Rabbit Hole Chapter 36

The owner’s face soured as if he were chewing on shit, and he grumbled as he punched numbers into a calculator. It was a settlement method surprisingly analog, utterly mismatched with the sleek, modern establishment.

“This much. Okay?”

“…Okay.”

Go San looked somewhat dissatisfied at the number shoved in front of his eyes. He turned his body and beckoned to Geumseo. Obediently, Geumseo shuffled over to Go San.

“Is this enough?”

“No, fuck. Why are you asking that. Why. You want me to say, if it’s not enough and you want more, tell them to give you more?”

“You earn a lot though.”

“Hey. Sound swimmer. Earning a lot and paying someone for their labor, what’s the—? What’s.”

Having no real argument, the owner just kept repeating “what’s, what’s.” Then the owner clicked his tongue and opened a built-in refrigerator in the corner. Unusually, there was a safe inside the refrigerator. After turning the dial several times, the door opened, and Geumseo saw that much cash stacked up somewhere other than a bank for the first time. Even the loan shark Misters weren’t quite at this level.

The owner took out a very stingy little bit from it, even put it in an envelope, and handed it to Go San.

“Not me. You should give it to him.”

While the owner had been fiddling around opening the safe and getting the money, Go San’s voice, who had been toying with Geumseo, had softened considerably.

“Here. Happy now?”

“…Thank you.”

Heo Sangmuk had been put through that ordeal, and the atmosphere of the establishment had gone to hell. Given that, Geumseo had naturally expected to be showered with curses like at the last bar, but it had been this easy. Even though it was money he had earned fair and square, this felt more unfamiliar than the tips that had been stuffed into his pocket. Was it always this easy? He turned his head sharply and saw Go San, who had been fiddling with Geumseo’s delicate ears, mouth the word: Why. The Go San asking that looked even more nonchalant than when he had been swimming.

∞ ∞ ∞

And just like that, Geumseo suddenly became unemployed. Jobless. A state he hadn’t experienced once since becoming an adult.

His body was at ease, and his mind was tired. T-i-r-e-d. Geumseo would lie on the sofa and chew over those four syllables, repeating them to himself over and over. He didn’t say them out loud. Because it felt like it would become more powerful if he vocalized it. When he was working, he hadn’t been tired, so he didn’t know why suddenly, now that he was resting, he was this sluggish. No, had he just been too busy to even have time to feel that?

“Look.”

Go San pulled Geumseo’s chin. Geumseo opened his mouth. Go San drew a very pretty smile. He smiled as if satisfied and, as if casting a spell, said “Swallow,” threatening him affectionately. So Geumseo swallowed what was in his mouth. A slippery, fishy, strange-smelling lump of protein.

Just as Geumseo had quickly grown accustomed to his family suddenly going bankrupt, his father disappearing, and hundreds of unknown numbers piling up on his phone every day, he had also grown accustomed to swallowing Go San’s stuff.

“Did you make other people do this kind of thing too?”

“You’re suddenly curious about that?”

“No, I’m curious if your sexual preferences were always like this.”

Go San held out orange juice to Geumseo. It had once been his favorite juice, but because of this reason, it had now become his most hated juice.

After rinsing his mouth with something refreshing, this time Go San laid Geumseo down and lowered his head between his legs.

“Ee-ung uh.”

Go San murmured, “This kind of thing.” His pronunciation was muffled because of what was in his mouth. Before he knew it, Go San had started doing this for him too. It was unwelcome. Geumseo wanted to stay forever in that ambiguous stage between pain and pleasure. Feeling good was no good. If you got used to feeling good, you would feel hardship and pain anew. Just like his days now, where he hadn’t used to feel fatigue, but now felt tired just lying around.

“Huh… ah….”

Geumseo’s eyes reddened as he whimpered. It was precisely that aspect that Go San had come to enjoy this act. He didn’t much like it poking at his throat, and he hated the fishy taste, but that sound, and the expression Yang Geumseo made, unable to cry or laugh, drove him crazy with arousal.

“I didn’t. To other people.”

