DD 3.4 Change

A couple, appearing to be in their late thirties, were going through the check-in procedures at the counter with their daughter, who seemed to be around first or second year of middle school, standing behind them.

Perhaps they didn’t have much experience with overseas family trips, as the couple’s faces were etched with tension, each wearing a backpack and a crossbody bag in addition to the checked luggage.

Once the check-in was finally completed without incident, the couple, who had been instructed to wait on a bench nearby until the inspection of their checked luggage was fully finished, moved over with the empty cart that had held their bags.

And they settled side-by-side in the seats directly across from the bench where I was sitting.

“You didn’t put the camera battery in the suitcase, did you?”

“No, it’s in my backpack.”

The father asked, gently brushing aside his daughter’s hair that had fallen by her temple due to being loosely tied, and the daughter replied in a slightly annoyed tone.

“I’m worried because she didn’t sleep well today. It’s going to be uncomfortable on the plane too.”

The mother said, looking at her daughter with a worried expression.

“Mom, what time do we arrive in Prague? I want to go to Charles Bridge as soon as we get there.”

Seeing their daughter, who, though tired, was excited about the trip and asking about the schedule, the parents’ worried expressions faded, and they exchanged smiles.

When I went on a business trip to Hong Kong with Phantom, I didn’t pay much attention to my surroundings. There was excitement, but the tension was greater. Just like the couple in front of me now. But sitting on a bench in the airport as a traveler, not a participant, things I hadn’t noticed then came into view.

Morae and Hyung had left.

They had suggested we part ways at the check-in counter, saying we shouldn’t do the cliché scene of watching each other until they disappeared into the departure gate. They would head towards the departure gate, and I would head back towards the gate we came through. We agreed not to have one person stay behind to watch the other’s back, but to go our separate ways.

But after waving goodbye, I returned to this bench and sat down. I just felt like I shouldn’t leave this place too quickly.

Families embarking on trips for summer vacation and holidays could be seen everywhere in the airport. It was an era when 30 million people traveled abroad annually, and overseas travel had long ceased to be exclusive to the wealthy.

In Grandfather’s village, there were opportunities for inexpensive package tours abroad organized by various groups like the Fisheries Cooperative, the Agricultural Cooperative, and women’s associations several times a year, and even in middle school, I often heard travelogues from friends who had visited various countries during their breaks.

The three of us—Mother, Father, and I—had never taken an overseas trip, despite how common they had become. Mother seemed to have traveled a lot in the past, but there had never been an opportunity for our family of three to go together.

We didn’t think our family was unhappy because of that, nor did we feel inferior or envious of our friends’ travel stories. My parents prioritized securing time to paint, so our household wasn’t wealthy, but I never felt unhappy or unfortunate just because we couldn’t wear branded shoes or clothes.

I was thinking about the days immediately following Mother’s award announcement.

I was recalling the faces of my father and mother, who discussed with joyful expressions at the dinner table every evening how to use the substantial prize money for our family.

Should we add to the cost of replacing the used car we’d driven for over ten years? Or supplement Mother’s digital equipment, get a new laptop to replace the one I inherited from Father, buy Father a new suit, and save the rest?

The dinner table was lively every evening, as the act of deliberating where to spend the money was more enjoyable than actually spending it. Although Mother never explicitly suggested it, I knew at the time that she had in mind a museum tour in Europe for the three of us to take together.

However, that scene, not a real memory of my family’s time together, felt unreal to me now, like a video artificially staged for happiness. Moreover, as if the signal had been disrupted, the screen flickered and went black shortly after. Like our plans, none of which materialized from the few options we had.

As soon as I sensed I had delved too deep, I felt a safety catch snap at the back of my neck. It was a signal to stop.

I rose from my seat, taking my gaze away from the girl engrossed in a travel book covered in colorful tapes and sticky notes marking important pages.

Since we couldn’t stay long in front of the departure gate, I contacted the driver as he had asked me to call when I was leaving the airport. The driver said he would be there in five minutes, but I hurried out of the airport.

The air outside was humid, with rain still drizzling, continuing from yesterday, but I didn’t feel the heat since my body temperature had lowered from the air conditioner.

People coming and going in front of the departure gate all had flushed faces, anticipating their travels. Just like at the hotel, I felt a sense of alienation here.

Suddenly, fatigue washed over me. As the tension eased, the physical exhaustion from not sleeping or resting properly for the past few days seemed to hit me all at once.

I crossed the street twice to get to the location the driver had told me. The black sedan that had been transporting us comfortably yesterday and today was slowly reducing its speed as it approached.

I bowed my head towards the faint outline of the driver visible through the darkly tinted windshield of the stopped car and approached the back seat, opening the door.

“We parted ways earlier than expected.”

It was his voice. He was inside.

With one hand resting on the edge of the door and my back bent, I froze for a moment.

“How….”

It was the same car I had arrived in with Morae and Hyung, and it was the same driver. As far as I knew, he had never traveled with us in this car before.

Tsk, he clicked his tongue and moved closer, pulling my hand resting on the door towards him as he sat down.

“You’ll get soaked again. Get in quickly.”

Still dazed, I got into the car as he led me, and sat pressed against the door, looking at him with a face full of questions.

“Is it that surprising to see me here?”

He looked as if he hadn’t expected me to be this surprised.

Actually, rather than surprised, I was glad. I was so glad to see him that I didn’t know how to manage my expression. Only after safely seeing Morae and Hyung off did I realize how frayed my heart had been, as if someone had squeezed it dry, in the past few days… I was happy about his completely unexpected appearance. Just looking at him felt like the beginning of healing.

He was already exerting his influence as someone I liked.

“I never imagined…”

As the car started moving and I adjusted my posture to sit more comfortably, I mumbled. For some reason, I felt shy looking directly at him.

“It doesn’t seem that surprising for me to be in my own car.”

His joke, a strange logic he insisted on, made me laugh. Whatever the reason for him being here, the comfort he provided at this moment could not be diminished.

Afraid my joy at this unexpected encounter was too evident, my gaze, which had been fixed around his chest, caught sight of his sunglasses. It was the rainy season, but he habitually kept his sunglasses clipped to the left breast pocket of his jacket.

“Your sunglasses are cool…”

“Hm?”

As if hearing a proposal he hadn’t anticipated, he raised his voice in question.

“Can I… try them on?”

It was a bold move for me. The fatigue after a major event and the excitement from his appearance might have brought out a different side of me.

He looked at me with an intrigued expression, as if he had heard a proposal that piqued his interest, and smiled silently, pulling up the corners of his lips. He readily handed me the sunglasses. With their simple frames, dark lenses, and thin, sleek arms, they gave off an intellectual impression, perfect for hiding one’s expression.

“Let me see. They suit you well.”

He turned me by the shoulder and peered at my face, looking amused. I could meet his gaze without looking away. It was a very useful item.

He stared at my face, his eyes shining as if he were looking at something wondrous, and only after a long while did he avert his gaze. Then, he took out a phone from his inner jacket pocket and held it out to me.

“What is this…?”

“This is Seo Yi-hyun’s new phone.”

The phone I received absentmindedly was the latest model from a brand that Juhan Hyung had been raving about wanting.

“Until now, their objective was those two, so there was no need to directly pressure Seo Yi-hyun. But once they realize that tracking the two is impossible, Seo Yi-hyun will be the only one left to extract information from. The situation is different now. You could easily become a target. We need to prepare.”

He spoke in a voice devoid of humor, tapping numbers on his own phone screen. A moment later, a light vibration was felt in my hand. It was a message from him.

“It’s a new number, so use this from now on.”

The message inbox, wiped clean, contained only his number, which was not yet registered in my contacts. The empty device in my hand, holding no trace of the past, felt like a futuristic tool that would allow me to reset everything and start anew. I silently mocked myself for my sentimental and hollow hope.

“Where you work and where you live. Finding out that much information within the country is simpler than you think. It’s best to live somewhere you can’t be easily accessed, even if they know where you are.”

His outline was more blurred through the sunglasses, but the color of his eyes seemed even clearer. His eyes, which boiled with a fizzy blue and white intensity like carbonation during sex, calmly met mine.

“I have a place that would be suitable as Seo Yi-hyun’s atelier and temporary residence. I was thinking of going there together now, would that be alright?”

I found it a bit difficult to keep up with the rapidly unfolding plan, but lingering wouldn’t change the situation. I nodded, and he showed a satisfied smile.

“You must have been at the extreme limit, both physically and mentally, for the past few days. Rest your eyes on the way.”

Instead of me, who didn’t know the internal system well, he reached for the controller on this side and reclined the seat. His arm crossing in front of my chest and the strong scent of his cologne made my entire body tense up for a moment.

Today, it wasn’t the usual cologne I knew. Although this deep, heavy, and distinct fragrance suited him, I felt a slight, inexplicable sense of disappointment. It was just cologne, after all.

As he withdrew his arm, he glanced at my face and let out a sigh-like hum, lightly ruffling my hair.

“I get it, but don’t look at me with… that kind of look.”

He said, turning his head towards the window. His profile, with his brow furrowed as he rubbed his mouth with his large hand, looked troubled.

Don’t look at me with that kind of look. It was a strange thing to say. He couldn’t see my eyes because I was wearing sunglasses.

■ ■ ■

“Each floor has a private elevator and an elevator hall, so residents rarely encounter each other.”

He said this as he opened the glass door with his card key, located directly in front of where we had parked. Inside the glass door was a hall space of about 10-13 square meters, furnished with a comfortable three-seater sofa.

On the wall next to the elevator, opposite the sofa, there were no buttons in the usual place. Where buttons should have been, there was only a black digital pad. He touched his card key to the pad, and the door opened. When the card was recognized by the pad inside, the light for the 5th floor illuminated automatically. The elevator could only travel between the parking lot and lobby floor, basement levels 1 and 2, and the 5th floor. It could not move to any other floors.

“As you saw when we entered, outsiders cannot even access the complex. This is partly because it’s on a hill, but they also raised the ground more to get a clearer view of the Han River. There are five units in total, one on each floor from the 1st to the 5th, but in reality, it’s from the 3rd to the 7th floor. The basement levels 1 and 2 were designated as common areas because they don’t offer a clear view of the Han River.”

While I listened to his explanation, waving the card key like a fan, all I could understand about the situation was that the villa he had brought me to was extremely luxurious.

The elevator door opened from the opposite side of the direction we had entered. As soon as we stepped out, it was the entrance. More precisely, it was a rectangular room used as an entrance. The long entrance, paved with light gold-beige marble, was clean, with no unnecessary decorations.

“You can wear your shoes inside.”

As I hesitated at the threshold leading from the entrance to the hallway, he said this, closing the door of a sleek, handle-less built-in cabinet he had been checking the interior of.

To get from the entrance to the actual living space, one had to pass through a bent hallway. The structure was designed to prioritize privacy, as the interior was not visible from the entrance.

“The exterior architecture itself makes it difficult for outsiders to access, but with five or more guards stationed 24 hours a day, you can be quite assured about safety.”

At the end of the hallway, a spacious living room, which could only be described as wide open, appeared. The ceiling was high, creating a sense of openness, and one entire wall was finished with glass. This ensured ample light even on a cloudy day like today.

“This house was purchased for foreign rentals to generate rental income, but the previous tenant’s contract with this company ended in May, and they completely settled their affairs in Korea and returned home. Since then, no new tenant has appeared, and I was considering moving into this house myself. What do you think, do you like it?”

He slowly surveyed the simple living room, furnished with minimal furniture, and then turned to me, who was still standing awkwardly at the end of the hallway. His tone was like picking up a T-shirt from a display shelf and asking about it.

It would be a lie to say I didn’t understand the intention behind his question about whether I liked it. But if my understanding was correct, the reason this time was incomprehensible.

Perhaps thinking that my inability to answer promptly meant I didn’t like it much, he began to elaborate on the house’s advantageous features.

“It’s a duplex structure, so both Seo Yi-hyun and I can have our privacy, almost as if we’re living separately. And for me, I’ll only be spending evenings here due to work, so you can focus on your painting comfortably.”

He walked towards the living room window, twisted the handle downwards to unlock it, and slowly slid the large sliding glass door to the left.

Despite the villa being seven stories high, a spacious garden unfolded in front of the panoramic window. It was a real garden with grass, soil, and landscaping. Beyond that flowed the gray Han River, sprinkled by rain.

A cool breeze carrying the scent of damp earth from the garden wafted in. Only then did I realize that the air inside had been somewhat stuffy.

“When the weather is nice, you can work in the garden, and there’s nothing to disturb you. It’s quiet, isn’t it?”

He slid the door open all the way and turned to me, smiling.

If I wasn’t misunderstanding, he was recommending this luxurious villa as my atelier and temporary residence, and perhaps, proposing that I live here with him.

As I remained unresponsive, he walked back towards me. He made almost no sound as he walked across the light pink marble tiles.

He walked up to me, standing awkwardly in the living room like a potted plant that didn’t match the house’s atmosphere, and bent his body slightly to look closely at my face. Sunglasses. I needed sunglasses, but I had already returned them to him in the car.

“You don’t look like you like the house.”

It was a problem beyond liking or disliking it. Even if I couldn’t continue staying at Manager Han’s place, I hadn’t expected such a lavish house.

“Then where were you planning to stay?”

“……”

He asked, as if reading the question in my mind.

“They’ll find out quickly that you’re staying at Manager Han’s place. Frankly, I believe his place was already compromised some time ago.”

As he said this, he straightened up and crossed his arms firmly in front of his chest.

