6 – Tit for Tat (3)

Chapter 3

It was a day of drizzling rain that swept away the lingering, lukewarm heat in one go. Having overheard that crackdowns would gradually begin next week, Hwang called out to the resting Gi-tae, saying that since the business season was over, they should quickly dismantle the tents. Hae-won, left alone once more after seeing the two of them off in their raincoats through the light rain, rolled around in his room—where the boiler had already been disconnected—before finally pushing himself up.

As he walked across the wooden porch toward the kitchen, raindrops that had clung to the eaves fell and splashed against the ground, making a pleasant sound. Taking out a black plastic bag he had kept on the top shelf of the refrigerator, Hae-won returned to the porch and sat down, stretching out his uncomfortable leg. As he overturned the cold plastic, the chocolates he had collected so far rolled out.

There were four round chocolates, two square ones slightly smaller than a palm, and one that looked like a pretty handmade soap. They had appeared one or two at a time every weekend; adding them up, it had been well over a month as of today. Sometimes they were placed neatly atop the wall, and sometimes they were found lying in the yard. The only commonality was that all seven were chocolates that could not be obtained in this neighborhood. After discovering the fourth chocolate, he hadn’t even told Gi-tae.

Leaning his head against the wooden pillar supporting the roof, Hae-won scanned the melted chocolates with an unreadable expression. A cool, damp breeze brought by the rain ruffled the hair covering his forehead. His nails, which had been ruthlessly broken, had mostly regained their original shape, but his fingers were still covered in scars. His ugly index finger crawled slowly across the porch and pulled the first round chocolate toward him.

Peeling away the crumpled plastic revealed a chocolate that had melted once and then hardened into a strange shape. He felt no strange premonition. Setting the wrapper aside, he popped the piece into his mouth. It wasn’t offensively sweet, nor did it taste bitter. A moderate sweetness soaked his tongue and slid down smoothly.

The cherry blossom tree, which had burst into pink petals just a few months ago, was now covered in lush green leaves, draping over the wall. Just as he was melting the second chocolate on his tongue while watching the thin streaks of rain tap against the green leaves—

“Oh…”

On the wall near the main gate, a chocolate appeared that hadn’t been there when he saw Gi-tae off. Hae-won straightened his back and checked the calendar hanging on the wall. Today was… Saturday. The weekend.

Hurriedly lowering his stretched leg, he reached under the porch. His only umbrella fit into his grip. After a couple of attempts to open the rusted umbrella, he held it up and approached the wet main gate. Pushing open the gate, which was a span lower than his chest, Hae-won looked down at the grey, rainy slope.

The water mist rising from the sea where the sun was setting seeped thickly into the alley. Aside from the sound of rain, the surroundings were silent. No footsteps, no sound of breathing. His chest heaved violently, and goosebumps prickled across the nape of his neck. As if being pulled by something, his head turned to the right, and the edge of a black umbrella entered his field of vision. Then, it vanished behind the alley in an instant.

The sound of footsteps treading on the uneven alley was buried in the rain. The path winding down the slope toward the wharf was relatively gentle, but it was as complex as a maze. After only a few steps, he grew short of breath and his heart hammered wildly. Several times he nearly tripped as his slippers, slick with rain, lost their grip.

As if possessed, Hae-won chased the person who had vanished between the lonely, empty houses. Bracing himself against old, cracked walls, stepping through puddles, and sliding down collapsed stairs, he finally reached the sea, separated from it by a single road.

The pitch-black sea pushed waves violently, slamming into the breakwater as if to destroy it. The sound of the crashing waves, the raindrops drumming on the old umbrella, and the ragged gasps from his own mouth mingled, shaking his fragile consciousness. Taking a dizzy step out of the alley, the back of a man holding a black umbrella gradually revealed itself across the road. A hot breath escaped him.

The umbrella held by the man facing the sea slightly obscured his shoulder, and a cigarette held between his fingers released a pale grey smoke. As his hand rose, the smoke split into several directions like paint dropped in clear water. After exhaling the smoke, the man lifted the umbrella, revealing a broad back. It was a back he could not forget, and had never forgotten. A back he had reached for, only to withdraw his hand before touching.

When a surging wave crashed against the breakwater once more, the strength left his sweat-slicked hand. The trembling umbrella fell to the ground before he could catch it, making a dull thud. Simultaneously, the cigarette held in the fingers of the man with the black umbrella also fell to the ground. In the moment the man with the umbrella turned around very, very slowly, Hae-won also turned back.

The slope he had struggled to descend was even more grueling to climb. After slipping countless times, he simply sprinted, without even the luxury of putting back on the slipper that had slipped off his foot. Every time his misaligned foot kicked the ground, his balance shifted violently. Though he didn’t fall, his shoulders slammed hard against the walls, and the rough, unpolished cement left red scratches on his wrists.

Was he being followed? He didn’t know. He could hear nothing. All he felt was the heartbeat thumping up from the soles of his feet. Hae-won ran, stepping on his own bursting heart.

Returning to the house at the top of the hill, Hae-won rushed frantically onto the porch. A few of the lined-up chocolates were kicked by his feet and rolled into the yard. Wet footprints were stamped across the room floor, which had trapped a warm heat beneath the scattered bedding. Closing the door—which had no lock—he slid backward on his buttocks in a crouched position. Startled just by his back touching the wardrobe, Hae-won hurriedly scanned the narrow room and curled his body up. Only then did the sound of his own gasping breath and the light rain enter his functioning ear.

“Haa…! Heu, haa…!”

Symptoms similar to the seizure he experienced in the valley appeared. Quickly covering his mouth, Hae-won tried to breathe through his nose as Gi-tae had taught him, but he could hardly control it on his own. He pulled a thick blanket over himself, burying his nose and mouth to steady his breathing. As a terror that felt like immediate death paralyzed his reason, he remembered Gi-tae leaving the house a few hours ago. Since he said he was dismantling everything down to the pipes, it would take time. It would take about an hour to return to Anbyeok-ri, and by then…

The thought drifted in that it might be better not to encounter Gi-tae at all. The blood-stained face of the General Manager, which could only be retrieved by digging through his memories; Seung-wan’s screams; the whisper that everyone who helped him would end up like that—they all rushed in sequentially. His body temperature grew cold, yet cold sweat soaked his forehead. Then, a faint but familiar sound caught his ear. His convulsing shoulders stiffened. He listened with his remaining ear.

It was the sound of someone stepping on the porch. Creek, creek… The sound of old wood shifting under weight was approaching very slowly. His ragged breath stopped.

Burying his face in the blanket, Hae-won looked up with eyes clouded by fear. The small window at the top of the low door, which required one to bow their head to enter, was covered with opaque traditional paper. Beyond the window, through which one could barely discern people passing by the door, a black shadow slid into view.

The shadow, shaped like a silhouette descending from the neck to the shoulders, stood motionless, staring into the room. Even though the inside wouldn’t be visible from the outside, there was no movement. Hae-won couldn’t tell if the shadow belonged to Gi-tae or someone else, so he couldn’t dare open his mouth. His entire body trembled. Just as he was lost on what to do, the shadow facing him through the door turned away.

Watching the shadow disappear toward the kitchen with terrified eyes, Hae-won gripped the handle of the wardrobe with shaking hands. Carefully opening the door with its creaking hinges, he squeezed his body into the compartment where unused blankets were neatly stacked. As he hooked his index finger on the edge and closed the wardrobe door, pitch-black darkness descended.

“Heu-uk…”

Buried in the bedding that smelled musty from long disuse, Hae-won covered his mouth with both hands and stifled his sobs. As the held-back breath burst out, a powerful aftershock surged, making his shoulders heave. The narrow space of the wardrobe filled with the hot breath escaping through the gaps of his fingers. As a damp sensation rose from his toes, every hole in his body felt clogged, as if he were submerged in water. His fading consciousness tossed a single question onto the surface.

Did he truly not guess the source of the chocolates that had fallen in the yard?

The answer to the question he had been ignoring came easily. Eyes brimming with tears turned bloodshot. If he had guessed, why hadn’t he gone elsewhere with the funds located beneath the bottom-most blanket? His tongue, tasting of sweetness, curled, and he felt a surge of nausea. Fear and longing, disgust and welcome, hatred and expectation clashed, and as a choking groan escaped his throat, the people living in his ears spoke up as if they had been waiting.

‘I think he’s waiting for you.’

Reflexively, another person’s whisper was heard.

‘You’re in trouble, Hae-won. You’re really fucked. You can’t live without me now.’

“No, no… No, heu-uk… No, it’s not…”

Curled up in a space so narrow there was hardly room to step, Hae-won buried his face in his palms and muttered repeatedly. It couldn’t be. There was no way he couldn’t live without Seo Hae-young. He had endured well for a whole year without Seo Hae-young. He had dreamed every time, recalled and erased him repeatedly, but he had fully endured. Though he occasionally felt suffocated as if wearing clothes that didn’t fit, and sometimes vomited food, he had gripped his breath and survived. He didn’t want to go back down to that basement again. He didn’t want to return to the time when he waited only for Seo Hae-young to come, felt regret when Seo Hae-young turned his back, and felt an unconscious sense of relief when Seo Hae-young touched him.

“No… Heu, no…”

The point he wanted to return to wasn’t then. A long time ago, when the emotions he harbored hadn’t been discovered. It would have been better to be alone in his excitement and alone in his heartache. Even if he wanted to imagine a “what if,” his limited imagination stopped at three years ago. It was the same now.

Seo Hae-young’s room, where the air conditioner blew coolly. The scent of the shampoo Seo Hae-young used. A game of hide-and-seek in the early dawn, wearing the pajamas Seo Hae-young had prepared, stepping into a dilemma from which there was no escape. The memories of that day encroached upon his confused mind like a wave crashing over the breakwater and flooding the road.

Hide only inside the house. Time limit: twenty minutes. If you’re caught before then, it’s over. I’ll count to one. Hide well. If you’re caught, you’re dead. Hae-won, are you here? I think you’re here…

His breath grew shorter. The sound of a stiff door opening echoed. The sound of damp footsteps approached. The sensation of someone stepping on scattered blankets and the sound of tapping on the wallpapered walls were gradually getting closer. The face hidden beneath his palms was stained with tears.

Soon after, the footsteps stopped nearby, right in front of the wardrobe. Hae-won stared blankly at his trembling palms with wide eyes. Through the gaps of his fingers, a wall traced with a long sliver of light appeared. The wardrobe door opened slowly with a chilling metallic screech.

The overcast light slowly swallowed the wall, and the dim light spread from his pitifully trembling legs. The creaking sound of the hinges was as subtle as a lullaby, intertwining with a low voice that brought the sleep of death. As the blurred hallucinations revived vividly and threatened his senses, the monotonous tone aligned perfectly with the past.

Got you.

A large hand snatched his ankle, and Hae-won was pulled out of the wardrobe helplessly, just as he had been three years ago. The pile of blankets that slid down supported his back, and a scent that had once felt only lovely enveloped his entire body without a single gap. When a cold tip of a nose touched the nape of his neck, a dizzying chill ran to the top of his head, and his entire body froze.

“Heu-uk, heu…!”

The tip of the nose that brushed his neck moved past his ear, cheek, and hair in turn, inhaling the scent of his skin. Beneath the t-shirt clinging to his skin, beneath the loose pant legs, two hands slid in without a moment’s pause. Abnormal breaths that struck his Adam’s apple swept across his heaving chest, rain-soaked limbs, and sunken stomach with warm palms. The touch that pressed hard and squeezed left red handprints, caressing every part where blood flowed, and each time, his thin shoulder blades thudded against the wardrobe door.

It was difficult to even utter a word, and there was nothing to be seen through his spinning vision. But the scent was enough.

It was Seo Hae-young. Seo Hae-young had come.

The scent, deepened by the moisture, was terribly sweet, and the touch that gripped his skin harshly felt disgustingly welcome. Asymmetrical sensations raced from end to end. Opening his mouth wide, Hae-won let out a gasping sound, surrendering all his body scent and temperature to Seo Hae-young. He couldn’t tell whose mouth the ragged breathing touching his functioning ear was coming from. His body was gradually pushed further down. Now, the only things supporting the weight of the two were the back of his head and his shoulders against the door.

“Heu, uk… Stop, stop it…”

A thumb, tracing his exposed ribs as if to dig them out, roughly rubbed his pale pink nipple. Rolling the nipple, which had peaked due to the chill, between his fingers, Seo Hae-young lifted his face from the nape of Hae-won’s neck. A hot sigh escaped from between reddish, damp lips. A hand that had traveled quickly up the lean line of his waist suddenly snatched both pale cheeks.

The movements, devoid of leisure or conversation, swallowed his consciousness like an uncontrollably swelling flood. A red tongue pushed into the lips of Hae-won, who was only gasping for breath with unfocused eyes. The hand touching his firm shoulder trembled, squeezing the thin fabric of his clothes.

“Haa… hup, eu…!”

A wet sound erupted from the tangling flesh. There wasn’t enough breath. When he turned his head to avoid the thick tongue, the hand that had slid to the back of his head gripped his short hair and yanked it back sharply. As soon as Hae-won’s mouth opened in a choked struggle, the tongue that had slipped out brushed his lower teeth and entered deeply, scanning everything from the roof of his mouth to the mucous membrane of his cheeks. His lower lip, sucked several times, swelled bright red, and blood seeped from where it had been bitten. Robbed of his breath, Hae-won writhed minutely under Seo Hae-young, who kissed him as if to devour him. Saliva leaking from the corner of his mouth dripped down his rigid cheek.

