I moved my hand to the edge of his shoulder. I slid my hand along his arm, which was bent to cup my cheek. His fingers gently tangled in my hair as he pressed his lips more deeply against mine. The moment their wet mucous membranes touched, a moan escaped from deep in both their throats.
They didn’t take their eyes off each other. Just as they always had whenever they kissed before.
The kiss, which had started by using only the surface of their lips as if exchanging low whispers, gradually deepened. Gently sucking on the tongue that parted his lips and entered his mouth, using his palate and his own tongue, Yeehyeon gripped the arm he was holding tightly.
After a long period of abstinence, the object of his love was right before his eyes. That alone was reason enough for his entire body to ignite in an instant. His young, healthy body could not be satisfied by merely looking at the man before him and hearing his sweet voice.
The time that had passed. Even when he felt so lost, as if he had lost the will to live itself, he still felt hungry when the time came, and no matter how long he tossed and turned, he eventually fell asleep. And as his life gradually stabilized, his sexual desire, just like his appetite and need for sleep, returned to its proper place.
That time had not been filled solely with lofty spiritual penance. Rather, day-to-day life was reality.
The way he kissed, the weight of him pressing against his back and chest, the curves of his body he had caressed with his hands. He had masturbated countless times, recalling the sway of his heavy cock and the sensation of being forcibly opened up as it pushed inside, the contraction and expansion of the knot that made his whole body throb as if he were holding a large heart inside him.
He did not think of it as filth. Just because he felt sexual desire didn’t mean he wanted to rub his body against any random person who passed by.
He pressed his own tongue against the wet flesh that writhed and gently rubbed against his tongue inside his mouth. Liu pulled down the hand that had been holding his cheek and pushed Yeehyeon’s coat outward. Yeehyeon cooperated, shrugging his arms to remove the garment, and this time, he pushed Liu’s coat back over his shoulders. Liu lowered his waist and pecked at him with a series of kisses. The force of it pushed Yeehyeon’s steps backward.
As he received his aggressive kisses, his hands were urgent as he undid the buttons of his shirt. While Yeehyeon undid two from the top, Liu, almost tearing them, unbuttoned all of them from the bottom up, then grabbed the nape of his neck and his waist, pulled him sharply closer, and buried his lips deep into Yeehyeon’s.
“Heut….”
A scent wafted up from between the parted edges of the shirt. It wasn’t very strong, but what brushed past his nose was unmistakably ‘that scent.’ It was no longer a hallucination.
The moment he realized it, he clearly felt an unsettling palpitation rise from the core of his body, as if egging him on.
Liu’s bare body, his coat and shirt now dropped to the floor. There was only the desire to rub his own flesh against that body at once. When Yeehyeon grabbed his sweater and the t-shirt underneath in one go and pulled them up, Liu helped him undress.
Like people frantically searching for something, they moved their arms wrapped around each other’s backs, caressing every place their hands could reach.
Taking his lower lip into his mouth and rolling it around, Liu looked at Yeehyeon from under his lowered eyelids with eyes as wet as his lips.
“Ha, heuk.”
The sudden, strong suction made Yeehyeon dizzy, as if he were being sucked right into him. An image of red liquid spreading from his lips along with a tingling pain.
Whenever he had fumbled inside his own underwear, lying on his side in bed, he would twist his lips between his fingers, but that could never imitate this excitement accompanied by pain.
“Eugh, mm. Eumm….”
He wrapped his arms around his neck and stood on his tiptoes, actively responding to the kiss. He ran his fingers through his hair, rubbed the shell of his ear, and clawed at his firm nape and parted chest, taut with arousal.
His intensified scent was loosening his mind while tightening his entire body. It wasn’t the kind of perfume that anyone could buy at a luxury cosmetics counter in a department store and bring home to their room, to their wrists and neck.
The fact that ‘that scent’—the one that had drawn out an unfamiliar side of him, that had made him inexplicably shrink before sex, that had liberated him from the stereotype that had unknowingly dominated his thinking that active sex was vulgar, making him feel free—was his pheromone.
He couldn’t deny that he felt satisfaction from it, that he felt greed, craving, and strong sexual arousal.
His promise that he would not let anyone else know this scent.
If it was merely fairness that others could not know what he did not know, this was tied to possessiveness, to a childish sense of superiority. It was not sublime or holy. It didn’t matter.
Yeehyeon cupped the cheek of the man who wouldn’t part from his lips for even a moment, pushed him back slightly, and looked into his eyes as he kissed his lips lightly.
“How is it?”
“……”
“Right now… are pheromones coming from me, too?”
His eyes, which had been staring only at Yeehyeon’s lips and scraping his lower lip with his teeth as if to say ‘just let me kiss you,’ turned to meet Yeehyeon’s. His brow furrowed, and his gaze sharpened.
“…What… What is that, supposed to…”
He couldn’t finish his sentence, nor could he close his mouth. Twisting his shoulders, he turned his body away, placed one hand on his hip, and rubbed the lower half of his face as if wringing it out. His bare chest, still flushed with the excitement from their kiss, rose and fell rapidly.
