Call Me Teacher
He brushed off my advice like it was nothing. Good. Please keep ignoring me. The more he did, the easier it would be to drag him straight into hell.
Gu Somin and I arrived at the room where we'd just finished our heated encounter. A strange, lingering scent hung in the air, but Somin had been drinking until moments ago, so her nose seemed completely numb to it.
"I already talked to Taehoon. Told him I needed to check on your condition for a bit."
"Ah... okay..."
She looked surprised. Clearly she couldn't quite believe Lim Taehoon had actually given his permission.
Well, I hadn't exactly told him the whole truth. If I'd said I needed to put my hands on Gu Somin in the next room over, what would he have said? Then again, the guy was already in heat like a bull in rut—his eyes had probably rolled back the second he thought he had a shot with Seoah.
I locked the door from the inside. Gu Somin watched me do it and raised no objection. She just looked around the room with an awkward air, arms folded across her chest as if holding herself together.
I spoke up to ease the tension.
"Take off your outer layer and set it aside, then have a seat up on the table."
She did as I asked. I shrugged out of my own jacket and folded it neatly on top of hers. No oil on hand, but I had my eyes and my hands. With those two things alone, anywhere I went could become a shop.
Gu Somin perched lightly on the edge of the table, and the sight of her was, in a word, devastating. That cinched hourglass waist and those long, chopstick-slim legs stood out in sharp relief.
Our eyes met for a second and I looked away without meaning to.
Goddamn, she's beautiful.
I didn't meet her gaze again. I just bent straight down toward her legs, wanting to project that I had zero interest in her as a woman and only wanted to fix whatever was wrong with her body as fast as possible.
I worked my way naturally up those sleek calves and pressed gently into the hollow behind her knee. The Blue Spot there was soft and gave way almost immediately, but the hard Red Spot on the opposite side needed me to brace the front while I dug into the back with firm, steady pressure.
"Nnh..."
I'd started with the easier Blue Spot, and for some reason Gu Somin flinched in pain. Looking closer, I saw why—the instant the Blue Spot vanished, a scatter of Red Spots bloomed and spread around the back of her knee.
Blue Spots really did behave like living organisms. It had been the same with Lee Mikyeong: clear one Blue Spot and a swarm of Pink Spots would writhe underneath.
In short, a combo. A two-hit chain. I already knew that if you used it right, women went completely under. Give them a measured dose of pain, then soothe it away like you were coaxing them gently back to comfort.
I cradled and worked the area around her knee without hesitation, chasing the Red Spots as they fled my touch, kneading freely along the back and front of her thigh.
"Haa... that's strange. It hurts, but it also feels kind of refreshing."
"That's how a good massage is supposed to feel."
Not yet. She was still a long way from feeling truly good. What would happen if I burst one of those rock-hard Red Spots? Curiosity lit up inside me.
I piled on every scrap of professional-sounding nonsense I could invent, trying to look the part. Sometimes I wondered if I was even worse than Jo Byeongchan when it came to talking absolute garbage.
"At first you're feeling the pain because I've restored function to this knee. That also means the pain on the other side has eased. People only ever register the pain from the part of the body that hurts the most."
"Ah..."
The way she nodded along was oddly endearing.
I set my hand over the stubborn Red Spot on her other knee, ready to move into the real game. Definitely... just pressing wasn't going to cut it. Even digging in hard didn't seem like it would be enough.
I thought back to when I'd cleared Lee Yeondo's Purple Spot. I'd sweet-talked her about how pretty that part of her chest was, lowered the spot's intensity, and only then worked it free.
"Stretch your leg out straight for me."
Gu Somin obediently extended her knee. I was kneeling on one knee, and the moment she stretched her leg out, I naturally caught a glimpse of the underwear between her thighs.
Sheer panties dotted with little openwork holes. Did beautiful women just always wear pretty lingerie like this? No—wait. This woman knew full well her underwear was on display from this angle, and she was still easing her thighs a little farther apart. That was not nothing.
I pretended not to notice and caught the tip of her outstretched foot, pushing it upward as if guiding a stretch. The Red Spots along the back of her leg started to respond. So Red Spots really did mark muscle contraction after all. Even simple stretching chipped away at them little by little.
Once the stretch was done, I pressed into the hardened Red Spot and felt it mash and dissolve under my fingers. When even hard pressure got no reaction, I pushed harder still and shattered through them in quick succession.
What kind of phenomenon would appear once a hard Red Spot was destroyed? I kept massaging for several more minutes after clearing them and got nothing. Same as when I'd removed a Purple Spot—did the change only show up in the person receiving the massage? Or did nothing happen at all?
