HYUNG 65

“What do you mean, first kiss? You kissed me in secret while I was sleeping last time.”

“That and this are different.”

“How are they different?”

When I tilted my chin, Ham Dowon swallowed hard.

“Actually… what I did was…”

Ham Dowon’s voice trembled.

“Right. What you did was.”

“…Sexual harassment. I am reflecting on it, but since you were pretending to sleep, hyung, I got greedy… Of course, even if you were really sleeping, I shouldn’t have done that, but…”

“You really have a knack for killing the mood.”

“I said I’m reflecting…”

Looking at the face of a truly repentant Ham Dowon, who didn’t realize that wasn’t the issue, I felt quite frustrated.

“I’ll forgive you. Stop reflecting. Let’s settle this.”

I subtly pulled Ham Dowon’s hand away and tried to kiss him again. I really wanted to try kissing him properly. But this time, Ham Dowon’s index finger blocked my mouth. My excitement fizzled out.

“I’m asking if we are dating then. Give me a clear answer. No slipping away vaguely. Absolutely not.”

“…No matter how much dating experience I have, I only kiss people I’m dating.”

I moved that finger away too. Even so, I still couldn’t kiss him. Because Ham Dowon snapped his head to the side.

“You even have a lot of experience?”

“…I mean relatively. Relatively. You said you’ve never dated. Even if I only had one girlfriend, it’s still more than you.”

“It’s not one person. …There are three that I know of. Even all of them were pretty…”

Ham Dowon’s voice trailed off as he glared at me. I felt like some total piece of trash Casanova. I suppressed the sigh that wanted to come out, grabbed Ham Dowon’s face with both hands, pulled him in, and said clearly right in front of his nose.

“You’re the one I’ve met after passing all those people by.”

“Hyung. That…”

“Yeah.”

Ham Dowon swallowed hard. Ah, finally, all the obstacles had disappeared. At last, we were close enough for our breaths to mingle, and just as our lips and the tips of our mouths lightly touched, Ham Dowon flinched but did not pull away. Instead, he grumbled.

“You really seem like a player…”

“Shh.”

I finally pressed my lips firmly against Ham Dowon’s.

As I slowly opened my mouth, Ham Dowon’s lips opened along with mine. Ah, now I have no choice but to be certain. I like him enough to want to do this. Just by our lips touching, it felt like electricity was shooting up my spine. I felt a thirst. I wanted to feel more. I held onto Ham Dowon’s cheeks and tried to kiss him even more deeply. While stroking Ham Dowon’s trembling back and moving my tongue slightly, something got caught on the tip of my tongue.

“What is this?”

I pulled my lips away for a moment, took the thing off my tongue, and looked at it. It looked like a short hair. It was a transparent color, so it wasn’t mine.

“Ah! That!”

Ham Dowon snatched that hair and hid it behind his back.

“What is that?”

“…Saja’s hair.”

Ham Dowon mumbled while looking down.

“No… before I came, I was playing with him and petting him… Saja was rubbing his body against my coat and clothes while playing, so I didn’t know it was stuck there, but that…”

“…In all my life, this is the first time I’ve kissed cat hair.”

“Hyung, I’ll go shake it off outside my clothes, so wait just a second…!”

“Forget it. If it comes out again while we’re kissing, I’ll just pretend I didn’t notice and swallow it.”

“What if a hairball forms in your stomach, hyung?”

I pulled the guy back as he tried to leave. Ham Dowon allowed himself to be pulled back while pretending not to, but he avoided my lips.

“What’s a hairball?”

“A clump of hair. Cats groom themselves, so clumps of hair often form in their mouths. So they vomit because of hairballs, and that’s why you have to be careful…”

Leaning his face on my shoulder, Ham Dowon went on a long tangent about cats that I hadn’t even asked for. Since he seemed to be trying to drag out more stories he couldn’t even remember, saying, “And, and…”, I subtly covered his mouth with my hand to silence him.

“Let’s talk about the cat later. But by any chance, are you stalling for time right now?”

“…I’m not. No way.”

With his mouth blocked by my palm, Ham Dowon mumbled with unclear pronunciation. He answers quite well for someone I hadn’t even asked what kind of time he was stalling for.

“You are stalling. Why, now that our lips have actually touched, do you think it’s not that great? Earlier, you kept your mouth shut tight so I couldn’t do anything.”

