Change

He returned from the dressing room inside the bedroom with fresh sheets and draped them over my naked, curled-up form. It was embarrassing that my throat, hoarse from trying to thank him, was so wrecked — but I didn't even have the energy to clear it.

Even without screaming, my throat always ended up raw after being with him. Even the effort to artificially suppress moans seemed to strain my voice.

Just as my voice cracked as usual, his cock remained rigid despite having come. I suddenly wondered if he had ever had sex until the point where he returned to his flaccid state — and if so, with whom, what kind of sex, and for how long. I didn't have the courage to ask.

Unlike last time — when we had sex for a very long time, through knotting and multiple rounds — this time ended relatively quickly, but the feeling of utter collapse, as if my spine had turned to liquid, was the same.

I had no idea how it felt for him as the one doing the knotting, but for the recipient, it seemed to be a physically draining act. A lingering, tingling sensation still remained deep inside me, making my body tremble intermittently.

Perhaps the reason I felt so drained was because I was a Beta. An Alpha's knotting was never meant for a Beta, after all.

After covering me with the sheet, he left the room and returned with a large cup of water.

"There's no bottled water since it's an empty house, but this is from the water purifier, so drink some."

I fumbled to sit up and took the cup. Perhaps sensing my trembling arms were unsteady, he didn't let go of the cup until I brought it properly to my lips and drank.

It felt awkward to know where to look — his cock was still hard and glistening beside me where he stood. The traces of our intense penetration and the come he'd spilled were beginning to dry pale on the shaft he'd left uncleaned after pulling out of me.

"Shall we rest briefly, just long enough for a cigarette?"

He placed the empty cup on the bedside table as he proposed that, then walked around the bed to the opposite side. He cupped himself between his legs as he moved to stop his cock from swinging awkwardly.

Though the movement was mundane — almost clinical — the sheer size of him, large enough to require holding in place to move comfortably, was inherently too sexual.

When he bent over to pick up his jacket from the floor, his scrotum peeked out between his legs. Catching glimpses of that heavy, elastically swaying weight, I had to secretly rub my thighs together under the sheet. To hide my slightly stiffening cock, I slowly slid my body — which had been leaning against the headboard — down onto the mattress, lying face down.

He glanced down at me, then took a cigarette from his jacket and lit it while standing.

His profile was the human embodiment of the word "perfection."

The thickness of his chest and the swell of his muscles, the lean waistline curving sharply down from his back, his firm raised backside, and his long solid legs. Even his cock called to mind that champagne bottle wedged between a foreign model's legs — the one Yuni nuna and Juhan had giggled about when they first found it in a magazine.

His thick black hair, always floating lightly despite its fullness, and his blue eyes tinged with gray, which seemed to shift in color and temperature with his emotions.

Even if every single reason I liked him were based purely on his looks, I'd have no choice but to agree with myself — he was beautiful, once again.

But it wasn't the same beauty I'd first seen when we met — the flawless, self-assured beauty of a jewel exquisitely cut and displayed behind glass.

He too had a past that weighed on him, a past that sometimes governed him. He also had clumsy aspects, like fumbling through nervous speech when he wanted to comfort someone but didn't know how.

The beauty he showed now — one that reflected and refracted light through his own unique flaws and distortions — felt incomparably more alluring. I wanted to know more about his curves and scars, and if he wanted, I wanted to tell him about myself too.

Some might dismiss them as ordinary things that happen in the world, but to me, the one who had lived through them, they were events that carried enough weight to warp my very being beyond recognition — and also the trivial, insignificant, laughably small things.

It was the first time I'd ever felt the desire to tell someone else about myself.

Within the immense tenderness that soothed my anxiety, it was only natural that my feelings deepened the more I became physically intimate with him.

It was almost mysterious how Juhan or Yuni nuna could be exposed to this kindness and still manage not to like him as a romantic partner.

He sat on the edge of the bed, picking up the ashtray that had been on the table in front of the armchair, and took a drag from his cigarette while pushing back his now quite disheveled hair.

