The Longest Night

Taking "stay the night" as nothing more than a kindly you can have a spare room, sleep for a few hours and head back to Seoul in the morning was impossible — his eyes, his tone, his voice, all of it shook Ji-su to her very core.

Worse, the man saying it was absurdly handsome, he'd been helping and looking out for her since the afternoon, he'd called her mother Madam, and it was now the dead of night.

Everything was too vivid to write off as a misunderstanding, so Ji-su couldn't manage a single reply. She just kept worrying her lip between her teeth. She didn't even want to ask the stupid question — are we really just going to sleep?

His car rolled to a stop in the garage, and Jae-gyeom turned fully around to face her.

"You're going to dump the shit car, right?"

Ji-su understood easily that the "shit car" he meant wasn't the pale little hatchback parked in his repair shop. And he clearly wasn't asking because he wanted an answer, because he kept going.

"Honestly, it was over the second that bastard left you here and took a cab. I could just be your new boyfriend. I've already paid my respects to your mother, after all."

"That's — that's not as easy as it sounds."

"What's hard about it?"

"We barely know anything about each other, that's what……."

Jae-gyeom pulled out his wallet and pressed his ID card into Ji-su's hand. The message clear: keep it.

Yoon Jae-gyeom. Born the same year as her. A citizen of the Republic of Korea. In the photo he looked a few years younger, his hair cut a little shorter than it was now.

"Graduated from Gyechon High School, run a repair shop in the county seat, name's Yoon Jae-gyeom. You've already seen my house, and I gave you a rough sketch of my family earlier."

"……"

"And you're Im Ji-su, Gyechon High graduate, working at a company in Seoul — the Pride of Gyechon itself."

"Could you — please stop with the 'Pride' thing."

"Then what should I call you? Ji-su."

When he held her gaze and murmured her name in that low voice, Ji-su felt her heart lurch and tighten. She wanted to demand why he had to say it like that — except she couldn't say what that even meant. And a flash of instinctive self-preservation warned her that she had better not go digging into his feelings.

Of course, just as Jae-gyeom said, Kim Young-baek was finished in her heart as of today. But the end of Kim Young-baek did not automatically mean the beginning of Yoon Jae-gyeom. She had never once started a relationship of any kind this way — out of nowhere, like this.

Whether it was courage or recklessness, she summoned it, took the hand he offered, and followed him. The most ridiculous day of her life — and of course its grandest, most dramatic night was waiting at the end of it. Standing under the cascade of the shower, Ji-su scrubbed her mind clean. She decided to think about absolutely nothing.

After a long soak, she made her own way to his bedroom.

She wore nothing but his shower robe, which swallowed her whole — far bigger than anything her own body could fill. Her hair was still damp, her cheeks flushed, and standing face to face with Jae-gyeom, she gathered her courage and opened her mouth. Her voice trembling was beyond her control.

"Yoon Jae-gyeom. I've never — this would be my first time. I don't really know how — how any of this works."

Not trusting herself to handle his answer, his expression, or anything else, Ji-su charged at his lips the moment the words left her mouth — like a headbutt. Their first kiss was so violent that instead of a soft smooch, it landed with a thud.

"Is that an attack?"

"It is NOT!"

Jae-gyeom pulled her into his arms, her eyes still squeezed shut. He laid her down on the bed and stroked the corners of her eyes gently with his fingertips. Ji-su slowly lifted her eyelids. Their gazes met and twined together, warm and threaded with just the right amount of tension.

"Pretty brave, for a first-timer."

"Um…… could you just — not say anything?"

"Fine. I'll shut up and do my job."

Finding it hard to believe that Ji-su was actually lying in his bed, Jae-gyeom simply gazed at her for a long while.

The first love he had carried in his heart, and his heart alone, for so many years — dropped into his lap like a Christmas gift, absurdly out of place in the sweltering heat of summer.

Even that stubborn mouth of hers, which refused to give a single affirmative answer to any attempt to define what they'd become to each other, was adorable. If he had to guess, Im Ji-su was hoping to file the entire day away as nothing more than a harmless episode.

He'd said he had a job to do, but then he just kept looking down at her, until Ji-su swallowed hard and asked again.

"Um…… aren't you going to?"

"You think I'm not?"

As if his calm, steady gaze a moment ago had been a lie, Jae-gyeom's hands began tracing her soft skin with single-minded intent. The knot of the robe slipped loose without resistance. The moment she lay bare beneath his eyes, hiding nothing, Ji-su didn't cover herself in embarrassment — she chose something else entirely.

Her slender fingers slid into Jae-gyeom's hair, and when she pressed her lips to his first, he surged in as though he'd been waiting for it — his hot, slick tongue sweeping boldly, intimately over the soft, tender pink inside her mouth.

It was the kind of kiss that made every cell and every sense in her body lift off the ground at once. Jae-gyeom's unrelenting movements melted the stiffness of her nerves into languor — and then, afraid of the plunge, she clutched him tight. His hard, bare skin met hers without a moment's hesitation, closing over her like a claim. And his large hands set her smoldering all the more.

"Ah……"

His fingertips found places she had never once, with anyone, permitted anyone to touch. His lips pressed down like a seal at her ear, at her throat, then lower, patiently leaving a trail of pink marks. Her aching sighs climbed higher and higher in pitch.

Before stimulation she had never known, the words stop or enough never even occurred to her. Every part of her he conquered felt good — and made her want more. By the time she realized how completely she'd lost herself beneath his hands, it was already too late.

"Im Ji-su."

"Mmm……"

"Say yes."

A low voice — as if offering himself one final chance to stop before he became a beast. Ji-su, brined in pleasure to the point where she hadn't known she was crying out, forced her eyes open and looked up at him. The man hungering for her like this — she didn't hate it at all. Permission? I gave that ages ago. How does he not know that?

"Jae-gyeom. Hurry."

At that plea — which went past permission and straight into demand — Jae-gyeom finally set himself upon her with deliberate purpose. She trembled under a tidal wave of devastating sensation. Until the small hours, Jae-gyeom kept Ji-su crying out and gasping awake through the whole night.

When the long night finally passed and they were drifting into each other's arms, Jae-gyeom whispered sweetly at her ear.

"Ji-su. Forget 'Pride of Gyechon' — I thought of something else to call you."

I shouldn't ask, she thought — but the day had already run entirely on his whims, so what difference would one more thing make? In a voice worn completely hoarse, she asked as lightly as she could manage.

"What is it?"

"First love."

Flustered by the totally unexpected word, Ji-su buried her face in his chest and began an elaborate performance of being asleep. But as if he could read every thought in her head, Jae-gyeom drew her closer with all the heat of his heart and closed his eyes, following her lead.

"I can practically hear your brain spinning itself ragged over when and how to run away, Im Ji-su."

"……"

"Wow. Not even going to deny it? Pretty bold of you."

He was right. Ji-su had planned to wake at the crack of dawn and make her escape. It had ended in spectacular failure.

It had been terrifyingly good, then unbelievably exhausting; she'd welcomed it gladly, then shuddered at how much it took out of her — over and over, relentless, all night long. Repeating sensations she had never once experienced, Im Ji-su — who could normally rise in the morning without an alarm — slept like she had never existed at all, deep into the late hours.

When she finally woke alone in the bed, Ji-su saw the duffel bag of her own clothes Jae-gyeom had brought in from the car, and she snorted at the absurdity of it. She was grateful, of course, that he'd thought of her having something to change into — mostly because of the sticky note stuck to the front.