Chapter 57: End of Seventeen Years

Cha Eun-gyeol lunged at him like a madman.
True to his words that he never ended things after just one round during rut, he continued without rest.
He pressed their lower bodies together until Han-geon’s hips and groin burned red.
Han-geon’s entire body was drenched in the viscous fluid Eun-gyeol spilled.
His chest and stomach, even his hair and the rims of his ears, were splattered with the hot liquid.

He poured out so much semen that Han-geon’s insides now felt like they were bubbling.
The word rut became viscerally real—the act was relentless and tenacious.

There was no longer any need for restraints or coercion.
Han-geon didn’t have the strength left to move even a finger.
He murmured pleas for him to stop, begging weakly, but the more he did, the more fiercely Cha Eun-gyeol went at him.

He shoved into him with Han-geon collapsed face-down, lifting only his slackened hips.
When he finished there, he flipped him onto his back to face the ceiling and shoved into him again.
When he reached his peak, sometimes he came inside him, and other times he pulled out just before climax and scattered it over his body.
His hands smeared it deliberately, obsessively, leaving no part of Han-geon’s body untouched.

Unable to endure what was bordering on sheer cruelty, Han-geon barely managed to lift his collapsed body.
He crawled forward on all fours like a dog, clutching the edge of the sheets as he awkwardly dragged himself along.
There was no purpose to it—just an instinctive reaction.
Behind him, an innocent laugh rang out.

“What are you doing, Han-geon?”
“Trying to run away?”

“…Pl-please… stop….”

“I thought I knew everything about you,”
“but today, I’m learning a lot of unexpected sides.”

In an instant, long fingers wrapped around his ankle.

“I didn’t know you could be this cute.”

There was no mercy in the force that yanked him back.
His heavy body slid helplessly across the bed.
Too exhausted to respond, Han-geon could only lie limp, gasping shallow breaths.

The madness that began at dawn continued without end.
With each repetition, the shock of being driven into dulled, as if watered down.
Physical pain filled the void instead.
It was overwhelming and exhausting, yet Eun-gyeol still showed no signs of tiring.

At times, Han-geon briefly lost consciousness, as if fainting.
Each time he opened his eyes again, Eun-gyeol was there, mercilessly thrusting into him.

His abused opening hurt beyond words.
After being grabbed and shaken into climax so many times, Han-geon’s cock no longer responded at all.
It even stung when touched.
Eun-gyeol, who had relentlessly wrung him dry as if he’d tear him raw, now abandoned it entirely and continued to use him as he pleased.

“…What time is it.”

Han-geon asked in a completely ruined voice.
Instead of the “please stop” he’d repeated dozens, hundreds of times, this was what came out.

“Two.”

“…..”

He didn’t even want to calculate how many hours it had been since they started at dawn.
Quietly, Han-geon buried his sweat-soaked forehead into the pillow.

“Haa… huff….”

Ragged breathing spread behind him.
Eun-gyeol pulled out with a wet sound.
The semen that had filled him spilled out along with Eun-gyeol’s retreating length, streaming down and dripping from his open entrance.
The sensation of it running down his thighs never grew familiar, no matter how many times it happened.

“I’m going to wash,”
“Want me to wash you too?”

At last, Eun-gyeol asked.
Han-geon lay there without answering.

“If you don’t answer, I’ll carry you straight to the tub.”

His tone sharpened, his mood clearly souring.
Afraid he really would do it, Han-geon hurriedly replied.

“Let me rest a bit… just leave me alone… you go first.”

“Fine, then.”

Hearing Eun-gyeol’s indifferent reply, Han-geon lay facedown, breathing like a corpse.
Soon, the sound of running water followed.
Only after confirming Eun-gyeol had truly left did Han-geon try to turn over.

“Ugh…!”

He nearly screamed.
His waist refused to move.
The muscle pain was horrific, like he’d been beaten all over.
Gritting his teeth, Han-geon finally staggered upright and looked at himself in the mirror.

What the hell kind of state is this.
A bitter laugh escaped him.

“…Ha.”

It was impossible to look at with open eyes.
His entire body was smeared with pale, translucent fluid, and his skin was covered in bite marks.
It looked like he’d been attacked by a wild animal.

His neck was the worst of all.
These weren’t gentle, sweet marks from sucking—they were closer to having been torn into.
At this point, he couldn’t even tell where the couple of marks Yoo Junseong had left earlier were.
His neck, completely covered in red bruises, was horrifying.
Seeing how obsessively they seemed placed, as if to overwrite someone else’s marks, Han-geon felt sickened.

