Night fell fast over the mountains, bringing a brutal, freezing chill that drove everyone toward the central stone patio.

The teachers and students had set up a massive bonfire. Sparks danced into the ink-black sky as students gathered in a wide circle, roasting sweet potatoes, singing along to acoustic guitar tunes, and sharing loud, drunken jokes over fruit punch.

Mr. Lee sat on a log near the edge of the firelight, surrounded by the other teachers: Couch Choi, a female art teacher, and a male rep from admin. Green bottles of soju were being passed around them to ward off the freezing wind.

From my dark spot near the tree line, I watched him accept shot after shot from Mr. Choi. Mr. Lee wasn't a heavy drinker—I knew that from experience. Within an hour, the crisp, professional edge began to blur. His cheeks were flushed a soft, rose-apple red, his eyes glassy and soft as he giggled quietly at a colleague's joke, swaying slightly where he sat.

Around 10:30 PM, Mr. Choi clapped his hands loudly. "Alright, kids! Curfew time! Wind down and get back to your cabins! Teachers will be doing floor checks in twenty minutes!"

Groans echoed through the clearing as students began scattering toward their respective wings. I stood up from the shadows, slinging my hands into my jacket pockets, and quietly slipped away.

Back in my room, I didn't plan to sleep. I lay awake in the dark with my hands tucked behind my head, listening to the muffled sounds of the teachers drinking and laughing by the courtyard bonfire.

Time crawled. Finally, after what felt like hours, the slurred voices grew louder near the building entrance as they called out drunken goodnights to one another.

I sat up, slid off the bed, and pulled my door open just a crack.

Peering out into the dimly lit third-floor corridor, I saw Mr. Lee unsteady on his feet, heading down the hall alongside Mr. Choi. They walked together until they reached the middle of the passage and parted ways—Mr. Choi turning into his room just two doors down, leaving Mr. Lee to fumble with his keys outside Room 124.

I waited for him to go in, waited another ten minutes, then slipped out of my room, down the hall to his. I knocked softly. A few seconds ticked by.

Had he fallen asleep already?

The door unlocked and opened slightly. He stood there shirtless in loose greay wooly pyjama bottoms. He was completely flushed from a warm bath, his hair slightly rumpled and damp, his round glasses gone. He was trailing a faint scent of sweet soju and Yuja through the chilly hall. 

Mr. Lee blinked hazily up at me, his mouth parting in a soft, surprised 'O'. The alcohol had stripped away his defenses, leaving him wide open, vulnerable, and completely unguarded.

"Ji-ho-ya...?" he slurred softly, his voice thick and sweet, echoing the exact tone he used on the phone late at night. "What... what are you doing out here? It's past curfew... you need to be in your room..."

I didn't answer. I stepped forward, forcing him to back up as I shut the door behind me and turned the key locking it.

"Min-joon ran away, seonsaengnim," I whispered, stepping forward slowly until he was backed up against the opposite wall.

"So..soooo?" He stammered, his eyes wide open.

I leaned down until my mouth was inches from his burning ear, my voice dropping into a dark, possessive rumble. "I don't have a roommate tonight. And it's very cold in my room."

His breath hitched, a shudder running through his entire body as his glassy eyes locked onto mine.

"J-Ji-ho..." he whimpered, his hands rising weakly to rest against my chest as I leaned in, but he didn't push. He couldn't.

My hands came up on either side of his head, planting firmly against the cold, thin wallpaper of the resort room. I trapped him completely, stepping into his immediate personal space until our chests almost brushed, the heat from the afternoon’s basketball game still practically radiating off my skin.

"You’ve been pushing me away, seonsaengnim," I whispered, pitching my voice to that perfect, dangerous frequency of a teenager who knew exactly how much psychological power he held. "And then you give me a personal gift. You’re running me in circles. Do you want me or not?”

Hyun-woo opened his mouth to deny it, a sharp gasp forming on his lips, but the words died in his throat. He shut his eyes tight as a fierce, humiliating flush crawled up his neck, staining his cheeks a deep crimson. He looked utterly cornered.

"Please... Ji-ho-ya," he breathed, using the casual, diminutive suffix of a superior trying—and failing—to maintain authority. "Don't do this."

“Answer me,” I demanded, keeping my voice cold, steady, and unyielding.

I leaned in, angling my face to kiss him, but he flinched, turning his head sharply to the side. He was shaking from head to toe, his shoulder blades pressing hard against the wall as if he could melt through it.

