Chapter 34
He requested the driver to turn up the music volume just a little. Then he released the arm that had been propping up his chin and placed his hand on my knee. As he leaned his upper body more toward me, his long legs blocked in front of my shins.
The attendant in the driver’s seat probably had a vague idea about the relationship between him and me. He didn’t seem to have much intention of hiding it anyway.
“Aren’t you curious about where I drew circles?”
“Not really. I don’t think it would be good for me.”
“Don’t be like that and take a look at mine at least once. Who knows, it might be helpful.”
His hand wrapped around my knee gave me a slight shake.
Actually, I had finished the list before going to see the play. In 30 minutes, like solving overdue vacation homework. It wasn’t a problem that would become clearer by holding onto it and worrying for a long time. I drew triangles on all the items I hesitated about even slightly.
“Then let’s exchange them. I finished mine too.”
At my suggestion, his eyes narrowed for a moment. Seeing his face as if he’d received an unexpected ambush made it a little amusing. I provocatively teased him.
“You wanted to see it so badly. Don’t you need it anymore?”
“……Of course I do.”
While shaking his head with a somewhat dazed expression, he tightened his grip on my knee.
Meanwhile, the car was running past Hannam Station intersection, avoiding the elevated road connecting to Gangnam. The Han River stretched to the left, and low, old houses continued to the right. It was an area that hadn’t undergone redevelopment yet.
Around the time we exchanged lists via message, the car turned right. It entered a gentle uphill road and pulled into an empty lot in front of a building. Although the building facing the Han River head-on had a barbecue restaurant sign hanging from it, it was an empty building that wasn’t operating. Just from the area of the building and site alone, you could gauge its heyday when it must have flourished as an upscale restaurant. The land value alone would be worth over a billion won.
There were no tall buildings nearby at all, and since it wasn’t a commercial area, the surroundings were particularly dim. It was certainly an optimal place to enjoy a secret rendezvous while appreciating the Han River’s night view.
He was concentrating on the list I sent without any disturbance. His furrowed brow and tightly pressed lips looked like he was reviewing important documents. Is this really such a serious matter? While silently laughing at his serious profile, I casually turned my head.
A sedan following our SUV up the slope caught my eye. The attendant got out of the driver’s seat after confirming that the car was entering the entrance of the empty lot where we parked. Someone also got out of the passenger seat of that sedan. What’s this? I watched them through the heavily tinted windows. The two people seemed to be exchanging something. The person next to me was still not taking his eyes off his phone screen, having cut off attention to his surroundings.
Knock knock. The attendant tapped the window on his side, paused briefly, then opened the door. Two cups of iced coffee were handed to him. Thank you. After his brief greeting, the door closed, and instead of returning to the driver’s seat, the attendant got into that sedan from earlier. Then the sedan disappeared back the way it came.
“Is that car also part of your group?”
“They’ll be waiting at a distance, so don’t worry about them.”
After taking a long sip of coffee, he unfastened my seatbelt buckle and then unlocked his own as well.
There’s a car following us around, and he tells me not to worry about it.
Mother occasionally used cars driven by someone else, and during family trips, we sometimes hired local drivers. But I hadn’t grown up in an environment where attendants could be treated like shadows.
“You didn’t call your work subordinates out at this hour… did you?”
“I don’t do that kind of thing. They’re privately employed, so you don’t need to worry about that.”
Were they the ones who brought gel and condoms to the hotel room last time?
Apart from salary, it wasn’t uncommon to recruit talent by additionally providing a driver-cum-attendant, luxury housing, and even school fees for children if applicable. The scope and content of his work that I’d glimpsed superficially since Bangkok were also far from ordinary. As he said, his title might just be team leader, but he was probably in a position like a prospective executive with guaranteed rapid promotion. In that case, it made sense that the company would try to get the most out of him. Having invested money to bring him over, they expected results accordingly.
But to have a private attendant separately. Does that mean his private life is that complicated? Even though he claims to be so busy?