Watching the side of his face as he raised both arms as if stretching — the cigarette still between his lips — I unconsciously murmured.

"...Thank you."

"......"

He stopped mid-motion and looked down at me with surprised eyes, then slowly lowered his arms and transferred the cigarette from his mouth to his fingers.

"Was it good enough to warrant thanks?"

His voice and expression, tinged with a smirk, spoke of satisfaction with the sex.

I considered adding an explanation that it wasn't about that, but it didn't seem necessary. His free hand reached over and gently stroked my hair where I lay sprawled on the mattress, cheek still pressed against it. It was a smile that seemed to say he knew exactly what I meant, and what I didn't.

Because the glass door to the garden was open, the sound of rain tapping on the wooden deck was close. The downpour had thickened since we'd left the airport. The thin sheer curtains repeatedly billowed up and sank back down. Against the gray backdrop as they settled, the image of him touching me seemed to carve itself into my vision with a distinct texture.

After drawing his hand back from my hair, he flicked cigarette ash into the ashtray at his left and spoke in a calm tone.

"To be honest, I expected you might be uncomfortable staying in this house. Plan B was something I offered just in case, knowing that might happen... but there's also a Plan A. The order in which I presented them has simply been reversed."

He pressed his cigarette-holding hand against the mattress and turned toward me, meeting my eyes.

"Manager Han also said she'd feel more reassured if you stayed with me rather than alone. I feel the same way. Things will probably be unsettling for a while, but it's too much to ask you to call ahead every time you go in to take a shower, isn't it?"

With that playful remark, he took a short sharp drag. My whole body felt listless and it was hard to gather strength in my waist, but this seemed like a conversation I needed to take seriously, so I pushed myself up from my prone position and pulled the sheet up to cover my lower body.

From this new vantage point, where our eye levels were much closer, he cast a fragmented glance at me. Then, as if avoiding something, he turned his head away and took another drag.

"I would like to give you more leeway, but... as you know, Seo Yeehyeon, this is the situation we're in. Securing safety is the top priority, and on that I can't compromise either. Please understand."

Despite the finality of his words — leaving no room for negotiation, firmly stating he could not yield — his voice carried a desperation that didn't match their content.

It felt strange that he, an outsider, was appealing to me for understanding based on my own safety.

Whether it was loyalty to someone he had shared his body with, a sense of responsibility toward his exclusive artist, or perhaps some other small, lingering affection layered on top... his firm insistence — driven by serious concern for my safety, leaving me no room to refuse his offer — was a clearer, more distinct comfort than alcohol, than shopping, than the promise of a life in a luxurious villa.

As I watched his profile — brow furrowed as he inhaled his cigarette — in the air that had gone gray and subdued under the relentlessly persistent monsoon rains, a distinct impulse arose within me, like hunger: sudden, yet utterly natural.

I hadn't forced it, nor had I compelled myself to feel it. Like water that slowly rises to saturation and then spills over a levee, the urge to paint him — right here in front of me — arose of its own accord.

I fixed my gaze on his profile, trying to concentrate on that faint, flickering sensation — the feeling that the senses I'd believed were completely severed might be coming back to life.

"What's wrong?"

He turned to look at me, noticing how rigid I'd gone with trembling, anxious eyes, and asked with concern. I avoided his gaze and stumbled out a vague reply.

"Nothing, it's just... I feel bad..."

He let out a short laugh, as if to say, are you still on about that. He reached out and ruffled my hair.

I had thought that game — finding myself in the hairline fracture of a mug, in the cement bags abandoned at a halted construction site, in the face of an old woman sitting sulkily before her street stall — was a privilege I had surrendered myself. The price of having put my brush down for so long was that I would never again find a subject I wanted to capture in that way.

But he was right.

Before going to Hong Kong, when we spoke on the phone outside the entrance to my rooftop room — he had been certain that I would find something new I wanted to paint. And he was right.

The pulse throbbing above my head felt as if it were hammering through my whole body. Just like when he was knotting inside me.