The narrow room was filled with humid air. Even with the air conditioner on full blast, it seemed insufficient to disperse the heat emanating from two adult men.
The body that had pulsed once strongly separated from behind. At the same time, there was the sound of someone flopping down beside him.
Gil Taeseo, who had been piled on top of Lee Saehyeon lying face-down on the bed thrusting away, had finished ejaculating and separated.
Perhaps sweat had particularly pooled between their stuck-together bodies—the cold air from the air conditioner hit directly against his back, now fully exposed to the air. Lee Saehyeon, trembling, spoke as if mumbling into the blanket.
‘I told you… not to do it inside. You bastard.’
The sensation of semen leaking from his hole was more unpleasant than his body slick with sweat. Despite the repeated reproaches, Gil Taeseo replied nonchalantly.
‘You’re a beta.’
He probably meant that since he wasn’t an omega, it was fine to cum inside. He wondered where the hell such shitty manners came from. Lee Saehyeon answered in disbelief.
‘You think the cleanup is free?’
He’d already experienced firsthand that if he didn’t scrape it out properly, there’d be trouble. In the end, every time Lee Saehyeon washed, he had no choice but to shut his eyes tight and scrape out what was inside.
Lee Saehyeon, who had kicked the body lying next to him several times, panted heavily. His breath was short for reasons unknown—whether from the sex or from anger. Maybe it was both.
Something unfiltered popped out of his mouth from his head half-cooked by the heat.
‘…But really, what are we to each other?’
It was something that had been sticking to his heart like a burr.
‘We meet all the time, fight, and it ends with sex. This isn’t friends or fuck buddies or anything…’
While fighting back and forth, the two had become something—whether to call them friends or not was ambiguous. Even after the sexual aspect was added to their relationship, it remained just as vague.
Though he asked casually, Saehyeon felt his heart clamoring inside his ribcage. He didn’t know if it was anticipation, tension, or dismay. He was just concerned that the person lying right next to him might notice. He felt like yelling at his heart to be quiet.
While deliberately trying to breathe calmly, Gil Taeseo’s nonchalant answer came.
‘Then I guess that’s what it is. More than fuck buddies, less than friends.’
‘……’
His body cooled as easily as it had heated up. Only his broken brain alone was stuttering, unable to resolve the strange error.
***
“…You fucking bastard.”
Saehyeon’s eyes flew open as he unconsciously spat out the words that had risen from within. He didn’t forget to add a few more thick curses.
Then, thinking ‘oh no,’ he looked around, but fortunately the child wasn’t nearby.
Saehyeon let out a sigh of relief. Somehow, swearing freely in front of the child didn’t sit right with his dignity as an adult.
The furnishings of the room entered his vacant eyes one by one. The spotless ceiling and the ceiling with lights—so clean you’d wonder if they even knew what fading was—were becoming familiar now. It was Gil Taeseo’s bedroom.
“He brought me here again.”
After finishing whatever it was—treatment or messy relationship—what came after was one of two things. Either Saehyeon lost consciousness or he didn’t.
If Saehyeon was awake, he would stubbornly take the child and return to his shabby home. Conversely, if he was unconscious, he would always wake up looking at this ceiling.
In Gil Taeseo’s house, in Gil Taeseo’s bedroom. The man was desperate to drag Saehyeon into his home, as if he had some kind of obsession.
“Haa…”
Saehyeon carefully mulled over the memory he’d just recalled. The more he thought about it, the more heated he became. Both Gil Taeseo and himself. Gil Taeseo because he had no class, and Saehyeon himself… because even he could see there was something he seemed to be hung up on.
“What kind of things are these?”
In the end, Saehyeon, who had included his past self among ‘those things,’ sat up. Sweeping back his disheveled hair and clutching his waist, Saehyeon’s view caught the nightstand pressed close to the bedside.
Next to the small nightstand that looked expensive at a glance, there was even a chair placed. It was a remarkable change compared to the first day when it had looked like a model house decorated without sincerity.
Saehyeon reached over and picked up the phone placed on top. Then, as if familiar with it, he opened the memo app and briefly wrote down the memories he’d just recalled.
*Asked Lee Saehyeon-ssi what we are to each other. Bastard answered more than fuck buddies, less than friends.*
In fact, if he were to write it all out in detail, it would be very long and arduous, but he decided against it since it seemed like it would only make him more frustrated.
It had been almost a month since Saehyeon started recording his memories. The reason for this ordeal was simple. The memories weren’t returning neatly in chronological order.
The sporadically cut memories were no different from jigsaw puzzle pieces. Small pieces cut haphazardly were mixed together and pouring down.
It might be better if they all came at once. There were still empty pieces in between. As a result, even the person whose memories they were would get confused if he didn’t organize them properly.
In the end, Saehyeon was forced to make recording a habit. Even though they were memories that made him more heated the more he recalled them, he had no choice.
*If it were me, I would have castrated him.*
Finally adding a reflection filled with personal feelings, Saehyeon got up. His hand, which would normally have been clutching his stiff waist, was placed on his chest instead.
Memories were originally crystals of experiences and emotions. It wasn’t an emotionless task of simply recovering wrongly deleted data.
In the end, every time Saehyeon recalled a memory, he had no choice but to relive the emotions he’d felt at that time. His chest kept churning because he couldn’t digest the indescribable emotions.
‘No way. Surely… even so, that can’t be.’
Saehyeon shook his head vigorously. He wanted to quickly shake off the sticky residue of emotions. It seemed he needed to quickly go out to the living room, drink some cold water, and get a grip.
But in the place he went out to, Saehyeon had no choice but to discover a living, moving ambush this time.
“…Why are you here?”
What’s the way to distinguish illusion from reality? Saehyeon basically thought two things were necessary.
First, clear identification of the subject. And second, maintaining distance. Because people sometimes get swept up in things that are too close while not knowing their position, leading to wrong thoughts and actions.
Until now, Saehyeon had been quite confident in this area. Grasping his position, and if things got really unbearably hard, ‘completely’ separating himself from it temporarily to regain objectivity. When he employed this, he’d generally never failed at problem-solving.
But the problem now was that the latter wasn’t working at all.
Night and day, the real Gil Taeseo was in front, and the past Gil Taeseo lurked behind.
“I didn’t know it was such a surprising thing for me to be in my own house.”
The man was leaning leisurely against the dining table. The sunlight that had just begun shining poured over him like a spotlight. The light reflected from his hair fell in specks onto his face below, as if stardust had been sprinkled.
‘That face is annoyingly pretty, damn it.’
It was a face that sublimated even his disheveled appearance into something like a deliberate concept.
But that sparkling face only annoyed Saehyeon today of all days.
“Aren’t you going to work? Is life easy?”
21st-century gangsters apparently didn’t just dominate back alleys. As could be gauged from the tall buildings and real estate, Gil Taeseo seemed no different from any entrepreneur. To put it simply, it meant he was really incredibly busy.
Perhaps because of that, the man repeatedly came home late at night and left for work again at the crack of dawn. Since Saehyeon usually woke up late on the days after being knocked out and moved, it was extremely rare for him to encounter Gil Taeseo.
That’s why Saehyeon hadn’t expected to encounter that culprit in the morning and wasn’t mentally prepared. His startled heart stirred slightly.
“I wonder why you’re in such a low pressure system today.”
Saehyeon’s sharp eyes and Gil Taeseo’s eyes sparkling with reflected light met in the air. It was a clearly contrasting sight from the recovered memories where they only looked at the ceiling or walls.
