He walked over to the living room window, twisted the handle down to unlock it, and slowly pushed the large sliding door to the left.
For a villa that was effectively on the seventh floor, a wide garden spread out directly in front of the full height window. It was a real garden with lawn, soil, and landscaping. Beyond it, the gray Han River ran under a scattering rain.
From the garden, along with the smell of rain soaked earth, cool air pressed in. Only then did I register that the air inside had been a little stuffy.
"When the weather’s nice you can work in the garden, and there’s nothing that will get in the way. It’s quiet, right?"
With the sliding door pushed all the way open, he turned this way and smiled.
If I wasn’t misunderstanding, he was now recommending this kind of luxury villa as my atelier and temporary place to stay, and probably, he was proposing that I live here with him.
When I still didn’t respond, he came back to me. Even walking across marble tiles so delicately colored they looked almost pink, his shoes made almost no sound.
Coming up to where I stood, planted like a potted plant that didn’t match the mood of the house and stuck at one side of the living room, he bent a little and looked closely into my face. Sunglasses. I needed sunglasses, but I had already given them back to him in the car.
"That’s not the face of someone who likes the house."
Whether I liked it or not was something that came after. Even if I couldn’t keep staying at Chief Han’s, this wasn’t the kind of extravagant house I’d had in mind.
"Then where did you think you were going to stay?"
"..."
As if he’d read the question in my head, he asked.
"They’ll figure out soon enough that you’re staying at Chief Han’s. Honestly, my assessment is that Chief Han’s place was already exposed a while ago."
Saying so, he straightened and folded his arms tight across his chest.
"I’ll provide everything you need so you can focus on painting in a safe space."
"..."
"I didn’t buy it new for you, and since it’s empty anyway I was considering trying living here for a while, so there’s nothing for you to feel burdened about. I did purchase it for rental, but I like the layout and the view, and I’ve kept being interested in living here myself. And even if I lived here alone, it’s not like I’d use all this space anyway."
Separate from the fact that he was a very wealthy man, I’d rarely felt the economic gap in our conversations. He wasn’t the type to flaunt his wealth.
This ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ was the first time I’d felt such a stark difference in sensibility that it left an impression.
A house that was empty anyway, a place he was considering moving into anyway, leftover space even if he lived alone anyway, so there was no part where he was sacrificing financially at all—that simple logic he presented didn’t seem like it could make persuasive the explanation that, separate from financial sacrifice, one could feel a burden emotionally.
"Phantom, and Chief Han’s place...."
As I managed to ask that much, he looked down at me for a moment, then unfolded his arms, lightly took my wrist, and, saying don’t do that—since we were here already I should at least look around the house—he drew me by the wrist down the hall beyond the living room.
"You’ve been a lot of practical help with Phantom’s work, so I’m sorry about it too. But you need to focus only on painting. Or are you thinking of drawing as a hobby, like Choi Inwoo?"
He turned to me in front of the main bedroom on the lower floor and asked as if to confirm.
I wasn’t thinking of drawing as a hobby, but since my uncle showed up I’d been focused only on the matter of Morae and my brother, and I hadn’t yet thought concretely about other parts.
After watching me for a moment, he opened the bedroom door inward and continued.
"You understand we have no choice but to put helping Chief Han on hold, right? Setting work aside, just going in and out of that house right now isn’t very safe for you. Same goes for Chief Han."
That was a part my thoughts hadn’t reached either. Even though it was my business, the fact that he was viewing the situation more broadly and preparing countermeasures... made me grateful and ashamed at the same time.
He stood me in front of the bed, whose mattress cover had been removed so dust wouldn’t settle, then walked to the full height window that, like in the living room, connected to the garden, swept aside the sheer curtains roughly, and left the window half open.
Though it was arranged a little more comfortably than the living room, the bedroom was the same in that, with no traces of life, it felt desolate.
"It’s all too sudden, and everything’s so fast that... I just... I can’t tell what’s what...."
He came back to me as I babbled, pointlessly stroking the arm exposed below my short sleeve.
Hm... Looking up at his face as he took a big breath and let it out in a sigh made my chest feel tight. I was sorry I couldn’t readily accept his kindness and goodwill, but I was too small right now to keep up with developments that were so far beyond what I had expected.
Looking down at me, he furrowed his brow with an apologetic expression and scratched across his straight forehead.
"I pushed you a bit too hard, didn’t I?"
"..."
I shook my head hard to say no. As if that were the only way to convey my sincerity to him.
I also hated that he was always the first to notice my hesitation and worry and be the one to apologize. I said I liked him, and yet my own inadequacy, taking so much from the person I liked, made my head bow.
"No. I’m very grateful that you’ve thought through things I didn’t even think of...."
If he weren’t here, if I hadn’t met him, how would I have handled this?
I wouldn’t have handled it. For Morae and my brother, who are still socially powerless like I am, reality was that we didn’t have the strength to actually resolve the problem.
Not every problem had ended cleanly, but the reason we’d escaped a crisis that could have easily plunged into the worst and brought things this far forward was entirely thanks to his help.
"It’s just that these are options I’ve never thought about... and that’s why I’m flustered. You haven’t done anything wrong...."
"I know."
He stopped my heavy confession, which felt like putting a hand into my heart to stir around and pull out the right word.
"I know you’re grateful plenty, so you can stop saying it."
"..."
When I took courage at his warm words and looked up at him, his face was contorted. It was only a very fine crack, but in his eyes emotions like pity and empathy and regret—aimed at me, the person right in front of him—were trembling.
I think of how he used to be, a person who would help for a moment and then be gone, keeping me fixed outside the border.
At least one thing was clear.
In one form or another, I now too was included inside the sphere of his kindness and concern. There was no need to doubt that; his eyes told me so.
