124 — Suspicious

I wasn't exactly in the mood to endure her passive aggressive interrogation. Su Ah had already messed with my head enough, no need to have a crazy sister pushing the rest of my sanity through the floor as well. "Must've rubbed onto me when we hugged." Wasn't entirely a lie, either.

"Su Ah hugging you and clinging to you. Now I know you're lying, baby brother. Since when do the two of you hug?"

I sighed. This wasn't worth a proper explanation.

"Where were the two of you?"

"Just..."

Her head slowly bobbed from side to side, scrutinizing.

"A date?"

She asked, tone oddly lax and bland.

A date?

I wanted to snort. If a date meant being emotionally gaslighted into a make out session in a dirty back alley and feeling like an utter failure of a human for doing so, then by all means.

"We just talked, is all."

"Really?"

"Mhm."

She was close. Close enough I could see how glassy and huge her pupils had grown, making her look drunk or dazed. Her forehead crinkled. Her breathing came shallow and fast and quiet, as though she was restraining herself with effort. Her hands fisted in the ends of the oversized sleeves of the white sweater she was wearing. It was one of my sweaters as well.

When Mia reached out, the oversized sleeves slid up her arms a little. She held her fingers right in front of my face. Right between our mouths, practically cupping the shape of my lower lip. "Open up."

"......"

She tipped her fingers, just a touch, and something faintly cold touched the edge of my lower lip.

"Noona."

For fuck's sake, we were outside still. Outside the door, outside a residential district and if some neighbor or random passerby saw this we'd be done for. A muscle twitched in my jaw. Giving in had become dangerously reflexive lately.

I let my fingers find her chin, my thumb settling over her lower lip with a tug. Mia parted her lips, just a little, her teeth white and sharp and catching my finger, a quick scrape that sent an electric prickle zipping up my spine. She nipped once, licked once.

A blatant, suggestive gesture, and a smirk lifted her mouth.

Her head bowed a bit, shoulders tilting, hair falling forward, eyes fixing, shining up at me through her lashes. "Doesn't smell like just a simple hug to me." She whispered, one of her fingers dragging across the exact same spot Su Ah had rutted up against me. Her expression grew sombre.

"Jae-il." The faint traces of sweetness in Mia's words melted away. The cadence of the familiar, ever-present undercurrent of a little psycho. Her nails raked up the inside of my thigh, close enough to my dick to make every muscle in my lower body tighten, but never close enough. "What did you do with Su Ah?"

"Like I said, we just..."

"Tell me." Her lips pursed. The pressure of her nails intensified as they moved upwards. A smile crinkled her eyes. A mocking tilt. A fucking trap. Her voice was saccharine-sweet. "I texted you earlier, you know? No, you definitely know. You saw the message. Didn't reply, though. Surely, if you weren't doing anything, you would've replied back, huh?"

Her fingers stopped a hair's breadth from where the denim was still dark and damp, the evidence Su Ah had left behind. Mia's pupils were blown wide, black swallowing the beautiful amber.

My mind went blank, and not for the first time, I wondered how things had become so messed up. Still, I had to put a stop to this behavior before things spiralled beyond control.

If a part of me was going insane already, how long would the last few threads of rationality in my mind endure before I went off the rails as well?

I clutched her wrist, firmly, and snapped it up right in front of her face.

"Stop."

She froze, eyes flicking up to mine, pupils still huge, lips parted on whatever venom she'd been about to spit.

I kept my voice flat. The same tone I use in the locker room when the team's losing its shit and I need them to hear me over the noise. "We went out, like I said, to go over some of the issues she's been having with her book. There was nothing to do with what the hell you're so keen on imagining." I released her. "Listen, I have a bloody match coming up and it's late. I'm tired and need rest."

Mia didn't move her hand. She let it hang in the air where I'd left it, fingers curled like she was still holding something invisible.

"Tired." She repeated, softly. "Sorry, Jae-il. Didn't mean to make it seem like I don't trust you."

She said that.

The words were a perfect mimicry of apology.

"It's just that..." The skin under her eyes was slightly crinked. "That I really really love you."

Then, Mia took a step forward, her head dropping onto my shoulder, her entire body slumping against me like a sack of bones.

