NTH 34

“Uh……, what?”

Jeha, who had been answering distractedly, stared at Nana with surprised eyes. Nana slowly blinked his eyes, fringed with damp, thick eyelashes.

“Don’t put any meaning into it, just kiss me.”

“What are you talking about, why all of a sudden?”

“Does there have to be a reason? The first man in my entire life to ever worry about me is right in front of my eyes, and he’s rich, capable, handsome, and even has a great body, so I guess I’m feeling a little excited.”

Jeha was a bit flustered, but he didn’t feel offended.

Come to think of it, Nana had always been like this. He had stolen Jeha’s things, spoken informally from their very first meeting, and acted shamelessly and rudely in every situation, but strangely, Jeha had never felt bad about it.

Rather, right now, he was even feeling a sense of unease. Jeha tried his best to think as rationally as possible.

“Even so, does it make sense to ask for a kiss out of the blue?”

“Why shouldn’t it? We’ve bathed together, and I just thought it would feel good to kiss now that we’re touching like this, so I just said it. If you don’t want to, well, we just won’t do it.”

Watching Nana speak as if he had nothing to lose, even after saying something so absurd, Jeha thought he understood the nature of the vague anxiety he was feeling.

“By any chance, have you… been like this with other people too?”

“Huh? Like what?”

“I’m asking if you’ve asked people to kiss you just because you liked their looks or they seemed to have some money.”

“I have. It was mostly the latter. A guy with money, even if his looks were a bit lacking, could buy me a meal or a drink, and if I was lucky, he’d pay for a motel room too.”

“……”

“But that wasn’t my intention just now. You’ve already given me food and a place to sleep. I just wanted to do it, but if you were offended, I’m sorry. Don’t think too deeply about it, heup……!”

Jeha’s large hand pulled the back of Nana’s head forward. Nana’s lips were sucked into Jeha’s as if they were being devoured. As Nana naturally parted his lips, a hot, soft piece of flesh rushed in like a whirlwind, ravaging every corner of his mouth. It licked his uniquely red lips for a long time and rubbed them with great care.

Whenever their lips seemed about to part, Jeha’s kiss would cling on persistently like a magnet. It was passionate, yet it also felt as if he were angry about something.

It was different from the kisses where he had to constantly worry about how to seduce his partner into paying for the meal, or how to entice them into paying for an overnight stay instead of just a few hours. It was also incomparable to Cheon Sagang’s, which left him feeling drained of all strength after he came to his senses from trembling in fear.

For a kiss from a man who had seemed like a rigid, classical scholar in all matters, it was excessively lewd, yet a tenderness that did not match its passionate pace flowed into Nana through the tip of his tongue.

“Ueung……, it feels good.”

Nana wrapped his arms around Jeha’s neck and pulled him closer. He swiftly lifted Nana and placed him on his lap.

Jeha held the nape of Nana’s neck, tilting his head as he pleased, and kissed him without rest. A sweet taste of unknown origin grew stronger and stronger from Nana’s saliva, making it impossible for him to stop. Jeha didn’t notice at all as Nana, growing short of breath, began to pant.

Nana’s mind grew faint, as if he were being eaten alive by Jeha.

“Wa, wait……, I, can’t breathe……, haah, haah…….”

Only when Nana pushed him away, thumping on his chest, did Jeha snap back to his senses.

“Sorry! Are you okay?”

Panting heavily as if he had just finished a sprint, Nana leaned weakly against Jeha’s chest. Holding Nana and caressing his face, Jeha said urgently.

“Are you okay? I’m sorry. I completely forgot that you were sick.”

Nana murmured with a faint smile on his pale face.

“No, I liked it. You’re really good at it.”

“We should get out now. I’ll help you, so stand up slowly.”

Jeha carefully led Nana out of the bathtub. He washed Nana’s hair, rinsed his body, and put a shower gown on him, then quickly washed himself and came out.

Wearing only a pair of black boxer briefs, Jeha dried the remaining water from Nana’s body and meticulously dressed him in underwear and pajamas. When he took out the hair dryer and started drying his hair, Nana stared up at him.

