With a subtle emphasis, Inwoo-hyung said, glancing at him across the table. It might have been an overreaction, but sometimes, Hyung made my heart sink, as if he were someone who knew things I hadn’t told him.
“Aish, what’s this? No fun. Who do you think I came for?”
As he said that, Inwoo-hyung lightly bit the inside of my wrist, which he’d been holding, before letting go.
“I called you over because you were acting all pitiful, saying you had no plans on a Friday night and were just stuck at the hospital organizing files. And now you’re saying what?”
Juhan-hyung, who had put his lip piercing back in place after having taken it out during the meal, vowing to eat four servings of lamb, jabbed Inwoo-hyung’s shoulder with his elbow, threatening him. Inwoo-hyung, still in his chair, shrieked and cried uncle.
I felt his gaze from over Yuni Noona’s shoulder as she packed her belongings into her bag. I lifted my head, but it must have been my imagination, as he was raising his wrist to check his watch.
As we exited the front door of the restaurant, located on the second floor of a building with a business hotel on the upper levels, the sound of the rain grew much closer. It was still pouring.
Juhan-hyung pressed himself against the window that took up one wall of the elevator hall, his nose to the glass as he peered outside to gauge the amount of rain.
In Hong Kong, Hyung had been so happy that he could escape the monsoon for at least a few days, but as if to mock his joy, Seoul was still in the thick of it. The monsoon rains that had made me worry about the humidity in the underground storage and exhibition hall all week were peaking today.
“Dr. Inwoo and Chief Kwon will have to call designated drivers… CEO, you didn’t drink, did you? Could you give Yeehyeon a ride? It’s raining so much.”
He, who had been slipping his arms into a summer jacket of a dark blue, almost navy color, turned toward me at noona’s words.
“No, it’s okay. I can just take the bus.”
I shut my mouth right away, thinking I had refused too quickly and too seriously, but I regretted it, worried I might have seemed strangely self-conscious.
“You have a lot of stuff, too. Just ask for a ride. It’s not a big deal to just drop you off for a second. Right, CEO?”
In the past, he had reacted unfavorably to Chief Kwon’s suggestion that he give me a ride, but now, he seemed like he would willingly accept something like dropping me off, even if it was a bit of a detour.
But for the time being, I wanted to avoid being alone with him in a confined space like the inside of a car. No, rather than wanting to avoid it, it seemed it would be more beneficial to avoid it.
The elevator, which had been taking its time in the underground parking garage, finally stopped on the second floor. After everyone else had gotten on, he boarded last and pressed the close button. He stood beside me in the corner, a step away, leaning against the handrail.
The close proximity in the elevator inevitably brought to mind the elevator in the Hong Kong hotel. I couldn’t know if he was thinking the same thing, but his gaze, fixed on his feet, seemed perfectly composed.
The tightening of the arm that had wrapped around my waist from behind and the excitement in the hot breath that had poured into my ear were still vivid. It was not a good sign.
But even as I wished for everything to become blurry, I found myself blankly retracing the memories of that day several times a day. Like someone afraid of them becoming even slightly exaggerated or faded.
“Go down to the parking garage and take the CEO’s car, okay?”
Noona said, nudging me with her elbow.
“In that case, I’ll take a taxi. It’s not that far… you don’t have to go out of your way to drop me off….”
“You think a taxi is going to stop for you on a Friday night, with it pouring like this?”
Noona lightly tweaked my nose, telling me not to be so naive.
“I’ll give you a ride. It’s not that far, so dropping you off is no big deal.”
He, who had been silently observing the conversation between noona and me, turned to me, holding onto the bar behind him. Unable to calmly meet his gaze, I ended up awkwardly looking away first again.
Ever since returning to Seoul, I had been the only one feeling awkward around him. I had never felt comfortable around him to begin with, but now that I knew what I wanted from him, the discomfort that had been like a vague impulse accompanied by a light flutter had changed into a dull ache and a sense of suffocation.
All this time, it wasn’t that I was uncomfortable with him; it was that I had wanted him.
Whether it was interest or affection… or lust.
But it seemed I wouldn’t get what I wanted, so I was anxious, and I had mistaken that anxiety and the grating feeling in my chest for discomfort.
That’s what I thought it might be. What did the current me know, anyway?
It seemed best to not close the distance with him as much as possible. But the unfamiliar me, who hadn’t rejected him even when he’d climbed onto the bed while I was unaware of my own feelings, was shattering that resolve with deflating ease.
I thought it would be better not to be alone with him, but I wanted to be alone with him.
I looked down at the toe of my worn-out sneaker, almost touching his dress shoe, and repeatedly bit and released my lower lip.
“And, I happen to have something to talk to you about.”
