MERRY 7

The college student who used to spend his vacations at his family home. Who would have thought that the man who didn’t have a bold bone in his body would show up years later and shamelessly start stalking me? I felt like a fool for ever admiring him in the past, and a bitter laugh escaped my lips.

Looking back, those books he enjoyed reading might have been dark, violent, and sinister genre fiction, and the kindness he showed while listening to my pointless jokes might have just been training to bring a victim down.

Then what was that gentle touch when he handled me? What was that look in his eyes, as if I were precious, and what was with the devotion he showed while shoving my cock down his throat and sucking on it so hard?

It was just as my thoughts were spiraling one after another. Suddenly, the car veered to the right and picked up speed. While struggling to keep my balance as the car swerved, I witnessed a massive dump truck grazing past us by a hair. If he hadn’t reacted quickly, I wouldn’t have just been hit; I would have been crushed to death.

Unlike me, whose heart was about to leap out of my chest in shock, Ethan calmly turned into an alley and brought the car to a stop. I couldn’t believe he had the peace of mind to pull out his phone and check his messages in a moment like this. The man in front of me really was quite different from the Ethan Reed I used to know. The guy who used to get scared and hold my hand while watching third-rate horror movies wasn’t here.

After several deep breaths, I finally managed to calm down. My eyes scanned the scene outside the window, and then I flinched. The arm I had instinctively reached out toward the driver’s seat when the car swayed was still blocking Ethan’s chest. He gestured toward my wrist with a glance, and I hurriedly pulled my arm back.

“It’s not because I was worried you’d get hurt. It’s just a habit. My reflexes are just overdeveloped. And my arm happened to feel a bit stiff anyway…”

My voice grew smaller and smaller until it died out, realizing how pathetic the excuse sounded. Ethan’s words about a terrible lie being worse than silence stabbed at my conscience.

“Sure, let’s go with that.”

He nodded nonchalantly and slid his phone back into his pocket.

“What kind of message is so important in a situation like—no, I don’t care. I don’t want to know anything about you.”

I wanted to scold my own rambling mouth. I bit my lip in annoyance and rubbed my face with one hand, but then Ethan suddenly leaned in close.

In a moment where I should have been thinking of a horror movie scene where a ghost lunges out of the shadows, why on earth was I thinking of a romance film set against a spring landscape? My brain must have been scrambled from the shock of almost being flattened by a truck.

Ethan, who hadn’t budged even when the car swerved violently, leaned his body toward me and took a deep breath. The sound and temperature of his breath against my ear were vivid.

In an instant, I forgot how to breathe. I couldn’t draw air and went stiff as ice, yet I felt burning hot. I felt such an intense heat radiating from myself that Ethan’s breath actually felt cool by comparison—hot enough to make the cold sweat running down my spine sizzle and evaporate.

It felt as if warning bells signaling a breakdown were ringing all throughout my body. The sound was as powerful as tinnitus but lacked a physical form. However, the symptoms were undeniably real. The system regulating my body temperature was warped, and the nerves detecting stimuli were broken. The way my fingertips trembled against my will was part of the same malfunction.

“Nothing happened.”

Ethan muttered lowly into my ear, almost like a whisper to himself but clearly intended for me to hear, and then he pulled back. His black horn-rimmed glasses lightly grazed my left jaw.

I reflexively clenched my jaw. This was a malfunction on a completely different level than the slight anomaly I experienced in front of the gallery earlier today; this time, it was an undeniable, glaring breakdown. While I struggled to fix my body as it creaked like rusted machinery, I snapped back even louder to keep him from noticing the problem.

“What? ‘Nothing happened’? I just saw a crazy-ass truck a second ago and you’re saying that?”

“At your friend’s house.”

“My friend’s house? What are you even talking…”

“There’s no scent. Doesn’t look like you showered, either.”

