“Probably the sound of this instrument rather than that boring thing…”
“Ah!”
“Is much more to my taste.”
His hand dug into my crotch as calmly as his voice. My shoulders jumped sharply. He must be crazy!
Fortunately, what J was playing was a passionate piece of my taste that he’d mocked. People were focused as if their souls had been completely stolen by the violent storm of notes that whipped, pounded, and poured down. I covered my mouth, trembling my thighs and prayed. Please let the seats behind us also be absorbed in the stage and pay no attention to the two suspicious men in front.
By the time the performance ended, I too had my soul wrung out in a different sense from the audience.
Vigorous applause loud enough to shake the hall filled it. Exhausted while entangled like vines around Kang Ikwon, I hung my hands limply and looked at J taking a bow. Even after the breathless piece ended, he had a fresh face like someone who’d whistle and stroll off the stage. J, who was leaving the stage, suddenly turned his head. I felt like our gazes met for a moment through the curtain where light and darkness tangled.
“It wouldn’t be strange if eyes met at this distance.”
Kang Ikwon whispered as if reading my mind. My heart pounded like someone caught at the coincidental timing. He bit my earlobe very hard, with full force, as if telling me to snap out of it. Amid the noise created by hundreds of palms clapping, I had the illusion of hearing the crunch of soft bone being crushed.
It must have been an enjoyable time for Kang Ikwon. He used the piano part to blatantly sexually harass me, and thanks to that I couldn’t doze off again until the performance ended. But when the lights came on in the audience, there wasn’t even a trace of satisfaction on his face, let alone the real thing.
“It’s over.”
He had his hand to his lips and was lost in thought while looking straight ahead. When the exhausted me tapped his arm, he only moved his dry eyes with no warmth to look at me, but didn’t turn his head. Instead, Kang Ikwon suddenly asked.
“How was it?”
“Uh… well. It was good.”
“Really?”
I tried to speak as calmly and indifferently as possible, but it got stuck in my throat and came out like mumbling. No matter how much Kang Ikwon doesn’t know, giving a ticket to my ex-boyfriend’s performance as a gift and even praising it on top of that is kind of trashy. Kang Ikwon, who’d taken his eyes off me, calmly made a bone-chilling proposal.
“Don’t you want to meet him in person?”
“What?”
“I could arrange it. Of course, if you want, that is.”
Kang Ikwon recommended it with eyes still bluntly staring into the distance, without much enthusiasm. But contrary to his words, his expression showed he absolutely hoped I wouldn’t want it. That stiff attitude like granting an unwanted request was infuriating, but the content was even insulting just to imagine.* Go backstage and what? Get J’s autograph?*
“No.”
I said firmly.
“Absolutely, absolutely abso-lutely don’t want to meet.”
“I see.”
Kang Ikwon buried his body in the chair as if completely deflated. He looked exhausted like someone who’d finished a full sprint. Even leaving the concert hall, even while driving, he was dazed the whole time like someone half out of it. It was unfamiliar to see him unable to focus on conversation with me and floating around, but today I too had my thoughts focused elsewhere, so in a way it was comfortable. The two of us parted quietly, each immersed in different thoughts and silence.
***
Kang Ikwon became more affectionate. I didn’t know it was possible to go further.
His attitude ripened stickily and sweetly like grapes past harvest season, and these days I feel exactly like a fly dying in honey. Ripe affection clings stickily to me, gripping my limbs and not letting go. To what extent? Exaggerating a bit, I have no memory of stepping on Kang Ikwon’s floor these days. The strong guy carried me around like a koala whenever he was bored. Actually, there was another reason for this—as soon as we entered the front door, it was straight to the bed, and after that…
“Just one more time…”
Incredibly intense sex.
Kang Ikwon bit and sucked my back already full of his teeth marks, my shoulder blades, protruding spine, and the dimples above my buttocks in order.
“Just one more time, okay?”
Ignoring the persistent pleading, I made a groaning sound and turned my body. Even in that brief moment, the expression that had twisted with dissatisfaction like prey had been snatched away smoothly relaxed when I stretched out my arms and embraced him.
Kang Ikwon these days is sharply on edge like a starving lion alone on a prairie everyone has left. At the same time, he wore me out with eyes that panted pitifully as if his thirst wouldn’t be quenched no matter how much he drank. Geez. I wrapped my legs around his waist and pulled. Yeah, this body is the nectar. Drink.
“Just… one more time.”
I repeated in a hoarse voice a promise that had been made many times and wouldn’t be kept. Kang Ikwon cupped my cheeks with a brightened face and kissed me. He circled my forehead, eyelids, and nose tip, then returned to my lips and lapped at them as if sucking up water pooled between each crease. The almost pitiful kiss slowly continued along my jaw and neck, spreading to my whole body.
“There… Ah!!”
My body, which had been enduring by biting the back of my hand, shot up. I sobbed slightly and threw my head back.
“There, there a bit more… no, no, stop now.”
Kang Ikwon of course didn’t stop. I stretched out my foot and kicked lightly, but far from being pushed away, he hooked my calf over his shoulder and licked up from the top of my foot, biting like a beast. The skin of my ankle with almost no flesh was crushed and pleasure resembling pain, or pain resembling pleasure, flashed. This was precisely the source of power that let Kang Ikwon’s “just one more time” tie me to the bed all day.