“Heu-uk, uk…”

“Haa…”

Before his trembling eyelids could close, Seo Hae-young sucked away the seeping blood and pulled his lips away, rubbing his nose against the tip of Hae-won’s round nose. The damp breaths bursting out tickled each other’s sore lips. The lips that had completely stolen the sweetness remaining on the tongue curved into a fine arc, delivering the first greeting that opened the gates of their reunion.

“You ate the chocolates… Were they tasty?”

The palms that completely wrapped around his cheeks pulled his pale face closer.

“Have you been well? Didn’t you miss me? You did, right? I appeared in your dreams too? I did. Didn’t you?”

“Huk, euuu…”

Their eyes met through the blurred vision. Those deep eyes, the ones he had faced through a car window, were staring straight at him with a strange luster. Lips beaded with drops of blood opened and closed like a fish.

Night was arriving. The darkness that crept into the small, warm room hid a face of resentment and longing in the shadows, revealing only eyes that shone like a beast’s.

“Hmm? You missed me. You chased after me right away… You could have waited longer, but you followed me first. I knew all that. Right? There’s no way you wouldn’t know. How long have we known each other? I knew you weren’t dead. Everyone else said you were, but I knew. That you were alive. See, Hae-won. I was right. So… you missed me, didn’t you? You missed me so fucking much that you got this thin, huh? Hae-won. Did you miss me? Answer me. Quickly.”

Then, a barrage of disjointed questions poured out. He gave no room for an answer, and whispers that seemed uninterested in hearing a response brushed against Hae-won’s stinging lips. Unable to offer any protest, Hae-won struggled to maintain his irregular breathing. The sentences, slightly faster and more urgent than the tone he remembered, broke apart into individual words that rolled around the curve of his ear. He pressed down on his aching chest and let out shallow breaths, but his body, unable to overcome the distress, began to curl up.

Seo Hae-young, looking down silently at the panting Hae-won, moved his fingers. His thumb swept down under the eyes, which were damp from countless falling tears, caressing the wet eyelashes and eyelids. No matter how many times he wiped them, they grew wet, and wet, and wet again. With a soft gasp of “Ah,” Seo Hae-young pulled Hae-won up into a sitting position, pushed his knee between the parted legs, and raised his hand. The palm, which had been caressing his entire body as if violating it, covered the gasping lips without a gap. The back of Hae-won’s head was pushed back against the wardrobe door.

“Breathe. Breathe.”

The hand that had been rubbing the thigh flesh exposed beneath the rolled-up shorts moved up to support the back of his head, softly stroking the hair that had been cut without permission. There was a sense of déjà vu in the low-toned exhortation. With wide eyes, Hae-won blankly watched Seo Hae-young as he mimicked the act of slowly inhaling and exhaling.

Soon, a single moan laced with horror escaped into the palm that felt hot enough to burn. A strange smile played on the lips of Seo Hae-young, who was mimicking exactly—down to the last syllable—the actions Gi-tae had once performed for him in a valley under the scorching sun.

“I said breathe, Hae-won. Properly…”

“Hng… ugh…”

The flowing tears thoroughly soaked the back of the hand covering his lips. Every time he blinked and a tear fell, Seo Hae-young’s face would become clear and then blur again. Swallowing the pooled saliva, Hae-won slowly inhaled, relying on the hand stroking the back of his head. While his heart beat uncontrollably, his abnormal breathing gradually settled into a steady rhythm. As his chest, which had been heaving, began to rise and fall shallowly, Seo Hae-young dropped the hand covering his mouth and left a short kiss on the swollen lips.

“Good boy.”

“Haa… hng…”

Sliding his lips across the lower lip, the corner of the mouth, and down to the trembling chin, Seo Hae-young wiped away the shimmering tears. A cool, damp breeze drifted in through the wide-open door, cooling the flushed face. Hae-won slowly opened his tightly shut eyes.

As the darkness tinged with dark gray became familiar, Seo Hae-young, who had been flickering in and out of sight, separated from the shadows. The disheveled forehead with hair slightly damp at the tips, and beneath it, the flawlessly lovely features, were slowly recognized. Hae-won looked at the man before him just as he had when he stepped out the front gate, as if possessed, following a stranger.

It had been a year. It was a length of time where things could remain the same, yet it was also a time where everything could change. Hae-won did not know what influence this short yet long period had exerted. However, the Seo Hae-young before him was different from the one in his memories.

The lines drawn with a sense of pathos were eerily beautiful. His skin, as white as if he had never seen the sun, created a bleak atmosphere, and his gloomily honed gaze was sharp, as if it could gouge out eyes and peel away skin. He was unstable and precarious. Even during the times when he felt only fear, after the days when Hae-young’s sheer prettiness had tickled a corner of his heart, he had never felt this chilling.

“We’re really… seeing each other after such a long time, aren’t you going to greet me?”

When a voice, slightly off as if excited, drifted over, Hae-won’s body, stiff with tension, jumped. The knee pressing firmly into the inside of his parted thighs, the hand sliding down his arm while fiddling with his knuckles, and the back that blocked the only exit—everything seemed solid and massive, leaving him unable to move. After staring at the frozen Hae-won for a moment, Seo Hae-young let out a laugh that sounded like a leak of air and suddenly snatched his wrist.

“Ugh…!”

“Here. Hello. Hel-lo.”

Gripping the wrist hard enough to crush the bone, Seo Hae-young forced the hand forward and shook it gently. The fingers, unable to straighten, swayed from side to side while bent. Shrugging his shoulders, Hae-won stammered, following the repeating word.

“H-hello…”

The moment Seo Hae-young’s lips curved into a cool arc, having successfully caught the crawling voice, a concise whisper followed.

“…Hello.”

Seo Hae-young, who had raised the hand that was resting on the floor to greet him as if glad to see him, burst into a frivolous laugh. The large palm, which could slap a cheek or plunge someone into water at any moment, touched the curled fingers, but Hae-won could not tear his gaze away from Seo Hae-young’s eyes. More than the palm that generously enveloped his flinching hand, the gaze that seemed far from whole sent shivers down his spine.

When they had encountered each other in the park before winter had passed, had his eyes been like this then? He couldn’t remember. All that came vividly to mind was the blood-soaked General Manager and Seung-wan, the droplets of blood splattered across moldy wallpaper, and the sight of him raping Hae-won nonchalantly in front of them. A tear fell onto his pale cheek. He began to tremble violently, fearing that Seo Hae-young might beat Gi-tae and Hwang and brutally rape him again in front of the two people who had saved him.

However, as if mocking such delusions, Seo Hae-young merely gripped the curled fist tightly; he did not strip his clothes or slam him onto the floor. He simply watched him with bated breath. His eyes scanned Hae-won as if to devour him—the short-cropped hair, the gaunt cheeks, the body with protruding knuckles—before coming to a stop at the brown pupils consumed by terror. Finally, with a smile, his tightly closed lips opened.

“You know. I’ve thought about it a lot. Really a lot. About how you screwed me over… no. That’s not it.”

As if correcting a mistake, Seo Hae-young trailed off and rephrased his previous words slightly.

“After you acted like that toward me… I thought about what you said for a long, long time. Actually, I was going to wait a bit longer. What if I actually killed you? Anyway, I needed some time… but you followed me. Knowing everything. You knew it was me. You were waiting, weren’t you?”

Within the torrent of sentences that left no room to answer or reflect, Hae-won picked out the few words he could understand and shook his head stiffly.

“N-no. I didn’t know, I didn’t know…”

His clothes, though not very wet, felt as if they were constricting his body. The safety of Gi-tae and Hwang, the unpredictable Seo Hae-young, and a future as blurred as a slope shrouded in water mist coalesced to poke at his incomplete emotions.

“No, I…”

His unbalanced body swayed aimlessly back and forth. That he had waited. That he had gone through something, that he had jumped with a certain heart, and that he had waited for Seo Hae-young here… That couldn’t be. It couldn’t be, yet the reason he had pursued him in the end remained inexplicable. Lost in confusion, Hae-won dropped his head, letting out an overwhelming sob.

“No. I hate it… Now, everything, I hate it…”

“…You hate it?”

A suppressed laugh burst out from right beside him. The laughter, leaking out like a sneer, cut the rejection he had uttered despite his fear in half.

“Hae-won. You were waiting for me…”

The hand, large enough to cover his entire face, tapped his pale cheek. Each time the relaxed hand slapped his cheek as if pushing it, his head lightly bumped against the wardrobe. Reflexively shutting his eyes tight, Hae-won waited for the violence to follow. With no way to handle the fear, he clenched his teeth until his jaw ached. Soon, a mass of darkness approached rapidly behind his thin eyelids, and his shoulders hunched up. However, the large hand merely stroked the back of his head where it had bumped and quickly pulled away.

As he slowly lifted his head, his gaze entangled with Seo Hae-young’s, who had not looked away. Facing those two eyes, bloodshot as if they might shed tears of blood at any moment, Hae-won found himself unable to breathe even though he had regained a regular rhythm. In that moment, Seo Hae-young, pulling the corners of his mouth up into a smirk, uttered a strange sentence.

“I came to apologize. I want to apologize for everything I did wrong and make up with you.”

“…Eh?”

“I’ve thought about it a lot. Fucking a lot.”

As Hae-won chewed over the words he had heard clearly but could not understand, Seo Hae-young gripped his forearm and looked around the room. Under the grip that exerted no control over its strength, a twisting pain bloomed in his shoulder. Letting out a groan, Hae-won glanced at the room door visible behind Seo Hae-young and sobbed. It was strange. Something was going wrong.

Seo Hae-young felt unfamiliar. The way he rambled through a disjointed introduction instead of hitting him, the way he acted cluttered and unlike himself—everything was so unfamiliar that only the anxiety grew. While Hae-won gasped and pushed away the knee pressing into his inner thigh, Seo Hae-young, having found what he was looking for, reached out and pulled over a small dining table that hadn’t been folded away after lunch.

The narrow table was placed in the center. The legs of the table pushed against his shins, and the angular edge pressed firmly into his solar plexus. With the old wardrobe behind him and the table and Seo Hae-young in front, his escape route was blocked.

“Listen, Hae-won.”

Caught in the middle, Hae-won watched with horrified eyes as Seo Hae-young slowly knelt. Resting his elbows on the table, Seo Hae-young looked directly into Hae-won’s wide eyes. The eyes, densely framed by long eyelashes, did not blink once, and his fluttering lips opened and closed as if reciting a memorized script.

“It’s all my fault. Letting you wander around like that, letting other bastards share you, and… everything else, I’m sorry. I should have been faster, from the start. I’m so sorry I couldn’t be.”

The edge of the table pressed against his windpipe. Trapped in the middle, Hae-won was lost for words. There was no way an apology that missed the essence of the matter by such a wide margin could reach him. The time when a few words could resolve resentment had long since passed. Hae-won shook his head, struggling to exhale the breath that had risen to the tip of his chin. The ever-selfish Seo Hae-young dropped his head low and muttered in a small voice.

“I did it because I was upset. I was so fucking miserable…”

The confession, tinged with laughter, hovered between sincerity and a lie, making it difficult to judge its truth. The absurdly hollow reason, considering everything he had put him through, also cluttered his blank mind. He couldn’t throw away all the time they had spent knowing each other into the mud just because someone was “upset” or “miserable.” He couldn’t let the relationship be destroyed to this extent.

Even when Seo Hae-young met his eyes again, Hae-won could not continue speaking and only kept shaking his head. Watching Hae-won, who dropped tears without even making a sound, Seo Hae-young wore a chilling smile as if he had expected this. Then, he stepped back slightly and placed his left hand on the flat table. When the wrist wearing a scratched silver bracelet hit the wood, making a clear sound, Hae-won’s gaze, catching the familiar noise, dropped downward.

First, the bracelet he had gifted him came into view. Then, a hideous burn mark covering the once-pale back of the hand suddenly dominated his entire vision. It was a wound he had never seen, and one that should not have existed.

Gasping, Hae-won instinctively reached out. His trembling fingertips touched the scar, which looked as if a layer of skin had been peeled away. Seo Hae-young, who had turned his gaze away, did not notice the fingers brushing against the numb area and continued to mutter his piece while fumbling over the disheveled blanket.

“You said you wanted me to feel even a little bit of what you went through. We can just hurt the same amount. Right? So, make up with me.”

As the sun completely set, the streetlamps towering in the alley emitted a hazy light. The small room brightened faintly, and a flashing blade reflected the light. Startled, Hae-won pulled his hand away from the burn mark and opened his lips in an “Oh…”

A paring knife, the kind used for apologies or peeling apples, was held firmly in the white hand. As the image of a shadow heading toward the kitchen flashed through his mind, his spine stiffened and the nape of his neck turned cold. Letting out a low laugh, Seo Hae-young adjusted his grip on the handle so the blade pointed downward.

“I’m sorry. Let’s make up. Okay?”

The hand gripping the knife handle moved across the table toward the outstretched back of the hand. Hae-won, his limbs frozen like stone, rolled his eyes—which were as red as Seo Hae-young’s—to follow the sharp tip of the knife. He didn’t know what the other intended to do, but a sudden urge to stop him surged. However, contrary to his thoughts, only a dazed mumble came out, and his muscles did not move an inch.