“We will provide all the necessary conveniences for you to focus on your painting in a safe space.”

“……”

“It’s not like I bought it new for Seo Yi-hyun, and since it was empty, I was considering staying here myself, so there’s no need to feel burdened at all. I did purchase it for rental purposes, but I liked the structure and the view, so I’ve always been interested in living here myself. Besides, even if I lived here alone, I wouldn’t be using this entire space anyway.”

Setting aside the fact that he was an exceedingly wealthy man, I rarely felt the economic disparity in our conversations. He wasn’t the type of person to flaunt his wealth.

This was the first time I had felt such a stark difference in our senses so noticeably.

It was an empty house anyway, I was considering moving here anyway, and even if I lived alone, there would be space left over, so I wasn’t making any financial sacrifice. —To him, who presented such a simple logic, explaining that I could feel emotionally burdened, regardless of financial sacrifice, seemed unlikely to be persuasive.

“Phantom, and Manager Han’s situation…”

As I barely managed to ask, he looked down at me for a moment, uncrossed his arms, and lightly grasped my wrist. He pulled me by the wrist towards the hallway beyond the living room, suggesting I look around the house since I had come this far.

“Seo Yi-hyun, you’ve been a great help with the practical matters, so I’m quite disappointed about the Phantom work, too. But you need to focus on your painting. Or, are you planning to paint it as a hobby, like Choi In-woo?”

He turned to me in front of the master bedroom downstairs and asked as if to confirm.

I hadn’t intended to paint it as a hobby, but since Great Uncle appeared, I had been solely focused on Morae and Hyung’s affairs, so I hadn’t thought about other aspects in detail yet.

He continued speaking as he looked down at me for a moment, then opened the bedroom door inward.

“You understand that the work helping Manager Han also has to be put on hold, right? Putting work aside, just entering that house now isn’t very safe for Seo Yi-hyun. It’s the same for Manager Han, too.”

That was also something I hadn’t considered. Even though it was my situation, he was looking at it from a much broader perspective and making arrangements… It made me feel grateful, yet ashamed.

He stood me in front of the bed, from which the mattress cover had been removed to prevent dust, then walked to the floor-to-ceiling window connected to the garden, just like in the living room. He roughly pulled back the thin, sheer curtains and opened the window halfway.

Although it was decorated more cozily than the living room, the bedroom was just as stark and devoid of life’s traces.

“It’s all too sudden, and everything is happening so fast… I… I don’t know what’s what…”

As I rambled meaninglessly, stroking my bare arm beneath my short-sleeved shirt, he returned to me.

Sigh… My chest felt heavy as I looked up at his face, which was letting out a sigh after puffing out his chest. I felt apologetic for not being able to readily accept his kindness and goodwill, but I was too small to keep up with the rapid developments that far exceeded my expectations.

He looked down at me, his brow furrowed with an apologetic expression, and scratched his straight forehead.

“Did I push you a bit too hard?”

“……”

I shook my head vigorously, as if that were the only way to convey my sincerity.

I disliked how he always noticed my hesitation and concerns before I did and felt apologetic. After saying he liked me, my own inadequacy, receiving so much from him, made me bow my head.

“No. You’ve considered things I hadn’t even thought of… I’m very grateful.”

If he hadn’t been there, if I hadn’t met him, how would I have handled this situation?

I wouldn’t have been able to handle it. The reality was that neither Morae nor Hyung, nor I, who were socially incapable, had the power to actually solve problems.

While not all issues were cleanly resolved, it was entirely thanks to his help that we were able to escape a crisis that could have led to the worst possible outcome and advance the situation this far.

“It’s just… these are choices I’ve never considered… so I’m flustered. Representative, you’ve done nothing wrong…”

“I know.”

He stopped my difficult confession, as if reaching into my heart and stirring it to find the right words.

“I know you’re grateful enough, so you don’t have to say it anymore.”

“……”

Gathering courage from his warm words, I looked up to meet his face, which was contorted. It was a very subtle crack, but in his eyes, emotions like pity, empathy, and sorrow for me, the person before him, were wavering.

I recalled the him from before, who had fixed me outside his frame, as someone who would help for a while and then disappear.

At least one thing was clear.

In some form, I was now included within the scope of his kindness and concern. His eyes told me there was no need to doubt that.

Anything beyond that—specialness, uniqueness—asking for such things felt like sheer greed, beyond any sense of propriety or station. I was already receiving far too much help.

He, who had been gazing at me wordlessly from a distance of about two steps, averted his gaze as if fleeing, his expression strained. His side profile, as he nervously ran his fingers through his hair, styled a bit more casually for the holiday, looked almost anxious.

“What do you like? Alcohol? Shopping? Travel? I don’t think it’s any of those… I need to know.”

The thought crossed my mind that perhaps him coming to the airport and bringing me here to make a new offer was to comfort me after I had sent Morae and Hyung away.

“Or do you want to meet Baek Yuni and Kwon Juhan for drinks? They’re probably better than me.”

I grabbed his arm as he took out his phone, as if to contact my sister and brother immediately. Perhaps surprised by my desperate action, his eyes widened slightly as he turned to look at me.

Not knowing how to start, I bit my lower lip, then, as if surrendering, rested my forehead on the edge of his shoulder.

Now that Morae and Hyung had safely left the country, the relief I felt made me gradually realize that I had been suffering from deeper anxiety than I had thought. Behind the reassurance of having breathed a sigh of relief now that they were gone safely, came a hollowness, as if a part of my heart had been torn away.

If I were to have someone comfort and soothe that feeling, there was only one person I wished to be that someone.

“……”

He paused for a moment, then put his phone back in his pocket.

His palm cupped my entire cheek. My head was lifted by a gentle force.

“Are you sad?”

His voice, refined and unsuited to the word ‘sadness,’ was now calm, unlike moments before.

I had given up on naming the emotion, as it couldn’t be simply defined by the single word ‘sadness,’ but looking at it most simply, it was sadness. I was sad because the people I loved had gone far away.

I was merely trying not to show it by accepting the situation as I always had, but I already felt a sense of loss and emptiness about my life continuing without them, and their lives continuing without me. To me, who was hesitating, unsure how to process this feeling, he gave me the opportunity to acknowledge my sadness.

His hand moved from my cheek to cup my ear, delving deeper. Even if it wasn’t ‘that scent,’ anything was fine.

“I… think I’m sad.”

I leaned my face into his hand on my cheek and corrected my answer.

“Yes, I’m sad.”

“……”

He narrowed his eyes, looking intently at various parts of my face as if trying to read some intangible message from me. The ‘that scent,’ which I hadn’t felt at all moments before, was now subtly detected amidst the other scents.

“You said if I wanted it… I just had to say the word. That I could have it anytime. Foolishly…”

As if scattering the last words into the air, he lowered his head and deeply pressed his lips against mine the moment he finished speaking. My waist was pulled, and my chest pressed tightly against his.

My lips parted under the force of him pulling me in and pressing against me, and his tongue filled my mouth. The familiar ‘that scent’ instantly dominated my nose and mouth, and as I exhaled deeply through my nose at the scent’s invasion, I wrapped my arms around his back and held him tight.

He kissed me passionately, tilting his head, holding me as if to pour a precious medicine into me.

The embrace, which pressed my waist and chest to the point of making breathing difficult, was almost like being bound. Feeling a sense of relief in his tight embrace, I too squeezed his broad back with my arms.

His tongue scraped the roof of my mouth, then hastily withdrew from mine, and I, reluctant, clutched his jacket and extended my tongue towards his lips. My tongue was immediately swallowed.

“Ugh, mmm… yeah.”

The strong suction, pulling my tongue to its maximum, echoed deep inside my throat. His left arm, which had been around my waist, cupped my buttocks over my jeans.

We didn’t close our eyes. At a distance where our noses brushed, we licked and sucked each other’s tongues, our eyes persistently searching the other’s, rapidly moistening with desire. As if that itself were another stimulant for arousal.

His strength, holding me and kissing me so hard that my ribs ached and my tongue felt numb, as if asserting his presence, conversely affirmed my own existence. Even if I was a faint outline, a blurry color, in this moment, I was an object of his desire and need.

No, today, I was not merely an object of lust. This heat was clearly his comfort.

“Haa, ugh.”

He released his tongue, which had been filling and sucking, and pushed me against the wall. As my back hit the wall with a dull pain, his thick thighs wedged between my legs.

The explicit friction, applied more directly to my genitals, momentarily blurred my mind, and I felt as if my body was rising. I passed under his armpit, wrapped my arms around his shoulders, and pulled myself closer.

“Haa, ugh. Ugh.”

He, who had heated up instantly, heaved his shoulders and breathed deeply, then clasped my buttocks with both hands, pulling me up onto his thighs.

Looking at each other’s lips from beneath lowered eyelids, we extended our tongues and rubbed them tip to tip. The friction of wet flesh rubbing against each other outside the body felt different from kissing inside the mouth. The rebellious pleasure of revealing something intimate to the outside, even without anyone watching, sent a tingle through my tongue.

My heels lifted with each upward pull of his hips. My thighs, rubbing between my legs, were more tightly clenched than usual due to a suddenly explosive desire. My chest, touching his shoulders, was the same. His body was so taut that the distinct contours of his muscles were clearly visible even through his clothes.

As if he were entering me and moving inside. As he pulled me up and down, he would occasionally thrust his hips, adding a lewd stimulation between my legs.

“Ugh, ugh, hugh…”

With each thrust, the vibration of my body turned into trembling breaths, and he looked down at me with a hazy gaze, observing me.

His eyes, which changed color from white to blue depending on the angle, seemed to see ecstasy through me, and even if it was my imagination, it felt like I wasn’t the only one feeling this heat, wanting his body heat, so for now, it was a relief.

I didn’t know what sexual attraction he found in me, who was clearly bland with no experience, no acquired techniques, not even innate allure…

He glanced down and muttered.

“What should I do? I… can’t hold back anymore today.”

As if to prove his words were not false, his front was already bulging.

This might sound strange, but… his penis was often noticeable even normally. When he twisted his body in a certain pose, changed the direction of his crossed legs, or put both hands in his pockets. Honestly, it revealed itself with a presence that was hard to ignore. Ever since I slept with him, I had to force myself to push it out of my sight whenever that happened.

His sex organ, so prominently protruding it looked constricted, was stretching the zipper of his pants taut. Noticing my gaze fixed below, he kissed my forehead and chuckled softly.

He kissed my forehead, then my eyelids, then my temples, with a hot intensity, then buried his lips in my ear and whispered.

“You really like my thing, don’t you.”

“Ugh…”

I wanted to deny it, but I wanted to stop being cowardly, leaving him to build the atmosphere while pretending I wasn’t involved.

It was true that I was looking at his sex organ, and it was true that I was anticipating something thrilling and messy to come, through its unnaturally prominent volume, as if something artificial had been inserted. So, let’s stop denying it out of embarrassment.

He deliberately rubbed it more, pushing his thigh deep. The slow, side-to-side movement of his pelvis was incredibly erotic.

“Hugh, ugh.”

The bulge in my jeans and his, which seemed about to rip through his zipper, created a thick mound that brushed against each other with his hip movements. It made me impatient.

I bit my lower lip, trying to suppress the groan that was already threatening to burst out, and his lips immediately came to steal the lip I had bitten. His way of sucking hard enough to cause a throbbing pain was one of my favorite caresses.

Savoring the sweet pain, I tightened my arms around his shoulders. Pushing off the marble floor with my toes… I couldn’t help myself and rubbed my own against his sex organ.

“Umm…”

He sucked my lips harder and slipped his hand under my t-shirt, stroking my back. His hand, which had traced softly up my skin, came back down and squeezed under my jeans. My hips were almost sitting on his thighs, so his hand, fumbling, dug into the flesh of my buttocks that had pushed up, and then into the crevice between my legs.

“Hughhh. Hughk.”

I turned my head, pulled my lips away, and shook my head. I was stimulated by the mere fact that he was approaching the opening where he could enter me… and I was shaking my hips on his thighs as if jumping. The moment I realized it, I felt mortally embarrassed, but I couldn’t control it.

My shaking head and heaving hips were both parts of my body, yet they expressed completely different intentions.

He rubbed my skin hard with his middle finger, sliding it into the crevice between my legs, and pulled me into his chest with one arm. Resting my chin on his shoulder, I rubbed my body against his, completely pressed together.

Shoulders, chest, abdomen, thighs. Every part of his body was made of well-trained muscles, and as I rubbed against him, the prominent contours of his physique stimulated my arousal. I felt the bulging, firm, unyielding hardness, as if it wouldn’t budge even if I punched it, all over my body and with both hands.

My thighs, supporting and bouncing between my legs, and his fingers moving in and out of the crevice between my legs, kept reminding me of the sensation of penetration, so my waist twisted involuntarily. I could no longer suppress the thirst for him, naked.

Burying my lips in his neck and rubbing them softly, I gathered all my courage and confessed.

“I… can’t hold back either.”

It was a faster, more voluntary surrender than before, when I had only started to be honest under his prodding and encouragement, after the heat from his caresses had sufficiently muddled my mind.

“……”

He stopped motionlessly, then withdrew his hand from inside my jeans and simultaneously grabbed the hem of my t-shirt, lifting it up. As I instinctively raised my arms holding him, my t-shirt was quickly removed. He casually tossed the t-shirt onto the console table where a TV with a modern, slim design was placed, then wrapped his arms around my thighs and lifted me.