While developing my thoughts alone, I absentmindedly brought the straw stuck in my coffee to my lips. Perhaps I’d been feeling thirsty without realizing it, as the coffee went down coolly and moistened my throat.
“Even though you lived in Italy for a long time, you drink americano well.”
He spoke as if it were fascinating, having been staring at my profile while drinking coffee.
“It’s like this now, but… it took me about 2 years to fully adapt too.”
He had some knowledge about Italian wine and food as well. It wasn’t unusual since it’s a much more popularized food culture than French, but it was still pleasant.
“You seem to know Italian culture well.”
“Not to that extent…”
Uncharacteristically, he trailed off and scattered his gaze. His lips twitched and his eyes rolled as if hesitating whether to say something or not, then he soon organized his gaze again to look at me.
“Italians’ pride in coffee is famously tremendous. When I worked at the New York branch, there was a colleague from Venice who would get angry every time we drank americano, saying we were drinking garbage.”
In agreement, I nodded with a laugh.
Even the general manager and owner chef of ‘Fiano,’ despite approaching 15 years of living in Korea, still couldn’t drink americano and didn’t recognize it as coffee. To Italians, americano was like kimchi washed with water in terms of Korean culture, according to those two.
“My school was also American-style, and I didn’t have many local native friends. If I were to calculate the ratio of Italian, American, and Korean-style meals… 3:2:5? About that much, and we even made kimchi every year at home. So even while living in Italy, I thought I wasn’t living a life immersed in that country’s culture itself… but when it came to coffee and wine, I found myself completely adapted to the Italian way without realizing it.”
This time he nodded at my story.
“You get stained by it. Drinking the water that flows in that country’s rivers and eating food that grows from that country’s soil seems to be like that.”
“Exactly.”
“When I was in New York, I missed bachelor radish kimchi, Pyongyang cold noodles, and braised short ribs properly made with Korean ingredients from Korean soil, but now that I’m here, I think of the bulgogi sandwiches I used to buy from New York food trucks. When I was there, I said ‘this is fake bulgogi’ and that I was eating it as a substitute because I had no choice. Human psychology is really cunning.”
I completely agreed with his words. I too had yearned for everything from my homeland while in Paeli. Even a piece of kimchi only felt real if it was from Korea, or at least produced by a Korean company. Even when we made kimchi directly at our house, it felt like an imitation. But now in Seoul, I missed Paeli.
Every morning when I woke up and drank capsule coffee, I missed all the rituals that opened the morning at Mother’s hotel ‘Mio palazzo’—the orderly, vibrant yet gentle and meticulous rhythms and scents. Every single morning without fail.
Still, I eventually adapted to americano and ate franchise pizza without complaint. If Fabino-ssi, the general manager of ‘Mio palazzo,’ saw me drinking iced americano through a straw, he would get angry saying my taste had been completely ruined.
With such thoughts, I quietly laughed to myself and shook the cool americano in my hand, whose taste I now seemed to understand quite well.
“But Jung Jiin-ssi’s list is… hmm… quite conservative.”
He had focused on the list again at some point and was staring at the screen with a serious face while stroking his chin. I lightly chewed on the straw with my teeth, holding back laughter as I asked.
“Seems disappointing?”
“Rather than disappointing… I’m trying to encourage myself by thinking I’ll change these triangles to circles one by one from now on.”
A chuckle escaped at his resolute declaration without a trace of humor.
To be honest, skimming through his list was as thrilling and exhilarating as secretly reading someone else’s diary. The items in my hands were perhaps more intimate and higher-level secrets than a diary. My list was the same.
If it leaked under the name ‘Actor Jung Jiin’s BDSM Play Preference Checklist,’ as the president said, it wouldn’t even take a full day to be socially buried. Maybe it would become such a scandal that I wouldn’t even be given a chance to hold a press conference to make excuses. That was another difference from Italy, if it was a difference.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
