By Zephyria 
Jae-min’s gaze keenly scanned the phone screen. Since he had looked up Oh Seung-pyo’s SNS once before, it wasn’t hard to find.
Among the long list of friends, a girl named Jung Su-hyun quickly came into view. She was that conspicuous.
‘She’s incredibly pretty.’
The first emotion Jae-min felt upon seeing the girl named Su-hyun was sincere admiration. The sparkling, bright, and cheerful energy emanating even from the small profile picture was extraordinary.
Hearing the noisy conversation that sounded as if they had rented out the classroom, she seemed to be a trainee preparing to be an idol; he could understand why the classmates were excited that Oh Seung-pyo had met her alone. However, contrary to the excited atmosphere of the classroom, Jae-min’s expression was cooling down.
‘Why would such a pretty girl… with a guy like that…’
The girl was a waste. More than a waste, it was almost worrying. Jae-min unconsciously shook his head.
If she was preparing to debut as a celebrity, she absolutely should not meet someone like Oh Seung-pyo. Where is the guarantee that a guy who specialized in threatening to leak other people’s secret photos to the school wouldn’t do the same to her?
Furthermore, they went to a karaoke room of all places? Thinking about what he did to him in that very karaoke room… for that dog-like slut, wasn’t coaxing someone to a karaoke room a set course?
‘Then he probably… did it with her too.’
His hand tightened instinctively, gripping the phone as if he would crush it. His teeth gnashed inside his closed mouth.
Because of that damn act, he was angry that his concentration kept wavering even during his study time at home. He thought he had barely managed his anger by staying away from that annoying face over the weekend, but thinking that the filthy bastard had done the same thing to another person’s lips in the same place using the same method made him want to stand up right now and punch the guy in the face.
“Quiet, everyone!”
Just as he was beginning to imagine beating Oh Seung-pyo to a pulp, Jae-min had to fold his violent imagination before it could unfold, thanks to the loud voice of the teacher entering the classroom. The teacher, whose expression was poor as if something unpleasant had happened in the faculty office since morning, predictably began a rapid-fire lecture as soon as he put down the class materials.
“Why are you all more distracted and mindless after moving up to the second year? In the first year, you’re tense because it’s your first time in high school, and in the third year, you’re tense because you’re actual entrance exam students. Is the second year just a period to pass through? If you lose your focus and ruin your GPA this year, it won’t matter how hard you try later. You probably think you can just play around until the second year and then go for the regular admission, but do you think the guys who played around will suddenly hit the jackpot on their CSAT scores, huh?”
It was clear he was taking out his anger on innocent students after being slapped elsewhere. However, for Jae-min, whose mind had been cluttered with random thoughts for a moment, it was a scolding that resonated. This was no time to be looking at the SNS of a girl he didn’t even know since morning. This was such a busy period.
He had to focus on his studies until high school to safely enter the university he wanted, and he had to enter the university he wanted to leave home without any trouble. Whether someone went to a karaoke room or what they did there had absolutely nothing to do with Jae-min.
Jae-min sighed and opened his book. In the first place, he hadn’t wanted to get particularly entangled with other kids during his three years of high school. There was a reason why he sought stress relief and a sense of liberation in the gaps of the internet where he could hide his face and name, rather than in friends or daily life. Jae-min didn’t want to be deeply involved with anyone, and naturally, that ‘anyone’ included Oh Seung-pyo.
Ryu Jae-min had believed for a long time that his true life would begin at twenty, upon entering college. Until then, he was merely preparing for his real life. Like a cicada that endures nearly ten years underground, waiting only for the summer day to become an adult.
But Ryu Jae-min was not a cicada. Instead of enduring ten years and leaving the world after singing for one summer season, he would live freely as a successful person for the long life remaining ahead of him.
His parents told him that if he just endured the remaining three years of high school and worked hard to enter a good university, he could do whatever he wanted from then on. They said they wouldn’t interfere at all, whether he spent all day clinging to his phone or left home to live on his own.
The words were smooth, but seeing how the two of them treated Noona, he couldn’t trust them entirely. Still, it didn’t have to be perfect. The mere certainty that things would be different from now was enough to make him look forward to the day he became an adult. He had done well so far, so as long as he maintained his pace, it wasn’t an unrealistic goal.
“You all know the first exam is next month, right? Get your heads in the game.”
“Yes—”
As the students gave lethargic responses, the teacher finally seemed to cool off and began the lesson. Jae-min’s restless heart was gradually settling, much like the teacher’s mood.
The third period was a mobile class in the music room. Although arts and physical education classes decreased in the third year, that wasn’t the case for the second years yet. The students descended the stairs noisily, never stopping their mischief for a single moment.
This was their first music class since moving up a grade. After enduring stiff, rigid lessons, the students felt as if they could finally breathe upon entering the music room. They continued to chatter until the teacher slammed a folder onto the podium with a loud thwack.
“Quiet, quiet. Everyone, let me speak.”
The music teacher set up his laptop and projected the screen onto the electronic whiteboard. When he opened the prepared file, a list of famous song titles that the students were well acquainted with appeared.
“Since it’s the first day, I’ll start with a brief explanation of how the performance evaluations will be conducted this semester.”
The teacher explained the songs they needed to master during the semester and the instruments that would be accepted for the evaluation. Students who had learned the piano, violin, guitar, danso, or recorder, or who enjoyed them as hobbies, listened with ease, while those who hadn’t simply stared at the teacher with gloomy expressions.
“If you aren’t confident in playing an instrument, you can focus more on singing. Besides singing and instruments, I’ll give you a few more assignments, like watching a designated performance and writing a review, or researching a composer. Don’t overthink it; let’s just have fun. Even if you’re exhausted by college entrance prep, keep music enjoyable! Got it?”
“Yes—”
The teacher raised an eyebrow at the students’ lukewarm response.
“You’re all so lifeless, as if I said something I shouldn’t have. Who’s the class president?”
Seung-pyo raised his hand without a word. As soon as the new school year began, the homeroom teacher had held a vote for class president on the first day. Oh Seung-pyo—who had great grades, an impeccable personality, and was good at both gaming and basketball, making him someone many students always wanted to hang out with—had naturally received the most votes.
The result had happened regardless of his own will, but since he had already been elected, Seung-pyo didn’t see a reason to refuse. He had served as student body president in middle school, and he figured that being class president could add at least one more line to his student record, so it wasn’t a losing proposition.
“Ah, Seung-pyo. Right. Seung-pyo, stand up and sing a song as a demonstration. There must be a song you know on this list, right?”
“What?”
Had he miscalculated? A losing proposition had already occurred. The students, who had been slightly dampened by the announcement of the performance evaluation, suddenly sparkled with interest and began to clap. Some joined in the crowd, adding their voices to tattle on him.
“Oh Seung-pyo went to a karaoke room with a girl over the weekend!”
“What, you went on a date? Then, to commemorate it, you definitely have to sing a song in front of your friends.”
The music teacher didn’t let the quick tattle slide and played along. Seung-pyo didn’t hide his dissatisfaction, knitting his brows. Since they had done singing evaluations in the first year, the music teacher obviously knew that he was tone-deaf.
