By Zephyria 
He and I went straight to a hotel on the day we first met. We started by getting our needs met. I spent every night for a week with the man who pounced on me as if he were starved for sex. It wasn’t until after a week that we kissed for the first time. Until then, we really just met, fucked, came, and parted ways, over and over again.
Moreover, until last month, he had never cleaned up after me like he does now. Jeong Tae-geon, having finished his business, would lie languidly for a while before going out for a cigarette. He would say things like, “Thanks, I came well,” or, “I almost shot all my cum,” using vulgar language that made people cringe, and then he would tidy himself up and disappear.
But these days, he’s different. He’s changed. He cleans up after me, and sometimes he even waits to have a meal together before leaving. Eun-ha blinked his eyes blankly. While he was listlessly pondering when the turning point had been, a vibration buzzed. It was his phone.
It was unfortunately on the bedside table on the other side. He was too lazy to move more than just reaching out his arm, so he remained motionless, and Jeong Tae-geon brought it to him. Eun-ha swallowed his discomfort and took the phone. Even this small act of consideration made him unnecessarily nervous. Maybe he was jumping the gun all by himself, but… he’d been burned so many times before.
For now, it was probably just a needless worry. Putting his concerns aside, he checked the message.
Hey
Don’t forget our date on Saturday
“Who is it?”
Gu Hae-bin. As he read the sender’s saved name, Jeong Tae-geon leaned his head over his shoulder. Eun-ha answered briefly and recalled the appointment. Had time already flown by so quickly?
“A friend.”
“What kind of date with a friend?”
“We’re going to an exhibition or something.”
“Just the two of you?”
“……”
“The name sounds like a guy.”
“It is a guy.”
“See the exhibition, eat, and then fuck?”
“……What’s wrong with you?”
He twisted his body to create some distance. Seeing him staring with a frown, Jeong Tae-geon laughed harshly, as if blaming Eun-ha for being so serious.
“Is it not your taste to share your hole with some guy whose face you don’t even know?”
“……I don’t. We promised each other not to do that while we’re seeing each other.”
“Yeah, we did.”
“Then why?”
Instead of answering, Jeong Tae-geon tilted his head crookedly. His eyes seemed to narrow as they met. Suddenly, he reached out and grabbed Eun-ha’s chin tightly. Then he turned it slightly from side to side.
“My trust in you is low. It is.”
“What did I do?”
“Even if you don’t do anything, that’s just how it is when I look at you.”
“What does that… Explain it properly.”
“……”
“Huh?”
“……”
“Answer me. You know this is what we initially promised…”
“Hey. Let’s do it one more time.”
Saying something out of the blue, Jeong Tae-geon pressed himself closely against him. His hard, hot flesh dug between his legs. Wait, when did he get like this…? With a bewildered expression, Eun-ha looked up. What kind of random conclusion was this all of a sudden?
But there was no time to argue. Because the man, doing as he pleased, forcefully inserted his penis.
Eun-ha, inhaling sharply from the pressure, closed his eyes for a long moment before opening them. His vision began to blur again. As the familiar heat rose, his mind faded into a hazy white. As if it were a lie that his nerves had been so sharply on edge just moments before.
His mind relaxed languidly. Eun-ha felt a nauseating sense of stability from the man who was breathing excitedly into his ear and wrapping his whole body around him.
He liked the warm heat, he liked the entwined limbs, he liked the gestures that desired him. He really did, to the point of nausea.
Was this inertia, or lingering affection?
He disliked everything about it. So, as expected, he was pathetic. He quietly closed his eyes.
The aroma of coffee beans pleasantly permeated the tip of his nose. Eun-ha savored his peaceful morning as always, taking a sip of the coffee that Jeong-ho had made for him.
He diligently gets up early. He finishes getting ready to go out, and eats a light breakfast of toast. The road to work is always congested. The occasional sound of car horns. The crowded buses. People running towards the bus stop. People hastily adjusting their clothes and catching a taxi. People crossing the crosswalk. No matter where he looked outside the car window, he saw people starting their days busily. Eun-ha liked the vitality they gave him.
The time spent tending to the plants. The time spent at the counter, doing his own kind of ‘work’. The time spent watching the customers, who were mostly college students.
They were all similar in nature. Eun-ha liked the peace that came from a normal and regular daily life. He gained a sense of belonging and stability from the small but meaningful days. His father spewed harsh words at Eun-ha, saying that he was just playing at being a cafe CEO, and Mom didn’t exactly positively evaluate his complacent life either… But for Eun-ha, even that was something he was barely managing to keep going.
An ordinary life. A very normal daily routine.
He knew how far a person could fall when that natural and rightful foundation collapsed.
Eun-ha shifted his gaze indifferently. He looked at the man who had somehow been hanging around the edges of his unchanging daily life. He came every day without fail. It had been quite a while since he had gotten used to watching the man who came every day. He mostly looked out at him with a somewhat unfavorable feeling.
What was slightly different from usual was that someone had come to find him.
A woman who found the man alone outside the store came in, greeting him happily. Eun-ha quietly watched the woman sitting across from him and the man looking up at her, saying, “Sunbae.”
“I came just in case, and you’re really here.”
“What is?”
“It’s rumored. That you’ve taken up residence here.”
“……There’s a rumor like that?”
“Yeah, because you disappear in a flash whenever there’s a chance. Like Cinderella.”
It was a seat close to the counter. Since there were hardly any customers, the conversation could be heard naturally and easily. The woman, interpreting the man’s question as meaning ‘is there really such a rumor?’, answered playfully. When Eun-ha heard it, it was closer to the nuance of ‘why would something like that even become a rumor?’
The man smiled appropriately, saying, “Is that so?” It certainly wasn’t something that would become a rumor. Who was a regular customer of where, whether they were or not.
But if the subject was that man, the story might be a little different, Eun-ha thought. It was an objective assessment.
He carefully scrutinized the man’s face, where a polite smile faintly lingered. It was a face he had seen almost sickeningly for about a month, but he had rarely seen him smile so noticeably. There were people who occasionally recognized the man when he was alone and approached him like that, and each time, the man would break his sharp, expressionless face and show a different face.
He had the impression that he was smiling unusually gently.
Even to the point of feeling that the ‘gentle’ form of his smile was very flexible and skillful.
In summary, it meant that it felt somewhat artificial.
The reason why he couldn’t accept the texture of the smile as it was was probably because he knew the man’s inner thoughts towards him so well. Why did he come at similar times every day? Why did he keep looking at him? Meanwhile, he had long since passed the age of wavering and fussing. To be precise, it was probably a lack of emotion that came from experience rather than age.
He wondered if he looked like he was rolling around carelessly or something… Eun-ha had received countless attention of that type. People who were trying to figure out how to get with him.
There were women, and there were men. He wasn’t interested in women, so he only slept with men.
Besides, that man had a similar atmosphere and impression to the man he had met about a year ago. If that man was 100 percent, then that man was about 50 percent blurry, and if you were to compare them, they didn’t have very similar faces, but anyway, they had a very similar feeling in their appearance.
In that they looked like they were very good at having fun.