HMT Chapter 7 (Part 3)

Seeing him tremble with his eyes shut, Kim Yoon let out a low laugh. The hammer stopped precisely beside Jiwoo’s temple, leaving barely enough space for one finger.

“Am I really that scary?”

His voice held no emotion, like a wasteland stripped bare.

The hammer fell to the ground with a dull clatter. Blood-stained fingers removed Jiwoo’s glasses. As the familiar weight disappeared, Jiwoo’s tightly closed eyelids fluttered open. A tear spilled down his cheek.

His dark, wet eyes rippled like a lake disturbed by a stone. His small face and delicate features looked flawless.

That frightened expression lit a fire in Kim Yoon’s gut. The same thrill he felt when killing someone for the first time twisted now into something hotter. Jiwoo’s trembling fit perfectly with every violent instinct inside him.

He had looked at him with tear-brimmed eyes the very first time they met, too. Back then, Kim Yoon ignored the sensation. Now he wanted to savor it. Blood rushed downward so suddenly it left a dull ache. What would it be like to touch that soft-looking mouth instead of the head he wished he could pry open?

A moment ago he had been satisfied, but now his throat felt unbearably dry.

His gaze swept slowly over Jiwoo’s round eyes and faint double lids, the slightly reddened nose, the soft lips beneath them.

Then he gave in to the impulse that surged through him.

“Mm…!”

A large hand slid into Jiwoo’s messy hair. Startled by the pressure on the back of his head, Jiwoo recoiled, but his lips were caught and sealed shut.

Before he could even process the warm pressure, something slick forced its way past his parted lips. A hot, thick tongue pressed down on Jiwoo’s trembling one. Unable to even shut his eyes, Jiwoo clenched his fists.

He couldn’t believe this person, kissing him with eyes closed, was really Kim Yoon.

His first kiss left him breathless in a completely different way. His face flushed as his breathing quickened. Flustered, he couldn’t manage to breathe through his nose. Feeling him struggle, Kim Yoon briefly pulled back.

“Haa…”

The hot breath tickled Jiwoo’s swollen lips. The friction reopened the nearly healed cut, and blood gathered again. Kim Yoon’s eyes lost focus staring at it.

“Nngh…”

When he dove in again, Jiwoo’s body tilted backward. Kim Yoon reached out, catching him before he could fall.

The kiss tasted of iron. The scent and flavor of blood filled Jiwoo’s senses. His clenched fists loosened helplessly as his hands hovered near Kim Yoon’s waist. He couldn’t push him away, he clung to him like Kim Yoon was the only thing keeping him alive.

The tongue rubbing and pressing against his own, the way it swept across his inner cheek, the wet sounds, it all made Jiwoo gasp, swallowing down saliva and blood alike.

Kim Yoon finally pulled back only when the tears falling from Jiwoo’s eyes had nearly washed away the blood splattered on his cheek.

Jiwoo sucked in a desperate breath, his chest rising sharply. But Kim Yoon’s arms around him did not loosen. Their foreheads touched, and Kim Yoon studied the heat lingering in Jiwoo’s face.

“Jiwoo.”

His voice was rough from the intensity of the kiss, and Jiwoo’s eyelashes fluttered. The hand on the back of his head slid down like running water. It closed around Jiwoo’s thin neck. With a slight squeeze, Kim Yoon felt the frantic pulse hammering against his palm.

Even while being choked, Jiwoo only looked up at him with wet eyes. Such gentle, trusting eyes, eyes that wouldn’t blame him even if he killed him.

The strength in Kim Yoon’s grip slowly loosened.

“…Difficult.”

His mind tangled like he was facing the hardest question in the world. In Kim Yoon’s eyes, almost everyone fell into two categories, disgusting people, and people who barely existed, like dust in empty air. His parents were no exception.

He memorized the names and faces of those connected to him, wore whatever mask would win their favor, yet people held only that much value to him.

But Jiwoo kept slipping outside those lines. Not because Jiwoo tried, but because Kim Yoon’s own perception of him was shifting, and every time he noticed it, it made him feel sick.

