Stay With Me Tonight
"Hmph…"
She couldn't manage a comeback. All she could do was puff out her cheeks.
Tears welled in her eyes, her face gone round and swollen — so cute I couldn't help stroking her hair as I spoke.
"So from now on, no more talking to Choi Seongyong."
The worry in my voice must have been the last straw. Lee Jieun's face crumpled, and fat, glistening tears started rolling down her cheeks.
"I don't… want to talk to him either… hic… but Oppa… hic… you talk to Heejung unnie every single day…"
What the hell was I supposed to say to that?
I hadn't even finished wrestling with the question when she threw her arms around my waist and buried her face in my chest. The sudden closeness caught me off guard, but I didn't let it show — I just patted her back and kept my voice even.
"So that's why you kept answering him?"
"Mhm… I don't even like him… hic… but Oppa talks to someone else every day, so…"
I didn't argue. I just kept rubbing her back until I felt her ease away from me, a little calmer now. Her face was flushed pink. Whether that was leftover embarrassment or the alcohol, I couldn't tell.
"All done crying?"
Lee Jieun just nodded, not saying a word.
The mood was already there. This time I was the one who leaned in, bringing my face close to hers. She stared up at me with reddened, glistening eyes — but she didn't pull away.
Peck.
A light bird-kiss, lips touching and parting in the same breath. The face that had been staring at me went a shade redder.
"Come here."
I took her arm and gave a gentle tug. She offered no resistance at all, settling onto my lap like it was the most natural thing in the world. She was so small that the weight of her on my legs felt almost comfortable. I wrapped both arms around her, and she leaned into me and buried her face in my chest again.
We stayed like that for a while. Then, from somewhere against my shirt, I heard her breathing go rough.
Sniff. Sniff.
At first I figured her nose was just stuffed from crying. I was about to hand her a tissue when something about it felt off.
"Hehe— Oppa, you smell so good!"
She was beaming up at me like the tears had never happened.
I already knew Jieun had a thing for my cologne, but…
I'd sprayed it more than twelve hours ago. Was it seriously still noticeable? The sheer absurdity of it made me laugh.
"Hmph— why are you laughing?"
"Just because Jieun's cute."
I leaned in again. This time Lee Jieun squeezed her eyes shut, waiting. I wasn't going to leave her with another peck. I kept our lips together, parted mine just enough, and brushed my tongue against hers.
She startled for a second — then her lips opened, letting me in. I explored her mouth slowly, mapping every corner with my tongue, while she just sat there with her lips parted, giving the occasional little twitch. Anyone watching would have known it was her first kiss.
Our lips came apart with a soft, wet sound, a thin thread of saliva stretching between us before it broke. She still looked dazed, drunk on the feeling of it.
I wanted more. God, I wanted more. But we were still in the shop.
"Want to stay with Oppa tonight?"
She hesitated, thinking it over — then gave a shy little nod.
I could have scooped her up and headed for a motel that second. Except—
Ah… how long is this going to take to clean…
The table we'd been drinking at, the chicken bones scattered across the floor — just looking at the mess made me sigh. Dongmin hyung had said to leave it, that he'd deal with it on Monday, but how was I supposed to walk out on that?
"Sit tight for a second. Let me tidy up a bit and then we'll go."
"I'll help clean too!"
Thanks to Drinking, Singing, and Dancing, I wasn't even buzzed. Jieun, on the other hand, was clearly well past her limit. The most helpful thing she could do was stay in her seat.
"No. Oppa's got this. Just sit and rest."
I caught her by the shoulders as she tried to stand and eased her back down. She looked ready to puff her cheeks out again, so I tossed her a question while I started clearing the table.
"So when did you first meet Choi Seongyong, anyway?"
I knew for a fact it hadn't been the Christmas dinner. Seongyong had been into Jieun well before that — he'd been pestering Dongmin hyung about her for ages — and Jieun herself hadn't acted like she was seeing him for the first time that night.
She thought about it for a moment, then started talking.
"Uh… sophomore year of high school, I think? I saw him once when I was walking with Oppa."
"Oppa? Your older brother?"
"Yeah… my brother got into a lot of trouble when he was younger. He used to hang around with some pretty shady people."
A delinquent type, then?
I filed the thought away and waited for her to go on.
"Anyway, we were walking home together, and these guys came running up in an alley and bowed to my brother. That's when I saw him."
