Cheon-oh bared his teeth and ground them against the skin at his throat. His hand roamed over her pallid waist as his lowered eyes flashed with a mad, feral gleam.

Inside, only wordless lust muttered like a lunatic:

I want to bite, swallow, tear apart, devour—break her, pin him down. And I want to caress him, he thought. I want to be tender. I want to fall to my knees, to gaze up at him, to grovel at his feet and beg. I want to kiss him…

Then, the man raised a hand to rest atop Cheon-oh’s head. Long fingers tangled in his wavy hair, sweeping the strands back before leaning in. Lips brushed against Cheon-oh’s ear, whispering with the exact, devastating tenderness he so desperately craved.

“—Gasp!”

Cheon-oh violently jolted upright, his chest heaving as his frantic gaze scoured the room.

The gloomy predawn shadows, the unfamiliar exotic furniture, the impossibly soft bedding—it all rushed back, reminding him exactly where he was and why he occupied this solitary chamber.

And, to his mounting horror, he remembered exactly what he had dared to dream.

Slapping a hand over his mouth, the boy’s face drained of all color. He cast a look of utter disbelief down the length of his body, his trembling fingers slowly peeling back the covers. The moment the fabric shifted, his worst fears were confirmed by a sight he wholly refused to accept.

Clinging to a fragile shred of denial, Cheon-oh carefully lifted the waistband of his trousers—only to bury his face in both hands, utterly crushed by despair. His complexion had turned a sickly, ashen white.

Ah…

I’m in deep trouble.

***

Slipping out of his room under the cover of pitch-black night, Cheon-oh crept silently into the estate’s designated bathing chamber. At fifteen, a boy’s mind is a chaotic tempest on the best of days; factoring in the harrowing events of the past week and this sudden, explosive revelation, rational thought utterly eluded him.

Had he retained any common sense, he would have recognized that visiting the outhouse offered a far more plausible alibi if intercepted, or that actively suppressing his footsteps was infinitely more suspicious than walking normally. Stripped of his usual calculated logic, he operated on pure, desperate instinct.

He simply had to obliterate the evidence.

A sickening guilt churned in his gut, convincing him he had committed an unforgivable sin—which, considering the subject of his dream, felt entirely accurate.

Paranoia painted vivid hallucinations of his master materializing silently behind him, looking down with elegant disdain to demand an explanation.

He could perfectly envision Cho Yoon’s brow furrowing at the soiled garments, relentlessly interrogating him about the exact nature of his midnight fantasies.

If that happened, Cheon-oh knew he wouldn’t survive the interrogation; he’d likely plunge his head into the bathwater and drown himself from sheer mortification.

Consequently, he bypassed the lanterns entirely, plunging his garments directly into the freezing water the second he breached the room.

Relying on years of assisting his master with household chores, he meticulously scrubbed the fabric in the pitch black.Yet, the slick sensation of the water against his hands relentlessly summoned flashes of the dream, forcing him to grind his teeth. He felt utterly deranged for fixating on those phantom caresses amidst such a humiliating crisis.

Finishing the task with unnecessary aggression, Cheon-oh violently wrung out the wet fabric and swiftly drained the contaminated basin. Erasing the physical proof marginally settled his racing heart. When even his heightened olfactory senses detected nothing amiss, he finally deemed the crisis contained.

Pressing his freezing hands against his flushed cheeks and burning ears, Cheon-oh exhaled a massive sigh of relief.

He briskly snapped the freshly laundered clothes to banish the wrinkles and rolled down his sleeves.

If I just hang these in my room, they’ll be dry by morning, he rationalized. I’ll fold them, pack them away, and no one will ever know… Armed with this fragile reassurance, he yanked open the heavy wooden door.

And immediately nearly collapsed from sheer terror.

“M-Master!”

Cho Yoon stood perfectly still directly outside the threshold, one hand half-raised as if preparing to knock. Driven beyond simple shock into absolute panic, Cheon-oh’s grip failed. The damp, painstakingly scrubbed garments slipped from his fingers.

Before the fabric could kiss the floorboards, Cho Yoon snatched it out of the air.

Confronted with his petrified, mute disciple, Cho Yoon lifted his gaze, methodically scanning the darkened washroom. To Cheon-oh, those agonizingly silent seconds stretched into a suffocating eternity.

Trembling violently, the boy forced his frozen lips apart.

“I-I’m so sorry! I…”

“You bolted out of bed so suddenly, I wondered what had happened,” Cho Yoon interrupted, cutting through Cheon-oh’s pathetic stammering with a tone of profound nonchalance.

The sheer normalcy of the response left Cheon-oh dumbfounded. He stared blankly up at his master, his mouth hanging slightly ajar.

