“70-year-old wild ginseng would let you last half a day longer than wild mountain ginseng.”
“No…, I’m not eating that.”
I desperately moved my tongue, dulled from drowsiness, to refuse.
“You eat… no, you absolutely shouldn’t eat it…”
My tongue becomes dull again. Lips lick and press against my cheek. A low laugh rang out like a lullaby.
“Just… just give it to your father…”
I feel the touch stroking my head until I fall asleep.
It’s a hand so tender it brings tears to my eyes.
Suddenly I thought that what I should really worry about isn’t the luxurious dates but becoming accustomed to this tenderness. So despite the warmth of the hand, I became a little lonely.
***
When I opened my eyes, I saw an unusually wide bed and unfamiliar walls. After being dazed for a moment, as I turned over, something tightly, stuffily constricted my chest.
“Ah…”
Only after barely craning my neck to check behind my back did I realize. This is his place.
The bedroom was pitch dark, unable to distinguish day from night. But judging from the complete absence of the characteristic signs of morning, it’s probably dawn. Not late at night. It was already past midnight when we rolled around in the living room once and moved to the bedroom.
My shoulder and arm on the pressed side were numb, perhaps from sleeping in the same position held by Kang Ikwon for a long time. He was deeply asleep, his lips buried between my neck and shoulder, embracing me from behind as if binding me. When I carefully pulled my arm, the strength of his embrace grew stronger. When I gave up and lay down, this time a sudden urge to urinate was felt. Ah, damn…
“Mm…”
I sighed and pulled my arm with force, and after tossing and turning for a moment, with a moan, I could see eyelids lifting slightly in the familiar darkness.
“…Are you awake?”
He searches for me with a voice so low it’s chilling. Both the unclear pronunciation and half-open eyes are tinged with hazy sleepiness.
“Keep sleeping.”
“Don’t go…”
“I’m not going. I’ll be back from the bathroom.”
“…Don’t…”
Listening with a willing heart to the murmuring that could be heard as hurry… or don’t… like a precious child’s first babbling, I patted his chest. Soon the thick chest began to heave regularly again. Whew, I couldn’t help but smile contentedly at the surprisingly defenseless and fragile breathing sounds.
“After only seeing you lively like a monster, this is new.”
I murmured while pressing his lips that were slightly parted, uncharacteristically unkempt, then kissed his cheek with smacking sounds. Come to think of it, this is the first time seeing him asleep. Even after I was so exhausted I couldn’t control my whole body, the guy was fine, and when I fell asleep as if tumbling down, I always felt the touch of hands holding and stroking me until the last moment. My morning greeting was making eye contact with him already looking down at me with a clean face when I opened my eyes.
“Cute.”
As I enjoyed looking at his unusually disarmed and disheveled appearance, a strange thought suddenly occurred to me. Then doesn’t it mean he’s been armed and always tense until now?
Before I could reflect on where such an impression was left in my unconscious, the urge to urinate that had awakened and been neglected stabbed at my lower abdomen. Running to the bathroom, I soon forgot that thought.
“Wow.”
The exclamation that came out while walking down the hallway had almost turned into a sigh by the time I reached the living room.
“Wow…”
The ceiling was high. And the cityscape at night was contained like a picture in a frame within the floor-to-ceiling windows that reached all the way to the end. I approached the window and quietly gazed at it. The time I checked in the bathroom was 4 AM. Seoul, still submerged in darkness, was like a sparkling snow globe. My nearly naked figure overlapped on top of it.
I almost peed myself.
I muttered while craning my neck to look at the rather avant-garde lighting.
I should have looked for the bathroom attached to the master bedroom. After opening three different doors looking for it, I regretted it as soon as I ran outside, worried about Kang Ikwon who kept tossing as if about to wake up. This house was like one giant maze. Even the bathroom I barely found after wandering around here and there didn’t have the smell of daily life.
How rich would you have to be to live in a house like this? Though I hadn’t deliberately buried it, curiosity that had never particularly surfaced slightly stirred. What kind of work did Kang Ikwon do in New York, and in what way did he love what kind of person?