“It—it wasn’t a personal gift,” he stuttered, red and shaky all over, desperately clinging to a bureaucratic lie. “The budget... it was sponsored by the school for the excursion MVPs...”

"Don't lie to me," I interrupted, pressing my thigh deliberately between his knees, cutting off his physical escape. "The other guys got cedar and citrus. I got Yuju. I asked you about it after the tutorial last Tuesday, and you screamed at me. You told me it was inappropriate. And then you go and wrap it yourself? You knew I wanted it."

I almost pitied him. Almost. He was so hopelessly flustered, caught between his rigid professional code and a raw, human instinct he didn't know how to suppress. But the investigator in me needed to push him to the absolute brink, simulating a reckless, consuming adolescent lust to see if he would display the cognitive distortions of a true predator.

"What are you so afraid of?" I murmured against his ear, feeling the frantic pulse in his throat.

"You are my student," he choked out, his voice thick with a deeply ingrained Korean dread of violating the sacred boundary of the seonsaengnim. "It’s wrong to harbor feelings for you..." He said it like a mantra, trying desperately to convince himself more than me.

"So you admit it then? You admit you want me... huh, seonsaengnim?"

A long, shuddering breath escaped him, his eyes shutting tightly again. "You should leave. Right now. Go back to your room before the other supervisors notice."

He made a sudden, desperate movement to duck under my arm, but I anticipated it. In one swift, deliberate motion, I grabbed both of his wrists, catching them in my grip and pinning them roughly above his head against the wall. The sudden display of adult physical strength caught him completely off guard. He went entirely limp, the blood draining from his face as shock took over.

"Not until I get a kiss, seonsaengnim," I growled, letting a flash of dark defiance bleed into my tone. "You’ve been strutting around all day, constantly licking and biting those lips right in front of me... do you have any idea how long I’ve waited to taste them?"

"Ji-ho-ya..." he muttered shakily, his eyes wide and terrified as he stared at his trapped wrists. "It... it wasn’t intentional. I just... it’s a nervous habit."

"Yeah? Well, this is what you get for doing it," I rasped, before pressing my mouth firmly against his.

He froze instantly, his entire body turning to stone under mine. He put up a brief, frantic struggle, trying to twist his head away, but I persisted, deepening the pressure, capturing his terrified, hitching gasps. I coaxed him firmly, letting out a low moan, forcing a sensory overload that a repressed man like him had no defense against.

"Stop," he muttered against my lips, but the resistance was entirely gone. His hands had gone completely slack in my grip, his body turning pliant and shivering as the adrenaline crashed.

My tongue explored his mouth, and the sheer intimacy of it struck a strange, jarring chord in my own chest. Memory surged—the ghost of our previous encounter. He wasn't as unhinged or desperate as last time; instead, he stopped fighting entirely and just stood there, his breath hitching rhythmically.

Sensing his surrender, I slowly loosened my tight grip on his wrists, letting my hands slide down his arms—still up against the wall—to his shoulders. My fingers deliberately skimmed down his chest, tracing the outline of his shirt over his taut nipples.

At the sudden, sharp friction, he gasped harshly. The sensory jolt broke whatever restraint he had left. His hands came down, wrapping tightly around the back of my neck, his fingers tangling in my hair. He pulled me in with a sudden, devastating hunger, finally kissing me back with a desperate, starved intensity.

Hmm... I murmured into the kiss, an unexpected, dangerous spike of arousal hitting my own core. Yes. Just like that.

He was clinging to me as if he were drowning, pressing his weight fully against mine. Through the thin fabric between us, I felt his unmistakable arousal pressing hard against my thigh, his hips bucking subtly, driven by pure, unadulterated instinct.

I let him ride the friction against my thigh, giving him the solid, unyielding pressure his body was craving, pressing back into him to anchor him. He shook pathetically, his breath coming in short, ragged wheezes as his body stiffened, nearing the edge. My hand moved down, circling tightly around his waist, pulling him impossibly close while my other hand cupped his rear, lifting him into the contact.

That completely did him in. He let out a choked, broken cry directly into my mouth, his lower body jerking several times in rapid, helpless spasms against my leg, before he went entirely still, his forehead dropping onto my shoulder. I looked down, seeing the dark, wet patch quickly seeping through the fabric of his trousers at his crotch.

Hmmm... I felt a cynical, triumphant smirk touch my lips. He must have been so incredibly strung up all day, completely consumed by the sight of me on that court.

But then, the illusion shattered.