Go San was good at anything that involved using his body. The act of sucking, which he had done for the first time for Geumseo, was no exception. He was too good at it, so Geumseo’s knees often jerked and jumped. Instead of swallowing, Go San spat into his palm and rubbed that palm against the inside of Geumseo’s thigh.

“Spit. When it’s in my mouth, I don’t think of it as dirty, but the moment I spit it out, it feels dirty.”

Wherever Go San’s hand passed, Geumseo felt scorched, as if a hot iron were going back and forth. Even so, Go San was unperturbed.

“It’s like that.”

“…Then why do you tell me to swallow it? That dirty stuff?”

“Because….”

Go San bowed his head and kissed next to Geumseo’s knee. His eyes, smiling sleekly, were like a crocodile’s eyes revealed above the water’s surface, or a shark’s fin.

“It’s something that’s never come out of your body, right?”

“So it’s clean?”

“No. So I want to feed it to you.”

It was incomprehensible. He didn’t want to understand it either. He decided not to understand. Three statements that were the same yet different.

“But only eat mine. Only swallow mine.”

Having said that, Go San bit hard into the inside of Geumseo’s thigh.

∞ ∞ ∞

With nothing left to do, Geumseo naturally ended up accompanying Go San to his training. It had also been over a week since he had gone back to his rented room. He didn’t even feel like going back, and Go San wouldn’t let him go either.

‘Don’t worry about the monthly rent.’

At that one word from Go San, Geumseo decided not to worry about it.

‘No need to go out for work either.’

‘…I have to pay back the debt to your family.’

‘You are paying it back. You’re working, with me.’

Geumseo, like a fool, didn’t ask, “What work is that?” He knew well enough what Go San meant.

He didn’t even have the energy to say he hated that, that he wouldn’t sleep with him that way. Fine, it’s not my money, it’s not my debt, do as you please, you’re the creditor. Geumseo gave up and decided not to think about the money.

Wearing ample water-resistant pants that looked like something you’d wear at the beach, today too he submerged himself only up to his knees. Every break, Go San would rest his arm on Geumseo’s dry thigh and look up at him. At times like that, Go San looked like a merman. In Geumseo’s imagination, the Go San version of a merman seemed like something out of a brutal fairy tale or a pirate movie, not Andersen’s fairy tale. It felt like he might suddenly yank him down and swallow him whole.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

When Geumseo flicked water with his fingertips and asked, Go San just replied, “No reason.” Even though to Geumseo, his tone was its usual nasty self, the coach would often make a face out of sight of the two of them, as if to say “ugh, gross,” getting goosebumps. What was certain was that all three of them were dreaming different dreams while in the same bed.

Or maybe it was two of them and one other.

“Have you lost weight?”

Go San soaked Geumseo’s dry thighs recklessly. His wet hand intruded rudely into his pants, groping his thighs and gripping them tightly. Geumseo’s buttocks, thighs, sides, and pelvis were indiscriminately covered in bruises. It wasn’t Go San’s fault. By his standards, he definitely hadn’t squeezed hard. It was just that Geumseo’s skin was weak.

Wait, so is it all my fault then?

Geumseo scooped up quite a bit of water and splashed it right at Go San. He was already wet, and what harm could a little more water do to a face that was going to get wet anyway.

Go San squeezed his eyes shut, then slowly opened them.

“Don’t lose more weight. Your bones bump into me.”

As expected, Go San brushed it off very lightly. Even the coach, who had been appalled by each and every one of these actions at first, now seemed accustomed to it. He had his headphones on and was humming a tune.

“What should we go eat after this is over?”

“Meat?”

“Yeah. Meat goes without saying. But seriously, you can’t lose any more weight. We have to take a photo.”

“A photo?”

Go San nodded and was scribbling something with his finger on Geumseo’s thigh. From the repeated motion, Geumseo realized he was writing the same character over and over. He didn’t know what he was writing yet. Geumseo’s attention focused there.

“We have to take a passport photo.”

“…Go San.”

“Huh?”

“Huh?”

Go San and Geumseo asked back at the same time. Geumseo had murmured because he realized what character Go San was writing, then asked back about the passport photo. And Go San was answering because Geumseo had called him.

“Why did you call me.”