HH | Chapter 2.1

Ah, damn. I left my work clothes behind. When the car suddenly broke down, Eunil had left the shopping bag with his work clothes in it behind.

The compact car with 170,000 kilometers on it had been given to him by his sunbae when that person went into the army. He had thought, What kind of car is this, for someone like me?

But he had accepted the saying that if you wanted to earn money, mobility came first, so he kept driving it around. And just when he had reached the point where he would be sorry to be without it, it finally broke down, almost as if telling him to quit it already.

Just his luck, on a day like this there was also a plan. He was meeting some department classmates for the first time in a while, first at a PC cafe, then for dinner. One of them had said he would introduce him to a first-year junior girl and told him to scrub up and come looking sharp, and though that was not the only reason, Eunil had pulled out his favorite jeans and the T-shirt that still had some shape to it. Going out in itself was enough to make his heart flutter.

So Eunil rubbed his forehead, looking troubled. It would be inconvenient to work like this, and he could not ignore the sweat smell or the wrinkles. It was June, right on the edge of summer, and every day was well above 30 degrees.

With physical labor, sweat was unavoidable, and in this huge house he could not exactly turn on the air conditioner just for his own comfort. That was why he carried work clothes around in the first place, but now it felt like a carpenter leaving his tools behind.

At last, Eunil made up his mind and took off his jeans. He spread them neatly on the marble floor, then took off his T-shirt and laid it out beside them. He ended up looking indecent, wearing only the white cotton briefs he had bought in the army and a pair of white socks, but so what, he thought. It was not like anyone was going to see. Even so, he was trying his best.

After running the powerful vacuum through even the dry bathroom, sweat had dampened his smooth skin. Eunil put the vacuum away properly in the bonus room and stretched out flat on the marble floor, savoring the coldness to his heart’s content.

He missed the air conditioner because sweat kept running down him, but when he lay like this, he had nothing in the world to envy. Since he had stripped down to nothing today, it was even better. He even wondered if he really needed to wear work clothes when nobody was here.

Maybe five minutes had passed. Eunil took off the ceremonial gloves and changed into latex gloves. He attached a microfiber cloth dampened with water to the mop and went back and forth between rooms, scrubbing with enthusiasm.

For places he could not reach with his hands, he used a hand cloth and scrubbed hard. It always looked like there was nothing to clean, but once he actually got to work, it was obvious whether something had been cleaned or not, so he did not even think about slacking off.

By the time he had worked like that, two hours had flown by. He had thought sweeping and wiping would only take five hours at most, but it was not quite so easy. After taking the clothes out of the dryer, ironing them, and hanging them neatly on the hanger, another thirty minutes had vanished.

Eunil now took off his socks and went into the bathroom attached to the dressing room. With a cloth soaked in cleaning solution, he scrubbed the sink and toilet, the glass wall dividing off the bathroom, and the tiled floor with all his strength. Sweat poured down like rain. If it had been up to him, he would have pointed the handheld shower not at the bathroom floor but at himself and soaked himself through.

It was only a thought, but a fierce stream of water came pouring down not from the handheld shower in his hand, but from above his head. It was coming from the rain shower installed in the ceiling. Eunil quickly reached out to turn off the faucet, but his vision was blocked by the milky stream of water, and in his panic he was soaked through before long.

It was actually happening, all of what he had wanted, one hundred percent. Since this had never happened before, it was naturally his fault for assuming the water came from the handheld shower and not checking the lever.

Eunil’s reflection in the full-length mirror behind him was a sight to behold. Wearing opaque sanitary gloves, with hair plastered down black and limp as if he had just showered. Even his white underwear had turned water-colored and translucent, showing all his skin through it. Setting aside the embarrassment, it was so absurd that all he could do was laugh.

Days like this could happen. They did happen. But today he had a plan. Eunil looked back and forth between his wet underwear and his sorry state, then sighed deeply and took off his briefs. The fact that the house faced south, with plenty of sunlight, brought him a little peace of mind. Spread out under the sunlight coming through the floor-to-ceiling windows, they would probably be mostly dry by the time his part-time job was over. Eunil carefully spread the underwear out beside the clothes he had taken off, then went back into the bathroom and resumed his work.

He rinsed away the bathroom’s cleaning solution with the cool spray from the handheld shower. He wiped the floor with the dry mop, then scrubbed again with a hand cloth, rising onto his heels for high places and squatting down for low ones.

Eunil could not help snickering at the fact that he was cleaning in someone else’s house with his genitals hanging out in plain view. He thought that if he told his classmates about this, it would make a pretty good joke for a while, since experiences like this could not be bought even with money.