Before this MT trip, Jiwoo had been just another person he found disgusting. Their first meeting played a big role in that.

Back in high school, Kim Yoon was worse at managing the stress of interacting with people. Still always clashing with his parents, he chose a quiet, empty place to sleep during lunch every day.

It was the only way to suppress the urge to smash the faces of anyone who annoyed him.

The day he first saw Jiwoo had been the same. He was dozing on top of the rooftop storage shed when a bothersome noise interrupted him. The door opened, loud voices followed, and then a group of boys snickered. Their half-broken adolescent voices grated on his ears.

“Ha… don’t…”

A thin, clear voice slipped between the harsh ones, so clean it stood out like pure water. Whatever sleep remained vanished instantly.

He opened his eyes while lying down. The bright blue sky filled his vision. Sunlight forced him to lift an arm to block it. But the rays still leaked through his fingers, irritating his skin. He was in a foul mood, his only peaceful time at school had been disrupted.

“Hey, hold him properly.”

“He keeps squirming.”

“Then twist his arms behind him.”

There were four voices. He didn’t need to look to know, three were ganging up on one.

To Kim Yoon, both sides were the same kind of trash. The ones bullying and the one being bullied.

It was an all-boys school, so every class had its hierarchy fights. But in his grade, no roughhousing ever escalated into real school violence.

That was only because whenever it seemed like it might, Kim Yoon interfered before things got out of hand. Not because he pitied the victims, far from it. He just hated that he, who had to wear a polite mask and restrain himself, had to watch idiots do whatever they wanted without consequence.

He became an accidental shield against school violence, but he didn’t feel anything about it. Whatever happened in other grades wasn’t his concern. Students in different grades rarely crossed paths anyway. However those kids lived had nothing to do with him.

“Khugh… please… stop… I’m sorry…”

So why?

Why did everything feel so irritating that day?

The moment he heard that trembling voice full of despair, he sat up. As he’d suspected from the sound, three of them were beating one kid senseless. From a glance, the one being hit was small.

Even when he curled up trying to avoid the blows, one kid held him from behind so he couldn’t move, forcing him to take every punch and kick head-on.

He seemed to have no tolerance for pain, his breathing was ragged, like he might pass out. If left alone, they’d probably be dealing with a corpse soon.

Kim Yoon had only been here to nap. But if the kid died or wound up severely brain-damaged, he too would get dragged into the mess for having witnessed it. His father would never tolerate him revealing his true nature at school. Even if Kim Yoon insisted he was just a bystander, his father would throw a fit.

His head already throbbed.

He took a whistle from his pocket, leftover from gym class earlier, and blew it. Thinking a teacher had appeared, the delinquents panicked and scrambled away.

But right before fleeing, the ugliest one delivered a final, ruthless blow.

A choking sound rose from below. Kim Yoon had heard it before, when someone got struck directly in the solar plexus. There was a reason it was called a vital point. A wrong hit could kill.

He wanted to drag those idiots back and make them all experience the same sound.

Memorizing their ugly faces, Kim Yoon jumped off the storage shed.

Up close, he immediately saw why the kid was a target: he was small. His rumpled uniform revealed skin that was unusually pale, almost rice-cake white. His hair was such an overgrown mess he wondered when the kid last visited a barber, and his glasses were so unfashionable they looked like something a comedian would wear.

And despite being a first-year, his uniform was overly worn out. It was obvious he wasn’t being taken care of properly at home.

Ugly, poor, and as soft as he looked, he was the easiest possible prey for boys full of teenage aggression. Even someone like Kim Yoon, who couldn’t feel empathy, found the kid just a tiny bit pitiful.

His breathing was weakening. It was the first time Kim Yoon had watched a person dying right in front of him, and goosebumps pricked his skin. Honestly, he wanted to leave him. He had always been curious to see someone die.

But he snapped out of it.

He knelt beside him. Seeing how the kid struggled to breathe, he asked if he was okay and lightly hit his back to help him breathe. His voice flowed out soft and soothing, as usual.

The kid thankfully, or unfortunately, started breathing normally again soon.

