Chapter 101
It didn’t seem like impulsive words brought up because of what happened in the tent above. He must have arranged this moment to bring up that story.
Flames burning surrounded by cylindrical heat-resistant glass, chilled champagne, charming lights decorating the tent… I slowly looked around at the props surrounding us one by one.
Finally, I looked down at his hand gently stroking the back of my hand with his thumb. Then I awkwardly and stealthily withdrew my hand.
“You wanted to talk about that… here, that’s why you said to meet?”
A faint disappointment crossed his face. Though he tried to smile, he seemed like someone feeling bitterness.
“You’ve gone back to formal speech.”
“……”
Since I hadn’t even been conscious of the fact that I was speaking casually to him, I felt awkward and unnecessarily brushed my arm while avoiding his gaze.
As the twenty-year-old him who had rushed at Luca overlapped with the current him inside me… without realizing it, casual speech had come out as if I were speaking to the twenty-year-old him.
I had felt vivid realization that the man before my eyes was truly the same person as him from the past.
Standing up from his seat, he took the chilled champagne in his hand. After first removing the wire cage, he slowly turned the bottle while covering the cork with his palm. The champagne, from which gas gradually escaped, opened quietly with an elegant “pop” sound.
We both emptied our glasses in one gulp, and the narrow, long glasses were filled again with golden liquid.
Sitting beside me, he quietly watched the flames burning while swirling like a whirlpool. He seemed to be waiting for the aftereffects of excitement, anger, and shock still wandering around us to subside.
My mind was also full of confusion. There were mountain-like challenges ahead that seemed impossible to solve. Regardless of such inner turmoil, the surrounding nature was only peaceful.
If we kept hiding here, wouldn’t we not have to solve any problems? When I silently sneered at such a stupid thought, his lips opened.
The story began from a completely unexpected place.
“I was thirteen when I went to ‘Mio Palazzo’ with my mother at your mother’s invitation. Having grown that much, my inner self wasn’t just a child anymore, but I was still… acting like an innocent child, a mature son.”
After briefly stopping his words, he drank more champagne and continued.
“It was around fourth grade when I learned what kinds of rumors were circulating around me. Of course it was shocking, but… I couldn’t reveal it either. I was afraid of being abandoned or denied.”
The night we stayed together at that shabby hotel in Naples. The twenty-year-old him had partially confided this story. Now that I knew more about the inside story of the rumors surrounding him, I could imagine much more vividly the size of the terrible shock that must have struck a child of about ten years old.
The person known as his birth mother couldn’t even be met. But they said that birth mother might not be his birth mother. From another side, they said his father wasn’t his biological father.
When truth is revealed as falsehood and other truth is uncovered, that’s rather clean. It’s shocking, but all that remains is dealing with that shock.
But a child thrown into a maze without knowing what the truth is… would feel like wandering a vast forest thick with fog for a lifetime.
“But actually, even before that, I was a child who couldn’t go against my parents’ will. Though our family traditions were strict, I was still a young child… and since mother was affectionate, I could act spoiled to some extent, but I was ‘disturbingly’ mature. It was probably survival instinct.”
After smoothly swallowing the remaining alcohol, he glanced at me.
“When I first visited ‘Mio Palazzo,’ I was mature enough to notice that hyung and the twins couldn’t have been born under the same parents. I was also vaguely aware that hyung’s father treated the twins and hyung with subtly different attitudes.”
“……”
Just the mention of Yang-bu from his mouth made my heartbeat rapidly accelerate. I brought my glass to my lips to hide my stiffly tensed jaw muscles.
His gaze, with his upper body leaning forward, continued to be directed at me.
“Probably because I was sensitive to such flows of affection. At the time it was more of an unconscious feeling rather than something specific, but looking back after growing older, I could understand what kind of situation it was. Hyung’s family wasn’t particularly hiding that hyung was an adopted child either.”
There was a reason why the twenty-year-old him hadn’t been flustered when I brought up adoption.
He put down his empty glass on the low table and straightened his hunched waist. His face came closer. Like being subdued, I couldn’t avoid his eyes.
His long, solid, somewhat sharp-looking neck swallowed dry saliva. His slightly parted lips seemed to be trembling.
