"I have absolutely no intention of sharing it, though."
He moved in even closer and kissed my bare shoulder as he said it with a smile. Seeing him hunch his big body, arms dangling between his legs, cheek resting on my shoulder, I found him so adorable that I smiled back.
Embarrassingly, every time I smiled, the fluid his knot had flooded me with kept seeping out below in little spurts. In truth, there was no stopping it—it was just running. The towel I was sitting on turned damp. Not wanting him to notice the way the sensation made me sit up straighter on my own, I fidgeted with the water bottle and phone in my hand and said,
"Having a job where you don’t have to clock in... times like this, it’s nice."
He sparkled his eyes in a teasing grin, toyed with my waist, and rubbed the tip of his nose against mine.
"Are you saying it’s a job that’s good for having sex? Seo Ihyeon, you’ve gotten so filthy."
I saw no need to deny it. It was true. I leaned into his lips as he kissed me lightly, savoring the afterglow, and let a lazy moan rise from my throat—then a faint bitterness crossed my mind at the thought that the first visual record we’d made together was a sex video. I didn’t feel guilt or unease about those clips from a moment ago, but apart from that, I wanted at least one piece of proof that our relationship wasn’t only sex. It was a contextless impulse.
"CEO."
"......"
His twitching eyebrows seemed to complain about my going back to the usual form of address after sex, but he didn’t put the thought into words.
"Would you... take a picture with me?"
Maybe the suggestion surprised him; his eyes widened. But he quickly smiled and, as if he’d been waiting for it, slid behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist. While he pressed his cheek to mine, propping his chin on my shoulder to get into picture-taking position, I opened the camera and flipped the lens.
The screen that had been showing the messy table outside the open door switched to a bust shot of the two of us. We’d spent nearly every day right up against each other for about a month, but we’d never actually captured us together, so it felt like a fresh two-shot.
Because the frame caught us down to our bare chests, the photo had a slightly suggestive vibe. I tried adjusting how far I extended my arm, but a close-up of just our faces wasn’t much better.
"Come to think of it, this is my first selfie."
"What about me? I think this would be my second?"
He hugged my waist a little tighter and looked over at me. The image of him holding a phone and hunting for an angle to take a selfie didn’t suit him at all, and a snort slipped out of me.
Unlike how natural he looked, I stared at my own stiff reflection on the screen, then lowered my arm and ducked my head.
"This is awkward... maybe we just shouldn’t."
"Why? I was already getting my hopes up."
At the genuine disappointment in his voice, I hesitantly lifted my arm again.
"Since neither of us is wearing a top, it doesn’t exactly look wholesome."
He tapped the image of us on the display and laughed, then pressed his lips to my cheek. His right arm crossed my chest to hold my left shoulder, and his handsome face—made even more photogenic by the screen—leaned in close enough in the frame to look like he was about to kiss me.
"Try smiling a little more."
To loosen my stiff expression, he stroked my side and whispered at my ear.
"No matter what we do, we’ll look like ‘we literally just had sex,’ the kind of couple that shows it."
Click. With a slightly awkward, bland smile, the two of us were preserved in a 4:3 rectangle.
Couple. I didn’t know if he’d said it consciously, but the word left a residue as striking as the aftermath of the knotting.
Watching his profile as he sent the photo to his own number, I suddenly felt a sense of missing him even with him this close. Even right after he’d knotted in me twice, I felt like I didn’t have enough of him. It wasn’t a hollow from any distance he was putting between us. I couldn’t explain it even to myself; I simply pressed my forehead to his shoulder.
■ ■ ■
Given that even just standing still was hard, refusing his kindness when he offered to take care of the cleanup would have been pointless stubbornness.
While he gently swept inside me, I tried to steady myself by grabbing at the shower pole, but it wasn’t easy. Don’t fight it, lean on me—he kissed my temples and cheeks over and over in a voice that said it was killing him to see me like this, and with practiced hands he washed me out.
Even though a lot had already leaked onto the bed, the volume of cloudy liquid swirling down the drain with the shower stream was tremendous. It was almost astonishing that so much could be held inside me.
Only after I’d finished the cleanup and sat down in the tub did he start his shower. He roughly toweled himself dry, slipped on a robe, went out, and came back with two cold cans of beer.
He sat across from me and handed me one.
"This is the first time we’ve bathed together in this room."
It was also the first time we’d had sex downstairs where I’d been staying. It was smaller than his upstairs bathroom, but I liked this one—finished floor to ceiling in tiles across several shades of blue. Watching him a bit awkward in the snug little tile tub, not a high-end whirlpool, where movement wasn’t exactly free, was delightful.
"This might sound obsessive..."
"......"
"What did you talk about—with Choi Inwoo."
Maybe even he felt sheepish bringing it up; he couldn’t meet my face properly.
"Just... art. That’s all."
"Art, as in, you telling another man you’ll quickly hand over Seo Ihyeon’s first work?"
He leaned his elbows on the tub rim and cocked his head, twisting his hair around a finger. With that face so full of dissatisfaction he looked like a teenager... it was exactly the kind of expression I wanted to capture on camera, but my phone with its nearly dead battery was on the bed.
