EAR Ch 14

Jaemin looked up at such Seungpyo with a dumbfounded face, but didn’t say a word. He merely let out a small sigh as if resigning himself, stood up from his seat, and walked following Seungpyo.

As the two disappeared from view one after the other, the kids exchanged questions like “Did something happen between them?”, “Were those two close?”, but there was no particular information, so there was a limit to their guesses as well. They quickly turned their attention elsewhere.

Breaking through the hallway bustling with the break time, the two who went straight without saying a single word headed to the resource room this time as well. The resource room is a place where teachers frequently come and go, so average students don’t linger around here without a reason. Seungpyo locked the door just like an hour ago and pushed Jaemin toward the inside.

Whether the attitude of going out of his way to push roughly even though he would have gone in without being pushed was dissatisfying, Ryu Jaemin knitted his brows slightly, but this time too, there were no words.

Silence flowed for a moment. Seungpyo, who stood blocking the door, let out a large breath, then crossed his arms and stood leaning back.

“If I tell you what I want, can you grant all of it?”

“If possible, I will. I don’t want to keep making situations like this with you. It’s scary and….”

“Scary, my ass.”

Seungpyo uncrossed his arms and put his hands into his school uniform pockets this time. On his handsome lips hung a sneer like a piece intentionally adorned crookedly. Jaemin looked at such Seungpyo with a gaze that looked like he was really scared.

Seungpyo didn’t say his demands right away and sent an intent gaze toward Jaemin. From head to toe, as if one who occupied the upper hand was appraising an item, he intentionally took time and leisurely, blatantly scanned his whole body.

Although he had never directly faced a gaze beyond the screen, Jaemin was someone who had abandoned himself to group voyeurism for a long time. At the moment he subtly flinched his body as if instinctively realizing the nature of the gaze, Seungpyo opened his mouth again.

“Then if I tell you to strip in front of me too, will you strip?”

“…Huh?”

Jaemin opened his eyes wide as if genuinely surprised. As if at least his current fluster was not an act, his lips trembled faintly.

Oh Seungpyo repeatedly pondered throughout the class hours what he should demand from Ryu Jaemin to vent this anger. If he had acted annoying here too, he would have been really pissed off, but Ryu Jaemin’s reaction was quite satisfying. Seungpyo came to want to humiliate Ryu Jaemin more.

“Act like a whore in front of me too. I thought about it while listening to class and got curious. How it would be to see in person the slutty act that the number 1 student in the whole school does.”

“…”

“It seems like it would be more fun to see at school. Honestly, didn’t you post those kinds of pictures because you wanted to try doing something like this too?”

“No, Oh Seungpyo….”

Through the school uniform shirt collar that was rumpled in Seungpyo’s hand and had not completely returned to its state, Jaemin’s Adam’s apple surged shortly.

“What on earth are you talking about. How can you say something like that….”

“You said you’d grant everything, so why are you making excuses now. You don’t want to?”

On the day he picked up the cell phone, the pictures of Ryu Jaemin that he had enjoyed without noticing time passing passed through his head one by one.

Oh Seungpyo was smart, and so his memory was good too. Among the various pictures still vivid in his head, the thing that surprised Seungpyo the most was a short video of a few seconds recorded with the sound muted.

“If you jerk off in front of me the exact same way as back then, I’ll let it slide. Without muting.”

It became quiet as if literally muted. It was a silence where even the flow of time seemed to have stopped.

Thanks to that, Seungpyo was able to observe Jaemin’s facial expression changes more delicately. As if not expecting that he would make a demand like this, the fluster that overflowed without being able to be polished though he tried to endure leaks out here and there over his expressionless face.

Jaemin’s face tightly shutting its mouth with a frightened look, his troubled expression and slightly crooked eyebrows, and the jawline where strength was being applied gradually made Seungpyo amused.

To be honest, a male classmate masturbating—far from getting turned on, he wouldn’t want to see it even if someone begged him to watch while giving him money. The reason he viewed Ryu Jaemin’s pictures uploaded on SNS was, of course, not because they were genuinely hot, but because they were absurd and intriguing.

Still, well, if he could make Ryu Jaemin properly troubled, watching it live once is something he could endure.

“Why aren’t there any words?”

At Seungpyo’s urge, Jaemin powerlessly lowered his gaze. Seungpyo let out a dry laugh under his breath. Just an hour ago he was gently provoking people, yet now he was acting as if he became faint-hearted and didn’t know what to do, which was just funny.

Jaemin kept his head bowed for a long time as if suppressing his indignation, and barely opened his mouth. His voice was trembling.

“Oh Seungpyo, why are you really doing this to me? If it was to some extent I was going to give in, but you’re being too much….”

“So you’re not gonna do it?”

“I can’t. No, I won’t. Please stop picking on me. Why are you doing this to me when you mistook the person?”

Jaemin had a tearful face as if he would squeeze out tears at any moment. When he voluntarily took and uploaded all kinds of pictures to the internet that tens or hundreds of people might see, he didn’t care, so he didn’t know why he was making a fuss pretending it was hard now.

Seeing him acting brazenly as if standing at the top of his head and then suddenly trying to crawl on all fours trembling, even if he acted tough, it seemed that operating a pervert account was quite a guilty conscience to him as well.

“It’s getting more and more absurd. What did I even do that you’re already pretending to be weak.”

“What?”

“If you just hadn’t lied, I was planning to just move on? But you poked at people first.”

“What did I even do….”

“Tutoring materials? Because you think others are losers like you who risk their lives for test scores, bullshit comes out like that. I don’t do that kind of thing. For you, you’d have to spend money, spend time, and offer everything to get your current scores, but not me. Whether my score falls behind yours or not, that’s none of my business either.”

Ryu Jaemin swallowed hard. His gaze shook as if realizing late that he made a slip of the tongue.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t say it to make you feel bad.”

“Forget it. Don’t act bothersome and just do what you were told. Then I’ll refrain from passing the pictures around.”

“…”

“At this rate break time ends again. Start quickly. I’m counting down. 5, 4, 3, 2….”

Hiccup.

Seungpyo, who was folding his fingers while counting numbers, stopped the countdown with his mouth open at that moment. Right before counting ‘1’, Ryu Jaemin suddenly heaved his shoulders.

Below his face that wasn’t well visible as his head was bowed, the sound of trying hard to swallow tears was heard. Seungpyo had a dazed expression with his mouth open, and couldn’t continue his words with only his pinky finger raised.

“Don’t…. Really, it’s really not me. You saw it wrong….”

For good reason, Ryu Jaemin was literally crying. Pressing his eyes with the back of his hand, heaving his shoulders, and trembling his voice.

Though he had consciously passed by Ryu Jaemin several times over the past year, he was always a similar, in a way somewhat dry kid. His reputation at school was also like that. The number 1 in the whole school, but a quiet and nice kid who didn’t show off. A polite, smooth model student who didn’t get angry or excited greatly, didn’t laugh frivolously or pull noisy pranks, and didn’t use rough words or swear.

Because he was such a Ryu Jaemin, the fact that he was secretly doing perverted acts was all the more surprising. But now he was even crying in front of Seungpyo.

While Seungpyo remained frozen like ice, Jaemin’s crying sound also continued for a long time. However, as time passed, Seungpyo’s reason gradually returned. Being flustered and forgetting the countdown was only for a moment; at the childish sight of stubbornly insisting on a matter that would be no use denying, Seungpyo only felt even more stunned.

“You’re fucking abominable.”