“Ugh.”

Instinctively, I wrapped my arms around his neck to avoid falling. My body was now at a position looking down at his face. He was only a little shorter than me, but objectively, I was by no means small or petite. He lifted me, who was slightly over 180 cm, without any momentum, and even shook me up and down a couple of times as he walked towards the bed, as if gauging my weight.

“I knew you were thin… but you’re not hollow inside, are you?”

His face, looking serious, as if this was truly not the case.

“You’re tall, after all. Do you eat one meal a day?”

His mumbling remark, adding that he’d have to keep me locked up until I gained some weight, reminded me of the witch from the gingerbread house in the fairy tale I read as a child, and I let out a laugh.

“You think I’m joking.”

He collapsed onto the mattress with me in his arms, then looked down at me lying there, cupping my cheeks in one hand and squeezing them. The pressure from both sides made my lips pucker and release repeatedly, and I felt like my face was turning into a goldfish’s, so I gently pulled his wrist down. He let out a soft chuckle.

Then, he straightened his back, threw off his jacket, gathered my legs together, and pushed them towards his left side as he leaned in to kiss me. My lower body was turned to the side, and my upper body faced forward, but it wasn’t uncomfortable.

Feeling his arms wrap around my neck, digging into the back of my head, I also wrapped my arms around his neck. His other hand moved from below, unbuckling his jeans and unzipping them.

“Hnnngh… Hhh…”

As soon as the zipper opened, his hand shot in and gripped my penis through my briefs with a strong force. The arms holding him tensed up. Seeing my reaction, he seemed to get more heated, and the movement of his tongue inside my mouth became more intense.

His large hand moved deep past the base of my penis, rubbing broadly between my legs. He then wiggled his fingers, scratching at my anus through my underwear. With that teasing, suggestive touch, I could only writhe and groan, tightening my hold on his neck.

His hand, which had been stroking broadly as if tracing my perineum, pulled down my jeans and briefs together from behind. Because my lower body was twisted to the side, my pants came off easily. The jeans, pulled off inside out, fell heavily to the floor with my underwear.

When I became aware of it, I was naked.

It was darker than usual because it was raining, but it was still broad daylight. It was an empty house, not his, though it belonged to him. It was a setting I had never imagined for us to be intimate again. The unexpectedness of the time and place tensed my body in a way that was different from before.

Before I could dwell on it further, he began to unbuckle his belt. The act of him, bent over me, continuing to kiss me while unbuckling his belt for full-on sex made me swallow dryly.

Slurp. He pulled his lips away from a deep kiss, then gently rubbed my shoulders and whispered.

“Can you take off my shirt?”

My movements were sluggish as I reached for his shirt, which was already unbuttoned down to the second button, and began to unbutton the rest. It was my first time taking off someone else’s clothes.

While I fumbled clumsily with my hands, he alternately kissed my forehead, the bridge of my nose, my cheeks, and my lips, and before I knew it, he had taken off his pants and was in his underwear.

Looking down, I could clearly see the shape of his erection through his black briefs. The tip of his penis, pushing against the fabric as it rose, was already stained a darker color and was wet.

“Thank you.”

As the last button came undone, he tucked my hair behind my ears with the hand that had been around my shoulders and kissed my forehead. Receiving thanks for unbuttoning his shirt made me have a foolish thought: should I have thanked him when he held me or undressed me earlier? It was obvious that doing so would only break the mood.

He pulled away from me, sat up, and positioned himself, having me spread my naked legs to either side of his body. His torso entering the space between my spread legs brought to mind the intimate contact and union that would occur in our most private parts. Heat rose to my cheeks.

Hnnngh….

He pursed his lips, regulating his breathing through his nose, and swept the hair falling over his forehead away. He then began to rub his lower half, clad in briefs, between my legs with a supple twist of his waist.

The bulge beneath the damp fabric, pressing against my perineum, was a strange sensation, and I felt myself becoming wet between my legs. Without touching my body at all, he remained like that for a moment, pressing his lower body against mine, moving only his waist to bring his penis into contact with my perineum.

His torso, glimpsed through his open shirt, was clearly defined, with chiseled abs that were thick and firm. Yet, the movement of his waist, rotating gently to rub his penis where he wanted it, was incredibly flexible for its thickness.

“Hhh, hht. Hhuk.”

Each time his waist pushed forward, pressing his bulging flesh against me, I couldn’t help but groan. He was so sexy, focused on the act that resembled intercourse… The muscles in my buttocks contracted, involuntarily clenching. I couldn’t believe my body’s reaction, but this was the pleasure of sex I had learned from him, through him.

“Can you try to squeeze your thighs together?”

He told me to try, but his hands were already pushing my legs up to my chest as he spoke. He ran his fingers slowly from my testicles, which bulged slightly between my pressed thighs, all the way down to my anus.

“You’re so thin, but did you know your butt and this part are quite plump?”

He added, with a suggestive smile and a sidelong glance, “Suggestively.” His expression was even more suggestive.

He knelt, changing his position, and pulled his penis out of his briefs. Freed from the tight confines of his underwear, it sprang up from the waistband. The tip, swollen to a clear shape, was already wet with precum, staining the entire dark red shaft. I instinctively covered my mouth at the imposing sight of his penis, glistening with bodily fluids, in the shadow cast by his body.

“I’m going to… rub it here.”

He held my thighs firmly together so they couldn’t spread apart, and then forcefully pushed his penis, which writhed as if alive, between my thighs.

“Ugh! Hhutt… Euk.”

The sensation of my soft inner thigh skin brushing against his hot, throbbing, wet penis was peculiar. Even though it wasn’t tearing into my anus, I felt a sensation of penetration, as if it were splitting my flesh.

His penis, which had penetrated past my inverted testicles, met my penis. My scrotum, slightly lifted in the air, bumped against his. Then, a thick heat shot out from between my thighs and plunged back in.

His penis, thoroughly slick with precum, slid effortlessly between my thighs. The friction, resembling the sound of intercourse as it moved in and out of my wet anus, permeated the room like the sound of rain pattering on wet ground.

Since it wasn’t enclosed by delicate mucous membranes like my anus, he didn’t adjust his speed. Each time he thrust down from above, I had to bite my lip at the sensation of our penises rubbing directly against each other.

The recoil of his testicles hitting my anus with each thrust was also unbearable. Thump, thump, thump, thump-thump… Just the sensation of that elastic weight hitting my butt crack, and the image of his scrotum being pressed and crushed between us as he moved back and forth, was enough.

The location was different, but the weight of him pressing down from above, the resulting movement, the tickling in my lower abdomen, and the spasms in my fingertips and toes… everything was not much different from actual penetration. Rather, the thickness and heat of his penis brushing against my skin, the wetness, felt even more distinct between my thighs.

A large amount of precum flowed down his penis onto my penis and pubic hair, and then down my testicles and groin, all the way to above my anus. The path of the fluid was so clear on my skin that my body felt incredibly sensitive.

Without even touching my penis, let alone my anus, just by moving between my thighs, he was driving me to the brink of orgasm.

Gasping as if I couldn’t breathe, I fumbled and grabbed his hands pressing on my thighs from both sides.

“Hah, hh… Hhuk…”

My gaze, wet and pleading, sought his eyes. I left it up to him to judge whether my plea was to stop or to push harder.

Keeping his head lowered, he looked up at me, a slight smile playing on his sweat-beaded face.

“What if… I slip and accidentally go in?”

He pulled his penis back and tilted his head, peering closely at my perineum.

“Oh… it’s already very wet… this might be dangerous?”

“…Hht!”

My head snapped back at his sudden touch towards my anus. I twisted his hand, which I was holding, and rubbed my head against the mattress, which was not covered by a sheet.

His fingers pressing around the entrance felt like they were just diagnosing the condition, devoid of any sexual nuance. For reasons I couldn’t understand, this made me even more ashamed. It wasn’t the shame of wanting to bolt and run, but the shame of being the only one sexually engaged in this moment.

I knew he had to be aroused, as he fumbled around my wet anus.

By pretending to be completely unfazed by my moans and teeth-grinding reactions, he was breaking the balance of arousal between us, maximizing the tension.

He deliberately rubbed his hand, coated in bodily fluids, widely over my anus, and then furrowed his brow. He then pulled my hand, which was holding his, downwards.

“Look. It’s completely soaked. You’ve leaked so much…”

He smeared bodily fluids onto my hand and made me rub around my anus himself, his excited eyes fixed below.

“Th-that’s… because of you, CEO…!”

My face flushed red, I lifted my neck and struggled to pull my hand away. It was his precum that had made me wet, but his words, implying it was my own discharge, were mortifying… I wanted to stop him somehow.

His gaze shifted to me. It was a burning gaze, far from ordinary. Whether he had let go of my wrist or I had freed it, as soon as he withdrew his hand, a finger thrust inside.

“Euk…!”

I flinched, startled by the sudden penetration, but it wasn’t due to pain. There was no resistance at the entrance.

With one finger inside me, he pushed my knees, which I had gathered at my chest, outwards and leaned in deeply to kiss me. Looking into his eyes up close, I saw a faint madness mixed with joy.

“That’s right. I made it wet like this… You’re leaking and wet because of me. It’s because of me.”

He lightly inserted and withdrew the finger inside me, looking alternately into my eyes. His gaze was urgent, as if searching for something, yet also languid, as if lost in ecstasy.

Mixed with the strong perfume I had smelled earlier, ‘that scent’ was intensifying. Like a scent that had permeated his skin and fingernails from long use, a fragrance rising from his bare skin when he took off his clothes. I greedily flared my nostrils to inhale that scent, which seemed more distant and hazy than usual, and pulled his neck closer.

He turned his head, our lips met, and he inserted his tongue. I accepted it, now quite adept, and rubbed my tongue against the wet mucous membrane.

Below, as his finger repeatedly entered and withdrew, more precum flowed into my anus. A squelching friction sound emanated from both above and below, seeping into the room like the sound of rain on wet ground.

I finally had to confront the desire for something deeper, for an pressure and movement that would break me. With just one finger softly inserted, I could no longer be broken or transformed.

He rolled my tongue in his mouth, then turned it sideways… As he kissed me passionately, he suddenly narrowed his eyes and withdrew from my mouth.

“Do you know… how much you’re clenching and releasing down there?”

I shook my head, sobbing and moaning. It wasn’t a denial of his question, ‘Do you know?’, but a refusal to admit it. That I was involuntarily tightening my anus, demanding more stimulation from him.

He lightly tapped my lips with the index finger of his other hand, the one not inside me, and gently bumped his forehead against mine.

“You don’t say a word with this mouth about what you want.”

“……”

A fleeting expression of mild dissatisfaction, as if he wished I would ask or beg for something, appeared on his face and then vanished. I had gone to him for help with this matter… which felt like a very big favor…

“Haa… Eut.”

Before I could ponder it further, his finger, which had circled inside, withdrew.

“I’m going to spread your legs a bit more.”

By the time he said that, my legs were already spreading, and his glans was aimed at my anus.

It was nothing like his finger. Just the glans rubbing against the entrance sent a heavy pressure that made my breath catch. Unlike his finger, which had entered easily in one go, his thick glans struggled to penetrate.

Before his glans was even halfway swallowed, he repeatedly pulled back and pushed in. Drawing the precum glistening around the entrance as far in as possible.

“Hhh, hh…”

My lower body, spread and twitching from the repeated in and out motion, felt it. I let out a sob-like moan and raised my arm to cover my eyes.

“Why are you covering them? Curious Seo Yi-hyun.”

He gently grabbed my wrist and pulled it down, speaking soothingly. A faint smile even graced his face as I looked up, but below, his broad, swollen glans writhed, parting the mucous membrane.

“You don’t have to wait until I’m fully inside… I’ll make you feel good quickly.”

“……”

My body trembled slightly with fear and anticipation, unable to comprehend his meaning, and my opening tightened.

“Hh, hhahuk!”

His glans thrust in, forcing its way through my constricting opening. I had only just swallowed his glans, but my lower body felt numb, as if I had already completed more than half the sex. However, it wasn’t due to tightness, but the size of his erection. The entrance was already sufficiently wet.

Looking down at my dilated pupils vibrating, he gently wrapped his other hand around my wrist. Then, he pulled them taut towards our point of union.

A penetration, precisely aimed at my prostate with his prominent glans, was delivered.

“Hhh, hh… Hahk. Euk!”

It felt like lightning striking in my head. Like lying naked in a field where lightning struck repeatedly. Rain was pouring down on my bare body. The sound of rain outside seemed to intensify, but that wasn’t important.

The sensation of his penis shaft passing over my prostate while fully inserted was different. It was a blatant, direct stimulation. My prostate felt like another penis hidden inside my anus.

It felt as if his penis was having sex not with my anus, but with a second penis inside my anus, not my penis.

His thrusts, not to apply pressure to his own penis through deep insertion, but to stimulate my prostate, repeatedly pressing and withdrawing quickly, felt like they were crushing my lower body.

Unlike the previous penetrations, which had built up and peaked, bringing the pleasure of ejaculation closer and then further away, this was different. A surge of power instantly filled the root of his penis, and the tip of his glans tingled.

“No… no, please stop!”

“That’s not true… Be honest, quickly.”

I struggled with all my might to pull my arms away, but he used that struggle as momentum to penetrate me even more persistently.

With my hips slightly lifted, he pressed my wrists, which I had used to hold him, onto my pelvis, fixing my body. He then repeated the action of pressing and withdrawing from my prostate with unbelievable speed, as if measured by a ruler.

