The clattering sound from the dishes, followed by the sound of water dripping onto the sink basin, and even the sound of a sponge scrubbing the bowl. These ordinary sounds that I couldn’t normally hear in my house reached me peacefully, as if mocking my trembling state, or perhaps trying to soothe me.
The sounds stopped quickly. However, instead of heading toward the distant front door, Woo Tae-seon’s footsteps were getting closer to the bed where I was lying.
“Hup!”
I opened my eyes wide, having kept them tightly shut, because of the cool temperature that touched me from behind as if embracing me. Woo Tae-seon’s skin felt relatively cooler because my fever was rising through my thin pajamas. Yes, that must be why I felt somewhat refreshed.
“Why, why are you doing this? Today I…”
“I know.”
His firm arm tightly restrained my struggling body.
“Just sleep. They say this makes a fever go down faster.”
“…”
“A wet towel didn’t work.”
I couldn’t escape from Woo Tae-seon’s embrace, which bound me like a sturdy rope. The more I resisted, the more the heat I had been suppressing gently rose up, covering my mouth and blinding my eyes.
When I realized there was nothing more I could do, I became instantly exhausted, like a flat tire. Taking advantage of this gap, powerlessness crept in and nudged me. Would he really let me sleep? Come to think of it, he had let me sleep peacefully earlier too. I just wanted to stay still like this. That’s how naturally I gave up and surrendered. Even admitting that the cool temperature actually felt good.
As Woo Tae-seon noticed me gradually becoming docile, he loosened his grip, and an unfamiliar peace rippled through his embrace.
Perhaps it was because of my foggy, softened mind, or because I had closed my eyes, weakened by the stable warmth I hadn’t felt in a long time. I leaned on his sharp nose bridge rubbing against my nape and his cool arm that solidly supported me from under my neck, without any suspicion.
As our skin collided like one body, an unfamiliar sense of relief settled gently over us. So it probably wasn’t difficult for Woo Tae-seon to slightly turn my head toward him.
“…Mmph!”
A strange yet familiar sensation swallowed my dry lips at once. The deep eyelashes, slightly tilted, moved before my wide-open eyes. Seeing the light-colored eyes I met up close, I realized we were kissing.
Ah! An exclamation escaped as my lower lip was lightly bitten. The pointed tongue that didn’t miss the gap of my slightly opened bud naturally transformed into gentle softness, comforting me. It cooled my hot palate by licking it and took away the heat by intertwining with the swollen base of my tongue.
Unlike usual, he was gentle and detailed. He wasn’t trying to tease me or extract anything from me. So even sharp thorns could easily be blunted.
“Hnngh, mmh!”
He thoroughly licked each small bump and caressed deep inside my mouth. Yet he was certainly persistent too. When I exhaled hot breaths, he inhaled them completely, and when I was full of breath and about to swallow, he blew air into me. So now I had no choice but to cling to the chest I had been pushing away.
When his lips carefully separated after the final sweep, it seemed as if my lips followed, twitching, as if not wanting to part from the warmth he had given.
“…This should be enough to transfer it.”
The heavy breath exhaled by his considerably deepened voice tickled my ear. I was confused. What exactly was Woo Tae-seon? What was the meaning of him licking my forehead where cold sweat was flowing? I was simply confused.
I muttered with quivering lips. Perhaps it was something I should have held back, but I was already excited by the fever. Maybe it was possible because I wasn’t looking at his face while in his embrace. Or perhaps this was all just a clumsy excuse to say what I had been holding back.
“Why, why are you doing this?”
“Hmm?”
“You, to me, to me, me…”
Woo Tae-seon’s arm that was wrapped around my lower chest pulled me closer. His firm abs pressed against my spine, which had been bristling with sensitive nerves like a hedgehog’s quills, fitting perfectly like matching puzzle pieces. As Woo Tae-seon held me deeper in his embrace, he whispered in my ear.
“Why? Am I not allowed to cherish Teacher?”
“…”
“You asked me to be affectionate.”
No, I’m confused. Because you’re strange. Because I feel like I’ve become strange… It feels like something has developed between us. You shouldn’t be doing this to me.
“It seems Teacher has something you expect from me?”
Fortunately, no sound came from between my twitching lips.
* * *
After reluctantly entering the password on the door lock keypad and opening the front door, I was greeted by a bright home as I returned from work. Normally, I would have been upset thinking about the wasted electricity, but today I took off my shoes with familiarity.
