[I’m sorry for hitting your precious cheek despite being a brothel whore.]
“What does a brothel whore originally do?”
[The customer’s…]
Seeing Lee Jeong hesitate without being able to write the next words, Hyunjin urged him.
“Write quickly. Before I get dressed and go down. I have to get turned on watching Lee Jeong-ssi write to fuck you. Isn’t that right? Write it properly. So I’ll want to do it while looking at those words.”
Looking at Hyunjin smiling like a demon, Lee Jeong squeezed his eyes shut.
The man wanted Lee Jeong to kill his own dignity with his own hands. He wanted him to call himself a whore, to not forget what his job was, to repeatedly tell himself endlessly. He wanted Lee Jeong to say with his own mouth that despite living a life like filth, he dared not challenge the man’s authority.
Right. If that’s what you want, as much as you want.
Lee Jeong thought so and opened his eyes that had been closed.
Between trampling and killing his own self and protecting Lee Jeong’s family that the man so humiliated, there was no priority to be assigned. Dokyung was more precious than his own dignity, incomparably so.
A brief moment passed, and Lee Jeong wrote again. Unlike before, it was a hand without hesitation. The fingers writing in calm handwriting no longer trembled.
[I should have sucked your cock until you were satisfied and satisfied your cock with my vulgar hole, but I’m sorry I couldn’t. I’ll do well from now on.]
The man burst out laughing seeing those words. The laughter that began bursting out with cackling echoed unpleasantly in the room. The man laughed for a long time like someone watching a comedy. Wiping the tears hanging at the corners of his eyes through his glasses, the man finally stopped laughing.
“Ah, really so funny, Lee Jeong-ssi. Yes. Now finally, my hurt heart feels a bit better. Then what should I do now, Lee Jeong-ssi?”
[Please fuck…]
Hyunjin snatched the notebook from Lee Jeong’s hand as he was about to write the next words, threw the notebook to the side and smiled brilliantly.
“No, now you have to do it with actions.”
*
White light was pouring in dazzlingly through the window. In the bright sunlight where even each speck of floating dust was visible, Lee Jeong slowly opened his eyes.
The familiar pattern of the ceiling. The familiar feel of the bedding.
And the familiar body temperature and scent touching him beside.
All his senses immediately recognized where this was, but it took about ten more seconds to be sure it was real. It wasn’t realistic. Suddenly opening his eyes in his room, and next to that person at that. Lee Jeong quietly blinked and calmly breathed in and out.
Being suddenly dragged to Yeodan, sold to the establishment by President Park’s hands laughing like a demon, living a slave-like life while raising a baby in his belly, giving birth to the baby and leaving him at the nursery, moving to Yeodanhwa…
Did all those things really happen to me?
The times he tried so hard to survive in that terrible time felt futile and fleeting like a one-night nightmare. Those distant times felt like a thousand years, and also like a fleeting moment like blinking once.
‘Are you up?’
Then a low voice gently tapped at his ear.
‘……’
Greatly startled, Lee Jeong slowly turned his head.
At that moment, his breath felt like it would stop. At the familiar silhouette. At the fact that the body with a hot temperature like flames, which had been drawn so vividly that he could draw it with eyes closed or open, was before him.
That person was lying there. Choi Wookyung, that person whose three-character name pierced his heart. With such a familiar face and voice, he existed wholly lying beside him. As if nothing had happened, just like that.
The face he’d vowed countless times to slap as soon as they met looked haggard, as if he’d been through mental anguish. Meeting eyes that were painfully the same as before, Lee Jeong just moved his lips.
Were you living well, forgetting about me?
I’ve never had a moment not stuck in the mud while raising your child, the one you made.
He wanted to shoot those words at him. But no words came out of his mouth. Emotions welled up so much it was hard to handle. As he barely opened his lips, the tears that had filled up first flowed down his cheeks.
‘…Ah….’
A clear moan burst out.
I had lost my voice. Was that also a dream?
Opening his lips, he quietly called his name. An unfamiliar voice he himself hadn’t heard for so long burst out.
‘…Team Leader-nim.’
‘Why did you wake up already? Did you have a bad dream?’
Speaking in a voice full of sleep, his thick forearm pulled him tightly into an embrace. His entire body felt like it would burn in his hot body temperature like flames. The tears that burst out strangely wouldn’t stop. Even seeing Lee Jeong endlessly shedding tears nestled in his arms, he didn’t ask why he was crying.
‘Don’t cry. Don’t cry… Ido-ya.’
