The annex was still as quiet as it had been a few days ago. Unlike the main building, which had been bustling enough even with the small number of survivors, there was no sense of survivors’ presence here, and there were no particular structural changes.
Come to think of it, I think I’d heard that Lee Gojun and Lee Geonwoo were still living in the annex. Perhaps because of that, though I wasn’t sure if it was just my imagination, the air in the first-floor corridor seemed more pleasant than before.
As I was taking small breaths, my body tilted diagonally as Cha Woodan seemed to be climbing the stairs. While I was lost in other thoughts, he seemed to have roughly looked around the first floor.
“Do I really have to act?”
“……”
“Where should we say you got hurt, Hayoung-ah. Your face? Arm? Or your leg or ankle?”
There seemed to be a subtly emphasized intonation when he mentioned the last options. Suddenly recalling Cha Woodan’s touch and gaze on the day he grasped my ankle, I quickly emptied my mind and clumsily tried to raise my senses.
There was no problem roughly scanning the entire annex with a general sense, but the fact that the target I needed to find was a person made it nothing less than an excessively harsh task for me. If it had been a matter of finding monsters, I probably could have easily checked not only the annex but also the nearby field. However, finding people was something I couldn’t get used to no matter how many times I repeated it.
Instead of me swallowing a sigh, Cha Woodan went up to the second floor, and then to the third floor. Soon he reached the fourth floor and stopped moving for a moment as he was entering the corridor.
“He’s there.”
I couldn’t know where “there” that Cha Woodan was pointing to was. Leaving me turning my head sharply behind, he moved his steps again.
“He’s not even hiding his presence anymore. It seems he’s given up on running away.”
I slowly turned my head, still trying to detect Cha Jeoh’s presence that I couldn’t feel.
From Cha Jeoh’s perspective, he was cornered this much, so there would be no more way out. It’s not like we’d spend our lives chasing and being chased. So for Cha Jeoh, all that was left was to raise both hands and feet in surrender around now, and get caught by me while pretending otherwise.
Cha Woodan, who had reached a certain point before I knew it, carefully moved only his hands so as not to drop me and opened the door. Unlike the main building, perhaps because it hadn’t been used much recently, a heavy noise of the door frame engaging rang out.
Soon Cha Woodan entered the classroom. I felt momentarily puzzled by his action of not closing the door again for some reason, but I quickly turned my attention elsewhere.
A faint presence began to be felt from one side of the classroom. That thing shaped like a person gradually became clearer as the distance grew closer. Soon, when Cha Woodan stopped right in front of him, I could hear him taking small breaths.
“…Hayoung-ah.”
That voice was sinking unusually low today and seemed to have become roughly hoarse. When I lightly tapped Cha Woodan’s shoulder, he bent his waist to put me down.
Where my bottom touched was not a hard chair or floor but atop a fluffy pile of blankets. If there was a place with blankets in the annex, there was only one, so it was obvious where this was. The place where blankets that hadn’t all been moved to the main building remained, that classroom where the twins and I had stayed in the annex for several days.
I settled in while arranging the rustling blankets, and groped through the air to reach out my hand. I had attempted to grab an arm or shoulder, but what my fingertips touched was bare skin. Slowly examining the outline, it was probably a face.
“Hayoung-ah….”
Cha Jeoh called me again, drawing out the pronunciation. His cheek too, no less than his voice, seemed to have become rough.
“I don’t deserve to receive your touch… and yet….”
Even while saying so, he didn’t try to avoid his own cheek where my hand was touching. It was truly a shameless and contradictory attitude. While I swallowed a hollow laugh with an emotionless expression, someone sat down close behind my back.
Because Cha Woodan gently pulled my body, my small back bumped against his flat chest. I could tell he had positioned me between his two legs.
However, what drew out my puzzlement more than the current posture or situation was something else.
‘Why hasn’t he closed the door yet?’
I couldn’t voice it directly yet. If I expressed it through gestures, at least one of the twins would understand perceptively, but I also thought there might be a special reason why Cha Woodan, who couldn’t have forgotten such an important fact, deliberately didn’t close the door.
“…Do you hate me now?”
An out-of-the-blue question cut through and pierced the thoughts I had been having. As I moved my lips with displeasure, I felt Cha Jeoh drooping beyond my unseeing vision.