Though hidden by his shirt, I could gauge the rapid movement of his firm waist. The undulation of his flexible waist, entering and exiting me as the muscles in my buttocks contracted and released.

Through the unbuttoned shirt, his broad, bulging chest and clearly defined abs glistened with sweat.

“Take off my shirt…”

“……”

“I want to see it all.”

My mouth was parched from the uncontrollable moans I couldn’t suppress or swallow. The honesty I revealed to him, my voice cracking with a dry throat, was neither a plea to stop nor a rejection to be left alone. I wanted to see the obscene panting of his waist and hips as he thrust back and forth, searching for the pleasure within me.

His eyes narrowed as he looked down, a satisfied smile appearing. He released my wrists and continued to move his waist even as he pulled his shirt off his shoulder.

“Hhh, hh… Hhutt…”

He had shrugged his shoulders as if he would run away the moment he let go of my hand, but even after becoming free, I was still yielding myself to him. A longing, as if I could reach climax with just a little more, just a little more, tormented my lower abdomen with an unbearable itch.

As if the sweat-soaked fabric was sticking to his skin, making it difficult to pull off, he loosened the sleeves he had rolled up a couple of times. Then, he roughly tossed the shirt, with its sleeves turned inside out, onto the armchair beside the bed.

My greed, tracing the beautiful proportions of his body and the curves of his muscles that felt both firm and flexibly elastic, was clearly evident in my eyes, but I had no desire to hide it, nor the energy left to try.

He, too, his upper body muscles bulging with tension as if on the verge of explosion, breathing heavily, traced every inch of my naked body sprawled out, connected to his penis.

His gaze, which had been pressing down on me with a heavy intensity, suddenly curved with playfulness and smiled.

“Now that you’ve taken it off… do you like me?”

It wasn’t that I didn’t like… the way you looked… in your shirt…

“Ugh… Hhhu, hht!”

Before I could even answer, the rapid thrusts, scratching my prostate, began to pound.

Because he wasn’t entering all the way, his pelvis didn’t collide forcefully with my groin, and therefore, my body didn’t heave in response. Yet… looking down, his hips were relentlessly rocking, entering and exiting me.

Unlike me, lying still, only his movements were exaggeratedly highlighted, carrying a different texture of excitement than the usual sense of unity, as if we were one. His movements during sex, down to every bead of sweat on his skin, stimulated my vision as vividly as if a camera had zoomed in.

Watching his focused expression, the furrowed brow and lips, and his rapidly undulating, obscene waist, as he relentlessly targeted one spot, I layered my own arousal on top of the pleasure of my prostate being rubbed.

“What are you looking at so… intently? It’s a little embarrassing.”

Lies.

—I didn’t say it out loud, but perhaps he sensed my inner thoughts from the shift in my gaze, as he propped himself up on his fists on either side of my chest, bending his upper body, and smiled sheepishly. He was feigning composure, but it was a smile that seemed somewhat anxious. He, too, was not free from the rising arousal.

“Hhhu… Hhuk, hh.”

As he changed positions, my legs and hips, resting on his thighs that dug deeper into my buttocks, were lifted slightly into the air. With his penis only halfway inside, he began to circle his hips in a wide arc. Following his rotating penis, the entrance widened, and I instinctively shook my head, wrapping my arms around his forearm.

When I managed to push open my tightly shut eyelids, he was looking down at me with a face that suggested he was facing a serious problem.

Slowly, the sensation of his thick penis dragging along my inner walls as it withdrew made my eyes widen.

“Hhu… Hhuk… Hh….”

I felt his glans catch at the entrance, and without realizing it, I shook my head, saying no, and clutched his arm tightly.

“Ugh. Hht!”

As he pulled his hips back further, his glans, precariously perched at the entrance of my anus, snapped out and struck his lower abdomen. The sensation of his glans, slick with pre-cum, bouncing out and lifting the upper rim of my entrance made my toes curl. No, it made my toes spread. Whatever it was, a tingling that felt like it had to be expressed outward through my toes vibrated through my body.

The same action was repeated several times. At a steady pace, neither rushing nor lingering. He would enter halfway and then withdraw. With his distinctively shaped glans, he stimulated the rim of my anus, bouncing off it. But he never entered all the way.

Having been brought to the brink of climax a couple of times only to be pulled back, and with the added stimulation to the entrance where my peripheral nerves converged, I was now ready to be completely honest and abject.

Rubbing my forehead and the bridge of my nose against his arm, which stood like a pillar, I pleaded in a voice that seemed to crawl.

“Please….”

My body, hypersensitive at the verge of climax, wanted to reach it in the way I desired. Just as I could no longer climax through my usual dry masturbation. I made no attempt to hide the way my inner walls quivered and my entrance twitched. Rather, I wanted him to notice and be aroused by it.

He pressed his hips down, lowering his upper body to kiss the bridge of my nose.

“What is it.”

His voice, deliberately low and whispered as if someone were eavesdropping on our secret intimacy. This time, with his penis entering bit by bit, as if dividing tiny increments, I became utterly impatient and began to stomp my feet in the air.

The direction of pleasure he guided me in was so varied, and the techniques he had to conquer and capture me seemed endless. Even penetration wasn’t just penetration. How could… all Golden Alphas be this… good at it. Sex.

“My insides… feel… strange….”

“How do they feel strange.”

The furrowed brow, clenched tightly, proved that he, too, was suppressing the urge to push harder, yet today he was more patient than a few days ago.

As if he disliked it… or was afraid of it, he only stimulated me from the entrance to my prostate, never pushing his penis all the way in.

“It itches…. Inside, my insides itch….”

I hadn’t realized it, but I was actually scratching my lower abdomen. An itch from within that couldn’t be relieved even by scratching the skin.

His breath, looking down at me, collapsed as if violently disturbed, becoming rough.

Not wanting to miss the moment his defenses crumbled, I turned my head and kissed the wrist of his arm, which was braced beside my chest.

“Please… just, hard… all the way inside, do it for me….”

My appearance might have seemed like I was trying to coax or appease him to get the kind of sex I wanted, but it didn’t matter. He wasn’t the type to feel cheap conquest looking down at me for such things, and he was the only one who could reach the inner walls I couldn’t reach and relieve this itch. If I could reach that pleasure right now, I felt I could do even more. In fact, recalling the things I had whispered in his ear on the bed until now, this was nothing.

“How?”

His short question, looking down with glistening eyes, was perhaps something I had anticipated.

Breathing in ragged gasps like someone terrified, I moved my hand from scratching my lower abdomen to between my legs, fumbling at the point of our union. His eyes burned ferociously, as if ready to swallow me whole the moment he got the okay.

Meeting his gaze directly, I found the base of his penis, which was more than half out of my anus, with my trembling hand. And I pulled it in.

His pupils, looking down, dilated as if witnessing an unbelievable sight, vibrating. His lips parted, and a gasp-like moan escaped.

Perhaps it would be better to erase the distance between us, so I wrapped my other arm around his neck and pulled him closer. As our cheeks touched, our ragged breaths wet each other’s ears.

“Harder… push this in further…. Fill me up completely, rub me all over with this… your cock. Shake me like you’re going to break me…!”

Once I opened my mouth, my words gained momentum, and I poured out a torrent of lewd talk, but his lips covered mine. As if he wanted to rummage through my entire mouth and swallow all those obscene thrusts before I could utter them, he roughly explored my mouth.

“Mmm! Ugh, mmp!”

He thrust the remaining half of his penis in all at once.

My moans, muffled like being in a cave, as I took his tongue, which explored my mouth wide open without holding back, echoed.

The hand holding his base got caught between his pubic hair and my legs. As if he wouldn’t let go, he twisted his groin hard, pressing my hand too. The rough sensation of his pubic hair rubbing against the back of my hand made my body twist.

His tongue, which had been writhing, pulled out of my mouth, and before I could exhale the breath I had been holding, my lips were bitten.

“What exactly is this… preventing?”

He muttered to himself, biting my lips ferociously, like an angry person. His thrusts, pounding into me with his hips and buttocks suspended in the air like a jockey at maximum speed, were unhesitating, making his earlier hesitation seem absurd.

But his eyes, looking down, seemed bewildered and fearful, like a boy having sex for the first time. It was impossible, but that’s how it looked.

“What… should I do? Huh? What should I….”

He murmured, sighing, and then bit his own lower lip. The penetration, which filled my entire body rather than just my crotch and pounded relentlessly, blurred my vision.

It felt strange. Like I was going to die. All the shallow knowledge in my head, all the good and bad memories, felt like they were about to vanish. Feeling the moisture running down towards my temples, I appealed to him.

“Why is that scary…. That’s why I’m shaking my hips so hard right now.”

I opened my eyes to his hand wiping away the traces of tears and looked up at him. He was right. Today, I wanted this.

“Erase it all and blow it away. Huh? Let’s just blow it all away.”

His murmur, correcting his command into a suggestion and mixing it with his breath, scattered weakly. He was silent no longer.

Using his entire body weight to press me down and secure me, as if to push me into the mattress, he paused his hip movements for a moment and dug in deeply.

“Hhuk, hhk… Khhuk.”

Unable to even moan at the pressure of the intensely addictive knotting, I gasped with my mouth open, spitting semen onto my stomach and chest. It was the climax I had longed for, but the internal pleasure, pounding like a new pulse, was stronger than the frontal pleasure felt by my penis.

He was beating inside me. Even without the friction of withdrawing and re-entering, the knotted penis, like a freshly extracted heart, repeatedly contracted and expanded, pounding inside me.

My whole body trembled from the burning heat, like something pushing up my organs and choking my throat. It was a dangerous thought, but I could understand the appeal of people who strangle others at the moment of climax.

The pressure from below was amplified by the pressure of his kiss. I was short of breath, but I didn’t refuse his kiss, clinging to the scent he poured into me.

The sex, where I was crushed and overwhelmed by his overwhelming power, made me forget myself. It was sex that demanded I dismantle and reveal everything about myself, and accept everything about him that was revealed.

Everything was swept away, and in its place, all of him rushed in at once. Along with a strange sense of relief, the vague certainty that this sex meant the same to him, I closed my eyes in the scent.

■ ■ ■

He brought new sheets from the walk-in closet in the bedroom and covered my huddled naked body with them. My voice was hoarse when I thanked him, which was embarrassing, but I didn’t even have the energy to clear my throat.

Even though I wasn’t screaming high-pitched cries, my throat always became hoarse after being with him. The effort to artificially suppress my moans seemed to strain my throat.

Just as my voice was cracked as usual, his penis remained hard despite having ejaculated. I suddenly wondered if he had ever had sex until he returned to his pre-erect state, and if so, with whom, what kind of sex, and for how long. I didn’t have the courage to ask.

Unlike last time, when we had sex for a very long time, including knotting and multiple ejaculations, this time it ended relatively quickly, but the limpness, as if my spine had melted, was the same.

I don’t know how it felt for him, the one doing the knotting, but for the one receiving, it seemed to be a very physically draining act. A tingling residual sensation remained inside me, causing my body to tremble intermittently.

Perhaps it was because I was a Beta that I was so exhausted. The Alpha’s knotting was not for the Beta, after all.

After covering me with the sheet, he left the room and returned with a large cup of water.

“There’s no bottled water since it’s an empty house, but this is from the water purifier, so drink some.”

I slowly sat up and took the cup. My hands were trembling slightly, so he didn’t let go of the cup until I brought it to my lips and drank properly.

Standing beside me, watching, his penis was still hard and glistening, making it awkward to know where to look. On his penis, which had been inside me and was not wiped clean, the traces of intense penetration and ejaculation were beginning to dry into a white residue.

“Shall we take a short break, just enough to smoke a cigarette?”

He took the cup I had finished drinking from and placed it on the bedside table, then suggested, walking around the bed to the other side. To prevent his dangling penis from swaying awkwardly, he held it between his legs as he moved.

Even though it was a movement that was completely devoid of sexual nuance, almost mundane, the sheer size of his penis, which was uncomfortable if not held, was already overwhelmingly sexual.

As he bent down to pick up his jacket from the floor, his scrotum was visible between his legs. Glancing at the elastic sway of his heavy scrotum, I secretly rubbed my thighs together under the sheet. To hide my slightly erect penis, I slowly slid my body, which had been leaning against the headboard, down onto the mattress, lying prone.

Glancing down at me, he took out a cigarette from his jacket and lit it while standing.

His profile was like the embodiment of perfection.

The thickness of his chest, the bulge of his muscles, the sharp, sloping waistline from his back, the firm, raised buttocks, and his long, taut legs. It reminded me of the champagne bottle that Yuni Noona and Joo-han Hyung had giggled about, found in a magazine, wedged between the legs of a foreign model.

His dark hair, thick yet always lightly tousled, and his blue eyes mixed with gray, which seemed to change color and temperature with his emotions.

Even if the reason I liked him was 100% due to his looks, he was undeniably beautiful, so much so that I had to admit it to myself.

However, it wasn’t the confident, flawless, elaborately crafted beauty of a jewel displayed in a showcase that I had seen through him when we first met.

He, too, had a past that weighed on his heart, and was sometimes dominated by that past. He also had a clumsy side, trying to comfort someone but not knowing how, fumbling his words.

With his own distortions and flaws, the beauty he showed now, reflecting light and transforming, felt incomparably more attractive. I wanted to know more about his curves and flaws, and if he wished, I wanted to tell him about myself.

