And so, I was able to smile. That’s not to say I treated it as a joke and burst out laughing. Separate from his sincerity, it was also true that the topic was far too sudden, so I simply looked at him with a bewildered smile.
He leaned his torso forward, loosely holding the on-the-rocks glass with both hands.
“England, France, Germany, the US, wherever… it’s possible in any country where marriage between an alpha male and a beta male is legal. It wouldn’t be difficult for me to acquire permanent residency or citizenship in any of those countries. If we do that, all the rights I have will be legally guaranteed to you as well… and if anything were to happen to me, all those rights could be safely transferred to you.”
My expression hardened slightly at his words, which he spoke as if the possibility of something happening to him was imminent. Having seen my stiffness, he closed his mouth for a moment and averted his gaze, as if he’d misspoken.
“It’s not that I’m trying to tie you to me using some trivial material benefits as an excuse….”
No, maybe that’s not entirely untrue. Murmuring this self-deprecatingly, he swept a hand across his broad jaw. Then he ran his fingers through his hair, which had dried on its own without any product after his shower, disheveling it.
“Bringing up marriage to you, who’s only just turned twenty-two… It must sound crazy.”
My lack of reaction seemed to make him interpret that I was taking his proposal negatively. Or that I wasn’t taking it seriously. He set down his glass, roughly scrubbed his face with his palms, then took out a cigarette and lit it.
I felt I now understood that his unflustered demeanor wasn’t calmness, but a blankness, a rigidity born from tension and anxiety.
Leaning forward deeply, he rested his elbows on his thighs and for a while, only repeated the act of bringing the cigarette to his lips. I watched his lowered face, which seemed disheartened by my reaction, and twisted the beer bottle in my hands.
Even though I thought I was also racing toward him with all my heart, his love was always a few steps ahead of mine. That’s not to say I found it hard to catch up. It was just that, if he had to stop and wait for slow me every time, I felt a vague fear that he might get tired of it at some point.
Gnawing on my lower lip, I looked down at his face and slowly opened my mouth.
“If you were to say this… not as something you blurted out as if you were being chased… but after fully considering your future or your life plans… then I, too, will answer you with all my heart.”
His eyes on me, he straightened his torso and spoke in a dry voice.
“It’s true I said it on impulse, but that doesn’t mean it lacks weight.”
“……”
“And it’s certainly not something I said just for the hell of it, without any sincerity.”
Watching him stub out the half-smoked cigarette in the ashtray, I was the one who grew a little anxious this time.
It wasn’t that I was trying to ignore his sincerity. How could I not know that when a man like him brought up the word marriage, there could be no trace of frivolity in it?
It was just that, while I was happy he wanted me so much he felt impatient… I didn’t want him to choose marriage as a way to resolve it.
I gripped the beer bottle, now slick with condensation, tightly with both hands.
“This is my first time being in a relationship like this with someone… so I don’t know if I’ve made you feel insecure in some way. But… my feelings are by no means light.”
Looking back, he had always craved deeper affection from me. Sometimes jokingly, sometimes with serious eyes. But he had never once forced it on me, so I had simply accepted it as one of the trivial emotions that make up a romance, like the jealousy I felt toward Shushu.
Unlike him, I had nothing… but I thought I was showing him everything—my feelings that were starting to grow again, however meagerly, and even my past that I had buried and ignored.
Was I still, without realizing it, holding something back inside me, not giving it to him? Was that why he was anxious?
I knew in my head that the balance of love between two people was unrelated to objective conditions… but I sometimes found it hard to believe the impatience he showed toward me, a man who seemed like he would never need to feel insecure with anyone. Compared to him, I was just a child who knew nothing, and yet… I was so completely fallen for him….
“I don’t know what you’ll think, but I… I’ve come this far because of you, CEO.”
“……”
“The thing with Morae and my Hyung, starting to draw again… being able to talk to someone about my father… all of it was possible because you were there.”
If I was the only one who could erase his anxiety, then I had to find the courage to break the silence. I took a deep breath and continued, as if swallowing it in small pieces. The moisture from the beer bottle in my hand felt like my own sweat.
