GB 45

Haero suddenly woke up with an unbearable feeling of nausea and rushed to the toilet. Only after emptying his stomach did he realize where he was.

His body moved first, and his mind woke up late. He sat on the bathroom tile floor until it warmed up, vomited a few more times, and then headed to the shower, clutching his sore throat and stomach.

“Ah…” Haero let out a stunned sigh as he was undressing.

There was a dried white liquid on his underwear.

It was a wet dream, which happened very rarely. Yoon Moo-hwa had taught him that this phenomenon was called a wet dream. He only told him that it’s something everyone experiences and that it’s not a sickness, nothing more than that.

Haero hadn’t experienced this often in his life. Compared to other males his age, it was a significantly low number. And yet, of all times, to have a wet dream now when he couldn’t remember anything from yesterday.

“What a great morning.” Haero groaned as he threw off his underwear and surrendered his body under the hot water of the shower.

After washing until his whole body turned red, he barely had the energy to dry off and returned to bed.

As he blinked while staring blankly at the ceiling, his eyeballs felt dry as if tiny thorns were growing inside his eyelids. 

“Ugh….” Haero curled up in pain and turned to his side.

If Yoon Moo-hwa knew, he would have scolded him silently with a serious and cold face. 

‘Pathetic, right? I think I’m pathetic too, hyung.’

Haero endured until his headache subsided, reciting the names of herbs he remembered one by one.

Then he dozed off again, not even realizing he had fallen asleep.

At first, he heard the sound of waves. It was a familiar sound. A sound he had heard every night, both real and fake. So Haero’s dream started to become vivid. He didn’t realize it was a dream. Haero was just looking out the window in some room, and all he could see was the distant beach, a radio next to him, and an ambiguous space where the sound of waves came from, not knowing exactly where.

Then Haero closed his eyes. He realized later that he wasn’t alone and that he wasn’t wearing pants.

When he became aware of this fact, Haero was suddenly on a bed. Without questioning the abrupt transition, Haero obediently accepted someone pushing their fingers into his mouth.

What the other person made him bite wasn’t exactly fingers, but the hem of a shirt. Haero bit the T-shirt and lowered his gaze to kill the tension.

He was tense, but it wasn’t fear. He felt excited and anticipatory.

About what?

He didn’t know, but about what was about to unfold.

In the midst of a bright day where everything was clearly visible, Haero only sensed the actions of the other person who lowered their head and took him in their mouth.

It was an act he had never experienced or seen before.

… No, he had seen it somewhere. Where was it?

Before he could recall the moment he had accidentally seen an obscene video at a social gathering, Haero’s mouth opened wide, his vocal cords stretched, and a moan burst out. But it wasn’t audible. This place was completely silent.

The sound of waves must have been a sensation too. The feeling of waves rushing over his skin was heard as sound. Haero twisted his body. As he twisted his waist to the sensation of tingling, tickling, and tightening as if his tailbone was being gently pressed, the other person pressed down on his pelvis. It wasn’t painful, but it was firm enough. 

Haero couldn’t bear it anymore and shouted, ‘Stop! Stop, please! I don’t want this!’

Then the other person raised their head.

They gently wiped their mouth with their thumb. Haero slowly opened his mouth and widened his eyes at the other person’s face.

‘This is what you’ve been wanting from me, Haero.’ 

It was his hyung. 

‘Isn’t this why you so desperately wanted to reach the age of sexual consent?’

It was Yoon Moo-hwa.

Haero woke up completely as he fell from the bed with a thud.

With a dumbfounded and shocked face, Haero blinked his eyes, and his face slowly started to turn bright red.

His naked body, without a single piece of clothing, was the same.

Haero, embarrassed, remained awkwardly fallen, then lowered his head. What came into view was his erect dick.

“I’m going crazy.”

The hangover was no longer noticeable. That wasn’t important anymore. Haero tried to get up as if fleeing, but his legs got tangled in the blanket and he fell hard. It made such a loud noise that he thought he might have broken his knee. Haero didn’t care about that either and went into the bathroom, turned the water as cold as possible, and stood there until his whole body turned red from the cold.

By the time he came out, his dick had returned to their normal state, and his teeth were chattering.

“I’m going crazy.” Haero curled up in the blanket, shivering. The sheets started to get damp.

“I’m really going crazy.” Haero mumbled, sinking into self-loathing as he buried his head under the pillow.

But the dream wouldn’t disappear. Dreams are supposed to fade when you wake up, so why, how is this one becoming clearer?

Unable to bear it any longer, Haero picked up and put on his inside-out t-shirt without caring. He roughly pulled on his pants and shoved his feet into his sneakers as he left the room.

