By Zephyria 
“Glad?”
“You were angry, saying the system might have used me like a younger brother. I felt that although I might never become as important to you as Si-woon hyung, I’ve at least reached a somewhat similar position.”
“What does it matter who is how important. The system…”
‘If the system were to use you, it would have been better if even you forgot my memories,’ Kim Si-baek had been about to say, but he froze, turning white with a sudden shock.
Tae-un forgetting him.
The dark gaze of that child, who used to look up at him from the small window of the semi-basement room, never reflecting him again.
Like so many people he had known, a numb glance directed toward another, a stranger’s emotion, directed at him.
His child.
“…….”
A sudden surge of nausea rose, and Kim Si-baek covered his mouth with his palm.
“Si-baek hyung…”
A call tinged with worry followed. These dark eyes, which always held such earnestness that it could be felt clearly even beyond the darkness—if they were to become those of a stranger. Just the imagination was a shock that twisted his stomach to the point of vomiting and distorted his mind.
〈I hope that child slowly forgets the time spent with me, so that in the end, he fades into a shadow of a memory.〉
Kim Si-baek finally realized how arrogant his wish had been. To reject Tae-un in order to not lose his family—his sole selfishness—and then, out of the arrogance of claiming it was for the boy’s own sake, to wish for him to forget. Despite that. Despite all that.
Biting his lip hard, he let out a strained murmur, as if scraping away the nausea.
“……I once wanted you to forget me someday.”
A light laugh, like a breeze sweeping through the darkness, was heard. Tae-un was not surprised. It was as if he had expected Kim Si-baek to harbor such thoughts.
“Why?”
“……Because it would be hard for you.”
So that he wouldn’t be crushed by agony alone for too long in a world where everyone had forgotten me. Though I alone would be unable to forget you, I hoped you would be free from the obsession that had held you for over twenty years.
That was what he had thought.
At that time, he had certainly thought so.
Kim Si-baek pressed his hand, which was covering his mouth, firmly against his face. He was bewildered by the stark change in his heart, a change he could never have imagined. The warmth of Tae-un remaining on his lips, that heat and longing swirling hotly inside his mouth, stirred his depths as if shaking them violently.
Tae-un, who wanted to carve himself into Kim Si-baek, had, before he knew it, carved himself just as deeply into Kim Si-baek. Was this truly a feeling one would have for a cherished younger brother?
〈Do you think a new relationship mixed in during that short time would change you and me, hyung?〉
Tae-un had been so sure, but he was wrong.
From the moment he accepted the child’s longing—which he had chewed over for decades but refused to face—this relationship, and he himself, had no choice but to change.
The child’s longing was gradually infiltrating him.
Perhaps from the night they shared each other’s body heat and warmth.
Perhaps from the long years of longing for the child and chewing over that desire.
Perhaps from the moment he first discovered it in the eyes of the young boy.
“Hyung.”
The darkness seemed to shift slightly, and a large hand touched the back of his thinly trembling hand. A body temperature as cool as his pale face. A sensation of the child that Kim Si-baek would never forget in his lifetime, even if he were to return to mak slecht.
“There are people for whom forgetting is more painful than remembering.”
Tae-un took his hand away from his face and pressed his lips to the back of his hand. Very slowly, for a long time, as if carving himself into him. As if licking the slender tremors, kisses touched the back of his hand, then his wrist, and then his lips.
In the darkness where not an inch ahead was visible, the touching lips moved silently. Kim Si-baek read a voiceless and formless language, not of sound, but of breath.
〈I hope I am the last person you think of right before you die. I want your head to be so full of thoughts of me that it feels like it’ll burst, so that you die embracing only me.〉
The lips that had spoken thus now decided his death.
I will die submerged in hyung’s memories.
Like drowning in the deep sea beneath a distant surface where not a single speck of light enters, submerged in hyung’s memories, filled to the brim with hyung’s memories overflowing into my prayers, lungs, and stomach, so that even the last breath bubbles with hyung’s memories, just like that.
As if dreaming of a truly joyful future, a bright voice, contrasting with the darkness, poured out from the gap of his beaming lips.
“So, hyung.”
A fierce pressure, as if the bones in the captured hand would twist, tightened.
“Carve all of yourself into me.”
The child’s longing finally swallowed Kim Si-baek.
