By Zephyria 
✽ ✽ ✽
[Sudden Quest. CLEAR]
[To be precise, the Returner did not handle it personally, but it is also true that you made the greatest contribution by clearing the Id Portal. The system has made a generous ruling that you were the one who handled it, so please continue to be grateful in the future <(-_-^)>]
[As a completion reward, the time limit for the second quest has been extended.]
While Tae-un was flustered by the sudden realization that he had become 35 years old, other hunters had smashed the core behind him; it seemed the system recognized that as a successful quest completion regardless. For now, the crisis of Earth’s destruction had been averted, but another crisis remained for Kim Si-baek.
“…….”
Looking at Tae-un, who was smiling brightly as if nothing had happened, Kim Si-baek found himself speechless. He had brought him behind a half-collapsed, deserted magic stone exchange, but what was he supposed to say? Why do you want to have sex with me?
No matter how much Tae-un sang the song of “sex, sex,” it was difficult for him to become such a shameless older brother that he would bring up sex with his own mouth in front of the boy. In truth, he had intended to avoid it by pretending not to know, but after being swept away by the princess carry, he realized that wouldn’t be possible.
If he just glossed over it, it was obvious Tae-un would do something similar again. What could a kid who, in elementary school, picked up rotten food and almost collapsed from acute food poisoning just to ruin someone else’s blind date, not do?
Even though he knew the reason why he had been brought here, Tae-un played innocent and simply looked at him demurely. Inside his pocket, the phone rang incessantly. It was likely contacts searching for him after he disappeared without a word, but Tae-un had turned the phone off entirely.
As Kim Si-baek struggled to find the words, he noticed a long scratch across Tae-un’s cheek. First, he decided to treat the boy’s injuries.
“Where are you hurt?”
“I told you, I’m really okay. It’s nothing.”
“What do you mean, nothing?”
“Besides, you said your compatibility with healing power isn’t great.”
Kim Si-baek clicked his tongue inwardly. If he had known Tae-un would use this excuse to refuse treatment, he wouldn’t have explained it.
Treatment for diseases or injuries helps sustain human life. It was the worst possible compatibility with Biyendwe, the god of the netherworld. Compared to the divine power consumed, the healing power was low, and there were strict limits. For example, he could not perform healing that reattached or regenerated severed flesh.
The only reason Biyendwe could heal to some extent was that he was a god with a weak position in the netherworld. The priests of the God of Death and Rest, Biyendwe’s sister and the mistress of the netherworld, could not heal people with divine power at all. Priests of the God of Death and Rest are skilled in taking lives with divine power.
“Do you still think it’s a waste to use it on you? Even though it’s hard to tell because your forearm is black, isn’t your clothes torn and bleeding?”
Tae-un glanced down at his right arm, silently removed his arm from the jacket, and rolled up the sleeve of his shirt with his left hand. In contrast to his all-black clothing, there was a thin line of blood on his white forearm.
“It’s just a slight scratch, so the bleeding has already stopped. It’ll heal if I put some saliva on it.”
“…….”
What left Kim Si-baek speechless wasn’t the scratch, but the various scars remaining on the forearm. The desperate memories of the boy’s twenty-one years, which he did not know, must be engraved all over his body just like this arm. Was his numbness toward his own injuries due to the grueling time spent unable to react to every single pain?
Kim Si-baek belatedly retrieved fragments of memories that suddenly surfaced. Thinking that the boy would just brush it off if asked if he was hurt, he racked his brain.
“Did you get presbyopia?”
“……I may be fully grown, but I’m not that old.”
“No, I’ve noticed for a while now that you wear glasses when you work at the office or drive. It seemed like you couldn’t see things far away very well.”
“It’s because of the injury to my face.”
Thinking it was better than being treated as if he had old-age sight, Tae-un answered honestly this time. He casually tapped the scar on his left cheek.
“The magical beast’s poison seeped in here, and I couldn’t completely remove the toxic energy. Everything else is fine, but it seems to be affecting the optic nerve, so my vision is gradually worsening. Plenty of people have bad eyesight, so it’s not something for you to worry about, Hyung.”
“Wait a second.”
Kim Si-baek quietly raised his hand. The bumpy scars, proving that the boy had lived fiercely even in a chaotic world, were pressed gently by his palm. A transparent light seeped into the scar. Like the magical beast’s poison that had left permanent damage in the past, but gentle and soft.
“…….”
Tae-un blinked blankly. Kim Si-baek, who had treated the wound, also twitched his eyebrows slightly. There was a strange sense of déjà vu, a subtle, ticklish stimulation as if he almost recognized something.