It was a joke at first, but having said it out loud, it felt a bit hurtful. Even though he was the one who said he liked me first, he acts like this now that we’re actually dating and about to kiss. I liked it just from our lips touching.

“Now that you think about it, you can’t bring yourself to give your first kiss to someone like me?”

“No way! That’s not it!”

Ham Dowon jerked his head up and huffed.

“Then what is it?”

“…Because you’re so skillful, hyung, so I’m really… embarrassed, and I’m scared of what it’ll be like if we do more, and because I’m so bad at it, so…”

Ham Dowon’s gaze, which had been looking straight at me, soon flickered here and there. It was cute how he pouted his lips and flickered them like a duck while mumbling, so when I chuckled, Ham Dowon gave me a dirty look.

“Then are you going to go learn from someone else?”

“How do you learn something like that?”

“By doing it yourself.”

“…I don’t want to do it with anyone else but you, hyung.”

Ham Dowon hit my chest with his clenched fist. It didn’t hurt. Since he started raising a cat, the way he acted spoiled as if he had become a cat himself was quite cute. Actually, wasn’t that hair from earlier his hair instead of Saja’s? It turns out Ham Dowon was a cat. Since it was truly a stray thought, I suppressed a pointless laugh and then carefully took hold of Ham Dowon’s chin.

“Then I guess you have no choice but to learn from me. Do you want to learn, or not?”

“Hyung, you really seem like a player…”

Even while grumbling, Ham Dowon was staring intently at only my lips as if possessed. He wants to do it too, for sure. Yet he has so many fears.

“Don’t you think you know too little?”

“It’s not like there’s an academy that teaches things like that…”

“That’s why I’ll be your instructor. Should I take this as the tuition fee?”

I pressed down on Ham Dowon’s lower lip with my thumb. Ham Dowon furrowed his brows, and I laughed softly. Ah, it’s funny. And he was cute. This Ham Dowon, who is sensitive and sharp yet incredibly innocent.

“…Hyung.”

“Yeah.”

“Hyung, you really are a player. It’s not just that you seem like one.”

Whether he was resentful, Ham Dowon initiated the kiss first this time. He did well up to tilting his head to the side to match the angle, but the way he just licked around my lips with his tongue was quite clumsy. It tickled. I encouraged him in my own way by patting his head, but seeing as it wasn’t going well at all, I eventually pulled my lips away.

“Ham Dowon, are you a fast learner?”

“…Why?”

“Because there’s too much to teach you. How am I supposed to teach this… Hold on.”

I’ve never taught something like this in my life, so what should I do? I thought for a moment, then unwrapped a candy that was in the car and put it in my mouth.

“Try to take the candy. Only with your tongue.”

“… .”

“Hurry. It’s all melting.”

I moved the candy I was biting on the left to my right cheek, grabbed Ham Dowon’s forearm to pull him in, and waited. For Ham Dowon to kiss me first.

Ham Dowon looked at me with somewhat dissatisfied eyes, pointlessly spending time stroking my cheek and brushing my hair back, before finally pressing his lips against mine very late. And unlike before, when he only flickered around the outside of my lips, he thrust his tongue in quite deeply.

The moment Ham Dowon’s tongue was about to touch the candy, I quickly hid it under my tongue. I rubbed mine against Ham Dowon’s tongue while pretending not to notice, and Ham Dowon flinched. Not giving up, Ham Dowon gallantly rummaged through my mouth again. It was an act closer to truly searching for candy than a kiss, but it was much better than the first time.

“Mmm…”

I closed Ham Dowon’s eyes as he stared intently at me, and I closed mine as well. I wrapped my arms around Ham Dowon’s neck. As expected, it was different from the girlfriends I had met until now. Even though Ham Dowon was on the pretty side, he wasn’t frail. His neck was much thicker, and his body was larger and firmer, but it wasn’t bad. No, on the contrary, it felt strangely stimulating. When I slowly opened my eyes, I saw Ham Dowon’s eyelashes trembling. However, the way he was furrowing his brows hard looked quite unusual. I quickly pulled my face away.

“Ham Dowon, what’s wrong?”

“…I can’t, breathe. My breath is…”

Ham Dowon panted, his ribcage repeatedly inflating and contracting heavily.