The positioned knife soared high. It looked boringly slow, yet it was too fast to block. The blade, shorter than a palm’s width, pierced through the burn mark.

The raindrops falling from the eaves stopped in mid-air, and the cold wind that had crossed the threshold vanished. Everything that lived and breathed paused for a moment, and Hae-won was among them. What broke the frozen time was the sound of bone, muscle, and flesh being torn apart with a crunching noise. Hae-won could not even make a sound as he stood by and watched the scene.

Cold sweat beaded on the white forehead where a clearly healed scar remained, and as teeth clenched, a suppressed groan and a giggling laugh leaked out. Dark red blood soaked the table and spread wide, wider. When the blade, which had split the burn mark in half and been pulled out, headed toward the fingers, a thunderous scream erupted from Hae-won’s choked throat.

His stiff legs gave way in an instant, and he kicked the table leg haphazardly. As the table tilted, the thin blood pooled at the edge dripped onto the crumpled blanket. From between the lips of Seo Hae-young, who was laughing with shaking shoulders, a mumble drenched in longing leaked out frantically.

“…I keep seeing you. I don’t want to see you, but I keep, keep seeing you.”

Blood sprayed by the blade splashed onto the area around Seo Hae-young’s eyes. A drop of blood, flowing like a tear, cut across the pale cheek and clung to the tip of the chin. At the same moment the rounded drop of blood fell, unable to withstand its own weight, the crimson-stained tip of the knife dug into the index finger.

The blade, having carved out a piece of finger flesh, stopped just before hitting the bone. The opposing forces of pulling and pushing clashed tensely. The gaze that traveled up the wavering tip of the knife rested on the hand firmly gripping the back of the hand where veins bulged.

The uncontrollably trembling fingertips were pale, highlighting the unsightly nails. The nails, though not long, had been clean, but now they were short as if newly grown, with jagged edges. The eyes, clouded by pain, moved slowly from the nails up to Hae-won’s face.

“You’re crazy…! Blood, this is bleeding… Ah… What, what do I do…”

In those wide eyes, an indescribable emotion swirled. A tide rushed into the pupils, which held a mixture of shock and horror deeper than betrayal or fear. Waves that covered and rose over the sandy beach fell drop by drop. Facing those deeply sunken eyes, Seo Hae-young felt the pain of his skin being torn to shreds becoming hazily diluted. His furrowed brow smoothed out, and the corners of his mouth, where a crooked smile had appeared, formed a graceful arc.

It was the expression he had missed so desperately. It was a face that made him say things that would inevitably cause hurt, and a fragility that forced him to raise his hand. It was a loveliness that evoked ambivalent emotions—a desire to strip away everything he had and make him crawl on the floor, yet a desire to shower him with unexpected gifts. From Hae-won, who was shaking his limbs with a face of agony as if it were his own hand being hacked, came a nostalgic scent.

“I’ll cut it… I’ll cut all of this off for you. Then will you forgive me?”

As the blade tilted diagonally, the base of the blood-stained finger was crushed. Hae-won, who had been trying to stop Seo Hae-young using even the hand that suffered aftereffects from the fall in the valley, shook his head as if fainting.

“N-no. No, don’t do it! Don’t do it!”

The blade sank further, and bright red blood spurted out. This couldn’t be happening. Terrified, Hae-won pushed the table away with his knee and lunged at Seo Hae-young, who would not let go of the knife. The edge of the overturned table scraped a long line into the skin of his thigh, but he had no time to feel the pain. Climbing over the waist of the fallen Seo Hae-young, Hae-won clung to him more desperately than he had in the past when trying to take away scissors.

“Let go…! Just let go of this… Hae-young… Seo Hae-young!”

He tried pulling the tightly held knife, and he bit hard into the fingers and wrist as he had before, but the steadfast arm did not budge. Even though he made four or five bloody bite marks and his thighs tightening around Seo Hae-young’s waist and his restraining arms were trembling violently, he could not stop the blade from descending every time the other tightened his forearm. Finally, when the tip of the blade touched his neck directly, a horrified Hae-won whispered a plea drenched in tears.

“Hae, Hae-young. Hae-young, no. Please, if you do—if you do this, I… If you, if you do this…”

A damp sensation settled on his scarred thigh, then brushed past his elbow and climbed up to his wrist. Their fingers became intricately entangled across the handle of the utility knife. A tattered hand warmly enveloped a hand with prominent veins. Hae-won looked frantically back and forth between the man he was pinning down and his own index finger, which had been sliced into a bizarre shape and was barely clinging to his palm.

“If I do the same to you… will you forgive me then? Can we make up?”

Lying disheveled on the damp floor, Seo Hae-young wore a suggestive smile. His black hair, wet from the steady rain, clung to his bloodless forehead, creating a chilling sense of dissonance. A drop of blood that had fallen on the corner of his slightly curved eye trailed down toward his temple. His pupils were dilated, and his gaze was hazy, as if he were dreaming.

“You still like me… right?”

Beneath the gentle yet coercive whisper, doubt and certainty coexisted. Faced with the question that was the root of how their ordinary relationship had been ruined to this extent, Hae-won could neither bring himself to lie nor offer the truth. He simply repeated the same plea—don’t do it, don’t do it—while staring at the tip of the knife descending toward his long neck.

“Don’t, don’t do this… Stop. Stop it, Hae-young… If you, if you do this, I… What am I, what do I do…”

“It’s because I’m sorry… I’m so sorry that I want to apologize.”

The forces that had been opposing each other began to shift slowly toward one side. The trembling tip finally touched the underside of a sharp jawline. It was a spot Hae-won had once wanted to slice with something sharp to drain the rotten blood. In the place where fear had prevented him from doing anything, Seo Hae-young easily lowered the blade.

If he let go of the handle, it felt as though the blade would slit his throat instantly; yet if he didn’t, he simply couldn’t win against the other’s physical strength. Completely collapsed in an embrace that evoked nostalgia, Hae-won prayed and prayed again. Every time he shook his head, tears fell in droplets, thinning the blood that stained Seo Hae-young’s cheek.

“Stop it, Hae-young… Don’t do this to me…”

A chicken with its throat slit. An image flooded his vision: a chicken hanging upside down, pouring out all the blood pumped by its heart, eventually ending up inside his own stomach. The pale broth, the droplets of blood spotting the yard, the tender pieces of meat, and the faucet and wall where the bloodstains wouldn’t fade for a long time. The chicken that used to rub its wings against his scrawny shins whenever he fed it, now plucked bare and served on a small dining table… He felt a surge of nausea. An uncontrollable disgust washed over him, as if what he had eaten months ago had been pieces of Seo Hae-young’s flesh.

“Ugh, hurk… ugh…!”

As Hae-won coughed and dry-heaved, Seo Hae-young, holding him trapped in his arms, did not withdraw the knife and continued to smile. A voice, blurred like mist, seeped into his ears.

If you said you like me… then you have to take responsibility for me.

Was it an auditory hallucination or not? He had no time to judge. The trembling blade finally pierced the soft skin. As the tip of the knife slid horizontally, slicing through the flesh, Hae-won gripped the honed blade and turned it with all his might. The first joint of his finger, thin as a dry twig, was sliced straight through, revealing the vivid red flesh inside.

“Ah—, gasp…! Hng, ugh…!”

After his teeth clenched tight, a single cry burst out. The desperate scream stemmed not from the pain of the flesh being cut, but from the long streak of blood drawn across the pale skin.

The utility knife, smeared with the blood of both men, clattered to the floor. Ah, ah… A grotesque moan leaked from his parted lips. With blood—belonging to who knew whom—splattered across his cheeks, Hae-won looked as if he had committed an impulsive murder.

The eyes of a chicken, as the light faded from them moment by moment, swallowed his reality whole. The blood spotting every surface and the fragmenting sense of reality magnified the wound and carved away his judgment. Short, panting breaths escaped from the teeth of the completely devastated Hae-won. The hand pressing down on the wound, whose exact location he couldn’t determine, shook violently.

It definitely wasn’t his neck. But it felt as if his neck had been slit. One moment it felt like nothing was wrong, the next he thought he could see the parted muscle, and then it seemed to be dyed pitch black. He couldn’t make any sense of it. The sound of his breathing—whether he was swallowing a sob or letting it out—echoed through the blood-stained room and hammered loudly against his ears.

“Ah… Ah, what, what am I supposed to do…”

Even as he hurriedly wiped away the falling tears with the back of his hand, reason did not return. Crawling frantically across the small room, Hae-won snatched up a towel Gi-tae had hung the night before and wrapped it around the bleeding area.

“Hae-young, please. Please, Seo Hae-young… Why, why are you doing this to me… Don’t, don’t be like this…”

His eyes, directed toward the ceiling, closed slowly and opened again, but all Hae-won could see was the blood spreading in a dark red hue. As if waiting for this exact moment, the scene he had faced every time he snapped awake from a dead sleep after reaching his limit unfolded before him. The walls melted, and everything spun around. Amidst a ringing in his ears similar to a bursting sound, his urgent breaths acted as a stopwatch. The ticking of the second hand, encountered at a crossroads of choice, raced steeply forward.

He had to pull himself together. Find the phone, report it, and then… what then? What was he supposed to do next? Did he have to go back down to that hellish basement of his own accord? Did he have to return to that life of spreading his legs just to make a living? Did he have to cling to Seo Hae-young, whom he resented enough to make his stomach turn, yet could not let go of even in death?

He didn’t want to. He didn’t want to do that with Seo Hae-young anymore.

If so, conversely, what if he didn’t call anyone?

What if the skin, which glowed white with a healthy complexion, turned a bruised blue; what if the arm that had been taut before striking his cheek violently fell to the ground; what if all the words that had helped him endure a grueling daily life, only to plunge him deeper into the mire, entered the grave? What if Seo Hae-young stopped breathing…?

Hae-won sat blankly without blinking, then started in shock. The towel was becoming soaked in bright red blood. His bloodshot eyes rolled frantically from place to place.

“Ugh…”

Suddenly, he felt a desperate need for someone’s help. He needed the warmth he instinctively sought whenever a seizure began after sinking deep into despair. He longed for that cold kindness—the one who would grip his wrist tightly and whisper that it was okay, and who would slap his cheek to wake him whenever he was consumed by nightmares. As he missed the man—whom he hadn’t recognized but knew exactly who it was—through countless nights, his upright torso swayed back and forth as if fluttering in the wind.

What do I do. What do I do. How, what should I do. What do I do. What, what can I possibly…

His mutterings grew like a rambling lament. The man who had repeatedly woven tight nightmares only to fish him out of them lay with his head on Hae-won’s lap, staring blankly with pale, open eyes. Those unfocused eyes posed a question.

What are you going to do now?

Because it was such a difficult question, Hae-won could not easily find an answer. His lips parted and closed, letting out moans that couldn’t form words. As time passed, the lines of Seo Hae-young, which had transformed into firm and strong contours, blurred into a hazy white. A signal flare demanding a decision went off. Taking a breath, Hae-won traced back a past that had faded and lost its luster long ago. He walked along the memories accumulated from his distant childhood until three years ago, and in an instant, he was swept away.

He remembered the days he crouched in the alleyway to avoid his father, who had come home drunk on daytime liquor. It was a winter without snow. A young Seo Hae-young, whose baby fat hadn’t quite disappeared, turned the corner and approached, gently tidying Hae-won’s torn hair. He remembered taking the hand that was offered with the words, “Want to come play?” The boy led him to a house that smelled good, was warm, and was clean. Then, he pinched Hae-won’s bruised cheek, saying, “If anything happens, tell me first.” Just as he was about to burst into tears from the pain, the boy offered a snack he had never tasted before. Next week, next month, and next year, the boy continued to poke at the painful wounds and give him rewards that were more than he deserved.

He remembered the day he showed him a movie, feeling embarrassed that he was always the one receiving. Hae-young had kept a disinterested expression the whole time, making Hae-won walk on eggshells, but after that, the movie they saw became a horror film they watched together every time summer returned.

He remembered Seo Hae-young, who would disappear for half a day when Hae-won was stuck at home with an out-of-season cold, only to show up in the middle of the night, shaking a bag containing medicine and porridge and saying, “Hi.” The medicine didn’t work well, and the porridge was tasteless, but he wasn’t lonely.

And the next day, his father died. There was only one person who stayed by his side and kept him company at the funeral home where no one else came. He couldn’t help but love him.

There had been so many wretched moments, yet the only things remaining in the circuits of his memory were moments of gratitude and happiness. Seo Hae-young was a sanctuary where he could never fully let his guard down.

The deliberation, which felt infinitely long when counting each piece, vanished without a trace once he woke up to find it had been but a moment. Hae-won let out a cry that bordered on a hollow laugh. Even if he let go of Seo Hae-young, he couldn’t let go of those memories. Without those memories, he was nothing. He could not exist. Lifting an arm whose muscles had grown stiff, Hae-won pulled Seo Hae-young’s head into his embrace.

“It’s, it’s okay. Hae-young. We, we’re okay… You won’t die. What do I do. Hae-young, what do I do? I don’t know why, why I’m like this…”

The ghosts of the past seized his mind and swung him around at will. Even after seeing the bottom filled with dirty water, he hated himself for making the wrong choice, yet the feeling of the hair brushing against his skin was unbearably ticklish, and tears poured down.

