“What....”

Seoryeong narrowed her eyes, as if comparing the big penis moving before her with something in her memory. The one that curved like a banana and was pretty—no—she hardened her face, lashing herself back into line.

Whether he read that chill in her face or not, Kiya’s hand began to slow. She was sorry, but it couldn’t be helped. No matter how he gripped and pumped his cock until the skin peeled back, not a bit of heat rubbed off on her.

After crossing from Azerbaijan into Russia, she went through a stretch where she lived like she was vacant. Eating, sleeping—she couldn’t do anything properly.

Wanting to shut out every sound from outside as much as possible, she simply curled herself up like a silkworm in its cocoon.

They hid in a secluded refuge with few people. This place, one of Kiya’s work sites, was, she’d heard, a sanctuary like the Sakhalin Monastery, receiving various protections from the Russian government.

A hut set in a dark forest. If you pried up the wooden floor, it was piled high with guns.

Thanks to Kiya, they had shaken off Interpol, but one day his breathing got on her nerves and she flew into a rage.

Shut up, Kiya...! Yes, I was glad to see you and I missed you, but please, just for a moment. Just go out for a moment...!

A desire not to allow anything at all grew like a monster. She didn’t want anyone punching through her cocoon as they pleased. She spent two months in that wrecked state.

At first, to get a spark back into her life, Kiya rolled his rosary and recited scripture. Seoryeong, face blank, tore paper to shreds and even ripped it with her teeth.

Then she heard news of someone’s death—with no subject attached—and immediately smashed her fist up into Kiya’s jaw.

We brawled on the floor like the old days. Beating Kiya, who had come not to escape but to drag her back to Sakhalin, wasn’t easy, but the wider she made her eyes, the more satisfied he looked.

And then he’d started getting his cock hard.

“Hrrk... Sonia...!”

At some point, he began stripping layer by layer with the gloomy face of a bride sold off, and masturbating.

Are you out of your mind?

Setting aside the tenderness of reuniting after so long, she could not get used to this shameless display from Kiya. How the hell had he lived that he used his body so carelessly?

“Kiya, there are plenty out there your size, so stop bragging. That thing—using it that often is why it’s gone all black—”

“Hnngh, that’s a terrible prejudice!”

“......”

“It’s because melanocytes are naturally abundant in the penis!”

In that instant, Lee Wooshin’s pale color bored into her head. Hairless, with a faint pink flush, indecent in its own way.

Suddenly the back of her neck turned hot, like she’d been doused in boiling water. Ah, damn it... She jerked her head away. Even while avoiding his gaze, the scolding didn’t stop.

“You even did it the first time with some woman you met in a bathroom.”

“Because she looked like you...!”

“......”

“If there was anything that resembled you, I didn’t discriminate.”

She was at a loss for words. In truth, she knew that heart of his well.

Back when she was hunting for Kim Hyun, she’d thought of sleeping with various men based solely on the shape of their cocks. Seoryeong let out a quiet, hollow laugh.

No matter how she looked at it, at the root, she and Kiya were exactly alike.

“But, Sonia. Your husband—he’s NIS too, isn’t he?” 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

“......!”

Kiya had never brought up her “husband” so bluntly before, and suddenly the whole of Lee Wooshin surged up like an ambush. Seoryeong’s face went rigid, bloodless.

She had left an injured man behind in Azerbaijan, and now she didn’t know if he was dead or alive. She had cut him off that cruelly and stuffed her ears on purpose. Yet a single word—husband—sent her heart plummeting.

“Then he must’ve gotten sex training like me. Odds are that bastard’s even more worn than I am.”

He flicked his tongue.

“Think about it logically. If it’s the mission, would a bastard who marries a woman he doesn’t love balk at one lousy round of sex? There must have been a whole parade of women before you.”

For some reason, her molars clenched.

“So don’t be so harsh only with me, Sonia. I’m not filthy—I’m experienced. Same situation as Lee Wooshin. Half because of the job. Half because of you.”

His hand worked rougher. The wet sounds grew louder, like he was close.

His groin, packed with muscle, split and flexed. Kiya swallowed a groan and knit his brow.

“Did you think I was the only dirty whoremonger?”

