chapter 21
21 – 21.
A soft, gentle sensation pressed against my lips.
A deep kiss filled with tenderness.
“…!”
Startled by the sudden skinship, I opened my eyes wide and quickly moved my body back.
Swoosh. With her lips slightly apart, she whispered softly with a faint expression on her face.
“…first kiss….”
In a fleeting moment, our eyes met with a subtle gaze.
Unconsciously, my saliva went down with a certain sensuous scent in the air.
“Was she always this beautiful?”
I knew she was pretty from the beginning, but this was the first time I felt her charm so strongly.
“No, this isn’t right.”
For a moment, my heart wavered, but I pushed away the turmoil in my mind and distanced myself from her.
“…stop now.”
If we cross the line, we can’t remain friends.
Well, our relationship was already ambiguous, not just simple friendship.
But still, there is a line.
Above all, I didn’t want to do something that I couldn’t take responsibility for, something that wasn’t even in the realm of being lovers.
“…let’s pretend that it didn’t happen just now….”
That’s when it happened.
Hanryeowon grabbed my collar tightly and without a chance to stop her, she swiftly took off her top.
“Hey, hey!”
Panicked, I quickly covered my eyes and stopped her.
“Hurry up and put your clothes back on?! You’ll regret it if you keep doing this!”
However, she didn’t stop there.
Swoosh, swoosh. After removing something, she threw it onto my body.
“…!”
Under the hand that I tried to cover my eyes with, I caught a glimpse of a freshly removed bra.
“Is this, is this real?!”
Is the human heart really this cunning? My heart pounded uncontrollably in response to her successive provocations.
“This is crossing the line,” I thought, while also thinking, “But is it right to forcefully refuse when she’s going this far?” These conflicting thoughts clashed fiercely.
In that moment of confusion between reason and instinct, battling against each other.
Thunk. She threw something at me again.
This time…
It was a freshly removed pair of panties.
“!!!”
Startled, I unintentionally stared at her.
“Wow.”
Despite feeling embarrassed, I couldn’t help but be captivated by her fully exposed body.
From the chest that seemed difficult to grasp with one hand to the smoothly defined abs, and all the way down to the tightly closed thighs.
It was so stimulating that I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
“…What do you think?”
Sensing my gaze, she provocatively swayed her hips and tempted me.
“Do you want a taste…?”
In the end, succumbing to my instincts, I became thoroughly excited and warned her.
“…Clearly, you were the one who started it.”
That’s how I lost my reason.
*
After that, Hanyeo-won and I developed a more subtle relationship.
Not friends, not lovers.
It was closer to what people commonly refer to as “partners.”
Truly, it was a strange and mysterious relationship.
“It’s okay. Don’t worry about it.”
“…Really?”
“Yeah. I’m still happy, you know? hehehe.”
Even so, Hanyeo-won assured me that she was perfectly fine with things as they were, relieving my worries.
Perhaps it was her consideration for the pressure I felt in a romantic relationship.
While I felt sorry for making her wait, I also felt grateful.
I thought that someday I would have to properly repay her for her waiting.
The stunning Hanyeo-won said, “[Come pick me up from school.]”
And the opportunity to repay her came faster than I expected.
“Is this the place?”
The next day, I accepted Hanyeo-won’s request and went to the school she attended.
For the time being, I had nothing better to do, so I gladly accepted the request.
“They’re all my age.”
Since I was in a college town, there were many people around my age. Unlike me, who was just an unemployed person, I couldn’t help but envy those who were going to college.
“Yoochan!”
How long had I been standing there waiting? From far away, Hanyeo-won came towards me, waving her hands.
“There’s someone next to you.”
She had a few friends with her.
“This is my boyfriend!”
“Hello.”
Hanyeo-won introduced me to her friends as her boyfriend, naturally.
Since I couldn’t explain our relationship to her friends, I played along as her boyfriend without a second thought.
“I’ve heard a lot about you from Hanyeo-won!”
“Oh my, you’re really handsome. Nice to meet you.”
“Wow, you’re tall…?”
I wondered if she had talked about me a lot before.
Her friends also glanced at Hanyeo-won with a hint of envy.
“We’re going to have a meal, would you like to come with us?”
“If you have any friends worth calling…”
“What are you talking about! Oh, my. You have no tact… I’m sorry. Our friends are a handful.”
“No, it’s okay. Let’s eat together next time when we have time.”
“I’ll wait! Definitely!”
“Don’t forget about our friends…!”
“I’ll bring them over in a snap.”
“hehehe. Well then, I’ll go first!”
In one way or another, I didn’t feel too bad, as if I had boosted her spirits.
…Of course, introducing myself as her boyfriend without permission was a separate issue.
“I’m your boyfriend?”
Parting with our friends, I narrowed my eyes and looked at her, who casually crossed her arms.
Then she shamelessly replied as if she didn’t know what she was talking about.
“No? A male friend. Boyfriend. That’s right, isn’t it?”
“That’s true?”
“Yeah. Isn’t it?”
There was a feeling of trying to hide something subtly, but I didn’t bother asking further.
“Anyway! Where are we going now? Have you eaten?”
“Wherever. We have to go home.”
I, who had come to pick her up, naturally tried to go home.
But she, shaking her hand with a ring on it back and forth, came up with a meaningful remark.
“It’s hard to clean up if we do it at home.”