With my gaze fixed on the window, lost in thought, my heart sank at the faint figure reflected behind me.
“You scared me. I thought you were a ghost.”
“Why aren’t you coming back?”
Kang Ikwon, who had been standing with his arms crossed quietly watching me, muttered. His languid voice still had sleepiness clinging to it.
“I was looking around… Nice place.”
I rubbed the back of my neck while looking around. The part about looking around the house is true. Yesterday we came in tangled up frantically from the entrance so I couldn’t see anything, but even just the entrance hall was, with a bit of exaggeration, about 10 meters long and wide. It’s a wonder that Kang Ikwon, excited like an angry bull, didn’t knock me down in front of the shoe cabinet.
“How many rooms are there? Do you live here alone?”
Instead of answering, Kang Ikwon stared at me blankly. With intoxicated eyes as if dreaming.
“Towel.”
“Ah.”
Kang Ikwon’s gaze was fixed on the towel wrapped around my pelvis. Long and thick like a hotel towel, it wrapped around like a skirt with room to spare.
“Since I was up, I washed. Is that okay?”
“No.”
“Huh?”
Since it was just empty words, I was a bit flustered at the unexpected answer. Of course, using the bathroom without permission in a house you’re visiting for the first time is generally rude, but we’re not in a general relationship, right? Above all, weren’t you the character who would say “I’ll carry it for you” even if I tried to take the bathtub?
“Hey. I just took a quiet shower, okay? The robe too…”
“Of course it’s not okay.”
He cuts off my words decisively. The eyes looking straight at me are sharp but the focus is blurred. Kang Ikwon, who approached in an instant, pressed my chest crushingly with force. My nipples were twisted mercilessly between his fingers.
“Ah!”
“Looking so lewd like this.”
“No, I was going to wear a robe.”
“Now you even appear in my house looking like this.”
His reprimand, which had been letting all my words go in one ear and out the other, suddenly broke off.
“My, house…”
The eyes that had been wandering over my body blankly for a moment slowly came to rest on my face. The gaze became clear in an instant. Kang Ikwon pronounced it slowly and precisely once more.
“Why are you in my house?”
“Because I slept with you at your house. Do you sleepwalk?”
I snapped my fingers in front of his eyes.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m completely awake now.”
As if it were true, Kang Ikwon’s tone became calm again. However, the hand that gripped my chest didn’t leave and slowly gathered, pulled, kneaded, and rubbed the barely-there flesh around my nipples.
“What are you doing?”
“You looked cold.”
The man gave a shameless retort that didn’t even make sense. Actually, after finishing my bath, my bare upper body was indeed cooling down.
“So you’re going to warm me up with friction heat now?”
“Why didn’t you wear a robe? It should have been hanging in the bathroom.”
There was. Two of them, in fact.
“Just.”
“Just?”
“Ah!”
He pulled on my nipple again. And repeated once more.
“Just?”
“I didn’t know which one was yours.”
I answered sulkily.
“In case, you know, it would be a bit weird if I wore it.”
“In case?”
“Ow! …Stop pinching.”
“Why? Did you think they were couple robes or something?”
He saw through my incoherent answer at once. So you’re deliberately being mean even though you clearly understood? Ha, does his personality change when he’s not fully awake? I grumpily admitted it.
“Yeah. I didn’t wear it because I thought I’d feel shitty.”
“They’re both mine. Simple—spares.”
He rubbed my areola with force, emphasizing the word simple.
“There’s not a single item in this house that needs to consider that person, not one.”
“I wasn’t thinking about his feelings though.”
One of the man’s eyebrows shot up. I looked at that area obliquely and said:
“If it was his, I thought I’d feel shitty.”
The moment I saw two shower robes hanging side by side in the bathroom of a house too large for one person to live in, my mood sank endlessly and groundlessly. What came to mind at the same time were Park Seoyun, whom I met at the restaurant yesterday, and the name of the lover, Jiho. The man who had been a shadow without any substance gained a distinct presence with just one name. Strange. He was a man who meant nothing at all.
“Your mood?”
“Yeah.”
Kang Ikwon looked at me with an expression that was hard to read.
“Why?”