And I could feel the weight of her, the softness of her breasts pressing against my chest, the warmth of her breath ghosting over the skin of my neck. She gently wrapped her hands around me. Her arms slid around my waist like it was the most natural thing in the world. Like she hadn't just been one heartbeat away from tearing my throat out with her teeth.

I didn't hug her back.

I just stood there, hands loose at my sides, letting her cling.

Because that's what this was. Clinging.

"I really, really love you." She whispered again, softer this time, voice muffled against my collarbone. "So much it hurts when you're not looking at me."

She exhaled into the curve of my neck, long and shuddering, and she held me so tightly, clinging so desperately, I half expected her to fuse with my bones and stay there permanently.

The violent flicker in the eyes, the suffocating sense of threat when she stood so close, as if she was constantly holding a knife in the space between her fingers, ready to shove into me. Even me. I didn't know if this was merely paranoia on my part, or if something was seriously off. But I had the faint suspicion I'd only understood the barest glimmer of Mia's true personality, and I wasn't certain it would remain a barest glimmer if I kept allowing her more liberties.

I sighed.

And then reciprocated the hug.

Why?

Perhaps I was starting to take sadistic pleasure from torturing my mind even further than it was already being tortured. Perhaps, because in moments like these, Mia seemed more a victim of our situation, and of her twisted thoughts and emotions.

If only.

As cliche as that sounded.

And, well, I loved this bitch.

How was that for insanity?

xXx

Mia's POV:

She slowly eased the door shut. It clicked. The lock slid home. Silence fell in the little bubble between the hallway and the rest of the sleeping house. Jae-il was gone, likely for a while. She'd see him on TV, sure, but she wouldn't have him.

She would not have him.

He was heading to the dorms. Away from her. To sleep in a different bed. To talk to different people, see different things, breathe a different air. He'd have his own routine, and she'd be here, at home, counting the days, hours, minutes until she could see him again.

"......"

Mia idly looked up the stairs, where her younger sister had disappeared.

Su Ah.

She had smelled it on Jae-il the second he stood at the doorstep.

The lingering, faint traces of another woman.

Her perfume.

It wasn't the perfume itself that made Mia's stomach coil; it was the location, the faint, subtle hints of that perfume that clung onto Jae-il in a way that didn't make sense.

That was not a smell you get from a brief hug from a distance. That was a smell that got on you when you were close enough, pressed together for a while, when a woman was wrapped around you, breathing on you.

'He lied...'

He lied indeed.

She knew she couldn't fully monopolize Jae-il. Such was the fate of those who threaded into forbidden territory.

Of course, acknowledging something and accepting it are different things.

Whatever had happened with Su Ah, her quiet, cynical, seemingly harmless little sister, was more than just a 'chat about a book'.

Mia bit her lip hard and felt the flash of pain wash away a surge of something darker inside her chest.

She took a step up the stairs.

She thought about the slightly disheveled clothes Su Ah had on, the way she had hurried past without sparing a word. The look she'd gotten from her sister.

Then two.

She thought about her brother's lips. Soft and full and pink, the imprints of teeth in his lower lip. His hair ruffled, his mouth swollen.

'He was with her.'

Then three.

Ah. The thought landed clean, like a scalpel between ribs. He was with her. Not just near her, not just talking.

Then four.

She kept climbing, slowly, barefoot. The wood was cold under her soles.

Five.

Mia pictured it without wanting to—Su Ah's neat little fingers in his hair, her thighs clamped around his hips, her breath hitching the way hers did whenever Jae-il finally gave in.

She wondered if Su Ah cried. She wondered if he kissed the tears off her face; no she wasn't crying. Mia would've seen the redness, the swelling, the tell-tale shine on her cheeks when Su Ah shoved past her in the doorway. There was none. Just flushed skin, swollen lips, the glassy, stunned look of someone who had her world redefined by the very taboo word Mia and Jae-il monopolized.

Six.

Mia wondered if he called Su Ah 'Noona' in that cracked, rumbling way he always did whenever Mia edged him closer and closer to climax.

Seven.

Her hand found the banister, gripping it tightly.

Eight.

Maybe…

Maybe she was wrong?

Mia frowned, hesitating slightly. She knew that ugly, sleeping monster within her was rearing its stupid head.

Nine.

Only one way to confirm.

She sighed.

And moved all the way up.

Then—

She stood in front of Su Ah's bedroom and inhaled shakily. Licked her dry, parched lips.

—And knocked.