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“Fifty bucks and you don’t even know how to give a proper blowjob?” The man in front of him zips up his pants, furious. “You’re dreaming if you think I’m gonna pay you for biting my cock.”
“It’s your fault, you squirm like a worm.” Jeongin wipes the spit off his cheek, his mouth bitter. He’s still on his knees, the rough carpet burning into them until they ache. “Besides, fifty dollars is for wasting my time.”
The two of them argue in the room. Jeongin doesn’t want to get ripped off again by some idiot who thinks he can fuck him for free just because of his situation, but he also doesn’t want to get physical and throw punches, so arguing is just a distraction to keep the man from realizing Jeongin has already pocketed a few valuables and some loose bills. Nothing he’ll miss.
The man storms out of the room, tossing a few coins at him with disdain. Jeongin doesn’t answer anymore, irritated by the arrogant attitude—like this man hadn’t followed him all the way from the highway to this cheap roadside motel, desperate and begging to bury himself balls-deep in Jeongin. He hadn’t even tried to bargain down the original $150 fee. And in the end, Jeongin only deserved spare change?
That’s why he hates the men he sleeps with.
He leaves the room, brushing the dust off his knees, heading straight to reception with a stupid smile on his face. Nothing brightens his day like forgetting the world.
His little happy place is not so much the reception desk itself, but the figure sitting there with his back to him, going through papers as always.
“You need to stop doing this, aegi-ah.” The tired voice calms his anger, even when it tries to sound stern.
“If I want to live here, I have to pay, hyung,” Jeongin says, wrapping his arms around him from behind. His body fits perfectly against the older man’s. “I can’t depend on you.”
“There are other ways, sweetheart…” Seungmin presses Jeongin’s hands tighter against his chest. Jeongin melts a little into that warmth, dropping his weight against the man’s head. “Besides, you need to take care of yourself in case one day I can’t do it anymore.”
Jeongin doesn’t want to let go when he feels Seungmin try to turn his chair. He didn’t come here to be sad again; he came to be spoiled, to forget. With a quick move, he locks the wheels. The click of the brake sounds like a reproach.
“Iyen-ah…”
“Then I’ll just buy dinner for myself and let you starve, since you don’t want my dirty money.”
He pulls away, emptying his pockets on the counter while Seungmin watches him with disappointment. Jeongin pretends to count the bills he earned while secretly enjoying the way the man struggles against the heavy chair until finally unlocking the wheels.
“I’d like it if you at least finished high school… or learned how to run this place,” Seungmin says, moving awkwardly in the tight space, the chair bumping into furniture.
“You need to pay your medical insurance, hyung… You can’t carry me too. ” Jeongin’s voice softens; he doesn’t want to start a stupid fight. “You can’t even afford to pay me a salary. Let’s be realistic.”
Seungmin’s grimace tells him he’s been careless. Jeongin always tries to be careful with his words when it comes to the man who has let him share their lives. Complicated lives, but at least they share them together.
His life has always been hard, painful, full of abuse. Maybe that’s why he didn’t care about the poverty he’d face if he ran away from home: no roof, no money, no useful skills to survive. A painful, abusive life that, by chance, collided with the sad, lonely life of an older man who took him in like a stray dog. Jeongin showed up at the motel one night years ago, when prostitution became his lifeline, and he never left—he clung to the man like a parasite.
The pain was less than before… or maybe he just forgot better when he was with Seungmin.
It could look like a pitiful love story, if not for the fact that Jeongin knows he’s just a whore playing “pretty woman” at a roadside motel, taking care of the love of his life as he withers away until they both waste into nothing.
Seungmin has a strange degenerative illness that has worsened with the years. He says he saw it coming, but Jeongin believes it’s just a way to make it seem less miserable. Maybe that’s why he stayed when Seungmin showed him a little mercy and let him live at the motel, even knowing what he does. Also because he’s in love with the man—there’s no question about that.
Jeongin knows his lifestyle doesn’t guarantee him a long, prosperous life. A client could snap one day and kill him, and no one would stop it. But he can’t just walk away. Not when he has to be a pillar for Seungmin.
