“Get in.”
“You go first.”
“No, I’m going back to that place anyway. I’ll drive you in my car.”
“It’s okay.”
So he drove here, I thought while waving my hand without interest. In broad daylight we can just go our separate ways, why bother going back and even seeing me off? However, with a thunk and the sound of it closing, the departing taxi was still empty. The man who let the taxi go without regret came and stood beside me.
“Why aren’t you going first?”
“I’ll see you off.”
It was a gentle and sincere voice, but equally inflexible and firm. I just gave up on the cigarette and slowly pulled my hand from my pocket. Luckily the room the man had booked was a smoking room, so I wasn’t particularly disappointed.
“You don’t have to be so polite.”
“About what?”
“I don’t know how it was with your lover, but I’m telling you to be comfortable with me. Relax.”
“Do I seem tense?”
Mm… I squinted my eyes to organize my thoughts.
“Is that just your personality?”
“I am tense.”
“What?”
I chuckled first and the man smiled following suit. A sudden feeling of friendliness surged toward this unfunny man who even delivers jokes in a way that doesn’t sound like jokes.
“Then let’s start by speaking casually to each other? I will too.”
I reached out and tapped the edge of his sleeve as I suggested. I have no memory of using formal speech with anyone I’m dating. Whether top or bottom, I’m the type who accepts hearing and speaking casually between people who share condoms. I hated this upright formal speech even more because it felt like a wall. However, the man quietly shook his head.
“I don’t mind, but this is more comfortable for me.”
“Why?”
“Does it bother you?”
Again. The man asked back as if I had the right to decide whether to tolerate his speech pattern.
“No… it’s not that.”
I answered bewilderedly, but since he was looking at me with dubious and suspicious eyes, I just nodded with a smile as if comforting a crying child saying you’re pretty, I said you’re pretty. Only then did his expression relax with satisfaction, looking truly innocent like a child who stopped crying at coaxing words.
Does he want confirmation because his Korean is poor? Except for the near-literary extreme honorifics, his vocabulary and pronunciation are honestly better than mine. Well, if he learned it like that from the beginning, it might be hard to change after living abroad for so long. Instead of insisting further, I just nodded.
“Then let’s both just do whatever’s comfortable.”
Anyway, we don’t even know how long we’ll be meeting—was the omitted subtext.
***
“Hmm…”
When the kiss ended, a pleasant sigh escaped. A fact I learned during our brief acquaintance: this man has a habit of biting the upper lip when kissing. He bites lightly, as if pinching up the flesh, then burrows in at an angle. His lips are always smooth and moist like a fish’s belly, so from the moment they touch, I’m already in rapture. A sweet yet dramatic kiss.
“You don’t have to pick me up every time.”
I whispered while our lips were still pressed together, smacking in the afterglow.
“It’s okay because I want to.”
The expected answer came back. Honestly, I like it, so what. I gave up the struggle without much regret and leaned back on the seat. The man’s car was a vehicle famous for official use. Spacious, fresh, and the seats clung to the body perfectly. When he first drove to pick me up, I could only blink at the car’s majesty that didn’t match the alley where asphalt was roughly and bumpily spread.
Not just the car, but the clothes he wore, his watch, shoes, even the most trivial accessories—everything exuded a money smell beyond expectations. Strangely enough, when wealth goes beyond a mediocre level, you don’t even feel intimidated. Perhaps it’s because of the man’s unique modest and transcendent elegance. Nothing he wore stood out arrogantly. I learned through him that luxury goods belonging to a neat owner have a humble and enchanting flavor like well-aged liquor. After admiring the man for a moment, I stretched my arms out fully and yawned.
“Where are we going today?”
“Do you like Mediterranean cuisine?”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“Then shall we try it once?”
Dating someone rich and kind is really convenient. I hummed, comfortably enjoying the sensation of my body melting. These are days of wonderful dates continuing to the point where it’s embarrassing that I thought he’s unemployed so I’ll pay, I’ll consider it payment for his face. It’s really true that when life is enjoyable, a week feels as short as a day. My pleased gaze must have been passionate because the man asked as if embarrassed.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I think seducing you was the best thing I did this year.”
“Even considering the year just started…”
A playful smile briefly crosses his handsome profile.
“That’s a pleasant thing to hear.”
“Right. It’s a compliment.”
