Even as I headed up to the second-floor study after my shower, hyung and nuna were still deep in conversation. Their voices were more animated than usual, but the details of their talk about studying abroad were too specific to belong to people who were drunk.

Not wanting to interrupt, I quietly approached the living room window and looked in. Empty beer cans were piled on the table. Music was playing from one of their phones. They were clearly, just as he had said, finding hope rather than anxiety even in an uncertain future.

It was different from reckless optimism. Because they didn't know what awaited them, the future was something to anticipate, prepare for, and plan toward.

He had defined their age as a time when people most want to explain themselves and be understood. Had he ever felt that same desire for someone, back then?

I pushed aside the curiosity that kept widening in scope, left the living room, and climbed the stairs.

The second-floor hallway was entirely dark, but the moonlight filtering through the floor-to-ceiling living room windows lit the corridor to the study just enough.

I knocked, and a voice called me in.

He was seated at the large desk positioned to face the door. The study was dim, lit only by two lamps—one on the desk, one beside the sofa set where we had talked—much like the day I had come to him for help. But it wasn't so dark that I couldn't make out objects. A gentle orange glow, like candlelight, filled the room.

"You're here? Sit over here."

He gestured toward the long chair in front of the desk. It was a wide leather bench without a backrest, one end adjustable to an angle, like a beach chair.

I sat down awkwardly, arms brushing over my legs, and he soon finished what he was doing and came over. He must have showered too—the scent of shower gel wafted toward me, cool and deep, like a shade of blue made for summer.

Sitting beside me, he held out a slim rectangular object. The packaging was so elegant, so beautiful, I almost didn't want to open it.

"Congratulations on the move. It felt like something worth celebrating—a real new beginning."

"......Thank you."

"Save the thanks for after you've opened it. You might not like it."

Listening to his low chuckle, I slowly untied the ribbon and peeled away the wrapping. My hand paused at the simple box revealed inside. I bit my lower lip, then let it go, and carefully opened the box, which unfolded on both sides.

"......"

Inside was a pair of sunglasses.

If my eye for detail was right, they were the same design as the ones I had tried on in his car a few days ago.

"It must have been inconvenient not having these in Hong Kong. I thought it would be nice to have a pair. Summer's still got a long way to go."

He leaned his elbow on his thigh, propped his chin on his hand, and looked up at me as he spoke.

"Ah... uh..."

Frozen in surprise, I couldn't react quickly. I just sat there with my mouth open, unable to say a word.

He laughed softly. Even though it was just the two of us, he straightened his back, leaned toward me, pressed his lips close to my ear, and lowered his voice.

"But were you perhaps... expecting a different gift?"

"......"

Had he known all along and was teasing me on purpose? My skin flushed red from the base of my neck upward.

No—it wasn't exactly that I had expected it, more that I had anticipated something, or braced myself for it. He had kept talking about that thing, after all.

But this wasn't disappointing just because it was different. Unlike what I had been expecting, this gift carried no sexual meaning at all—and that, somehow, made it feel even more like a gift.

The sunglasses always tucked into the left breast pocket of his jacket. Though it was almost always a different design each time.

I had been the only one in the car from Hong Kong Airport without sunglasses. Had he remembered that, along with the moment a few days before when I had impulsively snatched his and tried them on? He might not know what it meant to me, but it had meant a great deal.

I shook my head several times. He let out a low laugh, as if collapsing into the space beside my ear. The tip of his high nose brushed gently against my earlobe.

"Open the right-hand drawer."

"......"

When I turned my head, our noses touched. At that impossibly close distance, our gazes pulled toward each other. For a moment, he tilted his head just slightly and pressed his lips to mine—a brief, slow, almost cautiously deliberate kiss, barely more than a graze. My eyelids fluttered at the contact.

The moment his body touched mine, I stiffened with tension and excitement and swallowed audibly, but this time he didn't laugh.

Following his gesture, I reached over and opened the drawer of the coffee table in front of the bench. Another wrapped box lay diagonally inside the now-empty drawer. Perhaps because of that brief pause, I found my hands calmer than expected as I unwrapped it and opened the box.

Resting neatly on a bed of fragrant potpourri and finely shredded decorative paper was a thin, delicate piece of black lace lingerie.

He leaned in, resting his chin on my shoulder as if pressing it down. Together, we looked into the box on my thigh.

"There's something I want to make perfectly clear: this is definitely for men."

His voice was almost stern. Now that I looked, there was indeed a bit of extra room in the front to accommodate some volume. Even so, it wasn't, by any measure, clothing designed to comfortably secure male anatomy. It was less essential underwear than an adult novelty, something intended to produce a particular kind of excitement between two people.

When he had first brought up erotic underwear, all I had pictured was a small triangle brief—maybe with a slightly deeper cut in the crotch than usual. If I stretched my imagination further, perhaps a men's thong.

What lay before me now did technically fall into the thong category, but the material was sheer enough that the shape and color of what lay beneath would be completely visible. The long strings on either side could be pulled to make it slip away without needing to remove your legs. And the crotch was cut so narrow it looked as if the balls might spill out at the slightest movement... all of it was far beyond anything I had imagined.

I wondered if my imagination was simply lacking, or if the people who designed this thing—and he who had found it—were exceptionally bold in theirs.

"You'll wear it, right? You promised."

He rested his chin on my shoulder and whispered in a wheedling tone.

I didn't think I had literally promised, but I knew it amounted to the same thing. I hadn't looked forward to it with excitement, but I had prepared myself somewhere in the back of my mind. Maybe that resolve had been quietly growing since the first time he said, I think it would suit you, on the bed.

Looking back at everything we had done so far, refusing to wear these would seem more absurd than anything else—like insisting on kissing but being too shy to peck him on the cheek.

The line had been crossed a long time ago.

I let out a short breath. He lowered his chin from my shoulder and pressed a kiss to my T-shirt. His lips moved slowly toward the edge of my shoulder, then withdrew. With his long fingers he gently cupped my chin and turned my gaze—which had been fixed on the box—back toward him.

Then his thumb traced upward, teasing, and began to flip my lower lip slightly, repeating the motion.

That same friction—painful in a way that stung—continued on my lips, just as it had in the garden. I wondered why, now that we were finally alone, he was replacing kisses with this pinching, rubbing motion, but I couldn't deny that this new intimacy rattled my senses just as much as any kiss would.

"Mmm..."

I was marveling at his ingenuity—not just kissing, but creating an act that evoked kissing and drew stimulation from it—when a moan escaped me, cutting through the sharp little ache.

His eyes narrowed as he looked at me.

His gaze, moving slowly and deeply between my left eye and my right, seemed to be searching for something inside me. He had looked at me this way before—eyes moving over my face as if studying it.

As if I were a complete stranger to him, and he, caught between distance and curiosity, couldn't turn away—drawn to the mystery of that gap, not quite able to name it.

But his eyes, shimmering blue and then breaking into white, filled with both suspicion and the desire to explore—to me, they were far stranger and more mysterious than anything he might find in me.

Smiling faintly, his face drew closer. His lips met the finger rubbing my lower lip, and for a moment, lips and finger moved together over the surface of my mouth.

It felt like a kiss and yet wasn't, like a caress and yet something else—entranced by this new form of stimulation, I surrendered my lips entirely to him. The sharp little sting of his fingers and the soft, enveloping warmth of his lips reminded me of the interplay of sweet and salt.

But today he lingered on my lips for a long time, rarely letting his tongue enter. His kissing style was different from usual—what might have seemed at first glance like simple stimulation carried, with the weight of everything we had built, a hesitation I could clearly feel.

It wasn't that he didn't want to enter. Beyond the barrier he had set for himself, his longing was palpable—to invade, to stir things up, to squeeze me dry.

And yet he had gone to the trouble of preparing lingerie like this...

Whatever hyung and nuna might have said—though they were aiming at Inwu hyung, not him—regardless of experience or age, it wasn't innocent, unsuspecting Seo Ihyeon being swept away by the atmosphere or technique orchestrated by a seasoned hand.

I had wanted it first.

His lips moved up, down, left, right, grazing over his own finger—and I was the one who first licked them with the tip of my tongue. His large body went rigid for a moment, and he gripped both my shoulders tight.

But the pause, as if refusing me, lasted only an instant.

As if tearing down the wall he had built himself, his tongue cut into my mouth, and the two fingers that had been rubbing my lips plunged in simultaneously. He pressed down firmly on my tongue, and as his fingers rubbed back and forth in a slow, deliberate rhythm, my moans deepened.

"Ngh... mm... yes."

His fingers and tongue and my tongue tangled together like three people intertwining their bodies, and the kiss grew messy and wild. The deeper it went, the bolder his tongue moved, tracing daring curves, and my shoulders and chest rose and fell in broken rhythms. When his hand slipped inside my short-sleeved T-shirt and began to move over my back, I ignited instantly, craving his bare skin.