As Hae-won cried, repeating only that it would be okay, sticky blood touched his elbow. A hand stained with red blood climbed up his thin forearm, tenaciously like a leech, and slowly. The touch, which felt like a light tickle one moment and an inescapable chain the next, wrapped around his shoulder. His bent back lowered further, and soft lips brushed against the curve of his ear. It was a voice that resembled the sound of a thin breeze.

I love it so much when you’re like this. It makes it feel like I’m the only one you have.

The sentence, which shared the same texture as the whispers of long ago, stepped stealthily into his intact ear instead of a pit dug in a reed forest. It was a step that refreshed a consciousness that repeatedly swelled and then shriveled up. A grotesquely twisted smile hung on the corners of Hae-won’s mouth, and the last raindrop hanging from the eaves finally fell.

* * *

When the drizzling rain stopped, a wind with a lowered temperature brought the scent of people. The sound of raincoats rustling and the sound of exchanged conversation drew closer. Beyond the door, which was swinging wide open, the panicked voice of Hwang could be heard.

“What…! What is this…! Gi-tae, Gi-tae!”

Gi-tae, who had rushed into the room while half-removing his raincoat, came to a sudden halt. Stepping on the droplets of blood scattered from the struggle, Gi-tae looked down at Hae-won, who sat dazed in the center of the wrecked room. When Hae-won, who had been shivering all over like an aspen leaf and shedding only tears, finally lifted his lowered head, Gi-tae’s stiff legs took a step forward.

Urging Hwang to prepare tea, Gi-tae grabbed the shoulders of Hae-won, whose face was so pale he looked as if he might faint at any moment. Hae-won, whose upper body swayed violently, couldn’t answer the questions and only muttered one phrase repeatedly.

“Save, please save me… Please save me. Save…”

Even as he pleaded to be saved several times, Hae-won hugged the other’s body tightly, as if any hand reaching out to help would be a hand stealing Seo Hae-young away forever. He pushed his hands into the soft hair, wrapped his arms around the broad shoulders, buried his face in the nape of the neck where blood had dried, and shook his head. At the sound of the crying, which resembled a weak animal, Gi-tae hesitated before using force to pry Hae-won’s arms open and wrapped a towel around the large hand that showed no sign of the bleeding stopping. When Hwang, who had brought an elderly doctor who often checked on their condition, rushed in, a commotion broke out in the middle of the night.

Hae-won sat blankly like a child who had lost their parents’ hand until the people left, then slowly lifted his head. A breeze blew in from outside the door. In his blinking, flickering vision, Seo Hae-young appeared. The eyes that had watched him without looking away remained like an afterimage.

Crawling on his knees, Hae-won dug through the layers of disheveled blankets, grabbed ten fifty-thousand won bills and a card he had carefully kept, and staggered onto the floor. As the edge of the card dug deep into the linearly sliced skin, a blunt pain spread. However, his senses were dull, as if he had stayed awake for three nights. If anything, that was a relief. His wobbling knees led his wretched body toward the wind.

Before Gi-tae, who had stepped onto the veranda, could take another step, Hae-won collapsed in front of him, grabbed his pant leg, and held out the crumpled bills and the card. Forcing the items into Gi-tae’s rough hand as the latter frowned and tried to refuse, Hae-won moved his stiff tongue.

“I, I have money… The card, this. Noona said, she said she put a lot in here…”

His tangled tongue produced incomplete pronunciations. However, the deep furrow between Gi-tae’s brows as he looked down at the hand did not disappear. At the call of the old man asking why he wasn’t coming quickly, Gi-tae looked back and, without hesitation, slid his hands under the shivering Hae-won’s armpits and lifted him up. The threshold of the room touched his heels.

“Stay at home.”

“This, Hae-young… Hae-young… I have to go…”

Shaking off the arms that tried to put him back into the room, Hae-won stepped down from the veranda, picked up the scattered bills, held them out to Gi-tae again, and stepped back hesitantly.

“I have to, I have to go… Hae-young, called me, so…”

Watching Hae-won cross the yard, barely keeping his buckling knees upright, Gi-tae let out a rare sigh and dropped his gaze to the floor. He couldn’t find what he was looking for. Finding a pair of slippers covered in dust under the veranda, he shook them off and hurried over. By the time he put the shoes on the feet of Hae-won—who was clinging to the old man trying to get into the backseat, displaying a stubbornness never seen before, insisting he would ride there—the sun had dropped below the horizon.

The dampness pressed into the ground by the steady rain swallowed the coastal road. A single old sedan, driving along the coastal road that looked ominous with thick fog, rattled every time the sea breeze blew in. The rain had thinned, so the tunnels weren’t blocked, but it certainly wasn’t good weather.

Four people were in the unstable, shaking car. Gi-tae at the steering wheel, the old man turned around uncomfortably in the reclined passenger seat checking the wound, and two outsiders stained with blood.

While the old man sighed deeply and unwrapped the towel—which looked as if it would drip bright red blood if wrung—and replaced it with a new one, Hae-won, who stubbornly held Seo Hae-young in his meager embrace, didn’t answer any questions and simply stroked the pale cheek where blood droplets had dried.

When he whispered, “Hae-young, Seo Hae-young,” the closed eyelids slowly lifted. Since the eyes closed immediately if he didn’t call the name, his throat, which had called one person’s name dozens of times, became unsightly hoarse and metallic. When he called “Hae-young” once more, his eyes met those hazy pupils. The eyes, blurred as if consciousness were fading, curved slightly. The heartless right hand that had driven the blade into his own hand moved slightly and gently caressed his thin forearm.

It was a touch entirely different from usual. A touch marked by a caution as if dealing with a mirage that would scatter if gripped too hard or vanish if not touched, led the hand that was holding the towel to the nape of the neck. Despite being able to shake it off, the hand was drawn by an irresistible force to the plump lips.

A red tongue slipped out from the slightly parted lips and wickedly licked the index finger. Biting the twitching finger, the tongue licked without hesitation all the way to the hideously grown nail before moving down to the palm. Burying his lips in the palm where blood was slowly seeping out, Seo Hae-young curved the corners of his eyes with a look of utmost satisfaction.

Hae-won lifted his vacant eyes, feeling the damp mass of flesh rummaging through his wound. His blood-soaked reflection stared back from the rearview mirror. Then, his gaze met Gi-tae’s, who had been looking at the backseat. Hae-won stared into Gi-tae’s blunt, expressionless eyes and parted his lips.

What do I do?

No sound came out. Perhaps he had tried to speak, but the words were blocked. Though they were in the same space, he was severed from it. Alone with Seo Hae-young, in a place far removed from everything.

* * *

They had decided to fry pajeon once Gi-tae finished tidying up the tent and returned. They were going to call Mr. Hwang and the grandmother from the house with the blue gate, set a table on the porch, and share the leftover makgeolli from the business. Gi-tae, who rarely smiled but would occasionally let out a soft chuckle while frowning at Mr. Hwang’s mischievous jokes—the Gi-tae who should have been doing exactly that this evening—was instead staring at his sparsely stitched palm with a grim, frozen expression. And before the two of them, instead of a modest courtyard, stood the stark white curtains of a hospital.

As if his mouth had been stitched shut along with his palm, Hae-won stared blankly at the seam where the wall met the floor without uttering a word. With this, there were now two scars etched into the palm of his left hand.

“If your hand was like this, you should have said something.”

A damp wet wipe scrubbed harshly against his cheek. Beneath the wipe, which rubbed so hard the surface began to fray, the dried blood vanished, gradually revealing his bare skin. After pulling out several wipes at once and scrubbing, Gi-tae clicked his tongue in frustration and dragged the vacant Hae-won to the bathroom to wash his face. Holding the back of Hae-won’s head firmly, Gi-tae soaked his hand in cold water and washed away the remaining bloodstains as if bathing a five-year-old, then wiped his arms and legs with wet tissues.

Gripping a calf thinner than his own forearm, Gi-tae clicked his tongue again and roughly cleaned the blackened soles of Hae-won’s feet. After glancing at the bandaged hand, Gi-tae stuffed a wad of paper into Hae-won’s pants pocket. It was the bills and cards he had received from Seo Ga-young.

“Keep it. Or put it in your bank account.”

The bills in the bulging pocket rustled, tickling his thigh. With every step, Hae-won relied on the hand gripping his swaying body, walking down the stark white corridor with his swollen eyes cast down.

Unlike the elderly man who had returned to Anbyeok-ri before it was too late, Gi-tae had stayed by his side, remaining through the night. The excessive kindness received from someone with whom he had no connection felt suffocatingly heavy today. As Gi-tae caught the elevator to the ward, he asked if he was hungry, but Hae-won only shook his head in silence. Everything felt like his own fault, and he didn’t dare bring the words “I’m sorry” to his lips.

If only he had left town as soon as Seo Ga-young visited. If only he hadn’t grown attached to Gi-tae and Mr. Hwang and had just packed his bags. If only he had ignored the chocolates neatly placed atop the wall. No, if only he had run straight through the slopes the moment he saw that retreating back and fled to another place immediately… Would anything have changed then? Seo Hae-young’s voice, speaking of forgiveness from a completely skewed perspective, clung to his damaged eardrums and circled around. Like a cicada crying incessantly all summer, mem-mem…

“Mr. Hae-won?”

A strange voice sounding right in front of him pulled his vacant gaze upward. The elevator doors had opened, having arrived at the correct floor. As he stepped into the hallway following Gi-tae, a person who had been waiting called out his name—a name no one else in this place knew. Who was it? After a moment of thought, Hae-won let out a weak sigh of realization.

Was it last night? He vaguely recalled calling the number on the business card tucked between the bills and pouring out the tears he hadn’t finished shedding. As he sobbed, unable to speak properly, Seo Ga-young had been silent, seemingly flustered, and after listening quietly, said she would send someone. Seo Ga-young, who lightly brushed aside his plea for his Noona to come instead, asked a question that could not be answered after a brief silence.

“Let me ask one thing. I told you not to stay in that neighborhood. Why were you there?”

The way she asked a question she already knew the answer to was so similar to her brother that he was left speechless. As he let his hand drop, unable to continue, Gi-tae took over the phone, briefly relayed the name of the hospital and Seo Hae-young’s condition, and the call ended.

About an hour later, as soon as he entered the hospital lobby, a person who recognized him approached immediately and efficiently handled the things he had left unattended. He hadn’t seen the face clearly then, but now that he encountered them after washing his face and regaining some composure, he realized it was a quite tall person. Min-jung, whose eyes were roughly at the same level as Hae-won’s—who was not short himself—smiled brightly and reached out her hand.

“I couldn’t greet you properly earlier. I’m Choi Min-jung… oh my. Your hand is a mess.”

About to shake hands, Min-jung noticed the wrapped bandages and naturally withdrew her hand. After deftly turning her shoulder to shake hands with Gi-tae, Min-jung pointed toward the corridor where the patient rooms were and rattled off a series of superficial instructions.

“The admission procedures are all done, so please act as the guardian. For now, it’s a three-week hospitalization; no alcohol or smoking. Don’t overdo it. Well… I think you can hear the rest from the doctor or once Mr. Seo Hae-young wakes up.”

Hae-won gave a stiff nod to Min-jung, who spoke so fast he couldn’t keep up, and turned his eyes toward the long, stretching corridor. It was a hallway so silent it felt like the emergency room—a place where families on summer vacation ended up in the ER, busy medical staff, and the various noises of people complaining of pain—had been flipped upside down. Min-jung, with an expression that clearly showed her smile was merely a courtesy, caught the elevator going down and then back up, raising her voice.

“Could I speak with you for a moment?”

Startled, he looked back to find Min-jung’s gaze fixed on Gi-tae. Not knowing why she was calling Gi-tae separately, he hesitated, unsure of what to do, when a thick hand gently pushed his shoulder. Hae-won stared blankly at Gi-tae as he followed Min-jung into the elevator, saying, “Go on,” and then turned back to take a step into the corridor where not even a mouse would linger. It was a step as slow as crawling. He wanted to reach the destination quickly, yet at the same time, he wished he would never arrive; unfortunately, since the path had a dead end, he could not walk endlessly.

Finally arriving in front of the room where Seo Hae-young was, Hae-won rubbed his stinging eyes, a result of not sleeping and crying without pause. His hesitation was long before he finally placed his hand on the door that would open easily with a slight push.

If he were to run away, he could still do it now. As the pocket containing light items began to feel heavy, anxiety rose. Burying his eyes in his wrist, which smelled of a pungent scent, Hae-won struggled, exhaling irregular breaths. Unable to easily choose either path, he wanted to stomp his feet and scream. Instead of shedding tears that wouldn’t come, he wept painfully with only broken sobs for about ten minutes before his white-knuckled hand finally opened the door.

When a formless hand reached out from the gap in the door and pulled at his ankle, he could no longer consider escaping. His ankle, with the malleolus crushed by dress shoes and distorted, stepped forward slowly, as if treading through a fog that hid obstacles. As he entered the space where Seo Hae-young was, his entire skin tingled as if pierced by needles.

