Chapter 20

“Si-woon-ssi.”

Lying on his stomach the next morning, enjoying the cool softness of the clean sheets after his shower, Si-woon lifted his head as the mattress dipped beside him. Fresh from the bathroom with a towel draped around his neck, Je-hee stood holding a small tube of antibacterial ointment with an oddly sheepish expression.

“…Could you help put a little of this on my back? I tried in the mirror, but I can’t reach the middle.”

“Ah.” Sitting up at once, Si-woon took the tube and a cotton swab—and froze as Je-hee turned his bare back toward him. “It stung a bit under the hot water in the shower,” Je-hee added lightly. “I figured I could just leave it alone, but…”

“I’m so sorry.”

Looking at the angry red welts crisscrossing Je-hee’s pale shoulder blades, Si-woon felt a wave of acute guilt wash over him. A person’s back isn’t a scratchpad. In the heat of the night before, after Je-hee told him to hold on as tightly as he needed, his fingernails must have dug far deeper into the man’s skin than he had realized. Daubing the cooling ointment carefully along each red line with the cotton swab, he couldn’t bring himself to meet Je-hee’s eyes.

“If anyone should apologize, it’s me,” Je-hee said over his shoulder. “I’m the one who told you not to hold back.”

“Even so, I—” Waving his free hand in flustered denial, Si-woon abruptly stopped as an unbidden memory from their very first night together flashed through his head—Je-hee’s rough, strangled voice behind the closed bathroom door after putting him to bed: “Si-woon-ah, does it feel good?”

Wait—had Je-hee held back and stopped after a single round last night, too, just because he was worried about wearing Si-woon out after his bus trip from Naeju?

“…”

A scorching blush spread from Si-woon’s cheekbones all the way down his neck. When he fell silent mid-sentence with his swab hovering in the air, Je-hee twisted around on the mattress—and immediately looked alarmed at the color of Si-woon’s face.

“What’s wrong? Are you feeling dizzy?” Pressing the back of his cool hand against Si-woon’s forehead, Je-hee frowned in concern. “Did you catch a fever from last night?”

“N-no, it’s really not a fever—” Averting his eyes in mortification at having entertained impure thoughts while his partner was worrying about his health, Si-woon swallowed hard and decided that if he didn’t speak up now, this misunderstanding would repeat itself every time they went to bed. “Um… the truth is, my body was completely fine last night, too.”

“What?”

“Aside from a little stiffness in my thighs, it wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle.” Seeing Je-hee’s brow furrow in growing puzzlement, Si-woon clenched his fists on his knees and forced the rest of the confession out even if it killed him on the spot. “And the first time we did it… I mean, afterward, when you went into the hall bathroom by yourself…”

“…!” Je-hee’s ears turned scarlet in an instant.

“What I wanted to tell you that night before I fell asleep,” Si-woon forged ahead bravely, “was that you really don’t need to go take care of it alone on my account—”

“W-wait, Si-woon-ssi, I got it! You don’t need to say another word—I understand completely,” Je-hee cut in hurriedly, lifting both hands in surrender.

Recognizing that expression—Je-hee was trying to spare them both any further embarrassment—Si-woon shook his head stubbornly. If he let the subject drop halfway, gentle Je-hee would go right back to walking on eggshells around him in bed.

Seeing that resolve, Je-hee slowly lowered his hands, the flush on his cheeks giving way to a sharp, unmistakable gleam in his dark eyes. “…Are you truly sure I don’t need to hold back with you?”

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really.”

“Even if I keep you awake in bed all night and refuse to let you go? Even if I bite, lick, and mark every inch of you from head to toe?”

“I’m fine with that.” Having weighed his words carefully—and feeling a quiet flicker of curiosity of his own—Si-woon nodded without hesitation, blissfully unaware of just how literally Kwon Je-hee intended to take that permission.

* * *

He’s completely out.

Watching Si-woon’s peaceful, motionless face for a long moment in the early morning light, Je-hee carefully lifted the edge of the duvet and winced in belated contrition. “…Did I go a little overboard?”

From the curve of Si-woon’s broad shoulders and pectoral muscles all the way down his ribs, inner thighs, and the insides of his ankles, dark reddish-purple bite marks and hickeys bloomed across the sun-browned skin until scarcely an unmarked patch remained.

“Si-woon-ah.”

Brushing a thumb feather-light across Si-woon’s swollen eyelids—still faintly pink from the tears that had spilled over when the pleasure grew too intense a few hours ago—Je-hee felt his chest tighten with a fierce mixture of adoration and remorse. Even when Je-hee had pinned those trembling thighs wide and driven into him relentlessly until dawn, Si-woon hadn’t once pushed him away, straining with every breath to take all of him in just as he had promised.

Whether it was working two jobs, caring for his family, or giving himself in bed, Seo Si-woon poured every ounce of himself into the people he loved without holding anything in reserve. That unsparing devotion made Je-hee resolve all over again to cherish him twice as carefully.

“Sleep well,” Je-hee whispered, smoothing the duvet gently back over Si-woon’s shoulders and pressing a kiss to his hair. At the very least, he no longer had to hide how deeply he wanted him.