If he dies because of his dangerous lifestyle, maybe Seungmin will grieve for a while, but he doubts he’d throw himself into the fire for him. And what if the authorities confuse Seungmin’s kindness and love with pimping, letting a prostitute work out of his property and keeping part of the earnings?
“Forgive me, okay?” Seungmin says, taking his hand. “I promise when I die, I’ll leave you everything so you never have to do this again.”
“Don’t talk about dying, please.”
He’d rather die himself than watch Seungmin die. Spare himself the pain—maybe even give Seungmin a taste of his own medicine for tormenting him with the idea of death.
“I’m not hungry anymore,” Jeongin says suddenly. “Shall we go to bed?”
Seungmin doesn’t argue—he can’t, really. Jeongin helps him to their shared room. The walk is slow, Jeongin’s steps in rhythm with the squeak of the wheels, as if dragging it out could delay more than just their arrival to bed. He helps him rise carefully from the chair, feeling how light his body has become. Again, he’s lost more weight.
Jeongin lays him down on the bed, then heads to the bathroom across the hall to shower off every trace of another man so as not to stain the purity of their bedroom. In there, he’s not Jeongin “the whore”—he’s simply Jeongin, Seungmin’s lover and clumsy personal nurse. The loud shower muffles his nightly crying. He no longer thinks about why he’s crying; he just wants the pressure in his chest gone.
When he returns to the bed, Seungmin is already breathing calmly, turned away, probably because the side facing Jeongin hurts and it’s more comfortable to sleep that way. He had a catheter in his collarbone for treatment at the hospital a few days ago; Jeongin was there during the process to keep him company until the anxiety about the bill started to gnaw at him. Let’s just say that after disappearing for a few hours he came back with some bills. Just in case.
Jeongin clings to him like a drowning man to a lifeline. He traces the sharp ribs under his worn t-shirt, finds his hand and holds it tightly, like he could tie his soul to his.
He closes his eyes, but rest doesn’t come. His breathing falls in sync with the older man’s, yet in the dark, his mind fills with thoughts he doesn’t want, scenarios he doesn’t need. Every sigh grows heavier, as if he’s afraid that when he opens his eyes, the space beside him will be empty.
Seungmin never jokes about his death. He mentions it with cold serenity because that’s who he is—he’s had many years to process and accept it. His meetings with multiple doctors aren’t hopeful; they just make him cautious.
If he weren’t his lover, Jeongin would wish Seungmin had been his father. Since they’ve been together he’s taught him so many useful things—how to drive, how to cook—and even kindly paid for a nursing course because Jeongin wanted to be a little more useful to him. Jeongin doesn’t think that in the end all those lessons were for him; his effort outside the night work is exclusively to take care of Seungmin. And Seungmin devotes the remainder of his life only to Jeongin.
He prepares Jeongin for the inevitable: how to run the motel, how to file taxes, how to use the insurance policy he writes down carefully after every hospital visit, as if he’s writing a manual on how to live without him. A life after him.
IIn his spare time he fills notebooks with clear, orderly notes, as if that could ensure nothing is left to chance. He’s even written a will listing all his assets that they took to a notary public and he updates it from time to time depending on what else comes up in the process. Jeongin always reads it to check the details, as Seungmin requests. He says no one will claim his assets after death, but doesn’t trust his family not to pull something if they find out.
So Jeongin won’t be left unprotected. But most of the time Jeongin wishes all those papers and money could be traded for more years of life. Instead, everything Seungmin says is about a life after his death.
Jeongin prefers not to listen. When everything becomes too much he runs to the streets, finds clients, disappears for days and comes back with crumpled bills that smell of sweat and cheap cologne. Some pay more if they mistreat him, if they can reduce him to something less than human. It doesn’t matter—the pain he feels is nothing compared to the burden on his shoulders.
At the end of the day, all that trampled dignity fits in a stack of bills he keeps under the mattress “for emergencies.”
Without realizing it, Seungmin’s illness starts to colonize his mind. He tapes the ambulance number to the wall, memorizes the hospital where they keep his medical records, stores copies of the policy in different places so they’re at hand if something happens. He knows by heart the cardiologist’s number, the oncologist’s, the nephrologist’s—everyone he might need in an emergency.
