After hurriedly washing my body, I dried off the water. After changing into the clothes hyung-nim had put in the bathroom for me, I carefully came out to find the room with the lights on was quiet. I suppressed my heart pounding with fear and looked around inside.
My room wasn’t small either, but hyung-nim’s room was much larger, so it wasn’t a structure where you could see everything at a glance.
This was a space hyung-nim had used since before I was even born. Everything, starting from the air itself, was full of Jeongwoo hyung-nim’s traces.
Since he scolded me while standing me in such a place when my judgment was already clouded by alcohol, thinking about it, it was only natural that I ended up masturbating in the bathroom.
“……Hyung-nim?”
Surprisingly, Jeongwoo hyung-nim was sleeping on the bed. As if he had tried to close his eyes for a moment while waiting for me, he was lying straight with one hand covering his eyes.
Thank goodness. If I’d been caught masturbating in hyung-nim’s bathroom, it really would have been the worst.
Relieved that I didn’t seem to have been caught doing such shameful acts, I stroked my chest and doubted my eyes the moment I saw the clock on the wall.
I didn’t know when time had passed like this, but the clock hands were already pointing to 2 AM.
Being in hyung-nim’s room at this hour… actually wasn’t the first time. There was a time when I secretly came in when I was sleeping in Yoo Jeongyeon’s room.
We were lying down together watching a movie that day.
Seeing a scene where the male protagonist, a gangster, lit a lighter to light a cigarette, I casually said to Jeongyeon.
“Jeongyeon-ah, you know what? Lighting a lighter is surprisingly hard.”
“Really? It doesn’t look hard at all. But how do you know that?”
I told Yoo Jeongyeon, who asked with wide eyes, that I had touched Father’s lighter when we had a birthday party before. I never thought those words would stimulate Jeongyeon’s curiosity that much.
“I need to try that right now.”
“Huh? How can you do it now? We don’t have a lighter.”
We looked at each other for a moment.
“But if we ask hyung-nim to lend us one, we’ll get scolded.”
Reading my worried eyes, Yoo Jeongyeon grinned. What happened after that was obvious.
“Hey, stop talking and just follow me.”
Since Jeongwoo hyung-nim was the only person who smoked in Jeongyeon’s house, we snuck into hyung-nim’s room.
Of course, we got caught and scolded immediately by hyung-nim, whom we thought was asleep, while rummaging through the desk.
Whether hyung-nim was an extremely light sleeper or what, he immediately got up like someone who hadn’t been asleep at all and grabbed Jeongyeon’s earlobe. Even though hyung-nim had definitely looked like he was in a deep sleep.
Standing next to him, I was whimpering like I couldn’t act my age, remembering how I’d been scolded terribly until elementary school. Hyung-nim looked down at me silently, then let out a deep sigh.
After that, the arrow flew to an unexpected place.
“Looking at it, Yoo Jeongyeon, it seems like this kid is getting into trouble because of you. Would such a well-behaved kid have done something like this if he’d been alone?”
It was right after I’d entered high school, so it had been quite a while since I’d been pretending to be mature in front of hyung-nim. The relationship between hyung-nim and me had also become quite awkward, unlike before.
In fact, when Jeongyeon said he wanted to try lighting a lighter, I immediately thought of hyung-nim too. Knowing my personality, which wasn’t so pure, Yoo Jeongyeon struggled desperately.
“No, that’s not it! He also said it was good and let’s go to hyung’s room!”
“Shut up, and you go home right now. I won’t tell them.”
At that time, I had no choice but to go home at hyung-nim’s single word. Arriving in my room in the middle of the night, I immediately burst into tears.
“Huk, hueeng……”
The relationship between hyung-nim and me that had grown distant was something I had brought upon myself.
As a result, even when I did something wrong, hyung-nim didn’t scold me sharply like before.
Because to hyung-nim, I was no longer a younger sibling he cherished as much as his real sibling, but had become ‘someone else’s kid.’
But today, three years later, I came to think that perhaps hyung-nim still cherished me as much as his real sibling.
If he found out about the disease in my eyes, how would hyung-nim react?
He’d probably be a little sad…….
After coming out of the bathroom, I, who had been standing blankly, approached the bed where hyung-nim was. Knowing from past experience that hyung-nim was a light sleeper, each step was as careful as if I were walking on a glass floor.
