TATMFL - 8

Raon glanced at the man and quickly pressed the call button.

“Hyesung.”

―Yeah, Raon.

A warm voice came through the receiver, almost like a sigh.

―Sorry. I didn’t realize the phone was ringing while I was waking up Jian. I forgot to change the ringtone to a vibration…

“Jian?”

Raon blinked in confusion, narrowing her eyes slightly.

“Are you at my house right now?”

―Ah, yeah. I tried calling to go with Jian, but she didn’t pick up. I figured she was still asleep since we drank so much last night, so I came to wake her up.

As Raon pictured Jian, who was probably still lying sprawled out, Hyesung continued.

―Jian’s in the shower right now, so I’ll head out as soon as she’s ready.

“You’ve been working hard because of Jian, haven’t you? Both last night and today.”

Hyesung, who had carried a drunken Jian back home after their reunion party, chuckled softly at Raon’s words. He replied with a smile.

―Take your time, Raon. The weather’s really cold today. Do you want me to bring you a scarf?

“No. I’m fine. You take it instead. It’s on the desk.”

As Raon said this, watching her breath fog in the cold air, she could hear Hyesung’s laughter on the other end of the line. She could almost picture him squinting his eyes and laughing, as if amused by her giving up her own scarf.

―I’m already prepared from home, so it’s okay.

“Really?”

―Yeah. So don’t worry, I’ll see you soon, Raon.

“Okay. I’ll see you in a bit.”

After quietly replying, Raon stared blankly at the phone that had just ended the call.

She looked at her own expression reflected on the black screen, meeting her own eyes, and slowly blinked her eyes closed, then opened them again.

“…”

It wasn’t uncommon for Hyesung to come to the house that she and Jian shared. She had given him the password to the door, telling him he could come by anytime.

Because of that, Hyesung had often woken up the sleepy Jian to take her to class, and like today, he had comforted Raon when she was struggling with a hangover and helped her get to her appointment.

That’s why she had managed to finish the call calmly, but there was still an unavoidable tightness in her chest, as if something was constricting inside.

At that moment, the voice of someone she had forgotten about throughout the call suddenly pierced through her thoughts.

“Boyfriend?”

“...What?”

Raon, who had been lost in thought, responded a bit slowly, turning her head to see the man, whose gaze had shifted from her phone to her. He shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly.

“Your expression when you answered the phone looked so affectionate. Isn’t he your boyfriend?”

“No.”

Raon, now with a calm expression, responded as though to say, What are you talking about? and put her phone back into her pocket. The man, who had been staring at her face, casually asked as he walked beside her.

“Then, is it unrequited love?”

“...”

Raon, who had been about to take another step, froze for a brief moment, like a malfunctioning robot, at the man’s question.

But it was only for an instant.

Raon’s face, as she turned to look at the man, showed no sign of fluster or emotion at all.

The question about whether she liked Hyesung was something she had been asked countless times since elementary school, so it didn’t surprise her at all.

What startled her in that moment was that the man, whom she had just met, had noticed it.

Raon sighed and opened her mouth.

“The building for the business department is straight ahead from here. It’ll be easy to find since the sign on top says ‘Business Department.’“

Raon quickly added, clearly trying to show that she was uncomfortable with the situation.

“Well, take care of your personal matters and go back. I’m busy.”

“…”

Without even giving him a chance to respond, Raon abruptly turned and walked away.

The man stared at her with wide eyes, watching her leave.

After a while, when her figure completely disappeared from his sight, the man, Dokyung, suddenly grinned and smirked.

Behind him, a shadow approached.

A man with a long scar on his chin sighed.

“…I was wondering why you suddenly told me to park in an odd place.”

It seemed he had tried to walk here with a woman.

The woman, who was a witness to their collection scene a few days ago, was someone he had remembered while slowly following behind his superior, moving at a pace that didn’t even reach 20 km/h.

So he asked.

“Are you spying on her?”

