“Hnngh, ugh….”
Jieon curled up his body and let out a pained groan. When Mua approached to check on him, he saw that Jieon’s face was flushed red and his bangs were thoroughly soaked with cold sweat. He recalled Jieon saying he wasn’t feeling well before bed.
Is he sick…?
Mua muttered to himself. Jieon’s symptoms did seem close to having a body ache. Moreover, the energy Mua sensed was merely unfamiliar—he didn’t particularly feel any malice from it.
What was strange was that he couldn’t identify the scent that kept teasing his nose.
“Cheon Jieon, open your eyes. Are you alright?”
Thinking he should at least get some medicine if it was a severe body ache, Mua tried to wake the curled-up Jieon—when suddenly, Jieon roughly grabbed Mua’s wrist.
“Cheon Jieon?”
“I-I don’t feel well….”
“Yes, I can see that.”
Mua tried to answer as if nothing was wrong, but he couldn’t help being flustered by Jieon’s subsequent actions. Jieon pulled Mua’s hand closer, buried his face in the inner part of his wrist, and began rubbing against it.
“You, what, what are you—”
Completely frozen by the utterly unexpected behavior, Mua couldn’t shake off his hand or move away from the bed, standing there stiffly. Then Jieon gradually applied more force and pulled Mua toward him.
“Wait, you, get a hold of yourself…!”
Before Mua could attempt to do anything to respond, his vision suddenly flipped upside down. When he came to his senses, Mua was lying beneath Jieon.
The saying that people become so shocked they can’t even scream was exactly right. With both hands restrained and Jieon mounting on top of him, pressing down with his body, Mua literally couldn’t move a muscle.
What troubled Mua even more was the formless energy of unknown origin that enveloped his body at that moment. Before he could even figure out what it was, Jieon buried his face in Mua’s neck.
“What are you, what are you doing right now!”
“You smell good… you do….”
Only then did Mua scream and struggle, but Jieon paid no attention. Jieon’s body against his was hot enough to feel even through their clothes. Has he lost his mind because he’s so unwell? As his mind spun, a word he’d been living without remembering suddenly flashed through his head.
Rut.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me….”
The moment that word came to mind, a curse spilled from Mua’s mouth. This reaction was undoubtedly a rut.
But why on earth? The bewilderment didn’t disappear. Hadn’t Cheon Jieon taken rut suppressants not long ago? Judging by his attitude, he clearly took his suppressants regularly.
And it wasn’t as if there was an omega nearby stimulating him. ‘Shin Mua’ was of course a beta, and Suchan was also a beta, so he had no idea what could have suddenly triggered the rut.
“Ugh, please get a hold of yourself…! Ngh!”
But what was important right now wasn’t why the rut had come. In the meantime, Jieon’s touch was becoming increasingly sticky and explicit.
Finally horrified when Jieon began licking his neck, Mua was about to gather strength in his body to at least kick him—when Jieon suddenly raised his body slightly and looked straight down at him.
Their gazes met through the heated air. Mua stared blankly, as if entranced, at his own reflection in Jieon’s pupils.
After possessing a human body, Mua always felt a sense of alienation whenever he looked in a mirror. The mirror clearly reflected his appearance and movements, but Mua had never once felt that it was ‘his own.’
It was always unfamiliar, and sometimes that unfamiliarity became unpleasant. Encountering in daily life an appearance he could neither call his own nor deny was his, Mua often felt he was a foreign existence that belonged nowhere.
But right now, in this moment. For the first time, Mua felt that his reflection in Jieon’s pupils looked like ‘himself.’ It wasn’t simply a matter of having grown accustomed to Shin Mua’s appearance. It was closer to the opposite meaning.
It was none other than Cheon Jieon who was seeing precisely the being called ‘Mua’ inside Shin Mua. Even amidst the excited heat, Mua realized that Jieon was seeing through exactly to himself contained in this flesh and holding that image in his pupils.
He couldn’t explain how it was possible. But he was certain of his own thoughts. Though he was a Grim Reaper trapped in a human body, Mua found this moment when their souls faced each other so mysterious and ecstatic that he momentarily forgot what situation he was in.
“Mua.”
Cheon Jieon called him. Not Shin Mua, but ‘Mua.’ It was the first time those two syllables of his name had come from Jieon’s mouth.
