Passion Novel - Volume 3 - Chapter 62 - Aches

The incident happened when Jeong Taeui was away for a moment.

In reality, Jeong Taeui couldn’t really be called a proper member of UNHRDO. More than anything, his mindset was the problem. While he diligently carried out his assigned tasks, deep down, he always viewed the organization as an outsider. This was why neither the Asia branch nor the Europe branch felt particularly different to him.

Because of this, Jeong Taeui could observe the subtle currents within the organization from a detached perspective. Even when infighting broke out among the vice-chiefs, he wasn’t emotionally swayed to either side. When Asia and Europe were truly clashing, even though he fought on the Asia branch’s side, his heart remained neutral. This was because he hadn’t willingly chosen to join, and his tenure was limited from the start.

However, despite all this, Jeong Taeui fully understood his colleagues’ feelings. He knew perfectly well the overwhelming hatred his colleagues felt for the man named Ilay Riegrow. The man who killed their comrades, the man who felt no guilt, the man who could harm them at any time. And yet, the man who sat as their superior.

It was unreasonable to ask them not to hate him. If Jeong Taeui had felt a sense of belonging to the Asia branch, he would have hated that man too. Jeong Taeui had also lost a comrade once. It was an accident. The guy was a couple of years younger than Jeong Taeui, fresh-faced and green.

Every year, several young lives are lost in military accidents. One of them happened in the unit Jeong Taeui belonged to. Jeong Taeui wasn’t particularly close to him. Being in the same unit, they saw each other daily, exchanged greetings, and sometimes Jeong Taeui would hand him a Choco Pie or something while he was on guard duty. Nevertheless, Jeong Taeui vividly remembered the atmosphere of the unit and how he felt when that young man died in an accident. Here in the Asia branch, Ilay Riegrow had killed several branch members. He’d heard it was the same even before Jeong Taeui joined. Whether it was self-defense according to regulations or not, that man killed his opponents by his own will. He probably could have avoided killing them if he had wanted to, but he didn’t.

“Even I’d hate him. If a guy like that was my superior. I’d hate it even if there was no grudge, but with such deep-seated resentment towards the guy in charge, it truly feels awful, yeah.”

Jeong Taeui mumbled in a voice too low for the man walking a couple of steps ahead to hear. In the morning’s routine, another guy was inevitably carried off to the infirmary. The guys who charged in, knowing full well they couldn’t win, were one thing, but he couldn’t really curse them because he understood their feelings.

“Why, did you want to step in and stretch your muscles yourself?”

As Jeong Taeui grumbled, Ilay, who was ahead, turned around and spoke over his shoulder. Jeong Taeui shut his mouth. That monstrous guy had good ears, so he couldn’t just say anything carelessly.

“Not at all. I’m just grateful that you handled it personally, instructor.”

Except for always getting nagged by the infirmary medic. Ilay always personally dealt with anyone who charged at him. If Jeong Taeui even tried to interfere, Ilay would look at him with a gaze that overtly said he’d just knock Jeong Taeui out of the way first. So Jeong Taeui, even if he got nagged by the medic, never interfered, thinking it was much better to meet him as an assistant rather than a patient.

…But come to think of it, when Xinlu tried to attack him the other day, he was surprisingly quiet. Normally, it wouldn’t have been strange for him to bare his fangs for someone meddling in his business. He’s such a moody guy, Jeong Taeui grumbled inwardly and stopped walking. Ilay had stopped a couple of steps ahead. As Jeong Taeui followed and stopped, staring blankly, Ilay gestured for him to come closer.

Jeong Taeui approached, his eyes wary, wondering what was up with this guy. Ilay chuckled, then started walking again as if nothing had happened. Jeong Taeui followed a step behind, tilting his head. These past few days hadn’t been bright, but today was even worse. His mood had been gloomy from the moment he woke up this morning. And it wasn’t just because they had “played land-grabbing” again last night. Of course, that reason was a huge factor. Yesterday, that damn guy must have ingested some kind of aphrodisiac, because even though he had said he had a lot of work to do, he suddenly showed up long past midnight, woke up a sleeping person, and got on top of him. He’d rattled off things like, Today’s a weekday, tomorrow’s a weekday, you just barely finished your mountain of work past midnight, you have to wake up at dawn tomorrow to work, and it’s not just you, it’s me too, but it was useless.

‘I’ve been sitting at a desk so much my body feels stiff, you know. Come to think of it, I didn’t even get a proper workout today. Shouldn’t a person move their body a bit? It’s fine if I don’t sleep for a day.’