Though Dokyung’s actions of chatting away while the quiet woman stayed silent didn’t seem like the behavior of someone spying, the man still asked.

Dokyung blinked in confusion.

“When have you ever seen me do such a troublesome thing, Joon?”

“Never,” Joon replied.

If he had, the woman would have been surrounded by people that very night. But the Dokyung he knew didn’t really care whether there was one or ten witnesses. He was always too busy to bother with such things, and didn’t see the need to cause unnecessary trouble.

Since his superior was like that, his subordinates naturally left witnesses alone as well, and Joon had often heard complaints from those responsible for handling the police reports about the witnesses.

Still, in this world, there were always variables, and that’s why Joon had asked.

But apparently, that wasn’t the case.

Joon tilted his head.

“Then why the hell were you acting like a dog chasing after her? If she had a tail, she’d probably be flying in the sky right now—ugh!”

“It was fun,” Dokyung said, pushing Joon’s face away with his palm. His eyes were still fixed on the direction Raon had disappeared.

“…Fun?” Joon replied, rubbing his nose, still feeling the sting.

Looking in the direction Dokyung was staring at, Joon clicked his tongue with a pitiful expression on his face.

“That poor woman. She ended up catching the eye of a twisted pervert with a personality like a young master’s. Ugh!”

Joon, who had gotten another hit, groaned in pain, while Dokyung exhaled lazily, blinking his eyes.

His eyes, subtly narrowing, traced the spot where Raon had been standing, drawing a slightly deeper line of interest.

The woman seemed like a creation molded entirely to his taste.

He couldn’t quite put it into words, but the experience of his gaze being drawn to someone before even recognizing their presence was something that had never happened to him before in his life.

So, that early morning, unusually, he lingered after finishing his work, wanting to imprint that face in his eyes. He wanted to see the woman’s face head-on, as she was looking elsewhere.

It was a very strange feeling. The fact that he was patiently waiting to receive even a single glance from this young woman.

And finally, under the reddish-orange streetlamp, when her brown eyes, which seemed almost red in the dim light, and her slightly parted lips below them, were particularly vivid in his eyes even in the darkness, Dokyung smiled.

Not even a milk-smelling kid.

His lower body was heavily aroused.

In other words.

At that moment, in vulgar terms, he got turned on. By looking at that neatly arranged, pretty face.

That day, he returned home and, for the first time in his life, masturbated thinking of that indifferent face.

He imagined seating the woman as if she were trapped between his legs, pushing his fully erect penis between her upper lip and her fuller lower lip, and the hand gripping his shaft instinctively tightened.

In his lewd imagination, the woman’s face was contorted in agony. Her double-lidded eyes trembled, and she exhaled hot breaths onto his shaft, which she hadn’t fully swallowed, making his hand movements gradually faster.

As his chest rose and fell roughly, and clear fluid dripped from his glans, the woman looked up at him with tear-stained eyes. And then, finally, with tears streaming down her indifferent face, she bit down hard on his penis. Her characteristic languid eyes were red and swollen with tears and pain.

And that scene was more sensual and obscener than any he had ever seen.

As he listlessly stared at the messy traces left by his multiple ejaculations, Dokyung suddenly became curious. About the other expressions that indifferent face could make.

But that didn’t mean he intended to actively search for the woman. He had too many things to worry about recently to be distracted by mere curiosity.

However, when he met the woman again by chance, Dokyung smiled.

He was so drawn to her that he even thought that if they met by chance one more time, he would make time for such a distraction, even amidst his busy schedule.

And when the third chance finally led him to Raon, he saw it.

He saw her indifferent face, which had remained unmoved even in the face of violence, soften with a single phone call, briefly crumble at each word spoken from the other end of the line, only to return to a faint smile.

Although they had only met three times, she was the first woman he had seen with such a variety of expressions.

And…

Recalling the woman’s face contorted as if she were about to burst into tears, Dokyung smacked his lips with a nasty smile.

“Hye-sung…”

He also wanted to see that small face crumble miserably.