Traces Washed Away
Did you do it in secret while I was asleep?
Each time I eased my cock a little farther in and rocked forward and back, the coarse, slick-matted hair rasped vividly across its surface. Once past that clumsy thicket, the next sensation was the slippery petals, heavy with mucus, teasing the tip of my glans with a thick, wet drag.
The alternating friction of hair and the clinging press of soft flesh traced a steady circuit, scrubbing away at my reason with the mechanical relentlessness of an automatic car wash. Alcohol, lust, and the undercurrent of danger had already long since stripped my judgment of any real function. Pressing my lower belly tight against Jieun’s small ass, I ground against her in a frenzy while one hand began roughly rubbing between her legs.
It was a strange, destructive pleasure, different from full penetration, that raced up my spine in a sharp, electric surge as it neared its limit. Yet the moment the excitement peaked, a paradoxical wave of crushing drowsiness rolled over me like a tide. The alcohol and the exhaustion of dawn weighed heavily on a brain already balanced on the edge of climax. I no longer had the mental room to push on to actual insertion. Only the instinct to finish this act while fighting the sleep remained.
Unable to hold back the rising surge, I clenched my cock hard in my fist and came. Hot liquid pulsed out in thick spurts, spilling unchecked across her skin. It coated the smooth curve of Jieun’s ass, the rough hair around her entrance, and the inner thighs, trailing white down her legs.
Looking down at her naked body slumped unconscious against the toilet, I felt the same satisfaction a beast feels after marking its territory with a savage claim. At the end of that precarious thrill of possible discovery, I had perfectly branded my zone onto her.
Once the aftershocks of orgasm faded, the drowsiness hit even harder. I wanted nothing more than to collapse onto the bathroom floor and sleep right there, but first the evidence had to be cleaned. Leaving traces meant ruin.
Forcing my mind back into focus, I turned on the shower and adjusted it to lukewarm. The cool stream against Jieun’s body made her shiver, but she did not wake. I began wiping away every mark I had left, starting with the mess around her mouth and face from vomiting, then carefully rinsing the places where my semen and her fluids had matted together on her ass and the entrance itself. After drying her thoroughly with a towel, I carefully lifted her limp form and carried her back to the bed in her room.
I laid her down gently, then carefully dressed her again in the fresh underwear and clothes I had only half managed earlier, arranging everything as if nothing had been disturbed. Once the blanket was pulled up to her chin, the perfect alibi was reconstructed. Fatigue had reached the point that my hands trembled faintly as I tucked myself away and pulled up my pants. I no longer even had the strength to open the front door and leave.
Better to stay here and play the part of a man completely wrecked by drink than risk leaving traces through clumsy movement. The story would be that I had helped Jieun to the bathroom when she started throwing up, then passed out myself on the living-room sofa, unable to fight the alcohol. Perfect. Beyond the flickering edge of consciousness, I soon plunged into a deep, swamp-like sleep.
Strange sunlight cutting through the living-room curtains made my eyelids feel heavy. I was reaching up to clutch a head that felt ready to split from the hangover when someone poked my shoulder.
When my eyes slid open, Jieun was standing over me, looking down. The new clothes I had put on her the night before were gone; she wore only a thin sleeveless top that left the valley of her chest fully exposed. Below that she was completely naked. Between her parted slender thighs and the coarse hair, the white semen I had spilled the night before was still dripping in thin trails all the way down to her knees. Jieun stared at me with cool, tear-bright eyes full of anger, and opened her mouth.
“Uncle, you raped me, didn’t you?”
“……!”
My heart hammered as if it would punch straight through my chest. The terror that the traces I had believed perfectly erased had been discovered left me unable even to scream as I jerked upright.
“……Hah!”
I dragged in ragged breaths and rubbed my eyes. The scene in front of me warped and crumbled away like dust.
It had been a dream. Cold sweat slid down my back. The real Jieun was not a semen-smeared nude. She was neatly dressed in the shorts and T-shirt I had put on her the night before, standing with a bottle of water she had taken from the fridge to fight a vicious thirst. She tipped the bottle straight to her lips without a glass and gulped it down. Each time her throat worked, the collarbones stood out sharply beneath the thin fabric. After drinking for a long while she let out a low, pained sound and pressed a hand to her forehead.
“Ugh, my head is seriously killing me……”
I looked at the clock on the living-room wall to anchor myself in reality. It was nine in the morning. Sitting on the sofa, I wiped the sweat from my face. The afterimage of the dream was so vivid that every nerve in my body still stood on end. As my heartbeat gradually found its normal rhythm, the cold reason of the real world began to return.
“Weren’t you cold? Even in summer, an older guy sleeping on the floor like that can end up with a crooked mouth.”
