“You... your chest...”

As he let her go, he groaned like he’d been hit with a sledgehammer. From that brief brush alone, her nipples had pricked taut, and Seoryeong had no choice but to avert her eyes. Still, why would you shove your chest in there. Something had shorted out in her. Heat rushed into her cheeks and shame flooded her.

The moment she tried to put distance between them, her armpit was suddenly seized. Ugh...! The grip was so strong her shoulder socket ached.

“Who touched your chest?”

The face swathed in bandages was terrifying. Even at a glance, his expression had gone stone-hard.

Wooshin didn’t dare clutch her breasts the way his temper wanted; he pinned her by the armpit instead and shook her body. Each time his thumb sensed the bounce of flesh, her pulse quickened.

With deft fingers he avoided the breast itself and felt along the bra cupping the underside. With his other hand he snapped, snap, opened the buttons and in one motion yanked out the silicone inserts.

The contact made her shudder; Seoryeong tore his arm away with all her strength. The silicone plopped to the floor like dough, and she grabbed at her loosened top, glaring at the man drenched down his back.

“Is that something the Instructor gets to say—the one who even made fake body hair and stuck it on?”

“......!”

“Who cares if someone’s got three or four breasts...! And how ‘rolled in the mud’ were you, Instructor?”

“What?”

“How many infiltration jobs did you run to know all that by heart?”

She kicked straight at the crotch in front of her, and he staggered and dropped to his knees.

“I didn’t do my best at every moment like Kim Hyun.”

He spoke like a confession, and still the suspicion didn’t leave her eyes.

“Did you ever want revenge on me?”

“No. I should’ve loved you more.”

“......”

“But back then, I was looking for something too.”

It was the first she’d heard of it; her brows pinched. She wanted to press—what was it, was it a woman—but a shred of sense and pride kept her from that disgrace.

Panting, feverish, Wooshin leaned toward her lower belly.

“I was looking for the Winter Castle files.”

“......!”

“Never dreamed you’d be in there. I knew nothing—like a damned idiot....”

All at once he bobbed at the waist like a drunk. A man who had reacted to the cold air at first was moving duller and duller, only giving his head a weak shake.

I regret it. I regret every moment. Everything I did—except you. Fucking idiot, aren’t I. He muttered on and on, his speech slowing.

Seoryeong grabbed his forelock and made him face her. A sudden urge surged up to strip off his bandages and look into his eyes.

“When did you find out I was a Winter Castle mouse?”

“...After I lost you in Azerbaijan.”

Something like pus seeped out of his voice. Staring at that face, where lust and despair were mixed, Seoryeong gave a dry laugh.

“We were a cursed tie. You know that?”

“......”

Wooshin stayed on his knees without so much as a twitch.

“You might pity me and love me, but I can’t do that. You know that too?”

“I don’t.”

“You should. Do you know what they did to me in Winter Castle.”

“Seoryeong.”

“Leave Russia. Quickly.”

“......”

“Don’t open the annex door anymore, don’t make yourself a target.... Do what you’re best at—”

She hesitated, then bent at the waist.

“Disappear. That’s what I’m saying.”

His lips, about to move, stopped dead. He trembled his fist like he was holding back an explosion, then dropped his head. The white of his nape looked lost. Hiding her true heart, Seoryeong lifted his hair even tighter.

“Please.”

Her lips hovered so close they almost brushed his bandages. He flinched at her breath; his shoulders went rigid.

Her husband’s disappearance had left an unhealable wound in her, but now she wanted him to vanish right before her eyes.

Maybe the NIS’s withdrawal order had been right. Maybe parting then would have been the natural course. Her obsession had ruined it. Ruined them.

A Winter Castle mouse must not love a Solzhenitsyn. You couldn’t ignore all that blood.

So if he disappeared the same way as the past—then, at last, she could join in that pretense.

“That’s what you’re best at. There’s no time for this. Stop courting danger and go...!”

“Don’t talk that fucking nonsense, Seoryeong.”

“You’re capable, Instructor. If you set your mind to it, you can do it. Don’t let them treat you like a stud horse here—go back to being an NIS agent, please!”

Breathing hard, she too dropped to her knees. She thought, at least he can’t see my twisted face—and then one of his hands clamped her forearm hard enough to hurt.

Instead of wrenching away, she stroked his rough handback and forced focus into the blur stinging her eyes.

“Like before... you can leave everything and disappear.”

“......!”

