#30
“Why there?”
—You said evening was fine.
“…You meant dinner? I thought you were asking if meeting in the evening would be okay.”
—You don’t want to have dinner?
“No, I’d like that.”
—Then let’s meet then.
Before I could even say “Got it,” the call ended. He really is a cold-hearted person. He just asked what he needed to know, and once he got his answer, he hung up without looking back.
I inadvertently made dinner plans, but my gloomy mood still hadn’t lifted.
I’m also a person who needs conversation, but I never realized how sad it would be to have no one to talk to. I almost miss the old days when I had to go out and work without time to talk.
No, actually I don’t miss it. Pickpocketing isn’t exactly honest work. It’s better not to do such things.
I’ve become complacent. I’m complacent and that’s why I’m like this now.
I tapped Cha Sukyung’s slim stomach and muttered to myself.
I really am complacent. This kind of life—eating well and doing nothing—was never meant to be my fate, yet here I am complaining even though I have it in my grasp.
Lonely and bored? Did I ever have the luxury to think like that before? Back then, I worried about what I would eat today and how I would survive tomorrow.
I stretched widely and got up from the bed. I needed to find a more motivated and fulfilling way to live.
∞ ∞ ∞
“So I was feeling depressed. It seemed like there was nothing I could do.”
As I continued talking, Kwon Yikang sat with proper posture, eating his meal quietly. He moved his hands without making any clattering sounds from the utensils, neatly cutting his meat, putting it in his mouth, and chewing thoroughly with his lips tightly closed before swallowing. It felt like I was watching a textbook demonstration of how one should eat.
“Isn’t that a talent? Can you lose talent just because you lost your memories?”
“I don’t know. Anyway, in my current state, I don’t even know how to draw. There are so many brushes, but I don’t know why there are so many. Half the items in the studio are things I don’t know how to use, and the paint colors all look similar but have completely different names, so I don’t understand why they’re categorized that way.”
I guess talent belongs to the soul, not the body. I had some expectations too, but I’ve come to accept that the artistic talent disappeared along with Cha Sukyung’s soul.
“So I was getting depressed, and then Director Cha—oh, Director Cha is someone who works at our house, not someone who does odd jobs, more like the boss of the employees, I think. Anyway, Director Cha told me I should meet with friends since I seemed okay now. But then I realized I don’t have any friends? During my hospital stay, my father was the only one who came to visit me. The rest of my family didn’t even show their faces, and no one came to visit as a friend. When I got a new phone because mine was broken in the accident, it only had family contacts, and since no one has contacted me since then, it’s pretty clear I don’t have friends, right?”
“So you contacted me because I’m the only one whose contact information you have.”
Kwon Yikang smiled with crinkled eyes and took a sip of wine. He didn’t seem to be reproaching me, but rather found it somewhat amusing, so I relaxed and nodded.
For some reason, I tend to ramble on about various things with Kwon Yikang. I’ve only met him twice, but I feel strangely comfortable with him. Perhaps it’s because I think of him as someone completely unknown to both Min Jaehee and Cha Sukyung, so I don’t feel any tension or burden.
Moreover, no matter what I say, Kwon Yikang responds with appropriate distance and composure, so I don’t have to worry about whether he’ll harm me, look at me strangely, or blame me.
“Even the family members I have make me uncomfortable. We don’t spend much time together, but when we are together, I feel suffocated. I can’t find the right timing to speak, and we only see each other during meals, but if I talked like this during a meal, I’d immediately get scolded.”
“That’s usually how it is. I don’t talk much during meals either.”
“What’s a meal supposed to be? It’s an exchange. It’s sharing the most comfortable time together, isn’t it? But if you can’t talk and eat uncomfortably, there’s no meaning to the meal. It’s just filling your stomach. They’re not people struggling to get by, so I don’t know why wealthy people act that way. They talk about lacking dignity or class, but that’s just being bleak.”
I twirled spaghetti around my fork and chewed it. There were so many types to choose from, and after quite a bit of deliberation, the spaghetti I picked with a whatever-will-be-will-be attitude was decent enough.
“When I eat at home, I feel like I’ll get indigestion from being so self-conscious. When we all eat together, my stomach feels really bloated, and eating alone is somewhat better, but even then, it feels strange to sit alone at a huge dining table. It seems better to be by myself, hunched over eating cup noodles.”
“You talk as if you’ve actually experienced that.”
“No, I just think it would be better. It’s just my imagination, like, maybe it would be like that—just imagination.”
