Strategic Mating Partner Chapter 108

Expressing a guy who is almost 190cm tall as a puppy is a bit of a funny thing, but. Perhaps because he was a kid I had watched since his unruly, immature, and disobedient days, only his body had grown, and he was still a child on the inside. Even when he made such a grown-up face, he was just cute.

I want to mess up his hair. Taehyun, at the unconscious impulse, stroked Taehyun’s face on the screen with his thumb. If I mess up his bangs and tease him, he’ll get annoyed and tell me not to treat him like a kid. It was easy to imagine him pouting with his lips sticking out, all sulky. If I keep poking and teasing him like that, it was obvious he would pounce on me, saying you can’t do this with a kid. Just imagining all those moments made me feel good. Taehyun smiled lightly, as if he had never been down for being scolded by the coach, and replied to Sejin.

9:48 PM

Good job.

And he did not forget to quickly take a picture of just his face so that his ankle would not be visible and send it. As if to show that this was the standard of selfies.

9:49 PM

(Photo)

9:49 PM

You must be tired, get some good rest.

The opening ceremony was now really just around the corner. Taehyun smiled again as he recalled the opening ceremony procession he had participated in as a rehearsal. Unfortunately, the fencing team, to which Sejin belonged, and the taekwondo team were quite far apart. Considering that the number of athletes competing with the Korean flag was by no means small, it was, in a way, a natural thing. Still, there would be time to catch each other’s eye for a moment. Just being under the same sky as Sejin in this exciting, scary, thrilling, and happy moment was good. Being able to share the same moment was good enough.

‘I miss him.’

Taehyun, who had unconsciously thought of it again, thought to himself that this was foolish and quickly shot up from his seat. Then, he carefully moved his feet so as not to strain his taped ankle and went into the bathroom, splashing cold water on his face repeatedly. I know you are excited because you are having a late-blooming romance. You might get into trouble at this rate. Let’s not get too excited. As Taehyun was looking for a towel, with water dripping, plop plop, from his wet hair, the junior who shared the same room, haaah, was startled and handed him a towel.

“What is it, all of a sudden? A new kind of self-water torture?”

“There is such a thing. It helps improve concentration.”

Could it be that the words Taehyun had randomly spouted sounded quite plausible? As soon as Taehyun vacated the bathroom, the junior copied exactly what Taehyun had done a moment ago. It had inadvertently become a room of fools, but since it was not going to leak outside anyway, it did not matter. And so, a slightly unsettling and a little trembling night passed, and morning came. Finally, the festival of the world that everyone had been waiting for for four whole years began.

🤺

Hello, viewers, we are now here on-site in LA to broadcast the opening ceremony. This is the LA Stadium where the opening ceremony is taking place, with a maximum capacity of….

The opening ceremony was a schedule that took up the entire day. It was a huge event that took an exhaustingly long time, not only for the performances that went on for several hours, but also just for the athletes from each country to enter the stadium. I guess it was natural, given that the number of participants was in the tens of thousands. But it could not be helped that everyone was exhausted even before the performances began due to the seemingly endless waiting time.

“Wow…. Do we have to wait here again?”

Taehyun listened to the grumbling of the junior athlete, who was participating for the first time this year and muttering in a daze, as if it were cute, and replied.

“Still, the performance will start in about two hours, so it’ll be a lot better. Time flies when there’s something to see.”

Since it was an event that mobilized such a large number of people, it was not easy to even slip out to go to the bathroom once. You could go if you wanted to, but the journey back after heading to the bathroom was too arduous, so to speak. If you were not careful, it could take not just 30 minutes, but even an hour to get back to the waiting area, so you had to keep your wits about you if you did not want to get separated from your group. Of course, the staff and volunteers stationed here and there would kindly rescue the lost souls, but they did not have the ability to break through the tightly packed crowd or eliminate the hundreds of meters long waiting lines, so there was no answer in the face of human traffic jams.

“The internet is also really slow. It feels like it takes 15 minutes for one message to go through.”

That was also true. Not only did communication failures occur because so many people were gathered in one place, but since it was also a place where people from all over the world were gathered, everyone was in a more complicated situation than usual with roaming and what not, so sending a single text message was a real ordeal. Taehyun had also sent a message to Sejin a little while ago, but he was still staring with hazy eyes at the infinite ‘sending’ loading screen.

‘I think I might be able to see him.’

Even though they were almost at opposite ends of the waiting line, they were still part of the group moving together. When he slightly stood on his tiptoes and looked in the direction where Sejin was presumed to be, sure enough. He could see the top of a head that was about a hand’s span taller than the others. There were so many people gathered in front of him that he could not see his face well, but that small, round head was definitely Sejin’s.

‘……’

Taehyun smiled without realizing it and then managed to calm his expression. You are not alone here. How many faces are watching right now. After barely coming to his senses and clearing his throat, ahem ahem, the front row began to move somewhere little by little.

“We will be moving slowly from the front row this way. Please be careful not to break the formation.”

As they slowly moved their feet as guided by the leading interpreter and placard volunteer, it was soon Team Korea’s turn to enter. The broadcasting drones flying overhead were continuously capturing the athletes’ faces on screen. Taehyun naturally raised his hand and smiled, greeting the people who were cheering for him from afar.

Our proud athletes from the Republic of Korea are now entering. The total number of athletes participating in this LA Olympics is….

Probably, various flashy explanations and subtitles would be adorning the bottom of the screen. I wonder what kind of description people would attach to his face. He was curious, but he did not think it was important. There was something more important than that.

“Oof, finally sat down.”

“The soles of my feet are so hot.”

The moment he finally sat down on his assigned seat to watch the opening ceremony performance after the long procession was over. Taehyun was startled when he felt someone’s hand approaching the side of his waist. Only after that hand gently squeezed his right hand did he, ah, immediately recognize who the owner of that hand was. The familiar size, the familiar shape of the nails, and on top of that, the familiar texture of the back of the hand. To be sure, Taehyun caressed the soft back of the hand, where the veins were prominently raised, with his fingertips. Even though he was the one who had approached first, he was so startled and flinched when Taehyun touched his hands almost to the point of tickling them, which was extremely cute.

Did he ask to switch seats? Or did he just happen to sit in a seat near me by chance? That startled reaction was so cute that Taehyun continued to tickle the back of Sejin’s hand. Then, as if telling him to stop, Sejin tightly clasped Taehyun’s hand with his large hand, intertwining their fingers.

This much really would not be caught on the broadcast camera. Taehyun, while worrying about what he would do if his pheromone levels rose at this rate, did not let go of Sejin’s hand.

🤺

It was a natural thing to want to touch when you see a face, and to want to do more when you touch. Right after the long opening ceremony was over, Taehyun, without any further hesitation, went straight to Sejin’s room. He was well aware that there were many eyes on them since they were staying in the athletes’ village facilities from today, but that was why it would not arouse suspicion. It was not strange for athletes who were close to visit each other’s rooms. The opponent being the famously blunt and unsociable Joo Sejin might make it seem a little peculiar, but it was not a situation that would look suspicious to others.

As Taehyun very confidently knocked on the door of Sejin’s room, was granted entry, and stepped inside, immediately, thud, along with the sound of the door closing, his body was pulled in as if he were being dragged. Taehyun stopped Sejin, who was about to kiss him right away, and smiled.

“No. If we kiss now, my pheromones will probably rise. I have to be at the stadium tomorrow.”

It was too early in the day to do something here that would cause a huge problem if they got caught.