“Get off. Hey, you bastard. Won’t you get off?”
Saehyeon moved his other hand wildly. He grabbed and shook hard enough to pull out chunks of hair, and after losing his grip, he swung his fist.
Gil Taeseo took the punches too obediently as they poured down indiscriminately on his head, shoulders, and anywhere. It was the same even when Saehyeon bit at the hand that kept approaching like a dog with rabies. The hand with clear teeth marks stubbornly gripped his arm again.
‘Is he determined to see me ejaculate, whether it’s my hair or whatever?’
Suddenly he’d pounced and groped as if fixated on something, and now he was fixated on his face. That swiftly changing obsessiveness was incomprehensible, so it was flustering and even downright frightening.
Saehyeon was busy turning his head this way and that, hiding from his gaze. Even if his lower body was completely exposed, he couldn’t show himself pathetically sobbing.
It would be the same even if it was evasion that would soon be thwarted. Gil Taeseo’s hands were large enough that when he gripped Saehyeon’s twig-like forearm, there was space left over in his grip. Just thinking about how he’d dealt with the molester in the alley on the day they reunited, the difference in strength and build was stark.
As he’d realized earlier when being pressed down on the sofa, if Gil Taeseo set his mind to it, Saehyeon was no different from A4 paper facing a pressure press.
Looking at Gil Taeseo’s original temperament and the momentum from earlier, this useless resistance was a useless act.
“Look. Lee Saehyeon, look at me.”
But unexpectedly, Gil Taeseo’s weapon-like hands couldn’t find their pulse. He could just grab and lift up or down, left or right, like when he’d covered his chest earlier.
Driven to the edge of a cliff called whim that didn’t know when it would end, Saehyeon shouted.
“You fuck, if this continues like this, it’s rape. You know that?”
“……”
Gil Taeseo’s arm, which had been shaking Saehyeon’s arm uncharacteristically passively, stopped abruptly. It was because the words Saehyeon threw without much calculation unexpectedly pierced right to the core. Just like the words he’d thrown at the hospital parking lot last time.
Rape and sex partner.
One was a stone thrown at the relationship between two people that had formed a strange balance long ago. The other was a trivial and lowly justification that young Gil Taeseo had wielded without any thought of cleaning up, with only his heart running ahead despite having neither courage nor ability.
To be friends while also fucking. Thinking about it now, it was really absurd bullshit.
“I said let’s be fuck buddies, right? Then we should do it when we both want to and by mutual consent, shouldn’t we?”
Panting breaths mixed into the trembling voice. The more his emotions intensified, the worse it got, until later it sounded almost like he was sobbing from crying.
Neither the perpetrator hiding under his arm nor the assailant witnessing it could know the truth yet. But some things had the power to overturn a situation with just circumstance alone.
Things like grief and crying. Things that no matter how much you tried to cut them away, kept pooling and pooling like a shadow in your heart until they eventually burst. That was the best means of attack for Gil Taeseo. Paradoxically, those weak, soft, pathetic emotions that Saehyeon had tried to exclude from himself both by his own will and others’ his whole life.
“Did I say anywhere that you could lock me up and do whatever you want? If that’s what you heard, you’ve got delusions from distorting reality, so go see a psychiatrist. You must be happy since you earn lots of money so you don’t have to worry about hospital bills, you son of a bitch!”
The man just stayed still until Saehyeon finished pouring out just about everything. At this point, if not action, at least an annoying retort should have come back.
‘…Did I fuck up again?’
Only after spitting out all the words that had surged up from inside did his head slowly cool. It was when Saehyeon, with reason slightly returned, was gauging the situation.
“Right. I got it, so let me see your face.”
“I said get, off.”
“If you show me your face. Then I’ll stop what I’m doing right now and get off you.”
If he’d used force to pry it open forcibly, he would have resisted desperately. But when he asked for permission in a sunken voice, his heart wavered instead.
His already weak body meant his overworked arms and shoulders were getting numb. Saehyeon hesitantly moved his arms away.
Gil Taeseo cupped the slowly revealed face.
“Don’t turn your head.”
When the large hands attached to both sides of his face, they encompassed the fleshless cheeks, jaw, and even neck widely. It seemed like if he just strangled him like this, it would be smooth sailing with smart ticketing on an express train to hell.
“Is that, is that enough?”