When he pulled his hand away, the kid lifted his head. His heavy glasses slid down his nose.

Kim Yoon quietly marveled at how someone’s eyes could be so big and clear. Tears glossed his black irises, stirring something dark inside him.

Watching despair and pain slowly shift to a different emotion was oddly fascinating. He’d seen admiration in others’ eyes before, but this was different. It made him feel like a savior. A feeling he had never experienced.

A strange satisfaction bloomed inside him. When he draped his jacket over the kid’s shoulders, the black eyes trembled. The way the kid’s gaze followed him wasn’t as annoying as he expected.

But that was it.

He had done enough. He had spare jackets at home and didn’t need this one back. He had given help like alms, nothing more.

He simply told him to rest and come down later, then walked away without hesitation. The boy’s large eyes behind the thick glasses were surprisingly pretty, but only that.

“Sunbae, my name… I’m Nam Ji-woo.”

What he didn’t expect was the boy speaking. Not a thank-you, not crying, he introduced himself, voice small but clear, brimming with a yearning he couldn’t hide.

For some strange reason, Kim Yoon felt like he wanted to tease him. Calling the boy’s name as he wished left him stunned, and the expression stuck strangely in Kim Yoon’s mind. Without trying, the name engraved itself there.

Still, he assumed he’d never see him again. Different grades, different paths, maybe they’d pass each other once a month at best.

But their connection turned out to be annoyingly persistent.

“Ah, when should we play with Nam Ji-woo again?”

“What? You weren’t satisfied hitting him last time? We almost got caught by a teacher back then. And we can’t leave obvious marks. If I cause trouble again my mom will kill me.”

“That wasn’t even hitting. I had to stop in the middle of getting into the rhythm. And not by choice. It feels like taking a shit without wiping.”

“Well, yeah, but…”

He was heading toward the back garden during lunch. The voices ahead were familiar. Hearing the name, he confirmed they were the same boys from the rooftop day. Their distinctively ugly faces made it certain.

“I’ll call him to my house today. My parents are on a trip. The place is empty.”

“Will he come? He doesn’t seem like he will.”

“Then we make him come. What’s the problem?”

Clearly, they still enjoyed tormenting the awkward boy.

Jiwoo’s eyes from that day, gazing at him with blind devotion, flashed uninvited through his mind.

Kim Yoon tapped his thigh with his fingers, thinking. If he were in the boy’s situation, he would bite someone’s ear off if that’s what it took to escape.

“Yeah… he won’t be able to.”

Outnumbered three to one, by larger boys determined to beat him, he would absolutely end up half-dead again. Maybe actually dead.

But that wasn’t Kim Yoon’s concern. Losing one boy who might someday worship him wasn’t a loss. Honestly, it was preferable.

Clingers were more annoying than flies buzzing near his ear.

Yet despite his reasoning, Kim Yoon’s feet followed the boys instead of turning toward the garden. He trailed them until they disappeared into the boys’ restroom.

Leaning against the wall, he stared blankly at nothing.

A crack ran across his expression.

“Ah… I really hate their faces. They’re so ugly it puts me in a bad mood.”

Thinking about it, he realized he didn’t want to see those ugly faces around school again. That thought flipped his decision instantly.

He took out his phone. From his contacts, he called a number he hadn’t touched in a long time. After a few rings, a rough voice answered.

“Hello?”

“It’s me, sir. I have a favor to ask.”

His father dreaded the thought that one day his son might kill someone outside his influence. Better, then, to ensure any “accidents” happened within the boundaries he controlled, where cleanup was possible.

Hwang, the chief aide, was the man his father assigned to handle that cleanup.

After school, Kim Yoon left the gates whistling. He rejected his friends’ offer to go to the PC room. His fingers in his pocket thrummed with excitement. It had been a while since he’d gotten to hit someone, his stress already felt lighter.

Hwang carried out his request, luring the boys to a blind spot with no CCTV.

“What? Who the hell are you?”

“Let’s go. This feels wrong.”

The boys didn’t recognize him with the black cap and mask. They sensed danger and tried to flee, but men in black suits quietly blocked the exits.