I had benefited a lot from being hyung-nim’s sibling and childhood friend. If Jeongyeon and I hadn’t been the same age in the first place, our parents wouldn’t have become this close to begin with. Thanks to that, I’d been able to see hyung-nim more often and up close all this time, using Jeongyeon as an excuse.
Jeongyeon, who was as oblivious as me, was the number one contributor to helping my one-sided love. Of course, I could never tell Jeongyeon about my feelings either.
“……Hyung-nim, I’m sorry about today.”
The grateful guy wasn’t here now, but I could gather courage and even try something like this.
“Since I did wrong anyway, please forgive me just one more time.”
I looked at hyung-nim’s face, then very slowly lowered my head.
The lips that lightly pressed on hyung-nim’s cheek fell quietly without making a sound.
What do I do.
I quickly covered my mouth, worried a sound might leak out. Fortunately, his face, which was turned slightly to the opposite side from me, didn’t move at all. I repeated to myself once more.
I’m sorry, hyung-nim. But I have my circumstances too…….
Returning home when it was almost dawn, I didn’t get scolded by my parents.
It was all thanks to Jeongwoo hyung-nim explaining things well while I was washing. I had been masturbating in the bathroom, not even knowing that hyung-nim had tried so hard to keep me from getting scolded by my parents.
Still…….
It would have been nice if I’d done it on his lips too. Human greed has no end, and I felt regretful.
If that had happened, at least I’d be going after having kissed the person I love before dying.
It was a night I felt for the first time in a long while, how hard it was to fall asleep while clutching my pounding heart.
***
**2. Kiss, Kiss, Kiss**
“Jeongyeon-ah, have you kissed before?”
It was a somewhat sudden question to ask a friend whose voice I’d heard after a long time, but Yoo Jeongyeon and I were that close. He answered as if he’d been waiting.
– Of course.
“Really?”
And I was completely shocked by the totally unexpected answer. This was a complete betrayal.
– I told you I went on a blind date last time, right? I did it that day.
“Then did you get a girlfriend?”
– No, does everyone who kisses date? We didn’t date and it fizzled out after that.
“……”
Kissing doesn’t mean dating……?
– Hey, what’s with this silence?
It was fortunate that Yoo Jeongyeon couldn’t see my face. If he were in front of me now, he would have roared with laughter for 30 minutes seeing my confused face. Of course, even now he was giggling through the phone.
– This is crazy. Lee Hajin, when are you going to grow up?
“What do you mean. I know too.”
I suddenly felt like a stupid idiot who knew nothing. Originally Yoo Jeongyeon and I were equally clueless, but it wasn’t easy to accept the fact that he had left me behind and gotten ahead.
– What do you know?
“I know too. I tried it recently.”
So I blurted it out.
– What? With who?
“I’m not telling you.”
– Ah, what!
If I had to say, it wasn’t even a peck, and was closer to just putting my lips against his cheek and pulling away, but still, I decided to count it as a kiss. Thinking about that time made me feel strange. I lay down on the bed, hugged a pillow in my arms, and blinked quietly.
– Right, but hey, you can’t tell my hyung I kissed someone, okay? That guy’s a prude. If he hears that, he’ll immediately nag me over the phone. He might even chase here to pick me up.
“Hyung-nim would?”
That was quite an interesting story to me. Jeongwoo hyung-nim was conservative enough to be called a prude?
After hearing Jeongyeon’s words, I couldn’t help but naturally imagine hyung-nim’s chaste sex life.
– Yeah, of course. My hyung is practically impotent.
“That story again?”
I asked in a completely deflated voice. It seemed like it had already been a good two years since I’d first heard this. The Jeongwoo hyung-nim impotence theory was a hypothesis that Yoo Jeongyeon had been consistently asserting to me since some time ago.
– Sometimes I even wonder if that guy is really an alpha. Honestly, my hyung is at the age where he should be getting married soon, right? Even when Mom and Dad always try to introduce him to nice omegas, he says no. When they tell him to bring a lover if he doesn’t like it, he doesn’t even pretend to listen. And he’s never mentioned going into rut either? Sometimes he really does seem impotent.
Of course, there was some basis for Jeongyeon to say such things.
In fact, even I thought Jeongwoo hyung-nim seemed a bit impotent.
