A Mistake
The touch of his cautious lips felt like a breeze brushing against me. I wasn’t Soo-hee from the script, so I couldn’t accept his kiss. But the way his tongue traced my closed lips, the way his eyes trembled shut, the way he seemed to be pleading so sorrowfully—it all stirred something in me. Heat rose over my wavering emotions and moved my lips. I blamed the five sips of alcohol I’d had.
He must have been lost in the act, because he performed the perfect first kiss. Like a boy stealing the lips of the person he’d been secretly in love with, he didn’t even dare touch my shoulders. With only his lips and face offered forward, he poured every ounce of his focus into that single act.
The instinctive rejection I’d always felt toward Cha Jun-jae quietly raised a white flag at some point. On a day like today, the rain seemed to have washed away my reason. I was captivated by his strikingly handsome face, by his pure-hearted devotion that I could never deserve, and most of all, by the clumsy, unpracticed way his tongue explored my mouth.
I slowly gripped his shoulders and pushed him back just enough to create a small gap. I drew in a breath through it. Then it was my turn—I leaned into him, biting his lips in stages. I tasted him freely, pulled back, then chased after him again, slipping my tongue into the seam of his lips. Until now, a kiss had only ever been one form of expressing affection. I had never lost myself in the kiss itself, never mixed our breaths so desperately or gasped into it.
I pushed forward, leaning over him for a more comfortable position. Cha Jun-jae’s hands wrapped around my waist and lifted me. When I opened my eyes, I was lying on top of his broad, masculine chest.
“Ha…….”
Breathless, I pulled my lips away and pressed my forehead against the line of his neck. The moment I tried to steady my dizzy mind, his hand returned. Cha Jun-jae lifted my cheek and claimed my lips without permission. He devoured me urgently, as if trying to rob me of my senses, sucking hard. His movements had grown a little more skilled as he tangled his tongue with mine. The tip of his tongue scraped recklessly over the softest parts of my mouth. With wet, sucking sounds, he tried to fill me entirely with himself.
Our positions had changed. I had started on top of him. After my mind had been stolen a dozen times, I found myself cradled in his wide embrace. Cha Jun-jae was everywhere above me. I opened my eyes wide and looked at what I was holding. My hands were trembling as they clutched his shoulders. The moment my vision blurred, Cha Jun-jae pulled his lips away. My breath burst out and my chest heaved. His greedy mouth wandered to an unexpected place. The sensation of it sliding along my neck and moving downward brought my reason rushing back.
“Stop.”
But Cha Jun-jae ignored me completely. Pretending not to hear, he continued to shower my neck with careful, devoted kisses. I shuddered at the ticklish feeling and shoved his shoulders with all the strength I could muster. When my resistance continued, he finally pulled himself away. Both my breath and my vision cleared at the same time.
“Hey, what the… what is this…….”
“I think I understand it clearly now.”
My fingertips were flushed red. I had been tricked into a kiss. Cha Jun-jae, with a blush blooming across his cheeks, smiled brightly as if he had gained some profound realization. He took my hand—before I could even find the right moment to get angry—and helped me up. Instead of leaving, he sat right beside me, sticking close. My head was still spinning; I couldn’t tell if this was reality or a dream.
“I think I finally know how Hae-soo felt, Eun-dam.”
“Uh… yeah.”
“There were things I never understood before. First kisses, things like that.”
I couldn’t control my expression. I had been staring into the distance, but now I turned my head as if someone had commanded it. As I tried to calm my ragged breathing, the movement beside me felt suspicious. Like he had been waiting for the right moment, Cha Jun-jae’s arm slipped around my waist. I immediately slapped his arm away.
“What are you—what are you trying to do?”
“My phone.”
His long fingers were holding my phone. I had jumped to conclusions and gulped down a whole bowl of kimchi soup, so I quickly let go of his hand. Still in what looked like an embrace, Cha Jun-jae slowly returned to his original position. Sitting beside me, he turned on the phone and looked at it as if he had already forgotten the kiss. As if he expected me to believe it had all been acting practice.
I couldn’t lose. I didn’t want to show him how embarrassingly shaken I was. Even as my head spun, a useful idea came to me. I picked up the fallen script and opened it to the first kiss scene. I pulled out the pen that had been stuck in it and clicked the button with a soft snap.