Looking down at the palm that had touched the scar, he soon withdrew his attention. The strange feeling vanished as quickly as it had appeared. It was likely because he was preoccupied by Tae-un’s remark.
Come to think of it, this was the first time he had used proper healing power on Tae-un, rather than light purification or recovery.
“I’ve detoxified the remaining toxic energy. I couldn’t heal the nerves that were damaged long ago, but your vision should be a bit clearer.”
“…….”
“Un-ah?”
He thought the boy was just surprised that the wound was healed without a word, but the reaction was unusual. The black pupils, which had been groping the air with an unfocused gaze, suddenly dropped downward. His wide-eyed gaze looked vacantly down at his own palms.
The sight looked as if someone who had never known that the things attached to their arms were hands had recognized them as their own for the first time.
It was far too excessive to be a reaction to a treatment that slightly restored vision by removing toxic energy. Had the treatment gone wrong? As he reached out to touch his shoulder in worry, Tae-un flinched visibly and took a hesitant step back.
Tae-un, breathing heavily with his chest heaving, covered his face with both hands and pressed hard. Because the expression that had flashed for a split second before his face was covered was full of murky distortion, Kim Si-baek became even more anxious, but Tae-un soon removed his hands. On the face that returned, the murkiness had vanished completely, as if the sight he had witnessed for a moment was an illusion.
“Hyung.”
Had he really seen it wrong? Was it because his nerves were oversensitive? His answer was a beat late as he fell into thought.
“……Uh, yeah. What is it? If something feels wrong, don’t hide it and tell me.”
“Is it really okay if I don’t hide it?”
“Of course.”
“You’re the one who told me not to hide it, Hyung.”
“……?”
As Kim Si-baek let out a confused question at the repeated statement, he felt the pupils of the three-hundred eyes tighten toward him. Before Kim Si-baek could fully feel the sensation of smooth leather wrapping around his cheek, Tae-un tilted his head.
“……!”
Without giving him time to realize that what was pressing and covering his mouth were Tae-un’s lips, a tongue pushed in relentlessly. In his disorientation, his lips easily allowed the intrusion in the blink of an eye. Heat laden with moisture rushed into his mouth along with a thick piece of flesh.
The heat, wrapping around to the root of the tongue, strongly sucked his lips and stole his breath. A wet sound echoed from the mucus that collided and separated. As if trying to steal even that sound, Tae-un’s tongue searched through his mouth, greedily swallowing saliva. The rough urgency, contrasting with the gentle gaze he usually cast upon him, delayed Kim Si-baek’s response.
‘……Ah.’
Only then did he realize he was kissing—no, being kissed. His heart, which had dropped, raced urgently.
Kissing Tae-un, whom he had cherished like a real younger brother, was unthinkable. He should have pushed him away immediately, but because the movements stirring willfully felt more like a desperate longing than mere desire, he couldn’t put strength into his hands.
“Hng, ngh……”
It had been a very long time since this kind of sensation, where pleasure rose from the lower abdomen and scrambled his nerves, had occurred, and as he instinctively staggered backward, his back hit the wall with a thud. A thick chest, where elastic muscles could be felt despite the layers of clothing, pressed against him as if it had been waiting. He belatedly gasped for air at the heavy, hot presence pressing down on him.
Every time their rough breaths mingled in their mouths, Tae-un’s chest swelled even larger than Kim Si-baek’s. The right hand holding Kim Si-baek’s arm against the wall wasn’t suppressing him with strong force, but rather gripping him as if clinging to him.
The hand cradling his cheek traced his tense neck and sharp shoulder, sliding down long toward his waist. After fiddling with the slender line falling from the waist to the hips, a knee pushed deep between Kim Si-baek’s thighs. He snapped back to his senses at the sensation of a thick, swollen genital pressing and rubbing strongly against his thigh, the volume clearly felt. Tae-un wasn’t the only one erect.
When he grabbed the shoulders and pushed him away, Tae-un was pushed back very easily. A transparent thread stretched down from their interlocking lips before snapping.
He hurriedly looked for the minor, but Biyendwe had vanished without leaving a single feather.
“You, you, suddenly wh—”
He was so bewildered that he couldn’t even speak properly. The sound of his heart pounding echoed in his ears.
When Tae-un sang the song of “sex, sex,” he could have used the absurd excuse that the boy wasn’t in his right mind due to sexual frustration, but a kiss was different. The emotions that collided and seeped in secretly, the language spoken through gestures, confused him more than the blatant desire for sex.
Looking down at him, who had only pushed him away when he mentioned it several times but had completely lost his composure after a single kiss, Tae-un curled the corners of his mouth deeply, creating a deep shadow.
“You’re not going to lie and say you didn’t know I liked you back then, are you?”