He seemed half out of his mind, consumed by instinct, yet at the same time, he also seemed to be seeing reality with such lucid clarity. Mua unconsciously stopped his movements of resistance and relaxed his body.
A desire welled up to know, from even closer, even more precisely, whether Jieon was truly seeing him. It felt like he had a fever. He couldn’t distinguish whether it was heat from his own body or heat transmitted from Jieon.
His heart pounded violently and somewhere inside his belly felt ticklish. Before he could even be flustered by this physical reaction he was experiencing for the first time in his life, Jieon slowly, very slowly lowered his body, closing the distance.
Mua closed his eyes. Soon, very hot lips devoured Mua’s breath.
***
It was as if his body was floating in midair. He felt so good that he thought it would be fine to die like this. This kind of ecstasy, this kind of pleasure—it was the first time he’d felt it in over a hundred years of living between life and death.
Every time the large, firm palm groped and swept down his back, his waist naturally twisted. At the sensation of the hot mass of flesh moving violently, rubbing inside his mouth and sucking on his tongue, Mua felt like both his body and soul were being completely devoured.
Yet he wasn’t afraid. He didn’t want to escape. No—rather, he craved more of that stimulation. Pleasure incomparable to encountering new food gripped his entire body and wouldn’t let go.
More, just a little more.
Not even knowing what he wanted, Mua craved and craved again the sensations Jieon was giving him.
“Mmnh…!”
But the moment he heard with his own ears the embarrassingly sultry moan flowing from his own throat, he snapped back to his senses like someone doused with cold water. Along with the feeling of all the blood in his body cooling, his hazy consciousness became clear.
Mua blinked repeatedly, his eyes brimming with tears from excessive stimulation, and quickly grasped the situation he was in.
So, until just a moment ago, he had been kissing Cheon Jieon. Jieon was currently burying his lips in Mua’s neck, repeating biting and licking, and his hand that had entered under Mua’s top was now groping around the edge of his pants.
“S-stop, stop it!”
Like someone struck by lightning, Mua screamed loudly and pushed Jieon away with all his strength. Caught off guard, Jieon was momentarily pushed back by the sudden force, and seizing that opportunity, Mua desperately shook him off and got out of the bed.
“Crazy, this is fucking crazy!”
Unable to properly put strength in his legs, Mua collapsed onto the floor and practically crawled toward the door, continuously spitting out curses. He couldn’t help but curse. It was literally an insane situation.
Fortunately, Jieon didn’t chase after Mua and curled up his body again on the bed with pained groans. Whether he too had grasped the situation and felt dizzy, or whether he didn’t even have the presence of mind left for that—Mua couldn’t tell.
For now, Mua hastily closed Jieon’s bedroom door and rushed to his own room, locking the door. Even in the meantime, his knees kept giving out and he didn’t know how many times he fell to the floor.
Not from fear. If he’d been trembling from fear, that would have been fortunate instead. Mua, who had slumped down with his back against the locked door, clutched his head with both hands. His whole body was still trembling.
Not because he was scared or disgusted, but because he was aroused. Because the pleasure Jieon had given him felt good. Because he wanted to keep feeling it.
“A curse, it’s a curse. I’ve been cursed.”
Mua babbled nonsense. Because he couldn’t understand what had just happened.
Let’s say Cheon Jieon had an excuse. He’d lost his reason due to an unexpected rut, so let’s say he could even be aroused by a beta. But what about himself? Though he was a beta and not even a real human, he’d become dazed and surrendered his body to Jieon. He even felt pleasure—he kept cursing at himself because it was so absurd.
“It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense. How could this, how….”
He recalled the few times he’d easily succumbed to bodily stimulation. I should have disciplined myself more strongly then, but thinking he’d return to the Afterlife once he resolved the matter anyway, he’d been too complacent in dealing with it—that had been a misjudgment.
“Haah….”
Mua tried his best to somehow suppress the surging self-loathing and act rationally.
After repeating deep breaths to calm his mind, he searched for Suchan’s contact on his phone. In any case, he knew nothing about Primes, so Suchan would be able to handle this situation better in many ways.
Anyway, the human body is the problem. This is all because of this flesh riddled with desire. In any case, that’s what it was.