I pressed my chest against him as if leaning into his body and stared up at him with blurred eyes. I didn't try to hide my ragged breathing.

His fingers, thoroughly wet with my saliva, withdrew from my mouth and traced slowly over my lips. At the sweet distance where our noses almost touched, he looked at me and shook his head.

Hesitating, stopping, shaking his head in denial.

This was different from his usual calculated distance-keeping, his deliberate way of drawing out honesty by making me wait. I moved the box that had been resting precariously on my thigh back to its place and asked him.

"What's wrong...?"

Passive in form though it was, this was likely the first time I had ever demanded an explanation from him.

"......"

He looked at me without speaking. His eyes, his hands moving along my waist—something in them was different.

"If perhaps... you don't want to do this..."

As if he couldn't stand to hear such a thing, he frowned and pressed his hand over my mouth. Then, as if apologizing for that brief roughness, he gently stroked my lips with that same hand. He exhaled and whispered to me.

"More saliva... will you give me more?"

"......"

He wrapped his arm around my waist under my T-shirt, pulled me close, and slid his tongue behind my upper lip, teasing my inner walls.

"Don't swallow it... let it all flow into me. Inside me."

The voice that whispered this sounded desperate—like an addict in withdrawal, searching for something to dull the pain.

"Because I want all of it... because it's mine... I want to swallow every last drop..."

As soon as he finished speaking, he wrapped his arm around my neck with a rough, urgent motion. He gripped the very top of my neck just below my jaw, tilted my chin up, and demonstrated by letting his own saliva flow into my mouth.

"Mmm— hh... ah..."

With my chin lifted, swallowing his saliva in audible gulps, I looked up at his face through a vision blurred by the pressure building inside my head.

The scent dissolved in the saliva he poured into me was richer and more potent than usual. That scent—which had long since solidified in my mind as a symbol of sex—now flooded through me in excessive quantities, and excitement began to pulse and vibrate deep inside my body.

He gradually loosened the grip on my neck. He pulled his lips back and pressed his forehead to mine. He rubbed our noses together, then joined our lips again. As he tilted the angle of my jaw, the kiss deepened further, and he urged his tongue in, grazing the roof of my mouth.

Unless I swallowed, saliva naturally pooled inside my mouth. Without any effort on my part, the moment my tongue grew wet, all moisture was drawn away by his suction.

"Mm—ngh."

His suction felt as though he were trying to pull me—myself—inside him... like someone starving, parched, desperate for my saliva. The sensation of being held firmly in place and thoroughly explored by him drew moans up from deep in my throat.

His arms tightened around my waist. The hand that had been wrapped around my neck pressed down, sliding lower. He strained his brow and the bridge of his nose. Within his blue eyes—which filled my entire field of vision—excitement, hesitation, and guilt pushed tightly against one another. It was an expression I had never seen on him before.

I drew my chest away from his slightly, and carefully eased my tongue and lips free from where they had nearly suctioned to his. Instead, I let my fingers trail over the T-shirt covering the gentle swell of his muscles and looked up at him.

"Are you sure you don't have a cold? You barely ate anything. When your nose is stuffy, you lose your appetite too..."

That was the only excuse I could manage.

He quickly wiped away the strained expression he had been wearing and, with a playful, teasing tone, took both my upper and lower lip into his mouth at once and bit lightly.

"What? If I had a cold, you're worried I'd be too weak for sex and turn into a weakling?"

As if annoyed that I had stopped the kiss for something like that, he grumbled and pulled me close to kiss me again.

"That's not it..."

"Ah... now that you mention it, I do feel a little sick."

"......"

Cutting me off with an exaggerated, joking tone, he pinched the edge of the underwear between just his index finger and thumb and slowly lifted it. The underwear in his hand looked several times more... risqué than it had inside the box.

"If I saw Seo Ihyeon wearing this, I think I'd be completely cured."

"......"

He was trying to brush off my question with a joke.

As for the underwear—I hadn't really intended to refuse it from the start, so I would have put it on even without his excuse... but if he had made a more convincing show of being ill, it would have been less awkward for me to pretend to be fooled.

He dangled the underwear above his face, shaking it lightly up and down, and sent a drowsy, half-lidded gaze drifting up through the lace—clearly making no effort to help me out of my embarrassment.

He laid the lace over his face like a veil and pressed his cheek against mine. The fabric, faintly rough yet smooth, brushed between us, and my senses sharpened at once. There was a texture that raised the tension in me, different from a cotton T-shirt.

Remembering that this single scrap of fabric—designed not to cover and protect but to expose in the most provocative way possible—was the underwear I was about to wear, heat crept into my breath alongside a curiosity and excitement that was hard to feign. His breath against my cheek was not much different.

"You'll wear it for me, right? You said you were very grateful to me. Wear this..."

My shoulders flinched at the heat of his tongue tracing the rim of my ear. He took my hand and pressed it firmly between his thighs as he continued speaking.

"If you rub it here..."

His voice painted a blissful dream in front of his eyes as he whispered, blending in a sweet sigh.

"I wonder what that would feel like."

What I felt in my palm was already swelling—thick and warm. Feeling the heat and weight of his cock directly through the fabric made my insides stir again. I had to bite my lower lip against my upper teeth several times.

"Hmm, am I the only one curious...?"

"......"

At the deflated sound of his voice, I buried my forehead in his shoulder and shook my head.

"Don't be shy. I don't want to dress you up and tease you... I just want to see you looking sexier... seductive, a little naughty... okay?"

At the sound of his voice, gently stroking the back of my head and pressing a kiss into my hair, I nodded this time.

He looked back and forth between me and the lingerie, deliberating for a while—the voyeuristic pleasure of watching every step of the changing process was appealing, but so was the shock of confronting the final result immediately, without having witnessed the process at all.

"Since this is the first time, asking to see everything might be a bit... barbaric, right?"

I let out a small laugh at his serious profile, as if he were choosing the latter option entirely for my sake. He seemed to feel the awkwardness of his own talk of barbarism—given that he was the one who had handed me this lingerie—because the corners of his eyes, meeting mine, curved with a bashful light.

"I won't look. Because it's the first time."

Emphasizing because it's the first time as if staking out territory for the second and third times, he willingly turned around. In his hunched posture, his large back bent and his hands covering his eyes, there was an anticipation that bordered on innocence.

Whether I could actually look sexy or alluring as he expected... I had absolutely no confidence. With clumsy movements, I slowly pulled down my pajama pants, and heard a muffled sound—something like a stifled laugh. He raised one hand over his shoulder.

"Ah, I just like the sound of you undressing—don't worry about my reaction."

How could I not worry, with him showing that kind of anticipation?... I let out a silent sigh so he wouldn't notice.

I folded the discarded pajamas and briefs on the table and stepped into the lingerie, threading my legs through. The ribbons at the sides connected the front and back panels. It must have been high-end—the lace wasn't rough or stiff. But the sensation of that particular slightly scratchy texture brushing up my legs made me feel a little strange.

When the fabric touched between my legs, a sound almost escaped automatically—something close to a groan. I killed it and hunched my shoulders.

No matter how much I tugged at the edges, the front barely covered anything, leaving most of my pubic hair exposed. The back panel—no wider than the front—dug right into the cleft of my ass, hiding almost nothing at all.

I lifted my T-shirt slightly to check the situation below and felt a surge of genuine gratitude toward him for not having lit the room brightly.

Oh...

I hadn't meant to make a sound, so my own sigh startled me. My eyes went wide and I fixed my gaze on his back.

"Are you done changing?"

"......"

I was done changing, yes—but if the question meant whether I was ready to reveal myself, then no.

My balls looked as though they might spill out with the slightest movement. I tugged down the hem of my T-shirt and muttered in a voice that seemed to sink into the floor.

"Uh... it's really small... and, well, things aren't fully covered... I think you might be disappointed..."

Before my rambling excuse could finish, he turned on the bench and sat facing me.

"Hmm... what's that?"

His eyes were narrowed, curious, and seemingly displeased—pointing directly at the hem of my T-shirt covering the space between my legs.

"Uh... so this is..."

As I hesitated, he gently wrapped his hands around both my wrists and fixed them firmly against the outside of my thighs, putting me into something like a position of attention.

"......"

He stared in silence for a moment, his gaze fixed on the outline of my cock and balls visible beneath the tautly puffed lace.

"Mnhh..."

He bent his upper body and buried his nose gently into the lace, inhaling deeply—his shoulders shuddered—but he didn't release my wrists.

"I think you have a completely wrong understanding of what 'disappointed' means."

His murmuring, tilting his head, was closer to a monologue than anything directed at me. He examined the space between my legs from multiple angles, then picked up one ribbon end with his fingers, mimed pulling it, and looked up at me.

"......"

The thin string looked precarious—as if it would come undone with the slightest slip. As he toyed with the end and looked up at me, I could read the slow, thickening excitement losing its focus in his eyes.