I lifted my head at his slow voice. He was looking not at me, but at Inwoo-hyung. Following his gaze, I too turned to Inwoo-hyung without much thought. Across from him, hyung was just smiling with an unreadable expression.
○
“This feels more like a typhoon than a monsoon.”
As soon as we left the underground parking garage, he muttered, looking out the window at the sound of the rain pounding on the car.
“Even if I had caught a taxi, I would have been soaked just getting in.”
Just as he said, it was the kind of rain that would drench you in the short moment it took to fold an umbrella. I thanked him again for the ride, and he chuckled, saying it wasn’t something that warranted being thanked so many times.
“Seeing you in Hong Kong, it seemed like you could speak some English.”
As we stopped at the first traffic light after leaving the parking garage, he brought up an unexpected topic. He had never said anything like that in Hong Kong, so the fact that he had been observing me in that regard without my knowledge belatedly made my face flush.
“No, it’s just… a basic level. About what I learned in school….”
“You must have been a pretty diligent student. With foreign languages, even if you know it in your head and can hear it, it has to be ingrained in your body for it to come out of your mouth.”
“I don’t think I was indiligent. There wasn’t… anything else to do.”
I had lost the will to tackle anything, but for about the first year, I felt like I would go crazy if I didn’t do something. I hadn’t known what to do with myself. School classes and studying felt like a given duty, and I got through each day by completing them one by one. After that, it just became a habit.
“If you’d like to study a bit more properly, Seo Yeehyeon-ssi, I can get you a tutor. You could also join the class that Baek Yuni and Kwon Juhan are taking.”
“The class noona and hyung are taking… I probably wouldn’t be able to keep up.”
As part of their employee benefits, noona and hyung were receiving English tutoring from a native speaker once a week. It was support in preparation for overseas business, like the recent trip to Hong Kong. I was envious of the two of them conversing freely and fluently with people of various nationalities, but it wasn’t just a matter of English proficiency anyway.
The raindrops rushed in as soon as the wipers pushed them away, constantly creating waves as they streamed down. All the cars on the street were moving slowly and cautiously. Even so, considering it was a Friday night, the traffic was noticeably light.
Inside the car, where no radio or music was playing, there was only the sound of the rain, which seemed to want to pull us out of this car and swallow us whole.
“Or… should I teach you?”
“……”
I turned to look at his smiling face.
Was his tone sounding meaningful only because it was a misinterpretation colored by my own feelings?
To someone as clumsy as me, the hints he gave were just confusing and insufficient. From the start, there was no ruling out the possibility that they weren’t hints at all, and I was just assigning meaning to them on my own.
I considered whether reacting in a moment like this with something like, ‘Would you? If I’m learning from you, CEO, I’d like to try,’ would be a mature and sexy provocation, but just imagining myself doing that made me feel like a deflated laugh would escape. That really wasn’t it.
“I’m kidding. I don’t know why, but I have zero talent for teaching.”
Shrugging, he laughed by himself again. It seemed close to a self-deprecating sneer. Perhaps he felt pathetic, talking to himself in front of a silent block of wood like me.
“How long did you live in that house before moving to Chief Han’s place?”
In the end, he brought up a different topic. The car began to move slowly with the green light.
“Only about a month.”
“Hmm.” He let out a sound like a groan, keeping an eye on the car behind us that was attempting a dangerous pass in this rain.
“It was really close to my house, though.”
I hadn’t known the location of his house before, but thinking about it now, it was a really short distance, just as Chief Kwon had said.
With the intersection that housed a large convenience store and a large Italian restaurant specializing in brick-oven pizza as the reference point, the northwest was the so-called moon village where Morae and hyung’s rooftop apartment was. Although housing prices were said to be rising rapidly recently, the old, unrenovated houses were still dirt cheap. The eastern hill where his house was located was a traditional wealthy neighborhood, famous for being home to conglomerate chairmen, Hallyu actors, and foreign ambassadors.
It was similar to the structure of my grandfather’s village, which had been divided into a rich and a poor district centered around the port.
I had never actually done it, but it would probably take only about twenty minutes to walk from the rooftop apartment to his house. Now that I was living at Chief Kwon’s place, even if an opportunity to visit his house arose again, I probably wouldn’t be walking that route.
“Have you ever been to the Italian restaurant at the intersection?”
“No.”
“Ah, definitely don’t go. The food is terrible and it’s just expensive.”
He must have been thoroughly disappointed, as his expression was serious and his tone was firm, but that’s what made me burst out laughing. For some reason, he didn’t seem like the type of person to say something like that so seriously. Though, trying to guess his ‘true self’ when I knew so little about him was nothing more than a prejudice based on an image.
When I laughed, he chuckled along with me.
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