* * *

[Available Balance: 21,484,808 KRW]

Staring down at the banking screen on his phone after clicking confirm on the final loan payoff, Si-woon felt a weight he had carried for years finally lift from his chest. The bank debt was gone, and with just over twenty-one million won still remaining in his account after the payoff, the worst of the crisis was behind him. It wasn’t a fortune compared to the jeonse deposit he had lost in the auction, of course—almost ninety percent of his eight years of savings had vanished into thin air—yet brooding over stolen money wouldn’t bring it back.

Better to count it as a brutal lesson and look ahead. Thankfully, when he had finally mustered the nerve to speak with the law firm representing the winning bidder, the new owner had been unexpectedly sympathetic to his plight, granting him until the end of winter to vacate and waiving two months of occupancy fees to help him get back on his feet.

“I’ll still need to find a new place before spring, though…” Glancing around the stripped-down villa apartment at the few boxes left to pack, Si-woon opened a real-estate listing app to browse one-room studios within his twenty-million-won deposit budget—only for his thumb to pause over the screen as a quiet voice echoed in his memory.

“Could you give the idea of moving in and living together with me a serious thought, just once?”

Je-hee had brought it up only a single time a couple of weeks ago, keeping his tone so light and passing that he had changed the subject before Si-woon even needed to answer, clearly afraid of making him feel cornered. Back then, with his bank loan still unpaid and the eviction hanging over his head, Si-woon hadn’t allowed himself to entertain the offer for a second; walking into Je-hee’s spacious apartment with empty pockets and unpaid debts had felt like taking advantage of his lover’s generosity.

Now, with his loan cleared and a modest nest egg in his account, he realized he wanted the very thing he had been too proud to accept. Am I being shameless? Even if he contributed every month toward utilities and groceries, moving into a home Je-hee already owned felt undeniably lopsided on paper.

“…Stop treating our relationship like an accounting ledger,” Si-woon murmured aloud to the empty room, shaking his head at his own ingrained habit. Je-hee had never once measured what passed between them in won and cents; in fact, if he knew Si-woon was hesitating out of financial pride, he would be genuinely hurt. Deep down, Si-woon already knew where he wanted to go. All that remained was finding the courage to ask whether the door was still open—and keeping his tone light enough that Je-hee could easily change his mind if he had only meant the offer in passing.

* * *

“By any chance… is that offer to take on a roommate still open?”

Drumming his fingers against the steering wheel as they drove back toward Yeonghyeon a couple of nights later—tap, tap—Si-woon kept his gaze locked straight ahead through the windshield, his heart thumping far harder than it had when he practiced the casual line in the mirror. Calling himself a roommate was a cowardly hedge, perhaps, yet his tongue had refused to form the words live together as partners out loud. “Please feel free to say no if it’s inconvenient, really.”

In the passenger seat beside him, Je-hee bolted upright so fast that the seat belt locked across his chest. “Are you serious?”

The sudden brightness in that voice made Si-woon risk a sideways glance. Je-hee was staring at him with wide, shining eyes, looking as though he could scarcely believe his own ears.

“You really mean that, don’t you?”

Seeing such undisguised delight on the man’s face dissolved the last of Si-woon’s tension. “Only if the offer still stands on your end, Je-hee-ssi.”

“Wait—can I record you saying that on my phone right now so you can’t take it back?”

“…Pardon?” Blinking at the absurd request, Si-woon saw Je-hee flush slightly and clear his throat before leaning as far across the center console as the taut seat belt would permit.

“Never mind the recording—when can you move in?”

“Probably early next month at the soonest. I still have a few things to wrap up at my current place.”

“Couldn’t you move in any sooner than next month?”

“…”

Glancing sideways again, Si-woon nearly burst out laughing. Straining against his shoulder strap as though only the nylon webbing kept him from vaulting into the driver’s seat while the car was in motion, the normally poised Assistant Manager Kwon looked like an impatient child counting down the minutes to a field trip.

“Pfft—” Clapping his free hand over his mouth a split second too late, Si-woon couldn’t stifle the laugh that broke from his chest.

Across the console, Je-hee continued staring at him with deadpan urgency, waiting for an answer—which only made Si-woon’s shoulders shake harder. “N-no, I’m not laughing at you, I swear—”

“You can laugh at me all night if you want, just tell me if you can come sooner.”

“Ahem. Mm.” Forcing his eyes wide in a desperate bid to school his face, Si-woon caught the exact moment Je-hee’s solemn front cracked, and within seconds both of them were laughing aloud in the warm cabin.

“Should I just haul my suitcases over this weekend, then?” Si-woon teased lightly.

“Yes.”

The instantaneous, dead-serious reply made Si-woon blink. “Moving an entire apartment by this weekend really isn’t physically possible, Je-hee-ssi… Please give me just a couple of weeks.”

“…Fine.” Propping his chin in his palm, Je-hee turned toward the side window in a transparent display of sulking.

Smiling at the reflection in the glass, Si-woon softened his voice. “How about you come over this weekend and help me pack up my things instead? I think I’d really like it if we packed together, Je-hee-ssi.”

“…All right, fine.” Even as Je-hee grumbled under his breath, his right hand crept across the center console palm-up. Slipping his fingers into that familiar grasp, Si-woon gave it a gentle squeeze. Bicker over small, foolish things like this while driving home together—the ease of it still felt new to him, and for the first time in his life, he trusted that it was here to stay.

[END of VOLUME 1]