I never thought I’d get used to coming home to a house with the lights on. Especially not with Woo Tae-seon being the cause.
Starting with those couple of visits to my house, Woo Tae-seon began frequenting my home almost daily, as if he had taken a liking to it. I couldn’t understand what was so appealing about my place—having to walk up to the top floor without an elevator, with a narrow bed, a small sofa, and a compact space where you could cross from one end to the other in just ten steps.
So that’s how my daily life with Woo Tae-seon had somehow started repeating itself.
Today, instead of a bright but empty living room, I found Woo Tae-seon at the desk.
“W-why are you looking at that!”
On the cover of the old photo album I had urgently snatched from Woo Tae-seon, my name was written in crooked letters as old as the album itself.
I glared at the culprit who had arbitrarily excavated memories I had buried deep in my closet, but the guy shamelessly smiled despite being caught in the act. It was a relaxed smile, as if he had already taken everything he wanted. The meaning of that smile was immediately clear, as he fluttered a very small photo for me to see.
“I’ll take this.”
It was an ID photo taken before high school entrance, when I needed to make a student ID. It was my face from ten years ago, at the very back of the album, frozen with tension and awkwardness, barely lifted by a slight anticipation.
I couldn’t stop Woo Tae-seon from inserting my photo into his wallet, couldn’t prevent the younger me in a school uniform from being trapped in his wallet.
“The school uniform suits you better than I expected.”
When I realized that the sticky voice that flowed out like an exclamation wasn’t pure praise, Woo Tae-seon turned around. The hard bed frame touched my heel as I stepped back with a thud. Woo Tae-seon was in front of me, the bed behind me. It was such an obvious scene now that even feeling tense seemed odd. I gulped.
“Go wash up.”
“…Huh?”
“Next time, call before you come.”
But Woo Tae-seon went to the kitchen and began preparing a meal. It was just transferring packaged food into dishes, but if that counted as meal preparation, then it was preparation.
Woo Tae-seon didn’t suddenly change. That remained true even as I watched him cautiously for quite a while before quietly moving away. I think only then did I feel somewhat relieved as I entered the bathroom.
After a light shower, when I came out drying my wet hair with a towel, the only empty spot at the dining table was where I was supposed to sit. Naturally, I sat in that place. A quiet meal began.
The table in the kitchen was something Woo Tae-seon had brought in recently. Saying that the table in the living room was too low and small for meals, he had somehow created space where there was none and squeezed in a dining table and chairs.
The days that weren’t even that long ago felt distant. The past meals I had quickly devoured with just chopsticks, sitting on the floor with my back against the sofa at the low table, seemed like they happened in the distant past. Just as I had become accustomed to the silence with Woo Tae-seon, I was gradually getting used to spending evenings with him.
“Next time, let’s eat out.”
“Okay.”
“It’s not like we’re having a secret relationship, but eating at home every time is inconvenient.”
I just nodded and agreed with Woo Tae-seon. There was nothing for me to do. Everything would flow according to Woo Tae-seon’s wishes.
“When will you start driving the car?”
“Ah. That, I’m still a bit scared…”
“…Hmm.”
An out-of-place white foreign car was still occupying a corner of the villa parking lot. It hadn’t moved an inch from where Woo Tae-seon had parked it. Of course, Woo Tae-seon knew this as well. Since he knew it as well as I did, cracks were probably gradually forming in his once smooth brow. I urgently exclaimed:
“Soon! I’ll practice soon.”
“Alright.”
Though I said that, I watched Woo Tae-seon’s reaction while looking at his utensils placed on the table. I put down my utensils too. That’s how today’s suffocating dinner ended.
I avoided being in the same place as Woo Tae-seon as much as possible. That was true even in my house, which was practically one space. If Woo Tae-seon was in the living room, I went into my room; if Woo Tae-seon was in my room, I went to the living room.
So if Woo Tae-seon, sitting on the sofa, hadn’t called me, I wouldn’t have come out to the living room.
The first things I noticed were his posture on the sofa and his thick groin. Did he want me to suck it?
When I took his dick in my mouth, it wasn’t just holding it in my mouth but feeling like I was forcing that big pillar into my throat, widening it. I didn’t want to learn that my esophagus was an organ that could stretch in this way.
“From tomorrow, come here after work.”
Fortunately, Woo Tae-seon wasn’t asking me to kneel between his legs but was holding out a thin card.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
