On the day they first met, they went straight to a hotel. They matched bodies first. Like a man starving for sex, he pounced on him, and they stuck together every night for a week. Only after more than a week had passed did they kiss for the first time. Until then, they really had just repeated meeting up, fucking, cumming, and parting ways.
Furthermore, until last month, he had never cleaned him up afterward like now. After finishing his business, Jeong Taegeon would lie down lazily for a bit before going out to smoke. Thanks to that, saying he came well, saying his cum was nearly wrung dry, he’d make Eunha’s face crumple with vulgar language before tidying up his clothes alone neatly and disappearing.
But these days, he was different. He had changed. He cleaned him up afterward, and sometimes he would even deliberately wait to eat a meal together before leaving. Eunha blinked emptily. While blankly mulling over when the starting point of the change began, a vibrating sound buzzed. It was his.
It happened to be on the nightstand on the opposite side. Too lazy to move more than stretching out his arm, he stayed motionless, but Jeong Taegeon brought it to him. Eunha swallowed his reluctance as he received the phone. Even this trivial consideration bothered him for no reason. Perhaps he was drinking kimchi soup by himself… but considering how much he’d been burned so far.
For now, at this point, it would be needless worry. Putting his concerns aside, he checked the message.
Hey
Don’t forget Saturday’s appointment
“Who is it?”
Gu Haebin. As he read the saved sender name, Jeong Taegeon leaned his head in from over his shoulder. Eunha answered briefly while recalling the appointment. Had time already flown by like that?
“A friend.”
“What appointment 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 fuck too?”
“……Why are you being like this?”
He twisted his body to create distance. As he looked at him with a furrowed brow, Jeong Taegeon laughed irritably as if instead blaming Eunha for being serious.
“Because I don’t like the idea of sharing holes with some bastard whose face I don’t even know?”
“……It’s not like that. We promised each other not to do that while we’re seeing each other.”
“Right. We did promise that.”
“Then why.”
Instead of answering, Jeong Taegeon tilted his head crookedly. The eyes meeting his seemed to narrow thinly. Suddenly reaching out his hand, he gripped Eunha’s chin tightly. Then he turned it left and right alternately, examining it.
“Your credibility is low. Yours.”
“What did I even do.”
“Even without doing anything, just looking at you makes it seem that way.”
“What kind of… Explain properly.”
“……”
“Huh?”
“……”
“I said answer. This thing you’re doing, what we initially promised……”
“Hey. Let’s do it one more time.”
Making an out-of-the-blue statement, Jeong Taegeon pressed close below. His hot, erect flesh burrowed between his legs. No, when did it get like this… Making an absurd expression, Eunha raised his eyes. What kind of contextless conclusion was this all of a sudden?
But there was no time to argue. Because the man who arbitrarily aligned his glans forcefully inserted his member.
At the pressure, Eunha drew in a breath and closed his eyes long before opening them. His vision began to shake again. As the familiar heat rose, his head turned hazy white. As if the fact that his nerves had been sensitively on edge just moments before was a lie.
His mind loosened drowsily. Eunha felt a nauseating sense of stability from the man who poured excited breaths into his ear while binding his entire body.
He liked the warm heat, he liked the entangled limbs, he liked the gestures that desired him. Truly to the point of feeling nauseous.
Was this inertia, or lingering attachment?
Whatever it was, it was unpleasant. So he was a fucking idiot after all. He quietly closed his eyes.
* * *
The coffee bean aroma pleasantly permeated his nose. Eunha savored the peaceful morning as always and took a sip of the coffee Jeongho made for him.
He rose diligently at an early hour. After finishing preparations to go out, he lightly had toast for breakfast. The road to work was always congested. Occasionally sounding horn noises. Packed buses. People running toward bus stops. People hastily fixing their clothes while catching taxis. People crossing the crosswalk. Wherever he placed his gaze outside the car window, he could see people each busily starting their day. Eunha liked the vitality they gave.
Time tending to plants. Time doing what could be called ‘work’ while watching the counter. Time observing customers who were mainly university students.
They were all of similar texture. Eunha liked the tranquility brought by an ordinary and regular daily life. He gained a sense of belonging and stability from days that were trivial but meaningful. His father excreted harsh words at such an Eunha, saying he was merely playing at being a cafe owner, and his mother also didn’t evaluate very positively a lifestyle of peacefully settling down… but for Eunha, the truth was he was barely managing to continue even that.
An ordinary life. A very normal daily routine.
He knew how far a person could fall when that natural and proper foundation collapsed.
Eunha indifferently shifted his gaze. He looked at the man who had somehow planted his foot in the corner of his unchanging daily life. He came again today without fail. It had been quite a while since watching the man who came every day had become habitual. It was generally in the manner of subtly observing him while harboring unfavorable feelings.
If there was something slightly different from usual, it was that someone had come looking for him.
A woman who discovered the man who had been alone outside the shop cheerfully acknowledged him and came in. Eunha quietly watched the woman sitting in the opposite chair and the man who looked up at her saying “Sunbae.”
“I came on the off chance, and you’re really here.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s a rumor. That you’ve taken out a lease here.”
“……Such a rumor spread?”
“Because you disappear in a poof whenever there’s an opening. Like some Cinderella.”
It was a seat close to the counter. Since there were hardly any customers, the conversation naturally flowed well to his ears. The woman playfully answered, interpreting the man’s question to mean ‘did such a rumor really spread?’ When Eunha heard it, it was closer to the nuance of ‘is that even worth spreading as a rumor?’
Is that so, the man showed an appropriately roundabout smile. It certainly wasn’t content worth spreading as a rumor. Whether someone was a regular customer somewhere or not.
But if the subject was that man, the story might become a little different, Eunha thought. It was an objective evaluation.
He scrutinized the man’s face where a faint trace of polite laughter lingered. It was a face he’d encountered to the point of tedium for about a month, but he’d only seen him smile noticeably a few times. There were people who occasionally recognized the man alone like this and approached him, and each time, the man would break his sharp expressionlessness to show an unfamiliar face.
The impression was that he smiled meekly unlike himself.
Even the impression that that ‘meek’ form of smile was very flexible and skilled.
To summarize, it meant it felt rather artificial.
The reason he couldn’t take the texture of the smile at face value was probably because he clearly knew that person’s inner thoughts directed this way. Why does he come every day at similar times? Why does he keep looking at me? The age where he would waver and fuss about such things had long since passed. To be precise, it would be apathy coming from experience rather than age.
Whether he gave off the air of being loose or what… Eunha had received this type of attention countless times. People sizing up the angle because they wanted to try something once.
There were women, and there were men. Since he had no interest in women, he only slept with men.
Moreover, that person had a similar atmosphere and impression to a man he’d met about a year ago. If that person was 100 percent, that man’s face was blurred to about 50 percent and strictly speaking their faces didn’t greatly resemble each other either, but anyway, they had very similar feeling appearances.
In the sense that they looked like they’d really know how to have fun.
