Be Sweet to Me

Woo Tae-kyung yanked his hand away and started wiping it against the empty air, shouting.

"This is so goddamn filthy…"

"My hand's dirtier right now!"

"Sure. Keep screaming. Loud enough for the first floor to hear. I touched Woo Tae-kyung's dick and didn't even have panties on, so it felt hot, and it made me uncomfortable. Go on, tell everyone how offended you are."

Shit, I honestly can't tell who's dirtier here.

Woo Tae-kyung was dumbfounded that Lee Do-hee, in this situation, had gotten out of it by licking his own fingers and palm. He could still feel the texture of her tongue on his hand. What the hell, seriously—stuff like this actually existed?

He'd put his hand over her mouth to protect what little social standing and face she had left, and this was the thanks he got. Now everything from between his legs to his hand to the top of his head was stinging, and Woo Tae-kyung had simply had enough.

When he looked at her with a face full of disgust, Lee Do-hee was still frowning, her small fists opening and closing like a baby playing pat-a-cake.

"Lee Do-hee. Go wash your hands."

At the sound of an employee coming up the stairs, Woo Tae-kyung said nothing more and murmured it quietly.

Oblivious, she kept clenching and unclenching her fists all the same.

She had clearly, definitively gone insane. Where did she get off with that face, like a pervert savoring how it felt rather than someone who'd touched something dirty? Suddenly ashamed, Woo Tae-kyung muttered to himself at the empty room—shit, shit—until the employee made it all the way up.

"There's… something I left behind…."

Claiming she'd forgotten a shoe, the employee—picking up on the awkward, strange current running between the two of them—made her excuses for no good reason, gathered her things, and headed back down.

The moment she was gone, Lee Do-hee rose from her seat with practiced dignity as if nothing had happened, then wobbled when a pump slipped off her dangling foot without her even noticing. Catching her by the forearm with quick reflexes, Woo Tae-kyung steadied her upright.

"Cut the act already."

How could an arm possibly be this thin?

Privately startled by the bone he could feel through her forearm, he said nothing more.

"An act?"

Lee Do-hee was groping around with one foot for her missing shoe when his words made the corners of her eyes shoot upward. Then, while he was still holding her arm and waiting until she found her shoe, she seized his ear and wrenched it hard.

He was dragged along, ear still in her grip. If he resisted, that stinging hand of hers was definitely going to tear his ear off—he could feel it coming—so Woo Tae-kyung held her arm with one hand and threw off the jacket he was carrying, trying to break free with the other.

Mwaaah.

Their lips mashed together clumsily. Their front teeth collided first, and his vision swam. Then his lips were rubbed raw against her plump ones, and he found himself locking eyes with her as she licked at his mouth the way she'd smeared her spit across his palm earlier.

Th-that glistening, gleaming madness in her eyes.

Even with their lips pressed together, her gaze stayed fierce, glaring at him like she refused to lose. Woo Tae-kyung pushed her off. He pushed knowing the sofa was right behind her. Her body went sprawling, limp.

Not just his lips but her own too, slick and dripping with saliva, and Lee Do-hee cackled. She pointed at him and laughed like someone who didn't have the strength left to laugh, then let out a breath that seemed like it might tip her over the edge, panting hard.

"Try cursing at me again. Go ahead, curse at me one more time!"

When Jang Hee-jo had called her a lunatic, that had actually been a rather polite way of putting it.

Woo Tae-kyung's words died in his throat. If he swore back, she'd come lunging at him again, and he'd already been shoved aside without any strength to spare—what if she actually got hurt this time? He couldn't even bring himself to touch her.

Her hand had just been on his dick and she'd called it dirty, and now here she was laughing with malicious glee, lips still glazed with spit, not even wiping them.

"Then I won't. So focus on breathing properly."

"So you only listen when someone smacks you around?"

Lee Do-hee sneered. It was absurd—she was the one who'd rubbed their lips together and somehow convinced herself she'd been the one hit—but he didn't want to provoke her any further. She curled her small body up on the sofa.

"I'm the one who got smacked just now, so why are you acting like the one who got hit?"

When he quoted her own words back at her, her shoulders shook with laughter again.

Woo Tae-kyung exhaled a long breath into the air, forcing down the disgust churning its way up.

Disgust? No—more than that, he thought, this wasn't simple anger. It was closer to not knowing what the hell to do.

