“The lessons my sister and Juhan take... ◆ Nоvеlіgһt ◆ (Only on Nоvеlіgһt) I probably couldn’t keep up.”
As part of staff benefits, my sister and Juhan had a weekly one-on-one with a native English teacher. It was support for overseas business like the Hong Kong trip. I envied how the two of them could talk smoothly with people of all nationalities in fluent English, but that wasn’t just an English-skill problem anyway.
The moment the wipers pushed back the water, sheets of rain came crashing in and flowed down in constant waves; every car on the road was inching along with care. Even so, given it was a Friday night, the traffic volume was strikingly light.
With no radio or music on, the only sound in the car was the fierce rain, as if it wanted to pry us out of the car and swallow us whole.
“Or... should I teach you?”
“......”
I turned to his face with a trace of a smile.
Was his tone only sounding suggestive because my feelings were projecting the wrong meaning onto it?
For someone clumsy like me, the hints he gave were always hazy and insufficient. It was just as possible they weren’t hints at all and I was assigning meaning by myself.
For a second I considered whether saying something like, “Would you? If I’m learning from you, I’d like to try,” would count as a grown, sexy provocation—but just imagining myself acting like that made a deflated laugh leak out. That really wasn’t me.
“Kidding. I don’t know why, but I’m hopeless at teaching.”
He shrugged and laughed by himself again. It looked close to a self-mocking smirk. Maybe he felt foolish talking on his own to a log that didn’t respond.
“How long did you stay at that house before moving to Chief Han’s?”
In the end he picked another topic. The light turned green and the car began to roll slowly.
“Only about a month.”
“Mmh.” He made a sound like a low groan as he watched a car behind us try a risky overtake in this rain.
“It really is close to my place.”
I hadn’t known where his house was before, but thinking about it now, it was exactly as the Chief had said—really close.
Using the intersection with the big convenience store and the large Italian place that did wood-fired pizza as the reference point, the northwest was the so-called hillside slum where Morae and my brother’s rooftop room were. Home prices had surged lately, but the narrow, old houses that hadn’t been remodeled still went cheap. By contrast, the eastern hill where his house sat was the classic wealthy district—famous for conglomerate heads, Korean Wave actors, and foreign ambassadors living there.
It was similar to my grandfather’s village, split into rich and poor around the harbor.
I’d never actually walked it, but from the rooftop room to his house would probably be twenty minutes at a fast pace. Now that I was staying at the Chief’s, even if I had reason to visit his house again, I probably wouldn’t be walking that route.
“Have you been to that Italian restaurant on the corner?”
“No.”
“Ah, don’t go. Ever. The food’s bad and it’s overpriced.”
He must have been thoroughly disappointed—the look on his face was serious and his tone firm, which made me burst out laughing all the more. Somehow he didn’t seem like the kind of person who’d say something like that so seriously. Trying to guess his “real self” when I still knew more about him that I didn’t know would only be prejudice based on an image.
When I laughed, he gave a quick laugh too.
The rain cut off as if by a lie when we entered the tunnel. The laugh had eased my tension a little, and my thoughts slipped to the cigarettes I’d kept in my backpack.
I fished in my pocket and handed over a pack with a green wrapper. He looked from the cigarettes to me and back again, like, What’s this?
“It’s just... at the hotel, I smoked one.”
“......”
His eyes widened a little. A mischievous smile slowly spread over his face, like he’d just caught a kid pulling a cheeky stunt. He was the one who’d said that since I was an adult the decision to smoke was mine, anyway.
“I kept it to give you a pack when we were back in Seoul, but I never found the right timing....”
I apologized for touching something without asking, and he said, What’s the fuss over a single cigarette, and joked that if he could charge this kind of interest, he’d welcome it anytime. With a perfectly serious face like a moment ago.
He didn’t set the cigarettes down anywhere; he took them and rolled the pack around in his palm on the steering wheel for a moment. In profile, the clean lines that looked like they wouldn’t allow careless approach made him seem deep in thought.
The tunnel section ended in the meantime, and we were shoved back into the rain.