Sophomore year — so she'd been eighteen. That was two years ago, wasn't it? And she remembered that?
"You remember someone you only glimpsed two years ago?"
"Well… it's kind of a long story. Basically…"
There had been five or six of them. One was her brother's direct junior, and he'd been in the middle of "educating" his own juniors. Educating, meaning he'd lined them up and was beating them one by one — and Jieun had just happened to walk past. Then the guy doing the beating came sprinting over to bow. Imagine how that looked.
"So my brother asked what was going on, and…"
The junior told him the truth. The kids being "educated" had ganged up on someone at school and beaten him so badly they all got expelled. The victim turned out to be someone the educator knew — a younger kid he looked out for.
It had left a deep impression. And even back then, Choi Seongyong had that bright yellow hair and the tattoos on his arms, so she'd never forgotten his face.
"My brother got into so much trouble when he was young that he really hates people like that. He and I are close now, but… he seriously cannot stand violent people!"
Good thing we hadn't gotten into a fight earlier. If I'd just beaten Seongyong into the floor, every point of affection I'd worked so hard to build with her would have gone up in smoke.
"If you hate him that much, why didn't you just block him? Why keep talking to him?"
"Hmph— because Oppa keeps talking to Heejung unnie, so I did the same thing!"
"Come on, what's that got to do with anything? You talk to Heejung too."
I'd finished cleaning by then. I sat down beside her and laid on the sophistry. She froze at my logic, then muttered under her breath.
"That's… that's different…"
"Then would you rather Oppa stop talking to Heejung?"
The bluntness of it made her start thinking hard. It was a genuinely difficult question. Telling me to stop talking to Heejung would have been messy — Jieun and Cha Heejung were friends, after all. Singling someone out like that was a dangerous thing to say.
Me, I can tell her not to talk to Seongyong no problem. I'm not friends with the guy.
"No… that's not it… it's just…"
Lee Jieun hesitated, fumbling for the words. But I hadn't asked the question because I wanted an answer. I cut her off.
"We're all cleaned up, so let's go. Come on — up you get!"
I took her hand and pulled her to her feet. We walked out of the shop like that, fingers still laced together.
"Wow~ Oppa, I've never been here before! There's even a computer!"
Watching Jieun wander around the room with that look of wide-eyed wonder put a dad-smile on my face.
Not that a father and daughter would come to a place like this…
I'd been worried the mood might turn awkward once we got here. Then she ran and flung herself onto the bed, and I realized I'd been worrying over nothing.
"Oppa, the bed is so soft!"
She'd been bashful the whole way from the shop. The moment we stepped into the building, something flipped. The unmanned check-in — paying without a single person in sight — delighted her. So did the adult vending machine standing next to it.
"Oppa, what's this?"
"That's, uh… love gel. It's like lotion."
"And this?"
"That's… let's just get up to the room first."
She kept pointing at things I really didn't want to explain, apparently finding my reactions hilarious, so I just herded her upstairs. Now she was poking around the room like a kid on a sleepover, and I had to say something before she got any more comfortable.
"Oppa will shower first, so watch some TV."
"Huh…? Huh?"
Lee Jieun bolted upright on the bed and started scanning the room. I laughed, walked over, and kissed her.
Peck.
"I'll be quick. Just wait a bit."
I pressed the remote into her hands. She pulled the blanket all the way up to her chin, burning with embarrassment, and I headed for the bathroom.
Finally. It's happening with Jieun.
The thought hit me with a strange, swelling warmth. Lee Jieun was different from every woman I'd met since gaining Sex Coin.
Seong Gaeul, who I'd met through money from the start. Cha Heejung, who I hadn't even looked at twice until a single night of drinking pulled us together all at once. Song Dayoung, a one-night stand from a hunting bar. All of them had come crashing into my life out of nowhere.
Jieun was different. I'd had feelings for her long before any of that. She was the first person whose Difficulty I'd ever checked, and the one I'd poured more effort into than anyone else. Slowly turning an already-settled relationship into something else — God, the work that had taken. Going on dates day after day and still keeping that fresh, innocent feeling alive had been exhausting.
And the most important thing of all: I was going to be her first.
It wasn't that I was the type who only went after virgins. That was a separate issue. I just knew how deeply a first time burned itself into your memory. Even I still thought about my first girlfriend every now and then.
I have to make a memory she'll never forget.
I made the vow under the running water, and I meant every word of it.