As soon as Seo Nakil spotted me, he got out of the car. As I looked back and forth between that man and the car with its engine off while catching my breath slightly, I suddenly came to realize a certain fact.
“You were already here.”
The words that it would take 20 minutes to arrive were just an excuse. It was practically words prepared purely for my sake, meant to say not to feel sorry while preparing to come down.
“Shall I say it’s because I didn’t want to rush a sick person?”
Seo Nakil smiled, lightly shaking what he held in his hand.
“Do you dislike lies being too frequent?”
That question somehow made a corner of my heart sting.
Seo Nakil wasn’t a very honest person. Even the first button of our relationship was his lie, so how much more so?
But I couldn’t reproach him for not being truthful every moment. At least I had no right to do so. Quite coincidentally, where Seo Nakil’s lies pointed usually touched upon my convenience.
When I looked at him standing like a tree and casting shade over me, I sometimes realized how trivial such truth and falsehood were.
“…Medicine?”
The plastic bag held in his hand sagged heavily with however much he’d bought.
“Because you said you were sick.”
“It’s just a passing body ache.”
“Even if the body ache passes, the sick you remains.”
I glanced down at what I’d received. Inside the bag were various medicines and supplements, and even warm drinks piled so high that there seemed to be no empty space at all.
“Thank you.”
It was a word delivered with sincerity, but somehow it didn’t feel satisfactory. Compared to the sincerity and consideration Seo Nakil had shown me, it seemed like an answer that was too small, even trivial.
After hesitating for a moment, I took out a bottle of warm yuzu tea from inside and asked.
“It feels a bit disappointing to just part like this… would you like to have some together?”
He asked back with a drowsy smile.
“You’re telling me to leave someone who’s coughing with cold symptoms standing outside?”
“…”
“Come this way.”
I followed him and climbed into the back seat of the car. Thinking that Seo Nakil might also have been disappointed about parting right away like me, it felt like a ticklishness different from the cold symptoms filled my throat completely.
We sat side by side in the quiet space drinking warm yuzu tea. Even though it was a convenience store drink without a single piece of pulp, why was it so sweet and warm? Even after finishing it, I had to fiddle with the empty bottle for a long time.
“…I’ll have one more drink to look for.”
Seo Nakil burst into soft laughter.
“Then this winter will be warm.”
Winter. I chewed over the cold sensation contained in that word. The last winter I remembered was a season when the cold wind blew as if it would last forever.
If I drank what he gave me, could I somehow manage to endure even such a season?
“Will spring come after winter?”
“It has to.”
As if he put strength into his fingertips, a squeaking sound rang from the glass bottle.
“We’ll have to make it come.”
It sounded like a reminder to survive that season no matter what, and it also sounded like an aspiration to make it so.
I took the opportunity to rummage through the bag and took out medicine. When I carefully removed two fever-reducing pills and held them, Seo Nakil naturally took the empty bottle from me and handed me his yuzu tea that he hadn’t drunk even a sip of.
As I stared at the hand he held out to me, Seo Nakil asked in a whispering voice.
“Is it strange that I’m only kind to you?”
After thinking for a moment, I answered honestly.
“A little.”
“…”
“I wonder why me among so many people. I’m nothing. Whatever you’re thinking, I’m a bit more shabby and pathetic than that. If you see how rotten I am inside, you’ll surely be disappointed, and when that time comes, I worry a bit about whether you’ll regret treating me this kindly.”
Was what I swallowed earlier actually medicine that makes me vomit my innermost thoughts rather than fever-reducing medicine? The feelings I didn’t even know were there leaked through my weakened lips.
“Bae-u-nim is the most wonderful person I know. You’re amazing, cool, and even kind to me. That’s why I’m trying to look good too…”
“That’s enough.”
He carefully caught and stopped my heart that was rolling and tumbling down.
“More than enough, Ijae-ya.”
I burst into laughter and asked.
“Even when I’m in this state?”
“What’s wrong with you?”
“I suddenly got sick and made you drive to the pharmacy in the middle of the night?”
“While buying medicine, I thought. How sincere you must have been about group activities. How much you must be struggling to faithfully finish what you could just tear up that trash-like contract you signed with that garbage and pretend not to know.”
“I got scolded by my leader hyung for not being able to sing well. I stayed alone and re-recorded too.”
“So you ended up doing it in the end. Because you always have.”
“I still sleep a lot. If I didn’t have group activities, I would have spent more than half the day sleeping.”
“Living is tiring. Just don’t have bad dreams.”
“I have the most anti-fans in Starium. There was even an SNS hashtag created saying to remove me from the group.”
“It must be a misunderstanding. Because you couldn’t do anything mean.”
“…I’m not as handsome as you, Bae-u-nim.”
“Instead, you’re prettier than me.”
As I looked at him in disbelief, he smiled, gently folding his eyes.
“Is it still strange that I’m only kind to you?”
“No, well…”
As we continued the idle conversation, my body gradually became drowsy. As the unpleasant lingering low fever melted away and I drooped, Seo Nakil, who had moved a little closer to sit, offered me his shoulder.
“Sleep a little.”
“…Then just 30 minutes.”
I mumbled while dozing.
“You have to wake me up in 30 minutes.”
“What if I don’t want to wake you because you’re sleeping too soundly?”
“You still can’t.”
“Because overnight stays are forbidden?”
“Because you’d have to wait the whole time I’m sleeping…”
His voice flew over my nearly sleeping consciousness like a spring breeze.
“Waiting is nothing.”
“…”
“How is it waiting when you’re next to me, Ijae-ya?”
Soft silence swallowed me whole.
Seo Nakil became a tree for exhausted me once again. With deep roots that don’t shake in any wind, stretching branches to cast shade so I wouldn’t be burned by the scorching sun.
He was a slanted, solid tree at dusk that offered his whole body to support my whole body so I wouldn’t roll off the cliff.
As promised, and as expected, 30 minutes later Seo Nakil woke me up. But the way he woke me was different from what I expected.
He didn’t call my name. He didn’t shake me. He didn’t hold the hand that was sprawled on his thigh either.
“…”
I looked at Seo Nakil’s face, so close that I couldn’t focus properly. My hazy expression, still not completely free of drowsiness, was reflected in Seo Nakil’s black eyes.
“You’ll catch my cold.”
I whispered with our lips pressed together.
“I wondered why you were frowning, was that the problem?”
At Seo Nakil’s response tinged with laughter, my brow narrowed slightly.
“That’s the biggest problem. What if it interferes with your schedule?”
“Who’s worrying about whom?”
Even though I’d scolded him in my own way, Seo Nakil looked purely happy.
“They say colds get better when you pass them on.”
“…”
“So give it to me. Hm?”
“I don’t want to…”
Even knowing it was meaningless words since our lips were already locked, I said so.
“I don’t want to be someone who gives bad things.”
“Give me at least one thing.”
He answered while gently pushing me out of the car.
“Because I think that way I might cling to you a little less.”
“…”
“Get back safely, Han Ijae-ssi. See you on the weekend.”
I stood there for a long time even after Seo Nakil’s car left the underground parking lot. The whole time I held what he’d given me to my chest, the warmth of the drinks was transmitted.
I don’t really know how I got better. It might have been because I took the medicine he gave me, it could have been because the yuzu tea was warm, or it might have been because the saying that colds get better when you pass them on was true.
Whatever it was, what mattered was that the medicine Seo Nakil gave me worked well. This time too, he had fixed and pulled me up.
The fever subsided and spring deepened.
And thin threads connecting the two of us began to form, one strand at a time.