With no way to confirm it, I kept working, and my eyes happened to settle carefully on her feet.
Gu Somin's feet were relatively unattractive. Years of walking in dress shoes and high heels had left the soles thick with calluses. At a glance it was almost pitiful. A badge of honor, maybe. Like a swan—graceful above the waterline, paddling like mad underneath. No wonder no part of her body was left unscathed.
It wouldn't just be her knees. Her lower back, her neck—everything would have problems. I'd caught a glimpse earlier of scattered Blue Spots along the back of her neck. Not as large as the ones on her knees, but still a sign that something in the function had gone wrong.
So this is the kind of hardship that hides behind the glamorous lives of models.
"Somin."
"Yes?"
"If I told you to quit modeling, what would you do?"
I had no real intention of telling her to quit or anything of the sort. I only asked because her body needed a short rest if it was going to heal quickly. Reaching this kind of condition in her mid-twenties was serious compared to every other woman I'd examined so far.
Seoah made the contrast obvious. Aside from the Purple Spot on her hips, even Red Spots were hard to find on her. Sometimes she had more Pink Spots than Red ones. And Seoah was older, so that said everything.
Gu Somin's face turned grave at the question. Even when I'd looked into her future, it had been clear—this was the kind of thing a doctor would have asked her at least once. In the vision, the doctor had scolded her for continuing to model despite the warnings.
After a long silence, Gu Somin lowered her head.
"I'm sorry. I don't think I can do that."
Ah.
In that moment I understood how important modeling was to this woman, and how fierce her pride in her work really was. In the end, those very things had been what dragged her down in the future.
I gave her a bright smile, the opposite of her expression.
"It's fine. You don't have anything to apologize for. I just wanted to hear that resolve from you."
"What? What do you mean...?"
"I don't want you to quit modeling, Somin."
She stared at me blankly, clearly not understanding.
What Gu Somin wanted most right now was recovery—but her professional spirit ran just as deep, so she was desperate to have both. I kept going, giving her the words she most needed to hear.
"It means your knees can get better even if you don't quit modeling."
The stiffness in Gu Somin's face slowly melted into a bright flush. Then, all at once, tears welled along her lashes.
"Really?"
"Yes. Fortunately, I think it's possible. Of course, you'll have to meet the conditions I set."
"Hic... hic... w-wah... th-thank you so much..."
The doctors had almost certainly told her the knee would never improve unless she quit modeling. So she'd been sitting in pure despair. Just like with Park Yuyoung, tears of pure grievance spilled down her cheeks, and I pulled a handkerchief from my pocket and held it out to her.
"Hngh... it really was so hard..."
Without meaning to, I'd clearly hit her weakest point dead-on. When I sat down beside her and patted her back, she buried her face against my chest in a rush. The fact that her boyfriend was in the very next room didn't seem to matter at all.
People always said that when you're hurting, the man who stays beside you is better than the boyfriend. And when the boyfriend in question was Lim Taehoon, I could understand exactly how she felt. Remembering the things the two of them had said in the alley, I boldly stroked her hair.
As soft and warm as I could make it. Just enough skinship near her face to stay on the right side of the line.
I traced past the clean, sculpted curve of her jawline and brushed lightly over the nape of her neck. By now Gu Somin had to have noticed.
She lifted her head a little and looked up at my face. Up close she was even more beautiful. Her eyes were rimmed red and her makeup had smudged faintly at the corners, which only made her look purer and more captivating.
Well—we'd already been free with the touching earlier. Completing the kiss we hadn't finished before, I brought my lips to the corner of her mouth. My heart hammered not knowing how she'd react, but the second Gu Somin closed her eyes, I felt the confidence of a sports car dropped onto an open highway.
The moment I took her brilliantly shining lips between mine, the vision I'd seen earlier unfurled in front of me again.
The sorrowful wedding dress was gone. Gu Somin was walking a fashion show runway, flanked on both sides by some of the most prestigious names in the international fashion world. Famous celebrities, reporters, and countless fellow models watched as she owned the stage with a confident stride. Crucially, Lim Taehoon was nowhere beside her. I wasn't there either. Gu Somin, who had finally begun to love her own life, had poured most of it into modeling.
If this image of the future was true, then I had changed her life. A deep, aching pride settled in my chest.
I brushed her lips once and pulled back. She opened her softly glowing eyes and spoke.
"I'm so confused... I don't know what I should do."
"Because of Taehoon?"
"Yes..."
"What do you want to do? What does your heart really want, Somin?"
"..."
