It seemed Seo Jaehoon had deliberately chosen a horror movie. My heart felt like it would leap out of my mouth, but for a different reason. Sitting in the café, I pressed my palm firmly against my chest, where my heart still hadn't calmed down, and sipped the lukewarm, cooled Americano.
“You need to write your review.”
“Just… in a little bit… Let me calm down….”
The sun was just beginning to set outside, but for some reason, even the reddish sky felt frightening. My fingertips kept trembling. Seo Jaehoon observed every bit of my state and smiled as if he was pleased.
“Ha Yeoul, you don’t like scary things, do you.”
“It’s not, it’s not that I don’t like them….”
“Then.”
“It’s just… the jump scares… my heart hurts….”
At my answer, Seo Jaehoon nodded with an “Ah.” He looked down at his hand that had been on the table and smiled with a sly look on his face, muttering, “So that’s why you held my hand….”
Earlier... the movie was so scary that calling it a groundbreaking work in the horror genre felt insufficient. They said it was based on a true story, and even though I roughly knew the plot, it felt like my heart was going to drop to my feet several times.
Throughout the movie, Seo Jaehoon was either looking at my hand holding his, holding my hand to his chest, or pressing his lips to the back of my hand and whispering, “I’m scared.” All with a face that wasn’t scared at all. The only one steeped in terror in that theater was me.
“Weren’t you… scared?”
“I was. I think I’ll be scared when I sleep tonight.”
“……”
Seo Jaehoon muttered nonchalantly without a single change in his expression.
“Make sure you put away the doll on your desk before you sleep, Yeoul.”
“……”
“And don’t give the doll a name.”
In a low voice, Seo Jaehoon murmured, “miss me.” The movie we had just seen replayed quickly in my mind. To make matters worse, there were no other customers in the cafĂ©. The sun was definitely still up when we came in, but I don’t know when it set, as the outside was on the verge of night.
“Ha Yeoul.”
“…Yeah…”
“I know a decent wine bar. Want to go?”
Half in a daze, I nodded at Seo Jaehoon’s words. Yeah, wine sounds good. Overcome with fear, I rambled on like that, not even knowing what wine tasted like.
Seo Jaehoon was grinning from ear to ear. He was in an excessively good mood, and I didn’t know why, which made me feel uneasy for no reason.
“If you’re done drinking, let’s get up.”
“Okay.”
* * *
Arriving at a dazzling hotel lounge, Seo Jaehoon and I followed a man who appeared to be the manager toward the inner part of the hall. When Seo Jaehoon said something, the man nodded with a wide smile and extended his hand. What’s going on, I wondered, tilting my head as I followed him.
As I trailed blankly behind, I stopped when Seo Jaehoon stopped in front of a glass window.
“Ah….”
A gasp escaped my lips at the night view visible behind Seo Jaehoon.
Seo Jaehoon turned to look at me and smiled. Only then did I think I had some idea of the conversation they had exchanged. With a triumphant expression, Seo Jaehoon stood still, as if he were a photo taken with the city’s nightscape as his backdrop.
“I came here for a photoshoot before. The night view was something else. I didn’t think we’d get a seat since I didn’t make a reservation, but thankfully we did.”
“Ahh….”
“The night view is great, and the wine is pretty good too.”
Out of habit, Seo Jaehoon pulled out my chair and waited for me to sit. It was a gesture that felt somehow ticklish, but it was too awkward to refuse, so I slowly sat down. I felt myself blushing for no reason as the chair was gently pushed in.
“Are you hungry?”
“Not hungry.”
“Looking at you sometimes, I have no idea what you even eat to live."
Seo Jaehoon said it in a tone of genuine bewilderment. At his rhetorical question, I thought about the things I’d been eating lately. Hmm… a green liquid of unknown identity, school cafeteria food, and dinner we all eat together.
We eat at least one of our three meals together, so what does he mean he doesn’t know what I eatbto live. Seo Jaehoon must have noticed the puzzlement on my face because he gave an awkward smile.
“Right, you do eat.”
Seo Jaehoon nodded and familiarly ordered wine from the server who came to take our order. He turned to a dazed me and asked, “Is dry okay?” Not knowing what that meant, I nodded awkwardly, imagining the taste of grape juice. It must taste something like grape juice for adults, I guess.
As I watched Seo Jaehoon order so skillfully, my gaze soon turned back to the night view. The view from the lounge was spectacular enough to make my head feel dizzy. I found myself wishing my eyes were a camera. Then I could take dozens of pictures of something this pretty and pull them out whenever I wanted to see them.
The thought made me feel a great sense of regret. Unaware that my feelings were written all over my face, I continued to feel that wistfulness for a long while.
“Ha Yeoul.”
“…Huh.”
My mind was so captivated by the night view that my reply was a beat late. Seo Jaehoon moved his hand and tapped his fingers on the glass table.
“Let’s come again.”
“…What?”
“I said, let’s come here again.”
His eyes weren't filled with his usual playfulness, but with sincerity. He always had a mischievous smile on his face, but not today. He was looking at me so seriously that it felt a little awkward, and I let out an involuntary cough and turned my head away.
“…It’s beautiful here. I’ve never been to a place like this before. Thank you.”
I offered my thanks to Seo Jaehoon before it was too late. With nothing more to say, I turned my head again and took in the city’s nightscape until the wine we ordered was placed on the table.
