Limits of Paradise

Chapter warning: this chapter contains scenes of sexual content. Please be warned before proceeding.

“8th floor. Doors opening.”

With the cold, mechanical voice, the elevator spilled out a white light. A stocky man stepped into the hallway and walked to the left entrance, pressing the keypad on the door lock. But a short alarm sounded, indicating the wrong password.

“Damn it…”

The hallway felt unusually chilly today. The man hunched his shoulders and slowly entered the correct numbers, finally gaining entry to his home.

His eyes drifted to the mirror attached to the shoe rack. Under the sensor light, his thinning crown was clearly visible. Ha Sung-joo irritably ruffled his hair and tossed his clothes onto the living room sofa.

“Ugh, it’s cold.”

He quickly turned on the boiler and ordered jokbal (pig’s trotters) through a delivery app. With a weary expression, he headed to the bathroom. As he stood in front of the mirror, his gaze once again focused on his thinning hair.

“Why is it falling out so much?”

He had been taking hair loss medication for a while, but after experiencing impotence during a massage, he stopped taking it over a month ago. His dejected manhood showed no signs of recovery, and the hair falling to the floor only increased day by day.

Ha Sung-joo bent over the sink with the intention of a quick wash. As he scrubbed his face with soap, his bangs kept falling down. He repeatedly pushed them back, but they kept slipping down, even poking his eyes.

It was then that he opened his eyes in frustration. His face, covered in white foam, reflected back at him in the mirror. From the bathroom ceiling, long black hair was cascading down, brushing the top of his head.

“What the…”

For a moment, he couldn’t comprehend what he was seeing in the mirror. His mouth hung open. The long hair slid past his broad forehead, down to his chin, covering his entire face. His vision went completely dark.

“Uh…”

Ha Sung-joo’s head tilted back. His eyes, wide as saucers, spotted a woman hanging upside down from the ceiling. She grinned, her mouth stretching to her ears, and gently shook her head. Her stiff hair, like a broom, brushed swiftly over his foam-covered face.

“Ugh, ahhh!”

He screamed and bolted out of the bathroom. In his haste, he tripped over the threshold but didn’t have time to register the pain in his knee. Soap bubbles trailing behind him, he dashed into the small room and slammed the door shut.

“Huff…”

Ha Sung-joo turned on the lights and checked every corner of the room. He even glanced up at the ceiling before climbing onto the bed and pulling the blanket over his head.

His plump body trembled uncontrollably. His eyes stung from the soap, but he didn’t dare go back to wash it off. As he rubbed his face against the blanket to wipe it off, he heard a loud thud.

“Eek!”

Startled by the sudden noise, he squeezed his eyes shut and muttered quickly.

“It’s nothing, it’s nothing, it’s nothing…”

It wasn’t a ghost. Whenever he stomped around the house, the old man downstairs would bang on the ceiling with a rubber mallet in protest.

Thud! Thud! Thud!

The old man downstairs was not only cranky but also surprisingly strong. It wouldn’t be surprising if the ceiling gave way. Ha Sung-joo cursed the downstairs neighbor silently, trying to forget the horrifying scene he had just witnessed.

Thud, thud, thud, thud, thud, thud!

But today, the protests from downstairs showed no signs of stopping. By now, the noise was probably bothering not just his apartment but the entire building.

As Ha Sung-joo was cursing the senile old man, he heard a knock on the front door. His body jerked in surprise but quickly calmed down. It must be the jokbal delivery.

“Damn it, how am I supposed to go out there…”

On the verge of tears, he let out a suppressed sob. Surely, his overworked body was seeing things. But the memory of the woman’s face, grinning with her mouth torn wide, and the sensation of her stiff hair brushing his skin, was too vivid to dismiss.

Still, he couldn’t stay holed up in the small room forever. He needed to grab his phone from the living room to call his mom and ask her to visit a fortune teller, and he also had to fill his empty stomach with the jokbal he ordered.

Ha Sung-joo slowly pulled the blanket down with squinted eyes. After quickly checking the ceiling, he dashed out to the living room.

Thud, thud, thud, thud, thud!

The sound of the rubber mallet from downstairs seemed to follow his every step, as if someone was actually hitting the soles of his feet.

“Eek!”

He managed to grab his phone from the couch but immediately collapsed sideways. His last memory before blacking out was seeing a tall man approaching him.

When Ha Sung-joo regained consciousness at dawn, he didn’t even bother to wash up before heading straight to work. He stopped by the restroom to wipe the sleep from his eyes and wet his hair before combing it. Then, he anxiously fidgeted in the brightly lit office.

“Oh, Deputy Director Ha, you’re here early?”