Sleep clung to his eyelids, preventing him from opening them properly, and he tossed and turned in a sleepy daze, but Ilay didn’t budge. “If you’re sleepy, keep sleeping. —If you can, that is,” he mumbled something like that, easily pulled up Jeong Taeui’s pajamas, and spread his legs. Following his words, Jeong Taeui stubbornly tried to sleep, ignoring whatever he was doing, but it was impossible. He tried to forcibly hold onto his awakening consciousness amidst the continuous stimulation, telling himself, “If I don’t get proper sleep, I’ll collapse from fatigue,” but the moment Ilay pinched his chest hard, he shot upright. He half-rose, only to be pushed back down again.

‘Hey, that hurts! If you want to come, just rub it off somewhere by yourself, don’t forcibly wake people up!’

‘There was an instructor meeting at 6, right? About five hours left. It’s fine, you can sleep. I’ll just get some exercise in the meantime.’

Ilay said this with an unconcerned face, then grabbed Jeong Taeui’s wilting manhood. It didn’t hurt, but his grip was quite strong, making Jeong Taeui flinch and curl up. Sleep was rapidly fleeing.

Damn it.

Jeong Taeui exhaled a long sigh, cursing under his breath. Then, a little deflated, he mumbled,

‘I remember it was just the other day you confirmed with your own mouth that you wouldn’t touch me or Xinlu.’

As Jeong Taeui mumbled to himself, Ilay gave the expected reply: that what he did was too weak to be called “touching.” While the man was probably sincere in his own way, Jeong Taeui felt a headache coming on and groaned, pressing his forehead.

‘You didn’t possibly do this to Xinlu too….’

‘Xinlu? Hmm, if I did that with him right now, I feel like he’d bite my dick off at some point. Besides, I don’t really feel like it.

Ilay chuckled. Even as he did, he held Jeong Taeui’s and his own manhood intertwined in one hand, slowly stroking them. Jeong Taeui looked at Ilay with a highly displeased expression, then sighed again, lay back on the bed, and closed his eyes. It seemed sleep was out of the question anyway, but he figured he might as well conserve some energy.

The reason he stopped himself from flaring up was, first, because he felt like getting angry wouldn’t get him anywhere, and second, because he was somewhat relieved by the mention that Ilay didn’t feel like it with Xinlu. It seemed this guy had at least changed his mind and given up his wicked intentions towards that cute child.

Alright, go ahead and play your land-grabbing games however you want.

Jeong Taeui sighed, accommodating the man whose vitality was so strong it made the bedsheets shake just from him holding and vigorously rubbing their members together. There was a saying that one gets used to anything, and a fleeting worry crossed his mind: What if I get used to this situation and later become someone with no basic morals myself? He felt depressed. Even after the man, who had been rubbing him until he felt like his skin would peel off, came first on Jeong Taeui’s stomach, he didn’t move. He then came once more between his thighs, and again while rubbing between the cleavage of his buttocks, thrusting his hips vigorously and cheerfully, as if genuinely enjoying a sport.

During this time, Jeong Taeui, surprisingly lulled by the pleasant, rhythmic swaying of his body that wasn’t rough or suffocating, vaguely drifted off to sleep, almost like he was having a wet dream while half-asleep. When he woke up an hour or two later, having slept lightly but deeply enough not to wake easily, Jeong Taeui felt utterly depressed looking at the clock pointing to 7 AM.

There was a dawn meeting for the busy instructors at 6 AM, ahead of the joint training with the South America branch. When there’s an instructor meeting, the adjutant naturally follows. He was perfectly late.

Surely Ilay wouldn’t say anything to Jeong Taeui—he lacked common sense, but not that much conscience—but he’d probably get some dirty looks from other instructors or adjutants later. And naturally, Ilay wasn’t there. Of course, if they had woken up side-by-side in the same bed, that would have been deeply depressing in its own way, but the sight of him freshly “playing land-grabbing” by himself and then disappearing wasn’t exactly pleasant either. The fact that he’d left no traces on his body, cleaned himself up, and just covered Jeong Taeui with a blanket over his naked body somehow gave the explicit impression of “Oh, I did that again with that guy,” making him even more depressed.

What’s more, that wasn’t all. Another layer of unusual gloom settled over him that day. The moment he opened his eyes in bed, checked the clock, let out a long sigh, and slumped back down, Jeong Taeui realized: It must be pouring rain today.