As if to imply he could pull it at any moment, he gripped the tip of the string, tugged it lightly, then let it drop. Without a word, he pulled off his shirt.

Just watching him undress made my cock twitch inside the underwear. Perhaps because the physical contact over the past week had been limited to nothing more than touching over clothing, my body was reacting faster and more sensitively than usual today.

He exposed his upper body, grabbed my wrists, and pulled me closer. As I stepped between his spread knees, the bench's low height meant his mouth soon reached my cock. The sensation of warm, wet softness enveloping my skin made my eyes flutter shut. My ass tensed and contracted involuntarily.

He tilted his chin, parted his lips, and took my cock into his mouth as if kissing it.

"Oh— mm..."

The slow friction—unhurried, not rushing in—felt like it was melting the most sensitive skin. Looking down, I saw him tilting his head from side to side, using tongue and lips to trace the length of my cock through the lace... it was almost like watching him kiss someone else entirely.

Mm... ah...

With his face buried in the lace, breathing in and out deeply, his warm breath soaked through to my cock. His high nose bridge and full lips pressed firmly against my shaft through the single layer of lace. Then, twisting slightly, he rubbed his entire face slowly and widely against my hardening cock.

"Ah— mm. Ngh..."

As the stimulation intensified, my knees pressed together and my upper body curled forward. My wrists slipped free from his grasp, and I grabbed my T-shirt as if something in my chest was aching, clutching at it.

His now-empty hands swept up my bare legs from my ankles.

"Hah, oh... hh..."

I pressed the top of one foot against the other and lifted my heels. I couldn't straighten my arching back. I braced one hand against his shoulder and scraped my fingertips over his smooth, healthy skin.

The hand that had been gently teasing the backs of my thighs gave the lower half of my fully exposed ass a light shake, and the flesh there vibrated. At the same moment, his hot tongue dragged heavily up over the swollen outline through the lace.

"Haah. Ngh— hh..."

I thought I finally understood why people generally have sex lying down. My core felt like it was collapsing; my back kept bowing forward, and the harder my cock grew, the weaker my knees became, until my legs trembled several times over.

"I'll let you sit soon. But before that... will you show me the back?"

His voice, making the request, was husky and tightly controlled—the sound of a man working hard to contain himself. Using the force of my push against his shoulders to straighten my back, I gripped my T-shirt and slowly turned around.

"Ha, I'm losing my mind. Disappointed? Disappointed?"

"Oh— ugh!"

Simultaneous with his mutterings about losing his mind, his face drove into my ass without warning, and I had to cover my mouth with one hand.

"Ohh..."

He gripped my pelvis, wedged his firm nose between my cheeks, and used his entire face to scrape up and down the groove. The back panel of lace had long since disappeared into the cleft, and the only thing covering my bare rear was the thin strap resting precariously at the waistline—seeing my own fully exposed backside made me bite down on my lower lip.

"Ohh, mm. Mmmm..."

The wet heat of his mouth pressing into the dip of my hole through the thin lace pulled moan after moan out from behind the hand covering my mouth.

"You're not very interested in yourself, are you?"

He spoke in a rapid tone, soaked with excitement. It was a sudden question—not the kind one would ask while so thoroughly occupied with parting someone's ass and spreading saliva between their cheeks.

Still clutching the front of my T-shirt, I turned my head and looked down at him.

"......"

"Your own feelings, your own body... even your own paintings... you probably don't know them well."

Was that his impression after seeing my sketches? My legs went unsteady with the sensation of falling from a great height, but he held my pelvis.

He raked his teeth over the flesh of my ass and looked up at me.

"Do you know that can be quite... cruel, depending on the situation?"

Then, with loud wet sounds, he bit into the flesh and sucked it into his mouth.

"Ugh!"

My body was yanked sharply backward, and just as my balance collapsed, the next moment I was sitting on his thigh. His arms—veins standing out all the way to his upper arms—wrapped tightly around my waist like a binding. He buried his nose and mouth in my nape and inhaled my scent as if starving. Between breaths, as if summoning patience, he bit at my flesh through the T-shirt. Hmm, haa, hmm, haa. Quick, deep breaths, over and over—like a trained dog searching for the source of a scent it recognized.

"You flit around right in front of my eyes... teasing me with your whole body, saying with everything you are that you want to have sex with me... and you don't even know it. Isn't that cruel?"

As if he found me infuriating, he bit down on the nape of my neck.

I didn't know when he had pushed his sweatpants and underwear down to his ankles, but I could feel his hard cock pressing up against my ass.

With urgent yet precise movements, he forced his hand between my thighs and spread my legs wide. Using his thigh as a brace, I looked down at the exposed space below. Beneath the black lace, my cock was squirming, and his glistening head peeked out beneath it. With my legs spread, half of my balls had slipped past the lace entirely.

"Ah— ah!"

His hand, digging up between my thighs, brushed against the center of me, and I jumped on his knee as if scalded. His large cupped palm swept upward several times—from deep inside all the way up over my cock—wiping, covering, dragging. The sensation of being rubbed through the rough lace was entirely new.

He raised his hand up in front of my chest, stretched his neck over my shoulder, and licked and sniffed his palm deliberately—right in my line of sight. As if making sure I saw.

While he licked the hand that had just been between my legs, his other hand stroked my waist with a softness and tenderness that seemed to belong to an entirely different person. His voice, slightly roughened and husky, was thick and sweet, like honey soaked through with moisture.

"I think my cold is completely gone. What about you, Seo Ihyeon?"

The ambiguous words—which I seemed to understand and yet not understand at all—made me turn my head to look down at his face. His nose was near my lips, and the moment he tilted his chin the way he was doing now, it was exactly the right angle for a kiss.

As if reading my thoughts, he stretched his neck and pressed his lips to mine. Could he really read a twenty-two-year-old's desires as easily as text in his eyes?

"Mm... you look like you have a lot you want to say."

He said this while stroking my cock through the lace.

"How... did you know?"

His eyes asked: Know what? His touch was making my cock harden, squirming inside the tight underwear, scattering my thoughts—but I wanted to ask anyway, even borrowing the moment when my reason was numbed by excitement.

"That I... want to be with you, Director."

"......"

He looked quietly at my face, then let out a soft laugh and pressed his lips to mine again.

"Golden Alphas know everything."

"That's a lie. Inwu hyung said Betas aren't affected by pheromones at all... ugh."

While I was speaking, he had been rubbing his lips against mine, and then, in an instant, he bit down hard on my lower lip as if to clamp it. My hand flew to my mouth without thinking.

"It hurts..."

When I muttered this and touched my lip, he lowered his shoulder and let out a short sigh. Then he stuck out his tongue and carefully licked the spot he had just bitten.

"You like it when I hurt you, though?"

"This... wasn't that."

"What's the difference between that and this? Ah... so you mean it wasn't sexually painful?"

"......"

"I see. So Seo Ihyeon likes it when I hurt him, but only the sexually painful kind. I'll keep that in mind from now on."

He seemed to be trying to change the subject, but I didn't need an answer badly enough to press for one.

What he had said—that I was broadcasting my desire for him with my whole body—might have been true. I didn't have the boldness to deliberately seduce him, but I couldn't claim I had been meticulous enough about hiding my feelings and desires that he wouldn't notice.

"Ugh... ah."

The hand stroking my waist fumbled its way inside my T-shirt to find my nipple, and even the faintest questions I had instantly scattered.

Without any preamble, his index finger and thumb seized the small protrusion. Starting from the areola, he squeezed the flesh wide and pulled outward—from the inside out, as if extracting something from within.

"Ah— ngh. Ahh..."

The motion—pinching sharply until the flesh stretched taut, releasing abruptly, then starting again from the outer edge of the areola and squeezing outward only to release again—made me feel as though something might spill from my flat, featureless chest. My body, which had learned the intense pleasure of being penetrated before it ever knew the pleasure of penetrating, contracted below with every surge of excitement, complaining of the emptiness inside.

The one going crazy was me. With my nipple being wrung by him and my neck being bitten, I arched my head back and ground my hips. Every time I did, the friction of my cock against the lace sent sharp, electric jolts tearing through my lower body.

"You're quite proactive today."

He spoke as if praising me, biting at my raised neck. I agreed. My mouth was already dry from panting, and his voice sounded distant even though he was whispering right against my ear. With trembling hands, I hurriedly pulled my T-shirt up—all the way up, until the hands squeezing my nipple were fully exposed.

Seeing the caress with my own eyes made my head boil over. I tried to suppress my overly sensitive reactions by biting the back of my hand, but my hips kept writhing and grinding atop his thigh on their own.

"Can't stay still, can you? Weren't you embarrassed? Look—it's all sticking out."

He fondled the part of my balls peeking out past the lace and bit at my ear. By now... nothing seemed to matter. Nothing felt embarrassing, and I knew clearly what I wanted as I rubbed my hips against his groin. I was no longer the person who had simply waited for him to do something.

