SLC 24

Secretary Kang greeted them as soon as the front door opened.

“Yeah.”

Mok Seongha answered casually as he took off his shoes.

Secretary Kang had expected them to come in holding hands again today, looking improper as usual, but unexpectedly, the two of them entered with some distance between them.

“Have you eaten?”

“No.”

Mok Seongha answered.

“I prepared something.”

“Set one for the teacher too.”

In response to Mok Seongha’s words, Secretary Kang looked at Kim Jinkyung from the corner of his eye.

“What were you doing that you still haven’t eaten at this hour?”

It was a routine scolding. Mok Seongha was one thing, but hearing that Kim Jinkyung also hadn’t eaten until this time irritated him. That single remark caused Kim Jinkyung, who had been taking off his shoes, to turn pale and freeze on the spot. Secretary Kang found it a little strange.

Did I scold him too much?

But he had stayed out overnight, so this level of scolding was deserved.

“Uh, well, I mean….”

“He was studying.”

Mok Seongha answered for him.

“Why didn’t you answer your phone again? I kept calling.”

“I didn’t bring it.”

“Not the young master. You, teacher.”

Kim Jinkyung flusteredly pulled his phone out of his bag. After checking the screen full of missed calls, he apologized.

“I didn’t see it.”

“What were you doing that you didn’t check your phone even once?”

This was the first time the young master had spent 1 night and 2 days outside. Secretary Kang had packed a dinner box and waited. If he got a call, he planned to bring the food over. He knew which hotel and which room they were staying in, but he couldn’t just open the door and go in without permission.

“Th-that is… well….”

Kim Jinkyung’s face grew even paler than before.

How did someone so timid, like a herbivore, end up rolling in here as a teacher?

“He was studying.”

Mok Seongha answered again in Kim Jinkyung’s place.

“What kind of studying do you do all day? Then you must have studied all night without sleeping.”

The reprimand was the same as before, but Kim Jinkyung began to shake as though he would pass out at any second.

“He did it because he could.”

Mok Seongha grabbed Kim Jinkyung’s wrist and started pulling him along. Secretary Kang clicked his tongue in displeasure.

As they crossed the living room and walked down the hallway, Mok Seongha looked back at Kim Jinkyung. His already pale face had lost all color, to the point it looked pitiful.

He was 25, right? He had even done his military service. He was so timid and easily scared, how did he manage to go to the army and come back? Or maybe, since he liked men that much, it was paradise for him.

That thought sparked an unusual irritation in Mok Seongha’s gut.

He released the hand he had been holding.

Kim Jinkyung looked down at his wrist, then rubbed it with his other hand as if he was wiping something away. It was the wrist that had been rubbed under Mok Seongha all night yesterday.

Mok Seongha expressionlessly looked down at Kim Jinkyung’s pale wrist.

“Um….”

Kim Jinkyung spoke.

“Yeah.”

Mok Seongha answered without taking his eyes off the wrist.

“I-I’ll go this way.”

“Yeah, what?”

Kim Jinkyung pointed to the room opposite Mok Seongha’s.

“I’ll stay here starting today.”

“Why?”

Mok Seongha asked.

“I think it’ll be… uncomfortable.”

“What’s uncomfortable?”

Mok Seongha couldn’t understand it.

Ever since they left the hotel, Kim Jinkyung had desperately avoided even the slightest contact with him. When Mok Seongha tried to take his hand in front of the entrance, he panicked and pulled his hand away.

“I-I think I’m a bit tired….”

Kim Jinkyung muttered while avoiding his gaze.

“What does being tired have to do with using separate rooms?”

“I just want to be alone for a bit….”

Just as Mok Seongha was about to ask if he was going to sleep and then share the same room again starting tomorrow, Kim Jinkyung went into the room and closed the door.

“…..”

He had never hunted before, but he wondered if this was how it felt to lose prey right in front of his eyes. Mok Seongha swallowed his anger and irritation and went into his own room.

Kim Jinkyung, who had been washing his hands at the sink, turned off the faucet. In the bathroom, now silent without the splashing noise of water, he absentmindedly stared at the mirror.