“Why are you so skilled at washing other people? Standing there in just your underwear, you look like a bathhouse mister.”

“The things you say. It’s all done, so go out and sit in the living room for a bit. I need to clean up the bathroom and change the bedsheets.”

“Can I come to this bathhouse again? The mister is so sexy, I want to come every day.”

“Get out, quick.”

After chasing Nana out to the living room, Jeha drained the water from the still-foamy bathtub and cleaned up.

When he returned to the bedroom to change the sheets and blanket and then went to the living room, Nana had already sprawled out on the sofa and fallen asleep. It seemed he had become extremely drowsy after taking a hot bath while not fully recovered.

Muttering to himself about who was the homeowner and who was the housekeeper, Jeha had no choice but to pick Nana up again, lay him on his own bed, and cover him with a blanket.

Jeha briefly considered sleeping in the living room, but worried that Nana might get sick during the night, he decided to stay by his side. There was also the fact that Nana, lying alone on the large, wide bed, looked even smaller and lonelier than usual.

Sitting next to Nana, Jeha gazed blankly at his pale face and listened quietly to the shallow breaths that escaped him regularly.

Nana’s claim that he only ran errands in CEO Cheon’s office was surely a lie. The memory of Nana’s unusually gaunt face when he found him in the phone booth made his fists clench unconsciously.

If Nana was truly those children from his past lives, and if Cheon Sagang was his parasitic soul, then their encounters in every life with Jeha could not be a mere coincidence.

No matter how connected they were in past lives, there was no way for reincarnated souls to recognize each other. Furthermore, he had never even heard a rumor of souls being reborn together in the same country and the same era over several lifetimes.

And yet, the fact that Nana, Cheon Sagang, and Jeha had already crossed paths in several lives had to be seen as an indication of a special thread of fate between them.

Was it possible to figure out what that connection was and save Nana’s soul from the shackles of the parasitic soul within the short span of one year? If it wasn’t resolved in this life, would he meet different versions of Nana and Cheon Sagang again in the next life?

Whatever the answer was, Jeha had already resolved to never again let Nana be somewhere beyond his reach.

Cheon Sagang could not gain power without his host, Nana. Therefore, he would try to find where Nana was by any means necessary and attempt to make contact. Jeha had to focus on protecting Nana while also preparing to confront Cheon Sagang.

But how on earth?

Was a parasitic soul the kind of being that would quietly die from physical violence like being stabbed with a knife or strangled? Even if Jeha killed Cheon Sagang that way in this life, was there any guarantee that Cheon Sagang wouldn’t be reborn with his host, Nana, in the next life?

Looking at Nana’s peacefully sleeping face, Jeha’s heart felt utterly lost.

Nana tossed in his sleep, turning his body toward Jeha. As he came face to face with Nana, the first thing that caught his eye was his lips. The lips that had been blistered and chapped with fever had regained their natural reddish hue, perhaps due to sufficient rest.

The memory of the deep kiss he shared with Nana in the tub made his heart beat faster on its own. Nana’s body, which he had briefly caressed, was much thinner than it looked, to the point that it evoked more sorrow than lust.

Jeha recalled Gu Minho’s words: ‘If you want to dream of a past life, try increasing the intensity of the stimulation.’ If what he said was true, then with today’s incident in the bathtub, Jeha might be able to dream of another past life.

He was curious about what other forms Nana had taken when he had crossed his path, but at the same time, he was also afraid. Recalling a past life’s connection meant that he would have to witness another of Nana’s deaths.

With a troubled heart, Jeha closed his eyes and tried to sleep.

Cheon Sagang parked his car near Haengseong Station and quickened his pace under an umbrella. With the darkness thick and rain falling on the quiet street, it was desolate beyond compare.

Nana, whom he had been holding captive, had escaped around lunchtime about a week later.

He had made Nana stay in a small side room attached to the Angel Cash Loan office, making him clean the office and run errands, and whenever he had a chance, he would kiss and caress him, sucking and drinking Nana’s saliva and bodily fluids.