I laid my hand over his as his fingers traced the boundary between my balls and the lace. Turning my head to look down, I saw his face—hungry, fierce, focused entirely on me. Contrary to his leisurely words, there was no composure in his expression at all.

I stuck out my tongue and licked his lower lip. I licked it several times, letting out my heated breath. I guided his long, firm fingers deeper—into the space between my spread legs, to the place where he had already planted the memory of pleasure.

"Ah, ugh..."

His fingertip touched my hole through the lace, tracing the entrance in slow circles. I grabbed the arm that was caressing my chest and bit at his lips. My upper body buckled, and my breath began to shake. He pulled me against his chest and lifted me upright. My body was writhing—whether from my own movements or the force of his arms, I couldn't tell—and I just clung to him and panted.

"Should I... put it in here?"

His voice, grinding against my entrance as if he would tear through the lace and plunge inside, was heavily restrained.

"Please— hh..."

I nodded, sobbing like someone crying.

"Should I put a finger in and rub inside?"

As he spoke, I pushed my tongue into his mouth. I wanted his scent unbearably—wanted to drink my fill of it. Like he had done to me, I licked the roof of his mouth, rubbed my tongue against his, teased the back of his upper teeth, and begged him to suck my tongue.

"Mm— oh..."

His fingertip pushed the thin lace—thin as a thread—aside and slid inside. At the same moment, the strong suction on my tongue made my mind spin, up and down.

I held the arm crossing my chest, stroking it, and met his eyes with wet, trembling ones. I let him see everything—my reaction to the penetration, my fluttering lashes, the way my breath kept rising sharply and then collapsing.

The finger, which had been lingering shallowly at the entrance, straightened and slid in deeply. My lower body—legs spread—drew it in without resistance. I could clearly feel my inner walls wrapping around his finger, as if they had been waiting for it.

"Don't grip so tight... I feel like my finger's going to come."

He released my tongue and spoke, brow furrowed as if he had put his cock inside instead of his finger. I shook my head, wrapped my arms over his shoulders from behind, pulled his neck into an embrace, and clung to his lips again.

"More... more..."

"More?"

"You gave it to me earlier too..."

"Why do you want to taste my saliva? Hmm?"

"Hah— ah."

I moaned and clutched his shoulder as his finger—straight, relentless—thrust into me with a thudding rhythm.

"The smell... good smell... haaa, hh..."

Through my blurred vision I could see him hunch his broad shoulders, his face flushed with intoxication.

"It's not that... it's the smell that turns you on. The inside of you—it's a smell that makes me twitch."

He muttered through clenched teeth as if chewing the words and spitting them out, rotating his fingers inside me, sweeping along my inner walls. Then he slid another hand between my lower abdomen and my ass.

"Hh— ah! What—what is this!"

His right middle finger was overlapping his left middle finger, which was already inside. The sensation was completely different from when two fingers of the same hand entered—entirely unfamiliar—and I opened my eyes wide, went rigid in my upper body, and stopped breathing.

While I held my breath, his tongue plunged roughly into my mouth.

"Ngh, mm. Mm."

As I accepted and swallowed the saliva being pushed in, the two hands digging from different directions were slowly spreading me wider inside.

When the left hand, which had entered toward the front of my groin, drove in deep, the right hand, which had entered at the back, moved downward. The next moment they swapped, creating a clashing, jarring rhythm inside me—and that rhythm gradually quickened.

"Hh, hh... oh... mm..."

Below his knees felt like a swamp crawling with crocodiles, and his neck was the branch I grabbed just before falling—I clung to him desperately and thrashed. Saliva I couldn't swallow fast enough spilled from the corners of my mouth because his tongue was blocking my throat, but I couldn't even think about wiping it away.

"How does it feel, taking in more of my scent? What happens to you when we kiss—what happens to Seo Ihyeon?"

Biting at the edge of my panting jaw, urging me to answer, he no longer pretended to be at ease even in his tone. There was no steady calm or rational composure left in the eyes looking up at me. It was the face of a man—no, an Alpha—whose every value had been subordinated to desire.

The fingers alternating inside me like a seesaw felt as if they were boring holes directly into my brain. When I kissed him and swallowed his saliva, I became an idiot who didn't know to close his legs to hide his own arousal.

To confess this about myself, I lowered my head and pressed the tip of my nose against his. I stroked his left arm—the one that had disappeared between my legs—and traced my way down to his cock, which had been swollen and aching beneath my leg for a long time. As expected, it was already soaked, dripping his copious fluid onto the carpet.

"I... I want you to put it in."

"Why, isn't my finger enough?"

"Ah— ngh!"

The friction of two fingers thrusting roughly in and out at an ever-increasing speed set my mind on fire.

"If it feels this good with just fingers, surely you don't need more?"

I straightened my back and then collapsed, then straightened again, smearing his pre-cum over the shaft of his cock with my fingers. Just as he had done, I brought the hand slick with his fluid up to my mouth and breathed in.

"Fingers... can't give you a knot..."

His eyelids were loosely half-lidded as he looked up at me, but the eyes beneath them glittered vividly with hunger and desire. He slid his tongue between my fingers, coated in his own fluid, and licked my lips.

"You get excited by my scent, you rock your hips wanting my cock inside you... and on top of that, you want a knot?"

"......"

"That's exactly like an Omega."

I don't know why those words—which could have been a denial of me as a Beta—stimulated me so intensely.

"Oh, hh... yes..."

Trembling violently from the excitement surging up like a pillar of fire, I bucked my hips. I pushed away the hand blocking my lips and took his tongue directly into my mouth, sucking in his saliva and the scent dissolved within it.

If being an Omega was the only way to possess and bind him beyond mere sex—the only way to draw out his Alpha instincts, shatter all his rational control, and make him run wild—then I didn't mind him feeling that I was like an Omega.

For him, that would mean his partner looked endlessly arousing to him, and his sexual impulses were being stimulated beyond control.

"Mm— ohh, ah..."

The two middle fingers inside me, moving rapidly up and down, suddenly spread apart—stretching my entrance—and I gasped, spitting out his tongue. With the arm draped over his shoulder, I scraped roughly across his sweat-drenched skin and pushed my chest up high.

In the holes riddling my brain, there was only one startlingly clear and simple desire: to have his cock thrust between my legs. It was I who was losing rational control and rushing headlong, driven only by something primal. My whole body trembled from the wanting—a desperate, life-or-death urgency that forced my mouth open on its own.

"Put it in, I want you to put it in... if you don't put it in now... something terrible is going to happen... hhuk."

I looked down at him and murmured through a desire that bordered on fear—the feeling that a massive hole had been torn open in my body, and if I didn't fill it immediately, everything that was me would leak out through it. I was almost crying.

He licked my chin—which was contorted around my bitten lower lip—while driving his fingers deep inside me, and then suddenly froze all movement. His gaze, which moments before had been tracing every sign of my arousal as if consuming it with his eyes, was fixed and trembling, as if he had seen a ghost.

"Hh— ah."

With all movement stopped out of some sudden anxiety, one of his fingers withdrew from inside me. The remaining hand swept broadly through my inner walls. He changed direction, feeling around, scraping. As if he had found something unexpected inside.

Without any conscious effort on my part, my inner walls contracted and clenched tightly around his fingers. I pressed my hand over my mouth and trembled from the stimulation.

"Seo Ihyeon..."

The voice calling my name sounded like someone possessed. My eyes, looking down at him from behind my covered mouth, were wet with desire held back too long.

"Seo Ihyeon..."

After murmuring my name once more, he slowly began to thrust from a seated position, increasing the speed of the penetration. I wanted him so badly it had started to ache in my gut.

The vibrations of him rocking me, seated on his lap, grew faster and more violent. He ducked his head under my arm and bit at my nipple through my T-shirt, driving into me relentlessly. Now, he seemed the more desperate of the two of us.

Seo Ihyeon, Seo Ihyeon, Seo Ihyeon...

As if chanting an incantation to ward off some disaster, he kept murmuring my name—and with a final, low "Fuck, Seo Ihyeon," he pulled his fingers out of me.

Still seated, he lifted me from behind and laid me down on the bench. The moment my back touched the angled end—set at sixty degrees—he pushed my thighs upward, lowered himself, and buried his face between my legs.

There was no wasted time, no wasted movement. Everything happened in an instant.

"Ugh."

His pointed tongue pushed the lace aside—thin as a thread—and plunged immediately into my hole. He curled the tip of his tongue inside, licking like someone savoring ice cream, tracing the walls. Then he pressed his lips directly against the entrance and sucked with loud, obscene sounds. He looked like someone who would have put a straw in there if he could. Looking down from between my raised legs, his face—pressed against my hole—held no trace of refinement or dignity. It was gluttonous. It was like an animal's obsession with the last remaining food before a long, unforgiving winter.