His knees and side ached. He could at least tell himself that the ache in his side was psychosomatic, but his knees throbbed so much that he didn’t want to get out of bed. If he told anyone, they’d laugh and say he sounded like an old man, but this is what happened when it rained. Maybe it would get better later, but for now, his knees hurt whenever the weather turned bad or humid. Counting on his fingers, it hadn’t even been a year since his surgery.

After a big fight with that damned Lieutenant Kim in the military, his knee was shattered, and he couldn’t move properly for a while. Fortunately, his recovery speed was so fast that his doctor was amazed, and he was able to walk a bit and move and run normally before long. Usually, he was no different from anyone else. But still, when the weather was bad, it would always ache.

‘Even if I’m underground, it doesn’t matter if it’s sunny or pouring rain, but it’s a matter of mood, you know… Why does it have to rain and make me feel so down?’

Jeong Taeui sighed depressingly, applying a hot towel compress to his aching knee first thing in the morning. At least it felt a bit better after the compress and wrapping a supporter around it. His life wasn’t easy enough to just comfortably relax when his body felt a bit sore and stiff, so Jeong Taeui started his day before it got any later. As expected, every instructor and adjutant he encountered before the regular routine gave him displeased looks.

However, Jeong Taeui met their unfriendly gazes head-on, his face grim enough to shrug off their looks with a snort. If they intended to scold him for not properly serving his instructor, they could just fire him. If they shouted for him to quit as adjutant, Jeong Taeui was ready to throw his hands up in joy and gladly step down at any moment. Unfortunately, no one told Jeong Taeui to quit as Ilay’s adjutant.

Come to think of it, isn’t this perhaps the image of a poor subordinate suffering in silence, sexually harassed by their superior, unable to say anything due to the abuse of power?

Jeong Taeui stopped walking. He hadn’t thought of it that way until now, but if he fit it into the formula, it was exactly that. This could be reported to the higher-ups and formally protested…

“…Ilay, Taeui.”

Jeong Taeui, who had been standing there blankly, met eyes with Ilay, who had returned and was now standing right in front of him, looking at him with a strange expression. Jeong Taeui raised an eyebrow and said grumpily, “What?” Ilay lightly shrugged his shoulders.

“No, you look even more cheerful today. Did something good happen?”

It’s the opposite, Jeong Taeui’s face contorted even more. Ilay chuckled and turned around. He hadn’t rested properly, his mind was uneasy, his body felt unwell—he had all the elements for gloom. Whether he knew Jeong Taeui’s gloomy state or not, the boisterous laughter and chatter of colleagues having lunch could be heard from the dining hall, located half a floor up in the duplex structure, beyond the railing. Occasional sounds of quarreling were mixed in. Having excellent hearing wasn’t always a good thing, so he could also hear the curses and sarcastic remarks from those who saw Jeong Taeui and Ilay passing below the railing. It was already a daily occurrence, so there was no need to get angry, and he never actually had.

But with his body not feeling well, he felt more unpleasant than usual.

“…Tsk…”

Jeong Taeui slowed his steps. He’d wrapped it tightly, but moving around all morning had loosened the supporter. Perhaps it was his imagination, but his knee seemed to ache even more.

He let out a long sigh, bent down, and put his hand on his knee. He thought that anyone seeing him would assume he’d been running at full speed and was exhausted, and somehow he felt pathetic, sighing again.

“What’s wrong? …Your knee?”

While Jeong Taeui silently waited for the pain in his knee to subside, Ilay, who had been walking ahead, returned. It was the third time he’d come back, so Jeong Taeui might have said something annoyed, but Ilay only tilted his head in a strange way, then observed Jeong Taeui for a moment before asking. He was quick-witted, that guy.

“Hmm… well. Go eat. I don’t really feel like it, I’d rather just go to my room and rest. …There’s no need for me to stick around while you eat, is there, Instructor?”

“Come to think of it, you said you had surgery. Where?”

Jeong Taeui stood up and gestured for Ilay to go. But Ilay didn’t even pretend to hear him. He approached Jeong Taeui, squatted down, and knelt on one knee. Without a moment’s hesitation, he rolled up Jeong Taeui’s trouser leg, clicked his tongue at the clumsily wrapped supporter on his knee, and then took it off.

“Tsk tsk. Was there really a need to dedicate yourself to the military to the point of ruining your body? Soldiers are nothing more than expendable goods.”

Ilay indifferently pressed down on Jeong Taeui’s knee, as if saying he’d done something foolish. It throbbed in response to the pressure, making Jeong Taeui frown. He grabbed Ilay’s hand to push it away and grumbled sulkily,

“It was a place I went into willingly, so I couldn’t exactly slack off there. Besides, this wasn’t even because of a military accident.”

