However, even after the words that came out after much deliberation, Won Dogyeong’s reaction was calmer than expected.
He gripped the steering wheel with his left hand and reached out his right hand to pull mine into his grasp. Won Dogyeong squeezed our interlaced fingers tightly, glanced at me sideways, then released his pheromones and asked.
“Not feeling well? Carsick?”
He must have thought it was because of morning sickness.
Ah, that’s not it.
“Mm…”
After I gave a vague answer, silence fell over the car again. I could feel warmth traveling through our clasped hands. Won Dogyeong just stared ahead with an impassive expression that made it impossible to know what he was thinking.
His subdued voice from the phone call earlier kept circling in my head, so I eventually asked cautiously.
“Are you… angry?”
Won Dogyeong glanced at me, turned on his left turn signal, and replied strangely.
“I wonder, what do you think?”
Up until now I wasn’t sure, but hearing him say that, it definitely seemed like he was angry.
“Sorry.”
“For what?”
“For not saying anything about going to Haemin’s place…”
“Nothing to be sorry for. You went because she’s a friend.”
His tone was the same as usual, but Won Dogyeong stubbornly wouldn’t even glance my way. It didn’t seem like that playful kind of sulking or grumbling—he really seemed to be in a bad mood.
“She’s a friend you know too, and she’s a beta and a woman, so I thought it would be okay.”
“What does that matter. She could still like you.”
I tried to explain calmly, but what came right back was a sharp answer.
“If that were the case, I would kn—”
“You didn’t know.”
Won Dogyeong, stopped at a traffic light, twisted his head sideways crookedly and stared intently at me. Dissatisfaction was seeping abundantly from his firmly upturned eyes.
“When you didn’t even know that I, who you live with, liked you, how would you know whether you know or not.”
But you’re a bit different…
This is unfair. I’m really not the type who’s that oblivious. I just never thought Won Dogyeong would be like that.
“That’s not true… Haemin knows about Yongyong, and she knows I was going to meet you.”
“Ah~ So if she knows everything, it’s okay to go to her place? Then are you going to go to Deputy Manager Han’s place next?”
“Why are you bringing up Deputy Manager Han here?”
By this point, I was so dumbfounded that my voice rose. The restless feelings I’d had while looking at this morning’s conversation and Han Hoyeon’s photo came flooding back, and my sense of injustice burst out without me realizing it.
“You’re the one who—how could you not say a single word when I’m saying your ex-boyfriend acts well? I feel like I’m the only idiot.”
“Then what was I supposed to say there? Should I have suddenly said, ‘Actually, he’s my ex-boyfriend’?”
“Yes! I’m scared to even watch dramas now because they might all be people you’ve dated.”
“I said I’d tell you, but you said you didn’t want to know!”
“Then I really can’t even go to the movies!”
“Right! My ex-boyfriend is in a movie I saw with you too, so what!”
“Hey! I said don’t tell me!”
Won Dogyeong, who had been gripping the steering wheel with a thoroughly pissed-off expression, shouted loudly like he was exploding. I hurriedly cut off his words, then suddenly realized something and ground my teeth with an audible sound.
“…A movie you saw with me? Which one?”
My eyes turned red with rising heat. The titles of Korean movies we’d watched together years ago floated through my head.
“So what. Is that what’s important right now? Why are you changing the subject?”
“You fucking—did you use me to go watch your boyfriend’s movie?”
I tried to pull my hand away in a surge of emotion, but failed because Won Dogyeong pulled it back forcefully. Having arrived at the underground parking lot, he parked the car and turned off the engine, then turned to me and said as if chewing his words.
“…Let me be clear—some of them you were the one who wanted to see. And you told me not to curse because Yongyong can hear, so why are you cursing? Don’t do it!”
“So you’re saying there are ones you wanted to see too? And Yongyong is in my belly, so they’re on my side!”
“You keep insisting Yongyong is on your side just because they can’t talk yet, but when Yongyong comes out, just you wait! No, and also, when you’re dating, can’t you even go see that? You went around meeting people too, so why are you only coming at me!”
I glared at him as he snapped back and bit my lip hard. He wasn’t wrong. Whether he told me or not, he could go see his boyfriend’s movie together.
To put it bluntly, we were just friends back then. It’s also true that I was meeting other people.
But while my head agreed with that logic, my current feelings didn’t. I ground my molars tightly and screamed furiously.
“My ex-boyfriends aren’t on TV!”
“That Euisanji or whatever guy you used to date was on some plastic surgery program!”
“How is appearing once by chance the same as that?!”