What exactly happened yesterday?

Memories of yesterday began to emerge from his confused mind one by one.

‘Teacher… ha…’

Kim Jinkyung turned the faucet back on and started washing his hands like he had lost his mind. He scrubbed with soap, but it felt like the sensation left on his hands wouldn’t disappear.

I’m crazy. Crazy bastard. Crazy human.

Kim Jinkyung cursed his self from yesterday and continued washing his hands obsessively.

Mok Seongha had gone into heat yesterday. The sudden onset of heat seemed to have vaporized his reason, to the point he didn’t even recognize what he was doing.

Begging for just once more, just one more time, he rubbed his genitals against Kim Jinkyung’s palm until it swelled. That wasn’t all. Whenever Mok Seongha couldn’t endure his arousal, he bit Kim Jinkyung’s nape or shoulder. Like an animal whose teeth had just started growing and was biting everything, he sank his teeth into Kim Jinkyung’s flesh. He didn’t forget to lick over it with his tongue so no wounds would remain. As he licked Kim Jinkyung with his tongue, the man inevitably got aroused again, and everything repeated from the beginning.

In the end, Mok Seongha masturbated against Kim Jinkyung’s hand all night.

“…I should die.”

I should have explained just enough and then let go. What was I even thinking?

Overwhelmed by guilt, Kim Jinkyung could barely keep himself together.

I don’t even deserve to be a teacher. Tutoring or whatever, I should stop here….

“Hey.”

“Aaah!”

Startled by the sudden voice, Kim Jinkyung screamed and jumped from his spot.

Mok Seongha stood in front of the bathroom door with a dumbfounded expression.

“Ho-how… why….”

“I knocked and called you, but you didn’t answer.”

“I was washing my hands, so I didn’t hear.”

Kim Jinkyung turned off the faucet. Mok Seongha handed him the towel hanging nearby. He dried the water off his hands.

“What is it?”

“Come eat.”

“…I don’t feel like it.”

“You haven’t eaten a single meal since lunch yesterday.”

“It’s fine. I’m not hungry.”

He just wanted to go to bed and ruminate on endless self loathing. Mok Seongha, who he thought would leave after being refused, was rooted in front of the bathroom and didn’t move.

“…..?”

Kim Jinkyung looked up at him.

“Hey.”

“Yes?”

“Were you born that way?”

“What?”

“Your hand.”

“……!”

“Or is your hand that promiscuous because you have a lot of experience with men….”

Kim Jinkyung shouted and clamped his hand over Mok Seongha’s mouth.

Is this cat insane, why is he running his mouth like that?

“Are you out of your mind? What if someone hears you?”

Mok Seongha looked at down at Kim Jinkyung’s palm covering his lips, then suddenly bit down.

“What are you doing?!”

Kim Jinkyung quickly pulled his hand back.

“Who’s going to hear? Even if I killed you here, nobody would hear it.”

“……”

Kim Jinkyung flinched and his shoulders trembled.

Why would he even use an example that scary?

“I’m not going to kill you.”

Looking at Kim Jinkyung, who had completely lost his nerve, Mok Seongha chuckled and added one more thing.

“If you die, who’s going to teach me?”

It was obviously about studying, but because of what happened yesterday, the word “teach” didn’t sound normal.

“I’d like it if we treated what happened yesterday as if it never happened.”

“As if it never happened?”

Mok Seongha raised one eyebrow.

“I-I mean, it was an accident.”

It was an accident that happened suddenly in a closed space.

“It wasn’t an accident. It was heat.”

“That’s…! …Anyway, something like that won’t happen again.”

“……”

Kim Jinkyung felt uneasy when he received no response.

“It won’t happen again, right?”

“I don’t know.”

Mok Seongha shrugged.

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“I don’t know either. I don’t know when or how heat comes.”

Kim Jinkyung stared with his mouth open for a while in disbelief, then pulled himself together.

“Ask Secretary Kang.”

“Secretary Kang doesn’t know either.”

“What about the Chairman?”

