CEL 58

“Sunbae, should I buy you a car?”

“What kind of car?”

“That expensive one.”

Hamin turned his head. Because he was held in Jaeha’s arms, his temple bumped against Jaeha’s chin.

What expensive car… English black tea? (Benz)

Jaeha saw his mouth form those words silently and pointed his finger toward the large TV. On the screen, the male lead stepped out from the driver’s seat of a luxury imported car.

That was the car?

He let out a hollow laugh. Pressing his face against Hamin’s cheek, Jaeha spoke.

“Sunbae, you wanted a car.”

“That was just to annoy you.”

“So you don’t want one?”

“It would be convenient to have one.”

“Should I buy it for you?”

Hamin raised his index finger as he looked at the eyes that glimmered with anticipation and excitement. He pressed his index against Jaeha’s round forehead, and Jaeha lifted his eyebrows.

Jaeha opened his mouth and chewed on the finger like gum to show displeasure. It was an act far removed from normal human behavior.

“I told you not to act generous with other people’s money.”

“You wouldn’t complain even if I used it.”

“Are they still contacting you?”

“Well….”

His half-hearted answer showed that he was still being harassed.

About two months had passed, yet little had changed. Hamin still lived buried under lectures and assignments, and only the number of times he met Jaeha had increased a little.

Jaeha still had no interest in his studies. He cared more about the length of his fingernails, his favorite snacks, and his sleep schedule than school.

Something felt wrong….

Hamin reluctantly stared at the screen. The scene changed, and the female lead who had failed to find a job held back tears.

“You still haven’t decided what you want to do after graduation?”

“Mm… yes. I’m not sure yet.”

“Well, you have to go to the army first.”

The arms that wrapped his stomach suddenly tightened.

“There are things you must not say, even if you’re my sunbae.”

“What things?”

“Talking about the army to someone who hasn’t gone.”

“That place is just where people live.”

“That place is where you fire guns and throw grenades.”

Hamin chuckled as he watched Jaeha shudder as if the thought alone horrified him. He imagined Jaeha with his dark hair shaved short. It did not suit him at all.

“But why did you go to the army, sunbae?”

“What kind of question is that?”

“Weren’t you exempt?”

The hand that had been rubbing his side moved slowly toward the back of his hand. Hamin saw Jaeha’s extreme caution, he was worried this question might wound him, and he replied casually.

“I hated the idea of my circumstances feeling like some privilege. I’m not denying the system, that was just my personal choice.”¹

“Sunbae, you’re really amazing.”

“I got a lot of reward leaves.”

“This movie is boring.”

It was misplaced resentment toward the film.

Hamin smiled, he slipped free from Jaeha’s arms, and went to the kitchen to bring back a glass of water. When he handed it over, Jaeha gave him a blank look, then patted his head lightly and spoke.

“Weren’t you thirsty?”

Jaeha’s cheeks flushed red. Every time Hamin offered such sudden kindness, he felt as if his heart could not endure it. His whole body heated, and he struggled to keep his hands still.

He held the glass carefully with both hands and gulped it down, and a sweet liquid like sugar water slid down his throat. Everything Seo Hamin gave him felt that way. Sweet, sticky… it melted him…

It made him weak.

The truth escaped Jaeha’s lips, and the emotion on them was impossible to hide.

“The water tastes sweet.”

“Because it is sugar water.”

Jaeha’s expression went blank for a moment, then returned, because he did not understand Hamin’s answer right away.

“…This is sugar water?”

“You are still a little underweight.”

What kind of person does that?

His eyes widened in disbelief and glared at him, but Hamin avoided his gaze.

“I thought you knew.”

Every overly sweet thing Hamin had given him until now flashed through his head.

So all of that really was lumps of sugar….

“You need to put on some weight.”

“I don’t want to hear that from you, sunbae.”

Jaeha reacted crookedly, but Hamin was sincere.