“Was it Choi Inwoo? Or… Jung Sein?”
Yeehyeon shook his head.
“I saw it too. The diary.”
“……”
Liu turned back, looking more surprised than if he had heard it from Choi Inwoo or Shushu.
His gaze dropped as his expression showed he understood what had happened. He walked to the table and tossed back the tiny bit of whiskey left in the glass next to the laptop in one go. Wincing hard at the strong spirit, he came back and grabbed both of Yeehyeon’s arms. The gaze of the man standing before him again was firm.
“You have no responsibility for the changing.”
He knew what he was worried about.
“It would be one thing if you had known everything about the pheromones between a Ghost and a Diamond Dust and still continued to have sex with me… but you didn’t know about any of it.”
He also knew why he had kept his mouth shut about that diary, about Diamond Dust.
“The changing was simply my foolish mistake.”
“I know.”
“……”
A Wei, who had thought Yeehyeon had followed him without knowing about the existence of Diamond Dust and its pheromones, was feeling confused, but Yeehyeon had no reason to be shaken anymore. He didn’t want to be shaken anymore, either.
“Haven’t we both thought about it enough for over a year? Do we… have to talk about that again?”
Liu’s hands, which had been gripping Yeehyeon’s arms, hesitated and withdrew. If he hadn’t come here after receiving the painting, he probably wouldn’t have expected to have this kind of meeting with Yeehyeon today.
Traces of pain began to show in him, who had been filled only with the shock of their reunion and the overwhelming emotion of Yeehyeon not turning him away coldly but embracing him without hesitation.
“But, have you really… received a sufficient apology, and been sufficiently compensated?”
Yeehyeon let out a soft laugh. Not to mock his words.
“Do you think that’s what I wanted?”
He approached him, placed a hand on his shoulder, and shook it lightly. For over a year, he had opened and checked every drawer of the past, considered every possibility. The conclusion had already been reached. Contrary to his worries, the diary had not changed the conclusion.
“For my father who lost my mother… and for me… would the death benefit or settlement money be sufficient compensation? Even if the driver who caused the accident got on his knees and apologized with tears, could that be a sufficient apology? No, even if that person took his own life, what meaning would that have for my father and me?”
Yeehyeon shook his head and bit his lower lip. Then he slid the hand that had been gripping Liu’s shoulder down and gently took both of his hands.
“Things like that… are nothing more than a belated cleanup after the fact. As long as we can’t turn back time, there’s no such thing as a sufficient apology or compensation for something like this anyway.”
Looking down at his hands, where the veins stood out more than usual because they were hanging down, Yeehyeon tore down a part of his past and showed it to Liu.
“I’ve thought about it for a long time. I had two paths. To live tormented by the despair of being sacrificed and betrayed, demanding ‘apology’ and ‘compensation’ as my due… to live on the strength of blaming and hating you, or to accept your regret and once again place my hope in the deep-seated comfort and understanding we gave, and can give, to each other.”
Liu’s hand squeezed Yeehyeon’s once, then let go. It traveled up his arm, stroking it, swept over his shoulder, wrapped around his neck, and covered his ear, tilting his head up slightly.
“As much as the fact that you changed me, the fact that A Wei is the person who made me able to paint again also doesn’t change. I… for my own happiness and nothing else… am in this place right now.”
Though he spoke calmly, Yeehyeon’s eyes were welling up with tears. Liu stepped closer and hugged Yeehyeon. He knew that even if he wanted to lay out all the apologies in the world, to give all the compensation in the world, such words were meaningless in this place, at this moment.
“I told you back then. That even if you didn’t accept me, I had no choice but to give myself to you.”
“……”
Feeling the heart beating in his chest pressed against his, his breath on his ear, and his sincerity, Yeehyeon hugged his back.
“Whether you forgive me or not, even if I hadn’t changed you and had committed no sin against you… I belong to you.”
When he closed his eyes, tears flowed down, wetting his shoulder. They just held each other tightly. They comforted each other for having endured the time of emptiness. They kissed each other’s shoulders and napes.
“So… how are my pheromones? Is it a good scent?”
He pulled away from him and laughed, wiping his tears away carelessly. Liu, cupping the back of Yeehyeon’s head, bit his lower lip hard and nodded with a deeply furrowed brow.
“Like roses in May?”
At Yeehyeon’s quote, alluding to the passage where the diary’s owner described Erich’s pheromones, he released his lip and smiled. Then he lowered his head, pressed his lips to his, and kissed him many times in small pecks.
“If smelling roses makes you want to do this, isn’t that strange?”
Yeehyeon laughed and cupped Liu’s cheeks. Their lips met once more, deeply, and delved in passionately.
“It’s an absolute scent… one that makes me lose all the control I’ve built up as a Golden, and turns me into a defenseless Regular with no barriers at all.”
Leave a Reply