Chapter 216

Overwhelmed with emotion, disarmed, Siron did the reckless thing of shedding tears before Baekgyeong. To cry weakly in front of an enemy—his pride should never have allowed it.

Baekgyeong suddenly thought Siron had always been the shell that wrapped around his own defects. But as those defects grew, the shell cracked, shattered, and in the end would only turn to dust and vanish. Still, giving up his place in Siron’s life out of guilt—that was not Baekgyeong’s style.

He set his hand on Siron’s trembling shoulder. Siron slapped it away as if touched by filth, but Baekgyeong’s hand returned, persistent, gripping his arm again. After several clashes, Baekgyeong ended up on top of him, pinning his wrists to the bed, staring down at him.

“The broken brother in my head is gone. You feel it too. I don’t act insane anymore.”

“And you think this shit right now is sane?”

Baekgyeong gave a crooked laugh.

“Definitely not sane.”

“Then stop it already!” Siron snapped harshly.

“It’s just... if you push me away, I feel like I’ll die. I’d rather jump off a cliff and kill myself right now than wait to rot seven years from now.”

His tone wavered between wicked joke and deadly earnest, his smile edged with madness.

“So please. Just don’t push me away. Let me at least be the watchdog by your door.”

Baekgyeong kissed the corner of his eyes, where tears had dried to salt. For some reason, Siron only blinked sluggishly, showing no reaction.

“Mm?”

Baekgyeong stuck out his tongue, licking away the wet trail from Siron’s lashes, sucking a bead of moisture from the curve of his ear.

“Promise you won’t push me away.”

Silent, Siron endured the kisses, breath ragged but yielding. He knew opening the door to the deepest room of his heart was dangerous, yet reluctantly he cracked it open.

“Then just be the watchdog. Nothing more.”

“Yoon Siron, you know nobody plays the dog better than me.”

Shamelessly, Baekgyeong accepted his reluctant surrender with delight.

“Fine. Just don’t—”

“Mmff!”

Baekgyeong’s palms cupped his cheeks and pressed a hard seal of lips against his own. Given only a doghole, the mutt was already trying to take the master bedroom. Siron ripped his mouth away, snapping irritably:

“Get off! Go back to your place!”

“The bed’s big enough. Let’s just rest together.”

“The sofa’s your place! I don’t share a bed with dogs.”

“How would you know? You’ve never owned one.”

Siron ignored him, pretending not to hear.

“I haven’t forgiven you. And I never will—not until the day I die.”

“Ha... I should’ve been better when you still loved me.”

Half self-mockery, half bitter jest, Baekgyeong bent down and pressed his face to Siron’s neck. Siron only stared into empty space, wordless, irritated by Baekgyeong’s desperate attempts to stitch together the broken past with the present.

For four years, Siron had lived fine without him. Only because Baekgyeong had been locked away paying for his crimes. If Baekgyeong had truly repented, lived clean, dated someone else, been happy—Siron might never have borne it. But Baekgyeong had been shut in a psychiatric hospital, miserable, and that misery had allowed Siron a precarious peace.

Simply put, Siron needed Baekgyeong to remain far away, living unhappily on his own.

During those four years, drowning in guilt and regret, Siron had rewritten their past in his mind thousands of times over.

Maybe those constant thoughts had really created some kind of pull. Because in the end, Baekgyeong had come back to him.

Siron suddenly recalled a book he had once devoured, The Secret by Rhonda Byrne. It said thoughts carried a magnetic pull and frequency—that what one thinks is transmitted to the universe and circles back, drawing similar things in. In other words, everything in your life was something you yourself attracted.

I drew him back again.

Feeling Baekgyeong’s unfamiliar body pressed to him, Siron thought bitterly.

Lying still in silence, he felt Baekgyeong lift his chest away, his expression anxious.

“What are you thinking?”

“The Law of Attraction.”

“...The Secret?”

Relief washed over Baekgyeong’s face. Slowly, his eyes sharpened with clarity.

“I remember. Humans release vibrational energy through thought. When emotions are involved, the vibrations get stronger. Vibrations attract others of the same frequency. In other words, what I fixate on becomes reality.”

It sounded like cult doctrine. Siron chuckled dryly. But Baekgyeong didn’t laugh. He only gazed at Siron’s face with deadly seriousness.

The sheer transparency of it made Siron uncomfortable. He grimaced like someone biting into a bug. Baekgyeong, dissatisfied, muttered:

“Guess this Law of Attraction thing’s a load of crap.”

He smacked his lips like a man who’d missed the timing for a joke.

“I pour all my thoughts and feelings into it, but reality won’t change.”

He waited for Siron to respond, to ask, but no words came. At last Baekgyeong spoke himself.

“Yoon Siron kisses me. Yoon Siron wants it so bad he’s going crazy.”

Siron laughed at the absurdity. Baekgyeong laughed too. Dimples hollowed into his pale cheeks, softening the feral lines of his face with a boyish charm. That laugh had once been the master key that unlocked all of Siron’s defenses.

He remembered belatedly: how five times out of ten he had wanted to kill Baekgyeong, four times he had been paralyzed with fear, and once—just once—his chest had ached with sweetness, so much that he endured it all and let Baekgyeong stay.

He almost fell for it again, almost kissed him back.

“You’d think you could steal a kiss. But fine—if reality won’t change, I’ll make it myself first, then think about it later.”

“Knew it...”

Siron tried to push his torso away, but Baekgyeong’s hands clamped down on his wrists, binding him against the bed.

Baekgyeong’s lips crushed his. His tongue thrust past the seal of his teeth like a cock, scraping along the bulge of his palate, tangling thickly against his own. The hot, squirming intrusion was revolting and ecstatic at once. Battling the conflicting urges to resist and to cling, Siron shoved his tongue against Baekgyeong’s—but his resistance only aroused him further.

When Baekgyeong pulled away, he bent down, pressing his tongue against Siron’s stiffened nipple, tracing and teasing. Yellow bruises mottled his chest where seatbelt marks had left painful welts.

Carefully, Baekgyeong licked the swollen nub, circling, then sucked it into his mouth with a noisy pull. The more he rolled it inside his mouth, the harder Siron’s nipples grew.

“Uhh...”

Siron twisted his shoulders with a shiver, moaning. At the same time, slick wetness seeped through his underwear, clinging unpleasantly to his swelling mound. It was a feeling he would never get used to. Yet he did not push Baekgyeong away. Instead, unbidden words slipped from his mouth:

“Don’t release pheromones.”

Baekgyeong, who had been faintly leaking them, froze and raised his head.

“It’ll hurt.”

Bracing himself on his palms, Siron lifted, gazing down with calm eyes as he replied:

“Then let it hurt.”

“Why?”

Siron’s gaze flickered. He had both choices—to refuse sex altogether, or to give in under the haze of pheromones. Yet, without reason, he had chosen to accept Baekgyeong’s massive body without that haze. He couldn’t even understand it himself.

“Maybe I want to do it with you sober.”

The words, spoken without conviction, left Baekgyeong staring at him, stunned.

“You’re sane?”

Siron let out a bitter laugh.

“Of course not. That’s why I’ll do it without pheromones.”

It meant he wanted to feel Baekgyeong raw, exactly as he was.

Baekgyeong looked like a mute man tasting honey for the first time. His face said everything—that in his universe there was nothing sweet except Yoon Siron, that Yoon Siron was the center of it all. To Siron, he was just a fool, one step short of realizing it was love.

And pathetically, knowing he’d only get burned, Siron still wanted to feel that fool again, vividly, like before.