“There’s a vice president, too.”
“Let the president do it.”
“You’re not even going to reflect this in the evaluation.”
“No, I’ll think about it positively. If you liven up the class atmosphere.”
“I know you won’t.”
Though he grumbled, he stood up from his seat. Clearing his throat with a hem-hem, he looked around the classroom, and his eyes locked exactly with Jae-min’s—the one person who hadn’t spared him a single glance despite Seung-pyo’s constant peeking all morning.
Jae-min flinched and frowned, quickly turning his head away, but Seung-pyo clearly saw the eyes that had glared at him coldly.
The teacher had only told him to stand, not to come forward, but Seung-pyo took it upon himself to walk up to the front of the podium. The teacher looked up at him in admiration.
“Oh, did you grow taller over the break?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t measured.”
“Right, well, what do you want to sing? New songs will be hard, so pick one from what you sang in the first year.”
Seung-pyo carefully examined the list of songs on the board. It was a mix of refined songs suitable for evaluations, old pop songs, and domestic hits from a few years ago.
“I’ll do this one.”
The students already began to laugh. The song Seung-pyo chose was a staple of singing exams that any Korean high school student would have heard or sung at least once, and it had been part of the first-year music evaluation. The teacher put the lyrics on the screen and sat at the piano with a smile.
As the resonance of the keys spread refreshingly, the laughter subsided slightly. However, the amusement didn’t vanish completely, and the students pressed their lips tight, holding back bursts of laughter. Seung-pyo began to sing.
“Che bella cosa na jurnate sole—”
So far, it was manageable. Although the pitch and tempo were clashing and erratic from the start, it was a section that proceeded in a relatively low register.
“Ma— na— tu sole qubello oine.”
As he hit the high notes, the students began to bow their heads and bang on their desks, laughing hysterically. Even then, Seung-pyo didn’t bat an eye; as if intentionally encouraging them to find it funnier, he loudly boasted his cracking voice, blatantly flaunting his tone-deafness.
O Sole Mio, O Sole Mio. Having finished the song without laughing once, Seung-pyo bowed elegantly as if he were a professional tenor. The students cheered and clapped, chanting Oh Seung-pyo’s name. Everyone in the room, except for one person.
‘He’s not laughing.’
Seung-pyo composed his slightly disappointed heart and trudged back to his seat. Remembering how Jae-min had laughed heartily after hearing him sing at the karaoke room, he wondered if he would react to the singing, but it was a misjudgment.
‘Ah, why do I even care?’
As if defying Jae-min, Seung-pyo also stiffened his expression. He didn’t particularly want Jae-min to know he had gone to the karaoke room with Jung Su-hyun, but even if he did, so what.
They had only locked lips once; it wasn’t as if they had become some special couple. Whether he met another girl or not wasn’t something Ryu Jae-min should be angry about, nor was it something he needed to be interested in.
“Seung-pyo is really good at singing. It’s a bit a shame it was so short. Shall we listen to just one more song before we start the lesson?”
“Yes!”
As the energized teacher tried to extend the singing contest, the students immediately responded to the sweet proposal. They were ready to sell out their classmates as long as it meant delaying the lesson.
“Who wants to do it? Give me a recommendation.”
“Myeong-jun!”
Since the president had sung, the vice president’s name naturally came up. Then, another student shouted.
“Ryu Jae-min!”
Jae-min, who likely hadn’t expected his name to be called, looked surprised, his eyes widening. Aside from those two—who were clearly targeted because they were the vice president or the top student in the school—no other names were mentioned. As the students’ opinions were split in two, the teacher nodded and asked.
“Then let the person who sang first choose. Whoever Seung-pyo picks will sing. No objections, right?”
The two candidates, forced into a singing contest that had started abruptly without any justification, were full of dissatisfaction. However, since Oh Seung-pyo had already taken the first turn, the atmosphere made it difficult to back out now. The class vice president and Jae-min both waited for the choice with pouty expressions, and Seung-pyo’s deliberation was short.
“Then, Ryu Jae-min.”
Ooh—. The students cheered, hyping up the atmosphere. Jae-min let out a small sigh and glared at Seung-pyo, but it didn’t last long. As if even a brief glance was a waste, he quickly looked away and stood up without a word, adopting an attitude of wanting to get it over with quickly.
“I’ll just sing from here.”
“Sure, go ahead. What song do you want to sing?”
“『Lascia ch’io pianga』.”
Handel’s 『Lascia ch’io pianga』 was as common a song for singing exams as the Italian folk song 『O Sole Mio』 that Seung-pyo had sung. It was an unremarkable choice, but Seung-pyo found a way to nitpick it in his head.
‘He even picks a title that’s gloomy, just like him.’
Jae-min took a moment to steady his breath and then began to sing to the piano accompaniment. Seung-pyo rested his chin on his hand and listened intently.
Come to think of it, even when they went to the karaoke room, Jae-min had avoided singing, claiming it was his first time and that he didn’t know any songs, so he hadn’t properly seen Ryu Jae-min sing.
“Lascia ch’io pianga mia cruda sorte—”
Unlike when Seung-pyo had prepared to sing, no one laughed. The music room became silent in an instant, as if the previous commotion had been a lie.
Along with the clear sound of the piano, Ryu Jae-min’s lucid voice filled the classroom like a neat geometric shape filling a white void.
Let me weep. Oh, my cruel fate. Give me back my lost freedom. Let me break the chains of suffering with this sorrow. Lord, have mercy…
Seung-pyo knew the content because he had read the translated lyrics while preparing for his own evaluation, but most of the other students probably didn’t. The song flowing from Ryu Jae-min’s lips felt less like a prayer of someone lamenting a miserable fate and more like an elegant and noble recitation; if one didn’t know the lyrics, they wouldn’t be able to guess what kind of song it was at all. Seung-pyo dropped his gaze to the desk and silently absorbed the smooth melody.
Once the second singer finished, the class atmosphere shifted exactly as the teacher wanted. As soon as the song ended, a round of enthusiastic applause swept through the room, and once that ended, the distracted atmosphere became as refined as the song Jae-min had sung. Afterward, the lesson proceeded as usual.
Whether it was because the top two students in the school being in one class was more strongly imprinted on the teachers’ subconscious than their roles as president and vice president, the two were linked in a summons once again.
Having spent too much time setting the mood at the beginning, the teacher, now rushed to finish the lesson, apologized and asked the two of them to help organize the equipment. Seung-pyo and Jae-min were left alone in the empty music room, tidying up sheet music and demonstration instruments.
Because they focused on the cleanup in silence without exchanging a single word, the work finished faster than expected. Jae-min, who had been crouching to organize the cables, stood up abruptly as soon as he finished his task and headed for the door. Watching his back, Seung-pyo finally called out to him first.
“Hey.”
Jae-min didn’t look back, but he stopped walking. Seung-pyo continued speaking to his straight back.
“You’re actually good at singing.”
“I’m good at everything.”
“That day, you kept avoiding it saying you don’t like singing, so I thought you were bad.”
“I can be good at it even if I don’t like it.”