After that incident, the weight he lost had not recovered quickly. From the start, Jaeha cared more about what entered Hamin’s mouth than his own, so there was no way he would gain weight.

So Hamin could only try on his own.

“Sunbae, you enjoy teasing me, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

It was not really teasing this time, Hamin agreed.

He stared at the furrowed brow with wrinkles and the lips that jutted out slightly. Looking at them pleased him.

“…I think it looks cute.”

“What does?”

“That is why I keep teasing you.”

Jaeha blinked like a frozen computer, then realized the meaning and his face flamed red.

That made Hamin want to tease him more.

At that moment, the screen that had shone brightly turned black, and Hamin’s eyes shifted toward the TV. Without even watching properly, the two-hour film had ended and the credits filled the screen.

An awkward silence filled the room because they both knew neither of them had watched the film. Jaeha had suggested watching, and Hamin had chosen the genre, so they were both responsible.

“Do you want to watch it again?”

“We need to eat. What do you want for dinner? Should I make kimchi stew?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Kimchi stew is better than soybean paste stew, right? Should I grill some meat too.”

Just hearing the words made Jaeha feel full, and he grimaced.

Part of the reason Hamin struggled to fatten Jaeha came from habits. At some point, Hamin started treating feeding him like a hobby, and it became annoying.

Especially when they ate meat that needed long chewing or shellfish that were troublesome to prepare, the nagging doubled. To be honest, his ears hurt a little.

“If we eat, let’s eat noodles.”

“You ate noodles for lunch. You want to avoid chewing?”

Caught red handed, Jaeha only rolled his eyes, and at that moment his phone rang. The caller did not seem welcome, and a sigh slipped from his lips.

“I’ll go take this call.”

Hamin nodded. Jaeha found it insufficient to just step into a room, so he grabbed his coat and went outside.

Will it take long?

Hamin did not feel especially let down. But he thought it would be nice if he could help somehow.

Left alone, he slipped into the room with the door firmly shut. Because they had recently cleared out the officetel studio, most of the art tools and drawings had been moved into the house.

Jaeha had wanted to throw them all away, but he had not stopped Hamin from secretly boxing and packing them.

Hamin opened the built-in closet and pulled out drawings from the box tucked in the corner, then spread them across the floor. The familiar lines stirred something inside him.

Jaeha dismissed them as products of his illness, but Hamin thought differently. Inside the drawings lay Jaeha’s world, and a piece of him. Hamin liked those moments when he could steal a glimpse of that world.

As he traced that mix of stirring and sorrow inside, one drawing with faded lines caught his eyes.

“…It smudged a little.”

Perhaps because of poor storage, or because the papers were stacked, some parts had grown faint. He stared at it a while, then picked up a pencil from the desk. He moved his hand cautiously over the faded part. It looked fairly convincing.

“Sunbae, what are you doing?”

Startled by the sudden voice at his side, he dropped the pencil.

Han Jaeha blinked rapidly as his eyes moved between the drawing and Hamin.

“You kept them because of this?”

“I restored it.”

At that answer, Jaeha’s face distorted in a faintly awkward way.

Restoration… it looked ruined.

Hamin looked quite pleased with himself, yet the redrawn image was a mess. A drawing that had served as a solid assignment degraded instantly to the level of a child’s scribble, and Jaeha felt dumbfounded.

“Because it is only pencil… it feels a little dull.”

He tried to speak as casually as possible, though he was worried. Because of his unpleasant call with his father, the words sounded as if he was testing Hamin. Even after saying them, he glanced sideways, and Hamin shrugged and replied.

“Maybe it will sound strange, but I prefer monochrome pictures.”

As if to prove that, Hamin gazed at the sketch with affection. It was a look he almost never showed him.

Jaeha rolled his eyes as he watched Hamin carefully lift and arrange the corner. Treating a mere old drawing like some precious treasure embarrassed him.