Only his hand was held, yet it felt as if his entire body was entwined and bound. Kim Si-baek tilted helplessly and fell onto the bed, and a dark, heavy figure climbed over him. The weight he thought he had grown accustomed to suddenly pressed down on him oppressively, making Kim Si-baek gasp for breath in short bursts.
The waist tie of the loosely tied gown came undone, and the hem of the garment slid down long. Kim Si-baek was bewildered to realize only then that Tae-un was not wearing any underwear. The volume felt around his abdomen and thighs was already swollen hot. The roof of his mouth went bone-dry.
“Un…”
Kim Si-baek himself didn’t know what he had intended to say by calling him. Only the residual sound of the voice, swallowed by Tae-un’s mouth, echoed deeply in his throat. The movement of the tongue, swallowing and sucking in all at once, made him tingle as if an electric current were flowing.
The child who asked him to be carved into him dug in violently, as if to devour him and lock him inside. The tongue, sliding deeper than usual, poked and prodded as if it would scratch his uvula. His throat was stimulated, and a small gag reflex rose reflexively, but Tae-un’s mouth would not let go.
Rather, he nibbled and pulled at the tongue of the man suffering from dry heaves. He pressed down with his full weight onto the chest that heaved painfully and cupped his cheek with a large hand. Because of the hand holding him firmly, he couldn’t even turn his head, and his crushed and bitten lips stung. Due to the metallic taste of the saliva swallowing down into his mouth, Kim Si-baek realized his lip had been torn.
“Keuh! Heuu, haa! Huk…”
When Tae-un finally pulled his lips away, rough breaths—whether from gagging or coughing—poured out breathlessly. His vision was completely blurred due to physiological tears.
Beyond the blurred darkness, Kim Si-baek felt a distinct gaze. He suddenly felt certain that Tae-un had not closed his eyes even while kissing. As if he could feel everything about him through his senses even while submerged in darkness, he must have been staring deeply at him with those three-hundred eyes.
Tae-un licked the drop of blood clinging to the wet lips with the tip of his tongue.
“Is there anyone else who tore your lip while kissing you, hyung?”
“……Do you think there is?”
As if satisfied with that answer, a low, purring laugh was heard.
“I’m the first. I’m glad. I should have taken hyung’s first kiss and first experience too.”
“You’re planning to make me a criminal…”
“If hyung went to prison, I would have followed you anyway.”
His long-ago experience as a police officer reflexively produced an answer like, ‘Prisons for adults and minors are different,’ but since saying such a thing in this situation would be strange, he kept his mouth shut.
As he remained silent, Tae-un kissed him, nipping at his chin and lips.
“Are you angry because I bit your lip?”
“If I say I’m angry, will you stop?”
“No.”
Tae-un bit down hard, as if to tear the wound on the lower lip further. A throbbing pain pierced through his entire body, and his fingers twitched. Tae-un’s hand, moving relentlessly downward, stripped off the knit and fumbled with the shirt underneath. He tried to undo the small buttons one by one, but perhaps becoming impatient, he yanked them hard. The buttons ripped away and flew in all directions.
It happened so quickly that he didn’t even have time to say he would take it off himself; he looked on in disbelief, but the fellow who had been staring as if licking him even in the darkness now tilted his head innocently, as if he couldn’t see.
……Since he was the one who raised him like this, there was no way to fight back. As he sighed, Tae-un let out a laugh and licked from his chin down to his collarbone with his tongue. The place where he nibbled and bit was the hickey he had made a few days ago.
Tae-un traced the mark that had grown quite faint when he saw it while washing his face in the morning. He kissed the skin with audible smacking sounds and then licked upward obsessively. Then, as if he had become a beast, he pressed his teeth in. There was not a shred of hesitation in the sharp teeth crushing the tender skin.
“Haa, ugh…”
As he bit and sucked hard, as if chewing and tearing the skin, a searing pain spread throbbingly. The sensation that not just the skin but the flesh itself was being chewed and torn away brought out an involuntary moan, and his fingers tightened around Tae-un’s shoulders.
It wasn’t only pain that spread searingly. Along with it, a dizzying heat warmed his body and pooled down into his lower abdomen.
“Heuu, hauu…”
Heat was chewed between the pain-mixed moans crumbling through his teeth. He had never once had pain converted into pleasure, yet the peripheral nerves of the skin being violently bitten and chewed flared up hotly.