Jae-min finally turned around to face Seung-pyo. Seung-pyo took a few more steps toward him.
“How long are you going to be like this?”
“Like what?”
“We’re in the same class, so we have to keep seeing each other. How long are you going to stay pouting?”
“Who’s pouting?”
Jae-min scoffed, unable to hide his absurdity. The gaze he leveled at Seung-pyo was cold. However, the criticism coming from his mouth was passionate and unrestrained compared to his cold gaze.
“You were the one foaming at the mouth because I did perverted things in front of you. I’m still pissed because of you. I’m holding back the urge to hit you, so stop talking to me.”
“Then just hit me and get it over with. Stop being all moody and pouting.”
A slight wrinkle appeared between Jae-min’s straight brows, and his fist flew up as if he were actually going to hit Seung-pyo. Seung-pyo didn’t even blink, waiting for the impact to land somewhere on his cheek or forehead.
But the punch didn’t come, and only the gaze Jae-min directed at him grew fiercer. Seung-pyo, the target, added one more comment.
“If you’re going to hit me, do it quickly.”
Even with his mouth shut, Seung-pyo’s brow twitched. After saying it, he realized the situation was similar to what had happened at the karaoke room. When he had posed as if to hit him, Jae-min had also grumbled, “If you’re going to hit me, do it quickly,” and upon hearing that, instead of delivering a finger flick to the forehead, Seung-pyo had ended up doing that to his lips.
Did Jae-min recall the same situation? The gaze glaring at Seung-pyo shifted ambiguously into the air. Seeing that the fist, which failed to reach its destination, had lost its strength, Seung-pyo narrowed his eyes slightly.
“Why aren’t you hitting me? Are you thinking about the kiss we had?”
Despite having told himself over and over that it was just ‘hitting lips,’ like a punching bag game, Seung-pyo ended up naming the act of that day a ‘kiss’ with his own mouth. Damn it. A sigh escaped him internally, but the expression on his face remained completely brazen.
Jae-min likely didn’t want to acknowledge that kiss as a ‘kiss’ either. Naturally, a rebuttal followed.
“What the hell do you mean ‘kiss’? That wasn’t a kiss.”
“Wow, as expected of a guy who took and sold lewd pictures, you’re on another level. You don’t even count that as a kiss.”
As if he had developed an immunity to the sarcasm, Jae-min didn’t even get angry now. He looked at Seung-pyo as if he were pathetic and lowered his voice.
“Stop talking about that. How long are you going to… it’s tedious.”
“Why? Just because you don’t talk about it doesn’t mean the fact that you were a whore who stripped and shook his dick for people to watch disappears.”
But there was a limit to pretending to be indifferent. At the persistent mockery that clung to him just as he was about to forget, Jae-min’s face finally distorted.
For someone who had lived his entire life as a model student, the shame and humiliation in front of a classmate—things he found difficult to get used to—forced his cold and neat face to crumble.
At the pure anger piercing him like an arrow, Seung-pyo felt a kind of fresh exhilaration. Was it because he had never lost to anyone before meeting Ryu Jae-min? Since he had never tasted this feeling in his life except when facing Ryu Jae-min, he couldn’t know or compare what this emotion was.
As if he wanted to provoke Jae-min’s anger even further, Seung-pyo approached without hesitation, lifted Jae-min’s chin, and leaned his head down. As soon as their lips lightly brushed, Jae-min pushed Seung-pyo away with a loud thud.
Since it was the reaction he expected, Seung-pyo wasn’t surprised. He didn’t ask why he was acting like this, nor did he sneer and ask why he was playing hard to get.
“…Hey!”
However, Jae-min’s immediate action was something Seung-pyo hadn’t anticipated. Jae-min began to rub his lips violently with the back of his hand. The force of the rubbing was so harsh that it seemed his lips would tear soon.
“Ryu Jae-min, stop it!”
Flustered, Seung-pyo hurriedly pulled Jae-min’s wrist. Jae-min struggled and resisted, trying not to stop the self-harming act of rubbing his lips, but Seung-pyo had the upper hand in strength.
When he finally managed to pull the hand away, Jae-min’s lower lip was indeed slightly torn and bleeding. Startled, Seung-pyo stammered before finally raising his voice.
“Why are you acting like a psycho again?”
“You’re the psycho, you filthy bastard. I don’t go around rubbing lips with just anyone like you do.”
“When did I ever rub lips with just anyone…!”
Seung-pyo’s words trailed off as he became speechless, and only after biting his lip hard did he lower his voice.
“You’re doing this because you heard about Jung Su-hyun earlier, right? I really only sang songs with her. She’s just a middle school classmate.”
“Who cares.”
“You’re angry right now because I went to a karaoke room with her.”
“What are you talking about? Doesn’t it occur to you that I’m angry because you’re once again vilely threatening and sexually harassing me?”
The gaze glaring at him as if to kill was savage. Facing the gaze that felt like a sharpened blade, Seung-pyo finally sighed first and lowered his head. When he lifted his face again while looking at the floor, his expression had become quite serious.
“Alright. I really won’t do it anymore.”
“…….”
“From now on, really, truly, I won’t bring that up again. Is it enough if I promise?”
“As if I’d trust a guy like you.”
“But…”
Unable to continue, Seung-pyo let out another long sigh. He ran his hand through his hair as if tearing it out, making a strange groaning sound.
Even on Jae-min’s anger-filled face, a curiosity that could be interpreted as ‘What’s wrong with this guy?’ appeared. At that moment, Seung-pyo suddenly locked eyes with him again and solemnly brought up the main point.
“I want to keep doing this, though.”
“…Doing what?”
“Kissing.”
“Don’t call it kissing.”
Jae-min frowned once more, but despite that, he gave a reasonable piece of advice.
“Go do it with a girlfriend.”
“We’re not in a co-ed school anymore, so it’s a hassle to keep dating and meeting outside, and I’ll be a senior next year, so dating is a bit… Moreover…”
His hesitant groundwork, which was uncharacteristically timid, was suspicious. Jae-min answered without listening further.
“I can predict what kind of nonsense you’re about to say, and just imagining it makes me annoyed, so shut your mouth.”
“Don’t be like that, just listen. You have things you want to release on this side too—ah, I’m not saying this to tease you, it’s just a fact—anyway, you must have had a reason for filming and uploading videos and photos. I looked into it, and this is all because of the sexual confusion people experience during adolescence. You even smoked cigarettes before. It’s not good for you to keep doing dangerous things just to relieve stress.”
“Did you not hear me tell you to shut up?”
“Since we go to the same school, it saves time, and there’s no risk of other people finding out.”
“What’s the point of others not finding out? You might be the one to leak it.”
“If you can’t trust me, then you take a picture of me jerking off and keep it. That solves it.”
When Seung-pyo persisted with the proposal, Jae-min made a blatantly disgusted face.
“I wouldn’t take it even if you gave it to me.”
“I didn’t understand why I was like this either, so I posted on a counseling forum. And they said… this can happen around high school. That it’s no big deal.”
It seemed like a decent offer for a guy who had been doing that kind of thing with strangers he didn’t even know. Seung-pyo gauged Jae-min’s mood and asked.
