HARD 1

The accident happened when he was nine, and they said it was a miracle he survived. Go Woonha has no memory of that time. He didn’t even know what had hit him. He just woke up in the hospital.

The miracle was a little more considerate to Go Woonha. Not only did he survive, but he also healed cleanly with no cosmetic issues.

However, after that accident, Go Woonha’s sense of pain became dull. His sense of touch was a bit like that too.

Go Woonha was curious about what it felt like to be in pain, what it felt like to be tickled, and what pleasure felt like. But people say the genitals are the most sensitive part of the body, right? So he tried it.

The result? This was satisfying enough.

He didn’t know what an orgasm was, nor could he tell if this was it, but Go Woonha was just happy to have found something that gave him stimulation. Go Woonha readily gave his body over to this first-time stimulation.

“Honey, this is amazing.”

Woonha turned over at the words of the instructor whose class he was taking as an elective.

“Do you like getting fucked?”

It was a question of pure curiosity. Although he did ejaculate from the unavoidable friction and repeated stimulation, it was no longer as mind-blowingly good as the first time, and Go Woonha was now ready to try something new.

“Honey.”

The instructor, who drew out the words Oh, honey, shook his head.

“I can’t even describe it. I’m addicted.”

“Hmm.”

At those words, Go Woonha just smiled and thought, Good thing I used a condom.

He doesn’t have a steady partner. He doesn’t date anyone younger. It’s because he feels less guilty with older partners. It’s probably because he has a younger brother. If he had been the younger brother, it might have been the opposite.

Go Woonha lived according to his impulses. When he was horny, he met up with someone and slept with them; if not, he didn’t. If his partner wanted to stay friends, he did, and if they said they wanted to kill him and never see him again, he agreed to that too. He didn’t have what you’d call sexual compatibility, so there was no reason for feelings to develop.

Then one day, he remembered the instructor’s words and decided to try getting fucked himself. If there was no pleasure, he needed to at least feel pain, so Woonha looked for a partner with a very large build. Even though Go Woonha’s own body was quite beautifully well-built, his partner was at least twice his size. Looking back, he thinks the guy must have been on steroids. Since he wasn’t natural, his dick was limp and flaccid.

“What is this?”

Since it was his first time, you would think he would remember his partner’s face or name, but all he remembered was that dick. It was lumpy and a bit disgusting.

“Beads.”

But his partner just grinned and nonchalantly pushed his dick toward Go Woonha’s face.

“Wanna touch?”

To see if this bastard was lying or not, Go Woonha touched it. They were real beads.

“Did it hurt?”

“You’re messing with your dick, of course it fucking hurts, you think it wouldn’t?”

The guy who retorted like that seemed to have a lip piercing, but he might be confusing him with the person he slept with after that.

Anyway, Go Woonha slept with that man and left early in the morning, feeling a state of pain that wasn’t disgustingly painful, but wasn’t pleasant either. The first thing he did on his phone as soon as he got home was to look up the procedure for getting beads put in a dick. It was his senses of pain and touch that were dulled, not his aesthetic sense, so to avoid it looking hideous, Go Woonha had just two put in, one on each side. It was pretty painful. The fact that he had to endure the pain for a while until it healed was also agonizing. That’s why he liked it. To the point where he considered getting more.

“What the fuck is this shit.”

He had seriously considered adding one or two more, until Go San, who happened to see him lying spread-eagled and naked in his room sunbathing, was about to gag.

Go Woonha was quite hurt by his tone. Go San was his younger brother, and he had been so cute and lovely that he had even appeared in toddler magazine ads until he was three. There were countless times Go Woonha couldn’t resist giving him a sharp bite, making him cry. As a result, even now that he was all grown up, he still found him cute, so Go Woonha didn’t want to be disliked by his brother, of all people. Well, it seemed like it was already too late, but it would be a problem if he made him want to puke every time he saw him…

So, the fact that Go Woonha’s dick ended up with only two beads is all thanks to his younger brother.

In any case, even after going that far, Go Woonha one day woke up alone, with two nameless men sleeping soundly on either side of him, and muttered.

“This is boring…”

This was after he had already finished counting all the patterns drawn on the ceiling.

👟

“Ah, this is a problem.”

Go Woonha examined his face from various angles in the rearview mirror. The cut on the corner of his mouth was glaringly obvious.

It was a problem. It wouldn’t have mattered on any other day, but today was his brother’s wedding. As such, Go Woonha had intended to be more careful, but his skin had gotten dry as the weather had recently become arid, and the bastard he met yesterday didn’t even give him time to moisten his lips before shoving his dick into his mouth. The scalp where his hair had been grabbed was a little sore too.

“I’ll just have to say I got into a fight.”

What could he do when it had already happened? Making up a pathetic lie like he fell down wasn’t Go Woonha’s style. He quickly resigned himself—or rather, accepted the situation—and got out of the car. Since he did actually get hit, it wasn’t a complete lie anyway.

He felt a ceaseless vibration from within his flax-colored jacket, which was chosen to match the dress code, and stood still for a moment. His premonition hit the mark, turning into certainty. An unsaved number was displayed on the screen of the phone he took out, but from that alone, Woonha recognized who it was.

“It’s my fault for choosing wrong, I guess.”

Go Woonha muttered with a slight smile. It was some guy who, after they had slept together just once, had immediately turned to stalking. He hadn’t known he would be this persistent. In terms of ratios, he did pick a dud three times out of ten, but this was the first time he’d hit a series of bombs like this.

A stalker, and a moron who can’t control his strength and thinks hitting someone is SM. Who would be the third one? Go Woonha declined the call, tossed the phone onto the seat, and got out of the car just like that. It didn’t matter since he had another one anyway.

👟

The wedding reception and after-party ended well after midnight. Go San had even arranged for drivers for everyone.