The silence inside the car was scarier than the angry water outside. The empty space that opened up when we were alone brought back the past three days of facing each other at Phantom after coming back from Hong Kong.
He’d returned a day later than me, on Tuesday, and didn’t come in properly until Wednesday morning.
When he gave me direct work instructions here and there, he was impassive. At least that’s how it seemed. He didn’t look at me with any extra significance, didn’t leave his gaze on me longer than necessary—none of that.
Now and then, when I’d been deep in work and lifted my head without thinking as I shifted posture, our eyes would meet. That was all.
We each did our jobs—contacting the courier company handling shipping for the pieces sold at the fair, producing pamphlets to promote our strong results at the art fair to existing clients in Seoul. Just like before.
“You smoked my cigarette, and what else did you get up to.”
“......”
So I hadn’t expected him to bring up that day like this, even obliquely. This time my eyes widened. There was a touch of laughter in his voice.
“I heard you couldn’t even finish a bowl of wonton noodles, didn’t get a massage, didn’t leave the room.”
I wanted a breath of outside air, but if I cracked the window even a sliver, the rain would come straight in onto my lap.
I kneaded the seat belt cutting across my chest as if to tear it off, mouthed words that almost, almost formed, then in the end let out a short sigh and kept my mouth shut.
In ordinary moments like this—not when the sexual tension between us was pulled taut—I had no prep or resolve for what expression and tone I should use to talk about that day.
The intersection he’d mentioned was coming up before I knew it.
He must have given up on hearing an answer, because he switched lanes to another topic.
“Do you... want to come to round two?”
He asked it as he eased down for the light at the intersection.
“I’m taking two more days off. We don’t have to rush tonight—we’ll have plenty of time to spend. Your brother and Yuni said they’re off this weekend too.”
I forgot the awkwardness and met his eyes.
This was the kind of person who seemed picky about who came in and never grabbed those who left—yet here he was, asking me to come along to round two, as if trying to keep hold of me.
I searched the corners of those enigmatic eyes for the hope or hint I wanted.
Through the heavy scent of rain that had sunk into the car interior, a fleeting trace of his fragrance brushed by and a chill ran down my spine. Even that brief moment, the scent brought back in an instant the intensity of the pleasure I’d shared with it. Startled, I found myself half-covering my nose and mouth with a hand and turning my head.
“It’s the post-trip get-together. It’d be weird for someone to skip.”
The way he added it made him look like he wanted to block in advance the optimistic interpretation I might give his words. The ticklish sense that he was drifting a little closer dissipated the next moment like a light scent skimming past my nose.
Either way, reading his intentions or thoughts was near impossible. Maybe it was the ten-year age gap, or the gap in experience that came with it. Maybe it was a deeper personality difference. Frustrating, but it couldn’t be helped. It’s not like I could go out somewhere, pretend to be a playboy, and stockpile dating experience.
“I want to, but... I have something important I need to talk about tonight.”
At my careful refusal, he narrowed his eyes and looked straight at me.
A short, irritable honk snapped from behind us. The light had changed. He turned the car toward the northwest hill.
Since I came back, he hadn’t pestered or pressured me to think about painting. The Chief was the same. They’d put all the cards on the table; now they seemed to be giving me time to decide on my own. But I knew I couldn’t lean on their consideration and drag it out too long.
Most likely tonight my brother and Morae would share their decision. I’d make my own position clearer too. On top of that, I planned to persuade them to start preparing to leave for Bali right away, whatever answer they gave.
I still didn’t know if I could really paint again.
But I couldn’t deny even the desire that I wanted to be able to. However vague and faint, having something couldn’t be the same as not having it.
Whatever the outcome, I would try, first of all.
Sure, part of the reason was the thought that if I picked up the brush again, my brother and Morae could go more easily—but I had no intention of dressing my choice up as some self-sacrifice for others.
It was a decision to follow my own desire, and I would try not to think of that as greed.
There were people who had shown me, directly, that listening to your own desire didn’t automatically mean denying and crushing someone else’s. Even weak as I was, I could make a stepping-stone of belief.