“You don’t happen to… have had your first kiss with me, do you?”
It would be more surprising if a guy who ran a lewd picture account on the side and exchanged dirty talk with anonymous strangers had never even kissed. Honestly, Seung-pyo felt confident that he wouldn’t even bat an eye if Jae-min confessed to having slept with those people during offline meetups.
Still, because Jae-min was reacting with such utter revulsion, he asked just in case, and a sharp answer came back instantly.
“Of course not, you son of a bitch.”
“Oh, neither did I. Then since neither of us is a virgin to it, we can just think of it casually.”
He lied about not being a first-timer because he didn’t want to lose. It couldn’t be helped. If he revealed now that it had been his first kiss, he would become a loser who wasted his first kiss in such a pathetic way. It was an act so incredibly crazy that he couldn’t even criticize Ryu Jae-min for being a psycho anymore.
Jae-min looked at Seung-pyo, who was standing his ground bluntly, with a hateful gaze and spat out.
“Are you bragging about how much you’ve done? You really are like a whore…”
“Let’s stop using bad words like ‘whore.’ I told you I won’t bring that up anymore.”
“You’re the one who used that word first today.”
“Ah, I said I’m sorry.”
Seung-pyo thought Jae-min would agree. If he intended to refuse, he would have left the music room long ago, yet Ryu Jae-min was still standing in front of him.
Besides, the sexual orientation confusion of adolescence, and the vivid desires that frequently attacked the body in waves because of it, surely weren’t things that only applied to him.
“You screwed me over once, and I screwed you over once… so from now on, we can just do it whenever we both want to.”
Just as Oh Seung-pyo had first shown Ryu Jae-min his despicable side by using the other’s weakness for blackmail, wouldn’t Oh Seung-pyo also be the only person to whom Ryu Jae-min had revealed his psychopathic nature?
Since there was nothing left to expose, Seung-pyo thought there was nothing wrong with suggesting they just relieve themselves whenever they felt the urge until this period of sexual confusion ended. Since he, a brilliant mind, was the one thinking it, the top student in the school, Ryu Jae-min, would understand. Ordinary people might call it crazy, but it wasn’t as if it would ever reach other people’s ears.
“I…”
Just as Jae-min was about to answer, there was a click—the sound of the door opening. Come to think of it, they had been making this fuss without even locking the door.
While Seung-pyo swallowed hard, inwardly startled by his own carelessness, the music teacher appeared, eyes wide with surprise.
“You’re still in the music room? Hurry to class. Lesson is about to start.”
“Yes. Sorry.”
“Was there a lot to clean up? I’m sorry. I should have done it.”
“No, there wasn’t much. I’ll head up now.”
I have to be more careful next time. As he let out a sigh of relief and left the music room to climb the stairs, Ryu Jae-min, who had clearly been about to say something, remained silent the whole way.
His cold, sunken profile looked as if he had forgotten everything that had just happened. Only the small scab of blood on his lip bore witness to what had occurred in the music room.
He couldn’t press further in the hallway where people were walking, and so they grew closer to the classroom without him getting an answer. Whatever. Since he had already thrown the bait, Seung-pyo whispered into Jae-min’s ear.
“I’ll be in the archives during lunch. Come if you’re interested.”
“Wait and see if you can.”
As if it wasn’t even worth considering, Jae-min strode ahead and opened the classroom door.
* * *
After finishing his classes, Jae-min stood alone in front of the school gate, waiting for the car to pick him up.
Staring at the distant mountains with his usual expressionless face, he suddenly let out a small chuckle, his lips relaxing. He had tried to hold it back because he felt like he was losing if he laughed, but since no one was watching, he let it slip.
What did Ryu Jae-min do after receiving that unconventional proposal during lunch today?
What else? Of course, he didn’t go. First of all, he was half-doubting whether Oh Seung-pyo would actually be waiting for him in the archives. If it were a sincere offer, it would just end with Oh Seung-pyo being embarrassed alone; if it were a lie, he couldn’t fall for such a prank. From the start, Jae-min’s only option was ‘not going.’
Oh Seung-pyo, who had returned to the classroom just in time for the start of class, had a face that looked rotten while pretending everything was fine. Seeing the kids who had been playing on the field demand to know where he had been, it was clear he had actually been stuck in the archives.
Oh Seung-pyo didn’t even answer properly and returned to his seat, not saying a word to Jae-min until school ended. He was a guy brazen enough to make an excuse like, ‘I just did that to bait you, actually I didn’t go either,’ but seeing that he couldn’t even make such a joke, it seemed he found it embarrassing himself.
Jae-min, who had struggled not to laugh in the classroom, was now ridiculing Oh Seung-pyo to his heart’s content. What on earth gave him the confidence to say he’d be in the archives during lunch? The more he chewed on it, the more the guy seemed like a lunatic. Did he seriously think Jae-min would go meet him after hearing those words?
‘Is he an idiot? It’s amazing that he’s ranked second in the school with that brain.’
Then again, he had heard from adults a few times that the brain used for studying and the brain used for living are different. The problem was that this phrase wasn’t exactly used as a compliment for Jae-min either.
Just because one gets good grades doesn’t mean they are quicker than others or don’t make mistakes, but receiving reprimands or looks that summarized as ‘Why can’t a kid of your caliber do something like this’ in the face of common mistakes or worries wasn’t a pleasant experience. Thinking of his own experience, he didn’t want to ridicule Oh Seung-pyo by linking his grades to his stupidity.
Still, funny is funny. While he nodded to himself, a familiar car pulled up and stopped. As he ran quickly to open the passenger door, the pickup driver sitting in the driver’s seat greeted him.
“Hi. Are you Jae-min?”
“…Ah, yes.”
The driver holding the wheel was someone he had never seen before. After a brief hesitation, Jae-min quickly got into the car and responded to the greeting.
“Hello.”
“Yeah, I was told to start picking you up from today. Did your parents tell you?”
“…No.”
“I only had my interview and got decided yesterday, so I started right away today. It changed so suddenly that they probably didn’t have time to tell you.”
He was bewildered since he hadn’t known the pickup driver was being replaced, but Jae-min soon accepted the situation. It wasn’t the first time the pickup driver had been changed without any word to him.
The Hyung who had been picking him up previously had worked for quite a while and was fairly lenient with Jae-min’s circumstances. He had the tact to keep it a secret from the parents when asked to come 10 or 20 minutes late; he wondered if that had been discovered. If the man had been fired because of his requests, he felt sorry.
Since he was an interesting person who often told stories about college life or failed blind dates, the commute had been subtly enjoyable, so he felt a bit sad thinking he wouldn’t see him again. If he had quit, he at least wanted to say goodbye. He thought about sending a message, but since he didn’t know what his parents had said to make him quit, he was reluctant to contact him first.
Part-time jobs change eventually anyway. He knew that, but he couldn’t help the sinking feeling. If they were allowing him to use the phone they constantly wanted to take away, it would have been nice if they had let him know, even briefly, that a new person would be picking him up from today.
“You have to go to one more place after this, right? I’ll time it accordingly.”
“Yes.”
