It was clearly night, but he couldn’t understand why his vision was so clear.

 

Dowon thought that perhaps this was just how dreams were, doing whatever they pleased. 

 

The background in this dream was a deep mountain night with not a single light, yet the woman spread beneath him was visible with excessive clarity.

 

Of course, this wasn’t what Dowon had wanted.

 

The woman who had now started crying was too beautiful, and rejecting that wasn’t easy.

 

“Sob, uhh….”

 

Dowon sucked on the crying woman’s cheek while gradually letting go of the threads of reason and morality. 

 

Even her cheek tasted sweet.

 

Come to think of it, this was just a dream, wasn’t it? 

 

No matter what crime he committed in the dream, the real him would never do such a thing. 

 

In the end, Dowon surrendered to the desires of the dream. He didn’t bother trying to regain his senses, no matter what the dream version of himself did.

 

This was just a dream.

 

Tearing apart the clothes of the woman beneath him, wildly biting her white nape, spreading her legs, and thrusting his grotesquely erect thing between them—everything would be fine.

 

Dowon lost his reason and moved his hips.

 

Like a beast, he tormented the woman beneath him with only rough, wordless breaths. He buried his lips in the skin exposed through the torn clothes. 

 

Above, he savored her flesh—below, he stabbed into her hole. 

 

He regretted that he had only one body, wanting to touch, ravage, and possess every part of this woman.

 

While sucking on her neck, he wanted to suck on her breasts; while kissing her mouth, he wanted to chew on her ears. 

 

He wanted to fill her insides with so much semen that her belly swelled, yet he also wanted to see his semen dripping and overflowing onto her white skin.

 

At some point, even her moans ceased to reach him.

 

In the silent mountains, only his panting as he explored the limp, unconscious body of the woman and the wet slapping sounds of flesh colliding—hard enough to make her thin belly skin bulge—existed.

 

Dowon was biting her breast when he suddenly lifted his head. He saw her parted lips. He wanted to put his tongue inside.

 

Likewise, he grabbed her head, which was shaking powerlessly with his thrusting hips, and kissed her. He felt her lips, cold from the night air. 

 

For a moment, the reason that had vanished flickered faintly.

 

Is she dead?

 

In that instant, Dowon thought his heart had stopped. 

 

A terrifying sensation of falling gripped him. At the same time, Dowon woke from the dream.

 

“…!”

 

It was still dark around him. Dowon ran straight to the bathroom and vomited everything in his stomach.

 

“Ugh….”

 

His heart pounded frighteningly. His stomach churned, and his head ached. 

 

Dowon barely managed to turn on the water and rinse his mouth in front of the sink. 

 

It still felt like the cold body temperature of the woman he had roughly crushed in his dream lingered on his lips.

 

“Fuck.”

 

Spitting out a curse he didn’t usually use, he splashed cold water on his face. His mind cleared a bit. 

 

Just enough to feel the dampness in his lower body.

 

Dowon pulled down his pants waistband, looked down, and swallowed another curse. His underwear was completely soaked and sticky with semen, as if he had pissed himself.

 

Apparently, splashing cold water on his face alone wasn’t enough. 

 

Dowon turned on the water to douse his entire body with cold water.

 

How long had he stood under the cold water? 

 

By the time he finally shook off the dream, Dowon emerged from the bathroom with a body like ice.

 

Even after washing, he was somewhat dazed.

 

Heading downstairs to the living room to get some water, he saw his father about to leave through the front door, seemingly on his way to work.

 

“You’re up a bit early today, Dowon.”

 

Glancing at the clock, which hadn’t yet passed 7, Dowon looked his father up and down. The outfit was a bit too polished for heading to work.

 

“…You too, Dad. What’s the occasion? Heading to school at this hour.”

 

“I’ve been a bit busy with work lately.”

 

“It’s summer break right now.”

 

His father, a university professor, had now built up enough seniority that he wasn’t the type to take on random odd jobs. 

 

Yet here he was, dressed sharply and heading out at dawn.

 

“Dad, did you get a girlfriend?”

 

“What? No, it’s not that. It’s just…”

 

“I don’t care. Go for it. I’m heading off to college anyway and will live on my own, so feel free to bring her here and live together.”

 

Dowon added nonchalantly while pouring water.

 

“As long as she doesn’t annoy me by acting like she’s my new mom.”

 

He meant it. 

 

Dowon suddenly realized he no longer wanted to play along with his father’s obsessive family charade. 

 

If anything, if the woman his father was seeing was younger, he’d rather push him to have new kids and play family with them.

 

Like his mother had done.

 

“Dowon. Dad is…”

 

His father opened his mouth as if to say more, but eventually shook his head. 