“Yeah.”
Gil Taeseo, who answered calmly, moved his hand slightly. Even with his face fixed so it couldn’t move, his thumb easily swept over Saehyeon’s eyes. The shadows around his eyes that would have stood out in a bright place weren’t clearly visible here, buried in the dark surroundings.
“You’re not crying.”
The hot fingertips carefully swept over the rough area around his eyes repeatedly. When the coarse texture rubbed the tender flesh, it stung faintly. The area around his eyes that had only shown black and white prominently turned red like that of someone who’d been tearing up due to that movement.
“I thought you were crying.”
Saehyeon, who had been tensed up, secretly let out a sigh at those words. He thought he might have unknowingly teared up, but apparently not. The day would come when he’d have to be grateful for his dry tear ducts.
“I’ve been saying that since earlier…”
It was when Saehyeon was about to turn his head, swatting away the hand that kept fidgeting even though there was nothing coming out. Gil Taeseo, who had been rubbing as if savoring the sensation of his fingertips floating in the air having lost their destination, opened his mouth.
“It’s fucking weird. I thought I’d get excited if you cried in front of me. Why do I feel so dirty?”
Strictly speaking, it was Saehyeon himself who’d taken damage close to brain injury. But Gil Taeseo kept spouting things that sounded like he’d been shot in the head.
Only then did Saehyeon give him a suspicious look and twitched his nose slightly. Fortunately, there was no smell of alcohol from the opponent stuck close to him. The relief was brief, and Saehyeon’s eyes became even stranger. It was an expression like looking at someone who’d gone crazy entirely on their own power.
“…What kind of perverted bastard talk is that?”
He should have noticed from the time his dick got hard enough to twitch at this shabby, skinny body. Looking at how he talks about getting excited if he cries and whatnot, maybe even locking him up was perverted behavior done without much thought.
Saehyeon began to carefully reflect on the Gil Taeseo he remembered. About whether Gil Taeseo had ever been excessively obsessed with things like restraint, binding, and enclosed spaces.
‘I think it was rather the opposite.’
But the Gil Taeseo in his memories was rather someone who acted out like having seizures around narrow, dim things. No, he actually did have seizures. It was because Saehyeon had run off with all the light sources in the room while Gil Taeseo was asleep.
Perhaps it was quite shocking, as that memory was still vivid. After squatting in the grass behind the dormitory with a stretched-out t-shirt filled with light bulbs and such, then returning to the room exhausted by heat and mosquitoes. Gil Taeseo had collapsed and was gasping for breath.
Only then did Saehyeon realize that Gil Taeseo wasn’t simply throwing a fit—no, it was a fit. He’d just realized that the reason for such fussy behavior wasn’t to be deliberately annoying.
‘But now, isn’t this exactly a dark, blocked situation?’
“…Hey. Are you, right now… okay?”
“What?”
“No, here… it’s dark and blocked right now. If you’re doing crazy things because your mind is hazy, I can go to outside the door…”
Saehyeon trailed off, recalling the extraordinary door lock with the pad on the outside.
“No. I can at least open the window.”
“You… is now the time to worry about me?”
Gil Taeseo asked as if dumbfounded. Saehyeon agreed with that a hundred times over. When his own nose was three feet long, and his neck and chest that had been bitten and sucked still burned, what was he doing?
But he couldn’t help it because the back that kept coming to mind, gasping without composure, kept appearing before his eyes. It was the day that made Saehyeon realize that even a large build, even that annoyingly relaxed human, was powerless in the face of mental pain.
Looking down at Saehyeon who was starting to play dumb as if he himself was embarrassed, Gil Taeseo rubbed his wrinkled brow. He kept letting out empty laughs.
“Haha…”
Originally, the human called Lee Saehyeon was this kind of human. No matter how much he himself was driven to extremes, no matter how badly the other person treated him. With just a small trigger, he’d bring them inside the line and give affection while grumbling. If you whine even a little, he turns around, looks in, and hugs you. And that, somehow, gave the feeling that he’d become a special person.
“Now I just need to grab you whether you break or not. But that’s fucking not easy.”
No matter how much you brandish a knife and try to push him away, he keeps rushing in and settling down.
“Right, I lost.”
He makes you want to be willingly swayed. To the point where it’s incomprehensible how he pushed this away before while saying harsh things.
