What to do? Seo Heejin had been looking forward to it so much. Even while answering, another yawn leaked out. The hand gently stroking my hair was so soft my eyes kept closing.
“If you’re tired, you can sleep first.”
“No…… I should wait and sleep together.”
Though I said no, I was relieved in my heart that he wasn’t sulking. Seo Heejin, who’d been standing still, crouched down in front of me.
He lightly pressed his lips on my knee exposed in shorts then lifted them, leaning his head against my thigh while looking up at me, and his face…… made me think he was annoyingly pretty first.
Not my type. Seo Heejin had definitely crouched down knowing from which angle he looked pretty.
“Yunwoo hyung.”
“Mm?”
“Do you really want to live together at our house?”
My drowsy eyes that had been closing snapped wide open. The sleep that had been pouring down also flew away completely. Because Seo Heejin wouldn’t give up and was talking nonsense again.
“If we live together, we can be confident even on days like today.”
Seo Heejin seemed to forget that the very act of two men cohabiting was hard to be confident about. Did I make a mistake saying I’d sleep over? A sigh leaked out in belated regret.
“I said I didn’t want to before.”
“Why don’t you want to?”
Why, he asks. When I had a perfectly good house to live in, why should I mooch off here—that was the bigger question.
“Because I need my own space too.”
“I’ll completely clear out the storage room.”
I’d forgotten this house had three rooms. One was the bedroom, one was the clothes room, and the remaining one was a room piled with miscellaneous items that neither I nor Seo Heejin hardly ever entered. I’d briefly suggested before that if it was like this, he should clean it out and make a study or game room, but Seo Heejin had answered that he didn’t really play games or collect books so it was bothersome to clean.
“Ah, I don’t want to.”
“I won’t take a deposit, and the rent too……”
As soon as the words “and the rent too” came out, I pushed up the leg Seo Heejin was leaning against. Just try saying you won’t take rent either. I should go home right now. I thought he hadn’t been doing this lately, but this touched my pride again.
“……I’ll only take half of your current rent. Since it’s house sharing.”
Seo Heejin quickly spat out the words. It clearly seemed like he’d noticed my mood had soured and changed his words.
“Don’t fuck around. I still have a long time left on my contract.”
“If you find someone to replace you, you can move out before the contract ends—I know that too.”
Like a rich young master, it would’ve been easier to talk if he at least didn’t know how the world worked. Seo Heejin chattered on saying my excuse was nonsense.
“If you’re worried about realtor fees, you can find someone directly in real estate communities.”
“I know that much too.”
“I’ll also look around to see if anyone I know wants to move in.”
If it was Seo Heejin, it seemed like he’d bring someone to replace me in my studio apartment in less than a week.
“I don’t need it. I said I have no intention of moving out yet.”
Even though I’d clearly refused several times, Seo Heejin didn’t seem to have any intention of giving up.
“Honestly, what’s good for me about living with you?”
It was obvious I’d be tormented by Seo Heejin every night, weekday or weekend.
At my words, Seo Heejin’s eyes widened and blinked. Wondering if this was another thing that would make Seo Heejin sulk, I unconsciously became conscious of it. Having been hit several times even after hearing he wouldn’t sulk seemed to have remained like PTSD.
“Hyung, then if there are good things about living with me, will you live together?”
Ah, damn it. I’d misspoken.
* * *
Seo Heejin became obsessed with ‘cohabitation.’ And it wasn’t just an obsession at the level of ‘this seems fun,’ but at the level of ‘I’ll definitely achieve this.’
“Are you in your right mind?”
Leaving that nice house behind, he’d even packed his luggage and moved into my tiny studio apartment.
He kept coaxing me to come to his house and live there for just a few more days, so I’d made this excuse and that excuse and didn’t go at all, and this incident resulted. Did it make sense for two adult men to live in an 8-pyeong studio apartment that was barely enough for one person to live in?
Moreover, I don’t know how long he was planning to stay, but in Seo Heejin’s hand as he entered after punching in the password himself was a 32-inch suitcase. I was so flustered that asking if he was in his right mind was the best I could do.
“At least give me a chance to show you what’s good about living together, hyung.”