“Do you really like my drawings, sunbae?”

“I told you before.”

“I thought that was just to comfort me.”

“I am not a judge in court, so why would I lie?”

Did that mean he would lie in court?

While Jaeha made a sullen face, Hamin laughed.

“I like your drawings. I like you too.”

Did Seo Hamin even know what kind of feeling those words stirred in him when he said them?

He struggled to hold back the pressure building below, and Hamin noticed. Hamin leaned in and kissed him.

“Expressing yourself is an act of courage. There are many people like me.”

“What kind of person are you?”

“A coward.”

Cowardly, fearful, those words matched Seo Hamin so poorly.

Jaeha could not bring himself to agree, and Hamin pressed firmly down on his shoulder. Without resisting, Jaeha fell back.

The cool touch of the floor made him shiver faintly, and raindrop-like kisses fell over him.

In a flash his shirt came off. Teasing fingertips wandered over him, then pressed against his chest. Like a carpenter gauging where to hammer a nail, Hamin marked his skin with deliberate claw marks and sucked down with a strong pull that made a wet sound.

“Now I understand why you draw on my body.”

Hamin left traces on him. His arms, his stomach, his chest, his thighs. By the time he realized, only he was panting.

“Why are you so forward today?”

“I told you weekends are yours.”

“You said you dislike things like this.”

“Me?”

Hamin tilted his head. His hair, now grown fairly long, rustled as it fell, and his innocent eyes blinked in confusion.

Ah, that was a little….

Balanced on that dangerous line, Jaeha wished desperately that Hamin would not cross it. He looked at him with an earnest face, yet however Hamin took it, he smiled bright as sunlight.

“I do not dislike it.”

As soon as the words reached him, their positions shifted.

Hamin pressed his palm to Jaeha’s round head and turned him over onto his back, and Hamin’s face reflected ‎a playful smile.

“Sunbae, you are really bad.”

“Such a thing, being bad alone is not punishable.”

“That is fortunate.”

Their tongues mixed. Hamin shoved his tongue deep in his mouth until it almost reached his throat, and with his thumb he fondled Jaeha’s thick earlobe.

Without closing his eyes, Jaeha stared at Hamin’s face as it slowly flushed. The kiss ended only after his clear gaze clouded and blurred.

“From now on, I plan to be bad too.”

‎

‎

Unfortunately, Han Jaeha was the sort who kept his words exactly.

“This position looks too lewd.”

“Hmmm….”

“Sunbae, your ass is really round.”

Are there people with triangular asses?

Instead of lashing out, Hamin answered by wrinkling the shirt gripped in his hand.

Han Jaeha seemed to think Hamin disliked such acts, yet that was wrong. To be precise, it was acts done without moderation that left him at a loss.

Something that should end after one time, Jaeha insisted on doing three, four times at least before he felt satisfied. Already more than once, Hamin had watched dawn break while Jaeha continued like that.

Even now it was the same. After already releasing twice, Jaeha pinned him down again with the drive of a twenty-one-year-old, and Hamin felt his body tearing apart into five pieces.

The clothes spread on the floor to prevent scraping had long since rolled up into lumps under their struggle.

Hamin clutched Jaeha’s shirt in both hands and buried his face in shoulder. With a deep breath, the scent of Jaeha filled his lungs. It irritated him, yet at the same time it calmed him.

“Sunbae, what are you doing?”

Jaeha noticed quickly that his body was going limp, and he snatched the shirt from Hamin’s grip. When Hamin turned his head and looked at him with dissatisfaction, Jaeha thrust his waist hard with a sulky face.

“Haahk!”

“Do not cheat with my clothes.”

Twenty-one. Twenty-one. Han Jaeha was twenty-one….

But he was twenty-one, not eleven, right?

Hamin tried to push down the irritation from that nonsense, but he was feeling resentful, and his eyes narrowed. At that, Jaeha’s large hand grabbed his already burning backside.

