By Zephyria 
The angle of his face, which had been tilted awkwardly enough to make his neck ache, was corrected, and a thick heat pushed in, forcing open his defenseless lips.
As it slid inside, it brushed against the tender flesh of the inner lip and tickled his tongue, which had frozen in a daze. The sensation of a wet, clinging entanglement stimulated sensitive nerve cells, awakening his bewildered consciousness. Yoo Jiha barely realized that the thing entering his mouth was a tongue.
It was a kiss. A real kiss, incomparable to his own clumsy gestures that had been nothing more than nibbling with his tongue.
Once the act was named and defined, heat flared up as if fire had jumped to his lips. The warmth of the tongue wrapping around his own swept ruthlessly through his mouth, entering deep enough to almost touch his uvula. Jiha floundered, unable to resist the dizziness that overflowed from his mouth and eroded his entire body.
He couldn’t even hear the sign of the Aberration hurriedly retreating. As the sharp tip of the tongue scraped the tender flesh, his fingers trembled violently. Currents of electricity flickered near his waist, and his blood flow quickened. The squelching sound resonated from within his mouth, feeling as if it were drumming against his eardrums.
The sound of water entwined with a heart beating so fast it was impossible to keep up with filled the surroundings. Sound occupied everything. A vibration that echoed from the man and swallowed him whole.
“Hng, nh…”
Yoo Jiha didn’t even realize that his upper body had naturally slid back, leaving him lying on the mattress. The unfamiliar stimulation, felt for the first time in his life, was so intense that it felt as if only the lips and tongue sharing the kiss constituted his entire being.
The kiss, which had begun urgently, grew rougher than he could follow. The large hand that had held him tenderly now gripped his cheek with stubborn strength, and the weight covering his body pressed down heavily, intertwining their legs. Even though his lungs burned as if they were on fire because he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t push these lips away.
“Ah!”
As the dizzying heat wrapped around his tongue and pulled hard, Jiha let out a sharp moan, a tangle of pleasure and pain. And in that moment, the thick, entwined heat suddenly receded, and his breath returned in a rush. Gasping for air and coughing harshly, Jiha realized that he hadn’t even been breathing properly. Because of what? Because of the kiss.
A kiss. He had kissed. With Jeil Heon. Himself.
“…”
His heart, which had been pounding wildly, plummeted to the floor in a different sense than before. He hurriedly rubbed his lips, but that only served to make him vividly aware of the objective fact that his lips were swollen and wet.
‘What, what was that? What happened? Why, why?’
His mind was a chaotic tangle. It was true that he was the one who had first attempted the lip-collision, but why, uh, the tongue, no, he was the one who used his tongue first, but still, suddenly, uh. What. What is this. What really… A mistake. It must be a mistake, right? Yes, a mistake. He must have been contaminated by the Aberration.
Drawing a conclusion that was closer to an absurd escape from reality, he barely managed to look up and saw Jeil Heon covering the lower half of his face with his hand. Half of his face was hidden, so he couldn’t read the expression exactly, but it was certain that he looked utterly dismayed.
It wasn’t a mistake, nor was his perception clouded by contamination. He and the man had kissed. Confirming once more the pale face of the man who couldn’t say a word, Jiha finally felt the weight of reality.
“I’ll… I’ll take responsibility.”
“…Huh?”
“For the p-po, ah, no, ki-ki, hng, kissing you.”
Hadn’t he been the one to crash his lips into the other first? Therefore, this was a matter he should rightfully take responsibility for. No matter if it was for a company project, the responsibility of stealing a strange man’s lips in broad daylight…!
“I don’t know h-how I should take responsibility, but for now, uh, uh, I’ll start by prostrating myself in apology…”
He rambled and tried to bow his head first, but a long hand gently blocked him. The man’s blurred eyes had become clear again.
“Do you know how to drive?”
“What? I have a license, but it’s a ‘closet license’ so…”
The sudden question was puzzling, but as a sinner who had committed a crime, he couldn’t ask for the reason and simply confessed the fact. Jeil Heon, whose gaze looked as if he weren’t in his right mind, responded calmly.