He, who had been a trivial parasitic soul, had built up his power in every life by absorbing the energy of his host, Nana.

So long ago that he couldn’t even remember, when he first attached himself to Nana’s past life, he was nothing more than a literal ‘soul,’ without anything that could be called a physical body.

He had tried to take over Nana’s body in a past life but failed, and met his death along with Nana. He thought his long and intense desire to become human had ended just like that.

But, unbelievably, he was given the chance of a next life. Although he had the most lowly and insignificant status and a frail body, he was reborn in the form of a human with a body.

From the moment he was born, Cheon Sagang could feel that his body was extremely incomplete. It was like an empty shell that could crumble at any moment.

In all lives thereafter, Cheon Sagang’s only goal was to find Nana. He had to find Nana, who would have been reincarnated somewhere on this earth around the same time as him.

Whenever Cheon Sagang became aware of a new life, he was always in the form of an adult. All the knowledge and information necessary to live a new life would unfold in his mind like a panorama.

He was able to find Nana without much difficulty either. The time and place where he found Nana were different each time, but he didn’t have to worry at all about how to find Nana in this wide world. Even if he just passed by him from a distance, he could recognize Nana at a glance, as if it were engraved in his very bones.

By finding Nana, forming an intimate relationship with him, and constantly absorbing his saliva and bodily fluids, his incomplete body would accumulate yang energy. He could become stronger as Nana became weaker. If they became close, he could absorb his energy at a frightening pace through sexual intercourse.

It would be great if he could absorb it endlessly like that, but there was a limit to the amount of energy a parasitic soul could take from its host in a single life.

After absorbing the host’s vital energy to the maximum, it was more advantageous for the host to die quickly. The greater the host’s lingering attachment to life and resentment, the more densely their life force would congeal, making it easier for the parasitic soul to absorb it in the next life.

However, there was one thing that was absolutely forbidden for a parasitic soul.

And that was killing the host with its own hands.

No matter how much power it gained, a parasitic soul that directly murdered its host would be annihilated on the spot and could never be reincarnated again. This, too, was like a survival instinct that he could feel on his own without being taught by anyone.

Therefore, for Cheon Sagang, life was very simple.

He opens his eyes, awakens to a new life, and finds Nana. He extracts as much energy as possible from Nana. After that, he either drives him to despair in some way to make him take his own life, or he creates a situation where he is forced to be killed by someone else.

That was the one and only reason and purpose for which Cheon Sagang was born and breathed. The time he and Nana had repeated such lives was nearly a thousand years.

When he finally absorbed all of Nana’s energy, that soul would become Cheon Sagang’s. He would become a complete human, like other powerful souls who had gone through many reincarnations, and would be able to switch bodies without ever dying.

He didn’t know exactly when, but Cheon Sagang instinctively felt that the day he would become human was not far off.

He could tell just by looking at how with each reincarnation, Nana was born with an increasingly frail body and a short lifespan, while Cheon Sagang came to possess a stronger and stronger physique. The period of time Cheon Sagang could remain in this world alone after Nana’s death was also gradually getting longer.

But in this life, Nana’s energy was extremely weak, weaker than at any time before. What’s more, even though they were in the same city of Seoul, it took quite a long time to find him. Furthermore, his profession was a loan shark, but Nana’s status as an undocumented person meant he couldn’t even take out a loan, so they had nNo point of contact, making it difficult to even approach him.

After many twists and turns, he managed to force a connection, but unlike in past lives where they could resonate with relative ease, this life’s Nana was suspicious and fearful, making it difficult to form an intimate relationship. On top of that, he felt an uncomfortable sense of foreignness, as if there were an obstacle between them, leaving Cheon Sagang on the verge of being consumed by anxiety.

In the end, his impatience made him take a drastic step. It was just last week that he had forcibly confined Nana to the office and began to prey on him. As he absorbed his saliva and bodily fluids, his body filled with energy at a frightening rate, just as he had expected.