By Zephyria 
It was the time when the branch was sluggishly blooming. The penis that had been tightly filling the inside suddenly slipped out without any warning.
“Ah, hup…….”
“……Hyung?”
A shudder ran through me at the sensation of suddenly feeling hollow, as if something had scraped the inside. Just as a tremor ran through my sensitized stomach, my shoulder was gently grasped. Drawn in by the slowly pulling touch, Eun-ha turned his head weakly and raised his eyes somewhat irritably. What broke into my field of vision was a face looking down at me under the dim lighting of the indirect illumination.
A gaze that seemed to be slowly examining me. If those slowly rolling pupils looked puzzled, as if trying to figure out the situation, it must be an illusion.
But the voice that followed made it impossible to dismiss it as an illusion.
“Did I… make it difficult for you?”
“…….”
For a moment, Eun-ha wrinkled the bridge of his nose like someone who had heard an utterly absurd remark, silently moving his lips before closing them again. The reproach—’Is that what you call a question now?’—rose to the throat but couldn’t be spat out, strangely, because it sounded as if he was genuinely asking out of pure ignorance.
Even though it didn’t make sense, common sense-wise, not to know such a thing.
“……Isn’t it obvious?”
And when he finally managed to answer belatedly, Eun-ha had to witness the two eyes facing him waver faintly. It looked so much like embarrassment.
It was utterly incomprehensible.
“Ah……. I didn’t know.”
“……You didn’t know.”
“You didn’t say anything like that, so…”
“Do you have to be told to know……?”
At the deflated mutter, the pitch-black pupils awkwardly turned elsewhere. Yeon-jun, swallowing a breath as if choosing his words, lightly cleared his throat. Like someone hesitating before saying something embarrassing.
“…You kept crying because you liked it.”
“…….”
“So I just… thought it was okay.”
“…….”
“Are you okay?”
The gaze that stealthily reached out again began to wander over Eun-ha’s face. In it, Eun-ha could easily read a reflective inner thought and finally felt indescribably uncomfortable. Reflection? And this appearance… as if he had just become aware of a fact he hadn’t known at all.
Every word and action of the man, so far removed from the general expectation, drove Eun-ha into the heart of incomprehensibility.
Strictly speaking, it wasn’t an unfamiliar sense of dissonance. Whenever I faced the man, I often felt a similar awkwardness. Despite his promiscuous private life being blatantly obvious, every time the man pretended to have an innocent personality, every time he acted coy with that gorgeous face, I used to criticize him inwardly for unnecessarily acting demure. But.
‘……To act ‘pretend’ to this extent.’
It was the first doubt that arose.
A doubt so unsettling that I didn’t particularly want to dig into it.
“……I guess in your eyes, I look okay right now.”
Even while instantly plunged into deep thought, Eun-ha delivered a bland, dry reproach without showing any expression. At the cracked voice, Yeon-jun belatedly shook his head with the face of someone who’d been pricked, compliantly. Then, with a briefly thoughtful face, he started, “Why didn’t you say…” before trailing off.
It was easy to guess the omitted part. He probably wanted to ask why I didn’t say a single word to stop him, even though it wasn’t okay at all.
It was something close to habitual passivity or patience. In sexual relationships with someone, Eun-ha would roughly endure and get through the moment—if it hurt, it hurt; if they clung on until it was burdensome, they clung on. Primarily, it was passivity stemming from the pessimism of how much consideration one could expect from a partner in a primarily need-based sexual relationship, mixed with a tendency to some extent to disregard the pain inflicted upon himself.
Whether it hurt or not, he didn’t care.
But there was no need to explain such personal circumstances. Eun-ha asked again, matter-of-factly.
“You were going to ask why I didn’t say anything?”
“……No.”
“No? You were just about to say that.”
“No. Just.”
“Just. What.”
“……Just, I thought I did something wrong.”
Following the admission in a thoroughly remorseful tone came an apology. Eun-ha looked at Yeon-jun with still perplexed eyes. Should I soften my heart at the attitude of deeply regretting his mistake? Should I highly praise him for not shifting blame, even though he could have easily said, ‘You should have said something sooner’? Or.
Or…… should I criticize and mock the man, asking why he’s acting as if he’s just found out about such a thing, saying that doing so doesn’t hide the fact that you’re promiscuous… as I’ve always done.
A hypothesis, barely formed, flickered at the back of my consciousness. Eun-ha forcibly emptied his mind. Believing it couldn’t be, he blocked the information trying to become clear on its own. He wanted to believe it was a groundless fear. He wanted to believe it was a useless hypothesis.
“Then…… is there somewhere that’s really painful or something?”
“It’s not that one specific place hurts.”
“Ah. Still, that’s a relief……”
“Probably my whole body hurts.”
At the simple correction, the two eyes facing him quickly clouded over. Yeon-jun, having focused all his nerves here, rapidly blinked his eyelids and muttered awkwardly. What to do……
“Sorry. I really didn’t know.”
“……Enough. How many times are you going to apologize?”
“Still. It’s my first time……”
He added that he seemed to have done it just as he pleased. Asking exactly where it hurts, his demeanor, with the corners of his eyes drooping, was even pitiful. Eun-ha watched the man, who was carefully grabbing one of his limp arms and asking if it hurt a lot.
He just stared for a long time. Quietly and ever so quietly.
It wasn’t because of anything else. Simply because, at some point, the thread of his thoughts had snapped completely.
“……What did you say?”
“Huh?”
“Just now, what did you……”
At the faint, fading tone, Yeon-jun silently tilted his head. As if recalling what he had said.
“Did I say I did it just as I pleased?”
“No. No…… before that.”
“…….”
“First time?”
Was that an expression suitable to come from the man’s mouth?
His brow slowly furrowed. Eun-ha struggled to properly understand what he had heard. But no matter how he interpreted it, it was hard to understand, so he thought he might have misheard, and after concluding he hadn’t, he wondered if Yeon-jun had misspoken.
But it wasn’t the kind of content one could easily misspeak. How many different meanings could the explanation ‘first time’ possibly hold?
“…What does that mean?”
“…Literally what it means?”
It was a puzzled reply. As if asking how else to explain something that is literally what it is.
Eun-ha stiffened for a moment, then, a beat late, stammered and pulled the corner of his mouth. It was a smile that was not a smile at all.
“……Don’t joke.”
The choked voice was closer to a wish that it were a joke.
And Yeon-jun immediately showed a vague expression. With his lips subtly stretched, he quietly looked at Eun-ha. From that gaze, a question was conveyed.
They seemed to be misunderstanding each other similarly.
“Why do you think that?”
“Well, that’s—”
Eun-ha, who had opened his mouth to say it was an obvious question, first let out a long sigh due to the sudden frustration rising to his throat. I don’t know what all this is about.
He felt dizzy. Wandering somewhere in his hazy consciousness, Eun-ha, as if pulling himself together for a moment, fixed his scattered focus. Next, he shakily raised his body. The fact that he had to receive Yeon-jun’s support during the process was utterly disgraceful.
He slumped down weakly, staggering. After organizing his thoughts for a while in silence, he could finally open his mouth. First of all……
“……We weren’t drunk that day, were we?”