Noticing the boy’s bewilderment, Cho Yoon rested his free hand atop Cheon-oh’s head. Though the boy’s recent growth spurt prevented Cho Yoon from petting him like a small animal as he once had, the fingers gently tangling and ruffling his hair remained undeniably warm.

“There is no need for such embarrassment,” Cho Yoon murmured. “It is perfectly natural for your age. Everyone undergoes this process. Be at ease.”

“W-What?”

“Did I not warn you that your body would undergo changes once you passed thirteen? I highly doubt you have forgotten.”

Even in his stupor, Cheon-oh’s brain whirred frantically. He scoured the mental archives of his master’s teachings, desperately cross-referencing biological facts with his current predicament. Latching onto the single physiological phenomenon that remotely matched the evidence, he stammered out a question.

“T-Then… what just happened to me…”

“Yes, it was a nocturnal emission.”

Cho Yoon delivered the clinical diagnosis with zero inflection. Cheon-oh’s confusion rapidly compounded into absolute bewilderment.

Is it really that natural? Does everyone experience this?

He had vividly dreamt of his master disheveled and pliable, of dragging him close and sinking his teeth into the man’s pale neck. Was that considered normal? Did every disciple harbor such depraved fantasies about their teacher?

Adrift in a sea of moral panic, Cheon-oh swallowed hard.

“But… the dream I had…”

“The dream?” Cho Yoon prompted gently as the boy trailed off.

Cheon-oh couldn’t possibly confess the graphic specifics. Desperate to convey the sheer gravity of his perceived sins, he carefully weighed his words.

“It was… an incredibly shameless and blasphemous dream,” he whispered, his voice trembling. “It was thoroughly depraved. Utterly incomprehensible. But… I found it pleasurable, and for that, I have no face to show you. I fear I have committed a grave, unforgivable wrong.”

“Hmm.”

He had sneaked through the darkness solely to bury this secret, yet here he was, spilling his blackened soul on the washroom floor. An oppressive silence stretched between them.

Clasping his freezing hands together, Cheon-oh absentmindedly rubbed his numb fingertips, dreading the impending judgment.

The comforting weight of his master’s hand vanished from his head. Bracing for a merciless reprimand, Cheon-oh’s breathing hitched—only to find both of his hands suddenly enveloped in a reassuring warmth.

Cho Yoon gripped the boy’s icy fingers firmly, delivering his verdict with unwavering conviction.

“There is nothing to fear. As I said, this is entirely beyond your control. It is simply a milestone of your maturation. You have reached an age where you might harbor romantic affections for someone, and your body naturally reacts in tandem. However, I must ask you one thing.”

“…Yes, Master.”

“Your moral compass is still developing, so allow me to judge whether this dream was truly as ‘shameless and blasphemous’ as you claim. I apologize if this brings you further shame, but my sole intent is to alleviate your distress. If you are uncomfortable, you need not answer.”

“No… I will answer, Master.”

Cheon-oh shook his head vehemently. Even in the pitch-black hallway, his martial training granted him perfect night vision; he could see the light-brown irises boring directly into his own. Waiting for the final sentence to fall, the boy looked up, entirely at his master’s mercy.

Yet, the question that breached the silence was completely unexpected.

“Was the object of your dream significantly younger than you?”

“What? No, not at all.”

Cheon-oh scoffed in sheer disbelief. Younger? He had no concrete idea of his master’s true age, but he intuitively knew the immortal had lived lifetimes longer than his own measly fifteen years.

“Then, did you physically overpower this person?” Cho Yoon pressed calmly. “Or was the subject trapped in a completely helpless situation, unable to resist your advances?”

“No… absolutely not.”

Even though his dream-self possessed a broader, more imposing physique than Cho Yoon, he could never claim to be the stronger of the two. While his dark, swirling desires were certainly rooted in a desperate need to influence the man, he harbored zero intent to render his master helpless.

Cheon-oh merely craved absolute monopoly over his master’s attention and nerves. He wanted to touch him flawlessly, to map every inch of his existence, and…

Scarlet heat flooded the boy’s cheeks, searing the tips of his ears and the nape of his neck as he ducked his head.

Utterly baffled by this dramatic reaction to what sounded like a completely innocuous fantasy, Cho Yoon asked one final question.

“Then what on earth did you do to this person to warrant such profound guilt?”

“…I-I hugged them,” Cheon-oh stammered, staring at the floorboards. “I held them… and… I think I kissed them.”

“…”

Cho Yoon stared at the boy in dead silence, momentarily robbed of speech as a single thought crossed his mind.

Did I raise him to be too innocent?