The server who set down the wine asked Seo Jaehoon if he would like to taste it. Seo Jaehoon’s gaze briefly flickered toward me before he shook his head. “It’s fine,” he said. The reply was curt, yet his polite tone felt so unlike him that it was a bit strange. I’d always thought of him as a reckless, foolish punk.
After finishing the table setting and opening the cork, the server moved away. Seo Jaehoon, who seemed to have drunk wine quite a bit, familiarly filled my glass. A clear, trickling sound echoed.
My eyes just followed the dark purple liquid filling the glass, then my gaze gradually shifted to Seo Jaehoon’s hand holding the wine bottle. The white back of his hand, the reddish fingertips, and the blue veins that ran from his wrist. For some reason, every part of Seo Jaehoon caught my eye today.
“Try it.”
He filled his own glass and looked at me with a slightly excited expression, and my hand moved on its own. Noticing my awkwardness, Seo Jaehoon filled his glass and pushed it forward slightly. His fingertips slowly caressed the stem of the wine glass.
“This part is called the stem. You can hold it here to drink.”
His beautifully shaped lips curved. “Like this,” Seo Jaehoon said, holding the part he had called the stem and bringing the glass to his lips. With a slightly hesitant hand, I grasped the long, slender stem of the wine glass and brought it to my mouth.
A sweet fragrance wafted up. I wonder if it tastes as sweet as it smells, I thought, tilting the glass and letting the purplish liquid fill my mouth. And then.
“Ugh—”
What is this taste. I contorted my face at the bitter, bitter, and bitter taste spreading in my mouth. Seo Jaehoon burst out laughing as if my reaction was amusing.
For an adult’s grape juice, it tasted awful. What kind of taste is this, soju would be better. To get rid of the bitter aftertaste on my tongue, I scanned the appetizers laid out on the table and picked up a canapĂ©.
“Why are you so cute today?”
At the words that slipped out of Seo Jaehoon’s mouth like a mutter to himself, my chewing slowed. A ticklish feeling spread from my chest. Then, like a vibration, heat spread throughout my body. I took a needless breath and drained the wine in one go.
I had a bit of a hangover tendency, but I could hold my liquor well. Every time my glass was empty, Seo Jaehoon would fill it, and when it was empty again, he’d fill it again. I think I had finished more than half the bottle of wine by myself.
“Does it still taste bad?”
“…No. It’s just… bad.”
“So it tastes bad, is that it?”
Seo Jaehoon laughed with a broken voice at my reply. What’s so funny? I grabbed the stem-or-whatever-it’s-called with two fingers and pressed it to my lips. As I tilted the glass, the still-unpleasant liquid flowed into my mouth.
“…What on earth… is the appeal of drinking this….”
I savored the lingering bitterness in my mouth and then lifted my head. His glistening eyes were fixed entirely on me. A question I would normally not ask, even if I were curious, suddenly came to mind.
“…You.”
“Yeah.”
“Just why do you like me… No matter how much I think about it… I don’t really get it. You’re so handsome, too.”
I rubbed a cheek that must have been flushed red from the alcohol. I was drunk, but not so drunk that I couldn’t feel embarrassed. Still, I wanted to use my intoxication as an excuse to ask. Why on earth do you like me?
Seo Jaehoon, sitting in front of me, had been watching me with those ticklish eyes for a while now. One might describe such a gaze as deep, but it felt a bit strange. Strange.
“Why do I like you?”
“Yeah. Tell me, I’m curious.”
I asked with a half-slurred pronunciation. It felt like my tongue kept curling inward.
“You couldn’t even make eye contact, but now you do. You couldn’t even say my name, but now you do. At first, things like that were fascinating and I was proud of you… Then I started trying to see your face, which I’d never properly looked at, at least one more time. I became curious about what you did all day, and when you’re next to me, I want to touch you, to hug you. And then, I want to do more.”
“……”
“When I look at you, it’s like this.”
Seo Jaehoon moved the finger that had been stroking the lip of the wine glass and casually tapped his own lips. As I slowly shifted my gaze, those lips I had thought were finely shaped curved into a smile.
“When I look at you, I smile like this the whole time. I must like you a lot.”
“…You crazy bastard….”
“I like you, Ha Yeoul. I’m originally a greedy bastard, but I like you so much that I thought it would be okay to share you because it felt like I couldn’t have you all to myself.”
Even in my drunken state, I could understand what Seo Jaehoon was saying. These bastards, from the beginning, had talked about sharing me instead of having me alone.
At first, I didn’t really know what that meant, and after I understood, I wondered if I was an object and felt bad, but now it was as if I’d been infected too, and my heart raced for all three of them.
“I… I am not me.”
Intoxicated, I blurted out the words I had kept inside, words I shouldn’t have said.
“That’s why, I like you. I like that Ha Yeoul is not Ha Yeoul.”
Seo Jaehoon’s answer spread warmly in my chest. My gaze, which had been fixed on his hand caressing the lip of the wine glass, slowly moved up to his face. The moment I met his eyes, Seo Jaehoon said.
“I like you. It doesn’t matter who you were.”
My heart pounded at a now-familiar speed. The heat rushed to my drunken face, and it felt even hotter than before.
“Still….”
“Yeah.”
“I'm not sure if this is right..."
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