 

Dowon didn’t even bother looking back at his father as he fled the house. 

 

After that, his father never brought up the topic of the person he was seeing, and naturally, the subject seemed to fade away.

 

That is, if not for the woman who showed up at the house that very weekend.

 

🦋

 

“Professor!”

 

A woman whose upper body was completely hidden by a huge flower basket adorned with a ribbon that read ‘Graduation’ called out to Dowon’s father from far away in front of the house, peeking over the flowers.

 

Dowon stared somewhat boredly at his father, whose face had turned bright red with embarrassment, hurriedly approaching the woman. 

 

He couldn’t see what she looked like because of the flowers, but just the jeans and sneakers gave off a fairly young vibe.

 

His father said something to the woman with a flustered face, and soon his expression darkened. 

 

But when the woman soothed him with her pretty voice, his father’s face quickly softened a bit—,

 

At that moment, Dowon frowned.

 

‘Pretty? Why did I think it was pretty?’

 

It was a distance where he couldn’t hear what was being said clearly. Dowon approached the front of the house as if entranced.

 

His father said.

 

“Dowon. Come here. This is….”

 

He couldn’t hear what was said clearly. 

 

More than that, the woman lowered the flower basket and smiled. To greet Dowon.

 

Their eyes met.

 

“Hello. You must be Dowon.”

 

Her round eyes crinkled slightly as she smiled. 

 

The awkwardly raised corners of her mouth and the cheeks stiffened with tension were instantly noticeable.

 

“I heard you graduated this week? Congratulations on your graduation.”

 

Her lips, painted red, kept moving. Her eyes, which had met his, fell back to the flowers.

 

“I didn’t hear what flowers you like, so I bought a lot. Everyone in our department was really worried about what flowers to buy from the shop. Actually, most of this was chosen by Jiyeon unnie. That unnie is….”

 

“Yiseo.”

 

His father grabbed the woman’s arm. Dowon stared at his father’s hand gripping her elbow. 

 

Suddenly, he snapped out of it.

 

He felt a sense of betrayal toward the woman in front of him.

 

He didn’t even question ‘Why?’. 

 

It was illogical, but Dowon thought it was utterly horrifying that the woman before him was being held by another man’s hand.

 

Maybe that was it. It could have been a natural disgust.

 

Dowon stared at the woman, who was biting her lip awkwardly while calling his father ‘Professor.’ He wanted to turn her gaze back to him.

 

Perhaps he even wanted to attack his father.

 

“Father, isn’t your girlfriend too young? You won’t have anything left to say to Mother anymore.”

 

At the sharply edged words, his father flinched and let go of her elbow as if shaking it off.

 

“What?”

 

The woman’s eyes widened. She turned pale, whether from embarrassment or guilt.

 

“She’s not younger than me, right? That would be a crime.”

 

His father hurriedly tried to explain.

 

“She’s an assistant who helps with Dad’s work. What do you mean, girlfriend? It’s not like that.”

 

“Does an assistant come all the way to the house with a flower basket this big just to congratulate the professor’s son on his graduation? Since when has Father been that overbearing?”

 

“Kim Dowon!”

 

Even at his father’s call, Dowon kept staring only at the woman in front of him. The woman frowned, then clicked her tongue briefly. 

 

And looking straight at Dowon, she said, 

 

“Sorry for making you misunderstand. Dowon. This was supposed to be a gift from the department, and I came because I’m the youngest. Naturally, I’m not in the kind of relationship with the professor that you’re thinking of.”

 

Her tone didn’t even mix in the polite speech she had been using. She looked him up and down as if he were a very young and immature child, then turned her head. 

 

And whispered to his father.

 

“Professor. I’ll get going now. It’s his graduation day, so comfort him well and feed him something delicious.”

 

His father nodded, looking at Dowon with a stiff face.

 

“Yeah. Sorry. See you tomorrow.”

 

“What for. He’s still young, it’s understandable.”

 

‘Young, huh.’ 

 

Dowon hadn’t heard that since he left the hospital and started growing properly. 

 

Anyway, that woman didn’t look much older than Dowon either. 

 

Since she was an assistant, maybe only five or six years apart. 

 

It could even be less. She looked more like she’d suit being his girlfriend rather than his father’s.

 

But no matter what Dowon thought, the woman left without looking back at him once, greeting his father.

 

“See you tomorrow. Professor.”

 

The woman bowed at the waist and left. 

 

Dowon found himself following her back with his eyes and suddenly frowned. But perhaps thinking Dowon had been glaring at her all this time, his father finally shouted.

 

“Kim Dowon, come inside with me!”