At 7 AM, the team leader of the financial planning department waved at him as he entered the office. Ha Sung-joo greeted him with an awkward smile and a deep bow. He had never been so glad to see his boss.

Being surrounded by people might make things better. If he could just get through today, he could drag his mom to a fortune teller over the weekend and get a talisman or something. As he was organizing his thoughts, his phone buzzed repeatedly with incoming messages. Three team members had suddenly requested leave for the day.

“What the hell is wrong with these guys?”

Even his boss, who looked like he was about to lose his mind, had shown up despite being sick. And here were his team members asking for leave over a simple stomach ache. It seemed he had been too lenient with them lately.

It wasn’t just his team; other employees were also out of sorts. Besides him and the team leader, no one in the financial planning team had arrived on time. Everyone else showed up after 9 AM, looking pale as ghosts.

“Hey, Assistant Manager Oh, what time do you think it is?”

Oh Won-jae, who finally arrived just before 10 AM, kept mumbling apologies as he took his seat. Ha Sung-joo glared at the dazed employees around him.

There was something unsettling about the atmosphere in the office. His eyes, which hadn’t fully washed off the soap from last night, felt itchy again. He approached Oh Won-jae, giving him a light slap on the shoulder.

“Hey, man, what happened to you?”

“Ah!”

Assistant Manager Oh screamed and slipped off his chair. Glancing at the team leader, Ha Sung-joo quickly helped his subordinate up.

“What the hell? What’s wrong with you?”

“Assistant Manager Ha…”

Oh Won-jae’s eyes were bloodshot, with broken capillaries. He grabbed Ha Sung-joo’s wrist with a trembling hand.

“I saw… something last night…”

“Saw? Saw what?”

As his subordinate’s chest heaved, Ha Sung-joo’s eyes wavered with anxiety. He already knew what Oh Won-jae would say next.

“Assistant Manager Lee Ye-jin.”

***

“Come in.”

Ji Hyun-ho, once again naked, entered the hot pool confidently and extended his hand. Tae-eun shook her head, hesitating.

“Can’t you put something on? Should we go buy some swimsuits?”

“It’s just the two of us. What’s the big deal? You didn’t mind last night.”

“That was because it was dark.”

Now, in the broad daylight, she didn’t want to be naked in front of Namsan Mountain, where many people were likely passing by.

“I want to suck on your breasts. Come on, hurry up.”

He acted as if he was demanding money that was owed to him. She crossed her arms and sighed in disbelief. But when he approached her with his erection leading the way, she panicked and waved her hands frantically.

“Alright, alright. I’ll get in. Just wait.”

Tae-eun quickly turned around, undressed, and slipped into the pool, leaving only her face above the water. Hyun-ho let out a low chuckle, stepped forward, and pulled her into his arms, seating her on his firm thighs.

“Why are you so cute?”

He grabbed her chin with one hand and kissed her lips. The smell of alcohol was no longer present inside his soft lips.

“Every time you do that, it makes me want to devour you.”

As if to prove his point, he opened his mouth wide and sucked from her philtrum down to her chin in one go. A growing warmth started to spread from her toes upward.

As she settled comfortably, his hand moved from supporting her buttocks to fondling her breasts with both hands, as usual.

“Aren’t you tired of this?”

She asked, half-reproachfully. Hyun-ho, who had been nuzzling her neck, looked up with wide eyes. His saliva-slicked lips formed a sharp smile.

“How can you say that?”

“Because you do it every day.”

“I want to do this forever.”

Her heart pounded wildly at his simple declaration. She tried to maintain a nonchalant expression, pressing her lips together.

“Your heart is beating really fast right now.”

He pointed it out, much to her chagrin. Tae-eun lifted one soft breast to his mouth, signaling him to be quiet. He chuckled and began to suck on her nipple.

As she stifled a moan, she remembered how peaceful her sleep had been since visiting the shaman. The shared dreams with Hyun-ho had stopped, and even after being freed from the sleep paralysis, they no longer dreamed the same dreams.

“Hyun-ho.”

“Hmm?”

He responded while noisily sucking on her nipple.

“Do you still dream?”

His lips paused. She glanced down, but his eyes were closed.

“I don’t dream at all.”

He moved to the other nipple and continued his greedy sucking.

Tae-eun hoped he would ask if she was dreaming too, but the question she wanted never came. So she muttered to herself.

“I don’t dream at all either.”

She raised her hand and stroked his messy blond hair. Soft strands slipped through her fingers.

“Why don’t we share dreams anymore?”

“Who knows.”

He stopped sucking and looked at her for a moment, then gently lifted her onto his lap. Kneeling between her thighs, he gave her a charming smile and answered.

“Maybe it’s because we’ve fallen in love.”

 

 

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