Anything beyond that—something special, being the only one—wanting those things... aside from questions of station or proportion, it was simply too greedy, literally. I was already receiving far too much help as it was.
From a distance of about two steps, he stared at me in silence, then, with a strained expression, averted his gaze as if to flee. Even his profile, threading his fingers through and irritably roughing his hair—styled a little more comfortably because it was a day off—looked almost anxious.
"What do you like? Drinking? Shopping? Travel? It doesn’t seem like any of those.... How am I supposed to know."
It crossed my mind that the fact he’d come all the way to the airport and brought me here to make a new proposal might have been, in its way, to comfort me, who had seen Morae and my brother off.
"Or should we meet Baek Yuni and Gwon Juhan and have a drink? Those two are bound to be better than me."
I caught his arm as he raised his phone like he’d contact my sister and brother right away. His eyes widened a little in surprise at the decisiveness with which I blocked him, almost clinging.
Not knowing how to begin, I bit my lower lip, then, as if in surrender, rested my forehead against the edge of his shoulder.
Now that Morae and my brother had safely left the country, through the relief I felt I was realizing, in reverse, that I had been suffering from a deeper anxiety than I’d thought. Hot on the heels of the reassurance that, since they’d left safely, I could finally breathe... came the hollow feeling as if part of my chest had been torn away.
If I was going to soothe and ease that feeling with someone, there was only one person I wanted to be that someone.
"..."
He paused for a moment, then put his phone back in his pocket.
His palm cupped my whole cheek. Under that gentle strength my head was lifted.
"Are you sad."
His voice, refined and at odds with the word sadness, was, unlike just before, only calm.
I’d been giving up on naming it, saying it was a feeling that couldn’t be simply defined with the single word sadness, but looked at most simply, it was sadness. The people I loved had gone far away, and I was sad.
As always, I was only pretending to accept the situation and refusing to show it; I already felt empty and at a loss, and I already felt sorry for the life of mine that would continue without them and the lives of theirs that would continue without me. Not knowing how to handle the feeling, I’d only been hovering, afraid to touch it rashly, and he gave me the chance to acknowledge the sadness.
His hand burrowed in deeper, not my cheek now but cupping back toward my ear. It didn’t have to be “that scent.” Anything was fine.
"I think... I’m sad."
Leaning my face a little into the hand that cupped my cheek, I corrected myself and answered.
"Yes, I’m sad."
"..."
He narrowed his eyes and examined every part of my face, as if he were reading some intangible message from me. “That scent,” which I was sure I hadn’t felt at all just moments ago, began to be faintly detectable, bit by bit, within the other scent he’d worn before.
"You said if I wanted you... all I had to do was say it. That I could have you anytime. Stupid...."
As if to fling the last words into the air, the moment he finished speaking he lowered his head and pressed his lips deep to mine. My waist was tugged and my chest pressed tight to his.
With his hand at the back of my head pushing in, my lips parted, and his tongue filled my mouth. The familiar “scent” seized nose and mouth in an instant, and as it poured in I exhaled hard through my nose, wrapped my arms around his back, and held on tight.
He kissed me thickly, tilting his head, holding me close as if he meant to pour some precious medicine into me.
The embrace that pressed my waist and chest so tightly that my breathing was constrained was almost like a binding. Feeling relief in the grip that left no space at all between us, I too tightened my arms around his wide back.
His tongue, scraping the roof of my mouth with its tip, pulled out of me in haste, and, unsatisfied, I clutched his jacket and this time pushed my tongue toward his lips. It was swallowed immediately.
"Mm, m... ng."
At the strong suction that drew my tongue in all at once to the maximum, the inside of my throat vibrated. His left arm that had cinched my waist grabbed my butt over my jeans.
We didn’t close our eyes. At a distance where our noses rubbed, we sucked and sucked at each other’s tongues, fixatedly searching the eyes of the other as they quickly wet with desire. As if that alone were another stimulant to arousal.
The strength with which he held me and kissed me—so hard my ribs ached and my tongue stung, as if to impose his own existence—made my existence, in reverse, definite. Even if my outline was faint and my colors blurred, in this moment to him I was an object of desire and need.
No, today I wasn’t just an object of sex. This heat was clearly comfort from him.
"Ha—ngh."
Letting go of the tongue he had held full in his mouth, sucking and squeezing, he pushed me back toward the wall. A dull pain flared as my back hit, and his thick thigh drove between my legs.
At the blatant friction delivered more directly to my sex, my mind flashed white for a moment and it felt like my body lifted. I slid the arm that had been around his back up under his armpit and around his shoulder and pulled him in tighter.
"Haah, h. Hh."
In an instant he ran hot, his shoulders and breath heaving, and with both hands he grabbed my butt and tugged as if to haul me up onto his thigh.
With lids half raised we looked down at each other’s lips and extended our tongues, rubbing tip against tip. The friction of wet flesh rubbing outside the body was different from a kiss inside the mouth. Even with no one watching, the rebellious pleasure of exposing something secret to the outside made the tip of my tongue tingle.
Every time he hitched up my butt, my heels lifted. The thigh rubbing between my legs, with desire erupting suddenly, was clenched harder than usual. So was the chest pressed to the shoulder I was holding. His body was so keyed up the grooves of split muscle were distinct even through his clothes.
As if he were thrusting in and out of me while already inside. Pulling me in and setting me down over and over, he occasionally shook his thigh to add obscene stimulation between my legs.
"Mmm, h, huh...."
Each shake sent a vibration through my body that turned into a tremor in my breath, and he looked down at me, like that, with softened eyes and admired.
His eyes, breaking and changing color white to blue depending on the angle, looked like they were seeing rapture through me, and even if that was my delusion, at least it didn’t seem like I was the only one heating up and wanting his body this much, and for now, that was a relief.
