- Words to Regret (7)
“What do you mean by that?”
Na Jia asked with a puzzled voice.
“I sent you upstairs to prepare the guest room, and suddenly you come down and say something absurd. Why would Seowoo sleep with you?”
Jihan replied with a tone that suggested he didn’t understand what was confusing.
“What are you talking about, noona? Your husband will use the guest room, and Seowoo will sleep with me. Aren’t you staying overnight today?”
“Yes, we are staying… but I can put my husband in my room. The bed isn’t that small. Seowoo can use the guest room.”
“Why would Yoon Seowoo use the guest room when he’s not a guest? He can sleep in my room. As you said, the bed isn’t that small.”
Na Jia looked back and forth between her brother and me in bewilderment.
“Seowoo. Does that brat treat you like this in the dorm too? How do you arrange your rooms?”
“Yoon Seowoo has his own room. He sleeps alone.”
I smiled softly and partially refuted his statement.
“He invades occasionally.”
“Oh my…”
In the end, we agreed to give the guest room to Na Jia’s husband. In fact, there was an extra room on the first floor besides the large room on the second floor, but if I said I’d sleep that far away, it was obvious that Jihan would feel hurt.
We had just reconciled. I didn’t want to create unnecessary problems. It wasn’t a difficult thing to do since it wasn’t the first time we’d slept together.
Actually, these were all excuses. I just wanted to be with Jihan.
“The guest room we cleaned will be empty then.”
Na Jia chuckled softly and patted my back. She seemed secretly sympathetic.
“Seowoo, you have it tough. Please take care of our log.”
“What’s with the ‘log’ reference again?”
I couldn’t honestly tell him about how his sister had discovered my crush, and if I said there was something like that, Jihan, who was sensitive about secrets, would likely be upset.
I pushed his back and changed the subject.
“Let’s go upstairs. It’s been a while since I’ve seen your room. Can I look around to see if anything has changed?”
“My room is always the same. Oh, while I’m putting away the birthday present you gave me, let’s look at the photo album too. Can I replace the photos you inserted with others?”
“Sure. Let’s choose together.”
Fortunately, Jihan was distracted by the photo talk and didn’t dwell on the previous conversation. I followed him upstairs, occasionally agreeing with what he said.
Jihan’s room, as familiar to me as my own, always displayed a neat landscape. It was mostly filled with achromatic items that matched his taste, but there were occasional vibrant objects: a small teddy bear at the head of the bed, a glass stand on the shelf, a blue dreamcatcher on the wall, or the cypress frame on the desk.
That teddy bear was a prize I won at a shooting game when Jihan and I went out during high school. I remember giving it to him as a memento since it was the first prize he’d ever received.
‘I bought him the glass stand when we were shopping for a gift for Jia noona’s wedding, thinking it would suit him.’
The dreamcatcher was something I made myself at his request for a handcrafted birthday present. It was old and poorly made due to my clumsy hands, but despite my nagging that I’d buy him a new one, it had firmly kept its place for over five years.
Now with the addition of this year’s birthday present, the cypress frame, my place in Jihan’s world of black and white had grown a little larger.
“If you’re done looking around, come here.”
Jihan, sitting on the edge of the bed, patted the space beside him.
“Choose some photos.”
“Don’t you like the ones I put in?”
“Those are pretty too. But I want to see more brightly smiling faces. I wonder if there are more photos of us smiling when we were younger…”
I sat next to him and looked through the album for the first time in a while. Most were familiar photos. Thanks to Jihan’s parents who had printed two copies of every picture we took together, making sure I had my share.
As I diligently absorbed the solo photos and those taken with Hyeonjun or Na Jia interspersed throughout, I said:
“You were pretty when you were younger too.”
Before his growth spurt, Jihan had a much softer look than now. His dark, lush eyelashes moved like a doll’s, and I had played countless pranks by putting my hand near his eyes when he was still.
“Am I not pretty now?”
“…How could you be pretty?”
