Lovers

36

Jealous?

There’s a saying that while some people may never do it, no one does it just once. I’ve never felt the truth of those words as strongly as I do these days.

“Ah, don’t. Really, don’t.”

Riegel, who was no different from an unemployed person, often seduced me physically and made me fall for him. Riegel quickly adapted to sex and even improved his technique. He must have had some audiovisual materials. Wow, imagining that beautiful, dreamy face seriously searching for porn doesn’t seem to fit. But a man who doesn’t watch porn, now that’s creepy in its own way.

“You always say ‘don’t’ with your words. But when I put it in, you’re too busy tightening up.”

“Stop saying things like that too.”

I need to check my appearance in the mirror, but I can’t do anything with Riegel clinging to me from behind. As I button up one button on my shirt, I contemplate for the eighteenth time whether I should slap away those mischievous fingers that are unbuttoning the one below it.

“Why are you trying so hard to go to work? It’s not even a real job anyway.”

“My original job requires risking my life, and that is my workplace.”

“Your workplace is on Munben Street.”

Riegel’s lips moved up and down my neck. I savored the pleasure his lips gave as I stroked his hair.

“It’s a job that requires frequent business trips originally.”

Riegel chuckled at my words.

“I don’t like that very much.”

“Why?”

“Who would like their lover having frequent business trips?”

I was surprised by Riegel’s words. Lover? You and me? Trying not to show my surprise, I pushed Riegel’s head away, and he yielded easily. In that moment, I buttoned up my shirt completely and put on my pants. Baral will be furious since I’ve been absent without notice for several days.

“…If you have nothing to do, why don’t you drive me there?”

Riegel smiled with his eyes at my words, saying, “Should I?” I understand now what it means when they say it’s hard to be truly angry when your lover is pretty. The problem is that I’m experiencing this with Riegel, and, well, I don’t know. If there’s anyone in my life closest to the word ‘lover’, it would be Riegel.

Having breakfast together with Riegel was quite unfamiliar too. Of course, when I lived with my father, we all ate breakfast together, but that was no different from a battlefield. The sight of young boys eating breakfast together… Playing pranks, older brothers shouting to subdue them, and in the midst of it all, father trying to enlighten us with the word of God – that discordant trio. Compared to that, breakfast with Riegel was quiet and elegant. The staff even waited on us.

“Who’s the superior trying to kill you?”

Riegel asked as he put a sausage in my mouth. I want to say I can eat with my own hands, but it’s the first time someone has put a sausage in my mouth, and honestly, it wasn’t bad. Except for the embarrassment, it felt like receiving extreme love. The thought ‘Is this okay?’ did cross my mind briefly.

Ah, I don’t know.

As I quickly ate the sausage, Riegel smiled and started cutting another one.

“Director Dill?”

He casually said such a sensitive thing.

“What good would it do you to know?”

“If someone’s trying to kill my lover, I should at least know who they are.”

We’re not lovers. What about Lee Shin-yeon?

It seemed too childish to say that out loud, so I just chewed on the sausage. Whatever Riegel’s intentions were, he didn’t seem likely to back down easily, and he already knew exactly who I was, plus the sausage was delicious…

After a moment’s hesitation, I opened my mouth.

“Otto Layer, Section Chief of Department 1.”

Riegel laughed at the mention of Otto Layer and said, “Ah.”

This time, he scooped up some scrambled eggs with a spoon and put them in my mouth, then asked affectionately,

“The owner of that tempting wardrobe?”

“How did you know?”

“We met in the hallway, remember?”

I thought he hadn’t seen me, but apparently, he had.

“Then you slipped into that room, but when I went in, you were gone, and the only furniture you could hide in was the wardrobe, so it was obvious.”

I thought Riegel had figured it out with some superhuman ability, but it turned out to be quite simple logic. They say magic is wondrous, but when you know the trick, it becomes trivial – this was exactly like that.

Having nothing to say, I picked up the orange juice glass and took a sip. I’ve had a lot of orange juice before, but I’ve never had juice this delicious except in this house. It’s fresh and sweet-tart. How can they make it taste like this?

While I was marveling at the orange juice, Riegel said,

“Why is Otto Layer trying to kill you?”

“Because I’m going to kill him.”

“Why do you want to kill Layer?”

“He backstabbed me.”

Riegel paused for a moment. He moved his fork again. I ate without knowing what he was feeding me, but it turned out to be salmon. A neat roll of salmon with onions, sauce, and even capers. As I was chewing it because it was delicious, Riegel said,

“Was it Otto Layer who stabbed you?”