He closed the door, which had been left open wide enough for one person to pass. Glancing at the reception area decorated in warm wood, he moved across the neat corridor. Stopping for a moment at the corner, Hae-won’s gaze was stolen by the lush green park visible through the large glass window that occupied one side of the room. It was a brilliant color that made yesterday—gloomy and thick with fog—feel like a dream. With difficulty, he tore his eyes away from the swaying leaves, and the bed located near the window caught the edge of his vision.

His frozen feet broke away with a cracking sound. With one step, the legs hidden beneath the dazzlingly white blanket were revealed; with two steps, the chest rising and falling shallowly was revealed. With three steps, the man who hid a hideous interior behind a noble shell was revealed.

Hae-won moved slowly toward the man through the silent space, where it felt as if he could hear the sound of floating dust. It seemed as though fatigue had killed off both fear and hatred. Finally arriving at the man’s bedside, Hae-won ignored the plush sofa provided nearby and stared at the pale face.

He was a different man from the one last night. The man with his eyes closed did not look like a demon, nor did he look like the insane human who had laughed while tearing Hae-won’s hands to shreds. He looked exactly as he did long ago, very long ago—sleeping so soundly that he would never wake unless shaken violently, making Hae-won inevitably press a kiss to his lips.

There were two things different from back then. One of the hands resting neatly on his stomach was wrapped in bandages far thicker than Hae-won’s, and the skin glimpsed between the collar of the patient gown was the same. The wound that narrowly missed the throat and rested on the collarbone was the result of Hae-won offering his own palm.

His gaze, traveling up the flawless neck, lingered for a long time on the picture-perfect features. The morning sunlight cast brightly over the man’s face. When his eyes were closed and his mouth shut, his face could not be more beautiful. When the gaze filled with countless reproaches, as if looking at a sinner, was hidden, and the words that repeated interrogation and oppression vanished, the past he had loved appeared. That discrepancy continued to shake him even now, a year later.

Moving his fingertips to break the rigidity, Hae-won lifted his trembling arm. His outstretched hand hovered in the air just above the neck.

Now, he wanted to… stop everything. He wished this man would disappear. He wished Seo Hae-young, who had gripped him and shaken him as he pleased since a distant past he couldn’t even remember, would die. If he pressed down hard with both hands, he could kill him in an instant.

However, the hand that was gradually descending turned away before it could even touch the area around the neck.

The tip of the middle finger, having given up on the neck, touched the torn lower lip. A scab had formed over the wound where teeth had clashed and torn the skin. He carefully touched the soft, crushed flesh and the rough wound. This was the only place he was capable of tearing.

How on earth did it come to this? Even if he pondered it, a problem he hadn’t found the answer to for over ten years was unlikely to be solved now.

Perhaps it was because he let his guard down, thinking the man was fast asleep. When the finger tracing the lip touched the corner of the mouth, the fan-shaped eyelashes slowly lifted. As a clear gaze appeared, as if he had never been asleep, Hae-won’s heart plummeted. There was no time to withdraw his hand. The moment Hae-won hurriedly averted his eyes and tried to step back, a grip like a shackle seized his forearm.

“Ah…!”

It was a grip that crushed flesh and broke bone. Pulled helplessly, the moment his knees reflexively hit the bed, the bandaged hand wrapped around his waist. The force pressing down on his wrist dragged him onto the bed, which was too small for two people to lie on.

The slippers Gi-tae had put on him flopped to the floor, and a strong scent wafted over. Seo Hae-young, who pulled Hae-won’s thigh and brought him completely onto the bed while Hae-won remained frozen, unable to breathe, buried his face in Hae-won’s flat chest, heedless of the clothes stained with dried blood.

“…Yoon Hae-won.”

The low, sunken voice spread with a deep resonance. Seo Hae-young, resting his forehead against the chest that was beating uncontrollably fast before gradually finding a regular rhythm, pushed his thigh between Hae-won’s tense legs. His knee, pressing into the inner thigh where red handprints likely remained, firmly entwined the legs that were like kindling, and the bandaged hand slid under the arm to press their upper bodies tightly together. The sensation of the lips he had felt with his fingertips earlier traced the hollow of the collarbone for a long time before suddenly digging in with teeth. While Hae-won flinched, Seo Hae-young left a shallow bite mark and whispered softly against it.

“I’ve been waiting.”

Those words sounded like a complaint, or conversely, like an urge directed at Hae-won, who was struggling to deny his emotions. Or perhaps it was a whisper that contained both meanings. Hae-won, who had kept his mouth shut since arriving at the hospital, responded with silence this time as well. Seo Hae-young, blinking eyes that held a hazy light as if the anesthesia hadn’t fully worn off, murmured incoherent sentences as if acting spoiled in his sleep.

“I thought it was a dream… I knew you’d come.”

Hae-won felt a half-hearted agreement, wishing that all of this truly were a dream. The forearm that had been gripped burned as if branded. The breath of Seo Hae-young, who had finally entered his embrace and exhaled a languid sigh, felt like a net entwining his entire body. The sunlight casting over the white blanket was warm, but a chilly frost rose from deep within. Seo Hae-young, who fell into a confused sleep instantly as if he had only been waiting for Hae-won to arrive, bound him fiercely even in his sleep whenever Hae-won showed signs of trying to escape.

Forced to let the strength leave his body, Hae-won leaned his cheek against the soft hair and looked up at the deep blue sky. It was a scenery so different from yesterday. Looking at the pale landscape, he let go of the emotions he had kept locked away for fear they might burst out.

“…I wish you would die, but I’m afraid you might.”

The sensation of floating he had experienced once on the cliff during the pouring rain made the ground vanish beneath his feet. The fall he thought had ended that summer was still continuing, and continuing. The bottom was not in sight. A sandstorm blowing from the pitch-black abyss struck his desolate body. His heart, so parched it had no strength left to fluctuate, was covered in dust.

As he began to grow sick of it all to the point of nausea, he started to want the thing he had feared his entire life. Closing his eyes, Hae-won hugged the head of the evenly breathing Seo Hae-young and prayed silently.

The one who always held the hilt of the sword was Seo Hae-young. The beginning and end of the relationship depended solely on his hand. It felt ridiculous now—the days he had spent frantically running away, ignoring that fact and only desperate to avoid reality. He had struggled and fled with the determination to die, but he was not in a position to be the one to sever the relationship first.

So now, he wished Seo Hae-young would be the one to heartlessly discard him first. Like the countless interests he had cycled through, he wished the man would throw him in the trash, saying he was getting bored. Since he had no strength left to cling pathetically, he wouldn’t be able to stop the departing steps, and though he wouldn’t be able to forget quickly, he would eventually be able to. Even if he died because he couldn’t forget, he prayed endlessly that this time, Seo Hae-young would pity him and personally sever the relationship that had become a curse.

* * *

Seo Hae-young fell into a deep sleep, as if being compensated for the time he had suffered from insomnia, so Hae-won couldn’t be sure if his desperate wish had been heard. Hae-won merely sank into thought, gently stroking the soft hair with a touch that held nothing but a sense of obligation.

Only a year ago, he would sometimes stay up all night because an unfamiliar bed was uncomfortable. In truth, what had kept Hae-won tossing and turning all night was not the uncomfortable bed, but the absence of a person. When he let the days pass without knowing the seasons in the basement he called home, he would mark Seo Hae-young’s scheduler every day he visited. He had put in great effort for a while, noting that he comes this day, and doesn’t come that day. In reality, the sparse patterns on a single page should have been marks in every single box. Voluntarily taking on the role of the one who waits and isolating himself was a kind of avoidance. It was a defense mechanism created by a bloated fear, because he didn’t know why Seo Hae-young was doing this, because he couldn’t understand those feelings at all.

Unlike the time when he had been woken up, the incomplete sense of stability provided by Seo Hae-young, sleeping soundly in his arms, relaxed his exhausted body. It was a level of learning that made him let out a hollow laugh.

Just as his eyes were beginning to close, he gripped the arm of Seo Hae-young that was tightly wrapped around his waist and gently slipped away. As expected, the man tightened his grip as if unwilling to let go, but knowing that he slept so deeply at times that he wouldn’t notice if someone carried him away, Hae-won struggled to shake off the strong grip and stepped off the bed. After neatly covering him with the blanket that had slid down to his waist, Hae-won led his exhausted body to sit on the opposite sofa.

On the edge of the sofa, which was spacious enough for four or five people, several shopping bags were neatly arranged. Looking inside, he saw clothes that hadn’t even had their wrapping paper removed, stacked neatly. They were a bit too small to be Seo Hae-young’s. As the smiling face of Min-jung, whom he had encountered in front of the elevator, flashed through his mind, a long sigh escaped. While he was fiddling with the bags containing autumn clothes, the person he had been waiting for returned.

After sending away Min-jung, who was handing over an envelope as a thank-you or reward, Gi-tae returned to the room, saw the silently sleeping Seo Hae-young, and sat down next to Hae-won. Hae-won moved aside so he could sit comfortably, observing the atmosphere in the silence that had settled after the commotion. After appearing to think for a long while, Gi-tae suddenly spoke.

“Yoon Hae-won.”

Hearing his name from someone else’s lips after a year felt alien. Perhaps that was why shivers had raced down his spine every time Seo Hae-young called his name last night and today.

Having lived as a dependent without even revealing his name, he had no pride to uphold. He simply nodded, rubbing his goosebump-ridden forearms. Gi-tae, leaning his elbows on his knees and looking out the window, gestured toward Seo Hae-young with his chin.

“Who is he?”

It was a question that had been deferred, but it was now a question that had to be answered. Clearing his unsightly, hoarse throat, Hae-won hesitated before his dry lips parted.

“A friend… he was a friend.”

“…A friend.”

Since the man was so expressionless, it was hard to tell what he was thinking, but he didn’t look like he believed the story. It was understandable. What kind of friend suddenly shows up and turns a house into a bloodbath, and what kind of friend remains unconscious all day as if dozens of people had died before his eyes?

However, there was no other word to define his relationship with Seo Hae-young. Even if he said they had been friends for ten years and had lived and tumbled together a few years ago, the shame and self-loathing would inevitably be his own to bear. Bowing his head low, Hae-won rubbed the bloodstains on his shorts and added a small remark.

“Now we’re… nothing. We’re nothing to each other.”

This, too, sounded untrustworthy. Gi-tae stared blankly at Hae-won, who spoke of a lie as if it were fact, then frowned as if something occurred to him.

“The one you said would come looking for you?”

Hae-won looked startled. He hadn’t realized Gi-tae would remember the nonsense he had partially confessed in the back of the truck. As he hesitated and tried to gloss over it, Gi-tae didn’t try to dig further, as usual. He didn’t hastily offer help or tell him to open up, nor did he get angry about the nuisance being caused in someone else’s neighborhood; he simply stood up from the sofa.

“I have things to take care of. I have to go.”

“Ah… I-I’m sorry.”

As Hae-won set down the shopping bag and stood up to follow, Gi-tae pointed to his clothes and asked, ‘Are these yours?’ Though he hadn’t heard the full story, the circumstances suggested it, so Hae-won nodded. Gi-tae, turning his back as if to leave immediately, gestured for him to follow.

Hae-won followed hesitantly and arrived at the shower room attached to the hospital room. Despite several refusals, he had no choice in front of Gi-tae, who had said, ‘What are you going to do with your hands like that?’ He stripped off the t-shirt that would never turn white no matter how many times it was washed, and kept his eyes tightly shut while Gi-tae scrubbed his hair vigorously. After being practically forced to wash his face and changing into new clothes, Hae-won belatedly offered his apologies and gratitude.

Looking down at the restless and flustered Hae-won, Gi-tae opened the hospital room door and waited for a moment. Hae-won, slow to realize the wait was an invitation to come along, shook his head slightly.

“…I’ll stay here.”

He managed a faint smile, unaware of how gloomy his voice sounded. Gi-tae, who he expected to leave without a word as usual, glanced at the room over Hae-won’s shoulder and left a slow remark.

“Take a taxi if you want to come.”

The door closed and Gi-tae vanished, but Hae-won could not bring himself to leave the hallway for a long time. He stared blankly at the dark-carpeted floor, counting the patterns, before finally turning his reluctant steps. He set the remaining shopping bag down and lay long across the sofa; by coincidence, he was facing Seo Hae-young.

Blinking his hazy eyes, he tried to resist the pouring sleep, but an uncontrollable fatigue pressed down on his eyelids. It didn’t take long for his consciousness, severed in the middle, to drift into the depths.

* * *

Min-jung gulped down the last sip of mix coffee, crumpled the paper cup, and knocked on the hospital room door a couple of times. There was no answer. Assuming he was asleep, she entered the room without hesitation. Her steps were light, knowing that once she left a few things, the tedious cleanup for the man would be finished. Jiggling her car keys as she entered, Min-jung raised an eyebrow upon finding the bed empty. Just as she looked around, wondering where he had gone, the long sofa caught her eye.

On the wide sofa, Hae-won was fast asleep with his knees bent. Next to him, she saw the owner of the bed, sitting on the floor with his chin resting on his hand, staring intently at the deeply sleeping Hae-won. Min-jung walked past Seo Hae-young—who didn’t spare a single glance despite likely hearing her footsteps—with a lukewarm expression, clearing her throat as she placed the car keys, phone, and wallet on the nightstand. Seeing his fresh face so soon after having a severed finger reattached made her think that youth really is a blessing, yet it also felt unsettling, as if he resembled her Noona in his inhuman manner. Wanting to finish quickly and get her generous payment, she skipped the pleasantries and got straight to the point.