“The Chairman doesn’t know either.”

“Then who knows?”

“My father.”

He had said his father had passed away a long time ago. In other words, there was nobody who could tell him right now.

“It’s on my father’s side.”

“The Chairman is….”

“My maternal grandfather. Didn’t I tell you?”

Kim Jinkyung nodded.

“That’s why the Chairman hates me.”

“……”

“The guy who got his daughter pregnant has animal blood mixed in. Who would like that?”

Kim Jinkyung should have said that wasn’t true, but the topic was too sensitive, so he couldn’t easily jump in.

“Other than Secretary Kang and the Chairman, nobody really knows much about me. You probably know me best.”

They had known each other for just about 2 months. Hearing that he, aside from his only family member and the uncle who had taken care of him since childhood, was the person in the world who knew him best sounded painfully lonely.

“Then have you ever talked with your father about this, even once?”

“I don’t really remember my parents’ faces. I’ve only seen them in photos. When I was little, they both died on the spot in a traffic accident.”

It was hard to even say out loud, but Mok Seongha continued, as if he were talking about someone else.

“I was lucky and survived because I wasn’t in that car.”

Then he said, “Or was that really lucky?” as if he were joking.

Kim Jinkyung quickly replied, “I’m glad.”

“I mean, I’m not saying the accident was lucky. I meant that it’s good that Seongha-ssi… is alive.”

“I know. You wouldn’t mean it like that.”

Mok Seongha continued as he looked at Kim Jinkyung, who was visibly tense.

“Anyway, the Chairman doesn’t really know either. It hasn’t been long since I turned back into a human.”

“How long has it been?”

Mok Seongha tilted his head and said, “Let’s see, about a year.”

“……”

So until a year ago, he had been a panther, and yesterday I did that kind of thing with him.

Kim Jinkyung was overcome by guilt and self-loathing. He was speechless as he stood there in a stupor.

“Before that, I switched back and forth. It hasn’t been long since I became completely like this.”

“Ah….”

Kim Jinkyung remembered what had happened before in the garden.

‘I hope the rain stops soon.’

The expression he had seen on the panther’s face when he said that. At first, he had thought that the panther form was comfortable simply because he didn’t like humans, but since he hadn’t spent that long in human form, maybe it was only natural.

“So that’s why you haven’t gone out this whole time?”

“Yeah.”

Only then did Kim Jinkyung understand why Mok Seongha had been trapped in this huge mansion for so long.

“If I go out, I’d be perfect target practice. I never know when I might change.”

“Then right now…?”

“Right now it’s fine. I haven’t changed even once for no reason in a whole year.”

“……”

That had probably been true until yesterday. But yesterday, his form had definitely changed even though he hadn’t gotten wet.

As if he had noticed the meaning of the silence, Mok Seongha smiled.

“There was a reason yesterday too.”

“What reason?”

“Heat.”

“……”

“I think I’ll go back and forth for a while. Probably. So…”

Before Mok Seongha could finish his sentence, Kim Jinkyung’s stomach growled. The sound echoed loudly enough to bounce off the high bathroom ceiling.

Mok Seongha started laughing as Kim Jinkyung’s face turned crimson red.

“Ahahahaha.”

“……”

“You really don’t sound like someone who has no appetite.”

He grabbed Kim Jinkyung’s hand. The latter startled and tried to pull away, but the veins in Mok Seongha’s forearm stood out as he tightened his grip.

“Hey.”

“Y-yes.”

“We only act like lovers when it’s necessary, or when Mok Seongha, Party B, demands it.”

Mok Seongha recited Clause 2 of the contract.

“No unnecessary physical contact, and even when it’s necessary, if the party of the first part refuses, the other party withdraws.”

Kim Jinkyung hurriedly recited Clause 3. Mok Seongha looked at him with a mocking smile and said one thing.

“Clause 2 comes first, so Clause 2 wins.”

…There’s no such rule. You damn cat.

Kim Jinkyung looked up at Mok Seongha with wronged eyes, but Mok Seongha didn’t care and dragged him along by the arm.