One boy looked around anxiously, another cursed loudly to hide his fear. The last boy’s legs gave out when he met Kim Yoon’s cold eyes beneath the brim.

Kim Yoon scanned them one by one, stopping on the face of the one who led the bullying. Those who were already terrified weren’t fun to beat. The ones who didn’t know their place, that was where the thrill was.

His eyes curved as he stepped toward him, striking without hesitation. A heavy crack sounded as the boy hit the dirty ground.

“Khugh… s-save me…”

Kim Yoon only stopped punching once the kid begged for his life. Several bloody teeth rolled like trash on the ground.

Even wearing gloves, his knuckles throbbed. His heart pounded with pleasant adrenaline.

The others were no fun, so he handed them off to Hwang’s men. Cleanup went to his father. He was dragged into the study and beaten hard enough to bruise black and purple, but he didn’t mind. It felt refreshing.

Even when he slept on his stomach, the pain was worth it, knowing he wouldn’t see those boys at school anymore.

“Ah, hello, sunbae.”

A few days later, when he met Jiwoo at school, he found himself staring through the thick lenses. It was a little disappointing that he couldn’t see his eyes well.

Seeing Jiwoo’s anxious expression as he held Kim Yoon’s hand and looked up with desperate eyes made Kim Yoon’s lips twitch again.

“He’s less annoying than I thought.”

It was a strange experience. Whether Jiwoo knew it or not, Kim Yoon really had become his savior. His gaze reflected that, like a magnet drawn to its opposite pole.

“Yeah. Hi, Jiwoo.”

Hearing his name, the boy’s lips parted in a dazed smile, unusually red for a boy. It was interesting enough that Kim Yoon went along with what he wanted for a while, talking first, greeting him, saying his name.

But that grew dull eventually. When he saw Jiwoo from afar, he went the other way.

Until the day he realized the boy’s emotion might not be simple admiration but something more primitive… Jiwoo had still been nothing more than a less-annoying type of person.

That should have been the end of it…

But as he finished recalling the past, Kim Yoon’s eyes gleamed sharply even in the dark.

“Why is it, Jiwoo… why do I keep making exceptions only for you?”

Thinking back, he realized it wasn’t the first time. What he had dismissed as whims were actually moments where he’d stepped out of character to protect Jiwoo.

He reached out and brushed the reddened corner of Jiwoo’s eyes. His fingertip skimmed skin as soft as a baby’s.

He still didn’t understand why he couldn’t bring himself to strangle the boy right now. Jiwoo had witnessed him kill. If word got out, even Kim Yoon wouldn’t be able to escape.

Killing everyone involved would solve the problem, of course, but he wasn’t some serial killer or psychopath. He didn’t kill people unless they were trash.

The best solution was killing just Jiwoo. There were no other witnesses. If he killed him and staged it as the work of the murderers outside, the problem would disappear. He could act as though he had killed the murderers while trying to save Jiwoo.

Simple.

“Do you want to go tell the others? That I killed the murderers. Ah, well, strictly speaking, it wasn’t ‘them.’ One of them was already dead.”

He said words he didn’t mean to Jiwoo, who only cried in silence. Jiwoo’s lips trembled before he gently shook his head.

“I… I can’t.”

“Why?”

Kim Yoon’s head tilted slightly at the unexpected answer. A quiet ripple moved somewhere deep inside him without his realizing it.

Even his own parents recoiled from this side of him. They had constantly inflicted violence, verbal abuse, and at times even curses.

For a child, parents were the first world they ever encountered. Even while calling him a monster, they raised Kim Yoon beneath their shadow only because he was their one and only child.

But Kim Yoon had never once felt emotional satisfaction from them. Human relationships were to him as dull and sometimes troublesome as moving pieces on a long game board.

He had long abandoned any expectation that someone might ever understand him.

His gaze wandered over Jiwoo’s tear-stained face. The faintly knit brows, the eyes like a night lake trembling in the wind, and the quivering lips.

Jiwoo could feel how persistent that gaze was.