‘Sob, heu, uu….’
‘It was hard, wasn’t it? It was hard all this time….’
Like someone who knew everything, he just quietly held and soothed him. It was the same reliable, deep voice that told him to believe only in him and wait.
It was the voice he’d resented so much. He thought he didn’t want to hear Wookyung’s voice again, the one that gave him false hope and abandoned him in darkness. But when he actually heard his voice, Lee Jeong couldn’t say any words of resentment. He clearly seemed to know how to speak, no, not being able to speak had become such a distant matter he couldn’t even remember it. No language was completed and came out of his mouth.
‘Aheu, heuk, heu….’
‘It’s okay… it’s okay, Ido-ya.’
Pat pat pat. The large palm patting his back was very careful, just like it used to be. He used to tease that if he hit someone wrong with those pot lid-like hands, their bones would break. In reality, he always treated Ido like a dandelion seed that would fly away if blown on. He had never grabbed Ido’s wrist hard even as a joke, or thrown him roughly onto the bed.
‘Don’t cry. When you cry like that, I… this place hurts so much.’
Wookyung’s hand gripped Ido’s slender wrist. And he placed Ido’s palm on his chest. Beyond the solid, thick muscles, fierce pounding could be felt. Thump, thump, the beating of his heart like a living fish was more comforting than anything else at this moment.
He was someone who had been most resentful for being alive and living well while forgetting him. If only he had been dead, he could have spent his whole life longing for him. Just keeping the beautiful memories, burying them in his heart like that.
However, he absolutely didn’t want to forgive him for leaving him and his baby walking through hell while clearly being alive somewhere. Therefore, the fact that he was alive was a more cruel reality to Ido than any other fact.
‘I’m sorry. For leaving you struggling all this time… I’m sorry.’
But strangely, looking at Wookyung’s eyes looking at him with sad eyes, saying his chest hurts, saying he’s sorry, Ido forgot the heart that had been resenting him. As if such feelings had ever existed, they melted away like first snow and disappeared futilely. The feeling of wanting to slap his cheek when they met, saying where had he been, that he had been so struggling.
Only tears poured out and he couldn’t do anything.
‘Don’t cry. Don’t cry…’
Wookyung’s hot lips soon covered Lee Jeong’s lips. It was a method Wookyung used to use even before when Ido pretended to be upset. With no technique but with a heart bursting with desire to soothe, he would look flustered and not know what to do, saying ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry,’ apologizing, and eventually rush in and kiss.
Unlike his blunt voice, how good he was at kissing. Kissing with Wookyung felt like holding slowly melting ice cream in his mouth. When he accepted his lips and tongue as if enchanted, laughter would leak out of his mouth before he knew it.
Eventually when Ido burst into laughter, the situation would end with Wookyung’s victory. During the time they spent together, there really weren’t situations where Lee Jeong would genuinely get angry, but later there were times when he deliberately pretended to be angry because he wanted to see Wookyung struggling like that and tease him.
‘Ha… mmph, mmm…’
Even while gasping for breath, suffocated by the hot breath persistently covering his lips, Lee Jeong laughed. The tears that had been flowing from his eyes had already stopped. Where did all the dark cloud-like, stifling sad emotions that had covered his insides go, and he heard his own voice letting out happy laughter like the old days.
‘You’re heavy, Team Leader…’
‘I told you not to laugh so sexily.’
The laughter deepened. Lee Jeong eventually wrapped his legs around his thick waist, giggling at the hands tickling his sides. Wookyung, who had been looking down at Lee Jeong with one eyebrow raised with an expression of ‘oh really?’, eventually let out a rough breath with a “haa” and buried his lips in Lee Jeong’s white chest.
‘You’re pretty. Ido-ya.’
He was someone who always buried his lips in his white chest and said the same thing. As if he could never say such embarrassing words, he would say so in a low voice with a flushed face. That he’s pretty. That he’s so pretty and precious.
‘If I’m that pretty, then stop making me cry now. I’ve been struggling so much all this time.’
‘Okay, Ido-ya. I’ll do well. I’ll really do well. From now on.’
He smiles. The time he had gone through, the harsh times, were times that could never be healed with such a light promise, with such bland smiles alone.
But just like in the old days, when he was with this person, all the things in the world that weren’t okay always felt… okay. Right now too. This moment so beautiful it brings tears to his eyes.
Seeing Ido wiping his tears and laughing, Wookyung teased.
‘What happens when you cry and then laugh?’
‘I don’t know. What happens?’
