Chapter 104
Looking out at the car outside the exhibition hall while muttering to myself, I brought my gaze back inside. Then I made eye contact with hyung, who was giving me a sly look.
My hand, which had been meaninglessly fiddling with the thin pamphlets the dealer had laid out, hesitated. Hyung narrowed his eyes further and leaned his face toward me.
“Did you make up?”
“……Make up about what?”
I had never even mentioned having a lover. So Seohae hyung couldn’t have known that we were currently separated.
After quickly scanning the interior space that had generously wide margins to the point of feeling somewhat empty, hyung lowered his voice.
“Before, you’d grab your phone right after working out and grin like an idiot, but lately you’ve looked dead the whole time. The story’s obvious, do I really need to spell it out?”
Was I such an easy person to read, or were the people around me like Seohae hyung and Kim Taeyoon exceptionally intuitive?
“Recently increasing your workout frequency wasn’t just because of the project either, right? Am I wrong?”
“……”
I silently put the straw stuck in my cup to my mouth.
Just avoiding his gaze and evading an answer would be considered tacit agreement to hyung’s certainty, but at least I hadn’t admitted it with my own mouth. There was quite a decisive difference between the two.
Hyung didn’t probe further. Though his intuition was sharp, he wasn’t the type to force open the mouth of someone who remained silent. Instead, he chuckled and lightly patted my back.
“But what are you doing drinking coffee like that? You’re not a kid.”
Hyung looked at me strangely, saying I was doing something I didn’t usually do.
I was bending over without touching the glass, drinking through the straw. Like someone else sometimes did. Without realizing it.
As hyung said, it was strange behavior I wouldn’t normally do.
“Ah, waiting is really boring. Let’s look at more cars. That white cabriolet from earlier seemed like it would be perfect for me.”
I followed hyung as he got up from his chair, licking his lips. Agreeing that waiting was boring.
■
Emerging from between the neatly organized blocks of the new city, we drove a bit more with the lake park on our right. Before long, we reached the Han River.
After passing mid-August, the start of sunset had definitely moved earlier. Not long ago, this time would have felt closer to afternoon than evening, but the sunlight sparkling on the Han River was already mixing with golden light.
Inside the moving car, air conditioning or ventilated seats were unnecessary. The wind entering through the driver’s window and exiting through the rear window no longer felt stuffy.
I could smell summer gradually ending in the air. It was a scent that made me miss Paeli. I fumbled for the right side of the still-unfamiliar steering wheel and turned up the music volume.
Paeli itself was a small city without many residents, but it was a suburb of Naples, and if you drove north for about 2 hours and 30 minutes, you’d reach Rome.
Since it wasn’t a world-famous tourist city, it attracted quite a number of vacationers from other European countries who wanted relatively leisurely time, nearby locals, especially young people. This was thanks to the beach clubs along the shore.
Though geographically classified as southern Italy, it was close to the border with central Italy, and due to the regional characteristics of many outsiders who had drifted in to work in tourism like our family, Paeli was far from a typical southern Italian town in terms of people’s appearance, lifestyle, and way of thinking.
The fact that there were three or four international schools in a small city of 50,000 people could give you some idea of Paeli’s unique regional character.
If you put your mind to it, finding a same-sex romantic partner wasn’t too difficult either.
There were several people I had dated. But they never lasted long due to various factors—the distance was a bit far to meet often, or I felt sorry that they seemed to be forcing themselves to accommodate me… and so on.
They were definitely decent people I had felt attracted to. It wasn’t that I came to dislike them. Yet thinking back now, I had easily felt burdened about continuing relationships for reasons that weren’t even that significant.
It hadn’t been difficult to end things with them.
This version of me—wondering about news even after saying it was over, hovering around, and as Yujun put it, “quickly” running after a proposal to meet briefly—was unfamiliar even to me. It was confusing enough to be different from expectations.
I didn’t know myself well. At least, not as well as I thought I did.
As Seoul grew closer, vehicle traffic gradually increased. I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel and kept chewing my lower lip restlessly. I kept glancing at the clock on the display every few seconds.
Only when I reached the point where Banghwa Bridge came into view did I finally make the call.
I closed all the windows I had left open so as not to miss his voice.
Those few seconds of listening to the ringtone. I could almost see his hesitation on the other end, checking the caller ID and unable to readily connect the call.
Please pick up… please pick up…
My thumb, which had been anxiously scratching the steering wheel without my realizing it, stopped.
[……]
The screen clearly showed the call was connected, but there was no voice from the other side. To confirm it was properly connected, I called out to him first.
[Um… hello?]
[……Yes.]
