By Zephyria 
It was before Kim Si-baek could even open his mouth to answer, “We’re just close brothers.”
“What a relationship.”
Tae-un, who had been playing innocent until now, suddenly leaned in. His face tilted at an angle, approaching as if he were about to kiss him, before he licked and lightly nipped Kim Si-baek’s earlobe. Ack, fuck, my eyes! Gwak Yun-sang screamed internally and squeezed his eyes shut, and Kim Si-baek was equally startled.
“Aaaagh!”
“Geez, Hyung. Why are you so surprised? It’s like you’ve never kissed anyone before.”
“Tae-un! Do you really want to get scolded?!”
Gwak Yun-sang lamented his fate, unable to purely enjoy the spectacle of Tae-un getting slapped repeatedly on the back. Even amidst this commotion, Biyendwe continued to sleep soundly.
Tae-un felt satisfied, as a slight stinging sensation remained on his back even after Gwak Yun-sang had left. Seeing the subtly satisfied expression on his face, Kim Si-baek decided that the next time Tae-un tried any tricks, he wouldn’t slap him on the back. The problem was his intuition that Tae-un would probably enjoy being hit anywhere…
‘…Well, let’s worry about that later.’
There was always the last resort: leaving Tae-un’s house.
Unaware that Kim Si-baek was harboring the terrifying thought of running away if necessary, Tae-un pointed toward Biyendwe.
“He’s still sleeping even though it’s this noisy. Is there something wrong with him?”
“Kids usually sleep a lot.”
“I thought maybe he was dead. Oh, can gods die too?”
“They do die once they produce successors.”
“Really? More importantly, is it okay to tell someone who isn’t even a believer, like me, that gods can die?”
Tae-un brought his face close as if an opportunity for a secret conversation had arrived, so Kim Si-baek pushed his forehead away.
“It’s not particularly a secret in mak slecht. Chaos has succeeded in god-slaying several times in the past. The god of the previous netherworld was also killed by chaos.”
“Hmm.”
Despite being the one to ask, Tae-un grabbed the hand pressing against his forehead as if he didn’t actually care. Kim Si-baek realized his mistake and tried to pull his hand away, but Tae-un interlaced their fingers and shifted his weight. Before he knew it, Kim Si-baek was pushed back and collapsed onto the sofa.
“…”
Because of that, his lips—which he had been trying so hard to ignore—came directly into view, putting him in a very awkward position. Kim Si-baek barely managed to divert his attention and shifted his gaze.
The face of the boy looking up from below felt quite unfamiliar. It wasn’t because the eye level had changed since the boy had grown so much during their time apart. The past month had been enough time to adjust to a 35-year-old Tae-un.
The reason for the unfamiliarity was these eyes.
Jet-black pupils that seemed light with mischief, yet did not hide the deep-seated desire lying beneath. Dark pupils that contrasted chillingly clear against the white sclera. Kim Si-baek looked up at those eyes of pitch-black darkness—an abyss as deep as the deep sea, unable to reflect even the face looking back at them.
He wanted to dismiss it as a joke and push him away, but the strength pressing down from above with their fingers interlaced was stubborn. Kim Si-baek tentatively wiggled his fingers. His own physical strength wasn’t exactly lacking, so it wouldn’t be hard to shake him off if he applied force. But…
He didn’t know. He hesitated, feeling that if he met that strength with his own, it would feel like they were truly fighting. Above all, he didn’t want to harm this boy even by a hair’s breadth.
Even if Tae-un had become an adult with a physique more robust than his own, even if he was praised as one of the world’s top hunters, in Kim Si-baek’s memory, Tae-un was still that child in the semi-basement room. A small, scarred child who didn’t even know how to cry when he was hurt and terrified.
That was why he couldn’t.
He blinked once, and the small child flickering before his eyes whispered, leaking a thick, narrow stream of desire.
“What do I have to do to seduce you, Hyung?”
The touch stroking his cheek was gentle yet explicit. As if he would no longer hide his true intentions. The sensation of lips clinging desperately and urgently revived once more.
The fact that he tried so hard to erase it meant that it was difficult to erase.
‘…Why is this kid so good at kissing?’
Even as he tried to brush it off as nothing, it wasn’t easy. Kim Si-baek swallowed a sigh at the unfamiliar feeling—a sensation that spread from his lips, seeped deep inside, and stimulated his heart.
