ACJY C71

“No, not even a whole sack, but half a sack? Have you no conscience? Haaa, Fuck.”

For the past five minutes, Taeheun had been cursing, repeating “Fuck” over and over.

It was fine that he’d done the work. On that wide field, he had laid down vinyl sheets, buried them with soil, poked holes, and then planted seeds. That part was fine. But the beans he received as a day’s wage amounted to a mere half-sack. It was a considerable loss, having worked two able-bodied men to the bone only to be given such a pathetic payment.

“Mr. Gibeom, you know. I’m not usually the type to complain so much. But I really can’t help but curse at that guy. I hope it pours rain so hard that all his adzuki beans or soybeans or whatever just float away!”

The man neither soothed him nor scolded him for being unpleasant. Silently, truly silently, he just listened to Taeheun’s grumbling and drove.

“Hey, would you like to go to town for lunch?”

After a long while of Taeheun talking to himself, the man finally uttered a single sentence. When Taeheun looked at him, the man, who had been facing forward to drive, glanced back.

“Mr. Gibeom.”

“Yes?”

“You know, I’m fine with anything as long as you are, Mr. Gibeom.”

At the unexpected answer, the man just glanced at him again. His eyes seemed to ask what on earth he was talking about.

“Let’s go to town. Let’s go.”

“Ah, yes.”

The man looked troubled. He might have been wondering if Taeheun had gone mad from heatstroke.

The truck entered the village hall parking lot. Taeheun waited for the man to turn off the ignition before getting out of the car. The sky was not just black but looked somewhat desolate. It was strange that with the clouds so thick, it still wasn’t raining.

To wash off his sweat-soaked body before heading to town, he followed the man up the stairs.

“What should we eat in town?”

Taeheun asked.

“Let’s have rice. Baekban!”

The man answered energetically. Having had noodles for both breakfast and lunch, he seemed to be craving rice.

“Okay. Baekban sounds good. Oh, let’s stop by the market while we’re there.”

“Yes.”

He waited for the follow-up question, but that was it from the man. He was a consistent person.

“Aren’t you going to ask what I’m going to buy?”

“What are you going to buy?”

The man asked, as if out of obligation.

“Mackerel.”

At Taeheun’s answer, the man whipped his head around. His eyes lit up as if he had just remembered something important.

“We can ask them to gut it, then grill some and braise some.”

“Yes!”

The man smiled brightly. Damn, he’s handsome. Thinking this, Taeheun also raised the corners of his mouth, following the man’s lead.

“I was actually thinking of grilled fish, which is why I suggested the baekban place.”

The man said shyly.

“Let’s eat baekban and buy mackerel. Oh, and I want to drink an Americano, too.”

“Okay. Let’s do it all.”

“Yes. Let’s do it all!”

The mood was so high it felt like they should high-five, so he raised his hand, but the man had finished speaking and turned his back nonchalantly. Taeheun lowered his right hand, which was left hanging in the air, and shook his head.

As soon as they entered the shower room, the man stripped off his clothes just like before. He tossed everything off, hwulleodeong hwulleodeong, right down to his underwear, and with his sweaty, glistening, sexy body, he walked past Taeheun and stood in front of the showerhead.

Fuck. Taeheun squeezed his eyes shut.

Just a few days ago, seeing his body didn’t affect him at all. But now, he felt dizzy. His breath caught in his throat, and his whole body flushed with heat. He thought he might even be breaking out in a cold sweat. What should I do? No, what is there to do? He snapped his eyes back open.

For a moment, he was relieved that the man wasn’t conscious of him, but then he got angry. I wanted to protest, asking why he wasn’t conscious of me if he liked me. He roughly tore off his clothes. Naked, he stood confidently in front of the showerhead next to the man.

The man was already wet. His well-shaped penis and black pubic hair were the first things to enter his vision. His gaze naturally drifted to the small, firm buttocks, then moved past the white cheeks to meticulously scan the muscular thighs and smooth calves.

As the man washed his hair, soap bubbles flowed from his firm pectoral muscles down his abs, and soon they reached his pubic hair via his flat lower abdomen. Of all things, the foam was so rich that it was impossible not to have lewd thoughts.

