Waking up after a deep, motionless sleep always felt sudden. As if I’d been abruptly thrust from one world to another in an instant, I had to take a moment right after waking to gather my thoughts and figure out where I was.
“Sleep well?”
“……”
Lying on my side, I was slowly blinking my downcast eyelids toward my chest when a voice from above my head made me lift my head from the pillow.
“Mm…”
My throat was still tight with sleep, unable to produce a smooth sound. My eyes, darting about in confusion, asked the question for me: how was he here?
The place I woke up was definitely my bed downstairs, but at the same time, it was also his naked embrace.
He was lying on his side facing me, his head propped high on two stacked pillows and his own folded arm. His other arm was draped lightly over my shoulder, his knuckles caressing my cheek.
“You were burrowing into me like a little mole. I was wondering if I should let you suckle on my nipple.”
He smiled, curled up and looking down at me from a level above. Seeing my upper body pressed tightly against his, I realized his words weren’t entirely an exaggeration this time.
“When… here… how…”
Still unable to grasp the situation, my questions came out in broken fragments, not proper sentences.
“Why didn’t you send a message?”
“I’m sure I sent one before I went to bed…”
I rolled over onto my stomach, propping myself up on my elbows. Roughly tidying my hair, which must have been a complete mess, I fumbled around the pillow for my phone. I picked up the phone, which had been teetering precariously on the edge of the bed, and unlocked it. The message app immediately popped up on the screen.
[Done with work for today, gonna stoooooppp nwooo]
I must have fallen asleep with the phone in my hand. The typo-ridden sentence remained in the message field, unsent.
“Ah…”
Letting out a sigh of dismay, I swept back my fallen hair and tucked it behind my ear. He snatched the phone from my hand, checked the message on the screen, and burst out laughing.
My mind was slowly starting to clear. In the morning’s natural light, the sight of him lying in bed, laughing, gradually came into focus. A moment ago, I had been so flustered by the mere fact of his presence upon waking that I hadn’t had the presence of mind to properly register the man right in front of me. This was the first time I had seen him in bed, not during foreplay, afterglow, or sex.
“Huh? Why are you… Don’t send it.”
His hand clicked on the screen, and it looked like he was about to send the typo-filled message I’d abandoned, so I reached out to stop him, but he casually turned his body to evade me.
“It’s a waste to just delete it. Something this cute needs to be saved.”
Lying on his back, he returned the phone to me with a satisfied expression. Then, he began to fiddle with the shell of my ear as I lay propped up on my elbows beside him.
“Still, what a shame. I should have seen it with my own eyes—Seo Yeehyeon, trying so hard to text me even when he was dead tired.”
My spine tingled from the morning affection, the kind that could be nothing other than romance. Starting the day immersed in such affection right after opening my eyes was a little… hard on the heart.
“Did we… sleep together? Or did you just get here?”
I asked, carefully placing my hand over his fingers as they touched my ear.
“It seemed like the lights went out around three, but when I didn’t get a message for a long while after that, I came down to check.”
So the sensation of someone adjusting my position and holding me in their arms during the night wasn’t a dream, but the stir of him getting into bed. I slid my hand from his, stroking his arm where the muscles were clearly defined, and let out a regretful sigh.
“You should have woken me up…”
“How could I wake up someone who worked until they collapsed and fell asleep?”
“Still… it’s a shame.”
“……”
His hand, which had been touching my ear, cupped my cheek, his gaze asking what was a shame. His large palm, big enough to cover my entire face, always felt so good that I found myself rubbing my cheek against it like a docile cat or dog.
“It was our first time sleeping together, but I didn’t even know…”
His lips curved into a gentle smile. His feelings, the way he looked at me so lovingly, were conveyed fully through his eyes alone. For someone like me, these expressions were perhaps easier to understand and more trustworthy than words.
He lightly rubbed the surface of my lips with his thumb and said,
“I’m happy you think of it that way, but if you had woken up, there was a high probability we would have failed to just sleep together again.”
Last weekend, on our way home after drinking sake together, he had suggested we just sleep together without having sex, but… well, in the end, we failed to keep that promise.
It had been an unreasonable plan from the start. We had just spent a delightful time sharing conversations that were more special than usual, and the thrilling, sensual tension that had been swirling between us since the izakaya had expanded to its maximum, making it impossible to feign ignorance of each other’s skin and body heat as we lay side by side.
As if such a promise had never existed in the first place, we had lunged at each other the moment we stepped through the door, starting a deep kiss. As if the playful kisses we’d shared hiding behind the car in the alley were not nearly enough to satisfy us.
He had already half-stripped me in the entryway. I, too, had wanted his naked body and had slipped my hands inside his shirt, exploring his shoulders and chest.
Anyone who had witnessed us would have scoffed, wondering why we’d made a resolution that was destined to crumble before we even reached the bedroom. That’s how quickly we had given up that night.
As our certainty about each other’s feelings deepened, my actions in bed grew bolder. A shyness stemming from my basic personality still remained, but despite that, I began to kiss him first without hesitation, to wrap my arms around him, and I no longer hesitated to let him see me with my legs spread or trembling with pleasure.