“The car is in the parking lot, and Seo Ga-young asked you to give her a call.”

Seo Hae-young, who had been fiddling with Hae-won’s hair—cut short enough to expose his eyebrows—finally glanced up and scanned Min-jung. A flat voice flowed from lips devoid of any smile.

“I guess she found out.”

Min-jung, looking at the two men and the strange atmosphere between them, asked slowly.

“Found out what?”

“That he’s here.”

Before she knew it, Seo Hae-young’s gaze had returned to Hae-won. Min-jung’s gaze followed his to the sofa. Since they had met in the dark of night and the chaos of the emergency room, she hadn’t had time to examine his appearance closely; now, Hae-won appeared to her as a clean-cut young man, albeit much thinner than others his age. Looking back and forth between the man who showed no sign of waking and Seo Hae-young, Min-jung played innocent.

“I don’t know. I didn’t know.”

Seo Hae-young remained silent for a while before offering a formulaic greeting, saying, ‘Thank you for your hard work.’ His expression as he spoke was dreamy, as if the anesthesia hadn’t fully worn off. He looked as though his mind was preoccupied with something. Eventually, Min-jung noticed his finger touching the tip of a round nose and slipping between parted lips; she turned away with a look that suggested she understood. The complicated reason why he had to contact Seo Ga-young first, or why he had hunted down a grown man like a rat, concluded in a somewhat awkward realization. Since she made a living investigating people and this wasn’t the first such case, there was nothing to be flustered about, but the reason she felt unsettled was likely because of Hae-won’s appearance. The empty eyes that looked up with a face so youthful he didn’t seem the same age would likely be remembered for a long time. After sending a text saying the job was done, Min-jung checked her bank account for the promised amount and left the hospital, a place she would never visit again.

The silence that arrived the moment Seo Hae-young’s contact was deleted from Min-jung’s phone calmed her heart. It was filled with stillness, like a sea where the waves had suddenly stopped.

With his index finger parting the gap and his lips moist, Seo Hae-young bowed his head and gave the sleeping Hae-won a one-sided kiss. The sofa cushion pressed by his uninjured hand tilted, and he wrapped his tongue around the motionless tongue before sucking in the wounded lower lip. A shadow cast deeply over Hae-won—whose alertness, which usually made him bolt awake at a mere nudge of the elbow, had been quelled—continued the long kiss.

The hot breath and the sensation of back muscles tightening were immoralities that only a conscious person could feel. The vivid feeling of smooth membranes and saliva clinging, and the wet sounds that mixed every time they collided and parted, killed any sense of morality. The urgency to fill a year’s void and the anxiety to distinguish reality from fantasy coexisted in a contact that deeply penetrated the corpse-like, limp body.

Only after hearing a low groan in his sleep did Seo Hae-young pull his lips away, steadying his ragged breath as he leaned his head against the sofa. His gaze was fixed on Hae-won, who frowned as if uncomfortable, just as he always had.

Blink, blink. Eyes that closed slowly and opened again carried a light that seemed to tell him to wake up. However, Hae-won, fallen into a deep sleep, seemed to have no intention of granting that wish. Letting out a hollow laugh, Seo Hae-young stood up and slid his arms under Hae-won’s legs and shoulders, lifting the thin body. His roughly sutured left hand stung, but he supported the weight with his wrist and moved him onto the bed. As he laid his head on the pillow, Hae-won breathed quietly without tossing and turning, appearing utterly exhausted.

Lying on his side beside Hae-won, Seo Hae-young tapped the tip of his nose and kissed him a few more times. It was strange. It felt as if a year of time had bypassed Yoon Hae-won. He was like the house at the end of the hallway with the broken lock. Both people and spaces could make one forget the passage of time. If anything had changed, it was only the weight—so light he could lift him with one arm—and the short hair. There were no changes that would make him unrecognizable in a valley crowded with vacationers.

Nevertheless, the strange impression of that day remained vivid in a remote corner of his mind, evoking a certain sentiment. Pressing his lips to Hae-won’s cold earlobe, Seo Hae-young breathed that sentiment into him.

“I guess we’re destined… It’s fucking amazing, right?”

It was a valley he had visited dozens of times since Hae-won disappeared, but the previous despair wasn’t that important to Seo Hae-young. By keeping only the fact that they met in the summer they had parted—in a way too grand to be a coincidence, as if drawn together—Min-jung, who had dragged things out for months regarding Hae-won’s whereabouts, no longer seemed obnoxious, and the pain of his flesh being torn grew dull.

The reason he hadn’t approached immediately at the valley and had watched him for several weeks was, as mentioned, because he needed time to think. It was a more fundamental concern than the hesitation that he might be overcome by a dark sense of welcome and slap the other’s cheek hard enough to ruin his face due to deeply ingrained habits. The days he had headed toward the pier, hoping he would follow immediately yet hoping he wouldn’t, were a time to dig into his own hidden depths and identify the cause.

“Hae-won.”

Perhaps he wanted to be the god who descended on a pulley into Yoon Hae-won’s miserable life. A life where he would reach out and rescue him just as he was suffocating under tragedy upon tragedy, only to abandon him again. He might have wanted a relationship where they were placed in the frame of lovers but were never equal. Yoon Hae-won must never betray him, must always feel grateful, and must love him eternally even if it is never returned. Yoon Hae-won had behaved exactly as he wanted until now, and since he believed he certainly would in the future, he had forgotten the limits. The complacency created by ten years of time that flowed without definition was his downfall.

“Yoon Hae-won—”

As he called his name, Hae-won’s fingers twitched as if he were about to wake. Calling his name once more, ‘Hae-won,’ and gently intertwining his index finger, the tightly closed eyelids opened. The warm colors created by the sunset gathered in the pale pupils. Instead of a greeting like ‘Hello,’ Seo Hae-young smiled, his eyes curving into half-moons just as they had in the old days. This time, something had to be different.

Waking up in the hospital room layered with reddish hues, Hae-won was quite startled to find that what he felt under his hand was not the smooth leather of the sofa. As he pushed himself up unsteadily against the soft blanket, his blurry focus, not yet fully awake, gradually sharpened. He saw long fingers with many small scars wrapping around his index finger. Slowly lifting his head, the face of the man facing the sunset was revealed. As he belatedly processed the smile covering the clear face, a sharp breath hit his jaw and was sucked into his throat.

“Ah…”

As Hae-won hurriedly avoided his gaze and recoiled until his back hit the headboard, Seo Hae-young used his uninjured hand to brace against the bed and closed the distance he had just created. Eyes blooming with different emotions locked in the air a palm’s breadth apart. The emotion planted identically at the base of both their gazes was exploration. Any sign of welcoming the reunion after a year existed only in Seo Hae-young, and even then, it was so faint that the other would hardly notice. It could not possibly reach Hae-won, who quickly bowed his head and clawed at the white fabric.

“Look at me.”

The tone, which cut through the silence, was tinged with an intimacy compared to the way he used to command from above. Reluctantly lifting his chin, Seo Hae-young—who, despite wearing patient clothes, had a complexion not like a patient’s—filled his vision. Even as he tried to face him calmly, he couldn’t help his trembling hands, and the cold pull at the nape of his neck was evidence that the learned fear had not yet died.

Hae-won, his lips parted where the scars from each other’s teeth remained, braced his two hands against Seo Hae-young’s shoulders as the other leaned in. Forgetting the injury and pushing away with his palms, a stinging pain shot up his wrist. Startled, his strength to push away faltered, and the opponent took advantage of the gap to close the distance abruptly, their lips colliding lightly. The kiss, the kind one would only give to someone based on affection, parted easily without the need to measure time.

Seo Hae-young smiled mischievously, as if he had played a prank, and raised an eyebrow slightly. It was read as an invitation to speak if he had something to say. However, Hae-won, who was not used to speaking first unless the way was opened, repeatedly opened and closed his lips while his fingertips fidgeted. Not knowing what to say, he wiped his lips with the back of his hand, then suddenly became aware of the bandage wrapped around his palm. It happened in an instant. The resentment he had kept buried surged up and burst out as a reprimand.

“Why… why did you do that?”

“Hmm?”

Seo Hae-young tilted his head and asked back, as if glad that a voice had finally broken through, and in Hae-won’s eyes, which managed to meet his, resentment and anger bloomed. It was subtle, but that much deeper.

“You almost died.”

Because the tone dropped so decisively at the end of the sentence, it was enough to heighten the mood of Seo Hae-young, who was pretending to be composed. The hand that had been bracing the bed suddenly reached out and snatched the thin forearm. It was a force strong enough to make his straight back waver, yet the white cheeks were puckered with a pleased energy.

“You did too.”

The lips, curved in an arc, parted slightly as a defense that mirrored the end of the previous sentence flowed out. It was too light to be called remorse. It was a tone and expression that dismissed jumping off a cliff, cutting off his own finger, and trying to slit his throat as nothing much. Hae-won could say nothing, as if he had been hit in the back of the head unexpectedly.

Seeing Seo Hae-young act as if all of this were a joke made it feel like it really was nothing, and the thought that those ‘nothings’ could stifle his breath so much made his eyes grow hot. Heavy tears, filling up in an instant, dropped onto his right cheek. His body, gripped in one hand, trembled violently, unable to overcome the anger.

His heart grew cold whenever he remembered the blood spreading on the small table and the blade touching the snow-white skin. The image of a decapitated chicken overlapped, and the kindness that had once been given like alms felt heartbreaking. That was a realm where hatred could not invade.

“…You almost, almost died.”

And so, Hae-won glared at Seo Hae-young, who was stroking his forearm with a thumb, and spat out the words haltingly. Whether he had been at that valley, how on earth he got those burns, and what he was thinking doing such a thing… though a mountain of words he wanted to say had piled up, he could only utter one sentence, but his devastated expression alone was sufficient. However, the opponent, who had surely read the emotions pooled at the bottom, still had a smiling face. He just looked at him, as if piercing through his confusion, smiling with an eerie persistence.

Just as the warm tears were soaking his cheek, the hand that had moved from the forearm up to the shoulder wiped away the tears. Treating the dampness without hesitation, he gathered the tears from both corners of the eyes. Seo Hae-young, offering a touch that was slightly lacking to be called kind, parted his smiling lips and gave an answer that brought an untimely, hollow laugh.

“I guess we’re even, then?”

Seo Hae-young’s expression as he said this was fresher than ever. It was a look as if he had set down a heavy burden from his shoulders, but it was a smile that either didn’t know, or pretended not to know, that the burden had all been transferred to Hae-won’s shoulders.

Hae-won let out a laugh mixed with a mournful cry. His severely distorted brow and downturned corners of his mouth brought back the tears he now desperately wanted to stop shedding.

“Really… why are you really doing this to me? I don’t… I don’t know why you’re doing this to me…”

He raised his hand, which no longer felt pain, and grabbed Seo Hae-young’s arm. Overcome with indignation, he gripped the coarse fabric and shook it back and forth. Even that was just the sight of his own scrawny upper body shaking, but since there was nowhere to vent his frustration, he couldn’t stop. Instead of striking the cheek of the passively resisting Hae-won, Seo Hae-young looked down at the sand-colored eyes shedding tears and rolled his eyes as if he couldn’t understand this situation.

“I don’t know how many times I have to say this… I just want to apologize.”

“…Is this an apology? Do-doing this, with your hand?”

“You already accepted it.”

It was a blunt yet sly response. Seo Hae-young supported Hae-won’s hand, who was staring back with a stunned expression, and stroked the bandage wrapped around the center of his palm. The white cloth, wound several times, smoothed out a path beneath his thumb.

“If you act like this, I can’t help but think that way.”

The thumb that had been circling the bandage moved up to the wrist, and a subtle voice touched upon a sore spot. Biting his aching lips, Hae-won braved his fear and pulled his hand away, questioning him in a way that was unlike him.

“If I… if I had just left you alone. Then what were you going to do?”

“I haven’t thought about it…”

“I’m asking what you would’ve done if you’d died. That’s what I’m asking right now…”

Seo Hae-young slowly stroked the back of his own neck, looking down at Hae-won, who was being strangely stubborn. Hae-won seemed to be trying to act strong, but his voice, laced with a sob, wasn’t particularly threatening; rather, it acted as a unique stimulant. Hae-young wanted to give him a plausible answer if possible, but since he truly hadn’t thought about it, he couldn’t. If he had to answer, it was because his bad habit of acting without considering the consequences had flared up. Letting out a shallow sigh, Seo Hae-young spoke, his smile vanishing.

“I’m getting tired of that conversation.”

His tone dropped ever so slightly. Hae-won, who had been trembling with his muscles tense and his hand unable to close properly, was seized by terror at just those few words. His resolute momentum vanished, leaving only ragged breaths; his utterly pitiful state brought back the smile that had disappeared.

“What’s wrong? It’s not like I’m beating you…”

Telling him to stop shaking, Seo Hae-young lightly touched his pale cheek and wrapped one arm around his rounded shoulder. He laid Hae-won down on the plush bed without giving him a chance to escape and immediately took his place beside him. Then, using the bandaged hand, he wrapped around Hae-won’s waist and pulled him close, pressing their lower bodies together. As he tucked the short hairs between his fingertips and rubbed them gently with his free hand, an undeniable sense of stability settled in. It was a tranquility suited for unrealistic fantasies. Lying on the same pillow as Hae-won, Seo Hae-young began to recount an unrealistic story as if dreaming.