“Does everything I feed you go to your ass?”

“That is disgusting… ngh, stop talking.”

“Do you like it when I do this?”

“Hhhngh….”

His massive shaft filled his inside and crushed in circles. After several climaxes already, his drenched insides wrapped around tender flesh.

He hit the spot that curled Hamin’s toes each time until Hamin could no longer lift his waist. Jaeha clicked his tongue softly and slipped his arm under Hamin’s knees. The sudden impact made stars burst across Hamin’s sight.

“Does it feel good, lawyer?”

He used the title like a cheat code every time, Hamin laughed inwardly. By now it was not the Jaeha of the past that swayed him but this Jaeha now, so it had little effect, yet his thought over timing and use made it somewhat endearing.

“It feels… good.”

“…What?”

“Yours… feels good.”

As he rubbed his stomach, he lifted his hips lightly, and at that moment the thrust hit deeper, snapping his back backward.

“Ahhh!”

He shuddered and spilled thick release in bursts. Strength fled from his limbs, and his body limped. Jaeha pulled him in a tight embrace from behind and whispered with a sigh.

“Do you think I will let it end here?”

Hamin turned his head. Sweat beaded across Jaeha’s brow, and he looked down with a face so satisfied it almost glowed.

What did that mean?

Hamin blinked in confusion, then realized the cock still buried in him was hard. Usually Jaeha released together, but this time he had held himself back somehow.

…So was this pride he felt now?

Hamin let out a hollow laugh and tapped his cheek. Until just then, Jaeha looked triumphant like a general who had seized victory, and Hamin’s eyes curved.

He pressed their lips together. Warm breath slipped between their tender skins, and Jaeha’s shoulders flinched.

“Jaeha-ya, I like you.”

“…Ah.”

His cheeks reddened, and his eyes lost composure. Along with lips drooping in grievance, Hamin felt warmth filling his body.

Jaeha stayed silent for a while. His mouth opened and closed like a fish, and he looked aggrieved.

“…One more time.”

“Isn’t the weekend over?”

“I have no class tomorrow.”

“Last week you said the same.”

“Next week too, probably no class.”

Hamin ignored the nonsense and lifted his body. As he pulled out the heavy length despite the ache, a moan escaped his lips.

He clenched his hole to keep anything from leaking and panted, and Jaeha’s large hand patted his ass in support. Needless to say, it helped nothing.

“I will wash first.”

“Let’s wash together. We need to clean up.”

“I am saying I do not want to wash together.”

When Hamin pointed out the stale pattern that started with Jaeha sliding fingers inside him and always led to sex, Jaeha rolled his eyes and acted distracted. Then his gaze stopped on the box he had not yet moved into the closet. He stayed quiet for a while, deep in thought, and then he whispered.

“Next weekend I meet my father.”

“…Will you come with me?”

It would not help much, yet it was better to have anyone beside him than to sit alone among people who made him uncomfortable. But Jaeha unexpectedly shook his head.

“I said just the two of us should meet if he has something to say, because a big gathering feels uncomfortable.” His light brown eyes lowered slightly.

“Strange, right? When I think about it, I could have said this long ago, but I don’t know what I have been doing until now.”

“You did well.”

Hamin crouched down and rubbed his tousled roughly. A sound close to a pleased moan came from Jaeha’s throat.

“My drawings… you can look whenever you want instead of sneaking to see them.”

“You dislike it.”

“I like it when you look at my drawings with joy, sunbae.”

Hamin only nodded. After all, not everything needed to be perfectly understood.

He rose slowly and glanced down at the body still sitting on the floor.

“If you will wash with me, come quickly.”

He heard loud clattering behind him. At that, Hamin could not help but break into laughter.

1. I couldn’t find reliable current legal provisions saying that financial hardship or being an orphan grant exemption from mandatory military service in South Korea. I have no idea what other circumstances would make Hamin exempt. ↩︎