“As far as I remember, hyung was the first person I rebelled against while shouting.”
“……”
“Hyung probably doesn’t remember.”
It wasn’t a resentful tone.
“I hated hyung sacrificing for the twins. It was the first time I’d been so angry… probably jealousy.”
The senior colleague of mother who had visited ‘Mio Palazzo’ was said to be the person closest to mother during her acting days, despite their nearly ten-year age gap. According to my dim memory, she was a very elegant and dignified person. Though she seemed to have nothing in common with the active and extroverted mother at first glance, there was endless laughter and conversation between the two.
She was also very knowledgeable about theater, and I remembered having enjoyable conversations with her. We talked about works by writers like Henrik Ibsen, Peter Handke, and Tennessee Williams, and she was the one who recommended several works by Korean contemporary playwrights to me. Though it wasn’t influential enough to say she had a major impact, it remained as a pleasant memory.
Her son was extremely quiet.
Because he was tall for his age and developed early, he looked at least two years older than his actual age, but he was a child who showed characteristics closer to a child rather than an adolescent boy.
While listening to his story, buried memories were excavated and brought fragmentary scenes hazily before my eyes.
‘You’re not even my real younger sibling!’
The image of a child shouting at me with eyes filled with tears, so angry about something, hazily crossed my memory.
His eyes looked down at my hands holding the champagne glass on my knees. They were eyes that wanted to hold, yearning eyes. But he only looked.
“But it wasn’t just jealousy. Not because I wasn’t hyung’s younger sibling, but I hated seeing hyung sacrifice for anyone… some kind of resistance? I don’t know how this will sound…”
Drawing out his words, he rubbed around his lips widely with his hand. He lifted his bowed head and carefully met my eyes.
“Like the anger when discovering that others are treating my precious person carelessly? Of course hyung’s family weren’t such people, but… to explain similar emotions, it was like that. Unfair, frustrating… impatience like I had to quickly bring you to my side…”
Perhaps embarrassed by the confession of emotions that were immature and unrefined, he lowered his eyes again and smiled awkwardly. But soon he faced me forcefully with a serious expression.
“That intense and unique feeling… continued to follow me even after returning to Seoul… and after that summer, I stopped pretending to be a child anymore.”
Both his expression and voice were almost tragic.
Thinking of the twenty-year-old him who would have appeared before me holding all such emotions, my heart was squeezed. How could he never say a single word of resentment toward me?
Before I knew it, the sun had completely set, and the surroundings enclosed by forest were sinking into soft, deep darkness. Having climbed higher than the buildings, when looking straight ahead, there was only comfortable darkness in view.
“Meeting hyung at thirteen… I first awakened to the emotion of liking someone. Hyung made me grow from a child to a boy… and at twenty… hyung was also the one who made me grow from a boy to a man.”
“……”
“We met again after another seven years passed… now even physical distance isn’t an obstacle. Why should I step back?”
To calm his slightly agitated emotions, he turned his head away from me. Sighing, he roughly rubbed his face with both hands. After sweeping up his fallen hair and clasping his hands behind his head, he slowly shook his head.
“If the target is hyung, I thought I could confidently wait however long. I don’t think I can… now, having learned the joy of hyung accepting me… I can’t endure even a week, let alone seven years… what should I do?”
When he unclasped his hands, his fine-textured hair flowed down softly. He looked at my hands again. This time he didn’t just look. He took my glass and put it down on the table, holding my left hand with his right hand and my right hand with his left hand.
“I understand well that you don’t want to be seen as having a strange relationship by people. I’ll really be careful. For hyung, it’s not at least a matter of survival. I’m dying. Hyung knows I’m not exaggerating with just a month or two of feelings. How long has hyung been inside me… if you tell me to live by erasing that, if you say there’s no hope now, that would mean I’m not me anymore…”
Whew… briefly stopping his words, he exhaled deeply toward the air. Then he brought my captured hands to his lips. Because he bent his waist, his face wasn’t visible.
“Take responsibility.”
“……”
“A thirteen-year-old fell for you and became twenty-seven like that. Can’t you even feel responsibility?”
Suddenly raising his head with a flash, he pulled the hands he was holding.
Like a child throwing a tantrum, he seemed to have returned not to twenty but to around thirteen years old.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