“If you’d left me alone and I’d died… I’d want you to be the chief mourner. Watch my body burn carefully, collect the ashes well, and keep them until you die. Whether you keep them by your bedside or carry them in a bag, do as you wish, and every day…”

As he let his imagination run wild without much emotion, Seo Hae-young eventually let out a breathy laugh and fell silent. It was because a tremor, one that couldn’t be ignored, was rising from where their shins were tightly entwined. Shifting his gaze from the protruding collarbone visible through the clean t-shirt, he looked up to see tightly shut lips and stiff cheeks. His eyes lingered a bit longer on the gaze filled with deep anger. It was an expression he could say he had almost never seen before. The face, distorted without mercy by rage boiling up to the top of his head, had a side to it that was as lovely as his terrified expression.

“I’m joking. Relax your face.”

When was the last time I saw him smile? The face prompted such a sudden thought. After a moment of contemplation, Seo Hae-young pushed his thigh further between Hae-won’s legs and bumped their foreheads together with a thud.

“Hey. Let’s talk about something more interesting than this. Didn’t you miss me? How have you been?”

As if his forehead wasn’t sore from the impact that made his skull ring, he smiled brightly and stroked the line of Hae-won’s waist with his uncomfortable hand. The t-shirt slid up, and the rough texture of the bandage brushed against the skin.

“Hmm? How have you been?”

Hae-won, who let his waist be touched, continued to glare at Seo Hae-young, who seemed so excited and amused that he was practically dying of joy. He resented the attitude of spouting a chilling story—one he hadn’t even considered—as if it were a joke. The way he subtly rubbed his lower body with his firm thigh and tickled the back of his neck with the hand that had been touching his hair to stimulate his arousal was hypocritical. He couldn’t stand it. His inner self, sparking like a fire in all directions, pushed the question he had been chewing on internally through his lips.

“…Shouldn’t you be tired of me by now?”

Seo Hae-young was silent for a moment, then wore an expression as if he found it absurd.

“What? You?”

When Hae-won didn’t deny it, Seo Hae-young slid his hand into the hair at the scalp, gripped the short strands firmly, and pulled back. Unaware that this was not normal behavior, he scrutinized the gaunt face. His gaze seemed to be checking for any part of him that could be tiring.

Eyes that maintained a surface-level calmness rolled slowly. He looked past the slightly parted lips as the chin was lifted, seeing the bright red tongue, then meticulously examined the drenched eyelashes, the reddened corners of the eyes from how much he had cried, and the straight bridge of the nose. Looking down at Hae-won intently, Seo Hae-young let out a dubious hum.

“I thought I would be too… but I’m not. What should I do?”

Trailing off as if seeking an answer, Seo Hae-young pondered for a while before suddenly lifting his head. He kissed the forehead where the brown hair was neatly disheveled and whispered, leaning in so close that their eyelashes intertwined.

“Are you so sorry that I’m not tired of you?”

The sentence, which ended on a rising note making it neither an apology nor a question, concluded with a wide, splitting smile. Stealing the few remaining words from Hae-won while letting go of the hair he had been gripping, Seo Hae-young stroked the rounded back of his head as if suggesting they stop the wasteful conversation.

“I just missed you. It’s good to see you again. You feel the same, right?”

The impression created by the hazy voice was infinitely tender and sorrowful, but Hae-won suffered an irreparable wound from that tenderness. He felt a fragment break off from within his heart, which was aching beyond words. If he were to describe the feeling regarding something lost, it was simply emptiness.

For the past year, he had suffered countless times at a crossroads. Did he forget? Did he not forget? The scale always tipped closer to ‘forgot.’ Since the man was someone who forgot and discarded everything easily, Hae-won had steadied his wavering heart, believing that even if he were sad for a moment, he would have completely forgotten. But if he had been looking for him like this, if he was going to commit an apology that didn’t even feel like one, he shouldn’t have done it in the first place. He wanted to lament why they had become like this, but there wasn’t even a target to vent his anger on. So, Hae-won couldn’t answer promptly as he once had and kept his mouth shut. If it were a past that could be forgotten just by slightly shifting the course of a question that assumed ‘you feel the same,’ he wouldn’t have been clinging to it all this time.

Hae-won sincerely wanted to smile without any thought. Regardless of the process or the texture of the emotions they held for each other, he wanted to be grateful that they overlapped in at least one place, and he wanted to embrace Seo Hae-young, who was climbing on top of him. He wanted to kiss him, unable to contain his delight, and shed tears of joy. But he simply couldn’t, and that made him profoundly miserable. Amidst the pain that felt like a thick rope strangling his neck and compressing his windpipe, the lips that descended upon his nape sucked the skin strongly, leaving a burn-like mark.

“Hmm? Tell me. Do you like me too?”

The hospital room, with the lights off, was submerged in darkness. Looking up at Seo Hae-young, who was dyed in charcoal hues, the only emotion he could feel was a tedious fear. It was a terror that made it impossible to look away. Even as the palm covering his lower abdomen swept down to his chest and pulled down his shorts, he couldn’t budge. When the white hand, which had slid into the new underwear that had been neatly placed in another shopping bag, gripped his completely flaccid penis, Hae-won froze, his limbs stiffening.

Leaning his upper body down, Seo Hae-young propped himself up with his elbow by the head of the bed, their noses brushing. The movement, narrowly missing the lips, was kind, as if delivering an affection that was difficult to put into words, but Hae-won let out unstable, wheezing breaths, clenching his molars. The darkness, not fully cast, clearly revealed eyes that were glistening. He couldn’t avoid the eyes he faced right in front of him. It was because the other gave him no room to look away, and the rope that had been strangling his neck had split into dozens of strands, binding his entire body.

“I love it so much… how about you?”

“Hng, ah…!”

A touch that drew immediate pleasure reached the penis that had been deprived of stimulation for a long time. The hand that softly stroked the shaft and rubbed the sensitive glans with the thumb was dry and warm.

“I missed you so much, how about you?”

Hae-won let out short, ragged breaths, his flat stomach heaving. The hand slowly shaking the penis using the wrist and the breath tickling his lips pushed in a terror that felt like he might faint. His heaving chest brushed against Seo Hae-young’s clothes draped over him.

“I asked how you feel. Aren’t you glad to see me?”

Even with two options—shaking his head or nodding—he couldn’t move. Then, lips slightly shifted direction and landed on his cheek and earlobe. The quiet kisses, falling and lifting without a sound, filled the stiff facial muscles, hiding a layer of persistence. It was a tenderness that added to the tension rather than releasing it.

The penis, enveloped in the warm hand, shook with faint, rhythmic sounds. Seo Hae-young stroked it broadly as if tracing old memories, then rubbed a particularly weak spot strongly with his thumb.

“Ugh, hng… Ah…”

Under the forced stimulation, the tip of the glans turned red as blood rushed in. However, it did not become fully erect. Though his eyes grew hot and his lower back twitched, the grotesque sensation of falling into a pitch-black abyss was more intense. Hot tears streamed down from eyes that were bloodshot, unable to even blink.

“Hng… Gasp, ugh…”

Suppressed moans became a mess, intertwined with panting breaths. Only then did Seo Hae-young slowly lift his upper body and gaze down at the face that had turned pale with fear. The gaze they met was deep. The eyes, containing a swamp so deep it was frightening, gradually narrowed as if detecting a suspicious sign.

The hand that had been touching the penis, which wouldn’t easily erect, moved upward. It was almost time to be slapped on the cheek. He closed his eyes tight and clenched his teeth, but there was no flash in the black void of his vision.

Opening his twitching eyes, Hae-won encountered the index and middle fingers being sucked in between lips that were drawn into a straight line, devoid of a smile. Seo Hae-young moistened his fingers with his tongue, looking somewhat annoyed. It was obvious where they were going. He wanted to kick off the bed and run, but while the fingers, drenched in moisture, slid between his legs, there was nothing he could do. Just as he rubbed the back of his head, damp with cold sweat, against the pillow, the wet fingers passed the perineum and rubbed the tightly closed folds. His stiff waist flinched and twisted.

“Hng, ha… stop it…”

The refusal, forced out by scraping his vocal cords, was stifled, as if speaking with a boulder placed on his chest. It wasn’t a voice so small that it wouldn’t be heard, yet the fingers slowly groping around the hole began to push inside as if they had heard nothing.

“Hng…!”

Even though only a single long middle finger had entered, he felt an overwhelming sense of foreignness. The middle finger, digging into the narrow entrance shrunk by a year’s time, slowly felt the inner wall as if confirming something. It turned in a circular motion and pushed the index finger in and out, stirring the inside as if performing an inspection. Unable to push it away and with his leg muscles tense, Hae-won let out moans that swallowed his breath, shedding only thick teardrops.

“Breathe. Properly…”

The bandaged hand rubbed his lower abdomen soothingly. Rubbing the spot where a penis would have more than enough reach, he forced the index finger in little by little. Gently shaking his hand, Seo Hae-young lifted one of the limp legs and held it with one arm. When he felt the man’s thick erection against the area connecting to the buttocks, Hae-won let out even rougher breaths, his unmoving head shaking creakily.

“Ah, I-I can’t… it won’t go in…”

His wide eyes were filled with an insurmountable terror. An instinctive repulsion surged amidst a chill that made his toes curl involuntarily. As the two fingers, stirring the hole that was becoming stiff due to a lack of lubrication, curved upward like hooks to rub the inner wall, his stiff, frozen legs trembled, pushing away the covering blanket. The day of their last sex, the end of that day, and the past where he had given his body countless times overlapped, bringing an indescribable fear.

“Are you scared?”

As Hae-won exerted all his strength to prevent the fingers from going further, the low voice reached his knee. Kissing the leg he held in his arms, Seo Hae-young slowly poked the hole that showed no sign of relaxing and asked once more, “Are you scared of me?” There was no other expression on his face as he spoke.

Gathering the words that were disintegrating within the short sentence, Hae-won barely managed a small nod. In his head, he tried to convince himself that if he just spread his legs once, this moment could be brushed over, but his body couldn’t overcome the repulsive feeling and eventually brought on dry heaves.

“Ugh…! Hng… ugh…!”

With nothing to throw up, Hae-won’s chest heaved as he let out pitiful, hacking coughs. Seo Hae-young, who was lightly thrusting his hips against the back of Hae-won’s thigh, muttered while looking down at the hole that was biting the fingers.

“Why are you like this? Between us.”

The hole that had once swallowed one or two fingers easily was now tightening around the knuckles without a single gap. The sensation of sucking in the tip of the glans as if inviting it inside had vanished somewhere during their long separation. As he vividly felt the inner walls wriggling to push him out, as if accepting another person for the first time, his eyes grew reddish and his reason faintly faded. Seo Hae-young let out a long sigh laced with regret.

He knew that if he shoved it in now, the narrow entrance would tear unsightly and bleed, yet he wanted to do it without considering the aftermath. He wanted to oppress him until his limbs, unable to move due to rigidity, twisted in strange directions; until the suppressed moans burst into screams; and until the flat lower abdomen bulged with spent semen. The past, where he had played all night because semen would leak out bit by bit from the hole when he pressed the stomach with his palm—though it looked like little difference—flickered like an impulse. However, instead of pulling out his penis following the whim, Seo Hae-young bit Hae-won’s calf hard.

“Ack…!”

As he pulled his fingers out of the writhing, shaking Hae-won and glanced sideways, he saw the skin clearly marked with deep bite marks. Stroking Yoon Hae-won’s thin, pale, yet not unpleasant leg as if it were something precious, he kissed the bite marks. A somewhat gloomy whisper leaked between the touching skin.

“Why are you scared of me?”

It was a voice mixed with an unwelcome laugh. Resting the thigh he had been holding on his opposite shoulder, Seo Hae-young gazed quietly at the slanted Hae-won and stroked his nape.

“I don’t understand…”

Letting out a long sigh, he lifted the limp leg, and the trembling of the tense muscles was transmitted through his palm. Crossing Hae-won’s legs—who was panting so violently that his thin ribs were exposed—and resting them on his shoulder, Seo Hae-young rubbed his bulging erection against the thigh and bit the ankle. His lips, without using teeth, brushed several times over the ankle that shook his balance every time he stepped on the ground.

“Hmm? How am I supposed to know if you don’t tell me. Can’t you tell me?”

“Ha-eu, hng…”

“You used to love having sex with me.”

Hae-won, who had been tensing his lower jaw so hard he feared his clashing teeth might bite his tongue, shut his eyes tight the moment the penis touched his rounded buttocks. As the hot, hard penis circled the goosebumped back of his thigh and smeared slippery fluid, the hole that had been tightly closed after the fingers left flickered slightly. It was a movement filled with anticipation. The moment he became aware of the tickling in his groin, Hae-won suffered an even more violent bout of nausea and twisted his shoulder, which wouldn’t move well. The instinct to follow the past engraved in his body collided with the current chaos.

“You love it when it hurts.”

The smooth glans brushed against the folds. Startled, Hae-won pulled his chin up, bracing himself for the impending pain. He was simply terrified. This was different from before, when he had managed to take in another man’s flesh every other day, or even without a single day’s rest. The expectation that he would undoubtedly be torn open was enough to make him panic. While he held his breath and trembled violently, he thought he heard a deep sigh.