“We’ve been together every weekend. But you still didn’t know even then.”
It wasn’t like we’d spent just a day or two together, we’d been going back and forth to each other’s houses for quite a long time—until the season changed once. If I still hadn’t realized any reason it would be good to live together, then there just wasn’t one, right?
Completely ignoring my answer, Seo Heejin opened his suitcase with a thud in the middle of the room. This narrow house became completely full just from the suitcase being opened…….
“Hey, this really isn’t right.”
It made me panic. How can two people live here?
“That’s why you should’ve come to our house.”
Even Seo Heejin doing this crazy thing was my fault.
Watching Seo Heejin blankly as he somehow found space in this house where there wasn’t even enough storage and organized the luggage he’d brought made my mind feel distant.
This bastard seemed to have forgotten that the first reason I’d given for not wanting to cohabitate was that I needed my own space.
The already complicated narrow room fell completely into chaos with Seo Heejin’s appearance.
* * *
Unlike my thought that he’d stay a day or two, three days at most, and then go back, Seo Heejin had already been parasiting in our house for over a week.
He stayed so brazenly that I, who told him to leave as routinely as eating, felt like I was the one callously kicking out someone who’d originally lived in this house together. I’d actually kicked him out the door once, but he immediately punched in the front door password and came back in, so it was meaningless.
Being together all day, and with Seo Heejin being at my house longer than me, there wasn’t even a gap to secretly change the password.
Suddenly imagining Seo Heejin changing our house password so I’d have to beg to be let in made my body shudder.
Leaving aside all these various problems, the biggest problem was that the existence of a person taking care of everything from one to ten beside me was incredibly comfortable. Except for the fact that I went to the company, for the time I was at home, I got to enjoy a life as comfortable as a nobleman in a historical drama.
First of all, in the morning I didn’t have to set alarms in ten-minute intervals—Seo Heejin woke me up without being late.
When I came out after washing up appropriately, I put on the clothes Seo Heejin laid out and ate the breakfast Seo Heejin prepared. While I brushed my teeth, Seo Heejin roughly cleared the breakfast table, and we headed to the company together.
There was a time when I couldn’t eat because I had to leave a bit early to head directly to a meeting location for an external schedule, and Seo Heejin acted as if he naturally remembered my schedule.
A cereal bar and drinking yogurt were thrust into my hands as I left the house before Seo Heejin. Saying I absolutely shouldn’t skip breakfast. These were things I had no memory of buying.
Thinking he was gradually taming me like this, I endured without eating, but having skipped the breakfast I ate every day, I got hungry before long and ended up taking them out to eat. To tame me with food. Seo Heejin, scary guy.
At the company I took off my nobleman label and lived as a servant, then came home and collapsed to become a nobleman again. Seo Heejin took off everything from my socks to my uncomfortable suit one by one.
Of course, in between, lips touching and leaving all over my body were a bonus. When I rolled around on the bed completely naked, Seo Heejin dressed me in sweatpants and a short-sleeved t-shirt to wear at home. Ah, there were days he didn’t dress me. Those days were when my cock shot up unable to resist Seo Heejin’s kisses.
However, on days like today when my dick was calm, Seo Heejin didn’t bother me further and just finished changing my clothes. This week was the deadline week, so I worked overtime until past 11 PM looking at the settlement, and the house that had definitely been a mess when I left was completely cleaned up.
“Did you eat dinner?”
“Yeah. Sort of.”
The lips pressing down on my hair saying I worked hard felt good. I shouldn’t be like this, but it felt healing.
“Did you clean?”
When I asked while sticking close together to lie on the narrow bed as always, Seo Heejin lightly stroked my hair.
That touch was so affectionate I almost thought without realizing ‘ah, being stuck together like this without sexual meaning isn’t bad either.’
“Live cleaning the house a bit, hyung.”
Fortunately, thanks to the annoying words, the absurd thought quickly scattered.
“If it weren’t for the stuff you brought, it’d be much cleaner, you know?”
When I laboriously lifted my leg to point at the suitcase still sprawled out with my toes, Seo Heejin pretended not to hear and said something else.
