“Did I tell you that I caused the accident trying to save a cat?”
“…Yeah.”
The silent protest ended pointlessly. That was the story I’d told him at the hospital. Honestly, who could say whether I’d really tried to save it or just swerved out of reflex, but at the time, telling it as a touching story seemed like the much better option. After all, not long after he’d woken up at the hospital, he’d had a look in his eyes like he wanted to grab Ilsun and do something to her. She was a stray I was fond of, annoying as she sometimes was, fond enough that I’d even given her a name. Her life had to be saved. Did Ilsun know how hard I’d worked for this? I didn’t need her gratitude, just for her not to wreck the wall I’d built.
“Did that cat survive?”
“It survived. But I only caught a glimpse in the moment, so I don’t really know which cat it… ugh!”
“What’s wrong?”
“Huh? No, it’s nothing.”
There was one more creature wandering around at the crack of dawn. One that, whenever it heard its name, came running like it thought it was the descendant of a tiger. It was Ilsun, the main cause of this whole accident.
Don’t come. Run away.
Contrary to my desperate wish, the creature climbing up from the rice paddies toward the road, the moment our eyes met, walked quickly toward us.
“Meow.”
And then it cried. It settled itself down not far from Choi Seol and started meowing away. I quickly checked his reaction.
“Cute.”
Fortunately, he didn’t seem to know that this cat was the culprit behind the accident that had wiped out his memory. Then again, even with his memory intact, it had all happened in an instant. There wouldn’t have been time to closely observe the cat that darted in front of the car. So could I get away with acting like I knew her?
“Right? She’s the cutest of all the strays that come to my place. Her name’s Ilsun—her mom was the most… well, anyway, isn’t she cute? Hahaha.”
Now that I thought about it, the reason Ilsun had darted in front of the car was because of her mother. Mother and daughter had teamed up to cause trouble. And of all cats, it had to be the two strays I cared about most. No wonder I kept feeling this needless guilt over the accident.
“Her name is Ilsun?”
Thankfully, Choi Seol didn’t seem to notice how I’d glossed over that. I quickly nodded.
“I started feeding her mom first, and after that, her mom gave birth in our storage shed. This one’s one of the litter. She was the first one born after I came here, so I named her Ilsun—’First One.'”
“Isn’t that a little careless?”
“Yeah. It was careless.”
I admitted it readily. I hated agonizing over things. To be precise, once I started worrying about something, I’d dig into it endlessly, so I tried not to create things to worry about in the first place. Given that, putting real effort into naming a stray cat was out of the question. So the names of the strays that came around our place were simple. Spotty, Blackie, Snotty, and so on…
“But there’s still affection there. Giving something a name means that.”
To me, giving a name was basically the same as giving your heart to something.
“Han Yeoreum.”
“Hm?”
“No, never mind.”
What was that, so anticlimactic.
My heart jumped, startled at suddenly hearing my name called. Choi Seol, for his part, seemed to think it really was nothing and just turned his gaze back to the cat.
“It’s a relief.”
“What is?”
“That I almost killed, with my own hands, the one you’d given your affection to. And that you nearly had to witness it.”
From the way he said it, he didn’t seem to know that this cat was Ilsun—he seemed to think the cat I’d been taking care of had nearly died like that. The thought that he’d think that way was touching, even as just imagining the possibility that the cat could have actually been hurt sent a chill through me.
Ilsun. Looks like you’re safe now.
Fortunately, he seemed to be the generous type when it came to animals.
“Meow.”
“Sounds like she wants food.”
Choi Seol said this in response to Ilsun’s persistent crying. He seemed to be able to communicate with cats fairly well. Come to think of it, isn’t he basically a butler who’s sworn loyalty to cats?
“Do you like cats, by any chance?”
At my carefully thrown-out question, Choi Seol gave an ambiguous smile.
“I’m usually the type to find animals bothersome. But there are a lot of strays living around the house, and after feeding them here and there, I weirdly grew attached. Of course, Grandma hated it, said they were noisy.”
Something jolted in me from a place I hadn’t expected. I’d been so careful, and yet his grandmother came up again, connected to this. I felt unfairly guilty, like I’d poked at a wound.
My thoughts must have shown plainly on my face.
“Don’t worry about it. She’d already been suffering a lot because of her illness anyway. She’s at peace now.”
Who’s comforting who here. At this point, I couldn’t keep avoiding it anymore.
“When did your grandmother pass away? You said it hadn’t been long for you.”
“My last memory is the day after the funeral ended.”
“Then… it really hasn’t been long at all.”
I should have asked more carefully. The death registration had said midwinter, and Choi Seol had also said “not long ago,” so I’d assumed there might be a week or two’s difference, but for him, it truly had just happened. On top of that, his flat voice, as if he were suppressing his emotions, made my chest tighten even more.
