Chapter 31

The moment Se-woong grabbed whatever came to hand—tugging at Shin’s shirt collar to press their lips together—Shin twisted his head as if he had been waiting for that very invitation. One of Shin’s hands slipped beneath the coat, gripping Se-woong’s waist through the thin dress shirt, while his other hand moved restlessly, caressing Se-woong’s fine hair and the back of his neck.

Se-woong embraced and stroked him in much the same manner. At each grazing touch against his skin, Shin’s brow knit with faint tension. In truth, Shin’s lips had rarely ever been rough. Though their physical acts were often fierce, his lips had generally remained smooth. Yet tonight, everywhere Shin’s lips brushed felt parched, stinging with intense roughness.

Was it from lingering in the freezing wind for so long, or had Shin been tormented by the same parching thirst as him, dry lips splitting open? Parting his lips, Se-woong extended his tongue to lick Shin’s chapped mouth.

Come back to me. Does giving me time mean you’re waiting for me?

Shin’s firm thumb pressed down against the corner of Se-woong’s mouth, dragging it down before immediately invading his oral cavity. Sweeping the blunt pad of his thumb along the inner mucous membrane of Se-woong’s cheek to pry his lips wide, Shin thrust his tongue even deeper into the gap. Whenever anger or urgency seized him, Shin often shoved his fingers inside Se-woong’s mouth as though his tongue alone were never enough. Se-woong’s lips would have parted willingly without any forceful coaxing, yet Shin could not endure even that fleeting moment of patience.

The wet, slick friction of mingling saliva echoed starkly through the emergency stairwell. Surrounded only by bare cement walls and stainless-steel railings, not a single surface existed to absorb the sound. Even their ragged, intermittent gasps bounced off the cold stone before returning to their ears.

Fighting the constant urge to sink to the floor, Se-woong only gripped Shin’s shirt with greater desperation. Nor was it merely a psychological impulse: each time the tip of Shin’s tongue scraped against his palate and thick fingers brushed his tongue to knead the flesh inside his cheek, the strength in his legs gave way little by little.

Shin’s heavy tongue showed no mercy. Churning through the mouth as though aiming to suffocate him, it burrowed into the deepest recesses of his throat. As if intending to affirm his existence through sheer pain, it was an unforgiving, punishing kiss. Yet all the while, Shin’s hand gently stroked down the length of Se-woong’s back.

“Wait, it hurts… Hold on a second,” Se-woong pleaded in a breathless gasp.

Shin buried his face closer. “…Woong-ah.”

Still keeping their lips glued together, Shin called out Se-woong’s name. The sound was like an exhaled sigh.

“Se-woong-ah.”

To allow Se-woong to lean entirely upon him, Shin braced the leg wedged between Se-woong’s thighs with greater force, pulling his waist flush against his abdomen. Deeming even that insufficient, Shin exerted every ounce of strength in both arms as though refusing to permit the slightest sliver of space between them.

Tightening his embrace, Shin whispered, “Relax and lean on me.”

Only then did Se-woong release the tension in his muscles, leaning his entire weight into Shin’s frame. Shin felt that burden in full. Despite the intense pain from having his raw mouth tormented, Se-woong did not forget to gently stroke Shin’s back. It was precisely that habitual tenderness of Se-woong’s that kept Shin’s thirst from ever abating.

He hoped something would fundamentally shift once this kiss concluded—just like in those bygone days, when a single kiss had the power to make everything vanish as though it had never happened.

When their romance had first commenced, having arrived at that decision through such immense difficulty, one might assume they did nothing but cherish and coddle each other. In truth, reality had been quite different. They clashed frequently and occasionally erupted into fierce quarrels. Neither Shin nor Se-woong was a stranger to romantic relationships, yet this dynamic differed substantially in texture from anything either had experienced before.

In particular, compared to the effortlessly composed Shin, Se-woong was encumbered by countless reservations. Having fought tooth and nail before dating—exposing every unsightly flaw to one another—Se-woong felt acting sweet and head-over-heels now was utterly unbecoming. On top of that, he constantly worried that Shin might suddenly find romantic affection between two men repulsive. Consequently, his outward expressions of intimacy often came across as unintentionally clumsy.

Shin, for his part, had grown unprecedentedly irritable after entering this relationship. To him, dating had always been simple: enjoyable while it lasted, and easily discarded upon parting, leaving little room for lingering regret. Yet for some inexplicable reason, that casual detachment failed completely when it came to Se-woong. It rankled him immensely that Se-woong, who laughed easily and acted so easygoing around others, grew awkward and guarded only in his presence.

That day had been no different. Seeing Se-woong return with a flushed face after playing table tennis with a classmate from next door, Shin had been unable to rein in the surging irritation in his chest. Seeing him limp into the room having twisted an ankle during the match, and noticing the bangs plastered with sweat against his forehead, had thoroughly infuriated Shin.

Shin asked coolly, “Did you have fun playing table tennis?”

“Yeah, it was all right,” Se-woong replied, wiping his brow. “What about you? Did you stay in the room the entire time?”

“…What happened to your leg?” Shin asked, staring down at him.

“Ah, this? Just twisted it a little. Nothing serious,” Se-woong explained, leaning back. “Jong-hoon said he had pain relief spray, so he sprayed some on for me.”

Shutting his open textbook, Shin walked over to where Se-woong sat. As he drew close, a pungent medicinal odor assaulted his nostrils. Apparently, Jong-hoon had not merely sprayed a modest token amount. Tilting his head, Shin gazed silently at the bare calves and ankles exposed beneath Se-woong’s athletic shorts. The skin near the right malleolus was flushed red.