Entering the academy building, Jae-min blended in with the other students and got into the elevator. The sudden change of the pickup driver was no big deal, but he felt inexplicably gloomy and leaned his body against the wall.
Since class hadn’t started yet, the academy lobby was crowded with kids chatting, kids doing unfinished homework, and kids drinking water or beverages. And among a few kids gathered together was Oh Seung-pyo.
As their eyes met, Oh Seung-pyo’s expression turned cold. He didn’t know why the other was acting like a rejected guy when he had never promised to go. For a despicable fellow who did nothing but blackmail and sexual harassment, he should be grateful he hadn’t been reported to the police.
‘Come to think of it, I did it once, but that bastard did it twice.’
The talk of calling it even by saying they each screwed each other over once was no longer an excuse. The second symptom of rabies shown in the music room today was a case where Oh Seung-pyo had gone crazy all on his own for no reason.
Jae-min completely ignored Seung-pyo and entered the classroom as if he hadn’t seen him. Thinking that he had crushed the guy’s absurd confidence, he felt his mood, which had sunk slightly due to the driver issue, float up into the air. His heart felt light, as if it had been placed in a hot air balloon. Feeling his expression loosen unconsciously, Jae-min hurriedly hardened his face.
‘No. I can’t get a taste for this.’
Being deeply entangled with another person isn’t limited to getting close through affection. A relationship where people harbor malice and hostility and constantly try to grate on each other’s nerves or fight is a deeper relationship than one where they just greet each other with a smile.
Telling himself that he had decided not to pay attention to useless things until entrance exams were over, Jae-min shook his head a few times to steady himself. Unnecessary distractions were shaken off by physical force. Fortunately, the instructor started the class before the emptied thoughts could fill back up.
By the time he arrived home, a drizzle had started. The pickup driver got out of the car with Jae-min. Since the car was provided by Jae-min’s parents, the driver had to use public transportation to go back.
“Goodbye.”
“Yeah, see you tomorrow.”
After parting with the driver and getting into the elevator alone, Jae-min stared at his reflection in the mirror. Because he had kept his face hardened all day, his cheeks felt heavy, perhaps because the muscles were tense.
He deliberately pulled the corners of his mouth up to create a smiling expression. Because it was a forced smile, it looked unnatural.
Just before entering the front door to say he was home, Jae-min spotted a pair of women’s sneakers. At a glance, it wasn’t a design his mother would wear. As he hurried inside, a guest he hadn’t seen in a very long time was in the living room.
“Noona.”
“Oh, Jae-min, you’re here?”
It was his Noona, who had visited last Chuseok and was coming home for the first time this year. She and his mother were sitting with a sofa table between them, as if they had been talking. Jae-min sat beside them without even putting his bag down properly.
“When did you get here? I didn’t know you were coming.”
“I had something to tell Mom, so I stopped by for a bit after work. I’m about to leave now.”
“Already? I just got here…”
Perhaps a hint of disappointment leaked into the end of his sentence, as his Noona gave a bitter smile. He knew she didn’t like staying at home for long, but he thought she would sleep over since it was late. His mother, who had been listening, cut off the siblings’ short conversation.
“Were you planning to lounge around just because your Noona came on a weekday? Hurry and wash up and change your clothes. Somin, you should leave before it gets any later if you’re going.”
“Yes.”
Jae-min’s Noona stood up, truly looking ready to leave. He was disappointed, but if she wasn’t staying over, it was time to go home.
“I’ll buy you something delicious next time. Let’s meet outside.”
She said this, but since both she and he were busy, it would take a long time before they could actually meet outside for a meal. Knowing this full well, he nodded obediently and asked.
“Yeah, how are you getting home?”
“I’m going to take a taxi.”
“Let’s go out together. I want to see you get in the taxi before I come back in.”
“No, go inside. Mom’s in a bad mood right now. Once I’m in, I’ll send the ride record to your phone.”
The last part was a whisper. With the beep of the lock and the door closing, he felt inexplicably lonely. If he hadn’t known she came, he wouldn’t have felt disappointed.
While Jae-min saw his Noona off at the entrance, his mother didn’t even come out. When he returned to the living room, she was sitting with her arms crossed, staring straight ahead. She had come because she had something to say, but it seemed it wasn’t a very good story.
“I’m going to wash up.”
He intended to go into the bathroom without asking what happened, but a cold voice caught his ankle.
“Do you have no interest in your Noona’s affairs? This child is so heartless.”
“…I was going to ask after washing up.”
“She says she’s quitting her company. She came on a day when your father is intentionally late because she doesn’t want to see him.”
“She’s quitting? Why?”
“She says she wants to live abroad. If that was the case, she should have studied abroad long ago. She didn’t go when we told her to…”
“Is Noona going to study abroad?”
“Would I say it like this if she were studying abroad? Whether it’s a working holiday or whatever, it’s a complete waste of time, and now she says she wants to go, so it’s a headache. Knowing full well that her cousins are studying abroad, what am I supposed to tell the relatives?”
Jae-min fell silent, having nothing more to say. He knew what a working holiday was, but honestly, as a high school student, it was difficult for Jae-min to judge whether his Noona’s decision was a good or bad one.
All Jae-min knew was that his Noona thought it was a good choice, and his mother disapproved of that choice.
“Please, don’t be like that. Somin, you were so smart in high school, too. Not knowing that everything is said for her own sake, she keeps acting like this just because her feelings were hurt by her father… truly…”
Can I disappear to wash up now? Jae-min’s head was already full of such thoughts. His mother, perhaps thinking her venting had gone on too long, sighed and gestured.
“Talking about it only gives me a headache. Hurry and wash up, go in, and do your work.”
“Yes.”
Jae-min quickly entered his room. By the time he organized his bag, changed out of his school uniform, went into the bathroom, and came back out, his mother was still sitting in the same spot without changing her posture once.
A ride confirmation message from his Noona had arrived on his phone. Jae-min placed his phone on the charging stand and sat at his desk. The home atmosphere, which was always stiff, was especially like walking on thin ice today. Once his father returned, it would go from stiff to sharp.
Somehow, he found himself holding his breath even in his own room. Jae-min put on his earphones, turned on the ASMR he often listened to during self-study, and opened his book. He just wanted to shut out the situation outside his door.
“…….”
Hearts, thoughts, and moods do not move according to a person’s will. Unable to solve a problem that wasn’t even that difficult, Jae-min, who kept drawing lines under the text, sighed and leaned his head back. Trivial distractions hindered his concentration.
What kind of people get married? Do Father and Mother love each other?
Do they understand each other because they are similar? If so, why can’t their children, Noona and I, understand those two?
Since graduating from college, his Noona barely came home during holidays and seemed to hardly even call. She could have lived in an officetel owned by her parents, but she had found a room with a friend and was living independently, paying monthly rent. She even refused the car they offered as a graduation gift and used public transportation.
To some, it might be the spoiled complaining of a ‘silver spoon,’ but sometimes it takes courage and will to refuse what is given. Not many people can choose a path with an opaque route, a detour, while a visible shortcut is right there. That was why Jae-min liked his Noona.