Another change was that our nights together, which had been lewd, intense, and overflowing with sexual stimulation, had now become sweet as well.
The exchange of emotions held a formidable power, as if it had legitimized every act we shared. Once the meaning of expressing affection was added, rather than just releasing carnal desire, even a single kiss felt different than before.
It wasn’t that the other person just happened to be there at a time and place where lust arose. It was a specified lust that arose because of the person before me, and in its grip, we had once again tangled our bodies together until the early summer sun began to cast its bluish light.
The next day, I woke up in his bed as usual, but his side was empty. A note was left on his pillow saying he had gone to a brunch meeting at the invitation of a VIP client. In the end, this was the first time we were greeting the morning together.
“Maybe you were half-asleep, but you were mumbling and burrowing into my arms… For a second, I did consider waking you up with a jolt.”
He tapped the tip of my nose with the thumb that had been rubbing my lips and laughed. If he had, I probably wouldn’t have been able to sleep properly from the tension, but I was still disappointed that I hadn’t been conscious of that time we spent trying to fall asleep together.
“If we… have sex… does that mean we really can’t be together until morning?”
“……”
Seeing the subtle twitch of his eyelids, I belatedly realized what a stupid question I had asked and wanted to bury my face in the pillow. As expected, he burst out laughing a moment later. And this time, he held my face with both hands.
“Of course not. As you know, I’ve been a bit busy lately… so there are many times I have to leave early in the morning. I may have the stamina of steel, but considering our frequency lately, I do have to pay some attention to my sleep schedule.”
His gentle explanation only made my face flush even redder.
“I think… I’m still not fully awake. I’m sorry for asking something so strange.”
After giving my face a boisterous squish by way of an excuse, he sat up and placed a light kiss on my forehead. Then, he draped his upper body over my prone back and nuzzled the tip of his nose against my ear.
“I’ll make breakfast. Why don’t you take care of the garden in the meantime?”
It was truly, very… a hard start to the day for my heart.
○
I want to properly remember August’s heat, the time of August that flowed slower and lazier than ever before, yet at the same time left a clearer mark than ever, like a stickily melting ice pop.
The garden, basking under the August sun. The parabola of a rainbow hanging over the stream of water spraying from the aqua gun connected to the hose. The cry of the cicadas clinging to the oak tree, as if symbolizing summer itself. The awareness of being alive that came from the beads of sweat beginning to form on my shirtless skin.
As he’d said, it must have only rained a little during the night, because when I came out to the garden, the ground was bone-dry under the fierce sunlight. August was now approaching its middle, but the sweltering heat remained.
With an ample supply of sunlight and water, even as people wilted in the continuing heatwave, the leaves of the plants were full of life. The weeds, too, had grown stronger along with them. After first removing the weeds that had grown thick again in just a few days, I connected the hose to the faucet in a corner of the garden.
Shwaaaaaa.
The sound of the spraying water alone felt like it lowered the surrounding temperature by a degree or two. Adjusting the direction of the stream toward the juniper I had clumsily pruned, I brought my left hand to the nozzle of the aqua gun. The water was cold. The sun pouring down on my bare shoulders and back was hot enough to burn me.
Amidst the mind-numbing sounds of cicadas and water, I brought my chilled left hand to my lips.
Using my thumb and forefinger, I gathered the flesh of my lower lip and toyed with it. A sensual feeling instantly washed over my skin. Under the glaring sun, so bright that the world before me looked white as if bleached even with sunglasses on, I pictured his lips.
The intense suction, almost to the point of pain, was the very depth of his desire for me. Remembering his way of sucking, as if he would bite down hard and swallow me whole, I twisted my fingers more forcefully. The sound of the cicadas made my consciousness hazy, as if I were being sucked into the swirl of a lollipop. I twisted my lip to the point where I thought the flesh might burst and bleed. I felt like I was going to get hard.
Ahem, hem.
At the sound of a deliberate cough meant to announce a presence, I slowly turned around.
Leaning against the open doorway with his arms crossed, he was looking this way, his head tilted.
Surprisingly, I felt no shame. I don’t know why, but I wasn’t embarrassed. I kept the aqua gun on and didn’t take my eyes off him on the steps.
Standing in the white light with a faint smile, he uncrossed his arms and came down the stairs. Then he wrapped his arms around me from behind, caressing my chest and stomach, which were glistening with a sheen of sweat, and brushed his lips against my ear. My summer grew a little hotter.
“Since when did you… start pinching your lips like that when you’re alone?”
You really surprise a person sometimes. As he added that, a sweet, syrupy scent wafted from him. I remembered him saying he would make pancakes with fruit for breakfast.
“If you wanted to kiss, you should have come inside and pounced on me.”
I tilted my head back, receiving his lips as they delved into my nape. Two small, unidentifiable birds flew swiftly past the top of the tall oak tree. His hands caressing my chest and his lips kissing my nape were pure heat.
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