Chapter 82
I don’t know why I came here.
This wasn’t a decision made in a normal state of mind, after considering the consequences and the aftermath. My steps toward this place, which I had only visited once, were controlled by my subconscious and instinct.
Like an ant or a moth that senses the approach of a cruel finger about to crush it and instinctively turns toward a safe place. After walking frantically, desperately, I found myself here.
It hadn’t even been two hours since we parted at the bus stop across from the church. It was only after I arrived in front of the heavy, firmly shut gate that I realized he was probably in the middle of a second round of drinks with the others.
I stepped under the brick roof above the gate, propped my umbrella in the corner, and hugged my trembling, wet body, rubbing my arms. Even though I had clearly used an umbrella to get here, my entire body, including my hair, was drenched. I must have just been holding the handle unconsciously, without any real thought of shielding myself from the rain.
I took my phone out of my jeans pocket and made a call. In a normal state, I would never have come to this house, but even if I had, I wouldn’t have dared to call, having shown up unannounced.
But as I wiped my wet face with my palm, the fingers that called the “CEO” had none of their usual hesitation or consideration for hollow courtesy. When cornered, a person will dispense with such courtesies to save themselves, and they can act in ways they normally wouldn’t.
Courtesy, the personality I knew as my own—none of it was the solid form and substance that made me who I was.
That wasn’t my only weak and flimsy part.
I wanted to viciously mock and curse myself for my social and mental weakness, for how I was bound to falter, my safety and peace threatened by outside intervention, no matter how much I pretended to be stoic.
I had mistaken a bland emptiness where nothing happened for peace.
Becoming numb was also a completely different concept from becoming strong.
I hadn’t known until now.
I thought I had simply chosen to be defensive rather than aggressive, but I had only been hiding myself in a void where no attack could occur. How can you defend when there is no attack?
My daily life was, at best, based on a thin, endlessly unstable glass floor that could only be maintained if nothing happened.
I was no different from the sixteen-year-old me, who had been exposed to external stimuli in a defenseless state, swayed by them, and left scarred. The metallic coldness of the thick iron gate at my back felt chilling, as if it would freeze me to the bone.
I don’t know how much time passed. It felt like about five minutes, and also like a terribly long time.
From the end of the alley that met the road, the beams of headlights cut through the downpour. A car drove straight toward me without turning right or left, and even before it came to a proper stop in front of the gate, there was the sound of someone hastily jumping out.
I slowly raised my head.
Before I could even lift my head fully, a figure dashed under the roof and draped his jacket over my shoulders. It was before he asked anything or said a word of greeting.
The thin summer jacket covered my wet shoulders, and he pulled me into his arms without a word.
A presence, distinct and devoid of any uncertainty, held me. The hardness and heat of his chest and shoulders, pulling me away from the coldness at my back, spoke of his solidity, so different from mine, of the lonely, condensed time he had spent forging himself.
While he opened the garage door with the remote and asked the designated driver to park the car, I, in his arms, repeatedly mumbled that I would paint, that he had to help me. Like an untalented, unknown actor at an audition, full of desperation, with only a single line prepared.
He readjusted the jacket several times, holding me tighter. The arm that wrapped around my waist, the hand that crossed my back to hold my shoulder, was like a rope, wound taut to keep me from falling further into unproductive self-loathing and sentimental self-pity.
Pressing the back of my head to bury my face in his shoulder, he muttered a low curse, and I felt the seething anxiety within me subside at just the sound of his voice. I squeezed my eyes shut.
He must have been curious and surprised, to have someone who was out suddenly call him from in front of his house. But he just drove the cold out of me with his body heat and asked nothing.
Still keeping me in front of his chest, he paid the designated driver, then pulled his jacket more snugly around me and led me inside the gate. I could feel the driver’s curious gaze glancing at us, but I didn’t care.
In his dark, rain-drenched garden, the air and moisture hung heavy, smelling like a deep forest. It felt like a different place from the garden that day I enjoyed a picnic reminiscent of the March Hare and the Mad Hatter’s tea party with Yuni-noona and Juhan-hyung.
As we passed through the gloomy garden, where it felt like a man in a raincoat might leap out from behind a dark bush at any moment, and stepped into the entryway, the air felt distinctly softer than outside.
His brow furrowed with a look of dismay, and he bit his lip slightly.
“Wait here a moment.”
I had a feeling I knew what he was worried about as he started to rush toward the living room. At first, I thought he was getting a towel, but seeing the look of utter frustration on his face, I realized that wasn’t it. The painting. He was clearly going to put away ‘Isolation’.
As he was about to step up into the hallway from the entryway, I grabbed the side of his shirt and shook my head.
The painting itself isn’t the problem. My reaction back then was about all the past events that the painting, which I had encountered completely unprepared, had brought to mind.
“It’s okay. That… I’m really okay with it now.”