It wasn’t that courage had sprung up in the meantime. It was that I wouldn’t wait for courage—whatever it was, I’d try taking the first step. Probably... even if I waited, courage wouldn’t come. The moment you take the step, that will be courage.
A church building absurdly grand for this neighborhood was growing closer. In the pouring rain it exhaled a pale mist over its big, dark body, like a menacing castle in a medieval horror film.
“That important talk—is it something I’m allowed to look forward to?”
“......”
I had made up my mind, but I didn’t want to speak it before the shape was fully distinct.
Instead of answering, I gave him my eyes. I wanted him to understand that my holding back wasn’t hesitation—I wanted to be careful.
Guiding the car toward the bus stop at the foot of the stairs, he smiled faintly.
“You’re not someone who opens his mouth easily.”
It wasn’t wrong, so this time I smiled faintly.
“I’ll tell you on Monday.”
“All right, then. I’ll wait.”
The way he said he’d wait was sweet. Even if what he was waiting for wasn’t me but my answer, that answer was still a part of me.
I only barely talked him out of hauling my things up to the top of the stairs in this much rain. “Things” meant two paper bags of hot pot to go and a backpack with a few small souvenirs from Hong Kong like cookies and toothpaste.
When I opened the door, the downpour that had followed us all the way seemed to clamp down around me as if it had been waiting. It was the kind of rain that looked ready to gulp me down whole.
I stood there so I could move only after he left. He gave a short toot of the horn to mean, Go on ahead. When I still didn’t move, his car began to crawl forward first. I could almost see him sighing at my stubbornness and shaking his head, and I turned away with a private smile.
Was this slow, clumsy heart really hoping to date him? To be his only one... to want that absurd position?
I had never even had a one-sided crush, let alone a relationship, so I had no data on how I behaved when I liked someone, how much and in what way I wanted him—even though it was me.
Before awareness, feeling was only a vague tremor.
The thirst began after awareness, but at least it wasn’t some life-or-death urgency like I’d die right now if I couldn’t be his lover.
I still believed I was standing at a point where I could nullify the feeling.
I didn’t have the strength to bear pouring out unreturned feelings in front of him—to find, in him, emotions with names different from mine, whether it was a sneer or pity or a coolness that calls itself cool. If things got more serious and heavy, I couldn’t stand the pain of that discovery.
A heavy one-sided love didn’t fit someone like me, who had lived for years in the absence of feeling. It would be like making a skinny newbie who just joined a gym, with no strength to speak of, lift a hundred kilos.
I slung the useless umbrella over my shoulder and, one in the hand with the umbrella and one in the other, hooked the paper bags of hot pot on my fingers and climbed. I decided to think only about Morae, my brother, and painting, at least for today. Click. Like he taught me—flip the switch.
The stone stairs, with poor drainage, ran like a stream with rainwater flowing down from above. Because of the drop from step to step, not only my shoes but my shins got soaked.
There was about an hour before my brother and Morae arrived, so I planned to shower and set the table with the hot pot he’d packed for us. By the time I’d climbed all sixty-two steps that felt steeper than usual because of the rain, the back under my backpack was damp with humid sweat. I wiped the sweat under my jaw and headed for the innermost gate.
Balancing so the umbrella on my shoulder wouldn’t flip, I dug in my pocket for the gate key. In the narrow alley lined with five or six houses shoulder to shoulder, the only sound was rain drilling into umbrellas. Even the newlyweds downstairs were quiet tonight.
Because the rain was loud enough to make my ears ring, I couldn’t register the footsteps coming up behind me at all.
“...Ihyeon, is that you.”
“......”
There hadn’t been any footsteps.
As if the rain had cut off like a lie, the voice calling me pierced the downpour and struck my ear, clear as day.
My body locked up before I even turned to see whose voice it was. My hand, with the key still stuck in the gate, fell into empty air.
A tough, fishy sea-stench washed over me like a wave rolling a boat, as if this crushing rain were nothing.
My uncle.
To be continued in Diamond Dust, Volume 3.
