“Don’t cry and stand up straight.”
“…Sniff.”
“You’re the chief mourner. No one will help you just because you cower and hide. Lift your head and face it head-on.”
Dowon grabbed Yeohwi’s collar and forcibly made him stand up. To stand on his own two feet. To properly look ahead.
Soon he too bowed to Chairman Seong’s portrait and offered incense.
When everyone treated him as a money bag and tried to plunder him, the only person who treated him as the chief mourner. The person who made him lift his head even if by force.
The sharp eyes of Chairman Do, sitting in a wheelchair, turned toward the two of them.
He didn’t know it then, but looking back, it was probably that moment. When Chairman Do marked Yeohwi as Dowon’s match.
What happened that day remained stamped like a tattoo in Yeohwi’s heart for a long time.
A twelve-year age gap. A perfect adult who had lived in the world twelve years longer than himself.
Dowon might not even remember, but to Yeohwi, who had become perfectly alone with nowhere to rely on, he was the first person to teach him self-reliance.
So when the talk of a political marriage came up, Yeohwi didn’t hesitate. No, rather he felt relieved.
Dowon was 32 and Seong Yeohwi was 20. If it were a normal relationship, even standing by his side wouldn’t have been easily permitted. Because he’d gained an opportunity to approach his side in this way.
‘I also… didn’t really know my own heart until now.’
Before this, it had been a pitiful loneliness. As Dowon criticized, he had been starved for attention. Being an orphan alone in the world, he needed someone to stay by his side and share warmth with him.
However, deep in his heart, there was a vague wish that the person who could resolve the source of that thirst would be Dowon. It was just too faint, so he couldn’t be certain.
Marrying early to build a family, settling down, becoming stable, harmoniously, lovey-dovey. A warm and pleasant married life full of affection like something drawn in a picture…
‘That kind of thing is a fantasy, I know it. I know.’
It’s not like he’s a kid throwing a fit about finding a unicorn. And of all people, it had to be with Dowon.
From the first day until now, he’s never shown a single opening or given any room for it.
He pushed him away calling him a kid, drew a line saying it was a political marriage, and far from treating him like a human being, he even dismissed his daily morning greetings without a second thought!
‘But still…’
Yeohwi stopped his struggling movements and stared blankly at the empty air.
During this short married life, the Dowon he’d observed from nearby was a man with an abyss much deeper than Yeohwi had guessed.
That back view of him accepting without any agitation the low-class verbal abuse Do Jingyu had poured out today.
Looking at that back, Yeohwi realized. That Dowon too had lived with the same deficiency as himself. The label of being an orphan who lost his parents, the contempt and greedy gazes of relatives.
When he was crying alone after losing his grandfather, Dowon had endured in this desolate house alone, sharpening his blade. Realizing that the strength that had straightened up Yeohwi when he was about to collapse was actually honed in loneliness with nowhere to lean on, a hot and damp emotion beyond respect surged up from below his heart.
‘…We’re alike.’
Perhaps the cold words Dowon spat out weren’t simple rejection, but rejection stemming from long-standing habits. A solid fortress he’d locked himself in and erected. A longing surged to face the real Dowon who would be cowering inside it.
After realizing that, a corner of his heart began to ache coolly. His feelings for Dowon. This didn’t simply stem from loneliness. His emotions were sharp, concrete, and precisely directed at only one person.
‘…I see, it has to be that person.’
It felt like his heart was sinking to the floor with a thud.
It wasn’t that he desperately needed someone’s attention. Back then and now, that person, Dowon, was what he desperately needed.
He was curious about him, he wanted to know him. He wanted to face the real face deeply hidden in the jet-black abyss and directly touch the substance of the black flames that must be burning within it.
He came to greedily want none other than Dowon to open his heart to him, and ultimately for him to become his person.
Moreover, he realized that this was the first time he’d experienced this emotion in his short twenty-year life.
‘But there’s no way that would happen.’
The emotion that bloomed like a sprout brought not hope but despair. His briefly swollen heart quickly sank.
To Dowon, he was just a bothersome and annoying kid born twelve years apart who didn’t know how the world worked.
“Haaa…”
Yeohwi made a groaning sound and burrowed back into the blanket.
He gloomily looked at the bedroom door with cruel eyes. Whether today or tomorrow, that door would never open forever. He’d have to sleep alone on this wide bed until he died.
Then, his gaze turned downward to below himself.
The bulging outline of his loose pajama pants.
Seong Yeohwi stealthily moved his body, pulled back the blanket, and looked down at his waistband.
‘Ah, um.’
Twitch. The thin pajama fabric stirred and the thing lying against one thigh jerked upward. Yeohwi’s face flushed hotly. He wondered if he was sane in this situation, but his beast-like large body was full of uncontrollable vigor.
Then naturally, the wedding night when he’d attempted a kiss with Dowon with only momentum and no plan came to mind.
That stupid and humiliating moment when their teeth had clacked together.
But just before that, in a very brief instant, Yeohwi remembered the sensation he’d felt.
The breath he felt when approaching slowly with tension. Before their teeth bumped together, the soft texture of lips that had brushed. It seemed a bit rough. It was also slightly cold. But inside was definitely moist.
Desperately reviving the memory that had been a dark history, Yeohwi slowly lowered his hand inside his pajama pants. He almost called Dowon’s name, then bit his lip and closed his eyes.
He hadn’t wanted to yearn like this.
Primitive, vulgar, what the hell kind of… It wasn’t supposed to be like getting his dick hard first as if in heat. It wasn’t supposed to be. But still, he couldn’t help it, could he?
‘I, I guess I really am a simple bastard. My cock, it’s throbbing too much.’
Between his legs was hot enough to feel the outline that protruded clearly even over his briefs. When he placed his hand over it, he could feel the thing pulsing like a separate creature from his body, twitching.
‘Is everyone normally like this…? When you like someone, does your body react first?’
He hadn’t even properly grasped his feelings for Dowon yet. How long had it been since he became aware of it, yet his dick was standing first like this. It had never been like this before. But somehow, before he could think things through, his lower body was already getting excited on its own.
After rubbing over his briefs with his palm, thinking it wouldn’t work, he shoved his hand inside his underwear. He properly grabbed the cock shaft and smoothly stroked upward.
The volume caught in his hand was quite large. Yet it still wasn’t fully erect. It was because he was naturally endowed with a rarely seen large member.
‘Maybe it’s because I’m stupidly hung with just a huge cock.’
Wrapped in an indescribable feeling, Yeohwi repeatedly shook his wrist rapidly. The more he did so, the more he kept thinking of Dowon. He repeatedly recalled the brief moment when their lips had bumped. And he closed both eyes and tried to draw him in the darkness.
If he got another chance, he definitely wouldn’t rush in clumsily like that.
He would turn his head to match the angle of their lips and overlap them softly. No, if it’s too soft, it might be boring for him. Passionately and hotly, yet not just pushing forward but controlling the intensity. He wanted to fully stimulate the sensitive places on the tongue so that not only Yeohwi but Dowon could get excited too.
“Ah, ah…”
Yeohwi rapidly moved his hand back and forth while running a simulation of repeatedly kissing the imaginary Dowon that appeared in his head. The pitch-black view before his eyes seemed to flash white at some point, and soon his palm became damp.
Yeohwi, who pulled out a tissue and wiped the semen flowing stickily between his fingers, swallowed a sigh inwardly. He felt strange. As if he’d stepped into a forbidden territory he shouldn’t approach.