Jieun had sunk down onto the living-room floor, holding her head. The completely vulnerable body that had collapsed in the bathroom the night before was now fully covered, yet the sensation of that clumsy thicket I had washed clean still lingered vividly in my hands. I had to keep my mind sharp. One slip in my expression or my eyes here would bring down the fence I had worked so carefully to build. I asked in the driest, most indifferent voice I could manage.
“How’s your stomach? Anything hurt, or feel off anywhere?”
Jieun forced her heavy eyelids open and looked at me. Her bloodshot eyes were full of hangover.
“No, nothing’s okay at all. My head feels like it’s going to split. My arms, legs, and back all hurt, and I don’t even remember how I got into my room and lay down last night. I think the film completely cut out.”
At her words the taut string deep inside me went slack with a soft snap. Relief flooded in. Through every moment of being washed in my hands in the bathroom, carried to the bed, and dressed again, Jieun’s consciousness had truly been erased.
Yet behind the relief a stubborn ember of suspicion still refused to die completely. Was her memory really gone? Or was she acting to put me at ease? The instant I glanced at her face with that quiet probe, Jieun roughly pushed her tangled hair back and tossed out a joking remark.
“Why are you looking at me like that? Don’t tell me you did something to me while the film was cut, Uncle?”
A cold current ran straight down my spine. The sharp emotion rose as far as my throat, but my expression did not so much as twitch. The professional instinct that had carried me through countless system failures and crisis situations without breaking showed its value here. I gave a short laugh and answered naturally.
“Do something? You were completely wrecked, clinging to the toilet and mumbling. I barely got you into your room, and this is the thanks I get.”
The moment the words left my mouth my heart hardened for a fraction of a second. Telling a girl who claimed the film had cut out that I had personally put her to bed could become solid evidence that I had been awake in the small hours, touching her naked body and changing her clothes. It was a fatal slip that had leaked through a crack in the carefully maintained deception.
But I recovered my composure at once. Jieun remembered nothing of the night, not a single fragment. Even if she registered that I had put her to bed, I only had to push the mask of the devoted uncle who had selflessly taken care of his niece’s roommate when she collapsed covered in filth. I needed to turn the conversation before her eyes could start to waver. Looking around the room with deliberate casualness, I asked,
“What about Nayeon? Is she up?”
Fortunately Jieun seemed not to have registered the weight of my slip at all. She simply leaned against the wall and shook her head.
“Nayeon’s still out cold. She’s a real lightweight—won’t open her eyes until around lunch at the earliest. By the way, don’t you have to go to work, Uncle? It’s already nine.”
I took my smartphone from my pants pocket and woke the screen. My fingers moved with the same calm as always as they tried to connect to the company infrastructure system.
“Doesn’t matter. I’m remote anyway, so I just need to log in and check a few things. I can sit around the house and pretend to work.”
I turned the screen off and set the phone down on the table with a soft thud. At my shameless attitude Jieun shot me a sideways look and shot back playfully.
“Wow, total salary thief. I’m going to report you to the higher-ups at your company.”
The childish threat was so cute I let out a short snort of laughter.
“I’m the highest person here, you know?”
“……What?”
Jieun’s eyes went round with surprise. A curious look, as if she were wondering how high up I really was. Then she grinned and lightly tapped my arm.
“You, Uncle? No way. Then you have to give me a real internship.”
“Not happening. You need to be good at English, for one thing. And anyway, remote or not, I’m going to have to start showing up at the office a lot more now. I’m already exhausted just thinking about it.”
At my grumbling Jieun propped her chin in her hand, eyes sparkling. A strange mix of longing and curiosity stirred in the pupils that had been hazy with hangover.
“Whoa, interns? But what do people at an IT company even do? Do they all just stare at computers all day like you, Uncle? I want to go see.”
“You’re asking me to hire you when you don’t even know what the work is.”
I answered with deliberate curtness, yet my gaze lingered on the collarbones and the line of her shoulders sliding out from under the thin sleeveless top. The modest valley of her chest, faintly visible, vividly summoned the heavy sensation of those same breasts being crushed in my hands the night before.
The traces of the territory I had so thoroughly branded the night before had been perfectly washed away and erased, yet the sense of absolute power that had come from fully controlling and violating that body still clung to my fingertips like residual nourishment. I stood up and looked down at her.
“Go wake Nayeon so we can head out. Your stomachs must be completely wrecked—let’s all go get some hot soup for the hangover.”
Jieun smiled brightly, looking pleased, and nodded.
“Oh, perfect. Then I’ll go get ready first.”
She stood, grabbed a towel, and headed for the bathroom. Watching the sway of her back as she walked, I swallowed the saliva that had gathered in my mouth. She still knew nothing, moving inside the palm of my hand with nothing more than the face of a naive college student whose stomach was simply upset.