“…Is he insane.”

His fully hoarse voice sounded pitiful.
After blinking blankly at his reflection, he collapsed weakly back onto the bed.
He should have gotten dressed and left while Cha Eun-gyeol was washing.
But after seeing himself, even the meager strength he had left drained away.

Nice going, Choi Han-geon.                                                      

‘This was the spectacular price for seventeen years of unrequited love.’
Thinking that, a hollow laugh slipped out.
Lying there in his miserable state, Han-geon chuckled weakly to himself like a madman.

Yeah.
This was the result.

He’d pushed the person he loved into a hotel, telling himself to let him sleep with someone else.
He’d only had one beer to calm his spiraling thoughts, and ended up being misunderstood as having slept with that person.
He’d been subjected to humiliation under the pretense of “checking,” and after that…

He hated him.
He hated Cha Eun-gyeol for doing this to him.
He resented him, felt betrayed.
He couldn’t forgive him.
Those emotions burst out chaotically, like bullets fired in all directions.

And yet, strangely enough, the final shot of that indiscriminate contempt wasn’t aimed at Eun-gyeol—but at himself.

Even in a situation like this, worrying about whether Eun-gyeol’s rut had been eased at all.
Feeling relieved, without realizing it, that Eun-gyeol hadn’t gone off to sleep with someone else.
Maybe… maybe he was far more insane than he’d thought.

If he’d known the price of loving him would be this enormous, this devastating—
If he could turn back time knowing all this…
Could he really abandon his feelings for Eun-gyeol?
Crush them before they ever sprouted, kill them outright?
If he could do that, he wouldn’t have ended up this miserable.

“…Pathetic bastard.”

The self-mockery he muttered in a dazed voice answered him well enough.

He probably couldn’t.
Yeah.
That’s why this happened.
Because he was this much of a pushover, this unbearably foolish….

Self-blame and self-loathing had been familiar emotions ever since he started loving him.
They usually didn’t affect him much anymore.
But today, it hurt too much.
His heart, beaten and abused until it was in tatters, couldn’t even withstand the familiar weight of self-reproach.

Han-geon weakly closed his eyes.
For today—at least for now—he decided to postpone blaming and hating himself.
He was too exhausted for it.

For a while, only his steady breathing filled the space nearby.
Lying there with his eyes closed, the questions that had piled up since last night drifted chaotically through his mind.
Among them, one stood out more than the rest.

How could Eun-gyeol do something like this to him?

He’d said he’d never held a man in his arms.
Han-geon knew Eun-gyeol’s long-standing preferences well.
Just moments before, hadn’t he said the very idea of it made him sick?

And yet Eun-gyeol had gone into heat like a beast over him.
Not only that—he’d kept at it for hours without rest.
The unmistakable marks left all over his body were proof of that unbelievable reality.

Why.
No matter how hard he wracked his brain, he couldn’t understand.
From the time Eun-gyeol had so cruelly built a wall between them on the rooftop until now—what had happened in between?
What kind of change had occurred inside Eun-gyeol for this to happen?

Because it was rut?

No matter how much he thought about it, that was the only answer he could come up with.

Rut must truly be something vicious.
Only then did Han-geon understand why Eun-gyeol locked himself in a hotel room whenever his cycle hit.
Whether it was his seventeen-year friend, or someone he’d always despised as a sexual partner—
“someone big, muscular”—
or both…
He’d acted purely on instinct, without regard for any of it.

More questions sprang up one after another.
How had Eun-gyeol known where he was?
Had Junseong contacted him?
What about the kiss marks on his neck before Eun-gyeol did anything—were they really from Yoo Junseong?
But no matter how hard he tried to remember, there was nothing….

“…Ugh.”

Han-geon frowned.
His head felt like it was going to split.
Come to think of it, he really had drunk quite a lot.

Between Eun-gyeol’s rough treatment and the alcohol crashing through his system, his body was a wreck.

He didn’t know.
Thinking about Junseong right now was too much.
That was something to reconsider before returning to the set.
The most pressing problem right now was Eun-gyeol.

Maybe Eun-gyeol, too… had simply snapped in a moment of rage and heat.
He’d warned him so firmly not to meet him, and yet Han-geon had—maybe that was why he’d lost control.

But was that anger really so intense that he’d abandon an omega he was with and rush over here?

And why had Eun-gyeol gone to his place?

Questions piled onto questions.
Too many to handle right now.
Probably something they’d have to talk through, slowly.
Just as he reached that thought, the bathroom door opened.