“Your whole body is like a flower garden.”
Kang Ikwon’s hand slowly traveled down my body, mottled with marks and bruises he’d left. The hand circling above my navel gripped my cock tightly. There’s even a hole dripping honey. Kang Ikwon muttered without smiling. When he sucked below using only his tongue without his lips like inserting a straw, it pulled so hard my stomach ached. I could feel the skin, already so red there didn’t seem to be a single piece of original skin color left, heating up even more. Right now my body must look like spring flowers in full bloom, just as Kang Ikwon said.
“Stop doing such lewd things.”
When I rubbed Kang Ikwon’s back with my toes and bucked my hips, Kang Ikwon pulled out the tongue he’d thrust in and bit with his teeth instead.
“Fuck, why is there endless honey flowing?”
“Because… you’re so persis… ah! …tent. Hhh…”
Kang Ikwon’s new weapon is a long battle. Even without proper foreplay, just sucking very long and persistently as if holding fruit in his mouth, then slowly pushing out with his tongue—even that slight stimulation made me shudder as if burned by fire. Repeating that several times, my whole body became so sensitive that the air touching me the moment his lips parted felt like an ice pick. From then on, I was a minefield that would explode wherever pressed. In the end, just one more time—where did my coy appearance go—when I moved on my own in desperation, Kang Ikwon, who had carefully planted those mines one by one in my body, pretended he couldn’t resist and gently entered me. And then endless blinking and fade-outs.
There’s no way I could walk.
Unlike before, Kang Ikwon didn’t have wild sex that kindled flames, but devoured me like ice cream that needed to be melted piece by piece with his tongue, hands, and cock. Sometimes half a day passed with just foreplay alone. Yet strangely, I felt that Kang Ikwon, who drove me with such patience, was becoming more anxious. His inexplicable impatience made me feel pitiful rather than frustrated. In response to him clinging as if he didn’t want me to leave for even a moment, I decided to devote all my time to Kang Ikwon except for the minimum needed to maintain my social dignity and status. In other words, 24 hours.
I was always quick to collapse after sex anyway, but now there really was no time to be fine. After lovemaking that felt like all my semen and bodily fluids had been sucked out, my body couldn’t keep up despite my admirable will. If you say stamina is a matter of willpower, that bastard should have sex with Kang Ikwon. No wait, he’s mine. Why would that bastard have sex with him? I just need to build my body. Build my stamina too…
Even though I made pointless resolutions every time and passed out, when I woke from sleep, my only exercise was still sex with Kang Ikwon. After rolling in bed for three days and nights like that, even breathing felt tiresome.
When I groaned and tossed in the middle of the night, Kang Ikwon held me tightly with his whole body. Sometimes late at night or early dawn, waking from light sleep, my eyes would meet Kang Ikwon’s looking down at me. Not… sleeping? When I mumbled with a tongue that didn’t work properly, Kang Ikwon, who’d been watching me silently, would slowly pat my chest or stroke my hair like putting a child to sleep. At those times, his eyes looked deeper and drier than the darkness of the room we were locked in. But strangely, that unfamiliar, dry gaze reassured me more than the familiar heat. So I’d quickly roll into deep, deep sleep like a baby in a cozy embrace.
“Have you ever liked anyone?”
Hm? I tried to raise my head while lying face down with all my strength drained, but dropped it back down. Ah, I don’t even want to move my hand.
“‘Anyone’… don’t I have a heart or something?”
“What kind of person were they?”
“Well, they were quite varied.”
I’m quite flexible in my tastes, you see. I reached out, fumbling to find the cigarette pack. Kang Ikwon looked at me quietly.
“So you liked everyone you’ve dated?”
“Well… I dated them because I liked them all…”
Ah, one left. I frowned and put the cigarette in my mouth. It would be nice if Kang Ikwon smoked, so we could share. I tried to light it, but the lighter was acting up. The wheel slipped and wouldn’t light.
“Not again.”
It always does this when I really need a cigarette. Kang Ikwon quietly pressed down my finger spinning irritably in vain. He covered my hand with his, and using his thumb that was longer and thicker than mine, flicked it vigorously like striking flint, and it lit immediately.
“Thanks.”
“Why do you keep using something this inconvenient? This is…”
Kang Ikwon stared at the common plastic lighter. He seems to have swallowed the word ‘cheap.’
“—Is there perhaps another reason?”
“Ah. I lose lighters so often, I just buy them as needed. Even if I buy expensive ones I lose them quickly, and even if I get them as gifts I drop them somewhere…”
Kang Ikwon, who’d been listening silently, slowly rubbed my thumb, its flesh dented from the struggle with the lighter. His neatly trimmed nail traced a crack across my skin.
“They don’t cost much anyway, so just using cheap ones and throwing them away is—”
I was chattering thoughtlessly when I suddenly thought of the lighter hidden in the console box. I changed my words hurriedly like making a U-turn.
“—what I thought until yesterday… but maybe I should change that too…”