Some might dismiss it as something that happens commonly in the world, but for me, who had experienced it, it wasn’t just about the events that had distorted my existence to the point of being unrecognizable, but also about the trivial, mundane, and amusing little things.

It was the first time I felt the desire to talk about myself to someone else.

Exposed to such great kindness, it was natural that the more I intertwined my body with his, the deeper my emotions became.

It was strange how, while being exposed to such kindness, Joo-han Hyung or Yooni Noona could like him without considering him a romantic partner.

He sat on the edge of the bed, picking up the ashtray from the table in front of the armchair, and took a drag from his cigarette, pushing back his disheveled hair.

Watching his profile as he raised both arms like stretching and lightly loosened his body, I unconsciously murmured.

“……Thank you.”

“……”

He stopped his movements, looked down at me with surprised eyes, then slowly lowered his arms and moved the cigarette from his mouth to his fingers.

“Was it good enough to be thankful for?”

His voice, tinged with amusement, and his expression spoke of satisfaction with the sex.

I considered adding an explanation that it wasn’t that, but it didn’t seem necessary. His hand, not holding a cigarette, reached out and brushed aside my hair, which was still resting on the mattress, my cheek pressed against it. It was as if he knew that wasn’t what I was talking about, with a smile.

Because the glass door leading to the garden was left open, the sound of rain tapping on the wooden deck was close. The rain had become heavier than when I left the airport. The thin, sheer curtains fluttered irregularly in the air, rising and falling. Against the subdued gray background, his figure touching me seemed to be etched into my vision with a special texture.

After withdrawing his hand from my hair, he tapped ash into the ashtray placed to his left and opened his mouth in a calm tone.

“Actually, I expected you would be uncomfortable staying in this house. It was a Plan B I suggested just in case, knowing that… and I have a Plan A. The order of suggestions has just been swapped.”

He gestured on the mattress with his cigarette-holding hand, turned towards me, and met my eyes.

“Manager Han also said it would be more reassuring for you, Seo Yi-hyun, to stay with me rather than alone. I think so too. You might feel a bit uneasy for a while, but it’s not like you can ask me to notify you every time you go to take a shower, right?”

He said that with a hint of playfulness, then took a short, deep drag from his cigarette. My whole body felt heavy, and it was difficult to put strength in my waist, but it seemed like a serious conversation, so I pushed myself up from my prone position and gathered the sheets to cover my lower body.

From a much closer eye level, he cast a fragmented gaze at me. Then, as if avoiding it, he turned his head and took a drag from his cigarette.

“I want to give you some space, but… as you know, Seo Yi-hyun, the situation is like this. Ensuring your safety is the top priority, so I can’t compromise either. Please understand.”

His voice, as he said that, contained an earnestness that didn’t match the content, which left no room for negotiation and firmly stated he couldn’t compromise.

It felt strange that he, a stranger, was appealing for my understanding using my safety as a reason.

Whether it was loyalty to the person with whom I had shared my body, responsibility as an exclusive artist, or some other minor sentiment layered on top… his determination to strongly worry about my safety and make sure I couldn’t refuse his offer was a clearer comfort than any amount of alcohol, shopping, or the offer of a life in a luxurious villa.

In the air, subdued to a gray hue by the relentlessly persistent monsoon rains, I looked at his profile as he inhaled his cigarette, his brow furrowed. Within me, a distinct impulse stirred, like a hunger that arrives suddenly but is profoundly natural.

I hadn’t forced it, nor had I compelled myself to feel it. The desire to draw him, who was before my eyes, arose spontaneously, like a flood overflowing a dam after slowly rising to saturation.

I focused on the flickering sensation that my senses, which I had given up for completely dead, might be coming back to life, fixing my gaze on his profile.

“What’s wrong?”

He turned to me, my body stiff and trembling with anxiety, and asked with concern. I avoided his gaze and vaguely mumbled a reply.

“No, it’s just… I’m sorry….”

“Still on about that?” he chuckled, reaching out to mess up my hair.

I had thought that finding myself in a cracked mug, a discarded cement bag in a construction site, or the face of an old woman sitting blankly in front of a stall was a privilege I had given up. The price for putting down my brush, I thought I would never again find a subject to draw in that way.

But he was right.

Before going to Hong Kong, when we spoke on the phone outside the door of my rooftop room. He had been certain that I would find something I wanted to draw again. It was true.

The pulse throbbing above my head felt like it was pounding through my entire body. As if he were knotting inside me.

■ Suppressant ■

Weekday evening.

A man stopped his car in front of a pharmacy on his way home. He lingered for a moment, smoking a cigarette, then seemed to make up his mind. He hastily stubbed out the half-smoked cigarette in the ashtray and got out of the car.

He felt he didn’t necessarily need to, but he chose a neighborhood that was an awkward distance from both his workplace and residence, a place he wouldn’t normally visit. He entered the largest of several pharmacies located in front of a large general hospital.

A plastic sign outside the entrance indicated operating hours until 10 PM, but it was only 8 PM, and the pharmacy was quiet.

“Welcome.”

Instead of the middle-aged man sitting facing the entrance, engrossed in his computer screen, a pharmacist in a white coat emerged from the inner dispensing room and greeted the man. The pharmacist, who appeared to be in her early to mid-thirties, responded to his unspoken question of what he needed with a smile.

The man was a strikingly handsome man with an unusual, exotic aura. He was tall and well-built, enough to draw attention even from a distance where his face wasn’t clearly visible, but he looked as anxious as if he were being chased.

However, she waited patiently.

Judging by his clothing, which exuded a natural, sophisticated taste, and the refined manners revealed in even the smallest, unconscious actions, the man was unlikely to be a desperate robber.

Patients seeking pharmacies for conditions they found difficult to discuss were far more common than people thought. Even something as simple as athlete’s foot or hemorrhoids could be difficult for the patient to bring up.

But even as he stood in front of the counter, the man’s nervous expression and hesitation stemmed not from shame he wanted to hide from others, but from the humiliation he felt himself.

Yet, he had no other choice. He forced his reluctant lips open.

“I’d like to purchase… a suppressant.”

“Yes, may I see your ID?”

Despite the man’s unusual demeanor, the pharmacist maintained a professional attitude. Her response made him feel slightly more at ease. He was grateful she didn’t glance at him like he was an animal, suspecting he might be an Alpha in heat. That would have made the situation even more agonizing. Especially since he wasn’t in heat.

After confirming his Alpha status, she returned his ID and asked, “If you usually take a specific product, shall I give you that one?”

He shook his head.

“No, I don’t have a particular one.”

Turning her back for a moment, the pharmacist scanned the shelves behind her and placed a paper box with a design emphasizing luxury in dark green and gold on the counter.

“This is the product most people ask for.”

Pushing the box towards her, the man said in a low, firm voice.

“I’ve already tried this one. I’m looking for something with a stronger effect.”

The man had already purchased and taken a suppressant at another pharmacy.

A suppressant. His entire experience with suppressants was limited to a brief period of use as a supplement during the early stages of his second puberty, when his manifestation occurred. As a Golden Alpha, he hadn’t needed suppressants, and he hadn’t wanted to become an animal that needed to control its heat with such things, so he had strived harder to perfect himself as a Golden Alpha.

However, the suppressant, sought again after nearly 20 years, had little effect. Initially, he thought it might be working a little, but as ‘he’ began to show sexual desire towards him, it soon became useless.

“As you know, Omega heats have a somewhat regular cycle due to hormonal action, allowing for more stable and fundamental suppression… but Alpha heats are often sudden, triggered by one’s own libido or an Omega’s pheromones… so even suppressants can only work by dulling the sense of smell.”

The pharmacist explained with a somewhat troubled expression.

The man knew this well.

While Omega heats, accompanied by increased pheromone secretion as their sexual urges intensified, occurred according to a fixed hormonal cycle, Alpha heats were different. There was no regularity, no cycle. When they felt desire, they emitted pheromones immediately, and conversely, exposure to an Omega’s pheromones could immediately trigger desire.

This was one of the reasons he couldn’t feel that Alphas were superior to Betas or Omegas, and it was also why he had poured so much effort into becoming a Golden Alpha.

He had thought that this animalistic nature, where one’s control slipped and pheromones were released based on the other’s stimulation, and one indulged in the other’s pheromones, had completely ended with his immature boyhood.

“There are products with higher potency, but they can temporarily render your sense of smell almost completely non-functional. If taken continuously, they can fundamentally affect your sense of smell. You are aware… of this, aren’t you?”

The pharmacist asked cautiously, observing the man’s rigid expression.

“I have no intention of taking it long-term. I’ll take two boxes of this.”

At the man’s words, she packaged two smaller boxes than the previous one and handed them over. Along with the instruction to take only two pills at a time, twice a day.

“Are you perhaps… not a Golden Alpha?”

As the man was about to turn away from the counter after completing the payment, she called out to him. Then, towards the man who turned back, she added in a cautious tone.

“If you are a Golden Alpha and suddenly need a suppressant, it would be better to see a specialist rather than taking over-the-counter medication.”

The man nodded as if agreeing with her suggestion.

“I will do that.”

However, even a specialist, a world-renowned authority in the field, could not explain the situation the man was currently in. A Golden Alpha temporarily experiencing abnormalities in pheromone regulation. It was a more complex problem than that.

He tossed the bag containing the medicine onto the passenger seat and lit a cigarette. The fact that all he could rely on right now were a few capsules made him want to laugh bitterly.

Only after smoking three cigarettes in a row could the man finally grip the steering wheel again.

■ ■ ■

“And then he rejected them again!”

Yooni Noona spread her arms wide, her voice rising in an aggrieved tone.

It was about the interviews for new employees at Phantom. She was complaining that he had rejected all the candidates that Hyung and she had carefully selected after a week of interviews.

“Right now, it’s the peak season for fourth-year students looking for jobs, so there are many applicants, but if this continues, we’ll end up working overtime in Chicago in August without a single day off, let alone a vacation! I mean, is it easy to find someone you absolutely like from the start? Why is our CEO so picky?”

Sitting next to me in the back seat, Noona hugged Juhan Hyung’s seat in the passenger seat and pouted.

“It’s because I suddenly quit….”

“It’s not your fault, so don’t think such things.”

Before my apology could get long, Noona held up her index finger and firmly silenced me.

Yooni Noona, Juhan Hyung, and I were on our way back from grocery shopping together after meeting at a large supermarket.

After Hyung and Morae left last Sunday, I stopped going to Phantom the following Monday. And then I moved my belongings to the basement of his house.

Plan A, which he had mentioned, was the basement of his house.

Even though it was a basement, the space was more than half exposed above ground, with the first floor being 1.5 meters higher than the stairs. It had large and numerous windows, so there was plenty of light and good ventilation. It was comfortable, without the dampness or mustiness typical of basements.

Just as he had explained, the previous owner had renovated it into a studio apartment, intending for his son to live there upon his return from studying abroad, so there would be no inconvenience. The floor and walls were clean, and it even had a kitchen and bathroom.

If I had to choose between Plan A and Plan B that he proposed, my choice would undoubtedly be A.

Even that was a sufficiently luxurious space for me, but he had paced on the epoxy floor, his hands shoved into his pants pockets, with a reluctant expression, and repeatedly urged me to reconsider my previous residence.

Although it was a modest move, ending with just one backpack and two shopping bags, today’s gathering was proposed by him as a sort of housewarming.

“It’s not like you’re choosing a lover, so why the fuss about feelings? When you first came to help, you were a bit hesitant, but then you just let me do as I pleased, saying you couldn’t refuse… Ah, it would be easier to arrange a matchmaking.”

While listening to Noona’s legitimate complaints, I thought that his initial indifference towards me might have actually been more favorable. I now knew that if he hadn’t liked me in the end, he would never have hired me, someone with such a troublesome past.

“After all, it’s Kwon Juhan and I who will be working face-to-face with you! We’re pushing through the person scheduled for the interview on Monday, no matter what.”

As Noona resolved herself, the car was entering his house’s parking lot.

We dissuaded the driver who offered to help with the luggage and took out the grocery bags from the trunk, two per person.

It was his and the manager’s opinion that it would be best for me to move around in a car driven by a driver when going out for the time being. Since I wasn’t going to work, I rarely went out, but the driver was always waiting in a separate guardhouse in the parking lot until he returned home. As someone receiving kindness and consideration, I couldn’t insist on my own discomfort, but it was undeniably awkward and burdensome.

“That driver, he definitely seems to be doubling as a bodyguard, right? Is… your father, the one you mentioned, that scary of a person?”

As we walked down the corridor leading to the studio, Noona asked in a low voice, even though the door had already closed behind us.

If she was asking if Mr. Im was someone who could snatch me from my current life to find Morae and Hyung’s whereabouts… then yes, Mr. Im was indeed that scary.

Even if the life here made me lose my sense of self and I felt unstable, it was nothing compared to being dragged to the village by Mr. Im and interrogated about Morae and Hyung’s location. I didn’t want to act like a supporting character in a Hollywood animation, nagging about morality without the ability to solve anything and burdening those around me.

“Did Hyung and Morae arrive safely at their destination?”

Juhan Hyung, who had arrived first at the door leading to the studio, asked, turning back towards us. I shook my head.

“They’re still on their way. They emailed yesterday saying they reached Kolkata.”

Morae and Hyung were communicating through the email account he had set up for me. After entering Eastern Europe via Minsk, the capital of Belarus, the two had crossed several Eastern European countries, traversed Russia, and then traveled south through Mongolia and China to India. From there, they planned to approach Bali by alternating between land, air, and sea routes. It was a route he had planned and prepared in less than a day.