Taeheun gulped, kkul-kkeok kkul-kkeok. His lower abdomen grew heavy, and blood began to rush to his dick. With indomitable will, he gripped the faucet and turned on the water. With a Swoosh! sound, cold water fell mercilessly.

Ugh. Fuck. Fucking cold.

A curse burst out automatically. He tingled from head to toe. Thanks to that, the heat subsided, and his growing penis instantly returned to its original state. If he could just finish showering like this, everything would be fine. But his eyes, against Taeheun’s will, kept turning towards the man.

The man, oblivious, washed his body as meticulously as always. After finishing his hair, he stood with his legs slightly apart in a squat and brought his soapy hand to the crack of his ass and his testicles. The rough, dark hand scrubbed his groin, which was exceptionally white compared to the rest of his body. His breathing became ragged. He felt dizzy again.

Close your eyes, you crazy bastard.

He screamed at himself. It would be over if he just closed his eyes and didn’t look, but for some reason, he couldn’t. In the end, panting for breath, he slammed his head against the wall. At the thump, the man turned around in surprise.

“Are you okay?”

A hand, slippery with soap, grabbed Taeheun’s shoulder. In that instant, his mind went blank. And it wasn’t just his mind that went blank. Taeheun didn’t even want to say what happened right after that.

Since the man had drunk makgeolli, Taeheun took the wheel. He turned the radio volume up to the max. The two of them just kept clearing their throats in embarrassment and ended up heading to town without any conversation. Even when they got out of the car and walked to the restaurant, they didn’t say a single word.

Fortunately, at the dinner table, both the man and Taeheun regained their composure.

“Is this jogi?”

Taeheun asked as he separated the flesh with his chopsticks.

“Yes.”

He immediately put a piece of the flesh in his mouth. It was savory and salty, quite good.

“It’s delicious, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

The man replied, deboning the fish in a somewhat awkward posture.

I thought he was good at everything, but I guess not.

He chuckled.

“Mr. Gibeom, you don’t know how to debone fish. I’ll do it for you.”

Taeheun was happy that there was something he was better at than the man. And since it was the task of deboning the fish that would go into the man’s mouth, he felt like he had become someone amazing. When he impressively left only the smooth flesh, the man silently mouthed ‘wow’. The child really did resemble his father. Feeling inexplicably proud, he personally placed the piece of flesh on top of the man’s rice.

“Than-, no, thank you.”

“Hey, it’s nothing. Don’t get all emotional over something like this.”

He overreacted by himself, waving his hands dismissively.

The man smiled. He took a large spoonful of rice topped with the fish. Watching the spoon enter the man’s mouth, Taeheun smiled contentedly. He thought he finally understood why people say you feel full just by watching someone eat.

If even a stranger makes me feel this way, why was my mother like that to me? There I go again. Taeheun shook his head vigorously. He didn’t want to think about his mother during this precious time.

“It’s delicious.”

“Of course it’s delicious. Who do you think deboned it?”

Taeheun said playfully and winked at the man.

The rice, which had been going down just fine moments ago, suddenly got stuck in his throat. It was because of that damn mother of his. He wanted to go and confront her right now, asking why she treated him that way. He also wanted to grab his father by the collar and ask why he had been so cold to him, his own look-alike.

Tears welled up in his eyes inconsiderately. Through his blurry vision, he saw the man’s chopsticks. A piece of fish landed on his bowl of rice. The man had placed a piece from his own portion onto Taeheun’s rice.

“Eat up.”

The man said gently.

The tip of his nose tingled. At this rate, he thought he would be bawling with tears and snot. Taeheun quickly scooped up a large spoonful, just as the man had done, and put it in his mouth.

“It’s delicious. For real.”

He gave a thumbs-up. Then he quickly bowed his head.

What’s wrong with me since this morning?

Getting emotional while eating ramen, getting a hard-on in front of a man, and now getting teary-eyed over a piece of jogi. It was as if he was going through a late puberty. Otherwise, there was no way to explain his current self.

