It ~Nоvеl𝕚ght~ wasn’t even surprising anymore, after watching myself—who used to take care of masturbation with bored indifference—cling to joining with him with blazing passion and boldness.
“When we’re back in Seoul, I’ll buy you a fresh pack.”
Muttering pointlessly into an empty room, I drew on the cigarette. My throat still stung, and the feeling of my lungs tightening made squint. I didn’t cough, but it didn’t draw smoothly either.
After two or three drags, I hooked the cigarette into the notch of the ashtray. I preferred watching the thin smoke curl up slowly. Depending on the angle it looked gray, then blue—the smoke resembled his eyes.
My thoughts went to him whether I liked it or not. It wasn’t a topic I could dodge.
Last night he was kind, and for my sake—soone without experience—he even held back the urge to run wild. He knotted in , but from how he reacted, that hadn’t been what he intended either. Besides, I was a Beta, so even if he ejaculated while knotted there was no fear of pregnancy. Contrary to his worries, I hadn’t torn inside, so I didn’t want him to feel excessive guilt or responsibility about it.
He’d even prepared this and that in advance out of concern for , so as a partner who’d spent the night with , he was by no ans lacking in manners.
But starting last night, nothing revolutionary had changed in our relationship.
Two adults had sex by mutual consent, and I myself wanted that connection and ca to this room on my own, so I had no intention of blaming anyone for not getting anything beyond that.
If anything, it was the opposite. I wanted to laugh at and turn away from myself for trying to find hopeful hints or aning in a hookup driven by sexual attraction.
If that kind consideration ca with no explanation attached, then what did it an? I might be inexperienced in this area, but I wasn’t so deluded and giddy that I’d misunderstand it on my own.
If only I hadn’t known. If only I could have dread sothing stupid and sweet for a while—would I feel any better now, alone in this room, recalling his eyes in the smoke of a cigarette I can’t even properly smoke?
Thinking like that, I already seed stupid enough.
I picked up the robe draped over the backrest and pressed it to my nose and lips. The cigarette I’d left on the ashtray had burned almost down to the filter. I gently rubbed out a finger segnt’s worth of gray ash into the tray and stood up.
Nowhere in the room—not even in the robe he’d taken off and left—could I sll him anymore.
■ ■ ■
He was waiting for in the back seat, dressed casually rather than in a suit. The sun was completely down, and he was wearing sunglasses inside the car.
I found it odd for a mont, but because he sotis had a random mischievous streak, I didn’t bother to ask why.
Because of the dull ache still lingering between my legs and the sense that things hadn’t fully closed, I sat a little awkwardly as I tried to settle into my seat. With fresh clarity I felt, in a male Beta’s body, what it ant to have slept with a male Alpha, the way it leaves traces after penetrative sex.
The doorman closed the door and the car pulled out. It was the sa driver as the day we went to see Ms. Sukhee Kim.
“I’m sorry.”
Once the car had completely left the hotel area and rged onto the overpass, he opened with sothing unexpected. I looked back at him, but behind the sunglasses I couldn’t tell where his eyes were.
“You must have been uncomfortable all day.”
“I wasn’t expecting to feel nothing the next day anyway... I’m fine. You really don’t have to worry any more. Resting helped a lot.”
Honestly, being on the receiving end of more consideration from him about my body now would have felt uncomfortable. I wasn’t as unwell or in so much pain as he feared.
Above all, he had nothing to apologize for. We spent the night together because we both wanted to, and I think he did everything with proper manners, softening and opening even though I wasn’t his lover. An apology would only make feel like I’d been used by him; if possible, I didn’t want to hear it.
“Seo Ihyeon, you’re sturdy. I thought you’d be a bit more... shaken.”
Tapping my crossed legs with the narrow paper envelope in his hand, he murmured without looking at .
“I’m glad you’re soone sturdy.”
I couldn’t tell exactly what he ant by “shaken.”
If he ant the wobble where you fail to tell apart sex that naturally follows a confession and exchange of feelings—getting swept up in the mood, having sex on impulse because of each other’s pull—from a one-night stand, and then mistake the intimacy after sleeping together for romantic feeling—
It might not be entirely wrong.
No—more precisely, sex was only the trigger for that wobble, but either way, it was true that my current state was far from stable or calm.
“You just... have to accept what’s happened one way or another, right?”
Whether you like it or not.
Muttering that to myself, I looked out at Hong Kong’s cityscape slipping away in the opposite direction from when we’d arrived.
When I first faced the city, riding Phantom and listening to Prince, I couldn’t have predicted the experiences and emotions that would each fill with their own colors and textures.
Looking back, from the mont I got to know him, it had been a string of variables I couldn’t foresee or prepare for. Not just the events. The feelings when facing him were the sa.
I’d thought eting Ms. Sukhee Kim would be the biggest event of this trip to Hong Kong, and I thought of myself from a few days ago, feeling a sheepish flutter at a single glance colliding in the rearview mirror. Put nicely, I was naive; put rcilessly, I was emotionally naked, without even a thin sheet to shield myself from danger.
I hadn’t expected it.
I couldn’t say I hadn’t expected at all that what happened last night might be the kind of trigger that would change our relationship, or his stance toward . I was ashad of that expectation I alone knew about.
Watching the seatback screen in front with an even tone the entire ti, there was nowhere in his deanor to find any signs of fondness, pull, or affection—any such possibilities.