“They’ll arrive safely. It’s the CEO’s plan.”

Noona, her hands full with the groceries, tilted her head and bumped my temple, and I nodded, meeting her gaze, understanding her intention to comfort me.

“Open the door quickly. This is heavy.”

At Juhan Hyung’s exaggerated plea, I pressed the password and unlocked the door.

There was a door leading to the studio halfway down the corridor connected from the parking lot, and passing through that door and turning right led to another door that opened to the garden.

Since I had arrived, he had been using the parking lot through the door connected from the garden, but there was also a staircase inside the studio connecting to the first floor. When he invited me to eat together, I would go upstairs through the internal stairs.

Actually… in the past week, since moving my things on Monday until yesterday, Friday, there had been two instances of physical intimacy between us.

Once, after eating sushi he had brought home in takeout, and another time, after eating oil pasta he had made, we talked a little… and then ended up kissing and making love.

However, neither time involved penetration. We only satisfied each other manually, and he rubbed between my thighs while I stood.

“Wow… what kind of basement is this? In college towns, there are so many dark houses on the second or third floor, crammed right next to other buildings! This is luxurious!”

Hani Hyung, excited, placed the envelope on the floor and began looking around the studio. It was an enthusiastic reaction, vastly different from my own when he first showed me the place.

“It looks even bigger because it’s open like a studio. This area is for work… and that area is the bedroom. Is that right?”

Yooni Noona, who had placed her envelope next to the luggage Juhan Hyung had casually dropped in the center, spoke while pointing to the bed peeking out from beyond that corner. Juhan Hyung was already rushing towards the bed, checking the cushion of the mattress.

The central space near the door where Noona and I stood had almost no luggage, aside from the tools for painting. Looking with interest at the canvases lined up under the window, upside down, Noona asked,

“Don’t you have any works yet?”

“You don’t have to show them if you don’t feel like it. We’re gallery staff, after all. We know how to respect an artist’s wishes.”

Juhan Hyung, who had returned to this side at some point, squatted down in front of the envelope he had placed, peeled a banana, and joined the conversation.

“It’s not that… I’ve been resting for too long, so I’m just warming up my hands right now…”

It felt like a waste of the tools and materials he had prepared, as I was still mostly sketching. The most I had done was touch oil paints a couple of days ago. But my painting time was rapidly increasing. I spent almost all my time painting from when he left for work until he returned, but it wasn’t the painful experience I had feared.

I was merely moving my hands to draw subjects, not yet pouring myself into them.

However, I couldn’t keep sketching for practice indefinitely. Having borrowed money with the promise of painting, I had an obligation to create works with economic value.

“Um… I’m just warming up my hands these days, drawing still lifes and landscapes. Would you be willing to model for me if you have time, Hyung? I want to try drawing people too.”

Hyung, who had been flipping through books, art albums, and exhibition pamphlets tucked into the shelves of the built-in furniture while chewing a mouthful of banana, stopped and turned to me.

“Me? Not Baek Yuni, me?”

“Your eye shape, cheekbones, jawline… your facial contours are more distinctive, so I thought it would be good to draw…”

I explained diligently, worried Noona might feel left out, but she just chuckled and brushed it off lightly.

“Why are you making such an effort to make excuses? She’s not someone who gets upset over things like this, you know?”

Feeling awkward for worrying unnecessarily, I smiled at Noona, and his voice came from above.

“You’re here, so why aren’t you coming up? Aren’t you hungry?”

He stopped midway up the stairs connected to the first floor, leaning his arm casually against the railing, looking down at us.

“We’re looking at Lee Hyun’s room. Wow… the treatment is different when you become an affiliated artist. I didn’t know the basement here was this nice.”

As he came down the stairs, he glanced at me, but without any particular response to Noona’s words, he turned his attention to the envelope on the floor.

“Why did you buy so much again? You won’t even be able to eat it all.”

“I have to work through my vacation this summer anyway, so I have to take advantage of the CEO like this. And we’re going to eat all of it?”

Juhan Hyung playfully wrapped his arm around his waist with a smirk, and even as he pushed Hyung’s forehead away, he smiled, clearly not displeased.

Hyung was surprisingly natural with physical affection and quite charming. This was true not only for him but also for the manager and Noona, and he often put his arm around my shoulder or leaned his head on me.

As they went upstairs, bickering while carrying the luggage, he and Juhan Hyung looked like close brothers. I followed them, thinking about my own rigid personality, which didn’t know how to be so casually intimate, even though I could kiss and have sex with him.

“Huh? The painting. Why did you take the painting down?”

As soon as we entered the living room, Juhan Hyung stopped, pointing to an empty space on the sofa. My flustered eyes unconsciously turned to him.

“I was looking forward to seeing how it would feel to see Lee Hyun’s painting.”

“It’s a piece whose value is about to skyrocket. I’ve safely stored it in the vault. If you want to see that painting now, let’s push for an exhibition.”

He glanced back at me, making sure the two of them wouldn’t notice, and then led the way towards the kitchen, changing the subject.

Even though I had said I was fine now, he hadn’t put back in its place. He seemed to think I had some trauma related to , but what had surprised me that day wasn’t the painting itself, but the past days it evoked.

However, I didn’t feel ready to explain it to him, or to anyone else. I had simply waited for time to pass and dull the edges without properly processing it internally. I was just grateful that he wasn’t forcing me to speak.

After moving the luggage to the kitchen, the serious meal preparation began.

Since Yooni Noona and Juhan Hyung insisted on meat, the main dish for today was barbecue. He, in charge of the meat, marinated it and then went out to the garden to set up the equipment, while the three of us took out the purchased ingredients from the bags and laid them out on the spacious island counter.

We had Hanwoo beef bought by cut, lamb chops with the bones still attached, handmade sausages, large shrimp, potatoes, and sweet potatoes – all the quintessential barbecue ingredients were there. We also had vegetables to accompany the meal, fruits for dessert, ice cream, and the cheesecake Juhan Hyung had put in the cart simply because he wanted it. As he said, it was an amount we couldn’t possibly eat in one dinner.

Besides barbecue, Hyung planned to make spicy whelk salad, and Noona planned to make kimchi stew. Since I don’t know how to cook, I mostly played a supporting role, washing and trimming ingredients.

“The manager will be here in 10 minutes too. Can we start the steak?”

Juhan Hyung checked his phone and rubbed his hands together, licking his lips. Hyung seemed to have already eaten two bananas, a peach, and a pack of crackers while preparing, but he still seemed hungry.

“Lee Hyun, take this to the CEO… and you help the CEO outside.”

As I stepped out the front door with the tray Noona handed me, he had already set up the table and grill by himself and was filling the grill with charcoal. I placed the tray on the table, which seemed convenient for outdoor use as it was made with integrated bench seating, and approached the grill.

“The manager will be here in 10 minutes.”

“We can start grilling then.”

He ignited the torch, designed to be used with a butane gas canister, and pushed the flame deep into the pile of charcoal stacked diagonally to allow for good airflow.

The blue flame, which had whistled as it penetrated the charcoal, soon rose as a red inferno. The scorching heat of midday had passed, but the sun was still up. I glanced up at him standing by the fire, thinking he must be hot, and our eyes met.

“Have you eaten lamb?”

“No.”

“Well, it has a unique aroma, so it’s a meat that can be a bit polarizing… but those guys have very refined palates, so they probably picked good quality meat. Try it. If you don’t like it, we have Hanwoo too.”

I nodded, looking down at the black charcoal catching fire and burning red. I wasn’t a picky eater.

“It’s even tastier if you marinate it for an hour or two, but if the meat is good, it’s delicious even grilled like this. Well, Kwon Juhan would probably eat raw meat and say it’s delicious.”

“Juhan Hyung… said the steak you grill is really delicious.”

“He says that? Wasn’t he just badmouthing me when I wasn’t around?”

I chuckled at his words, and he checked the sufficiently lit charcoal, then put away the torch and spread the coals evenly inside the grill.

“My mother is American and loved barbecue, so she often invited friends over for barbecue year-round. As I grew up, I gradually took over the chef’s role. We also often made Korean-style charcoal-grilled dishes.”

It was a simple, trivial story, and some might have overanalyzed it and called it excessive, but… it was the first time he had comfortably shared his story like this, so my gaze naturally turned to him.

As he placed the grill grate over the charcoal, ready for grilling, he seemed to feel my gaze and looked up at me. The contact of our eyes lingered a little longer.

His gaze held a slightly different light. It was a tense look, similar to the one he had given me just before kissing me yesterday while we were talking on the living room sofa. As I sensed that change, my body tensed as if bound by a tight rope.

He glanced back once, took off his gloves, and placed them on the shelves that hung like wings on either side of the grill.

Then, with one hand, he cupped the back of my neck, and with the other, he touched my lips. More precisely, he pinched my lower lip hard and rubbed it, making the inner mucosal surfaces touch.

It was sudden, and I couldn’t understand the intention behind this unfamiliar touch, so I just stared at him with wide eyes. His gaze, fixed on me, reminded me of the blue flame that had ignited the black charcoal earlier. As I looked into his cool yet passionate blue eyes, feeling the pain in my lips, his hand moved away.

It was a short time, barely 10 seconds, but my lips tingled with a sharp numbness, and I instinctively brought my hand to my lips and fumbled.

He put his gloves back on and smiled silently, without showing his teeth. It was a sly smile.

“The sensation… isn’t it similar?”

“……”

“Seo Yi-hyun, you like to be hurt, don’t you? Well, I do too.”

He didn’t mention what it was similar to, but I had a vague idea.

“You looked at me like you wanted to kiss me. But right now… I can’t.”

“Ah…”

A foolish exclamation escaped my lips. I lowered my hand that had been touching my lips, but the heat, as if I had been burned, remained.

He spoke as if the previous touch was a substitute for a kiss, but humorously, the sensation ignited a craving for a real kiss within me. I felt a little… resentful towards him for teasing me like this.

Suddenly, his voice lowered to an even more intimate tone.

“Or, should I just go ahead and do it? I don’t mind.”

As he said that with a mischievous smile, his phone on the table vibrated. Glancing at the phone over my shoulder, he frowned, wrinkling his nose as if disappointed.

“Ah… someone clueless must have called to ask me to open the parking lot.”

As he expected, the caller was the manager. While he opened the parking lot gate with the remote he had placed next to the phone and finished a brief call with the manager, I had to try hard to shake off thoughts of the recent touch.

I didn’t know what a gaze that wanted a kiss looked like, but I couldn’t say his guess was wrong. If such desires were visible in his eyes every time, it would be… more awkward than showing him my naked body.

“The manager has arrived, right? Huh? What is it? You haven’t even put the lamb on yet?”

Juhan Hyung, pushing the front door open with his shoulder while carrying a tray full of food, stopped with a disappointed look upon seeing the empty grill.

“What on earth do you have in your stomach? You must have been snacking on things while preparing, so are you that hungry?”

“It’s because there’s nothing in my stomach that I’m like this. Do those little snacks fill you up?”

Even as I approached Hyung, who was grumbling at the entrance, and took the tray from him to move the food onto the table, the minor push-and-pull between the two of them continued.

Noona, who appeared next, following Hyung with another tray, joined in complaining to him, who had just started grilling the meat. It felt like I also had some responsibility, so I placed the basket full of lettuce wraps on the table and nervously watched his expression.

He placed the marinated lamb onto a large, rectangular pan with plenty of olive oil, and contrary to my worries, he casually ignored their complaints.

After emptying all the trays Hyung had brought, I approached to take the tray Noona was holding, but Noona, about to move away, suddenly stopped, frowning.

“What is it, is the CEO dating these days?”

“Why are you writing novels again?”

“You never used to wear perfume, right? But you suddenly started recently…”

Noona paused, then leaned her face closer to his shoulder, sniffing.

“And today, you’ve put on a lot, almost too much. Who are you trying to seduce with such a provocative perfume…”

He frowned, asking what was provocative about perfume, and raised his arm, burying his nose and lips in the sleeve of his thin summer knit.

“Is it that strong?”

“It’s a strong perfume to begin with. Though you might have put on a bit too much. Are you perhaps catching a cold? You’re not the type to be so clumsy with this. Or does your partner like this? Something overwhelmingly intense?”

Noona, smiling slyly, playfully nudged his shoulder, looking amused. There was a hint that she was deliberately provoking him to tease him. But he just chuckled, not easily falling for the bait.

As they continued to joke and interact, I approached and took the tray from Noona. I felt his gaze but deliberately didn’t look his way.

As Noona said, I didn’t know if he had someone else. I had no right to question him about such matters or demand the truth. Until now, I hadn’t felt any such indication, so I had consciously tried not to think about his other romantic encounters or relationships that might happen when I wasn’t around. I was already overwhelmed just thinking about my relationship with him, let alone his other relationships.

However, even with just this light conversation, terrifying thoughts easily took hold of me.

“But CEO, I thought you only insisted on custom-made perfumes, but you do use off-the-shelf ones too. It seems like you’ve mixed two or three… Hmm, I can recognize one of them.”

Noona narrowed her eyes, concentrating, and named the brand and fragrance she guessed.

“Ho ho… Sharp, aren’t you?”

He widened his eyes and clacked the barbecue tongs together loudly.

I wondered if the fragrance Noona guessed might be ‘that scent.’ Perhaps the scent I recognized as ‘that scent’ was the result of a mixture of several perfumes.