"Follow wherever your heart goes. I want to follow mine."
I had no idea what I was thinking. I was just saying every word that came out of my mouth without running it through a filter.
And the second I finished speaking, I claimed her lips again. The moment mine touched hers, Gu Somin seemed to let go of the last thread of reason—her closed lips parted and her tongue slipped free. Mixed with alcohol, the inside of her mouth tasted faintly sweet. Her tongue was on the longer side, and every time it slid into my mouth it sent a ticklish rush of pleasure through me.
What struck me most was how her face changed during the kiss.
Just a moment ago she'd looked pure and unknowing, but the instant our tongues met she started sucking hungrily at mine. Completely different from Jin Ayoung. No composure at all—something almost clumsy about it. Maybe she didn't have much experience.
As if passing on everything Jin Ayoung had taught me, I cupped her face firmly and walked her through it step by step.
I teased and rolled my tongue against hers, then gradually tilted my head to taste her from another angle. Just as there was etiquette to eating, there was etiquette to kissing—or so I'd been taught. Since you never knew which flavor the other person preferred, you left a little tongue-mark on every part, one by one.
After that I sucked on her lower lip, nipped it gently with my teeth just short of pain, and poured every technique I had into her until a moan slipped from her mouth.
Her shoulders sagged and all the strength seemed to drain from her body as she leaned her upper half fully against me. I slid the hands that had been holding her face downward—one arm wrapping her waist, the other closing over her breast—and little by little we eased ourselves back toward the table together.
I'd already been hard from the kissing alone, but the second I touched Gu Somin's full breasts I went rigid as steel.
"Aahng..."
The reaction when I touched her chest was as immediate as a live fish hitting the board. Gu Somin clung to me like she was burning up and started moving more boldly, more aggressively. The moment her hand slipped quietly between my legs over my pants, I knew sex with her was a certainty.
Her cool fingers slid inside my pants and began to fondle me, and I slipped my own hand up under her dress and pushed my fingers straight into her panties. They sank in with an almost unreal softness and were sucked toward her entrance as if the path itself were sloping downhill.
"Hah... nnh... Junhyun..."
We broke the kiss and locked eyes, each of us lost in touching the other.
Slick—
Stroke—
Between the wet heat pouring from below and the face flushed hot just from having her eyes open, I spoke into the warm breath spilling from her lips.
"Somin... from now on, call me Teacher."
"Teacher... is it... really okay for us to do this?"
"We both want the same thing. Forget that piece of trash Lim Taehoon."
She didn't agree right away. I watched her lips tremble, then saw her bite down hard on her lower lip, and I pressed on.
"Is it because of your father?"
Gu Somin's eyes flew wide open.
"How did you know that?"
"I overheard you talking in the alley earlier. Not on purpose."
"Ah..."
I kissed her again. Then I pressed my lower body even closer against hers.
Before long we were close enough that our sexes were nearly touching, and I dragged Gu Somin's panties down past her thighs.
"Haa... haa... haa..."
We hadn't even started penetration yet and she was already panting, surrendering her body to me.
"H-here? We're doing it here?"
When I nodded, she bashfully tucked her chin down. She stretched out neat fingers, rested them against my chest, and hesitated for a beat. Then, not long after, she nodded just like I had.
I set the head of my cock against her entrance.
In that instant Gu Somin shuddered hard and locked her arms around my torso, clinging tight.
"I'm scared, Teacher... I'm scared we won't be able to take it back."
"It's all right. You don't have to take it back."
I stroked her hair and rubbed her back. Then, little by little, I pushed the head inside.
"Nngh—!"
The inside of Gu Somin felt so good my mind went blank.
"Ah... it's warm."
"Hnn... it's really in. Hic... am I weird? It feels too good."
"You're not weird at all. It feels good for me too."
I drove in deep. Gu Somin's thighs came up around me, and at last we were fully joined.
"I've never done anything like this... with someone I only met today..."
Sorry to say it, but from the moment I first saw Gu Somin, I'd known we would end up like this.
I laid my palm over her face. Her face was so small—CD-sized—that it felt like my whole hand could cover it.
"Maybe there's a reason we met."
"...What kind of reason? Destiny... something like that?"
"Ahem. Well, I don't really know about that sort of thing."
"Ahaha... ah, that's embarrassing..."
Still joined, we looked at each other's faces and laughed.
I stroked her cheek again.
"As far as my hands can reach, I'll help you."
And just like that, the multicolored spots that had been shining on her lips vanished as if they'd never been there—as if from now on there would be no need to look into her future at all.
I put strength into my hips and began to drive against her.