickly, bring that one too!]
[You go get him, idiot!]
[Just leave, leave me behind, guys…]
The fairies, in a state of confusion, supported all their comrades without exception and moved away. Occasionally, when they looked back, their eyes were full of resentment. Jin-ha felt as if he had done something wrong.
“Don’t worry about it.”
“But…”
“I didn’t kill them, I just intoxicated them so they couldn’t regain their senses. They’ll be fine after about three or four hours.”
“That’s a relief.”
Jin-ha nodded in relief.
Riyekan, who had called back the whirlwind, grabbed a handful of the powder swirling inside it and then extinguished the whirlwind. When he opened his hand, sparkling powder was revealed inside.
“The main ingredient of fairy-repelling powder is gemstones. Ruby, emerald, and sapphire are ground into powder so fine it could be blown away by a breath, mixed in equal proportions, and then mixed with tears shed from deep sorrow. For 1kg of gemstones, five drops of tears is just right. Less than that has minimal effect, and more than that has no effect at all.”
Was this really a method to intoxicate fairies? It was a recipe that seemed to belong in a fairy tale. Jin-ha took out a notebook from his pocket and carefully wrote it down.
“Does it matter what kind of tears they are as long as they’re shed from deep sorrow? For example, tears shed while reading a sad book?”
“‘Deep sorrow’ is quite an ambiguous standard. But this can only be completed through experimentation on your side. Over here…”
Jin-ha asked in detail about the manufacturing method of fairy-repelling powder for quite some time.
The quality of gemstones should be as transparent as possible and free of impurities, and since the concentration of sorrow varies from person to person, tears should be collected from various people using different methods, experiments conducted, and then a suitable person should be kept as a tear collector to regularly extract tears.
By the way, the Noon Moon Tower’s tear collector was Legas. Apparently, when Riyekan said nasty things like “Stop acting as my secretary and just focus on research,” Legas would shed tears of deep sorrow perfect for fairy-repelling powder. This was unnecessary information.
“Fairies are likely to be hiding in that flower.”
Riyekan pointed to a large flower blooming by the roadside as he led Jin-ha. It was a coral-colored flower that looked similar to a peony.
“I heard it’s good for napping because it has many stamens and contains a lot of pollen.”
“I see…”
In other words, it was perfect as a fairy’s nap bed. Hearing that fairies, whom he had only considered monsters until recently, had clear preferences and emotions, Jin-ha began to feel increasingly strange.
In fact, he had come today expecting to learn methods to kill fairies, but now he began to think that indiscriminately killing them might not be the right approach.
“What’s wrong?”
“If this powder were distributed on Earth, there would certainly be people who would try to capture or kill fallen fairies. I’m not sure if that’s okay.”
Perhaps this recipe would become a trap to turn fairies into ornamental animals. No, it was certain. Those small children would be confined in glass containers or small cages and sold at auction in the black market. However, considering people who died from being enchanted by fairies or suffered from fairy sickness, he couldn’t just bury this information either.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
