Divorce in Bed Chapter 7

“Stop crying and stand up straight.”

“…Sniffle.”

“You are the chief mourner. No one helps you just because you curl up and hide. Lift your head and strike back.”

Dowon grabbed Yeohwi’s collar and forced him to his feet. To stand on his two legs. To look straight ahead properly.

Soon, he too bowed before Chairman Seong’s funeral portrait and offered incense.

When everyone else treated him like a money bag and tried to plunder him, Dowon was the only person who treated him as the chief mourner. The person who made him lift his head, even if by force.

The fierce eyes of Chairman Do, who was sitting in his wheelchair, turned toward the two of them.

He didn’t know it then, but looking back, it was likely that very moment—the moment Chairman Do singled out Yeohwi as Dowon’s partner.

What happened that day had been etched into Yeohwi’s heart for a long time, like a tattoo.

A twelve-year difference. A perfect adult who had lived in the world twelve years longer than he had.

Dowon might not even remember it, but to Yeohwi, who had become perfectly alone with no one to lean on, he was the first person to teach him about self-reliance.

That was why when the talk of a strategic marriage came up, Yeohwi didn’t hesitate. No, rather, he was relieved.

Dowon is 32 and Seong Yeohwi is 20. In a normal relationship, he wouldn’t even have been easily permitted to stand by his side. But through this method, at least, he gained an opportunity to approach him.

‘I… didn’t really know my own heart until now either.’

Before, it had been a sorrowful loneliness. It was true that he had been starved for attention, just as Dowon had criticized. Because he was a total orphan, he needed someone—anyone—to stay by his side and share their warmth.

However, deep in his heart, there had been a vague wish that the person who would quench the source of that thirst would be Dowon. It was only because it was so faint that he hadn’t been sure.

Marrying early, starting a family, settling down, being stable, living harmoniously and sweetly. A picture-perfect, harmonious, and lovely married life…

‘That kind of thing is a fantasy. I know that too.’

I’m not a brat running around trying to find a unicorn. And of all people, with Dowon.

Since the first day until now, he is a person who has never shown a single gap or given an opening.

He’s a person who pushed me away calling me a brat, drew a line calling it a strategic marriage, and instead of giving me human treatment, ignores even my morning greetings!

‘But, still…’

Yeohwi stopped his struggling movements and stared blankly into the air.

The Dowon he had observed from the side during this short marriage was a man with a much deeper abyss than Yeohwi had guessed.

The image of his back as he took in the low-class verbal abuse Do Jin-gyu poured out today without any agitation.

Seeing that back, Yeohwi realized. That Dowon, too, had lived carrying the same deficiencies as himself. The label of an orphan who lost his parents, the disregard and greedy gazes of relatives.

While he was crying alone after losing his grandfather, Dowon had been enduring and sharpening his blade alone inside this desolate house. When he realized that the strength that had set Yeohwi straight when he was about to crumble was actually forged in a solitude with nowhere to lean, a hot and thick emotion beyond respect surged from beneath his heart.

‘…We’re alike.’

He felt that perhaps the cold words Dowon spat out weren’t simple rejection, but an exclusion born of long habit. A sturdy fortress wall he had built to lock himself in. A longing surged to face the real Dowon crouching inside it.

Once he realized that, a corner of his chest began to ache coldly. The feeling of wanting Dowon. This didn’t stem simply from loneliness. His emotion was sharp, specific, and pointed accurately toward only one person.

‘…It has to be him.’

It felt as if his heart had thudded down to the floor.

It wasn’t that he was desperate for someone’s attention. Then and now, it was that person, Dowon, he was desperate for.

He was curious about him and wanted to know him. He wanted to face the real face hidden deep within the pitch-black abyss and directly touch the reality of the black flame burning inside.

He had become greedy, wanting Dowon and no one else to open his heart to him, and eventually wanting Dowon to become his person.

Furthermore, he realized the fact that this was the first time he had experienced this emotion in his short twenty-year-long life.

‘But there’s no way that would happen.’

The emotion that had sprouted like a bud brought despair rather than hope. The heart that had briefly inflated quickly subsided.

To Dowon, he was just a bothersome, annoying, twelve-years-younger brat who didn’t know the ways of the world.

“Haaaa…”

Yeohwi made a groaning sound and burrowed back into the blankets.

He looked gloomily at the bedroom door with resentful eyes. Whether today or tomorrow, that door would never open. He would probably have to sleep alone in this wide bed until he died.

Just then, his gaze turned toward his lower half.

The bulging outline of his loose pajama pants.

Seong Yeohwi slowly moved his body, pulled back the blanket, and looked down at his waistband.

‘Ah, um.’

Twitch. The thin pajama fabric flinched as the thing lying against one thigh jerked upward. Yeohwi’s face heated up scorchingly. He wondered if he was in his right mind in this situation, but his large, beast-like body was full of uncontrollable vitality.

Naturally, the first night when he had recklessly attempted to kiss Dowon with nothing but momentum came to mind.

The stupid and shameful moment when their teeth had clattered together.

But just before that, in that very brief instant, Yeohwi remembered the sensation he had felt.

The breath he felt as he approached slowly with tension. The sensation of the lips that had softly brushed before their teeth collided. He thought they were a bit rough. They were also slightly cold. But the inside was definitely moist.

While desperately reviving the memory that was a “dark history,” Yeohwi slowly slid his hand down into his pajama pants. He almost called out Dowon’s name but stopped, biting his lip and closing his eyes.

He hadn’t intended to yearn for him in this way.

It wasn’t supposed to be something primal, vulgar, and suddenly… trying to get a hard-on like he was in heat. It wasn’t, but… he couldn’t help it, could he?

‘I—I must be a really simple guy. My cock is throbbing so much.’

Between his legs was so hot that the outline sticking out clearly even over his briefs could be felt. When he placed his hand over it, he felt the thing pulsing with a heartbeat as if it were a different creature separate from his body.

‘Is everyone usually like this…? If you like someone, does your body react first?’

He hadn’t even properly grasped his feelings for Dowon yet. He didn’t know why his cock was standing up like this when it had barely been any time since he became aware of them. It had never been like this before. However, before he could weigh the pros and cons of how this happened, his lower body was already excited on its own.

He rubbed over the briefs with his palm, then decided that wouldn’t work and thrust his hand inside his underwear. He grabbed the shaft of his cock in earnest and stroked it up and down.

The volume held in his hand was quite large. Even so, he wasn’t fully erect yet. It was because he was born with an exceptionally rare “big thing.”

‘Maybe it’s because my cock is just ignorantly huge.’

Yeohwi was swept up in an unknown feeling and shook his wrist rapidly. The more he did, the more he kept thinking of Dowon. He repeatedly recollected the short moment their lips had touched. And he closed his eyes and drew him in the darkness.

If another chance came, he definitely wouldn’t rush in clumsily like that.

He would tilt his head to match the angle of the lips and overlap them softly. No, if it was too soft, it might be boring for him. Passionately and hotly, yet not just pushing forward but adjusting the intensity. He wanted to stimulate the sensitive parts of the tongue to his heart’s content so that not only Yeohwi but Dowon too could get excited.

“Ah, ah…”

Yeohwi moved his hand back and forth rapidly while running simulations of repeatedly kissing the Dowon of his imagination that appeared in his head. At some point, he felt as if the darkness before his eyes was flashing white, and soon his palm became wet.

Yeohwi, having pulled out a tissue and wiped away the semen flowing stickily between his fingers, swallowed a sigh to himself. It felt strange. It was as if he had stepped into a forbidden area he shouldn’t approach.