A single kiss had never confused him this much before. He tried to excuse it by saying it had been a very long time, but he soon denied it. It was because the partner was Tae-un.
He had only seen him as a child even as he aged and grew larger, so it was confusing that he had suddenly pushed in with the presence of an adult, and it was confusing that his body had reacted to it. It was absurd that he had not only kissed Tae-un, who was like a younger brother, but had actually reacted to it, yet it was a reality he could no longer deny.
Following Tae-un’s words, he imagined himself being led by his seduction, kissing, and entering a relationship beyond that.
Setting aside the issue of whether he could view him as a sexual object rather than just a young brother, he judged Tae-un as a man objectively. He possessed outstanding looks, was socially successful, and was purely affectionate toward him.
He was certain that even if they shared only a physical relationship rather than a romantic one, his time spent here would be colored more beautifully and densely. He had realized the moment they kissed that while the pounding of his heart was flustering, it wasn’t unpleasant.
“I’m also cute and good at kissing.”
Perhaps reading the wavering in his eyes, Tae-un pressed his lips against the cheek he had been stroking. The kiss descended lightly, like a butterfly flying to a flower, and the lips did not miss the moment Kim Si-baek froze in precarious hesitation, stealing his breath.
The soft tongue that slid between the slightly parted, plump flesh was still as urgent as if being chased, even though it had licked deep inside once the previous night. As if his remaining time was short, as if he had raced toward this single act.
The reason he hesitated, unable to immediately react to or reject the kiss, was likely because of this desperate and earnest gesture.
The lips, which dove in roughly and entangled their tongues without giving him room to breathe, finally pulled away when Kim Si-baek coughed from lack of air. Despite having just ransacked his inside without hesitation, he still looked down at Kim Si-baek with a gaze dripping with thirsty longing.
“If you have sex with me, you can have a cute kiss like this every day—no, every 30 minutes.”
“…”
“I’m confident I can make sex cute too, if I do it with you. But since doing it too often would be hard on you, I’ll try to hold back at three times a night.”
The number was subtly specific.
As if proving that last night’s event was not an illusion, his kiss remained consistently hot, igniting the beat of his heart.
If Kim Si-baek’s morals had been slightly weaker, he would have been quite shaken.
‘I didn’t know I was someone so weak to temptation…’
Or was this also because the partner was Tae-un?
Hiding his increasingly troubled mind, Kim Si-baek wiped his face with his palm.
Since when had his gaze held an inappropriate meaning toward him? Yesterday? A week ago? Or perhaps, from the moment they reunited?
Every time a drop of desire, left to overflow without restraint, seeped in, Kim Si-baek recalled past contacts that he had thought he was reacting to sensitively. The explicit words thrown out like jokes, and the minor clinginess that was excessive for a relationship between brothers.
If the partner hadn’t been Tae-un, he might have noticed sooner. He might have been led by this impulse that made his heart react and entered into a deeper relationship.
‘…But it’s Un-i.’
Tae-un was the one who made him react, and Tae-un was also the one who stopped him.
Even after becoming an adult and leaving the facility, Kim Si-baek consistently visited the orphanage to look after the children and act as the eldest brother. In that modest orphanage, which wasn’t very large, Tae-un had been his most aching finger. At first, he was a replacement for his deceased younger brother, but before he knew it, the boy had carved a heavier and more vivid presence within him.
Kim Si-baek did not want to lose the child inside him. The child he had saved, and the child who had saved him. This was the only and absolute selfishness in his life, which had never been smooth.
Kim Si-baek’s fingers, raised close to the face, did not stroke Tae-un’s cheek, but instead pulled it firmly to the side. Since that action alone served as an answer, Tae-un kept his eyes narrowed even while looking ridiculous with his cheek stretched out.
“Don’t do that. There is no way to seduce me.”
“Why? I’m pretty.”
“You’re the prettiest in the world…”
“Even so?”
“What’s not allowed is not allowed.”
When he cut him off firmly, Tae-un’s eyebrows twitched once and then slowly drooped. His sharp, upturned eyes softened into a docile droop, and a pleading voice clung tightly to Kim Si-baek’s eardrums.
“Hyung-ah…”
“…!”
Kim Si-baek’s heart began to beat more violently than it had during the kiss.