“Where did you get hurt then?”

“Before discharge, with Lieutenant Kim. …He’s probably feeling a throbbing around his ribs and elbow right now.”

He felt quite awkward after saying it. He’d ended up like this from a simple brawl, completely unrelated to work.

Jeong Taeui clicked his tongue and secretly glanced at Ilay. Ilay stared at Jeong Taeui for a moment with an astonished—or perhaps pathetic—look, but then silently rolled down his trouser leg and stood up.

“Lieutenant Kim, is that the guy you mentioned before, your peer you had a fistfight with?”

“Ah—yeah.”

Jeong Taeui nodded, thinking, Oh, I guess I did mention it.

“Hmm. …To still be dragging around an injury of this extent, you’re surprisingly frail.”

Jeong Taeui felt a surge of indignation and wanted to retort, but then he remembered that this man had suffered worse injuries, more recently than himself. The shoulder that had been riddled with clusters like a honeycomb was now, regardless of its actual state, perfectly fine on the surface.

“Rather than me being frail, I think you’re just excessively inhuman.”

“Well, maybe so. Anyway, shall we go then? I think there might be other areas that need attention besides your knee.”

Ilay’s steps, showing signs of turning back with Jeong Taeui, were irritating, but his words bothered Jeong Taeui even more. He didn’t even think of moving from the wall he was leaning against and looked at Ilay suspiciously. Other areas that need attention. He didn’t have any other painful spots besides his knee. In fact, his knee was just throbbing a bit more than usual, not enough to make such a fuss. If it was more attention… did he mean “I need to teach you a lesson today” kind of “attention”? But he couldn’t recall doing anything recently that would warrant trouble from this guy. As Jeong Taeui continued to stare at him suspiciously, Ilay chuckled and tilted his head. Then he tapped just below his ear, above his nape.

“I made a mistake too, but why didn’t you put a band-aid on it?”

“Band-aid? …? …!”

Jeong Taeui, who had been frowning and tilting his head, wondering what he was talking about, suddenly widened his eyes and touched his nape. Then he glared intently at Ilay.

“…You put a mark on me?”

“You’ve been marked.”

“… …In a very noticeable spot?”

“Exactly where your middle finger’s third knuckle is touching right now.”

Damn it. It was right in a spot that was clearly visible from the front. If they were outside, he wouldn’t mind walking around with a mark or two, but appearing with something like that in this place, teeming with only men, one morning… that was definitely not ideal. And most importantly, there was someone who absolutely must not hear about this.

“Xinlu… you didn’t run into him today, did you?”

Jeong Taeui’s face turned pale as he racked his brain. Somehow, he felt like a cheating husband—though, come to think of it, it wasn’t all that different. But somehow, he felt that if Xinlu saw something like this, something frighteningly unknown would happen. Ilay watched Jeong Taeui’s face, which turned red then pale, with an expression that was hard to decipher, a subtle mix of amusement and contemplation, then asked casually,

“Are you that afraid of him hearing about it?”

“Of course!”

Even if Uncle heard about it, I’d want to dig a hole and hide, Jeong Taeui mumbled, tearing at his hair. At this location, unless someone’s incredibly insensitive or unobservant, everyone must have seen it. This is infuriating. Jeong Taeui, his face flushed, glared at the floor, then turned his fierce gaze directly to Ilay.

“When did you see this?”

“This morning, when you came to the instructor’s office.”

Ilay answered nonchalantly, meaning he had seen it even before the regular work day began.

“Hey, then you should have told me then…!”

“You didn’t seem to care much, so I just thought nothing of it.”

It seemed like he was destined to have bad luck from the very morning today. At least if his uncle had seen it, he would have told him, but his uncle had already left the instructor’s office earlier for work.

Jeong Taeui tore at his hair until it felt like it would come out, groaning, then quickly started walking. He fiercely shoved Ilay, who was standing almost blocking his path. Anyway, he needed to get back to his room quickly and…

That’s when it happened.

Splash—!

“…Huh…?”

He hadn’t even taken a step or two. Jeong Taeui blinked his eyes for a few seconds, then stopped again. Drops of water streamed down his eyelashes and into his eyes, making him wipe his eyes with the back of his hand. His hand was also wet. Not just his hand, but his head, face, and clothes were drenched. Jeong Taeui looked up. From above the railing, a man clicked his tongue, “Tsk!” and then hurled an empty bucket at Ilay. Ilay, who had stepped back to avoid the bucket, also looked up at the man.