“……”
“I think it’s because I’ve been deceived so much in my life. I especially hate it when it’s because of money.”
“……”
“Other than that, appearance…… I thought it’d be good if they were pretty. But I think handsome is good too. Cool, sexy, powerful. Like, someone who could split an apple with one hand…… Ah, age doesn’t matter. However old they are.”
“……”
“Anyway. That’s the kind of person I want to meet. What about you, Dowon-ssi?”
“……”
“……Dowon-ssi……?”
After a long silence, a voice mixed with a sigh cut through the darkness.
“……I don’t have one.”
“What?”
“I said I don’t have something like that.”
Dowon added as if annoyed, or as if tired.
“I’ve never set up such leisurely standards in my life. And I never will.”
“……Ah.”
Yeohwi opened his mouth blankly.
He doesn’t have an ideal type.
Did that mean no one had ever caught Dowon’s fancy until now? Or did it mean he’d lived his life excluding the emotion of love itself from the start?
“Dowon-ssi, then have you ever dated? I haven’t.”
“You said you’d sleep quietly if I told you.”
“Ah, did I say that?”
“You heard what you were curious about, right? Sleep.”
“But I actually know.”
“What.”
Yeohwi mumbled while burying his face in the pillow.
“That Director Do doesn’t have a single scandal. Women problems, men problems, neither.”
“……”
“Well, if Dowon-ssi had someone specific, Do Jingyu or Do Jinsang wouldn’t have left them alone. Like how they came and threw a fit at me……?”
“……”
“It’s not that there wasn’t anyone, but that there couldn’t be anyone. Someone who caught Dowon-ssi’s fancy.”
“Stop rambling. Just get some sleep.”
Dowon’s voice hardened stiffly. It was a clear signal that he wouldn’t allow any more conversation. But Yeohwi didn’t stop.
If there’s no set answer, then I could become that answer.
Even if I’m the wrong answer right now.
“If you ever come to like me, please tell me. I’ll be waiting in line first, anytime.”
“……”
“Are you sleeping? Really sleeping?”
“……I’m not.”
Dowon’s voice came out even lower. He was staring at the ceiling in the darkness.
“Do you not know how to give up?”
“What?”
“You agreed to the divorce too. Why do you cling to this side so much when you know it’s obviously a rope that will break? I should have told you it’s a waste of time, a waste of emotions, full of inefficiency.”
Dowon’s words were heartless, but Yeohwi read the faint doubt contained within them. It was a tone that truly didn’t understand. Yeohwi rested his chin on the pillow and stared intently at Dowon’s back.
“Dowon-ssi…… you don’t lie.”
“What?”
“And you’re not kind either.”
“……”
“All the people who tried to con me were kind. They pretended to be the kindest in the world, pretended to care about me.”
Yeohwi’s voice flowed out calmly.
“There was a person called Executive Director Gye. He was a butler who supposedly served Grandfather his whole life. That person held my hand and cried his eyes out. Poor baby young master, if you permit, I will now dare to become your father, he said. I thought that was real and followed him calling him Dad, Dad. I went to that ahjussi’s room and slept there every night, because I was scared.”
“……”
“But it turned out he was in cahoots with Grandfather’s personal lawyer manipulating the will. When Grandfather’s condition was good, when he briefly came to his senses and noticed, there was a huge commotion with even knife fighting and chaos. We even called the police…… I was lucky.”
Dowon’s breathing in the darkness became quiet as if it had stopped.
“I learned then. That smiling faces are the scariest. That people who show their true colors outright are better.”
Yeohwi smiled bitterly.
“Dowon-ssi was like that from the start. You’re annoying, I don’t like you, you’re a brat, get lost.”
“……”
“But I…… that actually reassures me. At least Dowon-ssi won’t smile at me while stabbing me in the back. Even if I’m rejected, it’s to my face. And actually, everything Dowon-ssi says to me is right……”
Yeohwi truly believed it. That at least this man doesn’t deceive me.
That’s why Dowon’s cold, hard side felt safer than any warm embrace outside. Should he call it a solid fence, no, a fortress wall? Even knowing he’d be kicked out, he wanted to enter.