How could the expression of refusal that had continued for years, clearly visible even to his young eyes, be explained by a simple phrase like ‘feelings were hurt’? If they didn’t cut ties completely, does the refusal cease to be a refusal, and do the things that happened in the past turn into things that ‘could happen’ between family members?
“Ouch.”
Unconsciously fiddling with the tip of his mechanical pencil, Jae-min realized he had been too immersed in his thoughts only after he pricked the underside of his fingernail.
Whether it was a jinx or something else, things that disrupted his studying were happening one after another today. Individually, they seemed like trivial matters, but just as repeated light blows eventually cause pain, the small accumulations of melancholy piled up until they completely drained his energy.
Jae-min gave up on forcing himself to stay at his desk and headed for the bed. Experience had taught him that stubbornly enduring the chair only depleted his strength without actually helping him study.
Lying on the bed, he stared up at the dark void. A day’s worth of unpleasantness—as black as night, but not as smooth; dark, lumpy, and viscous—pooled at the lowest parts of his body like residue.
It was emotional wastewater that had to be secretly discarded where people couldn’t see. In the past, he would have poured these things into a trash can of his own making, mixed them with others’ filth so no one knew whose they were, and then fallen asleep. But because of Oh Seung-pyo, even that had become difficult.
Blinking silently in the pitch-black darkness, Jae-min held his breath and reached inside his pants. Even the sensation of his own hand brushing against his thigh felt skin-crawling.
Words that had been sunken in his mind began to creep to the surface. Slut, whore, pervert… Raw insults he had only encountered as text on a screen, but had heard aloud several times recently, escaped his mind and lingered in his ears. The hand that had slid inside his thigh grasped the heat beginning to take shape at the center of his body.
‘Just because you don’t say anything doesn’t change the fact that you were a whore who stripped and shook your cock for people to watch.’
Recalling the voice he had heard during the day, Jae-min closed his eyes. In the room without a single speck of light, he pulled the duvet up over his head.
His quickening breath instantly made the space under the covers stiflingly hot. He felt like he might sweat from the lack of air and the heat, but Jae-min focused only on the movement of his hand. Gripping his hard erection tightly, he continued an act he would never show another person again. The area around his lower abdomen grew hot. He remembered one more thing Oh Seung-pyo had said.
‘Try acting like a whore in front of me, too. I thought about it during class, and I’m curious. I wonder what it would be like to see the top student in the school acting like a slut in person.’
With his eyes tightly shut, Jae-min was suddenly standing before Seung-pyo, who wore an arrogant, crooked smile. Standing naked before him while he remained in his school uniform, Jae-min diligently shook his penis and masturbated, just as he was told.
He didn’t resist or fight back as he did in reality, nor did he act roughly as if venting his anger like last time; he simply followed along meekly, like a model student completing an assignment. Watching this, the imaginary Oh Seung-pyo chuckled and spoke.
‘Does it feel good? You pervert.’
“Ah…!”
Jae-min gripped his twitching penis tightly. His thighs and waist shuddered, and soon, his hand was drenched in hot bodily fluids.
Panting and catching his breath in the darkness and heat until the aftershocks of pleasure subsided, Jae-min suddenly yanked the duvet down. He let out a long sigh, rummaged through the nightstand next to the bed, pulled out some wet wipes, and quickly cleaned his hand and penis. Even so, the smell of semen wouldn’t go away, making his face flush anew.
As expected, just wiping with tissues left him feeling too grimy to sleep. He pressed his face against the door and listened for sounds outside. Thinking no one was there, he peeked open the door to find the living room had gone dark in the meantime. Thanks to that, Jae-min quietly slipped into the bathroom and finished cleaning up.
Once he returned to his room and lay down, a literal “hit of reality” struck his body heavily. The words he had imagined right before ejaculating were things Oh Seung-pyo hadn’t even actually said.
Perhaps, as the guy mocked, he had already become a complete pervert? He had considered it a brief deviation to relieve stress, a temporary hobby to be discarded when the time came, but as the saying goes, “he who touches pitch shall be defiled”—perhaps while idling in the trash can, he had become the same kind of person.
After releasing the heat from his body, the tension eased and he felt drowsy, but the melancholy feeling didn’t vanish. Even so, sleep steadily approached, and Jae-min closed his eyes without resisting.
* * *
Perhaps because he had wasted his mental energy uselessly in various places the day before, he felt lethargic from the morning of the next day. Jae-min barely ate breakfast and hurried out of the house.
It seemed spring was arriving early this year, as the weather grew warmer by the day. It was still chilly, but many students were already attending school in just their uniform jackets without coats or jumpers.
“Hi,” “Hey.” Jae-min exchanged toneless greetings with the other students and took his seat. To the Jae-min of today, the noise of the students chatting energetically from the morning felt like a sound from another world, separated by a layer of glass.
“Oh Seung-pyo, did you do the English homework?”
“I’m about to do it.”
“Let me see it when you’re done.”
“Sure.”
Even amidst the blurred noise of several voices mixing together, those three syllables of the obnoxious guy’s name entered his ears with clarity. He hadn’t tried to be conscious of it, nor did he want to, but it was excessively vivid, like a sparkling lost item intentionally fished out of muddy water.
Jae-min frowned slightly to himself. Perhaps because of what he had done alone yesterday, he didn’t even want to look in the direction where Oh Seung-pyo was. The student who had asked for the homework continued.
“Want to play basketball during lunch?”
“Sure. The weather’s warm today, so it’ll be good for running.”
“It was a close call yesterday because you were missing. I looked for you but couldn’t find you. Where’d you go?”
“I took a nap.”
“Where?”
“Somewhere without people.”
He felt as if he would lock eyes with Oh Seung-pyo the moment he turned his head. He was worried that his stiff expression would give away the fact that he was eavesdropping.
Jae-min put in his earphones and deliberately rested his cheek on the hand closest to where Seung-pyo was. At school, as long as he pretended to study, he could escape and hide from almost any situation. No matter how many people he was crowded with, the surface area of this desk was Jae-min’s own space, separated from others. At the very least, within the school, there were few people who would bother to mess with the top student who was studying.
At lunchtime, Jae-min emptied his tray as indifferently as he had his breakfast and stood up before the other students, saying he had somewhere to go.
Whether everyone was still eating or had gone outside to play, only a few students remained in the classroom. He tidied his spot and stepped back out into the hallway. The hallway was also quiet, with few people passing by.
‘What am I even going there for now?’
Such a question surfaced in a corner of his mind, but well, even regardless of yesterday’s events, the archives room was a decent place to spend time quietly alone. Since teachers frequently visited to prepare for classes, students who didn’t want to be noticed avoided it, and during lunch, even teachers didn’t usually seek it out. Moreover, the door could be locked from the inside, and there were a few unused chairs; if pushed together, it was a good place for a nap, just as Oh Seung-pyo had said.
Even though he knew the other side was empty, Jae-min hesitated for a moment before opening the door. Like someone standing before a portal to another world, he stared silently ahead before finally swinging the door open as if he had made a decision.
As expected, there was no one in the archives room. Jae-min let out a small snort, finding his own unnecessary tension ridiculous. The tension left his shoulders.