“I’ll work hard so you can think that way when the year ends too.”
“Nice.”
I responded half-heartedly to words like a new employee’s sincere aspiration. Why would I bother being a killjoy saying things like ‘as if we’ll still be doing this by then.’ Instead of continuing the conversation, I turned on the audio and soft music flowed out. It’s classical music that seems the same no matter how many times I hear it, but my ears have become forcibly familiar with it.
“You really do like this stuff a lot.”
“You can change it to any music you like.”
“Forget it. I can’t say anything…”
I grumbled and listened for a moment to the melody played by some string instrument I couldn’t identify. His car was always precisely neat and clean like its owner. He never turned on music or radio, so I thought he disliked noise while driving, but maybe that was only when he was with me—whenever I pressed it, newly changed classical pieces flowed out each time.
“It really doesn’t matter. It’s not that I like listening to it, it’s just a habit.”
“Classical music is a habit?”
“I grew up listening to it. Many family members majored in it.”
I grinned teasingly but he answered obediently. A face that never thought classical taste would be something to tease about. Feeling a bit awkward and sorry, I scratched the bridge of my nose. The sense of incongruity in our living environments feels stronger at times like this than with the foreign car.
“Really? That’s so cool. Who?”
“Almost everyone on my mother’s side.”
“Wow.”
“My mother studied vocal music and my older sister is active as a cellist.”
“Oh.”
“So I’m just familiar with it, I wouldn’t call it a preference.”
“If you hated it, you’d be sick of it, not make it a habit, right? At this point, just call it a preference.”
He laughed out loud, a rare occurrence.
“Talking with you makes everything feel very simple, and I like that.”
“It’s good to live simply. I don’t know much about classical music but, well, I don’t particularly dislike it.”
First of all, the sound is so good I think I’d be entranced even if they played Buddhist chants. It was only briefly that I was surprised to witness the actual Bang & Olufsen tweeter rising up cutely like a mushroom from the dashboard—my ears soon became accustomed to that blissful luxury. In this car, even the radio resonated like opera. Classical music was at the level of a concert hall live performance.
“Not knowing something isn’t a reason to hate it. And sometimes there are things I really think are good.”
“For example?”
“I don’t know the titles. I just like things that are big and grand.”
Vaguely thinking of intensely exploding sounds, I waved my fingers like conducting a baton—tada tada—then knocked them together and flicked.
“Tada! Things that explode dramatically with a bang.”
“A bold and wonderful preference.”
“Really? Experts say it’s tacky. That I only like stimulating and famous things.”
I spoke indifferently, recalling an ex-boyfriend whose pride in his major pierced the sky.
“No, being famous means it’s that popular, doesn’t it?”
“There are narrow-minded people who think popularity is inversely proportional to artistic value.”
“That’s what I’m saying. That bastard was really fucked up. He said people who like Beethoven without even knowing which number the Fate Symphony is are the same as people who like the vase in Van Gogh’s Sunflowers.”
And honestly, I still don’t know exactly what kind of insult that is.
“—Did he say that?”
The man who’d been silent spoke. A low voice, but with rare irritation.
“What a dogmatic and arrogant person.”
“Right. You find him annoying too?”
“It would be best not to associate with someone who looks down on others like that for the rest of your life.”
It was quite a sharp criticism, unlike him.
“Don’t worry. Already a long time ago…”
We broke up—I was about to say casually when I suddenly closed my mouth. Even though he doesn’t know who it is, I felt uncomfortable having spoken so enthusiastically about an ex-boyfriend’s faults. Fortunately, he didn’t urge me to continue.
Come to think of it, this man who’s cheating with me hardly talks about his lover.
“Mm.”
As I swallowed a spoonful of soup, my mouth felt strange. Before I could show it, his hand, noticing like a ghost, took my soup bowl and pushed his shrimp dish in front of me instead. When I quickly chewed and swallowed the shrimp soaked in oil, my expression brightened noticeably even to myself.
“Ah. This is delicious.”
“This one suits my palate.”
Really?
It was hard to read his true intention from the way he calmly spooned the soup as if he’d wanted to eat it from the start. I’d ordered it because the name “grape soup” was so unique, but the sweet and bitter taste wasn’t for me… Absurdly, except for that one dish I ordered, all the other dishes he ordered hit my taste perfectly. I scraped up even the thick sauce from the bottom and marveled.