Kim Yoon spread his hand wide and cupped Jiwoo’s face. His palm covered not only his cheek but even his ear. At that silent demand for an answer, Jiwoo blinked his tear-glossed lashes. Terrified as he was, the dark eyes still held him the same way they once had, blindly, absolutely.

“You’re… my salvation, sunbae. Even if you killed someone… it’s more important to me that you’re okay.”

The voice was so small he had to lean in to hear it, but Kim Yoon felt the words striking not his ears but one by one sinking into his heart.

Ah… so they really do exist. Someone who still worships me even after seeing who I truly am.

A feeling he had never once received from his parents, something like faith, left a powerful echo throbbing within him. His heart pounded, booming as if it shook his soul.

“If sunbae hadn’t saved me back then… I wouldn’t be alive in this world anymore.”

A single tear, trembling at the end of his long lashes like a fan, finally dropped. As if reflecting on his past, Jiwoo’s dazed eyes slowly refocused on him, shining with a reddish tint of affection.

“So if you’re worried I might tell someone…”

Jiwoo lifted his small hand and laid it over the one holding his face, guiding it toward his neck. It was exactly where Kim Yoon had almost tightened his grip earlier.

“You can kill me.”

Letting him know it wasn’t an empty word, Jiwoo closed his eyes.

To Kim Yoon, that sight was more divine than any holy painting he’d ever seen.

His heart raced even faster than when he killed earlier. His blood roared hot through his veins. A flash of exhilaration passed across his face. The hollow place inside him filled to the brim with thick, satisfying weight.

It was like new flesh growing over a wound he hadn’t known existed. He felt reborn. As though everything in the world was newly shaped, and Jiwoo alone existed in color while the rest faded into dullness.

“…Ha.”

A short breath, full of satisfaction.

His lips, swollen from their earlier kiss, gleamed faintly. A thin smear of blood tinted them an unearthly shade, as if he had fed on something forbidden.

Kim Yoon traced the lips that captivated him and lowered his head. Lust surged hard enough to ache in his lower abdomen.

He felt that if he didn’t bite and suck Jiwoo from head to toe, leaving marks of himself everywhere, his burning thirst wouldn’t be quenched. He moved the hand on Jiwoo’s neck to the back of his head; Jiwoo’s eyelids fluttered open. Beneath his rising lashes, his eyes looked untouched by any of the world’s filth.

Seeing his pupils widen in startled panic when their faces drew close made Kim Yoon smile faintly. He captured the soft yet rough texture of Jiwoo’s lips in his own. He sucked them, top and bottom, and slid his tongue into the gap. Jiwoo reflexively sucked the tip of his tongue.

Something snapped in Kim Yoon’s mind.

He pulled Jiwoo tightly into his embrace. Jiwoo, overwhelmed, hesitantly slipped his arms around Kim Yoon’s back.

His blood-slick hand ran through Jiwoo’s hair. Feeling the smaller tongue recoil under the weight of his own, Kim Yoon wrapped and wound around it. The sweetness of saliva mixing with the taste of flesh slid down his throat. He didn’t want to miss a single breath Jiwoo let out.

Like a starving beast after three days and nights, he ravaged the soft mouth. Jiwoo’s lips split under the merciless pressure of the kiss, letting blood seep out. Even that felt too precious to waste. He wanted everything that came from Jiwoo’s body inside himself.

He dragged his tongue slowly over Jiwoo’s skin where droplets of blood welled.

“Huht.”

Jiwoo let out a small sound of pain, and the noise made precum seep from Kim Yoon’s tip.

The heat in his body boiled, making the clothes between them feel unbearably suffocating.

Instead of suppressing the impulse, Kim Yoon surrendered to it. His large hand pushed under Jiwoo’s sweatshirt. His palm slid along the curve of Jiwoo’s back, rising steadily.

The hand that had stroked his back slipped around front in an instant. He found the nipple he had noticed from the first time he saw him. The moment he pinched it lightly between his thumb and forefinger, Jiwoo’s thighs tensed. An instinctive reaction to hide the blood rushing downward, but because Jiwoo was sitting on Kim Yoon’s thigh, the movement only rubbed against Kim Yoon’s already hard length.

