ACJY C82

The two of them worked nonstop. The man worked so hard that Taeheun had no choice but to follow suit, and before he knew it, the sun was high in the sky. All those people had gone somewhere, and the surroundings were quiet. The machines, scattered here and there without their owners, looked desolate.

“Let’s take a break, too.”

Taeheun said this to the man who was sweating buckets, and he got up from his spot. Thanks to their hard work, the once-desolate field of the persimmon tree house was now full of rows covered in black plastic.

The man straightened up. He wiped his sweat with the towel around his neck and walked to the ridge of the field. Taeheun also wiped his face and body as he followed the man. Everywhere the towel touched stung. It was obvious his skin would be red, and some parts would probably be peeled.

The sky was thickly covered with clouds. While it blocked the scorching sun, it couldn’t push away the heat. The humidity made it feel as if they were in a sauna.

The man picked up the barley tea kettle the old woman had left behind, poured a drink, and drank it. He also poured one for Taeheun in a paper cup. The two sat side-by-side on the ridge.

Taeheun’s gaze didn’t know how to leave the man. When it came to the man, he didn’t want to miss a single second. The man looked back. Their eyes met. The face that used to flush red so often from shyness was calm. Instead, a hint of curiosity arose in his eyes as he looked at Taeheun.

“Mr. Taeheun, do you like me that much?”

The man asked. It was his characteristic blunt tone.

“Yes!”

Taeheun answered forcefully.

“Why?”

This was a man who rarely asked for reasons.

Taeheun found the man asking something so obvious to be amusing and laughed. Why? Well, because…

No suitable answer came to mind.

“I was curious. Were you always… into that?”

Taeheun, who hadn’t expected such a direct question, was slightly flustered, but then he thought of Kwon Yongjun and his mood soured.

“If I were, I would’ve sucked your dick by now.”

He answered deliberately crudely.

“Then is there another reason?”

The man asked back with an innocent face.

“Of course, there is.”

There must be.

“What is it? Why do you like me?”

The man, endlessly asking questions, was just like the child. A small laugh escaped. The man waited for an answer with his eyes that had turned a reddish-brown in the sunlight.

“Why, you ask? Well, because…”

He had been confident he could answer more clearly than anyone, but now that he was trying, he couldn’t think of a single definitive reason.

Why?

It wasn’t love at first sight.

He wasn’t born with that kind of romantic mindset.

Because he felt sorry for the man with the bad leg?

That wasn’t even worth considering.

Because he’s a good father?

That was one of the reasons he liked him, but it wasn’t the reason he got hard.

Fuck. Why?

The women he had dated back when he was Lee Seonjae all had a reason. One had a fucking beautiful face, one had beautiful breasts, and one had a killer ass. Living as faithfully to his instincts as possible, there had been just one time in college when he fell for a woman smarter than him. But with the exception of that woman, he was mostly moved by external appearances and went straight to bed. After that, if their sexual chemistry was good, they kept seeing each other.

The man was handsome. But he wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous or beautiful. He had seen countless guys like that and felt nothing. If asked whether the man’s looks were Taeheun’s type, that too was a maybe. Taeheun liked a flashy, westernized look like his own. Moreover, he never even glanced at women with dark skin like the man’s. He found it tacky. So, it wasn’t his looks either.

Personality? He did like his blunt and bull-like sturdy personality. But no matter how good someone’s personality was, what kind of person gets an erection for someone of the same sex? And if you asked if the man was fun, that wasn’t it either. He wasn’t particularly cute, and as for being good at conversation, they hadn’t really had what you would call a conversation.

The more he tried to find a reason, the more lost he became.

One day, while confined in the safe house, he had suffered a fever after eating the young radish noodles the man had made for him. After that, he fell for the man like clothes getting soaked in a drizzle. When he came to his senses, he already liked the man, the feeling of liking had turned to love, and it naturally led to sexual desire.

So, is young radish noodles the answer?

Fuck. There was no way that was the real reason.

Watching Taeheun deep in thought, the man smiled faintly as if to say, ‘I knew it.’

“Or is it because I’m similar to Yongjun?”

The man asked in a rather light tone.

“I told you, no. I’m not gay.”

Taeheun flared up.

“That’s not what I mean.”

The man gently refuted, as if soothing him.