He even invites his clients to the motel whenever he can, just so he won’t be too far if Seungmin needs him.
He’s installed an alarm that Seungmin hates for its piercing noise, but it lets him get there in time if something happens—even if he’s busy with another man. He will run to Seungmin.
Not everything is so bad. Sometimes, while bearing another man’s weight, his mind slips away. The face changes. The voice changes. The smell changes. In his imagination it isn’t a client touching him. It’s Seungmin making love to him.
It hurts less that way.
It’s less painful than the constant thought that he’s racing against time and Seungmin is at the finish line waiting for Jeongin to take the baton with the soft whisper of “when the time comes.”
One night, he comes back to their room to hear Seungmin coughing violently in the bathroom. Jeongin stands at the door, debating if he should go in, when he hears him sobbing. His heart cracks a little more. He crawls into bed, eyes fixed on the bathroom door, until Seungmin finally emerges, dragging the chair to the bed.
“You got back early.”
That’s all he says, with a tired voice and red eyes. Jeongin doesn’t help him onto the bed, just pulls the sheets back so he can climb in on his own, though clearly struggling. He still has some mobility, but it’s hard to hold himself up, so Jeongin prefers keeping him in the chair to avoid accidents.
“Did it go well?” Seungmin asks, though neither of them needs the answer.
“Enough.” And enough means there’s money for medicine, for food, for one more day together.
Seungmin switches off the lamp, filling the room with warm darkness. Jeongin hugs him from behind, nose pressed to the curve of his neck, clinging to the scent he refuses to forget.
“I don’t want you to die,” he whispers, barely breathing.
No words in return, only a tighter squeeze that comforts him a little. He wants to cry, but he’s too tired to make it to the shower, where Seungmin wouldn’t hear.
He moves slowly, sliding his hand across Seungmin’s stomach until the older man tenses.
“Iyen…” His voice is a warning—tired, but firm.
“I just want…” Jeongin whispers, but he doesn’t finish, because he doesn’t even know how to name what he needs. It’s not pleasure. Not sex. It’s just making sure Seungmin is still there, in the only way he knows how.
Seungmin doesn’t resist. He lets Jeongin turn him, climb on top, kiss him with a hunger that burns more in his throat than in his body. The kiss is messy, tasting of dampness and salt he won’t let himself cry. His hands roam the older man’s body like he’s trying to memorize it blindly, desperate in case every touch might be the last. There’s no rush in Seungmin, only a resigned stillness that ends in a crushing embrace, stealing his breath.
He allows himself to cry a little. He’ll tell Seungmin it’s because he missed making him feel good. To actually make him feel good, not just be a feelingless sexual object.
“It’s been so long since we made love,” he whispers, voice buried in his chest, where the heartbeat is slow and heavy.
“I’m sorry,” Seungmin replies, kissing the crown of his head. “I might faint if I see you naked.”
Jeongin smiles faintly, not moving away.
“It’s okay… I don’t even like sex.”
It’s ironic, but with Seungmin everything becomes bearable. He can always imagine him in another body, enjoy sex with another man while thinking of Seungmin tomorrow… and for the rest of his life if that’s what God wants for him.
The noise, the filth, the weight of the hours… all of it dissolves while they are together in the same bed. It doesn’t matter if the whole world collapses; in here only the warmth of his body and the slow, steady beat Jeongin hears under his ear exist.
But it’s a cruel relief. Because it isn’t the world that’s ending—it’s theirs. Day by day, piece by piece, as if time is stealing Seungmin away in parts.
Seungmin tries to lighten his sorrow by making promises he won’t keep. He tells him that for his birthday next year he’ll take him to the beach; they could even rent a small place to be more at ease, the hotel will be fine without them for a few days. They’ll just have to hire someone to manage it and they can get away. Jeongin knows that’s a lie; his only birthday gift will be widowhood—material things in his name and an urn with his ashes to accompany him until he dies and they can be reunited.
“I love you,” he whispers.
“I love you too, aegi-ah.”