“Haa… hu, sunbae…”

Overwhelmed by the sensations, Jiwoo arched his back. He knew Kim Yoon wasn’t the only one aroused, but the place and situation made it hard to give himself over completely. The thick smell of blood weighed on the air, making his stomach lurch occasionally.

And he didn’t understand why Kim Yoon was kissing him again so suddenly, so aggressively, his thoughts dulled under the heat.

Was it because he said sunbae could kill him?

The desire Kim Yoon pressed against him with hands and tongue told him, thickly, that he was wanted. His heart trembled.

Jiwoo would be lying if he said seeing Kim Yoon kill hadn’t shocked him. It terrified him so much he’d struggled to breathe, thinking the person he knew wasn’t Kim Yoon at all. But when Kim Yoon calmly said he could go tell the others if he wanted… everything else felt irrelevant.

Just as he’d said aloud, the most important person to Jiwoo was Kim Yoon.

He had been the one bright light in Jiwoo’s gray, suffocating world. Because of Kim Yoon, Jiwoo had survived his darkest school years and even found purpose in life.

When he realized the world had fallen apart, Jiwoo had already made up his mind: live and die with him.

Who Kim Yoon killed, whether he felt euphoria from killing, none of that mattered.

Even if Kim Yoon killed him, Jiwoo wouldn’t mind. In fact, dying by his hands felt like a pretty decent way for his life to end.

It wasn’t a thought a normal person could have. But for Jiwoo, who had spent years looking only at Kim Yoon, thinking otherwise would have been stranger.

“Ahk…!”

His thoughts went no further. Kim Yoon had dragged a nail across his nipple. The taut flesh jolted sharply under the friction, lifting Jiwoo’s hips.

That was when Jiwoo finally felt it, something hard beneath him, impossible to ignore.

“…Jiwoo.”

Kim Yoon pressed his lips to the rim of Jiwoo’s ear and whispered. His voice, swallowed by heat, was rough like a starving beast. In that moment, Jiwoo realized he had willingly offered his throat into the jaws of that beast.

A faint trembling climbed up his back and spread through his entire body. Fear prickled all the way to his fingertips, yet his arms only clung more desperately to Kim Yoon’s broad torso.

He didn’t want to let go. Even if he were devoured, it was fine. As long as he could be sure Kim Yoon wanted him, he didn’t care what happened to his body or anything else.

Jiwoo clung to him with his whole body, to the point where even the metallic scent of blood in the air felt bearable. He needed the certainty that what was happening was real and not a hallucination.

Jiwoo’s trembling traveled straight into Kim Yoon. While kneading the swollen flesh, he pressed his lips to Jiwoo’s soft cheek and slender jawline. His lips trailed up to the spot under his eyebrow. He kissed the eyelid that trembled so pitifully.

The frantic movement beneath the thin skin pulsed through his lips and hammered against his heart. A satisfied smile curved Kim Yoon’s eyes. But that satisfaction quickly twisted into thirst. Even touching wasn’t enough. This amount barely scratched the surface.

The hand ravaging Jiwoo’s chest moved naturally to its next destination. Sliding past the waistband, he grabbed the one place on Jiwoo’s thin body that had any softness.

“Sunbae…”

Jiwoo exhaled faintly at the shameless touch. His trembling thighs tightened around Kim Yoon’s waist. Even with a grip strong enough to leave marks, Jiwoo’s reaction was only a slight furrowing of his brows.

Kim Yoon rubbed his swollen crotch against Jiwoo’s. The inside of Jiwoo’s underwear was wet. His length twitched inside the fabric, begging to be freed.

Kim Yoon let out a low sigh and lifted Jiwoo’s shirt, then held it between Jiwoo’s teeth. Jiwoo bit down on the fabric as instructed and looked up at him. His blinking eyes made his long lashes flutter like a butterfly’s wings.

Even in the dark, Jiwoo’s white body stood out. Because Kim Yoon had fixated on only one side, the two nipples were slightly different in size. In the dim light, the pink color couldn’t be seen properly. Wondering how much deeper in shade the swollen one must be made his mouth go dry.