“Yongjun said he liked my looks. After that, he liked that I was taciturn, and though it’s strange to say this myself, he said that because my thing was big too, I was his ideal type.”

He spoke calmly, but his face turned beet red at the word ‘thing’.

“No matter how much Kwon Yongjun runs his mouth, the conclusion is that he liked you because your dick is big, isn’t it?”

Taeheun became agitated without realizing it. There were things you could and couldn’t compare. Lumping him in the same category as that bastard who sucked dick in the living room while everyone else was asleep was bound to make him furious.

At Taeheun’s words, the man showed his displeasure openly.

“Yongjun isn’t like that.”

“What do you mean he isn’t? If he liked you, Mr. Gibeom, he would have dated you. Would he have married a woman and gotten her pregnant? Am I wrong?”

“That’s because I’m not… into that.”

“Whether you are or not, in terms of results, that’s how it is. Before you met me, did the two of you ever go on a date? A kiss? A hug?”

He pressed him. Just like the saying ‘the one who farted gets angry’, Taeheun was doing just that. Despite the fact that he himself hadn’t even managed a hug, let alone a kiss, while sober.

“See, you didn’t. Then how many times has Yongjun-ssi sucked your dick? Probably so many you can’t even count. That’s the difference between Kwon Yongjun and me. I don’t give a shit about your dick, Mr. Gibeom. No, it’s not that I don’t, I’m interested, but that’s… Fuck!”

He roughly swept his bangs up.

“Yongjun is just scared, that’s all.”

The man made an excuse on Kwon Yongjun’s behalf.

“Just like how Mr. Taeheun was scared yesterday.”

A hint of pity was laced in the man’s tone.

Taeheun was about to ask how that was the same, but he shut his mouth. He wondered what was so different after all. He and Kwon Yongjun were the same in their liking for the man. Although their reasons for being scared might have been different, they were both scared.

So what? What about it? What was important right now wasn’t Kwon Yongjun. It was the man and himself, Yoon Gibeom and Kim Taeheun. But the conversation kept getting sidetracked. It was Taeheun’s fault for getting worked up over nothing.

Why wasn’t his damn head working at such a crucial time? When dealing with numbers, everything was clear and smart. He was so cunning he could play with people, and there were often times he was impressed with himself. Lately, he’d been on thin ice due to insomnia and lethargy, but his well had never run this dry before.

Taeheun clenched his fists. There was no room for doubt in Taeheun’s feelings for the man. It was very clear. He liked the man. No, he loved him. Putting aside the fact that he got hard at all times of the day, he always wanted to be with him, and he found himself always drawing a future for the two of them. It didn’t matter that the man had a grown child. He was confident he could treat the child like his own.

“Do you remember what I said earlier? That I want to grow old like the grandpa and grandma from the persimmon tree house.”

Taeheun said, casting his gaze toward the clouds.

“You know, I didn’t have a dream. At school, they often asked, ‘What is your future dream?’ Remember? Back then, other kids would raise their hands, shouting ‘Me, me!’ and say all sorts of things. Teacher, firefighter, police officer, soldier. Soccer player, etcetera. There were even kids whose dream was to be a good parent, but nothing came to my mind. I had never once thought about such a thing. From that time, I was already the head of a household.”

He continued slowly, reminiscing about the past.

After meeting the man, Taeheun realized he was a very lonely person. For the first time, he dreamed of happiness and could look forward to the future. He had thought such things had nothing to do with him in the first place, but that wasn’t true. He had simply been raised that way.

Looking back, Lee Seonjae was raised with all his desires castrated except for his sex drive. It started with making him accept the weight of being the head of the family at a young age as something natural. The desires for self-realization that every human is born with, such as the desire for success, fame, and achievement, were not permitted for Lee Seonjae.

His uncle-in-law taught Seonjae that what was wrong was right. He would bow and scrape in front of people while inwardly mocking and looking down on them, rejoiced in the misfortune of others, and simply passed by injustice. Guilt was a nuisance, morality was just boring, and the world was a place where violence worked much better than words.

‘Seonjae, you know, you have to teach a traitor a lesson. You must get revenge. And when you get revenge, how do you do it? Right. With high-interest loans! Not an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, but for an eye, you take an eye and a tooth, and for a tooth, you take a tooth and a nose. You know what I mean, right?’

His uncle-in-law had said it with a laugh, as if it were a joke.