With nothing to be self-conscious about, Eunil crawled around the floor like a four-legged beast, wiping up the water. Seizing the chance, he stretched his back and reached into corners where his fingertips could barely touch, extending his arm as far as it would go.

Even the unfamiliar posture of lifting his hips and bending his lower back low under the strain of hard labor made his soaked body gleam as if it had been oiled, with a sticky layer of sweat to boot.

When he got up, he could not help making a noise. “Ugh.” Eunil patted his lower back like an old man, then swept his surroundings with a final check to make sure the moisture was wiped clean. He turned around.

And then he had to suck in a breath.

Not because he was in pain, and not because he was exhausted. It was because a strange man was leaning against the doorway, looking at him.

The dry gaze showed no sign of surprise, and it was so steady it felt as if he had been standing there, watching Eunil, for quite some time. For a moment, Eunil forgot his own situation.

“Oh… are you the owner, sir?”

“Then you must be the helper.”

It was a low, clear voice. There was a touch of arrogance in the indifferent tone, but Eunil forgot all that and stared blankly. It was a good voice. And it matched his handsome face. Then he remembered this was not the time for that and bowed quickly. Oh no! Only then did Eunil realize he was naked.

He hurriedly bent at the waist and covered himself with both hands. Had he seen it? He had, right? He definitely had. The eyebrows that usually showed little emotion lowered in a gloomy way.

“My clothes got wet, ah, I really am the helper. Just a moment, just a moment.”

Eunil hurried past Leehyup in a half-crouch. He slipped his feet into the briefs that would still need a long time to dry. Maybe because he was flustered, the wet underwear would not pull up easily, and just kept rolling up around Eunil’s thighs. Leehyup was watching from a distance.

“It’s fine. You can do it naked.”

“Yes. Thank you… huh?”

“If you wear wet clothes, it feels disgusting, like wearing cheap stuff.”

“Wha…”

“Cum.”

“Cu, cum…”

It felt as if his head had been pelted with a series of jabs. While Eunil staggered to keep up with the words, Leehyup went into the dressing room with a lofty air as if nothing had happened.

For all the emotionless tone, the impact was so great that Eunil somehow could not get his underwear on anymore. It really did feel like that, so he put on only his jeans. He considered putting on his T-shirt too, but only for a moment. He still had cleaning left to do, and he had been told it was fine to do it naked, and besides, it felt wasteful to put back on clothes he had just gotten clean.

Eunil went into the dressing room, where there was still cleaning left to do. Thinking that he had not finished what he wanted to say, he stood beside Leehyup, who was loosening his tie.

Leehyup handed over the tie as if he had been waiting, and Eunil took it. Everything felt so natural, as if it had all been arranged in advance, that Eunil briefly thought this might be the perfect job for him after all.

“My name is Oh Eunil. About earlier… if you felt uncomfortable, I’m sorry. I showed you a sight you should not have had to see.”

He caught sight of the cuff buttons from his lowered angle and hurriedly took them as well.

“Not really.”

“Huh?”

Ah, it was an answer to the question of whether he had been offended. Still, it felt a little unfair to leave it at that, so Eunil stole a glance at his expressionless face and explained.

“I got hit by a bucket of water while cleaning… If I had checked the faucet first, this would not have happened. It had never happened before, either. I’ll be more careful from now on.”

“Is that my fault?”

“What? No… that is not what I meant…”

He really could not tell where the conversation would go next. While Eunil was still fumbling around, Leehyup suddenly changed his posture. The hard line of his jaw, slightly split in shape, caught Eunil’s wandering eyes near the shoulder.

“But are you hurt anywhere?”

“Huh?”

He felt like he was only ever stupidly repeating the question back. But he could not help it, because that was what Leehyup had said. Eunil raised his head sharply, a little put out, and met Leehyup’s eyes.

They were not just black. They were so dark they almost looked deep blue. Eunil lost his words this time. Especially if he was going to say something so languidly.

“It was a white cock.”

Ah. He had seen it. He had seen everything.

His already flustered mind tangled itself up even more. With the lack of hair on his genitals having become a complex for him, and with the experience of having never once shown it to anyone since he came to understand what sex was, he could not figure out how he was supposed to react. He barely managed to drag up the corners of his mouth and answer.

Footnote:

가는 날이 장날 — A Korean proverb meaning bad timing or “just when you go, it turns into market day.” It means something inconvenient happens at the worst possible moment.

백자지 — Crude slang, literally “white cock.” It refers to a penis that looks unusually pale or bare.