Even fingers hadn't been enough for me—now his tongue and lips, softer and wetter, were working my hole, and I was nearly out of my mind. I wanted to shove my own fingers inside and scratch myself from within. I rubbed his shoulders with my feet as if pushing him away. I reached my arms out, flailing, and pulled at his neck.

"No, stop... I don't want it anymore, please..."

He looked up at me, his mouth still pressed to my hole. His eyes—the blue now faded—glittered with something wild.

As if restraining himself from biting down, he rained a loud, vigorous series of kisses over my hole and my cock, then wiped the glistening saliva from his lips with the back of his hand and raised his upper body. His exposed cock also gleamed as if polished. The fact that he was delaying penetration at all was close to miraculous—his cock was rigid, dripping pre-cum steadily. It looked like it might melt.

He slid his thigh under my hips to settle into position. His chest muscles and the muscles of his lower abdomen were harder than usual—swollen, almost angry-looking. Gripping the shaft of his cock, he pushed aside the lace covering my hole with his head, as if annoyed by the obstruction, then rubbed himself broadly around the entrance, as if marking his territory.

"Hh— ah. Ngh."

Even lying still, I was breathing as though I had just run a sprint.

After positioning himself, he leaned his upper body down, cupped my cheeks in both hands, and pressed his forehead to mine.

"Seo Ihyeoon... Seo Ihyeoon..."

He stretched the vowels as he called my name, wearing a strange expression that seemed both deeply joyful and deeply pained. Like someone pleasantly drunk, or someone who had thrown themselves into intoxication to cope with hardship. Since he never usually allowed himself to come apart like this, seeing it was unfamiliar—and because I couldn't clearly define it, it made him feel, for the first time, like a tangible human being.

I gently wrapped my fingers around the wrists cupping my cheeks and rubbed my nose against his.

"What's wrong... Did I do something wrong?"

He shook his head firmly, forehead still pressed to mine. Between small kisses he scattered over me, he managed to continue with difficulty.

"No. You're doing too well... Seo Ihyeon, you're doing so well, you do everything well... You haven't done anything wrong. You're just... too good. What am I supposed to do? Because Seo Ihyeon is so good?"

And then our lips pressed together a little more deeply at last, and from below, his cock began to push inside, opening the way.

"Look at this. See how well Seo Ihyeon is doing."

He narrowed his eyes and smiled.

"Ngh— ngh. Haah."

Only then—as the thick, heavy presence slid in without a single gap, spreading and filling me—did all the itching dissipate at once, and a sense of fullness came rushing in. I tightened my grip on his wrists and ground the back of my head against the bench behind me.

"It just slides right in... do you understand? Does this even make sense?"

As he said it, he paused his penetration momentarily, as if to confirm the reality of the moment, then created a fluid motion with his hips, stirring gently below. Every time he rocked, my entrance spread wider along the length of him, and the friction between my walls and his shaft sent sharp pleasure racing through my whole body.

Feeling the pulse of a climax beginning to build, I reached down with one hand and touched myself.

Because he had pushed the lower strap aside during penetration, the underwear had shifted and twisted entirely out of place, leaving my cock and balls awkwardly exposed. My hardened cock jutted out at an angle, the head fully on display. The garment could no longer be said to function as underwear.

"Don't touch. Don't come too quickly. Let's go together through your hole. Okay?"

He lifted my wrist. Even after stopping me, his gaze stayed fixed below. He gave a faint smile and shook his head, having gently explained the appeal of the scene—the ribbon hanging precariously below my pelvis, the strap pushed aside, and his cock moving in and out through the opening.

"Just looking at it... I'm going to come right away. Seo Ihyeon, what is there that doesn't suit you?"

"My name..."

"......"

"Like before, just... ah, just say, Seo Ihyeon..."

I gasped out the words, barely managing to get them out as my breath kept catching. He watched me with careful eyes, then gave a soft smile.

"If you like that, should I keep calling you that?"

"Yes— ngh."

I nodded toward him as he twisted his hips, dragging his pubic hair against the rim of my hole. His upper body pressed a little closer, and he kissed my cheek.

"Seo Ihyeon, do you like my scent?"

His voice was slightly different this time—coaxing, soothing. I nodded in answer. While his lips scattered delicate kisses across my cheek and he whispered sweetly in my ear, below, his hips stayed deeply pressed against mine, the shallow, slick grinding continuing.

The penetration felt as though his wet cock—the shaft, the pubic hair at his groin, the stretch of my entrance and inner walls, something deep inside at the very end—was being offered shallow, tender kisses. It felt even more obscene than violent thrusting.

It felt as if his hips were shaking not only the inner walls of my hole, but every fragment of education and socialization that had ever constituted my humanity.

"Why do you like it? What happens when you smell my scent?"

"Hah, hh... ohh, ah..."

There was nothing left but the body's sensations—everything else was forgotten. I told him that it felt like suffocating to death, and then like being able to breathe again all at once. My voice, spilling out these contradictory things, was dry and cracked.

All the screws in my head had come loose—I could think of nothing but sex, his cock and the penetration, the erection that never faded, and the knotting that would feel like it was going to burst me open from inside. I confessed it all in a broken, stumbling voice.

"When you suck my saliva you want to be knotted, don't you? Should we? Should we knot again today? Seo Ihyeon, you love getting knotted."

Every time he thrust, the slick fluid met the air and the wet, sticky friction filled the room with sounds that made me dizzy. I wrapped my arms around his neck and bit my lower lip, and he lunged forward and caught my lip in his teeth. Then, changing his approach, he murmured as if pleading.

"I'll do whatever you ask... I'll do anything and give you everything... So please... let me knot you. Okay? I'm dying to do it with you."

Since the first time, he hadn't been the only one wanting to knot. If anything, it was I who had urged him on—who had subconsciously tempted him, even as he hesitated. Yet here he was, asking permission, making an unnecessary request. He wasn't someone who lost track of gain and loss, but his head—his cock—was so overheated that he was making an error.

I was in an equally abnormal state.

"Then... I want you to do it only with me. Kissing, fingers... sex, knotting... only with me..."

"......"

He slowed his thrusts, looking as if he had heard something unbelievable.

We had whispered countless outrageous things to each other during sex, but even when heat-drunk and out of my mind, I had never once asked anything of him. It had always felt like an overstep—misreading the mood, something that might cool whatever was burning on the bed.

But right now, I just... found courage welling up from somewhere.

He looked me over carefully, and then his thrusting began to gradually speed up again. I played with the back of his neck and added,

"You said you'd do anything for me..."

He grabbed the edge of the bench above my head and adjusted my spread thighs, deepening the penetration.

"Since the first time with you, it's always been... only you. You know that."

His words were true. I had lacked certainty, but I had long vaguely sensed that he wasn't with anyone else. And in this moment, that vague sense was cleanly confirmed as fact. The weight of that knowledge was beyond anything I could have imagined.

Whether it was another surge of his copious pre-cum or something else, a thick wave flooded the inside of me. He furrowed his brow, his broad shoulders shuddering. The penetration was no longer shallow in-and-out thrusting—it was full withdrawals followed by single, heavy, driving impacts, one after another.

"If I only kiss and have sex with Seo Ihyeon... can I keep knotting you? Can I keep doing this with Seo Ihyeon?"

Even held by him, the bench shook—but neither of us had any presence of mind to care.

"Do it, keep doing it... fill me all the way to my head. No, we shouldn't. We have to stop. What am I going to do? If we keep having sex and knotting like this... and I go completely stupid from it... then what will become of me, Director?"

I nodded, then shook my head wildly... rambling incoherently, unable to tell what I was even saying.

Kisses rained down over my entire face: my eyelids, the skin beneath my eyes, my temples, my cheeks, my lips, my philtrum, the bridge of my nose.

"If I said I'd rather that happened... does that make me a bastard?"

"......"

I knew his words weren't sincere. Neither of us was normal right now.

I pulled his neck closer and pressed my lips against his—lips that made me feel as if I were already dreaming a rapturous dream simply from looking at them, as if we had already shared a deep kiss. Even the ache of the moment they parted felt like an extension of the kiss.

I shook my head slowly, saying no. He bumped his forehead lightly against mine and spat out a low curse.

He threaded his arm under my bent knee, extended that arm behind my back, and lifted me.

My body rose effortlessly, and the next moment I was suspended in his arms. My grip around his neck tightened on instinct, but he smiled with his sweat-damp face as if to say there was nothing to worry about.

"From now on... should we go around like this? Should I go to work like this, attend meetings like this, eat meals like this? I'm starting to think we should."

His joke—taking a few actual steps while holding me, as if practicing in earnest—made me laugh even in this state.

"Hh— ah."

But the laughter didn't last. He stopped near the foot of the bench, moved his hips, and as he lifted me he drove his exposed cock further in and began to thrust.

Before I could even marvel at the sheer strength it took to hold and move me without leaning on any wall or desk, I had to endure the sensation of every opening in my body gaping wide from the unfamiliar intensity of this new position.