Shin narrowed his eyes. “That guy sprayed it on for you?”

“Jong-hoon? Yeah,” Se-woong answered innocently. “It was his spray, after all.”

This turbulent sensation was entirely unfamiliar. In the past, had a girlfriend received assistance from someone while injured, Shin would never have felt this sort of petty irritation. If anything, he would have sought that person out to offer polite compensation. That was courteous; that was the proper conduct he had been raised to observe.

Yet right now, merely imagining the eyes that had inspected that slender ankle and the hands that had held it turned Shin’s stomach inside out. Even before that, the sheer knowledge that Se-woong had been panting and sweating through a ping-pong match alongside a strapping male cadet had plunged Shin’s mood straight to rock bottom.

Such vile, twisted emotions were entirely beyond his prior experience. This feeling, utterly impossible to master or subdue, felt horrifyingly foreign.

“Se-woong-ah,” Shin called out quietly.

Letting his emotions be tossed about by something as trivial as romance felt thoroughly unlike him. Back then, Shin still believed that dating Cha Se-woong was merely ‘just another relationship.’

“Should we just go back to being friends?” he suggested flatly.

Granted, their beginning had been somewhat extraordinary. Even so, wasn’t it still just dating in the end?

Driven mad when he saw him, and equally frantic when he couldn’t—unable to manage those boiling emotions, Shin had initiated this relationship. Yet if being together only produced the exact same ceaseless turmoil, he thought it best to call it quits right here. As for the fact that they were both men, stopping now would allow them to sweep it under the rug as a temporary quirk of youthful vigor.

Besides, Se-woong seemed to harbor few regrets. Even right now, it was plain to see. Se-woong was far more relaxed around that garrulous classmate—whether his name was Jong-hoon or Jong-sam—than around him. Unable to speak comfortably when left alone with Shin, Se-woong had readily held out his injured ankle to that bastard and let him apply spray.

That had been their very first breakup.

After asking for the reason a few times, Se-woong soon accepted it and nodded in agreement. Shin’s prediction had been spot-on: parting ways appeared to be no momentous affair for Se-woong. Just like that, as though they had never rubbed lips or pressed bare skin together, Se-woong reverted to an ordinary classmate and dorm roommate.

If anything changed after ending their brief romance, it was that Se-woong found various excuses to roam outside rather than linger in their room.

The moment morning roll call and distance runs concluded, Se-woong vanished, returning only right before evening lights-out. During the hours in between, he seemed to sequester himself in the library or drift between other cadets’ quarters. At the same time, he grew visibly closer to classmates with whom he had rarely interacted before—especially Kim Jong-hoon, his ping-pong partner.

Shin knew this awkwardness was typical for former lovers forced to see each other daily, and that they would soon adjust. Even so, Shin detested every bit of it. He had asked to stop dating, not to have Se-woong vanish entirely from his sight.

Then came a certain night. Thinking Se-woong was sound asleep following evening roll call, Shin noticed him secretly slipping out of the room. Catching the movement, Shin opened his eyes. Expecting Se-woong to return after a short while, Shin waited, but Se-woong did not return the entire night. Shin could not catch a wink of sleep.

From the instant Se-woong had stealthily crept out of bed, heat had smoldered deep in Shin’s solar plexus. As the clock crept past midnight and dawn settled in, that fiery heat curdled into icy chill.

Where was he curled up asleep, and beside whom? Tortured by the thought of Cha Se-woong breathing softly in slumber beside someone else, Shin clenched his teeth until his jaw ached, enduring until the white dawn finally broke.

“Huh? You were awake?” Se-woong asked, stepping into the room.

Seeing him walk in with heavily swollen eyes, having clearly just washed his face, Shin had let out a stunned, hollow laugh. The memory of that instant remained dark and dizzying in his mind. Why were his eyes swollen? What could possibly have made him weep in the dead of night? Cha Se-woong only shed physiological tears when intensely aroused.

With a gaze turning frost-cold, Shin demanded, “…Were you with Kim Jong-hoon?”

Shin did not truly believe Se-woong had done anything reckless the previous night. He knew Se-woong’s cautious nature well, and above all, Cha Se-woong was not the sort of person whose impulses ever superseded reason. He knew it—knew it beyond doubt—yet Shin found his rage impossible to bridle.

This was the second time. The second time he experienced anger so blinding that his vision went dark. The first had been when he mistakenly assumed Se-woong had been meeting other men on weekends. Even after learning that was purely his own misunderstanding, that dizzying fury had remained vivid. Shin felt as though he had been reduced to a fool, carrying around a brain that refused to function with basic sanity.

“Huh? Jong-hoon? Ah… yeah,” Se-woong stammered, flustered. “More importantly, Shin-ah, I… I have something to tell you…”

Waiting for the subsequent words, Shin had clamped his jaw so hard that his cheeks felt numb. Having tried it, dating a guy doesn’t seem so bad; it doesn’t necessarily have to be you, so I’ve decided to see Kim Jong-hoon. If words like that came spilling out…

Shin sneered bitterly, “Se-woong-ah. Have you decided to just keep seeing bastards from now on? Did trying it once make you realize it suits you?”

“You bastard, talking like that again… Hey!” Se-woong cried out, his voice cracking.

In an instant, the rims of Se-woong’s eyes and the tip of his nose flushed crimson, and tears welled up thick and trembling.