As expected, stalking wasn’t a job just anyone could do. We had just barely escaped a major accident, yet he was serenely focused on me. In Ethan’s detached eyes, there wasn’t shock or relief—there was only me. Only Somerset Quinn seemed to trigger his nerves.

It seemed he had spent quite a lot of mental energy while waiting for me in front of Liam’s place. He must have thought of me enough to set his imagination on fire. I felt like a madman for even focusing on that fact.

A sense of joy that my plan had worked coexisted with a sense of pride that I had managed to unsettle him. Before I knew it, the dump truck was out of my mind and I was focused on Ethan’s reaction. Even if I couldn’t stop myself, I still had enough sanity left to know that this was insane. Feeling exposed, I barked out at him to cover my tracks.

“You… you… what kind of person have you become? What the hell happened to you to make you turn out like this?”

“I wonder. Didn’t you already forget that you said you don’t want to know about me?”

I stared intently at him as he replied casually. I was searching for any crumb of embarrassment or a hint of jealousy. I scanned him thoroughly so as not to miss a thing.

The blink of his eyes, the bridge of his nose caught in the night light, the way his hand lightly touched his hair, the faint movement of his lips. Is his mouth dry because he’s anxious? Doesn’t he look a bit cold? While I was busy speculating, I felt Ethan’s gaze shift toward me.

Terrified that he’d caught me scrutinizing him, my voice got loud again.

“You know everything about me! You know my home, my car, my job, and my workplace, but I don’t know anything about you except for the fact that you’re a stalker. I just thought that was unfair.”

When I countered him like a rapid-fire gun, Ethan let out a short chuckle. There was a hint of amusement in the sound of his breath, but his expression remained perfectly serene. In a smooth tone, he began to recite facts about the model Somerset Quinn.

“Somerset Quinn. Twenty-three. Born and raised in a wealthy neighborhood in the Upper East Side. Debuted at a late age for a model, and received significant attention for his handsome looks at his debut show. A classic beauty with strong features, and has a magnificent physique with well-distributed muscle on long limbs.”

“Well, I was born with it.”

“Rarely appears in interviews or talk shows, and even when appearing occasionally, hardly ever mentions his private life. Fans have to be satisfied with glimpses of his daily life through social media posts or paparazzi shots.”

“It’s not that I’m trying to be mysterious. I just am mysterious.”

“Has been offered numerous acting roles. However, it’s said he turned them all down. He reportedly received a personal love call from a director for a lead role in a film depicting high-level sexual fetishes, and was also in the running for a role in this year’s biggest hit hero movie. He was captured by paparazzi with fellow fashion model Susan Whittaker, but both sides claimed to be just friends. No record of any public relationships.”

“Relationships are just… Hey, that’s all stuff you can find by searching. Are you really going to play dumb and act like that’s all you know when you’re my stalker?”

If he were the type to be satisfied with just that, he wouldn’t be following me around. Sure enough, Ethan took on an arrogant air as if he knew everything.

“What do you want? Just say the word. Should I recite your home address? How about the fact that you slept with the male model you shot a pictorial with two months ago? Or that you slept with a fellow model’s manager? If one wanted to dig into your private life, they should be looking at the men, not Susan Whittaker. When I heard that ridiculous nickname of yours, Jaws…”

Seeing his crumpled expression, a sudden surge of intense defensiveness rose up inside me. He should be feeling responsible for why I ended up with a nickname like that, yet here he was judging me.

The nickname Jaws started not long after Ethan disappeared from my life. At the time, I was a movie buff who would watch the film Jaws on Christmas dozens of times, and whenever my friends asked to meet up, I’d turn them down saying I was going to watch Jaws. The nickname originated from them jeering at me, saying, “Jaws again? That damn Jaws!”

I don’t actually like the movie Jaws on Christmas. It’s not my preferred genre, and it doesn’t even star an actor I like. I’m certainly not the type of person who watches a movie with a terrible one-star rating just to feel superior about having “unique” taste.