Immediately after that strange declaration of defeat, Gil Taeseo quickly removed the body he’d been draping over him. Not only that, but he even slid his body further to the side to roughly perch on the sofa’s armrest. It meant there was a bit more distance from Saehyeon.
Saehyeon, who had become free, hurriedly sat up, but his chest felt empty somehow. Because Gil Taeseo had mercilessly ripped it open, only shabby thread remnants remained in the buttonholes.
While once again becoming dismayed looking at his own chest, Saehyeon belatedly noticed that there was more than one gaze sweeping over his bare chest.
“…What are you looking at? Won’t you turn your eyes away?”
Naturally, the owner of the gaze was only one person. He didn’t know what kind of whim upon whim made him step back, but anyway, how could he trust someone who’d been acting like a crazed rhinoceros until just now, someone whose head had probably snapped, and bare his chest?
As Saehyeon curled up covering his chest with both arms, Gil Taeseo clicked his tongue and threw off his jacket.
“Put it on.”
The chin gesture was irritating, but Saehyeon pulled up the jacket without much resistance. A beggar who picks up clothes charitably given by others is better than an exhibitionist patient.
The man’s eyes, staring intently at that sight, caught Saehyeon’s hands. The white hands busily gathering clothes were intermittently trembling.
It was a composition similar yet different to when he’d saved Lee Saehyeon from that shitty situation in the alley before. In the part where the savior from back then had become the assailant now.
Gil Taeseo rolled his tongue in his mouth. Clearly when he’d been biting and sucking the tender skin, there had been a sweetness that tingled on his tongue. Now only a bitter aftertaste lingered.
‘…Did he just lick his lips?’
Setting aside how it looked to someone else. A brief silence flowed like that.
“So. The problem is being locked up?”
Gil Taeseo suddenly opened his mouth. The calm, spiritless voice felt particularly unfamiliar. It was probably because of this 28-year-old Gil Taeseo he’d unavoidably kept running into.
The Gil Taeseo just past 20 years old that the current Lee Saehyeon remembered was someone with a bad temper but without any sinister venom.
In comparison, from the current Gil Taeseo, something sharply bristling could always be felt. It would be apt to describe it as a feeling of always tensing his body and being ready to crush something.
Riding on this strange lull, Saehyeon retorted.
“Right. Is there anyone who’d be pleased to be confined? In this 21st century?”
The more he spoke, the more absurd it felt. That people shouldn’t be arbitrarily locked up was a story based on very general and reasonable moral standards. But to ask back like he really didn’t know.
“There’s also emperor confinement, or whatever. You have the taste for sex with twins who look exactly like you, but not this hobby?”
“What kind of fucking perverted bullshit…”
Saehyeon, who had opened his mouth fiercely, mumbled without finishing his words completely. It was because he realized mid-speech that the excuse Saehyeon had clumsily swallowed while suffering from a hangover that morning had come back intact.
It seemed his way with words that left people speechless had upgraded as much as his momentum.
“…With black-suited men filling up the windows so I can’t even look outside or open the windows, what emperor.”
He didn’t know what emperor confinement was, but he didn’t think he’d ever been treated well enough to be called Your Majesty. Rather, wasn’t it that he was confined without being able to properly resist once because he was a powerless bastard?
Saehyeon, who had been thinking up to there, paused. The plush sofa, ceiling that didn’t leak, hot water that came out abundantly, and even delicious food. He’d remembered what he’d enjoyed in this house.
‘Then not quite emperor but noble…?’
His head, missing a screw, repeated useless thoughts like a defense mechanism.
It was the man again who cut off the thoughts that were about to continue. After tapping the floor with his foot as if thinking about something, he opened his mouth again.
“Then I should accommodate you.”
“What?”
“I’ll stop arbitrarily locking you up now. As you wished.”
At the unexpected words, his eyes that had been wandering through empty air and the floor and such naturally turned to the man. Then, as if waiting, their gazes met.
Even seeing it dimly in the darkness, they were still pretty eyes. It was amazing that the gaze that had been like a blade until just now now only looked pretty.
“…Why suddenly?”
Suddenly pouncing, then suddenly stepping back, and now saying he’ll release him.
For Saehyeon, who didn’t know that his tears that didn’t even actually come out were the turning point of all this, it was only bewildering.
“Why. You don’t like it?”
“No! Who said I don’t like it?”
