Chapter 29

Ah. Seoul nodded in comprehension. The fake orthodontic braces had perpetually chafed raw cuts inside his mouth. Even clenching his jaw caused stinging pain, and whenever Park Gil-pyeong struck him, torn tissue or gashes had been routine. Yet having gone several days without the prosthetic, the sores had healed with remarkable speed. Wanting to be thorough, Seoul ran his tongue gently along the smooth inner walls of his cheeks.

“There aren’t any cuts left at all,” Seoul answered earnestly.

Gwichang countered with cool command, “Let me see.”

“…” Stunned silence fell over the youth.

Turning further toward him, the boy’s amber-brown eyes roved Gwichang’s face in total incomprehension. Head resting back against the upholstery, chin tilted slightly upward, and dark eyes hooded in an attitude ten times more arrogant than usual, Gwichang reiterated his demand.

“Open your mouth. How am I supposed to know if it’s healed unless I look?”

Both of them knew full well this was no joke. Under the heavy weight of that languid gaze, Geum Seoul hesitated for several agonizing seconds before parting his plump lower lip. In truth, he had expected Gwichang to sit up and lean closer, yet the deputy director remained completely motionless. Hesitating, Geum Seoul folded one leg beneath him, climbed fully onto the sofa cushion, and leaned his upper body toward him. Still, the distance remained far too great to inspect the inside of a mouth.

Gwichang drawled softly, “Closer.”

Tap.

Gwichang tapped his own thigh with an index finger, prompting Geum Seoul to snap his half-parted lips shut and swallow hard.

“Are you trying to show off your face?” Gwichang mocked with a lazy smirk. “You’re supposed to show me the inside of your mouth. Take a good look at where my eyes are.”

Knowing full well the boy was hesitating in excruciating shyness, Gwichang let the words roll off his tongue with an air of complete innocence. Geum Seoul lightly bit his plump, rosy lower lip. His brown eyes darted through the empty air before coming to rest upon Gwichang’s broad shoulders, his expression tightening as though he had reached a momentous decision.

A soft rustle.

Geum Seoul peeled himself away. Bracing his knees against the supple leather of the sofa, he crawled closer with excruciating slowness, every movement fraught with careful deliberation. Gripping the sofa’s backrest firmly in both hands, he planted himself directly in front of Gwichang. Having crept forward on his knees to close the distance, his thighs ended up pressed virtually flush against Gwichang’s flank. Another long hesitation stretched between them. Unable to bring himself to sit directly atop another person’s lap, Seoul dropped his gaze, glancing back and forth between his own knees and Gwichang’s muscular thighs.

“Need a hand?” Gwichang asked lazily.

Seoul gave a timid nod. “Yes, please.”

He had assumed the man would shift for him, since all it took was peeling his back from the cushions and leaning forward just a fraction.

“All right.”

Yet confounding that expectation, Gwichang took hold of one of Geum Seoul’s pale thighs, parted it, and hauled the slender frame flush against himself. Ah. Seoul’s upright posture collapsed forward, his palms instinctively pressing down hard against the man’s solid shoulders. Unable to drop his weight all at once, he braced his hips awkwardly for a moment before sinking down with excruciating slowness until he settled over Gwichang’s lap.

Even with their bodies brought into such complete proximity, Gwichang did not lift the back of his head from the cushions. He merely kept hold of the bare thighs exposed beneath the shorts of the young man straddling him face-to-face, stroking the flesh leisurely with his thumbs. The skin was so tender that it yielded softly even without any pressure applied. Unsettled by the touch, Seoul hung his head low, staring down at those massive palms.

Thump—thump. His heart felt ready to burst. How could two people possibly be this close? It was bewildering, yet it wasn’t something he disliked.

With Park Gil-pyeong, even the barest touch had stirred sickening revulsion, yet whenever this man made contact, pleasant goosebumps prickled across his skin. The broad palms cupping his slightly chilled flesh were warm, and drawing closer allowed a clean, pleasant fragrance to seep through the scent of tobacco. Tap. A thumb grazed the underside of his lower lip.

“I get that you find me enticing, but you didn’t crawl over here just to show me the crown of your head, did you?”

“Ah,” Seoul breathed.

Only then did Geum Seoul raise his head. He wanted to protest that he hadn’t looked because he was aroused, but meeting those dark eyes at such suffocating proximity proved impossible. Ears burning crimson, Seoul parted his lips once more. Tilting his head forward just a fraction, Gwichang slid his thumb between the parted rosy lips without a moment’s hesitation.

It was, of course, a preposterous piece of theater. Now that the rash on the boy’s body had cleared, whatever cuts lingered inside his mouth had surely vanished without a trace. But Gwichang was an unabashedly shameless man. Whether born that way or because it was the only craft he had ever learned, his knack for using any means necessary was exceptional in every respect; the necks he had snapped using those methods numbered in the hundreds from his previous unit to his current post. Playing with a gentle young man yielding softly before him was hardly a chore.

His sole objective was teasing him. Depressing that remarkably charming tongue, Gwichang traced the moist inner membranes with delicate care, behaving for all the world as though he were conducting a genuine inspection. Amber-brown pupils quivered before rolling in pursuit of the thumb’s direction. With every blink, long lashes dipped and fluttered back up. The faint flush blooming across the youth’s cheeks made it abundantly clear what sensations this position was stirring in him, while the fingers resting against Gwichang’s shoulders twitched in involuntary starts.