“…Huh?”
“Uh?”
Hanryowon, who met my gaze with her large eyes, tilted her head following me.
‘This guy. Could it be…’
I belatedly understood his intentions and looked at her with determination in my eyes.
She chuckled and naturally led me towards the busy street.
“You didn’t know I called you to go on a date?”
“I just said to come pick me up.”
“Well, since we’ve come this far, of course we should go on a date!”
“There are only bars around here.”
“But there are plenty of motels, right?”
I lost my words at her casual mention of motels.
She slyly took something out of her bag and whispered in my ear.
“I brought some pills today.”
“Pills?”
“Yeah! Pills that let us do whatever we want. hehehe.”
“Wait, when did you get those…?”
“Does it matter? What matters is that we don’t have to hold back, right?”
Hanryuwon provocatively pressed my arm against my chest with an eerie gaze.
“If you don’t want to, just put it on and do it.”
His actions since earlier were so unsettling that I felt like I had to scold him properly.
“…You need to be scolded.”
“hehehe. Scold me a lot.”
In the end, I succumbed to her again.
*
There is an old saying that the late wind is the scariest.
Hanyeo-won, who woke up relatively late compared to others, moved like a rabbit in heat all year round.
If you look at her speed, she really seems like a rabbit.
Anyway. She would come to my house almost every day or call me out and demand physical affection without fail.
In the restroom, a room café, or a comic book store.
Not to mention our house or a motel, we even enjoyed physical intimacy in a park near her house.
It had been a long time since I felt this sense of lingering attachment.
Goddess Hanyeo [How about this? Should I order one?]
And she started touching costumes as well.
Goddess Hanyeo [What should I engrave on the collar?]
She also gradually introduced various types of play.
“Her pace is too fast.”
Her learning speed was truly monstrous.
“Well, even so…”
The reason I could accept all of her actions as cute was because she fully respected my life.
“Oh, are you going to meet Juheon?”
“Yeah. It’s the first time since high school, right?”
“I see. Okay! Have fun and don’t drink too much.”
“Sure. I’ll contact you after I finish.”
[Yes, yes!]
Hanryeowon never interfered with whatever I did.
As long as there was sufficient explanation, she wholeheartedly trusted me.
Some might say she didn’t seem interested, but from my perspective, that was not the case at all.
In fact, I felt strongly that she deeply trusted me.
“Would it be okay for us to keep seeing each other like this…?”
That’s why I was able to trust her in return.
“Oh, Juheon! Over here!”
“Hey. It’s Kang Yuchan. It’s been a while since graduation, right?”
It was the day we met as high school friends after a long time and enjoyed a chat.
“A hostess club? Crazy. I want to work there but I can’t.”
“Do you want the boss’s number? I still have it.”
“Oh, forget it then.”
As we shared updates over drinks, he suddenly asked about Hanryeowon.
“So, how is things with Lyeowon these days?”
Kim Juheon and I became friends through Hanryeowon’s introduction, and he liked Hanryeowon’s friends, so he sometimes gave relationship advice.
“Just, you know. We’re getting along well as friends.”
I casually answered his question and refilled my empty glass…
“Hey, you don’t have to hide it from me.”
Suddenly, he brought up words that I couldn’t understand.
“What?”
“That you’re dating Hanryeo-won. I know everything.”
“Huh… What?”
“What’s wrong? Why are you reacting like that? Aren’t you dating her?”
Kim Joo-heon explained with a slightly flustered face.
There is a rumor spreading among high school classmates that Hanryeo-won and Kang Yoo-chan are dating.
“Who’s saying that?”
I asked about the origin of the rumor.
“He always posts pictures of you guys on Instagram.”
It was Hanryeo-won’s SNS.
“Really…?”
“You didn’t know?”
As it turned out, the story was that Hanryeo-won had been consistently uploading pictures of us on her SNS, which led to the spread of such rumors.
“No way, her?”
Realizing the truth behind the rumor, I immediately made a call as soon as the drinking session ended to confirm the facts.
“You posted our picture on Instagram?”
And then…
[Oh, you didn’t know?]
They replied as if questioning whether I really didn’t know.
“I told you before, didn’t I? Can we post our pictures? So you said it was okay for you to post.”
“You asked me…?”
“Yeah!”
I paused for a moment at her confident tone.
“Did I really say okay to that…?”
I questioned my own actions.
“Did you forget or something?”
“Well, is that so…?”
In the end, I concluded that I had forgotten….
One day, living not as a boyfriend of Hanyeo-won but as a boyfriend who wasn’t Hanyeo-won’s boyfriend.
“It’s unusually quiet today.”
It was when I was waiting for a shift change at the convenience store where I had recently started working.
Ring… Ring…
Suddenly, a call came from Hanyeo-won.
“What’s up?”
Unless it was something urgent, we didn’t call each other during work hours according to our agreement.
Seizing the opportunity of no customers, I quickly answered the call.
“Uh, what’s going on?”
But.
“Yoo, Yoo-chan! I’m sorry for calling while you’re working… Do you happen to have time for dinner tonight?”
Somehow, her tone when asking about my schedule was oddly stiff.
“I have some time. Why?”
When I asked for the reason….
[ Well…. our little uncle and aunt suggested having a meal together…. ]
“….Huh?”
It was a proposal for a meal with none other than my parents.