“Because I… hurt you… if things had gone slightly wrong, you might have really died….”
Half of what Cha Jeoh was muttering flowed out through my other ear as it was. That’s how much what Cha Jeoh harbored was only useless anxiety, nutritionless worry, and guilt that the person in question didn’t want.
There were many things I wanted to say.
That there’s no way I would hate him.
That what he did hurt, but it wasn’t something I couldn’t handle.
That I couldn’t have died from just that much of a wound, and that he wouldn’t have let me die anyway.
‘So….’
…So. What should I say after that?
That I’ll forgive you? That let’s get along well from now on?
Thinking about it, this was a first. Both someone being this sorry to me, and me trying to respond to it, however clumsily, with sincerity.
‘…Right, sincerity.’
I was trying to respond with sincerity. Cha Jeoh’s apology, his guilt, all the reactions he was showing right now. That was the same as accepting another person’s emotions. It was a first in my life.
Was that why I felt so flustered and confused like this? Had I needlessly set out to find Cha Jeoh, chased him, and stubbornly come to his side? If it were my usual self, I would have just let it be, whether someone else ran away or not.
“…I’m still handsome. I’m pretty.”
Now that I listened, Cha Jeoh’s voice was a little different from simply being roughly hoarse. It was closer to being stuffily choked up. If it was the Cha Jeoh I knew, he would have stayed up all night, but there seemed to be a different reason.
“And I’m good at fighting too… strong… I listen well to what you say, Hayoung….”
“……”
“I can take you anywhere you want to go. Of course, if you, if you say you don’t want to….”
I can’t help it. As if he would say that, he started the sentence but didn’t actually finish it. I could feel the stubbornness he couldn’t let go of permeating that sentence. That was so like Cha Jeoh.
“…Anyway, I’m helpful in many ways. Still.”
‘What, it’s not like he’s advertising to buy something.’
“So.”
This time too, Cha Jeoh chose to keep his mouth shut instead of continuing his words. However, I could already sufficiently understand what he was trying to say.
I was silently swallowing a sigh when there was suddenly a cold sensation wetting my fingertips. Startled for a moment, I flinched and stiffened my body. Liquid that appeared from who knows where flowed down along my fingers.
In my flustered state, I briefly withdrew my hand from Cha Jeoh’s cheek. The water droplet tracing the curves of my fingers soon flowed loosely down the back of my hand, my wrist, tickling all the way to my forearm.
Then I reached out my hand again. Cha Jeoh’s cheek, which I found again without difficulty, was already soaked with damp moisture. Even in the midst of that, water droplets flowing ceaselessly wet my hand.
‘…Crying?’
I couldn’t bring myself to make a sound and only opened and closed my mouth several times. My closed eyelids trembled because I was suppressing the urge to open my eyes right away.
Unable to completely embrace Cha Jeoh’s cheek or withdraw my hand either, I left it in an awkward position when warm warmth covered the back of my hand. Someone else’s hand gently enveloping mine led me.
Even in the unseeable situation, I could be certain whose hand it was. The owner of warm warmth, with a relatively subtly higher body temperature. This was Cha Jeoh’s hand.
Soon my palm was buried fully in Cha Jeoh’s cheek. Unlike his solid body, his quite soft cheek flesh filled my grasp.
Cha Jeoh rubbed his face against my hand. His large hand supported my hand so as not to let it go, and tears were still pouring out endlessly as if washing my hand, showing no signs of drying.
“Hayoung-ah….”
A pitiful voice rang in my ear. That became the trigger that broke my limits in various ways.
I suddenly reached out my other hand and grabbed Cha Jeoh’s opposite cheek too. Since tears couldn’t be flowing from just one eye, this cheek was already not just damp but soaked through.
I wiggled my hands to adjust my grip on both cheeks and pulled him close.
It was an impulsive act. I probably wouldn’t know even if several more years passed why I did such a thing, with exactly what intention and purpose I had done so thoughtlessly.
Soon the two people’s foreheads bumped together a little painfully. Since I couldn’t see ahead, the two foreheads didn’t engage exactly, but I showed the meticulousness of adjusting my head position relying on sensation to correct it.
Cha Jeoh stopped sniffling and swallowed his breath. I clearly felt his body freeze stiffly.