Beneath my fingers, I felt his body begin to violently heave. His shoulders shook, and a ragged, pathetic sob escaped his throat, dampening the fabric of my shirt.

He wept. Truly wept.

I stilled instantly, the investigator's cold detachment slamming back into place. I pulled back just enough to look at him. A massive tear escaped his right eye, stealing down his flushed, ruined face, quickly followed by another. He looked completely shattered, his dignity utterly pulverized.

Oh no. Not again.

“Seonsaengnim...” I let my voice drop, the defiant teenager facade slipping for a fraction of a second. "Did I hurt you? I let your hands go... I thought you were enjoying it."

The moment the physical restraint vanished, Hyun-woo scrambled away from me as if I were a ghost. He stumbled blindly across the small resort room, collapsing onto the edge of the low double bed. He buried his head deeply in his hands, his posture hunched, looking like a man whose entire world, career, and moral framework had just ended in a single night. The quiet, shaking sobs continued to tear through him, raw and humiliating.

A heavy, sickening wave of guilt settled into my stomach.

Why the hell was I still doing this? I should just call this entire investigation off.

The psychological profile was definitively clear. He was absolutely no child predator. There was zero evidence of grooming behavior, zero entitlement, and absolutely no predatory calculus. A true offender would be rationalizing this right now—blaming my outfit, my forwardness, or claiming 'he couldn't help it because I wanted it.'

Hyun-woo wasn't doing that.

I walked over slowly and knelt on the floor directly in front of him, looking up at his hidden face.

"I'm sorry," I said softly, the words truer than he would ever know. "Please... don't cry."

He took several deep, ragged breaths, fighting a desperate, visible battle to regain control of his breathing. Slowly, the sobbing subsided into a quiet, trembling silence.

"Do you like me or not?" I asked again. 

He finally looked up at me, his eyes red-rimmed and his expression utterly defeated. "What does it matter? You’re a minor.  In this country, that is the end of everything."

"I won’t be a student forever," I countered quickly, leaning into the classic, naive rationalization a real teenager would use.  "I’ll be eighteen soon. That’s legal age. We can leave this town, go to Seoul."

"Ji-ho, a few months doesn't rewrite the present. It doesn't make what just happened in this room right," he said, his voice dropping to a weary, lifeless whisper. "Besides... I’ve started seeing someone."

I forced my eyes to widen, mimicking a sudden, jealous adolescent rage. "What? So... you’re cheating on me?"

"What?!" He blinked, looking entirely thrown by the sheer absurdity of the accusation.

"You heard me. You're seeing someone else while you look at me like that? While you let me do that to you?"

"This is crazy," he muttered, shaking his head in disbelief, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes. "We were never together. There is no 'us' to cheat on. You forced your way in here."

"Don’t see anyone else, seonsaengnim," I said, shifting closer where I knelt, my fingers gripping the edge of the mattress right next to his thigh. "Wait for me. I—I love you."

Hyun-woo looked down at me for a long moment, then a profound, tragic exhaustion clouded his eyes. "Ji-ho-ya... It’s just hormones speaking. You're confused. You'll move back to Seoul after graduation, go to university, and completely forget I ever existed. You'll realize this was just a mistake."

"I know what I want."

"That’s enough," he said, his voice suddenly hardening with the very last scrap of his professional dignity. He stood up, shaking, looking down at me. "Go back to your room. Right now! If you don't... I’ll call Coach Choi and the other teachers. I'll tell them exactly what’s happening. I don’t care if I’m dismissed and ruined tomorrow morning. Just get out."

But even as the threat left his lips, his eyes darted nervously to the side, completely betraying the terror inside him. He knew I was physically stronger. He knew how weak his own resolve was under pressure. He knew that all I had to do was stand up, hold him down, and kiss him again, and he would melt like butter on heat. He was utterly terrified of his own compliance.

I stared at his shaking, fragile form, and the investigator inside me finally called it. The case was closed. He was completely innocent.

I stood up slowly, deliberately letting out a harsh, angry sigh to maintain the cover of a jilted, petulant teenager.

"This isn’t over," I said bitterly, turning on my heel.

I walked across the room and ripped open the door, exiting into the quiet, dimly lit resort corridor. Just before the heavy lock clicked shut, the sound of another muffled, shaky sob drifted through the crack.

I stood out in the hallway, staring at the dark wood of the door, the heavy silence of the resort pressing in on me. I knew with absolute certainty that I had just utterly broken an innocent, moral man just to prove a client's lie.