He handed the envelope he’d been holding, saying he’d arranged things so I could move quickly through departure once we got to the airport. Inside were a simple docunt proving VIP fast-track access and a first-class ticket.
“Take tomorrow off. I told them you had the sa symptoms as last ti, so they’ll understand.”
His cover story hovered deftly between lie and truth.
“I’m fine. Thanks to your concern, I rested well. I think by tomorrow I’ll be completely back to normal.”
On top of the “first class” printed on the ticket he’d given , getting a day off as soone who had had sex with him felt inappropriate.
I thought I knew what the unease piling up in with every kindness of his really was.
It wasn’t just the awkwardness of not being used to this kind of luxurious treatnt. Inside those kindnesses, I felt sothing like obligation.
From his perspective, I know it’s good manners not to ignore a partner whose body is uncomfortable after a night with him. I understand. But—
Manners. Kindness.
At a glance those sound like words grounded in affection, but they also an treating soone outside a certain line with courtesy.
Maybe I’d been hoping that everything he’d arranged would resemble affection that cares for a lover. That was the nakedness of my feelings—my bare face.
I briefly considered whether returning the ticket would be the ending that preserved my pride, saying I didn’t need kindness universally bestowed on anyone he slept with, and then I let out a hollow laugh. I’m not the lead in a drama...
Suddenly I rembered sothing he’d said while idly popping the nuts Juhan had set out at the VIP preview. It was nothing—a remark tossed off in passing.
“Can soone clear these away? I don’t even like them, but if they’re in front of I keep eating them.”
If the first ti we slept together had been ergency first aid, then last night’s sex might have been an incident that happened on the sa principle as grabbing a handful of nuts.
He’d happened to be irritated after having a sensitive spot poked in a dirty way, I happened to be there trying to improve his mood, and sowhere in that process a sexual atmosphere happened to form... Maybe the fact that we’d once slept together made the temptation easier too. I wasn’t trying to play the victim of the night and cut him down as promiscuous. The one who willingly yielded to that temptation was none other than .
But if I’d had even a little human fondness for him—if I knew I wouldn’t be fine after sex—then I should have protected myself with more caution in my choice.
The car slowed, approaching the departure gate.
“I hope this business trip becos a good turning point.”
“...”
I looked over at him, but his face was still turned toward the dark, unlit screen.
“I’ll be expecting a positive answer about the painting.”
I considered for a mont whether a man as seasoned as he was might have his feelings shaken by an impulsive one-night stand. The answer was already there in his manner: the sa steady calm as before we spent the night together—no more intimate, not even colder.
The car ca to a full stop. His sunglassed face turned toward . Even then I couldn’t be sure he was really looking at behind the lenses.
“See you in Seoul.”
Maybe it was just as well I couldn’t confirm his eyes on .
Sitting in seat 1A—sothing I might never sit in again as long as I lived—given to as the price of a night with him, I looked down at the last views of Hong Kong receding far below and, calmly, accepted why my feelings had reacted with unusual intensity where he was concerned.
There was nothing more than a venting of emotion to confirm with my own eyes a conclusion I’d already braced for. So it wasn’t shocking, and it didn’t feel like plumting to the ground.
I liked him.
The private expectations and disappointnts, the atypical sensitivity that made take things more seriously than they were—unfortunate as it was, they were signals that I liked him.
There wasn’t so clear starting point from which I began to like him. At least for now, I couldn’t na the point.
His way of dealing with got under my skin; sotis I felt a rebellious urge; I wanted him to be provoked by , to show a change in his expression, to look at again.
Maybe the groundwork for the feeling had started earlier than I’d thought.
It wasn’t strange to dream of him as soone I could date. He wasn’t soft or easy to deal with, but he was undeniably attractive—soone I wanted to know more and get closer to.
It was just that I hadn’t known I might co to feel expectation and desire toward soone else. Much less that I’d indulge the foolish desire to choose, as the target, a dazzling person at the apex who drew everyone’s attention and favor.
The I knew wanted the bare minimum and chose accordingly to minimize the expenditure of emotions like disappointnt or humiliation—a coward.
So did wanting him make brave?
Not at all. Before I’d properly acknowledged the feeling, I had simply discovered a new side of myself—soone who answered the temptation of sex far too easily.
A flight attendant ca over and asked if she could prepare my al. I stared blankly at a flawless, straight smile, then asked for a beer. In no ti, a cold can of beer and a glass were set on the tray table. The world he lived in was like this—where everything appeared at a word, like magic.
Telling to rest comfortably, the flight attendant slid the door shut and left. Even now, cut off and alone, in that unfamiliar comfort that wasn’t comfortable at all, I started drinking the beer straight from the can.
He’d said after the Old Future shoot that sleeping with soone who isn’t your lover isn’t all ssy, and that an adult at this age can’t resolve desire only by masturbating just because they don’t have a lover.
My sister and brother agreed, of course, and although I didn’t say it aloud, I was mostly in agreent too.
Back then I’d wondered whether they could hold that sa position even for soone they liked—whether they could avoid being hurt if the person they liked slept with soone else instead of them.
In a sense, my thoughts then were a wildly off-target guess. A person you like can feel devastated even by a night with you, not with soone else.
Maybe what he ant when he said it was a relief I was sturdy was another way of saying he was glad I didn’t confuse impulsive sex with romantic feeling. I smiled bitterly at the late guess.
At so point the lights of Hong Kong had vanished entirely from view.
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