Chapter 99
I couldn’t even think of getting up from my seat. Leaving me frozen in place, Yujun picked up the wine prepared in the center of the table.
It wasn’t difficult to deduce that this man had deliberately switched the meeting place through the concierge.
The wine bottle was sealed once more with wax. Without removing the wax, driving the screw straight into the cork, Yujun said:
“Are you really serious about ending it?”
“……”
It was a light tone as if exchanging everyday conversation. It almost sounded cheerful.
It was an unthinkable situation, and he was someone I’d never even imagined having to face directly alone. My mind went completely dark, and I could only stare at the man pulling out the cork.
Boldly pouring lemon-tinged golden liquid into a voluminous glass with a bulbous body, Yujun glanced at me sideways.
“You know what I call that kind of thing? Playing the field. Right?”
I couldn’t deny that it might appear that way. But that didn’t mean I had to accept criticism from someone who wasn’t involved.
“What exactly are you trying to do now?”
The man laughed at my stiff words. It was a twisted laugh as if he’d heard an unfunny joke. After pouring wine into two glasses, the man walked over to me and held one out. Of course, I didn’t take it.
“Why, try it. It’s Burgundy wine made by a young 23-year-old producer, very popular these days.”
I showed no reaction to the man holding the glass toward me once more. As if he’d expected that, Yujun shrugged and put one glass down on the sofa table.
“Italians who don’t drink French wine, French people who don’t drink Italian wine. There’s no more useless stubbornness than that.”
There were more than a few things to correct, but I said nothing.
Yujun sat across from me with his legs crossed. Even his attitude of spinning the glass in small circles in the air felt like a threat directed at me.
The man who tilted his glass to smell the aroma drank the wine as if holding one or two sips in his mouth.
“When we went to university together, every time I suggested going to meet women, he’d refuse… I thought he had some serious complex or trauma.”
“……”
The story that began without beginning or end was about him, Lee Han. It was also a topic that caught my ankle as I was wondering whether I should storm out.
“With that body and that face, I wondered if maybe his dick was small.”
Without a trace of humor, with an even serious face, Yujun put vulgar vocabulary in his mouth. I frowned, but the man continued speaking nonchalantly.
“But… not at all. Ah, you’d know well too. With that body and that face, his dick is no joke either. Among friends who exercised and hung out together at university, he was called ‘Third Leg’ to that extent. Maybe… are you hanging around because you miss that?”
“Your words are excessive.”
“Who’s the one who really acted excessively?”
Tilting his chin to pour wine into his mouth, Yujun muttered as if talking to himself. He seemed like a man who didn’t hesitate to become vulgar or childish, who could become as mean as necessary before a goal he wanted to achieve.
“Anyway.”
The man who put his glass back on his knee looked across at me diagonally. “I’d never heard of a human being who has the wealth and status to easily obtain overflowing pleasure… but voluntarily refuses it. The children of wealthy people around me, and the human called my biological father who made me… were all the same.”
Yujun’s face hardened as he very slightly mentioned his own story, but he immediately organized his expression.
“So I thought Lee Han was also doing things no less than them behind the scenes while just putting on airs on the surface. As we became closer, I learned that wasn’t the case.”
“……”
“What he said about his body and heart not moving unless it’s someone who meets the standards he’s set… that was sincere. And…”
My breath tightened in the pause as he drew out his words.
“There was only one person from the beginning who could meet the standards that guy talks about.”
Yujun wrinkled his forehead and looked up at me. That gaze was no longer pretending leisurely sarcasm. It was tinged with anger.
『Unless it’s the best choice, the highest perfection that I can accept in all aspects, my heart doesn’t move. I don’t compromise with choices that don’t meet my standards just to moderately satisfy desires.』
I couldn’t help but recall the words he’d given me in response to my playful speculation that he must have had extensive experience.
It wasn’t that I didn’t believe his words. But the feeling of having it confirmed through someone else was a bit different.
I naturally pictured his early-to-mid-twenties appearance, carefully confiding my story to a close friend and living each day faithfully.
When I was defining him as someone who could never be achieved anyway and trying to bury him as a memory… he continued to dream of me. He didn’t give up.
Now I needed alcohol.
Forgetting that it was alcohol given by that man, I picked up the glass in front of me and drained three or four sips without time to savor the aroma or color.
“Excessive abstinence is also perverted. I tried various methods to tempt that guy, but it was useless. Later… honestly, I was a bit envious. Having a target you look at so passionately.”
The man was staring intently at one point in the air. His tone, which had been close to honorifics, had somehow changed to casual speech as if talking to a friend. No, it sounded like talking to himself rather than speaking about any particular target.