“If you have a license, you know well that sudden accidents can happen, right? What just happened was an accident. An unintentional accident, like a car crash.”
“An… accident?”
“Yes. Since it was an accident where lips collided, it’s the same as hitting a water deer. I’m the water deer, and you’re the driver.”
“…?”
What is he talking about?
“So… you’re saying you’re the water deer? Why?”
“Because an accident happened.”
He didn’t understand a single word of it, but since the man’s face didn’t look like he was joking at all, Jiha tried his best to understand.
“Usually, accidents happen because a water deer jumps onto the road, so in this case… shouldn’t I be the water deer…?”
“Water deer have foul tempers.”
“You don’t have a foul temper…”
“I’m just pretending to be modest to look pretty to you. I have a bad personality.”
“…”
“Do you want me to imitate a water deer for you?”
Jeil Heon was incredibly serious. Jiha reflexively shook his head. It was a sight he didn’t want to see as much as he hated power trips.
“Then, uh, the kiss just now…”
“Water deer collision accident.”
“…Then, for the collision accident, how should I take responsibility…”
“The water deer is dead. No need to take responsibility.”
“If it’s dead, I should take more responsibility…”
“The lips attached here were at fault. Sorry for being born.”
“…”
〈Seeing him generate bullshit with such a handsome face, he really is Sunbae.〉
He didn’t know why Kang Suk-young’s caustic words were playing back in his head, but as they talked, his mind calmed down a bit. It might have been that he was simply speechless from the absurdity of it all.
The man cleared his throat once and raised a hand. The hand, which seemed to hesitate slightly near Yoo Jiha’s head, soon ruffled his hair as if it were nothing. That gesture was a silent proposal to treat the kiss—no, the accident—as if it had never happened.
Yoo Jiha lowered his head slightly, licking the lingering heat inside his mouth with his tongue.
Of course, agreeing to treat it as if it never happened didn’t mean the memory was erased. An awkward atmosphere lingered, but they were currently on-site, and work had to be done. Clearing his throat, Jeil Heon took out a pair of opera glasses from the chest next to the mattress and handed them over.
“Aren’t you using any, Mister?”
“I can see fine with the naked eye.”
From that casual answer, Jiha was reminded once again that he was a being extremely close to anomalies. …When he’s like this, he seems like an ordinary person. Suddenly feeling a tightness in a corner of his chest, Jiha let out a small sigh.
Testing the opera glasses to look at the Aberrations in the general seats, he saw that the True Eye Text that had been appearing until a moment ago had disappeared.
“Uh, I can’t see the True Eye Text.”
“That’s because the opera glasses are Contaminated Entities created in the Aberrant Realm. You can’t read them with the true eye.”
“Then we can’t see the True Eye Text of the Aberrations performing the opera either?”
“We’ll just have to experiment with a few things and guess by intuition.”
Jiha had only briefly watched opera while his mother was watching YouTube, so he wasn’t sure if he could guess correctly. Soon, the lights in the theater went out, and the curtain rose.
Yoo Jiha, who had been swallowing dry saliva out of nervousness, almost screamed at the sight of the revealed stage. ‘Human tables and chairs,’ whose joints were twisted and bent so grotesquely that the skin had torn to reveal red muscle, were being used as props.
“Th-that…”
“Shh, it’s okay. Close your eyes and steady your breathing.”
Jeil Heon wrapped his arm around his shoulder again, comforting him. His heart, which had been pounding in horror, barely calmed down thanks to the steady patting. As if accustomed to such situations, he replied dryly, without any surprise.
“They are people who are already dead.”
The faces forming the decorations of the chair’s backrest were taxidermied, distorted with extreme pain and terror.
“…There aren’t any other victims here right now, are there?”
“The wavelength at Hanseong Opera House is weak, so even if victims occur, they aren’t identified immediately. They might even be beneath us.”
The general seats were too dark to see clearly. He wished he had looked more carefully earlier to see if there were victims. Yoo Jiha clenched his fists and composed himself. To save even a single victim, he had to discover the Viewing Method.
The performance began.