Oh, I slipped up. Flustered, I grabbed the wine glass in front of me, and as I hastily pulled it toward me, I knocked the fork off the table onto the floor. The sharp clinking sound echoed through the restaurant. I hunched my shoulders as eyes turned toward us.
“You dropped your fork. Please bring a new one.”
Kwon Yikang elegantly raised his hand and spoke to the restaurant staff who approached. He smiled reassuringly at me as I looked around nervously.
“It’s okay to make mistakes. Why are you so startled? As if you’ve done something wrong. Straighten your back and shoulders, sit up straight.”
Following Kwon Yikang’s instructions, I straightened my back and shoulders and sat upright. Perhaps because I wasn’t used to it, it felt awkward and made eating quite uncomfortable. Kwon Yikang let out a low laugh at my stiff behavior.
“You really are more like a wild colt running in the fields than a gently raised young master. Were you always like this?”
“Originally, I was extremely timid and frustrated, always trying to please others, never raising my voice, just suffering internally until I got depression. Instead, I was probably excellent at these kinds of etiquette things. Anyway, that’s how I was. I completely changed after the accident, so much so that my father was wondering if he should discharge me from the hospital, saying I was like an unruly child.”
“Sounds like a boring personality.”
“I think so too. The current me is better for living in the world, isn’t it? Though I don’t seem to have any advantages other than my personality.”
“Why do you think that? You’re still young. There are many things you can do if you look for them, and you have plenty of time to learn new things.”
“…Do I?”
My anxious heart sought some comfort in Kwon Yikang’s words. I carefully asked him, and Kwon Yikang nodded as if to assure me.
“You’re only twenty. You’re still very young. Your world is just beginning.”
“That’s true, it’s just beginning. …Come to think of it, I don’t know how old you are. How old are you?”
“If you heard my age, you might need to reconsider calling me ‘you’.”
That’s right. He’s definitely older than me, but I’ve been casually addressing him as ‘you.’ He looks like he might be in his late twenties or early thirties. But what should I call someone in this ambiguous relationship? Hyung? Hyung-nim? Sir? As I was pondering this, Kwon Yikang opened his mouth to continue speaking.
“Thirty-four.”
“What?”
“Thirty-four.”
“…”
That’s older than I expected. He didn’t look that old, but that’s nearly mid-thirties. A “wow” that wasn’t quite admiration escaped my lips.
“You’re a complete ahjussi.”
“That seems like too drastic a change in how you address me.”
“You don’t look that old. You have a youthful appearance?”
“Thanks for the compliment.”
“But your way of speaking is like an ahjussi.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment too.”
Kwon Yikang responded indifferently, but his slightly raised eyebrow betrayed his displeasure. I had to quickly suppress my laughter at his twitching eyebrow, which I found cute.
“I must really be an omega after all.”
“The conversation topic seems to be jumping all over the place?”
“Listen. It was really hard for me to adapt to being told I’m an omega. They kept telling me I’m an omega, but I didn’t know what pheromones were or anything, and I couldn’t feel anything different. I started to understand a bit after experiencing a heat, but at that time, I just felt like, ‘Ah, shit. Why does this happen? I had sex with a man? This sucks.’ That was my mindset…”
“So that’s how you felt. You were so aggressive then that I didn’t realize it.”
“I had never imagined doing this and that with a man, so it couldn’t be helped. In my imagination, the partner was always a woman. And I wasn’t the one being penetrated, but the one doing the penetrating.”
As crude words continued to come out of my mouth, Kwon Yikang raised his index finger to his lips. It was contrary to how he had told me to be confident just moments ago. It seems that even for someone as composed as Kwon Yikang, talking about fucking and penetrating in such an open place is beyond the acceptable level.
I chuckled at his reaction. I don’t know why this big man keeps looking cute to me.
“But now I’m thinking, ‘I really am an omega.’ You keep looking cute to me. And doing it with you… wasn’t bad. Even though they say I wasn’t in my right mind then, when I imagine doing it with a clear head, it doesn’t seem bad either.”
“I look… cute?”
With a scoffing laugh, Kwon Yikang made a face of disbelief. It seems that being called cute is not a compliment he appreciates. Even his current reaction is cute because of how prim he’s being.
I grinned and hid my face behind the wine glass, while Kwon Yikang’s eyebrows continued to twitch as if dancing.
“I’m curious about something.”
“Somehow I have an uneasy feeling that I shouldn’t ask, but is this just my imagination?”
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