Go Woonha had entered alone but wasn’t alone at the reception. However, by the time he was leaving, he was alone again.

‘I’m curious what a party at your house would be like.’

The person he had given an invitation to after that single sentence was a different person from last night’s partner who had left the cut on his lip. The new partner had slipped out of the reception with someone else. He had been testing the waters anyway, looking for a new partner, but since he hadn’t been feeling it at all lately, he had just decided to keep him as a business partner, so Woonha let him go without protest. There was no reason not to.

Go San had tentatively asked if he was his boyfriend, but of course not. Although he cherished his brother, even at a place that could be called a very important event in his life, his own pleasure and impulses were a separate issue. Just because it was such an event, does that mean you have to bring someone important? He didn’t have anyone like that in the first place, and it would never happen.

Unfortunately, there was no one at the event that Go Woonha could have left with. The newlywed brother and his wife looked happy in their own way, and everyone was thoroughly drunk on that happy atmosphere, but like his dulled sense of pain, Go Woonha had no sense of what that feeling was or what was the appropriate temperature for fitting in. So Go Woonha drank more than usual, partly to shake off the unpleasant feeling of having hit a series of duds. He wasn’t dead drunk, just moderately tipsy and very sleepy.

“Can’t go disturbing the newlyweds, you know.”

When Go Woonha said this playfully, Go San waved his hand as if calling a dog, saying he had no intention of letting him stay over in the first place. Only, the direction was the opposite. Shoo, shoo, get lost.

As he watched Woonha stumble into the back seat of the car, Go San placed a hand on the car’s body and offered some crooked advice.

“Take care of yourself. Your life is none of my business, but let’s not cause any trouble. Okay?”

This time, Go Woonha waved his hand. Yeah, yeah, I get it, now go.

As if he had no intention of staying long anyway, Go San immediately turned and went back into the house. I see him as cute, but objectively, he’s a bratty younger brother, and to think he’s getting married like this. It’s fascinating. It feels like just yesterday he was so small and cute, when did he get so big? Even though he hadn’t raised him, he felt proud.

And Go Woonha dozed off in the moving car.

He woke up because his surroundings were completely still, without a single vibration. He opened his eyes and looked out the window to see his own house. The house whose address he didn’t remember giving.

“How did they…”

Did they give them out as a general notice? Go Woonha, who was about to nonchalantly let it go while stretching his body, suddenly opened his eyes wide. There was someone in the driver’s seat.

“…”

The air felt chilly. Woonha sat up properly and frowned. Then, on the off chance, he called out a random name. A random name, but a man’s.

“…Andy?”

At his call, the person sitting in the driver’s seat whipped around. A pair of glasses with a boring design sat on his deeply distorted face.

“How many times do I have to tell you it’s Jack!”

Woonha dodged the hand reaching for him and chuckled.

No wonder he had a bad feeling.

He would probably forget that one syllable, Jack, again. That was just the kind of person he was. He had just thrown it out there thinking a stalker would get riled up and excited no matter what he said, and he had hit the nail on the head. Woonha reached his hand above his head and pulled the door handle. Then he threw himself out and rolled.

“Ow… that hurts.”

Chasing after the rolled-out Woonha, Jack-or-whoever-he-was crawled over from the back seat and approached him. It was like a scene straight out of a horror movie. Woonha’s eyes widened, and he kicked the open car door hard with his foot.

The timing was perfect. Jack’s head, which was just getting out to pounce on Woonha, collided with the door with a loud bang. Whether he was knocked out or just rolling around in pain, no more sounds came from inside, and only then did Woonha pat his own chest. He felt a phone. It was Go Woonha’s second phone.

“Fuck, the lock.”

He had to unlock it with his face, but he didn’t have time to hold his face up to the camera from various angles.

Muttering a short curse, Woonha shot up, opened the car door, and pulled the seatbelt to tie up the collapsed Jack’s hands.

‘Take care of yourself. Your life is none of my business, but let’s not cause any trouble. Okay?’

His brother’s serious advice replayed in his head. No sooner had he left than, contrary to those words…

“I’ve caused trouble…”

That’s all he could say as he looked at Jack, who was struggling and shouting that he loved him, that he loved him so much he hated him enough to want to kill him.

👟

“You should go away for a while.”

Woonha’s parents, having heard about the incident that happened to him last night, seriously suggested. Woonha, who had a large bandage on his palm from having scraped it hard on the ground, was making coffee for his parents. Of course, it didn’t hurt; he had only put it on because it would be annoying if the wound got infected.

“It was just a quarrel.”

Woonha introduced Jack-or-Tap-or-whoever as a friend. He said they had a small argument and he seemed to have gotten a little worked up because he was drunk.

It was the same kind of lie he always told, but even his parents, who loved their children very much but were also somewhat permissive, seemed to be suspicious this time.

“No. Go away. Go rest in Korea for a bit.”

“There’s no need to take time off work.”

“San is taking a short vacation anyway, isn’t he? The agency will have some breathing room, so it would be good for you to catch your breath too. Yes. There are temples in Korea, right? Do something like a temple stay.”

“Not a cathedral?”

Woonha found it amusing that his parents, who knew he had a baptismal name, were telling him to go rest at a temple, and he laughed.

But his parents were in no mood to laugh.

“There are no guns in Korea. Mom and Dad would feel at ease just with that.”

“Ah. Guns.”

“We’re worried that you’ll end up getting shot. Really.”

“Um…”

Woonha stalled for time with a groan as he set down the coffee cups. He had no desire to go to Korea at all. For work, maybe, but it didn’t seem fun, and it seemed harder to have a good time there than here.

“Mom’s heart is going to rot away at this rate. Just for six months, no, even three months would be good, just go and rest a bit and reflect on your relationships.”