His penis began to weep a little. Spreading the sticky fluid that beaded at the tip, he stroked faster.

“That bastard, sleeping with you after marrying you—that was all selling his body to you—agh!”

Seoryeong couldn’t take it anymore and kicked him in the groin. With her face ice-cold, she then stomped that vicious erection with her heel, whump, whump. She grabbed a pillow and whacked his head over and over.

Kiya could easily have dodged, but instead he shoved his cock closer and gasped.

“Ah, fuck...—!”

Hot liquid splattered like an explosion. Seoryeong flinched back, lifting her foot, but she couldn’t shake the sense her heel had been defiled.

In several spurts, semen flooded the mattress and comforter. Kiya, dribbling milky fluid down from his groin, looked sorrowful rather than sated.

“Why hit me? Am I wrong?”

No, you’re right. You’re probably right. Lee Wooshin was an operative, and I was just a target.

Right. That’s exactly why I was angry. I couldn’t forgive his deceitful posture.

And yet, hearing it in someone else’s mouth, a strange urge surged up to argue back.

What do you know. Do you know what that man did to me? One line of outcome can’t hold or explain everything.

“――”

Seoryeong squeezed her eyes shut. She felt a deep disgust at herself—for instinctively trying to slyly defend that man, that relationship made only of lies. Her breath jammed like she’d swallowed shards of glass.

So even staring at a blatantly shaped penis, instead of arousal, only grief and revulsion welled up.

Just then, Kiya, bracing a hand on the mattress, shot her a desperate look.

“Even on my knees like this, it’s no good? With me, it’s absolutely never going to happen?”

“......”

“If we got married and had two or three kids, and rebuilt the monastery—then we’d be a family that never breaks. Sonia, wouldn’t that be the perfectly dreamlike ending?”

“But Kiya. You are me.”

“......!”

“We’re the same.”

There was no statement truer than that.

We crossed death lines together and share horrific memories. The more you chew them, the more your heart feels like it blackens, burns up, and breaks.

We’re the ones who endured that hell together. So you are me. Staring into the pitch-black window, she said:

“I’m not interested in your thing. All I can see are your wounds.”

Her sunken eyes went to the countless scars covering Kiya’s body.

“So if I put my body together with yours, it would feel like those wounds are pouring into me.”

“......!”

“It would feel like another round of training, not sex.”

Kiya’s pupils wavered.

“How could I have a child with that heart? I can’t.”

Climbing down from the bed, Seoryeong threw the window wide. The cool scent of the forest pressed into the room, and the thick, stuffy chestnut-blossom smell began to dissipate.

Their eyes met then—Kiya, sitting like a dead man. His irises gleamed oddly in the moonlight. He lifted the corner of his mouth with an innocent look.

“Ah—there was someone like that.”

“What?”

“Someone who, with that heart, had a child and sent them to the monastery.”

“......”

“You know them too, Sonia. Want me to say who?”

What the hell is he talking about. She knit her brows.

“If you take after that person, you can do it too...!”

His grin, bared teeth and all, looked somehow unnatural. Seoryeong, face numb, stared into eyes blackened like coal dust.

Touch Kiya’s darkness and it smears easily. She shook her head, firm. We grew from the same root, but so much had changed.

“Kiya, in life—someone will show up to pull you out of that place back then.”

“......”

“Someone who’ll haul you up from the pit.”

“You talk like you’ve met someone like that.”

Seoryeong pressed her lips tight. Kiya’s black eyes suddenly went feral.

Out of useless pride she wanted to say no, to say even the encounter was all fake, but her limp lips only gaped like a fish dropped out of water.

Kiya clenched his fists and snapped, wretched and aggrieved.

“Do you have to get out?”

“What?”

“I’m asking if you really have to go outside, Sonia.”

“......”

“I don’t get it. That’s our special hometown—where we were together. Why talk like escape is the only right answer? Sakhalin is where we were born and raised...!”

A grim shadow crossed his face. Even so, Seoryeong shook her head again.

Even if they said it a thousand times, they’d never fully understand each other. Still—for Kiya, who had shared those days—

Seoryeong drew out a single realization.

“The place that completes me was somewhere else.”