Even his aunt, the only one who gave young Seonjae love, died without being able to tell him that was wrong. She was too unhappy herself to have the luxury of caring about another’s misfortune.

Lee Seonjae naturally grew into a cynical and twisted adult.

“I did get a dream later on, but it’s a bit much to tell you, Mr. Gibeom.”

He glanced at the man and smiled. He couldn’t say that even after meeting him, he had continued to dream of death for a while. For Taeheun, death was a natural thing, but for the man, it might be a painful one.

There was too much death around Lee Seonjae. It was no exaggeration to say that he saw death every day, something an ordinary person might experience only once or twice in their lifetime. Because death was a part of his daily life, he didn’t think it was strange, and after his aunt committed suicide, a sense of longing for death even grew in his heart. Just as an ordinary person dreams of happiness and pictures the future, Lee Seonjae dreamed only of death.

The future.

He let out a deflating laugh.

For Lee Seonjae, the future was darkness. Such a thing did not exist in the first place. He probably would have continued to live in darkness under his uncle-in-law until the day he died, whether it was by suicide, murder, or an accident.

The reason that Seonjae decided to go through with his plan was very simple. It wasn’t born out of a burning sense of justice or morality.

It was for a purely personal reason, an expression of revenge for the fact that his uncle-in-law, of all people, had thoroughly deceived him for over 10 years—him, the adopted son Lee Seonjae, whom he had worked to the bone since he was a small child who could barely hold a pencil. It was a natural result, as he had taken his uncle-in-law’s advice to repay traitors with high-interest loans to heart.

There was no pang of conscience. He didn’t feel sorry for anyone except for the family in that two-story house. Perhaps if he hadn’t had the nightmares, he might not have even felt sorry for that family.

That was Lee Seonjae. A bastard with no conscience, a vile and despicable bastard. A man who, while steadily preparing his revenge, had looked forward to death, the only thing he had dreamed of for a long time.

“It’s strange. After I met you, Mr. Gibeom, everything changed. So quickly that it makes me wonder if it’s even possible.”

But the Lee Seonjae of the past was no longer here. The young man who had lived with his desires castrated, carrying his family on his back without even realizing how hard it was, was completely dead.

“I have a future dream now, too. A future dream, not a dream.”

“Aren’t they the same thing?”

The man asked.

“Are they? But doesn’t a dream have a strong feeling of being difficult to achieve? Whereas a future dream feels like it will come true soon.”

“Ah. Now that you mention it, that makes sense.”

The man nodded.

“So, what my future dream is.”

Taeheun wanted to live a new life. With the man before him, with this sturdy man, he wanted to live until they became stooped old grandpas. Before meeting the man, Taeheun had never once pictured himself as a middle-aged man. Let alone an old man. But with the man, he looked forward to the years they would spend growing old together, just like the grandpa and grandma from the persimmon tree house earlier.

“I asked you why you like me, and now you’re suddenly talking about your future dream?”

The man laughed in disbelief.

“You can’t think of a reason, can you? It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me something like that.”

The man brushed himself off and tried to stand up. Taeheun grabbed the man’s wrist to stop him. The man, halfway up, awkwardly sat back down. Then he looked back at Taeheun.

“I thought there were a ton of reasons I was drawn to you, Mr. Gibeom, but for some reason, I can’t think of a single one. But I really do like you.”

The two looked at each other.

“And my future dream is to grow old with you, Mr. Gibeom.”

Taeheun spoke as if he were chewing and swallowing each and every word.

“I like you. I want to grow old with you for a long, long time.”

He looked very slowly into the man’s eyes. The man’s pupils were unwavering. In those eyes, which were so deep and dark that they often made Taeheun anxious, a gentle light shone. A faint smile spread across his blunt face.

Taeheun raised his arms and hugged the man tightly. It was a gentle embrace, far from impulsive. Their sweat-soaked flesh met, feeling slippery. White and black intertwined, creating a perfect balance. The sound of the heartbeats of men in their prime was powerful.

“But what about you, Mr. Gibeom? What do you like about me?”

He whispered in the man’s ear. This time, it wasn’t the man who turned red, but Taeheun, who had asked the question. He wanted to hear the answer, but there was also a part of him that didn’t. Feeling needlessly shy, he hugged the man tighter. The man chuckled in a low voice.