His voice was chilling. When I looked up, Riegel was smiling kindly. I checked his eyes, but he was really smiling, making me wonder if I had misheard his voice.

Ah, is that it? Sometimes people’s voices come out cold when they speak without thinking, to the point where you wonder if they’re upset. I sometimes get asked, “Are you okay?” even when I didn’t mean anything by it. Is it like that?

“The one who stabbed me was a subordinate of some informant.”

“But the one who ordered the informant was Layer, right?”

“I’m the one who commissioned the informant. I went to receive the details of the commission from the informant, and I was stabbed while receiving that information. So I don’t know if Layer commissioned it, or if there was a part where the informant tried to eliminate me. It could even have been Josef Kuno or his father, August Kuno.”

“Why does August Kuno come up here?”

Riegel’s voice was now clearly not good. And probably my face wasn’t good either. I jumped up and grabbed Riegel.

“It’s your turn now, Sebastian.”

I grabbed Riegel’s neck. I was holding his carotid artery. I could kill Riegel like this. Of course, I won’t kill him, but.

“What’s your relationship with Canaris?”

Riegel was looking at me quietly with my hand on his neck. His eyes held some emotion, but I couldn’t tell what it was. Is he feeling betrayed that I, who he had been cherishing and calling his lover, was now holding his neck?

I want to say it was only two days, but now I know too. Some two days, some 10 minutes, can be more intense than a year.

If Riegel hadn’t waited for me on the night of Jay’s funeral, he and I wouldn’t have become like this. That night changed everything for us. At least from my perspective, it did.

Ah.

Riegel smiled poisonously.

“So you approached me because of that?”

Huh, something felt off. What is this feeling of having messed up? While I couldn’t answer, Riegel firmly grasped the wrist of my hand that was holding his neck.

“Is that why you slept with me?”

I should say no, but for a moment I thought, well, it’s not completely untrue. If it wasn’t for work, I wouldn’t have approached Riegel. I wouldn’t have accepted when Riegel approached me. From the start, I would have physically stopped Riegel when he said strange things.

When I didn’t say anything, Riegel’s eyes glistened. I’ve seen eyes like this many times. In places where guns and blood are rampant, one in three has eyes that glisten like this. Some are born that way, and some gradually go mad on the field.

I felt I needed to say something.

…Preferably something plausible and a bit cool, yeah, something casually yet delicately thrown out against the backdrop of a sunset, a single line that resonates in the heart…

“You couldn’t forget Lee Shin-yeon either.”

Ah, this isn’t it.

Damn, the words slipped out. And once words slip out, you can’t erase them. Riegel’s eyes became even more sinister.

“It’s not like that. …I can’t explain it to you, but it’s not like that.”

“Yeah, right.”

“It really isn’t. I haven’t forgotten Lee Shin-yeon, nor have I betrayed him.”

Ah, now I’m really getting annoyed.

Yeah, go ahead and suck on that Lee Shin-yeon, why did you sleep with me then? A very faint rational thought in my head tried to raise its voice, saying ‘It was Riegel who questioned why we slept together. I wasn’t trying to interrogate him.’ But I immediately snapped the neck of that rationality.

I’m being very irrational right now, but I don’t care.

“You’re lovable in your own way. That’s why with you,”

Is he saying he loves both of them and me too? No, this bastard?

At that moment, the only reason I didn’t flip the table was that the table in Riegel’s dining room was unbelievably heavy. It was an Oriental-style table, but it seemed large enough for twelve people to sit and eat, and it was as heavy as if it had been carved from a whole tree. That’s why I held back; otherwise, I would have flipped it right away.

“You, what are you? Polyamory or something like that?”

Surprisingly, the person who taught me the concept of polyamory was our father. A Catholic priest but a free spirit, our father said that humans should not be discriminated against based on religious, sexual, political, or other values and ideologies. He then explained the concept of polyamory, but of course, I never fully understood it. Ah, so it’s the concept of wanting to date this person and that person at the same time? It seemed ridiculous then, but I never imagined the person who slept with me would say such things.

Without realizing it, I grabbed a knife. I thought about slitting his throat if he kept talking nonsense, but when Riegel saw my hand, he suddenly smiled. His eyes, which had been glistening just moments ago, were now brightly relaxed. What’s going on here?

“What, are you jealous? Armin Schnieke, are you jealous? Huh?”

“…”

“That’s cute. Really? I only have you,”

There was a loud bang. Riegel looked at the knife I had stabbed into the table and closed his mouth with a hum. With a cracking sound, the wooden table split in two.