It would be better to change it to a rainy day and add a more passionate feeling.
When a convincing scene came to mind, a satisfied smile spread across my lips. In that moment of full-bellied contentment without having eaten, I suddenly glanced sideways. Cha Jun-jae was watching me with an unreadable expression.
“What?”
“You changed it?”
“Yeah.”
“How?”
“It’s my script. Why are you so concerned… It’s just the weather and the positions and stuff like that.”
I couldn’t say Cha Jun-jae’s help had been completely useless. Even though it hurt my pride, I had no choice but to tell him. As I bit my lip hard, Cha Jun-jae tilted his heavy head toward me. His hot breath warmed my neck.
“The location too. Instead of outdoors, in the narrow boarding room where Soo-hee lives. What do you think?”
Without fail, Cha Jun-jae was trying to help. But my mind, still reeling from the kiss, kept superimposing his face over Hae-soo’s. I frowned as deeply as I could. I abandoned my earlier decision not to look directly at him. It happened right as our gazes tangled like our bodies might. In the narrow room, lying on my stomach and looking up at Soo-hee, Hae-soo’s eyes overlapped with his.
Having tasted his first kiss, Hae-soo didn’t hesitate to claim Soo-hee’s lips again. Ignoring the way she turned her head to avoid him, he pressed forward with an even more desperate expression, slipping his tongue out. But the Hae-soo that Cha Jun-jae was acting had none of that fresh, green innocence. It was like a sticky swamp, like a powerful river. He followed my turned face and pushed his tongue inside. The soft saliva-coated tongue invaded me, licking and playing inside my mouth as if trying to persuade me. My heart, which had never reacted like this in my entire life, floated upward and then sank heavily. It sank so deeply it grew quiet, as if it had stopped.
From that moment, my reason had already vanished. I wrapped my arms around the neck Cha Jun-jae offered me. The weight of his overlapping body didn’t feel heavy at all. The body of Cha Jun-jae pressing down on me reacted like a man’s. Feeling the world turn white before my eyes, I opened them again.
He was no longer Hae-soo. He was Cha Jun-jae, filled with desire for me. While pretending it was all acting, he had grown hard below. It should have disgusted me. Instead, I felt a strange, obscene pleasure like a woman who had lost her mind.
He had said he would never love me as a woman.
Yet Cha Jun-jae’s eyes, treating me as a complete woman, glittered with raw desire. It drowned out the inferiority complex inside me faster than anything else ever had. When I shook my head to pull my lips away, he followed me with a pleading motion. Wanting to see more of his face right before he cried, I yanked my head back harder. As Cha Jun-jae’s lips left mine, hot moans kept spilling out of him.
“Why…….”
He even boldly demanded more. I pressed down on his burning nose and straightened my head. Cha Jun-jae’s face in front of me was flushed with feverish red. Delighted by the sight, I rubbed his saliva-slick lips with my thumb. A suppressed moan burst out as if it were my own.
“Is this really acting practice?”
“Yeah…….”
At this point, I felt like a shameless director who had lured a new actor into a film with promises of a role, only to strip him naked. Though in reality, it seemed to be the complete opposite. I liked the way Cha Jun-jae whined pitifully because he wanted me. The situation where he seemed willing to give me everything yet only begged for my lips was incredibly satisfying. Call it a twisted personality if you want. Call it filling my crooked sense of inferiority this way if you want.
In any case, I had never found Cha Jun-jae this lovable or felt this happy while being with him.
“Ask me to do more.”
Only then did Cha Jun-jae’s gaze finally leave my lips. Suddenly, I wanted to capture the sight of his tired eyes, still burning with unquenched heat.
“If you beg me, then I’ll kiss you.”
“……How?”
I had expected him to refuse, but Cha Jun-jae willingly pressed his body closer. There wasn’t even enough space between us for a single sheet of paper. He offered his lips as if he were about to kiss me, letting out a hot breath where our mouths nearly met.
“I want to.”
“Really?”
“Give me permission.”
“More.”
“Permission…….”
But the one with little patience turned out to be me. I grabbed Cha Jun-jae’s cheeks and frantically offered my lips. His beautiful tongue poured straight into my mouth. It could no longer be called something as simple as acting instruction.