Struggle Chapter 72

And as if he knew exactly what was in his heart, he whispered.

“Isn’t it that your stomach keeps hurting… so you’re making these crying sounds?”

Nanyoung’s eyes flew open. Not that Taerok could see his face anyway.

His uncle seemed to think he was crying simply because his stomach hurt. Of course, that was a very big part of it. Having sex with Taerok even once made his insides ache. It felt sore as if it might be bruised inside, making it hard to straighten his back at all.

“I’m crying because I’m upset with you, Uncle, for keeping a sick person up, stuffing yourself in, and shaking me about.”

Even as he sobbed, Nanyoung refused to lose a single word.

“H-how can you be so, so shameless. How can you, to a patient…”

Indeed, Nanyoung’s insides were hot with a low fever. Precisely because of that, once Taerok put himself inside Nanyoung, he didn’t want to pull out at all. And what about his body, completely limp and pliant? Taerok was, literally, mindlessly aroused, and he was becoming addicted to Nanyoung more severely than to opium.

Furthermore, after he stirred him up like this, Nanyoung would groan and fall asleep, and using that as an excuse, he could keep from sending him out yet again.

“I’m doing this because I know you’re not that sick.”

Taerok finished speaking and thrust his hips up strongly. Nanyoung let out a long, drawn-out groan and scratched Taerok’s arm.

“Anyway… the late monsoon is in full swing, and it’ll be boring in the room. Isn’t it productive to play with your uncle and foster friendly relations?”

Nanyoung couldn’t agree with that. Was this the only way to foster friendly relations? And Nanyoung hadn’t come here to foster friendly relations with Taerok, who harbored treasonous intentions. The reason he had come all the way here, the reason he had come all this way and was mingling bodies with Taerok like this, was…

“Aaah…!”

Nanyoung sobbed and writhed as the cock rubbed up inside him elastically enough to make his belly skin ripple. His thoughts became as hazy as the water fog that had been thick outside since dawn, losing all recognizable shape.

Why had he come here?

“Nanyoung, your tongue.”

At those words, his body moved on its own, turning to look back and sticking out his tongue. Since when had he become so accustomed to this act? To his uncle’s body, his tongue, his sex, his body heat, his scent, and his everything.

“Nanyoung.”

At the sound of his voice calling him.

“Shall we really do as you said?”

What did I say? Nanyoung’s heavy eyelids blinked.

“Really live a plain life with you…”

But Nanyoung doesn’t catch the end of Taerok’s words. Because while he was whispering softly, his lower body was coarsely stirring Nanyoung’s lower mouth. Something like a fiery club was entering as if it would pierce through above his navel.

“Ngh, kkh… h-ah…”

Nanyoung tilted his head back, saliva dripping from his gaping mouth. He dug his nails into Taerok’s forearm and stretched his legs taut. Thin fluid trickled from the tip of Nanyoung’s cock, which had been touched to the point of chafing. Unlike his limp prick, his inner walls were swollen and clenched down on Taerok’s member with elasticity. Taerok didn’t hold back and poured his seed inside Nanyoung.

“Uuh… ugh… I, I feel like I’m going to throw up…”

Even as Nanyoung murmured, Taerok didn’t stop putting his seed inside him. On the contrary, he only tensed his thigh muscles until they stood out rigidly, then pushed his seed in deeper, grinding inside. Not that anything would come of doing this. No, wasn’t that exactly what Nanyoung had wished for? For nothing to come of it.

When Taerok returned to the room after instructing the eunuch attending him on Nanyoung’s condition and ordering him to fetch a simple restorative tonic, Nanyoung had rolled onto his side and was asleep. Perhaps he was hot from the fever, as he had kicked the blanket down to his feet. Taerok clicked his tongue, thinking that despite being of age, he was still this childlike. Then he opened the window first.

The rain made it damp, but the stifling heat that had been persistently miserable just two weeks prior had somewhat abated. Rather, the sound of rain was enough to clear his head. Taerok opened all the windows and returned to Nanyoung.

Nanyoung had apparently just drunk his herbal tonic and fallen asleep, the empty bowl placed above his head. As if by habit, Taerok ran his finger over the bowl and licked it. He detected no numbing of the tongue or anything like that. Even knowing such a thing couldn’t possibly happen in his own residence, he had checked for poison, just in case.