“That’s why I like it. Because Dowon-ssi is really honest. You pretend to be the villain, but you’re actually the most transparent person.”
Silence flowed for a long while. Only the sound of the night wind knocking on the window could be heard in the darkness.
Dowon, who had been weighing the burden of the past Yeohwi had revealed and that deformed yet pure trust directed at himself, suddenly opened his mouth.
“……What do you know. As if you understand everything.”
He turned his body to lie facing the sofa side. Their outlines were faintly visible to eyes accustomed to the darkness.
“There are plenty of bastards in the world who are assholes on the outside and assholes through the back door too, rotting away.”
“Then, does that mean Dowon-ssi is one of those bastards?”
“Who knows. Maybe.”
“Wow, that was a clumsy attempt. If you were a real bastard, why would you tell me this?”
“Because I don’t need to scheme to steal your snot-covered money. You’re going to come and offer it on your own even if I leave you alone, so why bother.”
“……Pfft.”
Yeohwi finally couldn’t hold it in and burst out laughing.
“Wow, you’re really unlucky…… But it’s true.”
Yeohwi buried his face in the sofa backrest and giggled. The stone that had been sitting heavily in a corner of his chest felt a little lighter.
“Should I just give all my money to Dowon-ssi and become penniless? Then won’t you take me in out of pity?”
“Don’t even dream about it.”
“Aw, I can dream. I’m sleeping anyway.”
“It’s a pipe dream.”
“You never know. I think there’s quite a chance. You keep protecting a poor kid, you won’t even touch me because it weighs on your conscience…… Would someone like that watch me get divorced and end up on the streets?”
Dowon silently gazed at Yeohwi’s smiling silhouette. His eyes glinted occasionally in the darkness. Yeohwi continued to spout dream-like words.
“The plan is this. I won’t leave this house and just endure for exactly 10 years. By then I’ll be thirty too. Maturely ripened so you can’t refuse using the excuse that I’m young, right? No, thinking about it, there’s no need to wait until thirty. If I just wait about 5 years and then sneak into Dowon-ssi’s room and suddenly……”
“……You’ll pounce on me or something?”
“W-well. If I’m twenty-five, Dowon-ssi will be thirty-seven. Won’t I win if I use my strength?”
“As if you could. It wouldn’t even get hard for you anyway, so how would you do it.”
“I get hard just fine, so there’s no problem.”
“What? This bastard……”
“Why. C-can’t I? Can’t I……?”
“You mongrel bastard. If you want to fuck, go out and find a matching hole. I said I’d allow it.”
“No……! Hmph…… I definitely said no. I don’t want anyone but Dowon-ssi.”
“How do you know without even trying? You’ll probably fall for the first person you see as soon as you go outside the house and follow them around clinging. It’s obvious from what you do.”
“That’s ridiculous. Do I look that flighty?”
“Yeah. You’re easy to win over. Just one finger, no, one fingertip would be enough.”
Dowon closed his eyes first.
“Tomorrow will be busy. Stop whining and save your stamina, sleep.”
“……Yes. Sleep well, Dowon-ssi.”
Yeohwi followed and closed his eyes too.
Sleep didn’t come at all, but he closed his eyes and quietly spent this moment like that.
***
Sure enough, Yeohwi didn’t sleep a wink all night.
When he closed his eyes, he thought he could hear Dowon’s regular breathing from the bed placed at a distance, making all his nerves stand on end, and even though he wanted to toss and turn, he couldn’t even breathe loudly for fear of waking him. In the end, he could only watch the outside of the window brighten bluishly with open eyes.
The unfamiliar ceiling and the elaborate Rococo-style molding decorating it. And the huge crystal chandelier emitting a faint light. Only when the morning sunlight squeezed in through the curtain gaps did Yeohwi succumb to the rushing fatigue and briefly fall into a light sleep.
“Wake up.”
Had he slept about thirty minutes? A low voice that pierced through his hazy consciousness struck his ears.
Yeohwi made a groaning sound while laboriously lifting his heavy eyelids.
“Ugh.”
He blinked painfully. His vision was blurry. Someone was standing at his bedside with their back to the backlight. A familiar cedarwood scent wafted from the person.