“Even while thinking… it was probably something you said on impulse… when I heard you talk about marriage, I set everything else aside and was, first and foremost, happy… That’s how much I, too, want you, Ai… and love you.”
“……”
He looked as if he’d heard a declaration of parting, not a confession of love.
He looked like a man standing under a collapsing sky.
His lips parted as if in a sigh and his furrowed eyelids trembled faintly, like a man who had heard a cruel sentence that took everything away, not a sweet whisper that filled and fulfilled him.
Taking in a deep, held breath, I placed the beer bottle on the table and wiped my wet hands on my pants. My lips pressed together on their own.
Was it too raw of a confession? Was the word ‘love,’ uttered by a twenty-two-year-old after only a few months together, too light to be believed?
But I was sure that the feelings that had melted into the rapport we had shared, even if unspoken, had at some point naturally evolved into love.
My feelings for him had taken on a complex form that couldn’t be fully contained in the simple word ‘like.’ What I saw through him wasn’t just a pinkish flutter or a thrill. If the definition of love was ultimately different for every person, for every couple, then no matter how I searched, the word that came closest to my current feelings for him was love.
“……”
“……”
Like someone trying to shake off a deep sleep, he blinked and shook his head a few times. Then he scrubbed his face roughly with both hands. When he looked at me again, his eyes were bloodshot.
After staring at me for a long time with a face that looked like it was stinging from a harsh word, he got up from his chair and moved to the seat next to me. Haa… The breath that escaped his sealed lips was heavy.
He cupped my cheek, turning me to face him, and swept my hair behind my ear with his long, neat fingers.
“Even after finding out I’m a frivolous man who’s never had a serious partner before… Seo Yeehyeon still loves me?”
I gave a silent smile to him, who had forced out a joke in a tightly strained voice. He smiled back, rubbing the shell of my ear with his thumb. When he smiled at me, he was so warm. At times like that, he looked as happy as someone who was fully enjoying what he wanted, so I had thought I was conveying my feelings to him well.
I lowered my head, nuzzled my cheek against his jawline, and rested my forehead on his shoulder.
“If you knew my real desires beneath the reason I’m barely holding on to… you’d be very surprised.”
That I was a person who felt not disappointment at the frivolity of his past, but rather relief and joy at the fact that he had never given his serious heart to anyone but me.
He once again cupped my face, turning me toward him. His face was overflowing with emotion, but the flow wasn’t pointing in one exact direction. I probably had a similar expression when I heard him mention marriage. A complexity that couldn’t be defined by a single word.
With his hands still cupping my cheeks, his gaze traced my face, and the distance between us cautiously narrowed. His lips were drier than usual. The lips that had met with just enough pressure to slightly indent their surfaces parted, and he rubbed the tip of his nose against mine, speaking in a low voice with his eyes cast down.
“From the perspective of someone who can’t and won’t hold back, I don’t think it would be that surprising.”
The hand that was stroking my cheek moved up to cup my head and then down to grip the nape of my neck. With our foreheads pressed together, he whispered once more.
“Love me more surprisingly.”
“……”
“It doesn’t have to be in a proper and healthy way, so just… to the point where I’m truly surprised… as far as I’m concerned, forget all self-control and dignity. To the point where you’d be called a bad guy, I want you to be greedy with me.”
“……”
“It has to be that way. I don’t think it can be any other way.”
It sounded like he was saying that he himself was already loving me in that way, beyond all bounds. No, it couldn’t have meant anything else.
I gently stroked his arms, which were wrapped broadly around my neck with both his hands. He pressed his lips to my eyelids and the bridge of my nose. Then he pulled my neck in closer, pressing our faces tightly together, and gave a long kiss to my temple and near my ear.
“The fact that these are words I’ve never said to anyone before seems to be the only value I can give you through them….”
And so, saying his own confession was shabby before my love, he whispered as if blowing wind into my ear, his dry voice sounding like it would crumble like a cookie at any moment.
I love you.
It was a whisper so small only my ears could hear it. But if I heard it, that was all that mattered.
The whisper of ‘I love you’ in his low, husky voice was followed by the meeting of our lips, and in the moments our lips weren’t touching, we spoke of love. As if his lips existed only to kiss me and to speak of love.
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