“Don’t be too happy. It’s not like I’m giving it for free.”
“……”
Of course. He thought it was suspicious that he’d give what he wanted so obediently.
Still, if he could just break through the condition that useless past events kept creeping up. If he could break through this situation, there was nothing wrong with accepting a certain level of conditions.
But that thought was brief too, as all sorts of perverted imaginings flashed through Saehyeon’s mind. It had just been a moment ago that he’d been persistently sucking on his chest and kneading his buttocks.
Gil Taeseo had been persistent enough to create the illusion that his chest and nape, which should already be completely dry, somehow still felt damp.
‘He definitely has some bizarre sexual wall. This bastard.’
Saehyeon’s eyes, which had only held suspicion, filled with an emotion close to contempt.
No wonder he readily accepted that insane suggestion to do it once after a long time. Getting aroused by this gaunt corpse-like body, and perhaps he’d reached out to the easy target that was himself because he had fetishes hard to show others. He couldn’t help but belatedly think such thoughts.
It was when Saehyeon, who had imagined bright red collars and chains, whips and such, gulped down his saliva.
“Just try running away or going into hiding.”
“…?”
“When you go somewhere, properly say you’re going.”
Gil Taeseo’s face, seemingly troubled, was reflected in the two eyes blinking blankly. It was the face of someone clearly speaking sincerely, with all playfulness drained away.
“What. Should I add a curfew and ban on overnight stays too?”
…What the hell is this bastard saying right now? It was a feast of useless bullshit embarrassing enough to make himself, who had listened seriously, feel ashamed.
“…Are you my dad? Or what, a dormitory supervisor?”
Permission to go out, curfew, ban on overnight stays. These were things he’d never even been regulated on by his biological father. It was one of the few benefits he could enjoy as a discarded son.
The dormitory did have an implicit curfew, but even that had loosened as the grades went up. Saehyeon had no interest in anything besides grades, college entrance, and scholarships, so he was very far from curfews.
But to receive such restrictions at the point when his mind is 20 and his body is over 28. And from Gil Taeseo at that—he just wondered if it made any sense.
“Is this… what they call a control freak? Or separation anxiety? Do you have something like that?”
Saehyeon ultimately couldn’t hold back his sarcasm. But as with this overall conversation and actions, Gil Taeseo again pulled out a reaction Saehyeon hadn’t anticipated.
“Yeah. Fucking severely.”
The man agreed intensely without a moment’s hesitation. For Saehyeon, he couldn’t help but be left speechless.
‘…He says such things that confidently?’
If it were himself, he would have bristled or denied it. From experience, when you gently scratched at such corners, the other person would naturally counter back.
No, countering was right. He definitely did strike back somehow, but the problem, if it was a problem, was that each and every one was close to eccentric behavior.
“Someone disappeared without a trace in the past, so my fucking heartstrings melted away completely and then snapped.”
The person in question of the eccentric behavior was in light shirt attire after donating his jacket. When he crossed his arms and twisted his body like that, the outline of his body became prominent according to the man’s movements.
‘What kind of man’s chest…’
Among them, Saehyeon’s eyes sharpened at inadvertently seeing the chest pushed up by the forearms.
‘If he’s got something like that, he should just feel up his own chest.’
The thick volume revealed through the wrinkles caught in the shirt seemed like it would be much more satisfying to touch than his own. Not that he would touch it, but if he had to say, that’s what he meant.
His own, which he glanced down at, was just utterly flat enough to be clearly comparable. Pulling up the jacket a bit more, Saehyeon tilted his head.
He absolutely couldn’t understand. Was it just that his extremely normal self couldn’t follow the thoughts of a crazy person?
“And what happened just now…”
He could see the hand that had gone down to rummage through his pocket as if wanting to hold a cigarette fumbling emptily. Eventually the man just sighed and confessed as if giving up.
“Right. I did a shitty thing.”
Saehyeon’s eyes widened in surprise. This, in a way… sounded like admitting his own wrongdoing.
To someone it might be nothing, but not to Saehyeon. At that single trivial statement, his bubbling heart subsided slightly. Ridiculously.
“I’ll accept most things.”
But that wasn’t the end of the man’s words.
Each thing he calmly spat out was the kind that couldn’t be easily chewed and swallowed.
“Stay reasonably within reach.”
Saehyeon swallowed quietly.