"Haah... hh... ngh..."

The force with which he thrust me away doubled into a rebound as my own weight was added to it. Each time my body drove back against him, his cock—plunging deep—felt as if it were carving a groove inside me made to fit its exact shape. The intensity was entirely different from lying down or standing.

The sound of our sweat-slicked bare skin slapping together was stickier and wetter than usual. We hadn't used lube since our first time in Hong Kong, but today his pre-cum was overflowing more than it ever had before. Each time my bouncing body collided with his groin and drove him deeper, I could feel fluid being pushed out along the circumference of his shaft. Even so, the slickness inside never dried up.

He pulled my slipping, sweat-soaked body tight against him and rubbed his lips against my cheek.

"Do you know what it feels like inside right now?"

His voice was soft, in contrast to the ferocity of his lower body driving into me.

"Mm— hh..."

Unable to form a coherent sentence, I only met his eyes, letting out a strained, high-pitched moan from my parched throat.

The eyes that met mine held the undeniable rapture of a man deeply in love. Whether it was physical ecstasy or something else entirely, his gaze made me feel—in that moment—as if he were utterly and completely captivated by me.

"It feels so good to be wrapped so snugly and warmly, with no gaps anywhere... For the first time since I manifested at twelve, I feel like it was a good thing to be born an Alpha. Right now."

He was clearly in a state of extreme arousal, yet the words didn't sound like the usual flattery someone spouts in the heat of sex. And besides, he wasn't the type to say things like that emptily.

With me—a Beta—he might experience pleasure as a man, but satisfaction as an Alpha seemed as though it would be difficult to find... Yet knowing he wasn't someone who derived pleasure through pheromones, those words landed in me like the deepest confession he had ever made.

"Oh— ah. Yes!"

The thrusting, which had seemed to pause for a moment, picked up speed. He lowered his hip position slightly, driving upward from below to amplify the force, and I wrapped my arms tightly around his neck so that our chests pressed together. There was no dignity in this—knees bent, legs spread, nothing but my hips rocking—but dignity had been excluded from the sex he taught me from the very beginning.

Standing firm as a rock, launching me upward rapidly and relentlessly—his thrusting was almost like a roar. As if pouring something inside himself into me, as if he couldn't bear it any other way, he moved fast and fierce without pause.

"But I'm like this, and you're not. For you, this..."

The voice murmuring those words didn't belong to someone submerged in the pleasure of thinking, This feels so good, I'm glad I was born an Alpha for the first time.

I loosened the tight grip of my arms and looked at his face. His eyes, fixed on me, seemed torn between pleasure and pain. I traced his face with my fingertips, and without him asking, I let my saliva flow into his mouth.

"Don't say things like that... I like it too... Don't you know?"

I didn't know what normal sex was like. I didn't even have other personal experiences to compare this with. What mattered was that what I felt in sex with him was not shame or the urge to shrink away—it was satisfaction, and liberation.

"I'm sorry."

He pressed his forehead to mine and said it several times, murmuring it like an apology.

Then he sucked fiercely at my lips and tongue. We tangled so wildly that I couldn't tell whose saliva was whose as we shared it. In his thick, sexual scent, I felt as if every opening of my body—including my nose—was wide open.

The force with which he shook me grew more violent. With no support to brace himself against, he lost all sense of direction and stumbled through the room holding me up like a directionless robot vacuum.

Thud. Only when my back hit the wall did he stop moving forward. He pressed against me with his whole body as if trying to carve me into it, kissing me deeply and filling me deeply. I could feel his inexhaustible pre-cum seeping out and trickling down below where we were joined.

"Ugh, mm. Mmmm..."

I scratched at his back and kicked my legs, which were dangling in the air. He was knotting—pounding against the deepest part of me as if trying to leave a bruise. The moment I felt the powerful, throbbing pulse of the knot, I convulsed and spilled white cum onto the black lace.

He rocked me up and down as if soothing me, and I begged in a hoarse voice for him to let me go. Even the constraint—unable to shake my limbs freely, unable to writhe like a madman—eventually folded into pleasure.

The lace tightening around my cock felt suffocating, so I pulled one end of the ribbon myself. The loosened underwear couldn't fall to the floor because our lower bodies were pressed completely together; instead it rubbed between us, between his groin and mine, heightening every sensation.

I came twice while he was still knotted inside me—it was the longest knotting yet. He had to lay me back down on the bench partway through, waiting until he had shrunk enough to withdraw.

As he laid my limp body down and diligently licked at my temples with the heat of his lips and tongue, I realized I was trembling all over, and that I was crying from pleasure.

"It's okay, I'm right here. Don't cry... don't cry... I'll do better."

The relentless small kisses raining onto my lips and his mournful whispers sounded distorted and distant, like hearing a voice from outside while submerged in water.

He had said something similar the first time we knotted, I thought—something about it being okay because he was here. Maybe the pleasure of the knotting, which had nearly choked me out of consciousness several times, made me mishear it, but the words I'll do better hadn't been there then.

Even now, he was treating me so well that I felt guilty for not having given more in return. What more could he possibly be promising to do better?

After that vague thought, what reached my ears was my name, repeated like a devout prayer.

Seo Ihyeon, Seo Ihyeon...

He held my hand and kissed the back of it several times as he called my name. This was far better to hear than any apology.

Even as he soothed me so earnestly—still not withdrawing, still inside me—I managed to squeeze out a faint smile and tell him it was alright. He looked at me with an anguished expression, as if he had hurt me, but I wasn't in pain; I was at the peak of pleasure. There was nothing for him to apologize for.

· Worry ·

He was in the study.

The terrace window leading to the garden was wide open, letting in a river breeze from the Han River, but it was midsummer—August just around the corner. The air filling the room, along with the strong sunlight pouring in, was muggy and close.

"You said you'd buy me something delicious for lunch, and this is where you called me? It'll be takeout at best."

She leaned against the open doorway of the study and complained playfully, a smile on her face. The man, who had been sitting at his desk staring blankly out at the garden, turned his head and laughed awkwardly.

"If you stay here, I'd have to eat lunch alone. I called you so we could eat together."

The man was wearing sunglasses. Though they were indoors, the light streamed in even to the entrance of the room where she stood, so the sunglasses didn't look out of place.

"It's just sandwiches—is that okay?"

On the coffee table in front of the sofa by the desk, which he indicated, sat a plastic bag with a logo and an iced coffee in a paper carrier. The logo was from her favorite sandwich shop.

Whether he had used a delivery app or had a driver pick it up, the ice in the coffee hadn't melted at all despite the room temperature—he had clearly bought it just before she arrived.

"If it's from there, that changes things entirely."

Pleased, she settled onto the sofa and took a long sip of the cold coffee.

Recently, he had taken to working here occasionally instead of going to the gallery. It was a new habit, but his absence from the office wasn't causing any real problems, so she hadn't complained. Yuni and Juhan had even welcomed it, saying the newly hired staff were less on edge when he wasn't around.

He handed her a sandwich, told her to start eating, and then sat in his chair, rolling the wheels idly back and forth. He didn't look particularly hungry.

"Among the exhibition pamphlets I passed along last time, he showed interest in the Renaissance exhibition—it seems he isn't very interested in contemporary art after all. Traveling far might be difficult, but have the office look into classical art exhibitions in cities within a four-hour flight. Even the new hires should be able to handle that level of research."

She had just taken a large bite of the lobster-filled sandwich and stared at him, wide-eyed, wondering if she had heard correctly.

"You mean you'd let him go see exhibitions even if they're overseas?"

"Of course. He doesn't show interest in installation art or experiential art. We can't just sit around waiting for the exhibitions he wants to attend to open in Korea."

He acted as though this measure were entirely natural and the only reasonable course of action. When she stared silently for a long moment, he finally noticed and looked over.

"......Why?"

"Nothing. It's nothing."

She shook her head, and he furrowed his brow from behind the sunglasses.

"Why? What is it?"

"Just... I noticed you haven't been paying much attention to the other artists lately."

"Manager Han is handling things well. Besides, I'm primarily responsible for VIP clients rather than artists, aren't I?"

"Well... that's true."

The question was why he was personally stepping in and paying such close attention to one particular artist—but he showed no inclination to explain his reasoning. She knew from years of experience that trying to pry into his thinking before he was ready was a wasted effort.

As far as she knew, he treated people he wasn't interested in as if they were invisible—thoroughly, and without much effort—and was brutally open about his hostility toward people he disliked.

While clients and artists were exceptions, sometimes those habits extended even to them. He would compromise for business, but acting endlessly accommodating purely for business wasn't his style either. He had his own lines.

Since he had shown interest in Ihyeon from the very beginning, while pretending to be indifferent, it wasn't surprising to her that he held a somewhat special interest in Ihyeon—whether as a fellow artist or for more personal reasons.

"Seo Ihyeon..."