“When he wakes up, I’ll have him wash a bit… and maybe feed him some watermelon.”

Taerok wiped the sweat beaded on Nanyoung’s forehead with a cotton cloth. They did say you sweat more when your body is healthy. Indeed, for someone who felt the heat so much, Nanyoung hardly sweated at all.

Taerok watched Nanyoung like that for a long while, then gave up on the small desk and went to sit obliquely by the window. Then he took out the book he had been reading.

Outside, only the sound of rain; inside, only the sound of soft breathing and turning pages.

Taerok didn’t feel bored at all and simply waited happily for Nanyoung to wake. The passage of time wasn’t tedious but as light and cheerful as the sound of rain. Unaware of the change in his own heart, he merely repeated the action of looking at Nanyoung every time a page turned.

∞ ∞ ∞

Taerok called over Nanyoung, who had come out after washing. The main wooden floor hall was cool, the wind blowing in gently due to the falling rain. Taerok sat the hesitating Nanyoung beside him and offered him a neatly cut piece of watermelon.

“It’s the last of the season. There won’t be any more, so enjoy it.”

When treating Nanyoung as Grand Prince, Taerok used formal, respectful language. But because he didn’t entirely stop using it even during their sexual acts, Nanyoung had recently been flinching irregularly at his manner of speech. Especially when Taerok whispered lazily and softly as he was doing now.

“…”

To forget the sticky, clinging acts of the past several days that suddenly surged into his mind, Nanyoung bit into the watermelon. As he chewed the crunchy fruit, the sweet juice flooded his mouth.

“It’ll soon be autumn, yet the rain is falling like this, honestly… The weather shouldn’t be this foul right before the harvest.”

Instead of answering, Nanyoung chewed his watermelon.

It was strange to hear Taerok say things like that. But looking back, while Taerok was cold as the rumors of him being cold-blooded suggested, he wasn’t that way toward the country or the people. Was he uninterested in individuals but interested in the collective?

For a fleeting moment, the thought crossed Nanyoung’s mind that Taerok might have actually been quite decent as a king.

And then he was immediately startled by his own thought.

“You’re not a child.”

Taerok clicked his tongue at Nanyoung, who had been so surprised that he dropped the watermelon he was holding onto his own thigh.

“Nephew, you require quite a lot of looking after.”

He picked it up and patted the slightly stained hem of the clothes. While focused on brushing off the clothes, the watermelon that had fallen on Nanyoung’s thigh was somehow suddenly in his mouth. He didn’t seem like the type to do such a thing…. Nanyoung was stunned by Taerok’s unexpected attentiveness and watched him blankly. And then he ended up blurting out these words without thinking.

“I think you would be a good father, Uncle.”

Taerok’s eyes, having roughly brushed off the fruit juice, hardened rigidly as he doubted what he had just heard.

Once he had replayed Nanyoung’s words in his mind and finished understanding them, it was absurd. From before the monsoon began until the dawns when the monsoon was at its peak, they had been mingling bodies, and even now they were together like this, so what on earth was he saying?

Taerok, having eaten the remaining watermelon down to the white rind, retorted in a sarcastic tone.

“Nephew, could you have possibly borne a child?”

“Pardon?”

“I have no wife now, and there will no longer be a woman coming to me. The only person who is mingling bodies with me saying such a thing leaves me dumbfounded.”

“Pardon?”

“If you aren’t going to bear my child, then I simply cannot fathom why you would say that…”

“No, no, Uncle… but, with me, forever…”

Nanyoung displayed reluctance and stammered.

“You’re not going to do this sort of thing with me forever…”

“This sort of thing?”

Taerok fixated on that expression among what Nanyoung had said.

“Yes. This sort of thing…”

But even though Nanyoung knew little of love and desire between people, he knew his duty, and so he was confident in his words. Confident that they could not, and would not, be stuck together like this for a lifetime.

Taerok was put out.

“I thought my treasonous intentions would not be easily extinguished, so I’d likely be doing this until you bore my child, Nephew.”

“No…”

Nanyoung shook his head, cautiously but firmly.

“Uncle, you just want to toy with me and, if possible, humiliate me and enjoy yourself for a little while, isn’t that right?”

Taerok pressed the bridge of his brow bone with his index and middle fingers.