However, the man’s eyes suddenly changed light and looked at me piercingly.
“So. While that guy spent his twenties willingly enduring even the sarcasm of ‘window dressing’ for your sake, where were you and what were you doing? Not sending a single email, living only pursuing your dream of becoming an actor… and now saying you’ll try to do well since you coincidentally reunited? Wow… you’re trying to take life easy.”
The man snorted and shook his head.
Yujun’s words had parts that didn’t match the truth, but looking only at the superficial facts that appeared on the surface, they weren’t entirely wrong either.
The man was instinctively grasping my weaknesses, knowing which points to stimulate to cut off my rationality.
Faced with Yujun’s attack that pressed me with facts that subtly deviated from the truth, I felt helpless.
“But then you enchant people to your heart’s content, and now you say it won’t work. So the kid can’t come to his senses and gets swayed around like that. I acknowledge your skills are good.”
Clank.
At the irritating sound of glass hitting glass, I suddenly looked up. Yujun, who had put his glass down on the sofa table, stood up. Eyes that had cooled coldly, with contempt and hatred flickering like blue flames, looked down at me.
“If you have even a little bit of a heart that cares for that guy, no, if you have even minimal conscience as a human being… don’t shake him by going around in circles and trailing attachment everywhere. Behave properly. I came to ask that favor. Actor Jung Jiin. Before you meet Lee Han, I wanted to ask that favor first.”
“It’s not even a requesting tone, and you, who aren’t even the person involved, have no right to make such a request for Lee Han’s sake, and I don’t see any reason why I should be listening to such insults from you.”
The man who was buttoning his jacket looked up at the ceiling and sighed.
“Ha… only your mouth is alive.”
Yujun, who bent his waist while pressing on the sofa table, looked closely at me. An expression that seemed to distort every muscle in his face, the most contemptuous expression a person could make, was directed at me.
“Should I speak bluntly for you to understand? Don’t hurt that guy with the elegant excuse that you don’t want to look like you’re selling your body when you’re selling your body behind the scenes. To think you’d give such a reason.”
Yujun laughed as if extremely delighted.
“Why don’t you just reveal your true colors? That while you were protecting your feelings toward me, I already became a rag and am not qualified to receive your noble love. If what you really want is to completely end the relationship with Lee Han, wouldn’t that be more efficient?”
The man who smiled by pulling up both corners of his lips with mad eyes straightened his waist.
Without realizing it, I stood up and grabbed the man’s arm.
“What the… what kind of bullshit is that?”
The man looked down at the grabbed arm. His face was disgusted as if looking at an insect stuck to bare skin.
Yujun soon snorted and brushed off my arm.
“Did you think we, that Lee Han, wouldn’t know?”
“So what exactly…!”
In an instant, my body was pushed to the opposite side of the sofa, to the tent wall. With a thud, my face hit the taut tent fabric.
My knee was struck, and as my knee bent, a strong arm wrapped around my neck from behind. Everything happened in the blink of an eye, cleanly executed with such elegance that there was no waste of force. Since my knees were already down, I couldn’t strike at the opponent’s lower body either. Even trying to twist my upper body sideways to create space, the gap in technique and physique was overwhelming.
“Try resisting. Did you think you were stronger than me just because you twisted my wrist once at that drinking session?”
The man whispered in my ear in a voice grinding his teeth.
He was Lee Han’s business colleague and personal bodyguard. Yujun belatedly added his self-introduction. I understood why he was almost always with him every time I encountered him in public places.
“Even a man you cut off after weighing options doesn’t like being known as a rag? That’s exactly what’s disgusting about you. Wanting to be remembered forever as a pitiful and pure first love…!”
Because we were both completely focused on each other, on the hatred directed at each other, we didn’t notice any presence at all.
“……!”
The arm that had been firmly wrapping around my neck and subduing me was released in an instant. At the same time, Yujun’s body was thrown to the other wall of the tent. I, who was dragged along by that force, also staggered and nearly fell.
When I barely regained balance by pressing against the floor, Lee Han was already on top of Yujun’s crumpled body, having flipped him over.
His solid thighs tightly squeezed Yujun’s sides, using his weight to the maximum to press down and compress Yujun’s abdomen. His left hand gripped Yujun’s collar, and his right hand was raised in the air with a clenched fist as if about to strike his face at any moment.
The fleeting moment of watching his back as he lunged at Yujun. A scene from the past overlapped.
Twenty-year-old Lee Han who had chased across Paeli’s plaza after Luca, who had mocked my adopted circumstances by comparing me to ‘vino da tavola’ wine of unknown origin.
“What are you doing? Are you crazy?!”
He roared at Yujun pinned beneath him.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