"......"

No sooner had she taken a second bite of her sandwich than Ihyeon's name came up again.

"When Manager Han was teaching him before—did you see talent in him even then?"

It seemed the real reason he had called her here today wasn't the sweet excuse of not wanting to eat alone. She drank a sip of coffee, quickly chewed and swallowed the sandwich, and answered.

"Very special. Ordinarily he was gentle and quiet, not given to tantrums for his age, but when it came to painting he overflowed with ambition and persistence—and he knew how to enjoy that ambition and persistence. And he was an incredible practice devotee. Though he thought of it less as practice and more as play."

After listening to her reminisce with evident pleasure, the man gathered several notebooks neatly stacked on a corner of his cluttered desk and slowly walked over to sit across from her. As he dropped onto the sofa, the scent of cologne drifted across.

Both his father's and mother's families came from old money, and by the time he was born, his mother was already establishing herself as a world-renowned painter. As a result, he naturally possessed the refined, stylish ease unique to a certain class, and his tastes were both individualistic and luxurious—yet he wasn't the type to apply cologne as the final step before going out. Because he was strongly averse to releasing pheromones, he had little interest in adorning himself with scent.

Whether he was fully aware of it himself or not, he had certainly been doing things lately that were unlike him.

"These are the 'practice' sketches Seo Ihyeon drew after moving to my place. Take a look, if you would."

From this point on, it was a part of Ihyeon's story she hadn't known. She too was curious about what Ihyeon had been drawing at twenty-two.

She set down the sandwich, wiped her hands on a tissue, carefully suppressed the rare flutter of excitement rising in her chest, and picked up the sketchbook.

There were four or five notebooks, each containing over thirty pages, every one of them densely packed with meticulous drawings.

What she held in her hands was not easy magic born of innate talent. These were the results of faithful hours—days spent moving a hand across paper honestly, without lying to the act of drawing.

"When I parted ways with Ihyeon, he had just turned twelve. Even then, he had frightening technical skill for his age—but not like this..."

Even if he had set down his brush immediately after winning for Alienation, the calculation showed that Ihyeon had continued drawing for nearly five more years after they separated. Given the diligence she knew him to possess, if he had drawn for five more years, reaching the level of the sketches she was now looking at was entirely believable.

"Seo Ihyeon stopping his painting... it wasn't a matter of him naturally drifting away from it over time, was it?"

She slowly turned the pages one by one, then looked up at him across from her.

"......What do you mean?"

Without touching his own sandwich or coffee, the man asked her pardon and lit a cigarette. Then he bent forward, rested his elbows on his thighs, and took a deep first drag.

"The work he supposedly made before—I've only seen Alienation, but there was immense energy in it. Regardless of his usual temperament... when he painted, he could be completely free... he had a boldness, a fearlessness, in revealing himself as if no one were watching him, as if he were guaranteed perfect secrecy that no one would ever find out. You can't produce a painting like that by luck. And you can't acquire it through practice alone—it isn't a technique. Suki Kim recognized it in Alienation, which is why she actively pushed for the special prize."

He pressed his forehead with the hand holding the cigarette, elbow still braced on his thigh, and gestured toward the notebooks on the table.

"But these sketches..."

"......"

"They not only possess a level of technique that staggers the imagination, and a distinct individuality that makes it impossible to believe they came from someone who took years away from drawing—but they contain absolutely none of his own perspective. In anything."

"......"

She couldn't disagree with that.

Some of the sketches were so precise they were nearly photorealistic; some of the croquis were filled with unpredictably fresh expressiveness—but Ihyeon's paintings lacked the voice of the person who had made them, the very thing that had once sent a shiver down her spine.

To her—who knew the Ihyeon of the past—these sketches were like a child refusing to speak.

"For anyone else, perhaps. But for Seo Ihyeon, this isn't painting. Because he isn't telling his own story at all."

She had recognized his exceptional insight into art and artists since their time working together in Hong Kong, but she couldn't help being surprised that he could read an artist he had encountered through only one work to this extent. She wondered if it was an ability that only manifested because the subject was Seo Ihyeon—but there was no way to confirm it.

Feeling momentarily disoriented, she looked up as his face—half-hidden behind sunglasses—turned toward her.

"Seo Ihyeon—why did he stop painting?"

He was wearing dark sunglasses, but up close, the faint outline of his eyes was visible.

"Are you... asking me?"

In response to her question, he turned his face away as if evading and flicked the ash of his cigarette into the crystal ashtray.

"Director Liu, you're not the type to hear things through others. No—you wouldn't even ask the person directly. You probably only found out I was divorced when you learned I had gotten married in the first place, right?"

"Whether someone I work with is married or not... is unnecessary information."

He took a deep drag of his cigarette, offering a thin excuse for the string of uncharacteristic behaviors he had been displaying.

"The paintings are Seo Ihyeon's work... So does Director Liu need information about why Ihyeon stopped painting in the past? To the point of asking me instead of him?"

"......"

Whether he was genuinely confronting his own changes and the reasons behind them—that was what mattered to her.

While he remained silent, drawing on his cigarette, the ice in the plastic cup melted and knocked together with a soft clinking sound.

"Light that doesn't know its own worth is troublesome."

After a long silence, his languid voice finally broke—it sounded like something said to himself.

"It's like someone with a superpower who doesn't know how strong they are, and therefore doesn't know how to control it, so they go around breaking everything. Even when a storm rages around them, they have no idea that the phenomenon before their eyes is a result of themselves. As an artist and as an individual, that kind of person is difficult to deal with. You would know that too, Manager Han."

He paused, took a short, deep drag, and tapped the ash with a slightly restless gesture.

"Seo Ihyeon has no idea what an extraordinary talent he possesses. Or perhaps he knows, but simply doesn't care. His relative standing doesn't matter to him. He made the difficult decision to reclaim painting—which was his language and his identity—and through that, he simply wants to exist as himself once more. He isn't crying to anyone; he's trying to rise on his own, even if it takes a long time, and he believes that is the only way to repay the people who helped him..."

Whether he was fully aware of it himself or not, the words he was pouring out without hesitation were proof of how long and how seriously he had observed and thought about Ihyeon.

It sounded almost like a confession—that Liu Weikun himself was struggling, caught in the storm being wielded by Seo Ihyeon, a young light who seemed unaware of his own impact.

"If it's to help him find his voice through his painting... I thought I needed to know everything, including his past. Of course, if Manager Han judged it was not hers to share... I couldn't force her to."

Even as he said the words, his face as he ground out the shortened cigarette was dripping with a stubborn, lingering desire to know anyway—by whatever means necessary.

"But can you tell me just one thing?"

"......"

His hands, now empty of the cigarette, clasped tightly together, and he turned his face toward her. Half of it was hidden by the sunglasses, but the fear-tinged concern etched into his features was not difficult to read.

He hesitated, his lips moving several times without sound.

"Was he abused... or did he experience some kind of terrible... incident? Was it something like that?"

His expression was pained simply from imagining and saying such a thing aloud. His face looked less like someone asking a question and more like someone pleading to be told they were entirely wrong.

This unfamiliar side of him—hesitant, almost afraid, in the face of another person's past—made her uneasy in a way she hadn't expected. Discovering a new facet of a close acquaintance she thought she knew well often brought more bewilderment than novelty.

The thought that his interest in Ihyeon might be deeper and heavier than she had imagined made her wet her lower lip. She wasn't sure whether to welcome it or be wary of it.

With his naturally exceptional looks, intelligence, and background, he had lived a life where desperation was never necessary to obtain what he wanted.

Even when he had first come to Seoul and opened a modest sixty-pyeong gallery, he had believed deeply in the results his talent and effort would bring—and despite being the owner of something so small, he had always greeted clients with a relaxed confidence. There was no sign of him groveling to sell one more piece or growing anxious over immediate profits.

Among buyers of high-priced art, some want their vanity satisfied through deferential treatment; others find their sense of superiority met simply by associating with an attractive person of discerning taste. In truth, the loyalty of clients drawn to his charm had played a significant role in Phantom's rise to where it stood now.

And yet, Liu Weikun was now revealing his anxiety—worrying over something that might have happened to a twenty-two-year-old affiliated artist.

His demeanor suggested he would kneel right there if it meant hearing that nothing had happened to Ihyeon, and the pity of it nearly made her open her mouth. But thinking of Ihyeon, she couldn't. If Ihyeon had not told him, or could not tell him, there was a reason—one that belonged to Ihyeon alone.

She let out a small sigh and shook her head.

"It would be best to hear that directly from Ihyeon. That way there won't be any trouble between the two of you afterward."

"You can't even answer that much? Manager Han, you know how close-lipped Seo Ihyeon is. Who knows how much longer it will be before I hear what happened from his mouth directly... You want me to carry this weight until then? Manager Han, don't do this. You can answer at least that much."

He rested his elbows on his thighs, clasped hands pressed to his lips, and shook his head.

