CEL 32

“Hyung, can I buy you a meal?”

“Go do your homework.”

“Eat more. The halibut fin here is good, why didn’t you order it? Should I order it for you?”

“Kwon Doyoung. Unless you want to swim next to the halibut, leave quickly. I have company.”

“Ah.”

Ah?

Is that the kind of reaction you show someone?

Doyoung let out a single syllable and looked at Jaeha, answering in a way that showed he wasn’t interested.

“Then tomorrow eat with me. After tutoring.” Did he think eating with Seo Hamin was something easy?

Jaeha sneered at the high schooler’s brashness and picked up his chopsticks. His neat chopstick grip went toward the tuna sushi, and just as he was about to lift it and place it in front of Hamin.

“Sure.”

His hand slipped and the sushi lost its shape.

“Got it! Then I’ll think about the menu! Can I contact you when I get home?”

“Why would you contact me after you go home? Don’t fool around and go in.”

After sending Kwon Doyoung off with a distracted goodbye, Hamin tilted his head as he looked at the tuna sushi on his plate that had lost its shape. Why is this smashed?

He was putting the rice back together grain by grain on his spoon when a cold voice came from across.

“.. Are you going to eat with him?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Because he asked me to eat.”

“With me….”

“You’re eating with me right now.”

He cut off the disappointment with a simple fact. Then Han Jaeha’s eyes lowered.

He didn’t know why he was suddenly acting this way, but the dejected look was unpleasant. Even when he tried saying different things, the replies were lackluster.

To make it worse, rain started pouring down on their way to change seats. He had thought the sky looked cloudy, but before there was time to buy an umbrella or find shelter, a sudden shower fell and left them awkwardly wet.

They quickly ducked under the eaves for cover, but since it was under an open store in business, it didn’t seem like they could stay there long. He scanned the surroundings. Cafes or convenience stores that were usually everywhere were nowhere in sight.

It didn’t look like the rain would stop soon.

Maybe Jaeha thought the same. He stretched his hand out to check the rain and said,

“I’ll go buy an umbrella, stay here.”

“It looks like you’ll be drenched in five seconds.”

“It’s better if at least one of us stays dry than both of us getting soaked.”

Could this even be called staying dry? Hamin, already half wet, looked down at his clothes and said absentmindedly,

“Since you’re wet anyway, just wash at my place before going.”

“…What?”

“My house is nearby, I’ll lend you clothes.”

Is he doing this on purpose?

He looked at Seo Hamin’s indifferent face. Droplets hanging on his eyelashes fell one by one, and it made him feel dizzy.

Had he erased from his perfect test-score brain the fact that I said I wanted to sleep with him? The careless suggestion made him annoyed.

What Jaeha felt while looking at the student he tutored wasn’t simple jealousy. It was closer to nervousness and unease.

He already knew.

No matter how much time they spent together, no matter how often they met, he had never felt they were truly becoming close.

In Hamin’s heart, I and that strange high schooler he just met might hold similar weight. Thinking that made something inside twist. Looking at his black eyes that gave away nothing, or at the way he often gazed far away, made him angry.

He hated Seo Hamin.

There was a bit of resentment, and he wanted Hamin to feel emotions as strong as he did. He looked at him with stern eyes and answered.

“Fine, let’s go.”

So after that, whatever happened was Seo Hamin’s fault.

In the end, they both came home looking like soaked rats. His plan to push Jaeha into the bathroom first failed, and after washing, he sat blankly.

He was roughly drying his hair with a stiff towel when Han Jaeha, just out of the shower, scratched his cheek with an awkward expression. Both the top and bottom he wore were short.

“Don’t you have anything bigger?”

“Wouldn’t it be strange if I had clothes bigger than that?”

“That’s true,” Jaeha muttered and plopped down on the floor. Hamin thought he would take the umbrella and go straight home, but he didn’t seem to intend to leave.

“Not going?”

“Do you know how cold-hearted you are, sunbae?” Was it just today or yesterday?

Even so, Hamin thought he was being rather generous with Jaeha.

Since vacation started, it had already been a month of these strange meetings. He had said twice a week, but they were meeting four or five times. But all they did was eat or drink coffee, so it didn’t interfere much.

He had to eat anyway, and one more person at the table didn’t bother him.

With what seemed to him like a reasonable thought, he unfolded a small folding desk. He had plenty left to study before the end of today. He stacked a few books from beside him onto the desk when Jaeha suddenly spoke.

“I remembered my wish.”

“What wish?”

“The wish I got during the festival.”

Hamin let out a small sigh at the sudden reappearance of the blank check he had forgotten about. He couldn’t believe Jaeha still remembered it. He thought it was bothersome and asked again.

“What is the wish?”

“Kiss me.”

“…What?”

Before he could process the words, Jaeha pushed the desk aside and came close. ‎A large shadow covered him.

He lifted his gaze Jaeha’s hazel eyes were too close. He froze in surprise at the gaze looking down at him, and without warning soft lips landed on his.

…Did he really do it? Just like this?

Eyes filled with some unknown feeling bore down on him, swallowing him. No, they really were swallowing him.

Without a trace of caution, Jaeha sucked on his lips so strongly that Hamin opened his mouth before realizing it. A soft tongue rushed in and filled his mouth.

The sound of heavy rain echoed in his ears. It felt like the droplets were hitting not the ground but inside his head.

Whenever their lips parted, hot breath escaped. Soon the sticky, humid air wrapped around his whole body.

“Ugh.”

He hit Jaeha’s shoulder several times, but Jaeha didn’t blink. Instead, he pressed closer and cupped the back of his head.

