Struggle Chapter 61

While consulting with himself, Nanyoung ended up laughing. After all, the line neither of them should cross was the same for both.

With self-mockery, Nanyoung knocked back his drink.

Perhaps because of the strong liquor, Nanyoung’s eyes stung.

“I came to lie with you, Uncle.”

Taerok merely filled Nanyoung’s cup with liquor and gave no reply. Into that silence, Nanyoung continued.

“I’m going to defile you, Uncle. So that you’ll no longer be worthy of sitting on the throne. I’m going to commit a taboo that not even beasts commit, with me….”

“What will you do if you confess everything so honestly like that.”

Taerok’s voice asking back was exceedingly gentle. So gentle that… the liquor slid down Nanyoung’s throat like silk.

“What will you do if I only defile your mouth and do nothing else.”

The third cup was filled. Taerok suddenly thought that this felt like the wedding wine he never finished with Min Nanok. He emptied two cups in succession and filled the third cup that he would empty together with Nanyoung.

Nanyoung, his eyes wet from the strong liquor, lifted his gaze and looked at him. When Taerok raised the third cup, Nanyoung flusteredly followed suit and raised his. Taerok asked.

“How is it, Nanyoung. Is that justification enough for you.”

“It’s not justification.”

Nanyoung gazed at Taerok with clouded eyes.

“Things like that aren’t even important anyway. Because I know very well that you, Uncle, don’t show my heart even the slightest consideration.”

Thanks to Lee Taerok, whether his own heart was genuine or not had ceased to matter.

Not even beasts commit such taboos.

Not even beasts…

Beasts have no heart.

Nanyoung and Taerok drank the third cup at the same time. Taerok cast aside his cup as if throwing it, lunged over the table, and pounced on Nanyoung. The cup that Nanyoung let slip went rolling across the floor.

“Ah—”

He never imagined he would learn in this way how thick Taerok’s fingers were.

Merely two fingers filled the inside of Nanyoung’s mouth tightly, stretching it full. Saliva trickled down from the corners. Both had emptied three cups, and by the speed of drinking, his uncle was faster, yet strangely it was Nanyoung who was drunk, and his uncle not at all.

“Urp… gag….”

Tears streamed down along the corners of Nanyoung’s eyes.

The fingers that filled his blocked mouth pressed down on Nanyoung’s tongue and scraped against the roof of his mouth. Nanyoung squirmed his knees. He instinctively tried to knee Taerok in the stomach to survive, but Taerok blocked it with his palm as if he had been waiting for it.

“You’re trying to hit your uncle?”

Nanyoung’s eyes were rimmed bright red, and though the whites of his eyes were moist, he glared at Taerok. Taerok smiled.

“It doesn’t matter if you hit me.”

“Kah… huk….”

“Anyway, hitting me while our bodies are already mingling like this—what’s the problem?”

Absurd words.

But plausible nonsense.

Nanyoung’s knee that had been heading for Taerok’s side slid back down.

Taerok withdrew his thoroughly soaked fingers. His wet hand moved toward the space between Nanyoung’s thighs. The outer robe draped down to his knees, but beneath it, he was half-naked. His upper garments weren’t removed; only his waist ties were barely undone. His trousers had come off long ago. When Taerok had lunged at him over the tea table.

Taerok explored lips with familiar ease and removed clothing even more skillfully than that. Just how many people’s undergarments had he stripped off like this? A dark red flame seemed to seethe in Nanyoung’s chest.

That fire still blazed unquenched and made him want to wound Taerok. The moment Taerok’s fingers slipped out, Nanyoung bit his shoulder.

“Ssss.”

Taerok made a sound like a snake, impossible to tell if it was a laugh or a warning.

“Lee Nanyoung… you have an odd habit?”

“…”

“A habit I would have never known about for my whole life if I hadn’t done this with you.”

Wasn’t it a habit that should have remained unknown for a lifetime.

Nanyoung bit Taerok’s shoulder even tighter. Taerok pushed Nanyoung’s forehead away, not so much because it hurt but because it made moving his body bothersome. Pulled off, Nanyoung looked at him with moist lips and moist eyes and asked.

“Sir, j-just how far do you intend to go?”

Taerok stared at Nanyoung blankly, then burst into laughter.

“You shouldn’t be asking me that. How far did you imagine it when you came here.”

“…”

“I wonder… shall I go as far as what Lee Nanyoung imagined.”