"The terrible thing Director Liu is imagining... it isn't that. You really must hear anything beyond that from Ihyeon himself."

She finished speaking with a finality that made clear she would not open her mouth on this subject again, and picked up her sandwich—even though her appetite had completely vanished. His face was still heavy, but he seemed to have recovered some composure compared to a few moments ago.

She knew the gap between his outward demeanor toward artists and their work and what he felt inwardly—and she also knew that the real him supported and loved the earnestness of true artistry, of embedding one's sincerity into one's work, far more than his outward manner ever suggested.

It was because she had recognized that about him—the same man others privately considered difficult to work with—that they had clicked from their time together in Hong Kong, and she had readily accepted his proposal to open a gallery in Seoul.

She had always thought his interest in Seo Ihyeon was simply an extension of his passion for art and for artists.

Though they hadn't discussed their private lives in detail, as far as she knew, he had not had a single serious relationship in the past ten years or so.

There had been a few people he dated casually, but those situations rarely developed into anything deeper. Whether that was because he hadn't wanted them to, or because he had simply failed to move them forward, she didn't know.

Whenever such topics came up, he would speak of it with a tone of regret and resignation—and that was all. He had never shown any real desperation toward a partner. It was clear he was not someone who believed a deeply respectful and loving companion was necessary for a satisfying life.

This didn't mean his approach to relationships was immature, or that he was a shallow person.

If anything, he was quite skilled at calibrating the distance so that his partner would not see his flaws or the parts of himself he wanted to keep hidden—and his approach to romance was likely no different.

He and his partners had probably never raised their voices at each other, let alone argued. They would have dated properly, shared intimacy appropriate to the frequency of their meetings, and parted with breakups polite enough not to wound either person's ego.

Mannered but without sacrifice. Never changing himself for another person. Free from childish emotional exhaustion... meetings and retreats that left no trace. If that was what one called mature romance, then his relationships until now had certainly been mature.

But in her personal opinion, it was actually immaturity. The absence of conflict couldn't simply be equated with peace. One couldn't even prove maturity in a situation entirely free of crisis.

Whether he personally felt a lack in the absence of a lover or not, love was the only way to approach another human being's interior as deeply as possible. Likewise, love was the only means by which one could truly receive the presence of someone else seeking to know you.

To spend a life seeing nothing but the bottom of oneself—she believed there could be no loneliness more terrible than that. True maturity could only be proven after two people had exposed their depths to each other. After all, being able to smile constantly because things were always going well could not be called strength.

Though she herself had not navigated that stage with much maturity, she remained certain that meeting someone who would break the rules, draw out a new self, force you to face an unglamorous version of yourself, and allow you to taste the full range of emotion—that was life's good fortune.

In her eyes, he was currently facing a new self that was shattering his former rules.

As she glanced over at him—still not touching the sandwich, still smoking, drinking only coffee—his phone rang from the desk behind him.

He usually carried three phones, and when they weren't on silent, he distinguished them by different ringtones. Holding a cigarette in one hand, he got up and walked to the desk, bringing the phone close to his face to check the caller. He took a long drag from the cigarette and exhaled slowly.

"Ah... Zhang Shuiyan. I thought he'd finally come around, since he'd been quiet for days."

He pressed the button to switch the ringer to silent, returned to the sofa, and rested the back of his head against the cushion.

"Are you just going to keep avoiding Shushu's calls?"

"If I answer, it only gives him room to maneuver. I made Phantom's position clear, and I told him plainly that crying on the phone won't change anything... I really didn't realize his dependence on Manager Han was this severe."

He removed his sunglasses, closed his eyes, pressed firmly on his eyelids, then put the sunglasses back on and looked at her.

He had been the one to set the initial policy, but she herself had been the one actually caring for Shushu in practice, so she had no intention of blaming the current situation entirely on him.

"Still—avoiding it won't solve anything. If he can't understand, you have to persuade him. My words won't carry enough weight on their own..."

"Ah, sorry—just a moment, I need to take this call."

A different ringtone sounded from his phone on the desk, and he sprang up with quick, almost startled movements and went back to the desk.

As he checked the caller ID and connected the call, a faint, soft smile touched his lips.

"Yes, it's me."

She felt she knew who was calling without needing to ask. The years they had spent working together were not short, but she had never found him this easy to read. This transparent Liu Weikun was a stranger to her.

"No, I can talk. Go ahead."

Holding the phone tight against his ear as if terrified of missing a single word from the other end, he walked out toward the garden, gesturing for her to eat the sandwich comfortably.

"Oh, is it already that time? Lunch—did you eat before you left?"

As if the strong sunlight made the watch hands hard to see, he raised his left wrist right up to the bridge of his sunglasses to check the time.

For someone who had likened Seo Ihyeon to a troublesome light, his expression suggested he was rather enjoying sunbathing in that exact brightness.

"I'm eating a sandwich... Ah, no, it's just that I'm a bit busy today... We'll have something good for dinner... Later... I'll head over there at the time..."

As he walked further away, fragments of the conversation drifted back to her, along with his occasional laughter. She set down the sandwich and picked up her coffee instead.

Though it had been quite some time since she herself had been in a serious relationship, she thought: if that voice did not belong to someone in love, Liu Weikun should quit running a gallery and become an actor.

"No, I'll leave work on time... If there's something you want to eat... Yes, see you later... Always be careful... Goodbye, then."

After finishing the call, he stood still for a moment with the phone still pressed to his ear, then chuckled—shoulders lifting—and shoved his hands into his pockets.

"You hang up first."

His voice was full of laughter.

Whoever the other person was, the mere fact that Liu Weikun was having a conversation about who would hang up first was shocking to her.

Both he and Ihyeon were precious people to her. She had even hoped someone would come along who could knock him off his course, invade his inner world, and boldly rearrange whatever was inside.

But if asked whether the two of them could sustain a balanced relationship through romance... she couldn't answer that confidently. That was an entirely different matter.

When he returned to his seat, his expression was sombre—a different person from the one on the phone. She had planned to ask casually, Who was that, with you grinning the whole time? Someone you're seeing these days?—but she had to revise her plan. The atmosphere wasn't right for light jokes.

All she could do was make a vague, somewhat uneasy guess that something had already begun between the two of them.

She put down the coffee she had sipped, and glanced at him as he fiddled with the cigarette pack—apparently already feeling the urge to smoke again.

"In any case, talk to Shushu properly. No matter how much Shushu depends on me, you are the Director—and Shushu is a flagship artist. More than anything else... I hope you prioritize this. If you've truly made up your mind this time, don't run away—see it through properly."

She had intended to indirectly warn him about the situation in which he, as the Director, was paying excessive and personal attention to a newly contracted artist who had yet to generate any profit—but as he lit a new cigarette and nervously swept his hair back, he seemed entirely oblivious to her intent.

This was his third cigarette since she had entered the study. He was smoking more than usual. Every change he displayed made her uneasy, because he did not look like someone welcoming change and adapting to it steadily.

"Right. Manager Han has plenty of other things to worry about, and I've let this drag on too long. I'll talk to him properly and close it out—just give me about another week on the Shushu matter."

His voice sounded exhausted, as if he had poured every last ounce of energy into that phone call moments earlier. Conversely, it made her realize just how capably he had pretended to be unbothered during that call—acting as though everything were fine, everything going smoothly—despite being in this unstable a state.

Neither of them touched the sandwiches after that, as they discussed the lineup and number of works submitted by artists who had agreed to participate in the joint fall exhibition. He smoked two more cigarettes during the course of it.

As she descended to the underground parking lot to return to the gallery, she thought about the two of them—moving in a direction she had never anticipated.

She never would have imagined that he, who had always wanted relationships he could end cleanly and politely at any moment, would choose twenty-two-year-old, guileless Seo Ihyeon as a romantic partner. Ihyeon wasn't the type who would want a superficial relationship, and as far as she knew, Liu Weikun wasn't the type to deliberately choose someone like that just to enforce his own mature view of romance.

"What about you, Director? If Inwu-ssi is serious about Ihyeon, and Ihyeon likes Inwu-ssi, you wouldn't object, would you?"

To Yuni, who had asked that, she had replied as if it wasn't anyone else's place to interfere—and she still believed that was the correct stance. But she couldn't quiet the feeling of worry.

Liu Weikun and Seo Ihyeon.

When she tried to define their relationship as romance, what rose in her mind was not the gentle softness of cotton candy.

What if the observation—that he didn't know how to control his own power, that he caused storms around him without considering the ripple effect—wasn't only about Ihyeon as an artist, but was actually a veiled description of his own situation, being pulled toward Seo Ihyeon the person?

"Hmm..."

As she pulled out of the villa's parking lot—solid as an impregnable fortress—she let out a sigh that came out more like a groan. As for the ending of the story starring Liu Weikun and Seo Ihyeon, she simply could not guess it. Not now, at least.