Jaeha’s kiss was just like himself, reckless. He sucked on the base of Hamin’s tongue, scraped the roof of his mouth, pressed against his molars, and pushed so deep it felt like he would hit his throat. He pried his lips apart again and again, chewing at them until Hamin’s vision blurred. He had never experienced a kiss like this.

The grip on his hair pulled tight enough to hurt his scalp. Yet when Jaeha bit at his lips while sucking on his tongue, shivers ran through him and his body lost strength.

He tried to brace his trembling waist, but he kept falling back. He couldn’t even grit his teeth, only forcing strength into his eyes, when Jaeha pressed his forehead against his and whispered.

“Sunbae.”

“You are crazy….”

“I’m hard.”

Too late, Hamin bit down and looked down. He shut his eyes. There were two bulges pressing against each other.

“Did it feel good for you too, sunbae?”

“Shut up.”

“It wasn’t bad. No, it feels good.”

Hamin felt anxious. The sticky air still clinging to him, the raindrops pounding so hard against the window it felt like they might break it, the gaze holding something he couldn’t read. All of it was unbearably uncomfortable.

He twisted his body with an urge to escape. He realized too late that the way he had always gone soft only with Jaeha was unusual. He had always made up excuses for it.

His head was a mess. He kept thinking that this wasn’t right, but no clear answer or direction appeared.

Drifting in the stifling feeling of being trapped on all sides, Jaeha suddenly whispered in his ear.

“Can I?”

Hamin bit his lip. He pressed hard enough that it felt like it would bleed, when rough fingers lifted his upper teeth. “You’ll hurt your lips,” Jaeha muttered, and Hamin’s mind went hazy.

If he were normal, he should have shoved Jaeha away and shouted at him to get out. He should have told him never to do something like this again, that it disgusted him. That was what he should have said. But….

“Being with you….”

What slipped through his lips was different from what he thought.

“I feel like I’m not myself.”

He grabbed Jaeha by the collar and pulled him close. In his head, he thought he could almost hear the sound of something shattering that he had denied until now.

Since meeting Jaeha, Hamin had realized again and again how strange his past life had been. Running endlessly toward an invisible finish line, never looking to the side or behind him. He had never thought about holding someone’s hand. To be exact, he hadn’t wanted to.

If the person next to him was better than him, he feared his ugly inner self would show. If they were less than him, there was no reason to keep them nearby. That was why it wasn’t an exaggeration to say most of his first experiences in life had come through Jaeha.

No one had ever cared about things like whether he slept well, whether he ate, or what he ate.

And it wasn’t annoying or tiresome like he had vaguely assumed.

Ridiculously, only now was he beginning to learn what it felt like to live. Little things made him laugh, trivial things got on his nerves. He complained constantly on the outside and inside, but he knew the truth.

He didn’t dislike this life. It was closer to something good.

So all of this was inevitable.

Only with Jaeha did he grow weak and yield. He wanted to grant whatever Jaeha asked for, if he could. Regardless of past ties.

Their feelings might not be the same, but Hamin wanted to let himself be swept into the storm Jaeha created. Or maybe he had never been dragged at all. Maybe he had been walking on his own without knowing it.

When did this start? He tried to trace it back, but no clear moment came to mind.

“What are you thinking about so much?”

“…That I’m just playing in your hands.”

“That’s a fitting thought.”

Of course, Hamin hadn’t meant it as a metaphor for Jaeha kneading his genitals, but Jaeha gave a small exclamation and squeezed the hard shaft.

Without skill, he gripped the tip tightly, and a sound close to pain escaped between Hamin’s lips.

When he heard that, Jaeha flinched and let go. He clenched and opened his fists restlessly, and Hamin whispered quietly.

“Do it gently.”

Jaeha carefully wrapped his hand again around the pink shaft. This time he let all the strength out and moved only his thumb, rubbing the soft skin.

Every time his hand touched the flesh, the pale body flinched. When he rubbed the tip of the urethra, a drawn-out moan came out.

Even on the bed, Hamin seemed like the type who would keep a composed expression and say hurry and finish, but his whole body was unexpectedly sensitive.

When Jaeha slid his hand up Hamin’s side, he inhaled. When Jaeha rubbed the inside of his thigh, it trembled. The sticky kisses made his cheeks flush.

His heart beat so hard it felt like it would explode at every reaction. If sex was like this, he could understand why kids their age were obsessed with it. Jaeha hadn’t even touched his own cock, but it already felt like he would come.

He licked along Hamin’s pale nape. He was already sweating, leaving a salty taste, but it felt sweet to him as if his sense of taste had gone astray.

“Stop….”

“Just come. That’s what you’re about to do.”

Hadn’t Jaeha once said he had a knack for saying things that pissed him off? Hamin wanted to throw those words back at him right now.

The feeling of his whole body being licked, of someone gripping and shaking his cock, was completely unfamiliar. The experiences he had done like a duty had never been this intense or this persistent, so for Hamin all of this was a new kind of stimulation.

Each time the thick hand went up and down his shaft, stars flashed before his eyes. Rough groans spun inside his mouth, and he kept bending his finger joints as if he wanted to tear something apart.

His cock was so stiff that even places without any nerves for pleasure felt ticklish. Like his chest, where Jaeha was now sucking with all his focus.

A man’s chest wasn’t supposed to be an erogenous zone, yet Jaeha sucked on the small nipples with conviction. In truth, the more he sucked the more it was Jaeha’s cock swelling, so maybe the real erogenous zone was his tongue.

Then is my chest just some kind of sex toy….

As he thought how absurd it all was, a thick finger fumbled around his dirty hole.

He didn’t ask why there, or anything like that. It wasn’t as if he couldn’t guess where men did it.