His voice sounded bewildered.
[Um… you’re still at the company?]
[Is something wrong?]
Whether he wasn’t angry with me or not, this time his voice carried careful concern. Suppressing my tingling chest, I put on a casual tone.
[Rather than something being wrong… um, what time do you get off work today? I’d like to see you.]
He couldn’t answer easily.
I could understand the contradiction of being both afraid and expectant about a proposal to meet from the other person. Because that’s how I felt when I heard his proposal to meet at the glamping village.
Just as he had done for me, I didn’t rush him and gave him time. After a breath that sounded like a light sigh, he asked calmly.
[Where should I go?]
[Can you leave your car at the company today? I’ll come pick you up.]
[Well… actually, I’m… at home right now.]
[Are you feeling unwell?]
[It’s not that… I’ve been working from home these past few days.]
Working from home for someone so dedicated to work.
I double-checked whether he was really unwell, and he denied it again.
[Then when would be a good time? I’ll come to you accordingly.]
[Right now is fine.]
[Really? It’ll take about 30 minutes. See you later.]
After ending the call, I immediately rolled down all the windows. I was tense enough to need fresh air right away.
I was more nervous than any audition I’d ever done, more than the <Eternal Night> audition… incomparably more nervous.
It wasn’t like I was facing death. While driving across Seoul, I looked back over my life so far.
When I left Lee Seogyeong’s mansion and returned to Manhattan. The twins had asked with excited expressions whether I’d had a good time with father’s boss.
The siblings thought I had taken a short trip to the suburbs of New York at Lee Seogyeong’s invitation. I had burst into bitter laughter at the lie packaged like a real date. Right, that was the only way to cover it up.
It was fun at first, but got boring later. Unlike what father said, he seemed authoritarian and didn’t match me. The twins had even comforted me, expressing disappointment at my response.
Yang-bu, who came to my room, had been restless, reading my mood.
He really didn’t know they’d keep you for a whole week. It was supposed to be just one night. It wasn’t his fault, he defended himself. I had looked at yang-bu making excuses with cold eyes and heart.
‘Enough with those excuses, just change the flight schedule.’
I had only requested that he arrange for me not to return on the same flight as the twins.
After repaying the debt of being raised without want as yang-bu demanded, the person I had once called father and followed had become my enemy. It was an unprofitable transaction.
Moreover, the problem wasn’t finished just because I left New York after that terrible week ended.
Even if yang-bu didn’t consider me his son, mother was still my mother, and the twins were my siblings.
Even while feeling depressed, I was swept up in surging anger and tried several times to expose yang-bu’s true nature. But in the end, I couldn’t speak.
My family would suffer just from what I experienced, but if it was added that the person who demanded it from me was the twins’ biological father… everyone’s life would obviously be ruined.
I had calculated that I could endure keeping the secret, but my expectations were wrong. The weight of a week, not just one night, was too heavy to bear.
I had left Paeli determined to keep quiet for life. I had never told anyone—not my family, not Taeyoon, not anyone. If so, having one more person keep the secret wouldn’t make my current burden much heavier.
At least, carrying the secret seemed easier than letting him go.
I didn’t want to lose him because of such a pathetic incident.
That was the conclusion I reached after returning from Hongcheon.
I exited Gangbyeonbuk-ro and drove toward Hannam Station. I passed through the neighborhood where I had eaten at ‘Fiano’ and had coffee with him in the back seat of a car.
Both his proposal of using coffee as a polite excuse and my acceptance of it were transparent. We had been reluctant to part.
The lukewarm sweetness of that night’s air, the tangy thrill I felt each time I briefly touched him, even the swaying of the ivy hanging on the high stone wall of the mansion across from ‘Fiano’ were vivid.
Looking back, that’s how it was.
Even before I realized the man before me was him from the past, I had been exceptionally attracted to him. Without being captivated by the past and memories, I was newly attracted to the present him, who had changed a lot from before.
Not because of memories, but because it was him.
Though I had only visited once, I could find his house without difficulty since I had left in broad daylight.
As soon as I got out of the driver’s seat to ring the bell, two men rushed out from the small entrance. Like most houses in the area, the entrance was disproportionately small compared to the enormous scale of the house. As if afraid of information or secrets from inside leaking out.
At the same time, the garage’s overhead door opened.
While one man got in the driver’s seat to park the car, the other guided me inside the garage. I entered the entrance connected to the garage and, following the man’s guidance, took the elevator to the second floor.
“……”
“……”
He was in front of the elevator door. Though there was even a chair prepared in the small hall, he was standing and pacing. It was a face I was seeing for the first time in about a week.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
