Chapter 205
Rumble- As the sky growled once more with a loud “Kwang!”, Hyeon-woo screamed and clutched his head.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry…!”
Tae-geon quickly brought Hyeon-woo inside and sat him on the bed as he fell into panic, unable to breathe properly.
“What’s wrong? What happened?”
“…I’m scared. I feel like I’m going crazy with fear…”
Tae-geon frowned as he examined Hyeon-woo. Hyeon-woo’s condition was not normal, muttering to himself with unfocused eyes staring blankly into space.
“They’re angry at me. Because I’m selfish, because I survived alone, because I keep being greedy, because I want to be happy… So, the sky, everyone is angry at me. Even in my dreams, they keep appearing, blaming me…”
Tae-geon tightly embraced Hyeon-woo, who was trembling all over with fear and mumbling incomprehensibly.
After a while, when the trembling stopped, Hyeon-woo emerged from Tae-geon’s arms and met his gaze. Hyeon-woo’s eyes were red, soaked from shedding tears.
“…I need to go see my parents.”
Tae-geon’s hand, which was wiping Hyeon-woo’s wet eyes, froze.
“…Where did you say you’re going?”
Tae-geon’s eyes were fierce as he replied, biting his molars.
“Are you saying you’re going to America now?”
Hyeon-woo shrank his shoulders, scared by Tae-geon’s demeanor as he repeatedly confirmed what he had heard.
“…Soon, soon it’s my mother’s birthday, I-”
“So this is the conclusion you’ve come to, right?”
“……”
“That you’re going to leave me.”
Anger that Tae-geon couldn’t hide began to spread like a sticky wave as he cut off Hyeon-woo’s words.
“So the answer you came up with in that little head of yours is to leave me, right?”
Hyeon-woo couldn’t say anything, feeling suffocated by Tae-geon’s gaze as he tapped Hyeon-woo’s temple with his index finger.
“Why? Are you thinking of giving Jerome a proper family now?”
“…No, it’s not like that!”
Hyeon-woo shouted, horrified.
“I can’t think, I can’t do anything like this! No thoughts, no decisions! I feel like I’m going crazy because my chest is so tight!”
At that moment, another flash of lightning struck, followed by a massive thunder.
“Huk…!”
Hyeon-woo curled up into a ball, trembling in fear with his hands wrapped around his head.
Despite gritting his teeth, Tae-geon couldn’t leave Hyeon-woo like that and reached out to embrace him. Barely catching his breath in the warmth that comforted him, Hyeon-woo sobbed.
“…I need to go, I need to go to my parents and beg. I’ll beg and beg again, saying I’m sorry, asking for forgiveness. I’ll ask them to see me just once, to forgive me…”
Taken aback by Hyeon-woo saying something completely different from what he expected, Tae-geon instantly withdrew his anger. His gaze, tinged with bewilderment, turned to Hyeon-woo’s tear-filled eyes.
“I haven’t been able to visit my parents since I returned to Korea. No, I couldn’t. I want to blame Jerome for being too busy, but the truth is I was scared.”
“……”
“I was afraid to face my past self who ran away like a loser, so I kept avoiding it.”
Hyeon-woo continued, biting his lips with a pained expression.
“The mistake I made is getting bigger and bigger. It feels like it’s growing into a huge snowball rolling down a slope, coming towards me. I feel like I’m going to be crushed, my chest, it’s so tight. I can’t breathe.”
After pausing and taking a deep breath, Hyeon-woo looked up at Tae-geon with wet eyes and desperately said,
“Come with me.”
Tae-geon’s eyes widened in surprise.
“Let’s go together and tell them. That accident, it wasn’t our parents’ fault. We know what the truth is, so let’s tell them not to feel wronged.”
“……”
“And let’s ask for forgiveness together. Say we’re sorry. Ask them to forgive us, okay?”
Hyeon-woo’s hands, gripping Tae-geon’s arms and urging him, were trembling.
Forgiveness.
Tae-geon’s eyes, recalling the dictionary definition of that word, steadily gazed at Hyeon-woo’s hands holding his arms.
Hyeon-woo’s hands, once soft and warm, which had fearlessly dug into his own small hands with reddened nail beds from self-harm, bringing him comfort, warmth, affection, and peace for the first time, had now changed like this.
Tae-geon stared blankly at the hands that were covered in all sorts of scars and calluses, so much that it was hard to believe they belonged to the same person, hands that had become as rough as sandpaper and could not be called beautiful even as a lie.
The times when he couldn’t protect Hyeon-woo were clearly visible, cutting into Tae-geon. Tae-geon could not accept that time at all.
Tae-geon clenched his molars as he caressed Hyeon-woo’s hands gripping his clothes. For a moment, Tae-geon’s eyes flashed with strong determination.