Taerok pried Nanyoung’s legs even wider apart and answered resolutely. Being grabbed by the knees and forced open wide to either side was such an embarrassingly immodest position that he had never even dared imagine, and Nanyoung was so flustered his mind went blank even though the hem of his outer robe covered his groin.

“Or, did you feel lust but not even know how to go about it?”

“…”

“I’d be disappointed if you haven’t even masturbated once thinking of me.”

“Masturbated… I’ve never done anything like that.”

Nanyoung turned his head to the side. His face must have been bright red. At Nanyoung’s answer, Taerok stayed still for a moment, then let out a hollow laugh.

“…To think I truly have to teach you everything one by one. I don’t know who’s defiling whom here.”

Taerok clicked his tongue and murmured. Struggling to pull his legs together and lift his upper body, Nanyoung protested.

But Taerok did not budge an inch. Even when Nanyoung stretched out his foot and kicked at Taerok’s side or his kneeling thigh, there wasn’t a single sign of pain or a single groan.

“Nanyoung, you looked at your uncle so openly, and what that gaze was pointing at was so obvious, that I thought you knew everything.”

He hadn’t known. Not at all. Honestly, even now he thought Taerok was lying. He wanted to believe that. The uncle he had come to know was, as rumors said, cold, his innermost thoughts unfathomable… and wicked. He was a monster.

Nanyoung pulled his body back and raised his upper body. Even so, his knees and ankles were still each held in Taerok’s hands. Lee Taerok had no intention of letting go. He had waited interminably. He had waited too long. The knees and ankles he had only now managed to seize—why would he let them go? Especially when Nanyoung had come here on his own two feet.

Nanyoung glared at Taerok with his reddened eyes.

“…Isn’t it you, Uncle, who has been watching me all along? That must be how you know that I was looking at you.”

It was his last resort. Before flipping the board, Nanyoung’s winning move inflicted no pain whatsoever on Taerok. Even Nanyoung’s flipping the board itself was the moment Taerok had been eagerly awaiting.

“And so?”

Nanyoung was struck utterly speechless. Taerok seized Nanyoung’s legs again, which he had momentarily let slacken. He pushed Nanyoung’s knees so that his legs folded, and placed the soles of his feet on his own kneeling thighs, making Nanyoung’s hips lift. He hadn’t even stripped him down to his undershirt, trying not to startle the boy too much, but it was starting to get in the way. Taerok lifted the hem of the outer robe with the back of his hand. That touch was as delicate as lifting a curtain as thin as a dragonfly’s wing.

“And so, it is my responsibility that I’m committing this taboo with you?”

“Then isn’t it? Even putting aside whatever my heart feels, if you, Uncle, had only never harbored treasonous intentions, this wouldn’t have happened to us.”

Nanyoung couldn’t take his eyes off Taerok’s touch. Concentrating on every single one of those touches, he couldn’t even move his lips.

“Well, let’s say that could be true.”

Taerok’s voice was languid from start to finish. He showed not a trace of urgency or caution. So much so that even if the door suddenly burst open right now and every servant of this royal house saw them, he looked as if he could nonchalantly tell them all to leave.

Taerok’s hand took hold of the waist tie on Nanyoung’s trousers and slowly undid it. Nanyoung’s breathing began to quicken.

“But isn’t it strange? Somehow, it feels like no matter what I did, even if I chose any of thousands and tens of thousands of other choices, I would have ultimately ended up coming to this night.”

Taerok pulled at the ties of Nanyoung’s clothes. As if pushing open doors, he parted them one by one.

The tie of the thinnest outer robe, then the next layer, then the undershirt… When his bare chest was revealed, Nanyoung’s chest was glistening wet. He seemed to have sweat a little.

“You ran out declaring you would take a spouse, and every time, you refused the Ministry of Rites’ earnest counsel, they say.”

Taerok softly narrowed his eyes and asked. Uncle could make a smile like that too… At this unfitting moment, Nanyoung momentarily spaced out.

“To me, you said you would find a match and take a spouse, yet you yourself never did.”

Taerok murmured. He licked a long stripe along the side of Nanyoung’s chest.

“Not knowing that back then was your last chance. As if even I didn’t know that was the last chance I was giving you.”

Nanyoung squeezed his eyes shut and let out a moan that sounded like a scream. While he did so, Taerok’s gaze was on the waist tie of Nanyoung’s that had been cast aside nearby.

“So the reason it feels like we inevitably ended up at this night is not because I harbored treasonous intentions, nor because we are drunk.”