I imagined myself visiting a perfume shop I’d never been to, paying a price that would clearly be a fortune for me, hiding the perfume in my room, and secretly smelling it to think of him, then shook my head.

“Wow… the meat smells amazing!”

Just then, the manager appeared, opening the door that led from the parking lot to the garden.

“It’ll be about 20 minutes before it’s ready to eat.”

The manager ruffled Juhan Hyung’s hair, who explained with a puffy face and glanced at him as if to give a hint. Then, he stroked my cheek and asked how I was. The manager, whom I hadn’t seen in five days, was on his way back from a cosmetic brand event at a client’s invitation, even on a Saturday, due to work.

“Look how Seo Yi-hyun likes you when the manager arrives.”

“Even though she seems stoic, her expressions really show through.”

Noona and Hyung said, teasingly pointing at me. I wondered if it showed that much just from a slight smile, and I felt my face with my hand as if searching. But my expression wasn’t something I could feel with my hands.

I felt a gaze and looked up at him by the grill, but our eyes met only for a brief moment. Perhaps he had just brushed past me as his gaze shifted.

After fairly dividing the finished lamb steaks onto everyone’s plates, he could finally take a seat. The table was for four, so he brought a chair from the terrace and sat on the side.

“How is it? Does it suit your taste?”

He asked, looking at me across Noona.

“Yes. It’s very… delicious.”

“That’s a relief. You don’t seem to be a picky eater.”

As I nodded, Juhan Hyung, sitting diagonally opposite me, spoke for me.

“Seo Yi-hyun doesn’t complain when she’s working either. Those kinds of people usually eat well without complaint.”

“You complain a lot but still eat well. You’re a peculiar case?”

Hyung, who was gnawing on the lamb with his face buried in his plate, needing no fork or knife, glared at him, lifting only his eyes. He then held up both hands in surrender. Afterward, instead of cutting the meat he had portioned for himself, he drank wine.

While the meat was grilling, I wondered if he had lost his appetite, as he barely touched his food and only drank alcohol. I was concerned, but I felt that if I, of all people, were to step forward and express worry for him at a gathering like this, it would draw unwanted attention, so I swallowed my words.

“Yi-hyun, how is it? Is life as a full-time writer manageable?”

“For now, it’s just…”

I mumbled a response with an awkward smile to the Manager’s question, who was seated directly across from me. Even the expression “full-time writer” still felt embarrassingly foreign.

“Representative, have you seen Yi-hyun’s practice sketches? He’s too shy to show them to us.”

“Wouldn’t he be shy with me too? He said he was practicing and wouldn’t show me anything?”

He glanced at me with a hint of resentment in his eyes as he brought his wine glass to his lips, answering Noona’s question.

Although I had asked him about his work before, I had never asked him to show it to me. I hadn’t realized he would want to see sketches at a practice level, and it was only then that I thought perhaps he had done so to avoid burdening me.

For me, who was eating lamb for the first time, he had separately grilled the ribs, brushing them with barbecue sauce. As I was slowly cutting them with my fork and knife, I paused, taking a drink of wine to moisten my parched throat. Suddenly, Juhan Hyung, with a triumphant look on his face, placed the bone, now clean of meat, onto his plate with a thud.

“Ah… then this, I suppose I will be the first appreciator of Seo Yi-hyun’s work.”

“He’s asking me to be a model because Yi-hyun asked him to.”

Noona said, her lips pulled into a slight, crooked smile, seemingly displeased with Hyung’s boastful attitude. In contrast to Noona’s furrowed brow, the Manager’s face brightened.

“Are you already starting the main work? But why Joo-han as the first model?”

“It’s not the main work yet…. I’ve been drawing mostly still life this week, so I’m planning to try drawing people now…. I asked because your bone structure and face shape are distinctive, Hyung.”

Though that was my answer, it wasn’t the whole truth.

I don’t know how others work, but unlike still life sketches where I honed my technique by copying what I saw, I needed a certain story when drawing people. When drawing complete strangers, my imagination or emotions were projected, but I didn’t want to project myself yet.

The people I could relatively comfortably ask to be models were Noona and Hyung. Among them, Hyung was the one who knew a more specific story, which was a larger reason for my request.

I felt a strong, natural urge to draw him, but I wasn’t ready to capture that emotion in my art yet.

“If you want to properly draw people, I can find you a professional model.”

He said, lightly swirling the wine glass he was holding. Juhan Hyung bristled and jumped up.

“Ah, what is this! Yi-hyun wants to draw me! Why are you interfering… Are you perhaps jealous because she chose me as a model over the exceptionally handsome Representative?”

He scowled at Hyung’s somewhat childish teasing.

“It’s a relief you admit you’re exceptionally handsome.”

“Hmph, whether the Representative is exceptionally handsome or not, Kwon Joo-han was chosen as the model.”

He shook his head, looking at Hyung, who leaned his arm on the back of his chair and looked down with an arrogant air. Then, he placed his glass on the table, pushed his own barely touched plate aside, and rested his elbow on the empty space, looking at me.

“Speaking of which, if you need anything – tools, materials, environment… or a model, anything at all – don’t hesitate to tell me. We spare no expense in supporting not only Seo Yi-hyun but all our exclusive artists, so please don’t feel burdened by that. It’s all for the sake of the work.”

Noona nodded enthusiastically in agreement.

“Yeah. Some people with high incomes, like Shushu, handle their own work tools and studios, but for those who have just started like you, we provide support up to a certain point. If you worry about materials or other things, the work won’t turn out as you intend. Not just any gallery offers this kind of treatment, you know?”

Noona said, putting her arm around my shoulder with a proud look. But when Shushu’s name came up, I felt a slight stiffness in my body, my attention drawn to it. I instinctively turned my gaze towards him. Caught in the obvious shift of my eyes, I quickly turned my head away, but he seemed completely unfazed.

While I understood the intention behind what he and Noona were saying, I already had more than I needed.

He had already scheduled construction for next week to build a partition wall and install a door between my sleeping area and workspace, stating that if I were to start painting with oils, the characteristic smell would make it difficult to combine work and living in the same space.

If there was anything I wanted, it was to work part-time, even if only for a few hours a day. In a situation where it was uncertain when I could generate income from my art, I at least wanted to contribute to his food expenses, but when I brought it up, he flatly refused, citing safety concerns.

“Ah, can Yi-hyun’s painting be displayed at the joint exhibition in the latter half of the year? It might be a bit rushed?”

Noona asked the Manager, her arm around my shoulder. The Manager, looking at me instead of Noona, replied,

“Since it’s a joint exhibition, even if it’s just one piece, it can be displayed.”

“Don’t feel pressured. We don’t force artists to hang paintings they’re not satisfied with. We’re just saying that if you have a finished piece by then, we’ll consider hanging it.”

I nodded at Noona’s words, but the mere thought of my painting being displayed at the exhibition made my throat feel dry with tension.

“It feels like something will be missing from this joint exhibition without Shushu’s work. Will everything be sold out at the Chicago exhibition?”

It was Juhan Hyung’s concern.

The joint exhibition was scheduled after Shushu’s Chicago exhibition, so if all her works were sold in Chicago, it would be difficult to bring them back to Korea.

“Shushu’s work will, of course, sell out completely, but it’s also good to promote other artists this time. Plan the exhibition well. An exhibition is more than half about the planning, not just the artwork itself.”

As he had done in front of Teacher Suki Kim, he still showed a confident attitude regarding Shushu’s sales. He didn’t seem overly worried about the joint exhibition either. The problem was Yooni Noona.

“Sigh… but can I really handle the Chicago business trip? Shushu is still panicking, right?”

Noona sighed, removing her arm from my shoulder, and leaned her elbows on the table, clasping her hands over her head.

I knew Noona was worried about Shushu’s anxiety regarding the Manager not accompanying her on the Chicago trip. Watching Noona’s hunched back, I couldn’t offer any words of comfort and just drank more wine than I should have.

“She needs to start becoming independent from Manager Han soon. If Manager Han has to follow her for every little thing, when will you get opportunities?”

“Hey, but won’t you end up caving in if Shushu calls you crying?”

Juhan Hyung scoffed, his tone disbelieving. He replied, bringing his wine glass to his lips,

“That’s why I’ve blocked her number entirely.”

He said it as if it were a fundamental solution, but to me, it sounded like he lacked the resolve to maintain his stance if he were to answer the phone.

“Oh… you’re really determined this time. You have to be determined. Otherwise, I’ll be in trouble. If the Representative, Baek Yooni, and Manager Han all go to Chicago… what am I supposed to do alone in Seoul?”

Juhan Hyung shivered dramatically, looking as if the thought alone was dreadful.

“If the Manager goes, I’ll have to stay. Even if we hire new people, they’ll all be trainees. How can you possibly manage the exhibition preparations with only trainees?”

He shook his head firmly at Noona’s dejected voice.

“That won’t happen, so Baek Yooni, focus on preparing for the Chicago exhibition. It absolutely won’t happen.”

“I appreciate the words, but… I don’t quite trust them. I rarely distrust the Representative’s words, but this is about Shushu. The artist is a bit… if I put it nicely, sensitive, and if I put it differently, temperamental… so I’m not very confident.”

The conversation briefly shifted to anecdotes about Shushu’s severe shyness, introversion, and sensitive nature.

When Noona first joined Phantom, she hadn’t been an artist for long, so it seemed her shyness was more than just being reserved. She had a dark, defensive disposition, showing symptoms close to social phobia, making events like putting her in front of a camera or having her give greetings in public unimaginable.

All interviews were conducted only in writing. Furthermore, Juhan Hyung, who joined around the time she started opening up, unfortunately had to go through the same process as Noona.

“Even before the accident, she wasn’t exactly sociable… but it got worse afterward. Still, she’s improved a lot now. Didn’t you see when she first met Seo Yi-hyun? Think about Kwon Joo-han, whom she wouldn’t let into the waiting room for half a year after joining. She’s getting better.”

He tried to reassure Noona, mixing in jokes with exaggerated expressions and gestures. Hyung complained that what made his initial days difficult wasn’t Shushu but the Representative’s torment, but that story was dismissed.

“Shushu doesn’t distrust you either. She says it’s because she’s mentally weak herself. If you give her time to prepare mentally, she’ll be fine. Kun is going with her too.”

With the Manager’s encouragement, Noona nodded. Her expression still held some anxiety, but her side profile, as she fiddled with the handle of a knife, looked considerably lighter than before.

“You’re coordinating with the person in charge over there, so where would we go without you? You are the person in charge of this event. That won’t change. Absolutely not.”

As if there was no room for further reconsideration, he stated, and then, assuming the lamb was sufficiently done, he said he would start grilling the Korean beef and took a can of beer from the cooler, returning to the grill.

My gaze naturally followed him. To hide it, I reached for my wine, as was my habit.

The fact that he would accompany her on the Chicago trip was one reason for Noona’s reduced anxiety, but it wasn’t for me.

I felt a persistent, unwarranted anxiety about him going on a long business trip with Shushu. I had been ignoring it because I found my feelings uncomfortable and unpleasant. However, my rational efforts to deny and turn away from it crumbled with surprising ease.

As I finished the remaining wine in my glass, Hyung got up and poured me more.

“Anyway, Seo Yi-hyun has been through a lot this time! Let’s forget everything today and have fun! Shall we all toast to Yi-hyun’s smooth artistic activities? Yes?”

The sudden shift of attention to me was awkward, but I wasn’t ungrateful for Hyung’s suggestion. He picked up the meat tongs again, returned to the table, and joined the toast.

As the meal wound down, the atmosphere naturally transitioned into a drinking session.

By then, the sun had completely set, and as the sun went down, the garden, covered in soil rather than asphalt, quickly cooled. The cool air, thanks to the garden trees, became a pleasant breeze. The lingering heat, just enough to make my back sweat, felt less unpleasant and more like a hazy, floating sensation, perhaps due to the alcohol.

“That’s why I really liked Seo Yi-hyun from then on!”

Juhan Hyung, slightly tipsy, had double the usual volume and energy in his voice. He was excitedly recounting how I had recommended Hyung’s own work to Inwoo Hyung at the exhibition where we first worked together.

“Ah, I’ll never forget Inwoo Teacher’s expression then.”

Hyung, looking as if the memory was still satisfying, tapped the table.

“What did he say? Representative, you were there then. What did Yi-hyun say?”

He took a sip of beer to wet his throat and chuckled.

“He said that the fact that you seem to show everything honestly, yet don’t at all, is a perfect match for your paintings and you.”

“I… I didn’t mean it with that intention!”

I swear I hadn’t spoken with any arrogant intentions. As I had explained to Inwoo Hyung himself later at a Spanish pub, I simply felt that his way of clearly and simply revealing his own dishonesty through his characteristic witty jokes was a very Hyung-like trait in his work.

Now, facing the canvas again, I felt more keenly than ever that this was a process requiring the resolve to be humbled before my own self-objectification.

“Th-then, what was your intention?”

Everyone burst into laughter at Juhan Hyung’s imitation of my tone. I also managed an awkward laugh at my own overly serious demeanor, but… suddenly, I was bothered by the fact that he remembered the situation so accurately.

At that time, when he had defined me as a ‘temporary part-timer’ and shown no interest, just as he had told Inwoo Hyung that morning in front of his ‘Ghost’ car, I hadn’t expected him to remember the conversation in such detail.

“I know, I know. Inwoo Teacher knew you weren’t being sarcastic, so he wasn’t offended and was actually intrigued by you.”