Not having time to wait for the elevator, Haero had to jump over his fellow cadets sprawled everywhere as he went down the stairs. He also had to stay alert to avoid tripping over beer bottles rolling around.

Even in such a precarious situation, the thoughts in his head, the scene that should have disappeared, just wouldn’t go away.

“Why suddenly? Why now?!” Haero shouted as he ran like mad across the empty drill ground.

This is all because of drinking yesterday and seeing that video.

He had never seen anything like that in his life before, at most it was just people caressing each other’s chests, but sucking on dick?

His head felt like it was about to explode. And it wasn’t just his head– his body, getting hotter as he kept recalling the dream, felt like it was about to burst too.

Haero clenched his teeth and ran faster, afraid his dick might become erect again.

Finally, Haero retched once more, emptying his already empty stomach, but even after pushing his body to the point of vomiting, he still couldn’t erase that scene from his mind.

It had all been in vain.

* * *

The day after the social gathering, there was a big cleaning of the dormitory building.

It was another custom that followed the social gathering.

Haero was mopping among cadets groaning like zombies from their hangovers, but he was groaning for a different reason.

Those who, like Haero, had entered late and had private rooms were called “young masters” behind their backs. It was meant to be quite sarcastic. The other “young masters” except Haero had either gone home early with various excuses or weren’t coming out of their rooms. Only Haero had come out on time and was mopping until beads of sweat formed on his forehead. Because staying still was even more painful.

“You don’t have to work that hard, young master.”

Someone leaning on a mop handle and scratching their swollen cheek sneered. He was a cadet who hadn’t seen Haero at the social gathering. As such, he particularly thought Haero was arrogant and unlikable.

“Leave him alone. He’s working hard.”

Someone tried to stop him, but that cadet, not yet fully sober, couldn’t make rational judgments. “He is doing well. Is it because he’s the same as a mop?”

Some just winked and laughed saying that was a bit harsh, some pretended not to hear, and most just yawned widely, drowning in their fatigue.

Even hearing that to his face, Haero wasn’t angry at all. His pride wasn’t hurt either. He knew the derogatory meaning of “mop” when used in a social context. It’s a term used to look down on someone who has sex indiscriminately with many people. Haero didn’t understand why having sex with many people without hesitation was something to look down upon, nor what that had to do with a cleaning tool for hygiene, and above all, he had never done such a thing.

“If ‘mop’ means sleeping around with other people, I don’t understand why I should be called that. I’ve never had sexual relations with anyone else.” Haero stood up straight and addressed the group. Not knowing who had spewed the nonsense, he made his point to everyone. “And how many people does it take to be considered promiscuous, and how many to be a ‘mop’?”

He asked this out of genuine curiosity, but no one answered.

‘There’s so much I don’t know.’

Haero went back to mopping the corridor, lost in contemplation.

The issue was sex.

Whether for pleasure or reproduction, he had always believed he would never engage in such acts in his lifetime. He had never been interested, and his libido was notably low. Above all, apart from physical desires, he had never felt that way about anyone.

Haero divided people into three categories: Yoon Moo-hwa, acquaintances like Seon Ikhyeon, Gu Yejin, and Yoon Sangwon, and everyone else.

It was very natural that he didn’t feel that way about Seon Ikhyeon, Gu Yejin, and Yoon Sangwon. That left two categories, and comparing Yoon Moo-hwa to others, Haero firmly believed that no one among the billions of people in the world could be as wonderful as Yoon Moo-hwa.

His face was beyond comparison. He was the most beautiful person Haero had ever seen. His body was also very well-built, with numerous scars that looked like decorations rather than flaws. His voice was impressively deep, his hair very thick, and his teeth…

Lost in thought, Haero groaned “Ah” and pressed his forehead hard against the mop handle.

“This is why…” Haero chuckled.

He felt really sorry for making his hyung appear and suffer in his dream, but it couldn’t be helped. Everything that others called ‘preferences’ was all centered around Yoon Moo-hwa for Haero.

Since Yoon Moo-hwa was the only one he had ever been interested in, though handsome or beautiful or wonderful, it was natural for him to appear as the partner in such a dream.

“I’m really sorry.” Haero mumbled, banging his forehead against the handle a few more times.

‘When I get out, I should watch some classic movies. It seems I have a preference for classical beauty.’

Haero shook his head vigorously. It was a struggle to shake off his thoughts.

The cadet who was about to sneer at Haero for acting crazy ended up stepping on the mop of another cadet who was cleaning the corridor half-asleep, as if receiving his own words back. His foot got soaked because the mop hadn’t been wrung out properly.