He had probably wanted to taste Jiwoo’s nipples ever since he glimpsed his bare body in the bathroom. Kim Yoon lowered his head and flicked the soft flesh with the tip of his tongue. It should have had no taste, yet a faint sweetness, like the one he tasted in Jiwoo’s mouth, brushed against his taste buds.

His throat bobbed. His parched esophagus grew slick with saliva in response to that sweetness.

While rolling the flesh with his tongue, Kim Yoon’s gaze also licked across Jiwoo’s face. Meeting his heat-darkened eyes, Jiwoo’s lips twitched. Unswallowed saliva dampened the fabric between his teeth.

Jiwoo couldn’t tell whether his trembling came from fear or from anticipation of what would happen next. Every boundary blurred.

He had always looked up at this person. And now that very person had his face buried in Jiwoo’s chest, sucking his nipple like a child. Jiwoo’s vision went hazy. A dizzy, drunken feeling washed over him.

Cautiously, he lifted a hand. He stroked the hair he had always wanted to touch and traced the firm line of his jaw. It felt like a wary kitten finally approaching to lick him, and Kim Yoon’s eyes narrowed at the sensation.

Beeeeep…!

A car horn split the cold night air. Jiwoo’s unfocused eyes widened. Slowly, the smile faded from Kim Yoon’s face. He lifted his lips away and pressed a thumb into the saliva-smeared nipple.

Jiwoo’s body shuddered once. Reluctantly, Kim Yoon fixed Jiwoo’s clothes back into place. He stood, grabbed Jiwoo’s arm when he staggered, and drew him behind his back. Jiwoo clung to his waist in worry.

Everyone should have been asleep. The sound was coming from the parking lot. A car wouldn’t honk on its own, so someone awake had caused it.

Zombies reacted to sound. Anyone making that loud a noise couldn’t possibly be sane. Whoever it was, they were likely out of their mind.

A thin sneer passed over Kim Yoon’s lips. He was out at night to kill someone, Jiwoo had followed him, and neither of them were in their right minds either, but the person making that noise was completely deranged.

Beeep! Beep! Beeeeeep…!

The horn didn’t stop. The repeating noise reeked of danger. Kim Yoon picked up the hammer from the floor. Blood dripping from the head had soaked the handle and made it slippery. He gripped hard enough for his knuckles to bulge, and the satisfying weight filled his palm.

He stepped toward the door one pace at a time. Jiwoo hurried after him, terrified of being separated. Before opening the door, Kim Yoon grabbed the hand clinging to his clothes. He pried it off, making Jiwoo look up in alarm.

He noticed the faint bloodstains on Jiwoo’s face. Lifting his shirt, he gently wiped his cheek. Jiwoo also carefully brushed his sleeve against Kim Yoon’s cheek.

“Stay here. I’ll take care of it.”

“…I want to go too. I don’t want to send you somewhere dangerous alone.”

Ah, what a cute little thing.

Seeing him shine his eyes like he wanted to protect someone when he had no ability to do so made Kim Yoon want to lick his eyeballs.

The emotion was unfamiliar. He wanted time to process it, but the horn kept screaming. His grip around the hammer tightened. Whoever caused that ruckus, he would kill them no matter what.

The lingering sensation of Jiwoo’s soft flesh, which he hadn’t even tasted enough of, made him irritable.

“You need to be somewhere safe so I can move freely.”

Other people’s safety meant less than a pebble on the roadside to Kim Yoon. He had saved people on the bus only because surviving alone had been difficult. He saw them as insurance for unexpected situations. If things went wrong, he would have used them as human shields to secure his own survival.

But right now, for the first time, he genuinely wanted to protect someone. If his parents had known, they would have celebrated with both hands raised. Until he understood exactly what this feeling toward Jiwoo was, Jiwoo had to stay alive by his side.

“You know what I mean, right?”

He brushed the back of his hand against Jiwoo’s cheek. Jiwoo reluctantly nodded. As if praising him, Kim Yoon ruffled the top of his head once, then walked in the direction of the sound.