Noona said, moving to sit diagonally across from me, digging through the whelk salad. Her pronunciation was slightly slurred due to the alcohol.

“Right, right. I know because I’m an S, but Inwoo Teacher is actually a true M. He probably got more hooked on you because you spoke so frankly to him.”

Hyung, who had been agreeing with Noona while pulling out the last beer can from the cooler, turned to me as if he remembered something and added,

“Ah, Inwoo Teacher was also very excited when he heard you signed the contract. Have you spoken with him?”

“Yes. He calls about every two days…”

“Hoho… really? Is Inwoo Teacher surprisingly sincere about Yi-hyun? For the great Inwoo Teacher to call every two days and put in this much effort, this is no ordinary matter.”

Noona said, biting the tip of her chopsticks and her eyes gleaming. Hyung, however, frowned.

“Sincere? Honestly, Inwoo Teacher towards Yi-hyun? Even if he’s sincere… ah, that would be too much of a stretch.”

“What? Are you saying someone experienced shouldn’t date someone inexperienced? Why are you suddenly acting so conservative? Manager, what do you think? If Inwoo Teacher is sincere about Yi-hyun, and Yi-hyun likes Inwoo Teacher, do you object, Manager?”

The Manager, looking as if he hadn’t expected the question to be directed at him, shrugged his shoulders, leaning his elbows on the table.

“Hmm, well… is that something someone else can step in and object to?”

Noona gestured towards Hyung with her chin as if to say, ‘See?’, but Hyung, who usually advocated for considerable liberalism in relationships, seemed reluctant to back down easily.

“I know that too. It’s not something someone else can step in and object to, so they should self-censor their conscience and refrain on their own.”

“Is Seo Yi-hyun interested in Choi In-woo?”

“……”

At his question, which had been quietly ignored by the two of them debating, everyone suddenly focused on him.

Neither his tone nor the expression with which he gazed at me conveyed an overbearing, interrogative attitude. That confused me even more.

Unable to grasp the intention of his question, I looked back and forth between the four faces, then slowly opened my mouth, fiddling with the stem of my wine glass.

“That… Inwoo Hyung has never seriously brought it up…”

“Set aside Choi In-woo’s circumstances. Is Seo Yi-hyun interested in Choi In-woo in that way? Just answer that.”

His face, which had a light smile fitting the mood of the gathering, revealed the mischievous curiosity of someone who finds amusement in observing others’ romantic entanglements.

It was a composure I could never have faked, even with acting, if the situation were reversed. Gripping the wine glass I had been fiddling with, I replied,

“……No.”

He shrugged his shoulders and looked around at the others.

“She says no? Why are you expending so much energy on something she has no thoughts about?”

“Ah… what a shame for Inwoo Teacher. He’s a man who believes he can charm anyone if he sets his mind to it, always saying he’s ‘an Alpha infinitely close to Golden.’ But it’s no use against a Beta, I guess.”

Although she spoke with sympathy, Noona’s face was full of amused laughter.

“Indeed. Seo Yi-hyun might look naive, but she’s not the type to fall for someone approaching her with worn-out techniques.”

Juhan Hyung also held my shoulder firmly, as if embracing it, with a satisfied expression.

My attention was focused elsewhere, and the situation of answering questions about a scandal with an unexpected person felt like a clumsy comedy, so I let out a bitter laugh from beneath my lowered head.

“Huh? Where are you going, CEO?”

But as if programmed to react whenever anything related to him came up, my gaze automatically turned towards the voice of Noona calling him.

“Where else? I’m going to get more drinks.”

“Ah, then we’re good with wine! Please bring us beer!”

As he turned away, waving his hand in a rough response to Juhan Hyung’s request, he had to stop at the posture of Noona, who had her arms outstretched.

“What, what is it?”

“Carry me to the bathroom on your way.”

He held her arm as she stepped onto the bench, fearing she might fall. He shook his head as if he couldn’t stop her, but gave her his back without complaint. Noona, with her arms around his neck, laughed like a child, her cheeks flushed from the alcohol.

I had felt it before, but while he could be an excessively ruthless boss at work, in private, especially at drinking parties, he was like a kind older brother.

Noona and Hyung, too, were people who operated with efficiency as their priority, and regarding work, they never acted spoiled based on their private familiarity or felt hurt by his blunt way of speaking. However, when drunk, they would cling to him like the youngest sibling who had been doted on.

These were things possible because he opened himself up, allowing the two of them to express their affection without fear of rejection.

Watching Noona’s retreating back as she disappeared into the house, clinging to his back, I was reminded of the experience a few months ago, right in this garden, where I felt like I had become ‘Alice in Wonderland.’ Since then, much had changed in my relationship with him, and we had even become lovers who shared passionate nights, yet I still felt like Alice from that other world in between them.

“So, am I a nude model? Is this finally my chance to showcase this physique?”

As Hyung walked over, making a joke while pouring his beer into my empty wine glass, I gave an awkward laugh.

■ ■ ■

Through the open front door, the laughter of Noona and Hyung drifted into the kitchen. I was in the process of tidying up some food with him, excluding anything that could be a side dish, when my hands paused for a moment at the boisterous laughter created by just two people.

“Ah… they’re still a long way off. They’ll probably be like that until sunrise.”

He said, turning towards the counter as he wiped the grease off the plates with paper towels by the sink, so the housekeeper could easily wash them in the morning.

Manager Han, who had come straight here after work, had already left by hired driver, saying he should go home and rest given his attire. But Noona and Hyung were engrossed in conversation as if the real fun was just beginning.

From the concepts for ‘Old Future’s’ fall season, to Noona’s impressions of the diversity of the American art market encountered while preparing for the Chicago exhibition and the management philosophy of the gallery there operating according to the market’s characteristics, and then to the stories of the future they dreamed of and were preparing for.

The topics were endless, and as the alcohol took hold, their conversations only deepened, showing how similar their personalities were.

“It’s only midnight, and you think they’ll go until morning?”

He placed the last plate in the sink and began washing the oil off his hands with liquid soap.

“They’re at an age where they have so much to say. They want to explain themselves, be understood, and talk with hope about uncertain plans. Even if they pretend not to like each other, they get along so well.”

He added that they didn’t need to worry about the two of them, as they would go to the guest room and sleep on their own, then turned towards me, shaking the water off his hands. He leaned against the edge of the sink.

“But.”

“……”

A light tension filled the air between us with just his tilted gaze and the subtle tone of his voice, which seemed to be shifting the topic.

“I didn’t know you talked to In-woo Hyung every other day.”

His voice was soft, and he smiled slightly as he gently touched his bangs with his wet hands.

“There’s nothing special… just everyday conversation…”

“Everyday conversation, what? Talk about food again?”

I nodded, looking at him as he asked playfully.

“Are you really not interested in Choi In-woo?”

“……”

I stared intently at his face, knowing I might reveal my own anxiety, hoping to gain a hint about his intentions in bringing up a topic I thought had been settled at the earlier drinking session.

Was he perhaps bothered?

But to interpret it so favorably… he had warned me about my relationship with In-woo Hyung quite early on. Even from the time he treated In-woo as an outsider, an object of suspicion and investigation, who seemed to have no interest in me.

As much as I felt frustrated by my inability to read his mind, I wished that, at the very least, I could remain an unknown territory to him. But… recalling how transparently I could see into the mind of a twelve-year-old, who was ten years younger than me, made me feel a bit despondent.

“Not yet…”

“……”

Perhaps it was a gamble I took out of a sense of injustice. The alcohol also made my cheeks flush.

He detached himself from the sink and approached me. I had thrown the bait, but I was the one whose lips were drying up, unable to predict his reaction.

He walked over to the clean counter after I had put the remaining food in the refrigerator, and slowly stroked the edge of the gleaming marble countertop, looking down at his fingertips.

“You’ll keep your promise to always use the car I prepared when you go out, right?”

“……”

He looked up, having completely changed the subject away from In-woo Hyung. His gaze, which seemed to crave an answer, looked so earnest that I met his eyes and slowly nodded. Knowing that everyone around me was very worried, I didn’t want to cause trouble with unnecessary actions.

As if that was enough, he smiled, put both hands in the back pockets of his jeans, and spoke in a voice that seemed to feign cheerfulness.

“Can you come up to the study for a bit before bed? Unlike those guys who came empty-handed to the housewarming, I have a gift.”

“Ah…”

“That’s not the expression of someone who’s just heard they’re getting a gift. I didn’t prepare it to see a face like that.”

I had always believed that feeling obligated to reciprocate material gifts with material things was perhaps disrespectful to the other person’s feelings. But now, finding myself on the receiving end of so much without anything to give in return, I couldn’t shake off the feeling of being indebted, as if I had borrowed something and needed to repay it.

“Hmm…”

He sighed, resting his elbows on the counter as he looked down at my face, which must have looked like that of someone meeting a creditor. His profile was below mine.

“It’s the same thing I said before, but I’m not sacrificing anything for Seo Yi-hyun. I’m not financially straining myself to support you or buy gifts, and I often give gifts to those guys and Manager Han. So, if you accept it with a happy face, that would be my reward.”

If it were Juhan Hyung or Yooni Noona, they would have reacted with joy to his gift… In that case, was I considering Noona and Hyung, who accepted his gift without feeling burdened, as shameless people?

That wasn’t it… When it came to my own situation, judgment became difficult. The gifts exchanged between Morae, Hyung, and myself had only been things like books, pens, or keychains.

“Ah, then Seo Yi-hyun, you do one favor for me too. Fairly. Then it’ll be fine.”

“……”

He straightened up from leaning on the counter, looking as if he had just had a good idea.

“I’d like to see the paintings you’ve started since moving here.”

His smiling face tilted slightly, as if urging me to answer.

“……Now?”

He nodded.

“Now.”

He said with an expression that implied, ‘What’s wrong with that?’

“If you have a strict rule about never revealing your work until it’s hung in the gallery, then I understand… but since you’ll inevitably see Kwon Juhan while painting him as a model… I don’t think you’re the type to absolutely refuse to show it. What do you say?”

I didn’t really have any strict rules or principles that I rigidly adhered to. Besides, he was the owner of the gallery that would manage my work in the future, so it wasn’t an unreasonable request for him to want to check on the artist’s progress.

No, I didn’t even need to bring up the position of gallery owner versus a fledgling artist who hadn’t earned a single cent yet.

If he wanted something from me, even if it wasn’t out of a sense of obligation to repay his kindness… I would have wanted to agree to anything.

Looking at his face, which waited for my answer with his hands in the front pockets of his jeans and his shoulders shrugged, I nodded. With a single nod, he revealed his even teeth and smiled with satisfaction.

The fact that he, who was more accomplished than me in every way and seemed like a symbol of adulthood to me, was smiling with a pure joy like a child who had received a desired toy, and that I was the one who created that smile at this moment, caused a small shock within me.

It wasn’t that I had never experienced the joy and happiness of others directly leading to my own happiness, but it was somehow different in nature from the warm contentment I felt through Morae or Hyung.

Every reaction that occurred through him had an intensity that made my head spin, and an passion that drew out impulses and courage I didn’t know I possessed.

Feeling a desire to see this kind of face more often, and to be the cause of it, a sentimental whim, utterly typical of a twenty-two-year-old, that I couldn’t pinpoint its origin or basis… in this unexpected moment, without any special conversation or dramatic emotion, I realized that I truly liked him.

If I feared change, the thing I should have been most afraid of and cautious about was the feeling of liking someone. Because it changes you without requiring choice or agreement.

Thinking back to my younger self, who would sometimes feel an uncharacteristic defiance against rejection and indifference from others, and wondering if that was a preview of the present, I let out a self-deprecating laugh. Avoiding his gaze, I smiled faintly and idly rubbed my arm.

When I looked up again, he was smiling faintly, mirroring me. He was probably smiling back because he didn’t know why I was smiling.

“Shall we go, then?”

I followed him as he led the way downstairs.

Down here, and then in the garden, I took out a few drawing notebooks containing sketches I had drawn over five days from the built-in bookshelf and handed them to him. My hands were sweating, and my throat was dry.

He slightly shook the notebooks in his hands as if gauging their weight, raising his eyebrows to look at me.

“Is all of this what you drew after coming here?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm, it seems you only drew real pictures after I left for work.”

He said, smiling, and seemed to be in a good mood.

Without accepting my offer to sit, he leaned against the back of the three-seater sofa placed away from the wall and silently flipped through the three drawing notebooks. He remained silent until he had checked all the canvases leaning against the wall, turned over.

I explained, as if making an excuse, that the coloring was just an experiment to see if I could create the desired colors with oil paints, but he waved his hand, saying he didn’t mind.

I would have preferred comments, even if they were critical or harsh. His expression and demeanor, neither frowning nor admiring, as calm and unchanging as usual, revealed nothing. If this was the reaction to seeing practice sketches and studies, I would need considerable training before showing him the paintings I had transplanted.

He opened the drawing notebooks again and looked through a few pages once more, his lips curving into a faint smile.

“This… makes the gift I prepared seem so shabby.”

His gaze remained fixed on the pages of the notebook.

He mumbled to himself with a faint smile, barely visible, then closed the notebook and rubbed his lower jaw with his large hand as if covering his mouth.

After maintaining the same posture for a moment, looking down somewhere on the floor with a thoughtful expression, he returned the notebooks to me. Our fingers brushed slightly as I took the notebooks, and he lightly hooked his pinky finger with mine on my ring finger.

“Then, I’ll be waiting in the study.”

To be continued in Diamond Dust Vol. 4