Since it served as a storage area, there was no separate heating, but the sunlight just past noon poured in through the window, making the interior bright and warm. Because it wasn’t cleaned thoroughly, there was a bit of dust floating here and there, but not enough to be bothersome.
‘It’ll be hot in the summer.’
Just as he was thinking such a trivial thought and about to close the door after entering, the handle rattled as if someone had grabbed it from the outside.
As he let go, the door, which had been almost closed, swung open again. A classmate with a stiff expression stood on the other side. The moment their eyes met, his previously calm heart suddenly surged like a wave, and his heartbeat quickened. Fearing his inner turmoil would be discovered, Jae-min also stiffened his face.
“Did you get the date wrong? I told you to come yesterday.”
Oh Seung-pyo, who had appeared suddenly as if he had teleported, skipped the introductions and asked urgently.
Jae-min didn’t immediately understand the abrupt question, then let out a short, incredulous sigh and moved forward.
“I didn’t come to see you.”
“Then why come here during lunch?”
“Just to rest alone.”
Jae-min pulled over an empty chair and plopped down.
“The classroom is noisy.”
“There weren’t many kids there.”
“It’s still noisy. I can hear the shouting from the playground.”
Even though he said he wasn’t there for him, Oh Seung-pyo didn’t leave. It was as expected. On the contrary, he strode into the archives room and firmly locked the door.
Seeing that he had taken off his jacket and rolled up his uniform sleeves, it seemed he had been on his way to the playground but changed direction abruptly. Come to think of it, hadn’t this guy agreed to play basketball during lunch? Jae-min tilted his head and asked.
“Don’t you need to go to the other kids?”
Seung-pyo snorted nonchalantly.
“Because you were my prior engagement.”
Then, he too dragged a chair over with a clatter, sat side-by-side, and studied Jae-min’s reaction. Jae-min unconsciously looked straight into Seung-pyo’s eyes.
If he told him he used him as material for masturbation yesterday, would this guy like it or hate it? Would he get angry again that a pervert used him as a substitute for internet trash?
While Jae-min was mentally weighing the answer to a question he would never ask, Seung-pyo narrowed his eyes slightly and scolded him with a smile that seemed uncharacteristically shy.
“What are you looking at?”
Who does he think he is, smiling with his eyes like that? Jae-min scolded him only in his head.
Whether he truly believed Jae-min had mistaken the date and come to the archives room today, Oh Seung-pyo—whose expression had been rotten all day yesterday—had completely shifted his stance and was suppressing a laugh. He was so shameless that it was embarrassing for the observer.
“By the way, what were you trying to say yesterday?”
At Seung-pyo’s question, Jae-min only blinked. Noticing that he didn’t know what he was referring to, Oh Seung-pyo added an explanation.
“Yesterday in the music room, you were about to say something, but the teacher came in, so you couldn’t.”
“Ah.”
Recalling the brief moment, Jae-min’s eyes shifted.
Yesterday, he had intended to give a model, correct answer to Oh Seung-pyo, who was persistently spouting nonsense. That he didn’t want to worry about other things until he entered his third year and his college entrance path was decided. That the time spent arguing with him was a waste, and the concentration lost because of him was a waste.
That just because he posted those kinds of photos on the internet, he hadn’t harmed anyone, and if it weren’t for him, it would have been much better for him as he wouldn’t have wasted time or energy. So, please, just forget about what happened in the first year and let’s ignore each other.
“I forgot.”
Oh Seung-pyo wasn’t the only one who had shifted his stance in a single day. It is a well-known fact that people easily become numb to the same stimulus, and once they taste a stronger one, they cannot return to how they were before, desiring increasingly intense stimulation.
Jae-min was now vaguely realizing that the sneering gaze and foul mockery staring directly at him might be a more useful tool than the twisted attention thrown by faceless people on the internet.
If so, as Oh Seung-pyo suggested, wouldn’t it be okay to use each other until the situation changed? Just as he finished his short answer and fell into thought, Seung-pyo’s face suddenly drew close.
“Then I can do it, right?”
Jae-min didn’t answer aloud; he simply met his gaze.
Their lips hovered as if they were about to touch, but Seung-pyo didn’t press his lips against him immediately. He stared intently into Jae-min’s eyes and asked.
“Aren’t you going to close your eyes?”
The karaoke booth at the arcade had been dark and narrow, and since they had been covered by a uniform jacket, their faces weren’t visible at all. Yesterday’s kiss had been very brief because Jae-min had pushed him away immediately.
Now, they were sitting side-by-side under a window where sunlight poured in brightly. This was the first time he was kissing while facing the other person so clearly. Jae-min opened his eyes wider and asked back.
“Is that necessary?”
Seung-pyo let out a breath as if puzzled, then, without closing his eyes either, moved closer and finally pressed his lips against him. The feeling of lips touching lips was still strange, so even though his eyes were open, Jae-min’s shoulders twitched in surprise.
The first time at the karaoke room had been so sudden that it felt more like a surprise attack than a kiss. Having been hit by an unexpected attack, Jae-min had been shocked by a secret invasion he had never felt in his life, and flustered by the sensation of the moist inner flesh hidden in his mouth contacting another person.
It felt as if popping candy were exploding one after another in his head. The tingling sensation reached the crown of his head, so he couldn’t properly remember the touch of the lips.
Oh Seung-pyo hadn’t pushed his tongue in yet; he just kept his lips pressed and maintained eye contact. He had never looked into another person’s pupils while stuck together like this, making the moment incredibly unfamiliar. He wished he would just get it over with. Perhaps because it was too bright, an awkwardness he had never felt while they were together began to tickle up his spine.
Was this another plot to tease him? Should he tell him to move if he wasn’t going to do it properly? Just as he thought that, Oh Seung-pyo suddenly opened his mouth and entered.
“Ngh…”
He didn’t want to be startled like a beginner every time, but contrary to his will, Jae-min’s shoulders twitched once more. He felt Oh Seung-pyo’s hand grasp the nape of his neck as if supporting it.
The tongue that entered his mouth didn’t stir the inside roughly and hurriedly like last time. It rubbed gently as if tickling the tip of his tongue, then gradually pushed deeper, slowly sweeping across the inside of his teeth and the roof of his mouth before overlapping and enveloping Jae-min’s stationary tongue.
His mind grew hazy. He had tried to keep his eyes open until the end, but unconsciously, his gaze dropped. Jae-min didn’t realize his eyelashes were trembling.
Last time, Jae-min had reacted so fervently that Oh Seung-pyo had teased him, asking if his tongue had moved a lot too, but this time, he was like a flying insect caught by a frog, unable to move a muscle, leaving himself entirely to Seung-pyo. He could have paid him back for the act of rummaging through his mouth, but he didn’t know how to return this kind of kiss.
Haa. Seung-pyo let out a light breath and lifted his head. Suddenly freed from the lips, Jae-min finally opened his eyes. While he stared blankly at Seung-pyo, unable to even think of closing his mouth, Seung-pyo licked his lips once and leaned in again, whispering.
“Why aren’t you doing anything today?”