"He said he wanted to buy it, but... I told him I don’t think I’m at that level yet. For now, that’s what I said."
He let go of his hair and straightened his head.
"Then when I said earlier that it’d be a problem if he and I set up some kind of pre-order, that must’ve felt unfair."
"Not unfair, exactly..."
He said he worried I was so mild that I’d keep my mouth shut even when I was misunderstood and got hurt, and that if I went out into the world I might get wounded.
But I wasn’t someone who kept quiet because I was mild and good, like he said. I was just a coward who was more used to resignation than most people, someone who avoided letting problems surface because I was afraid of them flaring up.
Instead of telling the person I loved what I really was, I sat there silently drinking beer and letting his worried gaze wash over me—the coward that I was.
"The wine Choi Inwoo brought. You know it’s one people often order when they’re trying to seduce someone, right?"
Earlier... when we came downstairs, I’d read the label—was that what I’d been checking? I brushed away the droplets running over my eyelids and shook my head.
"Seduce... there wasn’t anything like that. Nothing."
"I know. Even if that bastard had tried to seduce you, I know you’d have been firm."
There wasn’t a hint of doubt in his voice.
"Knowing that... I still don’t get why I couldn’t control myself."
Saying so, he picked up his beer from the tub edge and took several long swallows, looking embarrassed by his own jealousy. Rain still drummed through the small high window near the ceiling.
He set the can back down.
"Chicago."
"......"
"When I brought it up earlier, because I was still knotted, it might have sounded like some impulsive thing. I want you to know it wasn’t."
The swell of possession I’d felt when I first said his name, and that later moment that had come back like a confession—an invitation—crossed my mind. My mouth was dry; I drank more beer.
"Honestly, ever since you moved in here and started drawing again, I’d been thinking about it by myself... and watching the Kwon Juhan painting get close to finished... I started to want it in a concrete way: even if it’s just at an unofficial party, I’d love it if we could use this chance to introduce your work too. And apart from results as a painter, travel is stimulating. There’s no material more important to a creator than experience."
He smiled faintly and pushed back the clumps of hair that had fallen across his forehead, then gave a small chuckle to himself, like someone who’d just remembered something amusing.
"If I’m going to be even more honest, now that you’ve seen all my unflattering sides—"
Contrary to how shyly he began, when he turned his eyes back to me, they were intense without a trace of shrinking. He was making it perfectly clear he had no hesitation about his feelings.
"It’s also because I don’t want to be apart from you. Even if it’s just a few days."
He’d spoken with conviction, but then he lowered his head and laughed. Watching the long, strong line of his throat work as he swallowed his beer, I took a couple more sips myself.
It wasn’t only him who didn’t feel confident about even a few days apart. It wasn’t just a childish, clingy desire not to be separated and to stay close. I felt such a vague fear of his absence, to the point that I’d tried not to think about his business trip at all. It was a primal anxiety.
I hadn’t known that even if you liked someone and ended up dating them, you could want a relationship this close. Because he said it first, truthfully, I felt relieved.
"Last time, after we went to that exhibition, I said something."
His eyes turned to me.
"I said I’d rather have a lie than silence."
I set the beer can on the tub rim, scooped water into my hands, and splashed my face. I wiped away the running wetness with my palms.
"I think I said that because I’m someone who keeps silent."
"......"
I pressed my lips together once, then went on.
"Because I hated the me who stays silent."
The look in his eyes told me he already knew what I was about to talk about. Probably the story he’d been curious about ever since I suddenly hyperventilated in his living room. And even so, he’d never asked—he’d waited.
His calm blue eyes, fixed on me steadily, told me he was ready to listen.
It occurred to me that I didn’t need to screw up my courage or wait for the perfect timing to talk about the past. I only hoped what I was about to say would be an expression of my feelings for him. If it was about the two of us, even the smallest story could become a precious secret; I could be sure now that’s the kind of relationship we had.
"It was a collision... the cause was a brake failure on the at-fault truck. No one broke the law, and there wasn’t some criminal with a cruel intent involved..."
He lifted his elbows off the tub rim and let go of the beer can he’d been holding.
"My mother died... and even though there was someone who’d caused it, there wasn’t anyone to curse, to hate, to loathe... no perpetrator who’d done it on purpose with some horrific motive... and somehow that was harder... I didn’t know what to do with the suddenness, with my emotions..."
My dad, who got the call ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) at the Thai restaurant where he’d been waiting for my mother, ran out like a madman without giving me any real explanation, and my maternal grandparents called around to confirm my mother’s accident themselves.
And I took a taxi home alone and trembled in anxiety and confusion until my father, who had refused to attend my mother’s funeral, came back at dawn the next day looking like a ghost.
Spending the night refreshing articles—what had happened to my mother, how she’d died there on the spot, whether there might be some correction saying the earlier report was wrong and she was still alive... it was like waiting for a second death in the grave after you’ve already died, like a damp shadow of death slowly spreading over your skin. It was horrible.
Not only online articles but TV news reported the crash. These days, a traffic accident isn’t even enough to draw much attention, but within Seoul city...