Barely half a day had passed and he already wanted to drag Jang Hee-jo here. He'd thought he owed the man a debt; instead he seemed to have taken on something beyond any debt—something like original sin from the dawn of time.

Shit. Must've racked up a lot of sins following Jang Hee-jo around, huh.

Living this long and running into something like this.

Woo Tae-kyung looked down at Lee Do-hee, still curled up, somehow even smaller than before, and swallowed his tangled thoughts.

"Lee Do-hee. Look up."

He spoke to her where she lay limp and sprawled across the sofa.

"…Don't curse at me. Be sweet and kind to me. Everyone treats me that way, so you should too."

"Like your brother does?"

"Yeah."

"Will you… get up for me?"

In all his years living in that filthy, sordid world where the stench clung to your skin, Woo Tae-kyung had never once encountered anything called sweetness or kindness. He didn't even know what they were. How had Lee Yoon-gyum treated Lee Do-hee again?

All he could recall was a family straight out of a typical family portrait. He'd stayed one step removed from it and let everything slide past. A world that had nothing to do with him.

"Fine."

At his clumsy attempt, Lee Do-hee lifted her head again and scrambled up onto the sofa. Then she naturally extended her bare, shoe-less foot toward him. A sigh tried to escape on its own, but when his eyes met Lee Do-hee's, Woo Tae-kyung swallowed it.

Then he went hunting for the pump that had rolled under the table. He had to kneel on one knee to slip it on, so he knelt and, like Cinderella's glass slipper, fitted it back onto her foot. Pleased with the result, Lee Do-hee wiggled the shoe he'd just put on her right in front of his eyes.

His anger had dissolved, and sweetness and kindness were still mysteries to him, but Lee Do-hee looked so much like a child that the fight went out of him. Since his knee was already on the floor, Woo Tae-kyung brought the sleeve of the shirt she'd bought him up close to her face.

"Wipe."

Those glistening, shiny lips now struck him as a sign her head was starting to go soft, so he said it. She rubbed her mouth against his sleeve once, briskly, as if it were only natural.

"Tae-kyung, then let's go out and play now."

Lee Do-hee said it as she offered him her hand—the pat-a-cake hand, the one that had just gripped his dick.

"I've lost count of how many times we've played today."

"Playing at night is more fun."

Her scorching-warm hand finally caught his and laced their fingers together. He tried to pull free, not knowing what this was supposed to be, but when Lee Do-hee tilted her head slightly and just stared at him, his body stopped on its own.

Relax. Just go along with whatever she says. She'll get bored soon enough.

The question of whether he should actually trust Jang Hee-jo's bullshit followed right after, but Woo Tae-kyung decided this was still the best way to play it.

"Play with me, then. Hmm?"

"…Fine. Let's play. Until you're sick of it."

Hong Kong… he suddenly missed Hong Kong. He actually caught himself thinking that a knife fight among the pack of dogs calling for his head there would be easier than this. He'd never been this close to a woman before. And on top of that, fingers interlaced? He'd held a man's hand plenty of times—while cutting off his fingers, sure—but never like this with a woman, and Woo Tae-kyung had no idea how much pressure to apply, so he simply let all the strength drain out of his hand.

"Hold it sweetly and gently. If you grip like that, it looks like I'm dragging you off."

What the hell am I supposed to do about that, seriously.

Since Jang Hee-jo was so extraordinarily emotional, Woo Tae-kyung had always considered himself comparatively restrained. The loyal dog who kept his volatile, impulsive master reasonably in check from the sidelines.

It had been ages since he'd last seen the blood of some nameless stranger—how had he grown so calm in the meantime that this filthy feeling rising in him now wouldn't stay controlled?

Woo Tae-kyung looked at the brown eyes staring fixedly at him, as if watching exactly what he was thinking, and simply held her hand at a moderate pressure. Better to hand the leash over to Lee Do-hee and be dragged along. The moment he thought that, she let go.

"Boring."

"Then can we… go now?"

Sweet and gentle. No. Kind. Kindly.

"Drop the act, Woo Tae-kyung. I'm tired, so just indulge me for now. Turn that knob and she goes insane, so put up with it—it's all over your face."

At Lee Do-hee's merciless read—which never let anything slide—Woo Tae-kyung wiped the awkward expression he'd never once worn in his life clean off his face. For a long while, Lee Do-hee studied the bored, jaded face of Woo Tae-kyung, who looked like he might die of tedium.