“Alright. Let’s go together.”
Tae-geon’s resolute voice continued near Hyeon-woo’s ear as he brightened at those words.
“But leave Jerome behind.”
“…Huh?”
“Let’s go without Jerome.”
“……”
Hesitating to answer as if troubled by his proposal, Hyeon-woo slowly opened his mouth.
“…Okay. But we have to come back quickly. Jerome can only handle four nights without me.”
“Alright.”
After that, preparations for departure immediately followed. Passport, visa, and even airline tickets. Late at night, the former butler who had been helping with all these preparations knocked on Tae-geon’s door and entered.
The butler’s eyes caught dozens of envelopes scattered on the dining table. They seemed to be invitations to formal and important events, elegantly sealed with red wax bearing a seal.
Looking at them, the butler sensed that something the young master had been meticulously working on for a long time was reaching its final stages.
Shifting his gaze from the table to Tae-geon, the butler began the daily report of the mansion.
Jerome had been pestering Tae-geon to plant flowers and trees where the mountain lodge used to be, probably because he was bothered by the sight of it burned black. As the butler was about to leave the room after finishing his report on the progress of Jerome’s garden construction that had started this way, Tae-geon stopped him.
“What does it mean to ask for forgiveness?”
The butler’s eyes showed puzzlement at the sudden question. It was unfamiliar for the young master to ask such a thing. However, the experienced butler didn’t ask why. After carefully choosing his answer to the question, he spoke softly.
“Well, I suppose it’s about atoning to the other person and hoping to be free from the responsibility of the sin.”
“…I see.”
After the butler left, in the empty room, Tae-geon repeatedly muttered the same words with the tip of his tongue.
Atonement, atonement.
As far as he knew, atonement meant paying the price for sin and receiving redemption. The history of atonement that had demanded the price of blood. Blood sacrifices performed regardless of East or West to appease the wrath of God. Numerous humans and animals had shed their blood to achieve vicarious atonement.
Through the butler, Tae-geon was convinced that atonement for Hyeon-woo and his parents could not be more perfect than this.
This is not revenge that Hyeon-woo had tried to dissuade, but atonement.
He even thought it was unnecessarily honorable that lives that could have ended in vain deaths were given meaning in this way.
*
After thanking Driver Yoon who had brought them this far, the two entered the airport.
Hyeon-woo, who had finished checking in his luggage earlier than Tae-geon, came out of the bathroom after finishing his business. Tae-geon, waiting outside, gave an indecipherable expression to Hyeon-woo who was shaking off his wet hands. Looking intently at Hyeon-woo with a complex face crossing with various emotions, Tae-geon smiled and asked.
“…Did you remember your passport?”
“Huh?”
“You didn’t leave it in the bathroom again, did you?”
Hyeon-woo reflexively felt his pocket. Fortunately, it was safely inside. Who does he think I am? There’s no way I’d make the same mistake agai-
Again…?
Hyeon-woo’s face suddenly hardened as he tilted his head, trying to remember when he had done such a thing. He remembered. It was the same bathroom. The memory of a child running up to him and handing over his passport as he was washing his hands and coming out of that place vividly came back to him.
“No way…”
Hyeon-woo looked at Tae-geon with wide eyes.
“That passport back then…. Did you find it for me?”
Grabbing Tae-geon’s arm as he avoided eye contact, Hyeon-woo asked again with an unbelieving expression.
“Did you come to see me off?”
“……”
“Huh? Choi Tae-geon, I’m asking if you came to see me off?”
As Hyeon-woo repeatedly pressed him, Tae-geon finally nodded.
“…Yes.”
…You saw. You were watching. My back as I was leaving, abandoning everything in Korea.
He must have known that he was included in those countless things I abandoned. Knowing that, what thoughts were going through Tae-geon’s mind as he took in my last appearance?
Somehow, his heart ached.
Tae-geon, who had been silent as if lost in reminiscence, murmured softly.
“…You left without any lingering attachment, Han Hyeon-woo.”
Left without any lingering attachment? Me…?
He had been in pain, unable to let go of his feelings for Tae-geon even in America.
He had been even afraid, thinking that if he didn’t quickly let someone else take Tae-geon’s place in this heart full of his traces, it would remain Tae-geon’s space forever. The times when he had been desperate to let go of him were, on the contrary, proving that he had never let go of Tae-geon for even a moment.
“Let’s go quickly. We’re late.”
Tae-geon, who had been walking ahead towards the immigration checkpoint, stopped and looked back at Hyeon-woo who was standing dazed. Hyeon-woo, barely composing his expression while blinking his heated eyes, hurried his steps towards Tae-geon.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