“What’s different? How many times makes it wrong? Once is okay but three times is a problem?”
“Yes! It’s a problem from three times on, so what!”
“I’m counting how many times that doctor’s been on TV! Just let it go over three times!”
Won Dogyeong roughly ran his hand through his hair and glared. Rummaging through his pockets like he was about to pull out his phone right then and there was a bonus.
The thought ‘What if it’s over three times?’ flashed through my mind, but I acted as tough as possible with my words.
“Count! I said count!”
“I’m searching right now, Broad Mind Clinic Park Seongo!”
“I said do it! Count them and let’s talk again!”
We poured everything out and glared at each other, fuming.
The air was heavy with our pheromones that had burst out in our excitement, tangled together.
Our eyes, meeting with mouths clamped shut, were mercilessly upturned, and the hand we hadn’t let go of but were gripping had so much force in it that each joint had gone pale white.
I released the tension from my rigid body and gasped for rough breaths. I’d shouted so much my head was getting a bit dizzy.
With thirty right around the corner, even arguing has become too exhausting to do anymore, really.
As I caught my breath for a moment, I regained a bit of rationality and wondered what the hell I was doing. We’d occasionally fought over trivial things before, but this was the first time we’d fought this childishly.
Won Dogyeong too seemed to have come to his senses, as he unclenched his fist that had been placed on the steering wheel and roughly rubbed his face.
After letting out a small sigh, he took the hand we’d been clasping and retrieved something from the car door.
When the hand we’d been gripping so hard we’d worked up a sweat throughout the fight was released, I felt somehow empty.
“…Drink.”
What he handed me was a plastic bottle that still had some coolness left. I silently accepted it, emptied it halfway, and passed it to him. Won Dogyeong emptied the remaining water to the bottom and crumpled the plastic bottle to its limit before stuffing it into his pocket.
We sat staring at the windshield ahead for a while.
Nothing had been resolved, but I frantically racked my brain because I didn’t know what to say to bring it up again.
In the end, what had started it all?
Ah, going to Haemin’s place.
I’d already apologized for that though. Besides, wasn’t it Won Dogyeong who made things worse by bringing up Deputy Manager Han?
I don’t understand why he keeps harping on Deputy Manager Han when he knows himself it doesn’t make sense. Shouldn’t he be concerned about people I actually dated, or something like that?
It seemed like the problem was that he’d actually met him in person. Deputy Manager Han is pretty good-looking after all.
…I can’t apologize about the ex-boyfriend stuff. Even now I’m getting heated because the characters from the movies we watched together won’t leave my head. What’s even more annoying is that judging by their ages, the candidates narrow down to a ‘probably one of these people’ sort of thing.
Because I’d followed Won Dogyeong to watch all sorts of dramas and movies, thoughts kept spiraling like ‘come to think of it, that person was in that movie too, and in that drama they appeared with Won Dogyeong too.’
“…Sorry.”
When I turned at the quietly heard apology, Won Dogyeong, who had his face buried in the steering wheel, slowly raised his head.
“I’m not angry at you.”
What’s he saying after being so sarcastic.
“I know you and her are nothing to each other, and I know you really went to her place without thinking anything of it… I just got annoyed at myself for caring about every little thing like that.”
Won Dogyeong confessed in a sunken voice and mussed up his hair into a mess.
When he apologizes so readily like this, I suddenly have nothing to say. I awkwardly stammered out an apology in return.
“No, ahem. I’m sorry too… I’ll be careful.”
If I keep at it, it’ll seem like I’m the only one holding a grudge.
“…Should we head up?”
After seeming to think about something silently for a moment, Won Dogyeong soon asked while gathering the car keys, and I just nodded.
We got out of the car and walked maintaining an ambiguous distance—neither that of people who knew each other nor strangers. This moment probably ranks in the top 3 most awkward moments with Won Dogyeong in my life.
Even the day after going through heat, and the day I confessed about the pregnancy and learned that Won Dogyeong liked me, were less awkward than this.
The elevator was worse than the parking lot. Being placed in a situation where I was alone with someone I’d just argued with in a small, enclosed space made my whole body feel like it was creaking.
Lately we’d always held hands when getting out of the car, so this sense of distance felt unfamiliar.
I just stared intently at the rising numbers as the floors changed.
“What did you eat for dinner?”
Breaking through the silence pressing down on our shoulders, Won Dogyeong spoke up.
“Porridge.”
“Is that enough?”
“It’s fine… What about you?”
“I made stew and ate it.”
“…You ate something good…”
And then there was another conversational dead end.