“Did anyone in that neighborhood ever see this face?” Gwichang asked.

Gwichang’s tone, habitual in its flippancy, softened into a coaxing drawl. The moment Geum Seoul had settled over him, his heat had already stirred halfway, yet the youth, oblivious to what he was straddling, merely mumbled an incoherent slur, “N-no…” Trying to form the syllables, neat teeth lightly grazed Gwichang’s thumb before pulling away. One of Gwichang’s eyes narrowed to a slit. Just then, he had gone completely hard.

“So I’m the first. Is that right?” Gwichang asked in a low drawl.

“Yes.”

This time, the thumb pressed down firmly between the tongue and the roof of the mouth. The corner of Gwichang’s mouth curved into a crooked smirk.

The sickening disgust that had welled up after days spent eating, sleeping, and washing in the official dorms while placating that wild boar Noh Pil-gyu had clung right to the edge of his chin until the moment he unlocked the front door. In truth, he had even showered and laid down to sleep at the quarters tonight, only to drive back because he knew that holding it in any longer would end in murder.

He had naturally assumed Geum Seoul would be asleep in the bed, never imagining he would find him curled on the sofa. Having brought him home on an impulse without deciding what to do with him, Gwichang hadn’t expected anything upon walking in. Yet Seoul’s pale, luminous skin and the pure pheromones lingering unmasked by cheap makeup were proving to be a remarkably generous reward.

Gwichang slipped his slick thumb from between the parted lips. Hooking an index finger under the chin to tilt it higher, he feigned another inspection of the oral cavity, and the young man docilely revealed the rosy mucous membranes inside. A bent knuckle caressed the soft cheek like a fond reward. Only then did Seoul’s lips press together like the valves of a clam.

“Um,” Seoul began tentatively.

“What?”

“I stayed up because… there was something I needed to tell you,” Seoul confessed.

The sheen of moisture clinging to that lower lip. Stroking the exposed thighs while idly considering pressing the swollen head of his shaft between those parted lips, Gwichang lifted his dark pupils to lock onto Geum Seoul’s gaze. The crushing proximity was still overwhelming for Seoul, whose amber-brown eyes remained fixed on Gwichang’s jawline, even while his fingers resting on the man’s shoulders continued to drum like nervous piano keys.

Seoul murmured with quiet reverence, “You might not know it, but back then… you saved me. From the boss.”

The phrase ‘You might not know it’ was terribly naive. Gwichang had known precisely what was unfolding and had acted accordingly. He knew with absolute clarity what would have happened had he not arrived on time, and it was his own hand that had given the signal to shoot the moment Seoul’s field of vision was obstructed. Yet laying it all out step by step was far too tedious.

“And?”

“…There was something I got curious about,” Seoul said.

Gwichang commanded bluntly, “Speak.”

Having said that much, Geum Seoul swallowed. Then, gathering his wandering gaze, he leveled his eyes squarely at the man. Meanwhile, the fingers resting on his pale thighs were creeping softly beneath the hem of his shorts.

“You aren’t a police officer, are you?”

The context took a sharp bounce. That wasn’t an inquiry born of idle curiosity. A spark of keen interest surfaced in Gwichang’s black pupils.

“What makes you think that?” Gwichang asked.

While a trace of amusement touched Gwichang’s voice, it carried no ridicule. Keeping a composed face, Geum Seoul parted his lips, “I read about it in the newspaper once.”

Gwichang asked, “Read what?”

“That the government was procuring Phantom helicopters,” Seoul replied.

The young man continued to tread entirely unexpected ground. Gwichang had assumed he would mention the tactical vest from that night or deduce his identity from operational movements, yet his basis came from a completely different vector. Thoroughly intrigued, Gwichang halted the fingers creeping under the cotton fabric and leaned the back of his head against the cushions once more.

Leaning back against the cushions, Gwichang asked, “Is that so? Do you remember when you saw it, too?”

Geum Seoul blinked. Not out of confusion, but presumably while recalling the memory.

“…The helicopter article was about a year ago, in the first week of September,” Seoul answered. “Though I always read outdated papers.”

Gwichang’s pitch-black pupils sharpened. The agency had officially opened on August 21st, almost exactly matching Geum Seoul’s memory of reading the article in an outdated paper. Look at this bastard. When the brown eyes tried to slip away after answering, Gwichang nudged the boy’s chin again until those vivid, high-contrast eyes returned to him. A quiet chuckle escaped.

“Then you already know who I am,” he declared.

It had been a very long time—perhaps the first time in his life—that he had encountered someone who could provoke him in so many different ways. Tilting his head slightly to one side, Gwichang held Geum Seoul’s gaze without looking away, while the young man rolled his red tongue several times within his parted lips.

That alone made it clear the answer had already been settled. Geum Seoul was fully convinced his deduction was correct; he was merely deliberating whether it was safe to voice it aloud. As Gwichang waited in silence, resolve settled onto the tip of that small red tongue.

“Deputy Director Gye Do-hyeop of the National Special Security Agency.”

At the precise identification, Gye Do-hyeop’s eyes narrowed into a thin, amused squint.