Seung-pyo dove back into the parted lips and pulled out Jae-min’s tongue, which was still hiding inside. As he sucked the tip of the tongue strongly, a jolt like electricity ran through the area near Jae-min’s tailbone.
It didn’t end with once or twice. Seung-pyo clung to the tongue tenaciously, as if eating a gummy candy, and Jae-min helplessly gave his tongue over. While having another person’s tongue push in and move inside his mouth was a shocking experience, the feeling of another person sucking his tongue was more flustering than surprising.
The most absurd part was that every time his tongue was sucked with a smacking sound, it felt so good… that his waist involuntarily twitched.
Just like in the karaoke room, strange sounds kept trying to leak out. Jae-min struggled to control his breath, which had grown ragged from the heat, trying his best to suppress those sounds. However, the switch was pressed in an unexpected place. Because the hand that had been supporting the back of his neck slid down his nape, he unconsciously closed his eyes tight and let out a loud sound.
“Haa…!”
It was a voice mixed half with surprise at the sudden touch of bare skin and half with a strange, skin-crawling sensation. His face flushed instantly at a tone that was clearly distinguishable from a simple shout. He gasped for air like someone who had just finished a race.
When Jae-min cried out, Seung-pyo released his tongue. Oh Seung-pyo’s breathing was not only disrupted but he was almost panting. When he had asked why he wasn’t doing anything today, there had been a hint of a smile, but now, far from smiling, he glared at Jae-min with a face as stiff as if he were angry.
Then, he suddenly lunged forward and kissed not the lips, but the neckline revealed between the collar of the school shirt. Startled, Jae-min immediately pushed his shoulder away.
“Hey, ah, crazy, stop it!”
“Why?”
“Only kissing at school.”
As he blurted out a random excuse, Seung-pyo met his eyes from a very close distance.
“Then can we do more elsewhere?”
Jae-min kept his mouth shut and swallowed hard. He had said it haphazardly out of panic, but now it looked like he had to manage the fallout.
But it was a conversation worth considering. He had already shaken his cock in front of Oh Seung-pyo anyway. Yesterday, he had even masturbated while imagining him.
He hadn’t let Oh Seung-pyo sit next to him with the intention of ending it with just a kiss, but the problem was that Jae-min had no idea where to set the limit of what was permissible. When Jae-min didn’t answer, Seung-pyo took the lead.
“Do you want to come to my house later?”
As expected, Jae-min hesitated for a moment instead of answering immediately, then shook his head.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Why would I go to your house?”
At those words, Seung-pyo readily stepped back, his expression looking somewhat deflated.
“Stop testing the waters one step at a time.”
“I still don’t trust you.”
He meant it. A kiss was a kiss, and trust was trust. In principle, one should never entrust their vital spots to a human they didn’t trust. It might sound contradictory to say he distrusted a person he had let suck his tongue until it felt numb, but that was how he honestly felt. Seung-pyo asked again.
“Then when will you trust me?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then are we just going to keep kissing?”
“Yeah, for the time being.”
At the firm answer, Seung-pyo let out a low groan of frustration, but surprisingly, he didn’t push further and simply nodded. After thinking it over, Jae-min added,
“Send that.”
“What?”
“You said you’d take photos of yourself jerking off.”
“…You actually want those?”
“You said you’d give them to me.”
“You said you wouldn’t take them even if I gave them.”
Grumbling, Seung-pyo stared straight ahead and asked,
“If I give you those, can we do more than just kissing?”
“…No.”
“Then why are you asking for them already? I’ll take them when we can do more. Happy?”
Even though he was the one who brought it up… Jae-min knew it, but Seung-pyo really was a petty and calculating bastard. Feeling his distrust deepen, Jae-min also turned his gaze forward. His face was burning hot and showed no sign of cooling down. Down below, he felt… a bit of a stir.
‘What am I going to do if this happens every time we kiss at school?’
Even Jae-min, who usually maintained his composure, found himself flustered by his physiological reactions. He quietly pressed his lips together, but suddenly, Seung-pyo said something completely random.
“Didn’t the principal’s wig flip upside down yesterday?”
“What?”
“It was freaking hilarious.”
Just imagining it was a funny sight. Jae-min let out a reflexive chuckle, but he found Oh Seung-pyo—who suddenly brought up the principal’s wig right after a kiss—even more absurd than the principal who had accidentally worn a wig upside down.
“Why bring up the principal all of a sudden?”
“Because I feel like I need to think about something like that right now. You?”
Understanding what Oh Seung-pyo meant, Jae-min turned his head forward again instead of answering. He didn’t want to admit that he felt the same, but saying no would be a lie.
Surprisingly, continuing to think about the principal wearing a wig upside down was quite effective, and his overheated body slowly calmed down. Once he regained his reason, he began to worry about what other situation they might encounter if they stayed here alone. Jae-min hurriedly stood up.
“I’m leaving now.”
“Me too.”
The two of them checked the hallway and the surroundings before quickly leaving the archives. Seung-pyo, realizing late, dashed toward the playground saying he had to go play basketball, while Jae-min quietly returned to the classroom and sat in his seat.
He let out a long sigh, cast a wary glance around, then took out his phone and searched quickly.
How to kiss well
When the search results appeared, he cleared his throat—as if he were doing something naughty in secret—and covered the phone screen with his book, pretending to read.
Whether he met Oh Seung-pyo or not, he should have prepared in advance if he intended to go to the archives; he had been careless. To avoid being outdone by a slut who played around with girls, he needed to study. He had confidently lied that it wasn’t his first time, so if he just acted surprised like an idiot and couldn’t do anything every time they kissed, Oh Seung-pyo would surely start thinking it was strange.
Without realizing it, Jae-min swept his tongue across the roof of his mouth. The sensation of his lips, which had been entwined, explored, and sucked for a long time in the archives, still felt strange. Normally, he didn’t live consciously aware of where his tongue was in his mouth, but now it felt as if all the nerves in his body were focused on the smooth mucous membrane and the small piece of flesh inside his lips.
Here, and here, and down here too… Jae-min lightly touched the spots where Oh Seung-pyo had brushed and touched with his own tongue, then, feeling a bit embarrassed, he placed his tongue back in its proper place.
‘At that level, Oh Seung-pyo is good at it, right?’
That bastard, just how many times has he done this…
The sense of injustice from having his first kiss stolen surged up again, but since he had decided to play along, it was a useless resentment. If he was frustrated by losing, he shouldn’t dwell on the emotion but instead strive to win the next round. Whether it was studying, sports, or kissing, it was all the same.
Most of the information on kissing techniques floating around the internet was similar. Perhaps because they assumed the kissing was between lovers, they all advised focusing on creating a romantic atmosphere first. Advice to place a hand on the back of the neck or the cheek to relieve tension appeared frequently.
As he read that part, the feeling of Oh Seung-pyo’s hand supporting his neck, and the touch and warmth of the fingers stroking his nape, seemed to revive, causing Jae-min to rub his neck roughly with his own hand.
Do not move the tongue excessively or try to attack a wide area due to over-eagerness; proceed carefully, slowly, and softly.
It’s not that big of a deal. Gaining confidence, Jae-min closed the screen.