“……”
Even though my whole body was soaked, my voice was raspy.
He stopped and looked down at me. Then, with a touch so gentle it was almost cautious, he wrapped his arm around my shoulder again and spoke as if soothing a child.
“Then let’s go to the study. It’ll be warmer there.”
Water dripped from my T-shirt and jeans, and my wet socks made marks on the clean wooden tiles, but he pulled me by the shoulder, telling me not to worry about it.
We went up to the second floor, and he led me not to the study, but to the bathroom. It was the en-suite bathroom in his bedroom, which I had used once before.
Warming up your body comes first, he said firmly to me, as I stood stiffly at the bathroom entrance, clutching the hem of the jacket he had draped over me.
“You don’t have to use soap, just soak in the warm water for a bit.”
He bent over, lightly stirring the water filling the tub with his fingertips as if to gauge the temperature, then turned to me and added.
“Your body temperature has dropped to the core. It won’t come back up quickly unless you do this.”
I didn’t want to be any more of a burden, but I didn’t want to worry him either. I nodded.
Instead of a foaming bath bomb, he dissolved some faintly scented bath salts in the tub, then adjusted a dial to dim the bathroom lights. He then carefully removed the jacket from my shoulders, which I had been clinging to as if it were a lifeline.
Under his gaze, which swept over my entire body, I became conscious of my clothes, soaked and clinging to my skin. When I used my hands to pull the stomach of my T-shirt away from my body, he let out a soft laugh.
“Make sure you warm up your head properly, too.”
He said, lightly tousling my wet hair, then went out and closed the bathroom door.
I was bewildered, as if the memory of how I ended up standing in his bathroom had been cut out, but I acknowledged his strength and my own shortcomings, and decided to just follow his instructions for now. There was no point in clinging to a flimsy sense of pride; this was a situation I couldn’t even begin to resolve without his help.
I struggled out of my wet clothes and hesitantly stepped into the tub. As my frozen body sank into the slightly hot water, my skin tingled and itched. It was a sensation I usually only felt in winter.
I cupped water in my palms and splashed it on my face and head. My body was relaxing into a languid state, but it couldn’t melt the tension in my mind. I straightened my body, which was about to shrink away from the resurfacing threat, and shook my head. Knock, knock. After a short knock, the door opened about half a hand’s breadth.
“May I come in?”
The door opened toward the shower stall on the opposite side, not toward the tub. I could only hear his voice; I couldn’t see his face.
I was conscious of being naked, but I couldn’t make a fuss and ask him to leave.
“Yes…”
He came in with a change of clothes and a mug. He placed the clothes on a shelf attached to the wall next to the door, then approached. I awkwardly pulled my knees to my chest to cover my genitals, and from above me, he chuckled.
“What’s with the sudden shyness…”
“……”
Feeling my earlobes grow hot at his amused voice, I took the mug he offered. It was warm milk.
“Drink some. It’ll warm you up and calm you down.”
“Thank you…”
Perhaps he had intentionally warmed the mug as well as the milk, because the ceramic surface itself was piping hot.
He stood there, waiting, even after I had cupped the mug and taken a sip or two of the milk. I looked up at him.
Standing with his hands on his hips, looking down at me, he had the face of an owner looking at a puppy that had finally returned home at dusk after sneaking out and causing worry.
A face that wanted to be angry at the puppy’s filthy, scratched-up state—as if it had rolled in the mud, rummaged through trash, and even fought with other dogs—but couldn’t bring itself to, out of pity… If I had to make a comparison, that was the look on his face.
Feeling like the runaway puppy that had no excuse to offer, my gaze naturally dropped again. He let out a long sigh.
“Come out when you’re warm enough. Change into the fresh clothes.”
My initial negative impression and harsh judgment of him felt like a distant memory. Though not to the extent of Yuni-noona and Juhan-hyung, at some point, he had begun to open up his kindness to me, little by little. I didn’t know how much our private relationship—the fact that we had slept together—had influenced it, but it was clear that his kindness now wasn’t just because we were sleeping together.
After a long bath, until the warmth of the mug had faded to lukewarm, I came out of the bathroom holding a wet towel. He was sitting on the one-person sofa in the bedroom, drinking whiskey. The situation was in many ways similar to the first day I came to this room, and my mouth went dry.
At the sound of my presence, he stood up, came closer, and rubbed the ends of my wet hair between his fingers, saying I should dry it. It seemed like he would offer to dry it himself if I hesitated, so I obediently did as he said.
While I sat in front of the mirror at the bathroom entrance drying my hair, he leaned against the wall behind me, watching me through the mirror.
When I thought I was done and placed the hairdryer on the vanity, looking at him in the mirror, he unfolded his arms, silently approached, turned the hairdryer back on, and wove his fingers deep into my hair to dry it thoroughly, all the way to the scalp. I guess my attempt hadn’t been up to his standards.
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