“It’s okay. Now it’s okay. If you found me and came all the way here, that’s enough. You can stop.”

“Seoryeong, shut it. Please.”

He ground the words out between his teeth. His squared shoulders heaved as he pressed down the rising frenzy. Bracing both hands on the floor, he let out an empty laugh like a man crying.

“Stop what? Stop what, fuck. What the hell have I even done.”

On his pale face, an immeasurable self-loathing flickered.

“My eyes are wrecked; I can’t even look at you properly. I couldn’t hold you as much as I wanted. I’ve lost every right to my wife, and I haven’t been forgiven. So stop what, exactly—what am I supposed to stop!”

His lips shook violently. He kept sucking in harsh breaths as if to find some scrap of self-control, but whether from emotions he couldn’t master, his body slipped further out of his hands as time went by.

A man who had endured bone-melting ◆ Nоvеlіgһt ◆ (Only on Nоvеlіgһt) pain and destructive urges without cease finally slammed Seoryeong down, rough and hard.

“—!”

A feral shadow fell over her head. Wooshin thumped his inner wrist to his temple, trying somehow to clear his head, but every nerve was trained on the softness of her body. With tendons standing out, his limbs bound her smooth skin, and he begged in a cracked voice.

“Go... now. Don’t wait. Quickly.”

To avoid stimulation, Wooshin clamped a hand over his own nose and mouth, then hauled Seoryeong to her feet. She hunched her neck at the ominous air.

“...Do your buttons back up. Put the film back on your neck. Tell them no one is to come in for three days, and just in case, lock up tight yourself. I won’t do anything to hurt you, but if I go to find you for no reason....”

Seoryeong’s eyes widened slowly. His throat worked, swallowing something bitter, and the bandage at the corner of his eye soaked silently through. A man who had been panting with fever moments ago was now spilling tears without a single moan, the tip of his nose the only thing flushed red.

Her thoughts froze; her mind went numb. How could he resemble ice and silence even in a moment like this. That quiet endurance looked like something clawed by cold.

“Seoryeong. Tell me you love me.”

“......!”

“Even if it’s a lie—I don’t care.”

He was the one who had taken the drug, but she was the one who felt like she’d swallowed poison. Fine. You suffered too, didn’t you. The confused days must have crushed him every night.

Thinking that so distantly, she still cupped his wet cheek with a trembling hand.

“Ugh....”

A groan came out of him at once, and he rubbed the damp bandage against her small palm. At this point, it felt like her own head had gone wrong. Seoryeong looped her arms around his thick neck and pushed in her tongue.

“—!”

The iron set in his jaw lasted only a second. A frame on the wall rattled; a candlestick clattered down. A man who had been holding back with everything he had scooped her up and drove her into one wall.

“Unh...!”

As his tongue drove into her mouth with a fierce rush, her lower belly twitched. His tongue speared in and out through her rounded lips again and again.

He grabbed her soft breast like he might burst it, rolling the swollen nipple under his thumb. Haa.... A giddy moan spilled from both their mouths at once. He tugged the stiffened bud hard, scored it mercilessly with his nails, and yanked her skirt—fallen to her calves—up in a scramble.

Long-forgotten sensations flared back in an instant; the ache between her legs was unbearable.

“Haa... hff...!”

Gasping, Seoryeong locked her arms tight around his head. Hot saliva pooled on her tongue and streamed out in ropes.

How did it end up like this. Han Seoryeong. Get a grip.... What a pathetic, pathetic thing to do.

I came to warn him, not to act like a bitch in heat.

“Hff....”

But as her stockings and underwear dropped together to her thighs, there was already a wet, squelching sound.

Wooshin undid the buckle and pulled down the zipper. His cock sprang up from his trousers and jabbed at her, and her body went oddly stiff. The glans tip, jutting out past his clothes, was slathered again and again in white, as if yogurt had been poured over it.

Just then, he froze in place from where he’d been tangling her tongue. Sensing something off in her, he spoke without lifting his lips.

“It’s okay. If you push me away, I’ll spend my last strength and let myself be pushed.”

She only panted, a reddened nipple bared outside her clothes. Their burning, iron-hard heat was pressed tight together, but he didn’t budge. He only buried his face in the slope of her neck and swallowed his pained groans. 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

Seoryeong met her own reflection in a sleek black vase. The face with one breast bared under Wooshin’s hand wasn’t hers—it was Natalia’s. Something in her gut twisted.