Startled, I turned to look at Jihan. A well-sculpted handsome man was looking at me, to the point where calling him “pretty” seemed almost absurd.
“You’re handsome. Fans say you could totally fit the role of a male lead in a drama.”
With the right acting skills, he could definitely aim for acting roles. He wasn’t just handsome; he had a uniquely cool yet impressive aura.
“Is that so? I don’t have any plans to learn acting yet.”
“That’s something you can consider later, at your own pace.”
Of course, Jihan only showed interest in being an idol. He probably wouldn’t think about another profession until he could no longer be active as an idol.
“Yoon Seowoo was pretty when he was younger and is still pretty now.”
After making this extraordinary statement so casually, he flipped through the album. Soon, a photo identical to the one I had inserted in the cypress frame appeared in the photo album.
“Here it is.”
Though my memories were faint since we were much younger then, the excitement and joy I felt that day still lingered vaguely in a corner of my heart.
About an hour’s drive from Jihan’s villa, there’s a large lake. Unlike me, who preferred staying cooped up in the villa, the curious Jihan insisted on seeing that lake with me. He said the sunset fragments reflecting on the water at dusk were so beautiful.
In the end, I pretended to give in and went with him, and finally saw the sunset over the lake that he had praised endlessly. The reddish glittering surface of the water, the forest darkening into a comfortable green, the gentle breeze blowing strand by strand, and the faint sound of birds.
It was beautiful enough to immediately understand why he had been so insistent. It was a landscape that felt not just lovely and splendid, but even awe-inspiring.
When I said I wanted to ride a bicycle but didn’t like the effort, Jihan put me on the back seat of a rented bicycle. In that moment, with my arms tightly wrapped around his waist and my head resting on his back, I didn’t envy anyone in the world, even if they claimed to have everything.
Photos from before riding the bicycle, while riding, and afterward in front of a bonfire in the villa garden were captured across several pages in the album.
“What do you want to replace it with?”
“With a photo taken after the bicycle ride. Either this one or this one.”
In the photo, I was holding his hand tightly and smiling brightly.
“Back then, you smiled well and were curious about everything, which made you cute.”
I asked him as he carefully removed the photo:
“Don’t I smile well now too?”
Though I’m certainly not loud or energetic by nature, I don’t think I’m timid or depressed either. Given my profession, smiling anywhere and anytime had become a habit.
“Smiling for the camera is different from this. Oh, you’re still curious, that’s true. The problem is you’re curious about unnecessary things too.”
“Really?”
“Don’t you remember? The day that photo was taken, you insisted you couldn’t sleep alone and stuck right next to me. Even after returning to Seoul, you stayed at our house for three more days?”
“Oh, that’s right. I remember staying at your house, but I don’t know why. What was the reason?”
Jihan gestured toward the frame, which he had already changed, and said:
“You joined in when kids were telling ghost stories, insisted on listening despite my warnings, and then complained about being scared. I even tried to cover your ears, but you pushed me away.”
“…I did?”
“You woke up in the middle of the night from a ghost nightmare, crying and asking why I didn’t stop you. Have you forgotten that too?”
“How do you remember all these details…?”
It’s truly a ghost-like memory, remembering elementary school events so precisely.
“Anyway, Yoon Seowoo, you have to admit you’re curious. Whenever kids gather and whisper, you always peek in. Whether it’s ghost stories or love stories.”
Jihan sighed deeply and said:
“In high school, I think, you eagerly eavesdropped when kids gathered to talk about first loves and first kisses. I was so worried, thinking you were interested in dating.”
Come to think of it, we had a similar conversation during dinner. I looked up from examining the album photos.
A childish yet mischievous curiosity subtly bloomed.
“Like Jia noona said, what would you do if I brought someone else and introduced them to you?”
“What are you saying, an idol…”
“I won’t be an idol forever. What if I meet someone nice after retiring?”
I looked at him with clear eyes and asked:
“If the non-idol me becomes curious about someone else, would you try to stop me then too?”
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
