STRANGER; 낯선 사람 - taekook; vmin

3. you are me, i am you

As time goes by, you grow used to not having a person around no matter how important they were to you. This is what I've learned in my thirty years: whether you want it or not, you move on because that's what you must do to survive. The more time passes, the more I spend without thinking of him. One day became two, two became three, three became a week, and with the week came the habit of moving on. Not remembering his face anymore became customary.

Truthfully, I was disappointed that Jimin didn't take me with open arms ㅡ after all, he is Jimin, and Jimin loves me. It was foolish of me to think that his feelings would wait for me to feel the same way, too. I had no right to hold a grudge for that, deep down I felt like I deserved the rejection I was facing, I deserved to be hurt. It was fine that the one person who I know that belongs with me does not agree with it. With age came the maturity to accommodate alongside deception.

It was a mistake to think that he would always be there, to take him for granted, but I wasn't fooling myself when I thought that this would be possible. I was there with him through that weekend, I saw it in the way he looked at me, the way he touched me. Or have I seen only what I wanted to see?

I was insecure and anxious when I thought about his rejection, thinking that perhaps I had disappointed him somehow. I wrongfully thought of him as my last chance of being happy with someone, and now I had to deal with the emotional mess I had put myself in. This is what happens when the line between friends and lovers becomes blurred.

The second night of the trip we were a lot less timid and the fact that we wanted to fuck each other was no longer a shared secret. Jimin was a tireless lover, always taking in more and wanting more of me, to the point where I thought that we may never stop. I explored his body that night with the curiosity of a cat, trying to push his buttons and figuring out what worked and what didn't, and while he did the same to mine, it was clear that this is what he wanted. It was beautiful how much he always seemed to want more.

The feeling of emptiness that crept in came as a result of the certainty that I wasn't worth anyone's love, simply because I had no idea how to love another human. I was not good enough for him then, and I am not good enough for him now.

On a quiet Wednesday night, a night when the quietness in my apartment became too much and my cat's company was not enough, I turned on my computer and typed on the web browser 'www.exzone.com'. A few minutes later after the page loaded, I searched through the content to see what people were talking about and, with a lot of self-consciousness, typed in my own message on the board.

cyborg71:

[Seoul resident]

Male, 30, 1.79m. Straight black hair with long bangs below the eyebrows, no tattoos, skinny, non-smoker, no six-pack but muscular. Small face with big features, very tanned skin. Flex guy looking for a top or bottom to have fun for one night. No weird kinks!

An hour and a half later I was in a parking lot of a hotel in Incheon waiting for a man I knew as the muscular, 180cm Strawberry Man, who was two years younger than me and a top. He posted his number and I immediately deleted the post for safety, giving him a call and arranging a meeting at the Mok Motel, and also describing the car I would be waiting for him.

I heard a faint knock on the window of my unmistakable jeep and without seeing the man's face, I unlocked the door. He opened it without ceremonies, I saw his body first, under formal black clothes and an elegant gray overcoat, I could see he was indeed very muscular even through all those layers. Once he sat on the passenger's seat and revealed the most gorgeous pair of lips on a man that I had ever seen, I could not contain the smirk that crept up my own while exchanging eye contact with the stranger in my car.