“This is so fucking annoying….”

The glans, which had seemed poised to pierce through his lower body, merely grazed the opening before sliding between his pressed-together thighs. The slightly curved organ pushed through the gap between his thighs, where the muscle had wasted away, leaving only soft flesh. The pink glans, beaded with clear fluid, pushed through the narrow crevice and rubbed against Hae-won’s semi-erect member.

“Hng, ah…!”

“Seriously, I fucking don’t understand….”

Seo Hae-young, firmly holding Hae-won’s crossed knees with one arm, expressed his frustration with a deep frown as he thrust his hips upward. It was a surge so powerful that Hae-won’s upper body, pinned to the bed, momentarily lifted. Startled by the sudden stimulation, Hae-won let out a raspy moan, tears spilling from the corners of his eyes.

“You can’t… just do this however you want anymore. Right?”

His uninjured right hand gripped the tense buttocks before roughly rubbing the twitching opening. A pleasure that couldn’t be purely enjoyed made his knees tense.

“Haa…!”

“I’m really reflecting on everything… You know that, right?”

Pressing his lips against Hae-won’s shin, Seo Hae-young kept his member wedged between the thighs, thrusting his hips repeatedly while groping the opening. Every time the glans rubbed against Hae-won’s member as if scratching it and then retreated, the tip of a thumb entered the narrow hole. When his groin collided with his buttocks and his curled body bent further, the exiting thumb evoked a strange sensation—a mix of longing and repulsion. It wasn’t penetration, yet it was no different from it.

“Hng, ugh…!”

“I won’t do what you hate… I won’t. Okay?”

Contradictory words and the wet, slapping sound of skin hitting skin filled the spacious hospital room. The fact that Seo Hae-young hadn’t forced the opening wide to insert himself, yet was undeniably engaging in sexual acts, scrambled Hae-won’s reason.

The pain of being erect but unable to ejaculate was both agonizing and dizzying. Much like the numerous emotions he had experienced while enduring Seo Hae-young’s presence, conflicting feelings shook his frail body. The past held him back, layering a heavy guilt that made it difficult to accept this willingly, yet the other man would not budge an inch despite his desperate attempts to push him away. With his legs crossed over Seo Hae-young’s neck and feeling a dull ache, the only choice Hae-won had was to plead pain while trying to deny the pleasure. He focused only on the ache in his thighs where his knees were held, the stinging skin, and the pain of neat fingernails scraping his inner walls.

“It hurts, hng…! It hurts, it hurts….”

“Haa….”

Of course, a man who had spent a period—long or short—building up his desires was unlikely to easily heed a few pleas.

Seo Hae-young stared intently at Hae-won’s face, flushed red from dry heaving, as he continuously pressed his lower body against him. Hae-won’s toes curled tightly, his feet shaking aimlessly over the other’s shoulder.

“Hae-won, ah….”

No matter how much he gripped the knees to narrow the gap, there were mountains of things left unresolved. The tender skin was pulled and pushed along the entering member, creating stinging abrasions. The sticky, glistening traces on the thighs proved the reality of it. Still, it wasn’t enough; every time a moan filled with sobbing brushed his ear, the number of fingers thrusting into the hole increased. The entrance, as flushed as the thighs, stretched to the point of tearing as it swallowed three fingers, and a deep moan escaped from between his teeth. Gathering his dwindling patience to the point where veins stood out on his straight forehead, Seo Hae-young gathered the two long legs over one shoulder and leaned his upper body forward.

“I said I wouldn’t… I won’t do it anymore.”

“Ah… hng…!”

As his knees were brought closer to his chest and he had to bear Seo Hae-young’s weight, Hae-won struggled under the pressure. Gently suppressing the struggle—which was too meager to even be called resistance—Seo Hae-young sucked on the lower lip that trembled from the burden and whispered words that were hard to believe.

“Hae-won, Yoon Hae-won… give me a break. Please? I won’t do it again….”

There was no leisure in the movement of his hips, shaking so hard that his testicles were crushed against the gap. Narrowing his eyes, stained with excitement, Seo Hae-young rubbed his face against Hae-won’s warm nose and cheeks. The contact, an attempt to suppress irritation, clung stubbornly.

“Ugh, hng…! S-stop it… hng…!”

“That’s why I’m fucking holding back right now. Because you told me to stop….”

“Ah-hng…!”

His arms, feeling as heavy as if they were weighted with stones, trembled as they clawed through the crumpled blanket. Every time the member between his thighs rubbed against the glans, or the rest of the hand that couldn’t enter the hole slapped against the perineum, his vision blurred. A stimulation that was neither indirect nor entirely direct set his lower abdomen ablaze. It was a sensation he should not have welcomed. This was not how things should be.

“Ah… haa….”

After being shaken while bound for a long time, Hae-won lifted his head high to escape the voice calling his name—’Hae-won, Yoon Hae-won’—over and over. The pitch-black ceiling spun around. It was a nauseating vortex. As he stared at the dizzying patterns of the ceiling, a moan that sounded like a dying animal escaped him.

As he neared ejaculation, Seo Hae-young shifted his weight off Hae-won, who was drawing sympathy with sorrowful moans. Sitting up and looking down, his eyes, now accustomed to the dark, took in the wide-open hole. He obsessively felt the inner walls, which had lost their strength to push back, before abruptly withdrawing his hand. Gritting his teeth, Seo Hae-young spread wide the legs of Hae-won, who was shivering and arching his back even in his rigid state.

With the hand that had felt the humid, hot inner walls, he quickly stroked his sticky member. At the tip of the organ that hadn’t properly ejaculated in a year, cloudy semen beaded, and he aligned the glans with the twitching hole that had lost its filler. The hole, barely touched at the tip, twitched and tightened as if to suck in the member.

“Fuck….”

With just a slight thrust of the hips, he could have entered Yoon Hae-won. Hae-won, as if knowing what was touching him below, burst into a surge of tears. Even without a single word of refusal, his sheer terror was palpable. Letting out a powerless laugh while holding the struggling shins with his forearm, Seo Hae-young stroked himself up and down with his hand instead of thrusting. After a few strokes, he had a wet, long ejaculation, and the eyes framed by long lashes went slack as a hot breath escaped.

“Haa….”

“Hng, huu….”

The semen that seeped out seemed to push into the tightly fitted hole for a moment, before flowing down in a thin stream along the buttocks.

The hand that had been gripping the chafed thighs as if to crush them moved down, feeling the skin. The fingers, which had been massaging the lifted buttocks, swept up the semen that had flowed out without entering and pushed it into the hole. However, the fingers trying to force it in ended up pushing the semen back out instead.

Eventually, Seo Hae-young, watching the perineum messily dotted with cloudy fluid with a deeply dissatisfied expression, suddenly let out a peculiar exclamation. His shoulders, which had been languid from the afterglow of the long-awaited ejaculation, suddenly tensed, and he snapped his head up.

The bedside was exceptionally dark. Hurriedly reaching out with his left arm, Seo Hae-young fumbled around the nightstand. Forgetting that the hand was restricted by a bandage, the back of his hand knocked over the small lamp, sending it crashing to the side. As the loud clatter of metal echoed, the sobbing that had been ringing in his ears like a hallucination subsided.

He grew anxious. Ignoring the pain of his poorly stitched flesh, he turned on the fallen lamp, and the warm orange light drove away the deep darkness. As his eyes opened, his ears cleared, and the senses that had dimmed with confusion slowly returned.

“…Ah.”

First, Seo Hae-young saw the short hair scattered across the white pillow, and then he heard the shallow, rapid panting. Lifting his hand, which was stiff and covered in semen, he stroked the lower abdomen that was nothing but skin and bone.

Everything was intact. With a look of considerable surprise, Seo Hae-young gripped every part of the shivering Hae-won tightly before gently stroking him. As he watched the furrowed brow, the distorted mouth, and the eyes glistening with moisture every time the light hit, a comfortable smile slowly bloomed on Seo Hae-young’s face.

“…Yoon Hae-won.”

The smile, created by the drooping corners of his eyes and the rising corners of his mouth, contained an absolute, honest stability. Letting out a long sigh, Seo Hae-young released the ankle he was holding and lay down diagonally, overlapping with Hae-won, who remained motionless as if paralyzed by a nightmare. He hugged the body—so thin that the sharp bones were visible—and patted his back, wondering how long they had been apart for him to become like this. The sound of breath, escaping roughly as if releasing long-suppressed fear, warmed his ear.

As the rigidity slowly faded and Hae-won began to push his shoulder away, Seo Hae-young rested his chin on the crown of Hae-won’s head and stroked his spine with awkward touches for a long time. His hand, more accustomed to suppressing with violence than soothing gently, rolled the protruding bone at the nape of the neck.

It’s okay. It’ll be okay.

Seo Hae-young tilted his head, murmuring whispers that he himself didn’t know if they were his remaining sincerity or not. He kissed the trembling jaw and neck deeply, calming the slight tremors. While he lightly sucked the skin to fill the void, Hae-won, who had been waving his arms, eventually went limp, as if exhausted from pushing him away.

It’ll get better.

Hugging the upper body that swayed like a puppet with cut strings, Seo Hae-young spent the long night kissing the pale cheeks. As if Hae-won would disappear to a place where he could never reach if the lights went out or if he let go, he did not release Hae-won on the brightly lit bed all night.

He would occasionally lick or strongly suck on Hae-won’s member, who let out painful sobs, unable to even faint. He left several layers of unsightly marks on the inner thighs stained with semen, and he nibbled on the ankles that bore the marks of being trampled. Then, he would stop everything and gaze, as if possessed, at the naked body revealed under the light.

When Hae-won looked at him with exhausted eyes, Seo Hae-young would suddenly burst into an incomprehensible laugh, hug his waist suffocatingly tight, and pull him into his narrow embrace. His behavior, as if he couldn’t control his emotions, blurred the sense of reality, mixing with the drowsiness of dawn. In a desperate wish to escape the misery, Hae-won would occasionally lift a powerless hand to stroke Seo Hae-young’s hair. While thinking how tedious it all was, he let the soft hair slip through his fingers.

There was no end in sight. Not tonight, nor in the days to come.

* * *

Hae-won, who had been stroking Seo Hae-young’s hair for a long time while the other rolled his nipples—stiff from the cold air—in his mouth, closed his eyes and opened them again just as dawn was breaking. It was a rest so short he hadn’t even realized he’d fallen asleep. Despite having been washed, his skin, which had been smeared with sticky semen, was now dry, and the clothes that had been shed like skin were neatly dressed back on him. He must have slept deeper than he thought.

Hae-won stared blankly at the lamp that stood upright, emitting a soft light. This wasn’t the environment Seo Hae-young preferred, as he usually liked to turn off all the lights before going to bed. Just as he was about to close his eyes, feeling pathetic for remembering even such a thing, he heard a voice beside him.

Hugging Seo Hae-young, who was leaning comfortably against the headboard, Hae-won blinked his swollen eyes without showing that he was awake. His hazy gaze shifted to the side. Scanning the wounds hidden by the clothes and moving upward, he caught a glimpse of a sharp jawline. With his right ear pressed against the warm chest, he heard whispering sounds that he couldn’t clearly distinguish.

“…So, …is …fine now.”

At first, he thought he was on the phone. Who would be on the phone in the pre-dawn hours before the sun had risen? Hae-won, blinking his fatigue-laden eyes, suddenly frowned. The phone was lying neatly beside the fallen lamp. As he carefully lifted his head, he saw the profile of Seo Hae-young, whose lips were moving as he looked somewhere. It was a different expression from the one he had when he was acting insane a moment ago; he was looking clearly at one spot with a focused gaze.

He wondered if someone had visited. He could feel through their touching skin that Seo Hae-young was continuing to speak, but there was no audible response or sign of another person. As he lifted his chin a bit more, the hand that had been gently stroking his shoulder—thinking he was tossing in his sleep—began to pat him rhythmically. The hand patting his shoulder was the one not wrapped in bandages. A sense of inexplicable dissonance washed over him, and the sleep that had clung to him like a leech vanished instantly.

Holding his breath, Hae-won followed the direction of the gaze. At the end of it was the hospital wall lit by the dim light, and Seo Hae-young’s eyes were fixed on the chair facing the bed.

“Anyway… since it’s …, …will be.”

The chair was empty. He scanned the sofa with a sidelong glance, but there was no one there either. Seo Hae-young continued to mutter a few more times, as if having a conversation with an empty space. Sensing something eerie, goosebumps prickled over his wrists, which were not covered by the blanket.

“Right, Hae-won.”

In an instant, the hand wrapping around his shoulder pulled him into a tight embrace. Hae-won hurriedly dropped his eyelids. Pretending to be asleep wasn’t that difficult. Except for the effort he spent trying not to tremble in the face of the affectionate gesture of pressing their foreheads together and rubbing noses. Finally, lightly overlapping their lips, Seo Hae-young whispered, pressing the words into his mouth as if delivering the voice inside.

“If I ask for your opinion, just let things slide, and act nicely… then you’ll keep liking me, right?”

He had clearly called his name, but it wasn’t clear who he was talking to. The content felt familiar, but he couldn’t remember where the story had been pieced together from.