Only after he had calmed down did he raise his head and look at the man. As if the fish Taeheun had deboned for him was something truly precious, the man savored it. He was always like that. No matter how trivial or insignificant something was, no matter if it was a person he didn’t like, he would treat them as precious. He put his heart into it. If there was someone who practiced altruism in their very being, it would be that man right there.

Taeheun ate lunch with a constant smile. The lump in his throat cleared up, and he ate two whole bowls of rice. He ordered an extra serving of grilled jogi and shared it amicably with the man. The man paid the bill.

“Let’s go get dessert. I’m really craving some cold coffee.”

“Yes.”

The man rarely ever refused.

He walked side-by-side with the man. The same soap scent emanated from both of them. They were wearing identical black t-shirts bought at the market and were of a similar height, making them look like twins.

The only differences were their pants and slippers. One wore jeans, the other cargo pants with many pockets, and one wore three-stripe slippers, the other beach sandals.

Ah, our skin tones are different, too.

“If we were mixed together, we’d be milk coffee. Right? 😉”

Taeheun threw out a joke. Now that he’d said it, it sounded a bit naughty. The man, probably not getting the hidden meaning, seemed unbothered, and only Taeheun felt embarrassed, scratching his eyebrow.

Because he was wearing slippers, the man’s body tilted to the left with every step. Taeheun deliberately stood to the man’s left. The man tried to widen the gap, perhaps afraid they would bump into each other, but every time he did, Taeheun immediately closed the distance.

He wasn’t doing it in hopes of accidental skinship. It was his way of showing, through action instead of words, that if he were to misstep and fall, he should grab onto him, to use him as a support. The man might have misunderstood it as something else, but he didn’t care.

Taeheun stopped his steps, which were headed for a coffee shop, in front of a bakery.

Happy Bakery, huh.

“Is this the place? Where Jihye bought bread from before.”

The man also stopped.

“Yes. It’s the only bakery in town.”

“Let’s see. They sell coffee here too. Let’s go here. I suddenly feel like eating bread.”

“Yes.”

This time, too, the man obediently followed Taeheun.

As they opened the shop door, a bell jingled, ttallang-ttallang. The savory smell of bread filled the air. The stoic man’s face instantly brightened.

“I’ll have an iced coffee. What about you, Mr. Gibeom?”

“I’ll have…”

The man looked up at the menu and said, “a milkshake.”

“One iced coffee and one milkshake, please.”

Taeheun quickly held out cash. The man, a step too late, looked disappointed.

“Hey Mr. Gibeom, don’t just sit down. Let’s look at the bread. It’s been a while, seeing bread makes me excited.”

He grabbed the arm of the man who was about to head to a table. The man, as if he couldn’t resist, stood in front of the displayed bread.

“You like red bean bread, right?”

He asked confidently. The man shook his head. Instead, he pointed at a soboro bread.

“I like bread with nothing inside.”

“Really? Didn’t you say you liked this before? Jihye bought some last time when she went to town with Sojin.”

“Ah. Well, Jihye likes it. She thinks I’ll like it too because she does, so she buys it for me. She’s still a kid.”

The man confessed that even though he didn’t like it, he pretended to because it was from the child. That sounded just like him.

The man smiled warmly, perhaps thinking of the child. When he said, ‘She’s still a kid,’ there was even a sense of longing. Just as Taeheun longed for the man standing in front of him, the man longed for the child.

Taeheun used tongs to place a palm-sized soboro bread on the tray.

“What about you, Mr. Taeheun? What kind do you like?”

The man asked with an animated face. It was unmistakably the face of a boy.

What kind of bread did I like?

Come to think of it, he didn’t have a preference. If someone bought him bread, he would pick at it and stop. Red bean bread, cream bread, even cake from a hotel bakery were all just okay to him. It wasn’t that he disliked bread. Taeheun ate everything that way. If it was there, he ate it; if not, he didn’t. The only thing he ever openly disliked were soupy dishes with a dark color.

“Red bean bread.”

Taeheun replied, hoping to score some points with the man.

Sure enough, the man smiled brightly.

“You have the same taste as Jihye.”

The man cheerfully picked up a red bean bread.