“I wish you’d at least told me.”
Unable to meet his eyes, I muttered this while looking at poor, undeserving Ilsun instead, and then I felt his gaze on me.
“If I had told you, would you have comforted me yourself?”
“Well…”
“Forget it. How could I say something like that to someone who hated me? I’d be lucky if you didn’t just run off.”
My bowed head, which had gone solemn, snapped up at Choi Seol’s words.
“Who hated you?”
“So you didn’t?”
“Me? Me? Are you talking about me right now?”
There was no answer in return, but his eyes alone had already given me the answer.
“I… hated you?”
Me? My words caught in my throat. Not because I felt guilty, but because it was just too absurd. To be told point-blank that I’d hated someone I’d liked so much it nearly killed me, someone over whom I’d agonized so much—I couldn’t just sit still over the unfairness of it.
“What makes you think I hated you?”
“You barely even made eye contact with me at school. I had to specifically call out to you, and you’d come over reluctantly, like you were being dragged to a slaughterhouse, just to say hi. Later on, you even avoided me outright.”
I’d mentally prepared myself to argue back, but hearing him say it like that, memories suddenly flickered through my mind. Not a single word of it was wrong. Though, since it was from Choi Seol’s point of view, there did seem to be a bit of a misunderstanding.
“Was I wrong?”
“That’s…”
I was about to say no, but closed my mouth instead. If I did that, I’d have to explain the reason I’d worked so hard to avoid him—was that something I could actually say?
Because it was first love, because I liked him so much I couldn’t even meet his eyes, because I didn’t know what to do, because whenever he called my name or came near me my heart raced and my breath caught until my mind went blank and I turned into some fool who couldn’t even speak—because of that, I kept running away. I couldn’t say any of that.
“You’re the same, though.”
So I twisted things instead.
At my counter, Choi Seol’s eyes widened slightly.
“You avoided me too. Around the end of the semester… you did that too.”
It wasn’t really my place to say that, since I’d been the one to avoid him first, but later on I had tried to make an effort to talk to him. Of course, that had its own reasons too, but Choi Seol had ended up ignoring me entirely. It was a memory I’d kept buried until now, and it welled up unexpectedly, making me choke up.
“That’s…”
This time, Choi Seol’s lips opened, then closed again. Watching him hesitate and his expression harden, as if he too had a reason he couldn’t say, just like me, I let out a deep sigh.
“Forget it. It’s already in the past anyway, let’s just drop it.”
It wasn’t a trivial matter at all, but I pretended it was. I had no desire to summon seventeen-year-old Han Yeoreum back again.
“Already in the past… right, you said it’s already been ten years.”
As if turning my words over in his mind, Choi Seol murmured bitterly.
“Honestly, I still can’t quite believe it. That I’ve lived ten years more than I remember. But looking at you, Han Yeoreum, it does feel real, somehow.”
“Why? Going to say I look old again? Hey, it’s been a whopping ten years. I’m twenty-seven, and for that, this is practically baby-faced. I still get my ID checked at bars, you know.”
“No, not that.”
Choi Seol shook his head and leaned his waist toward me. In the suddenly narrowed distance, our eyes met.
“Right now, you make eye contact with me so easily, and you talk to me so easily too.”
He said it like he found that deeply strange.
“You hold my hand pretty well too.”
“No, that’s a misunderstanding—”
“Boldly crawling into a sleeping person’s blanket, too.”
“Who! Crawled into a sleeping person’s… crawled in, did you say?”
Me? Wait, now that he mentioned it, where had I woken up exactly? At that moment, fragments of memory suddenly flickered past. Right, yesterday I’d gone closer to Choi Seol to set the fan nearer to him, and seeing him sleeping so soundly had made me drowsy too, and then… ugh!
I’d gone in. I clearly remembered burrowing into Choi Seol’s bedding. At first, I think I’d just lain down on the floor right beside him, but then as it got cold toward dawn, I must have gone looking for the blanket and burrowed in. And then what happened?
“Don’t tell me—did I kick you?”
I had no idea about sleep-talking, but at the very least, I wasn’t exactly the type to sleep quietly. Why did I even ask. It felt like I was just adding another charge to my rap sheet, and I regretted it. Choi Seol, looking like he hadn’t expected to be asked that, his expression shifted strangely before the corner of his lips curled up suggestively. At least, by my standards, it looked suggestive.
“Well, the blanket was definitely a bit small for two people to share.”
Heat rushed straight to my face.
“You should’ve pushed me off. You could’ve kicked me out onto the floor too.”
“How could I do that to someone sleeping so soundly. Don’t worry, I got out instead.”
So that’s why he was outside at the crack of dawn? Actually, it wasn’t a walk—it was because of me?
“Sorry. I’m not usually like that, I just really hate the cold, so in my sleep I must have…”
“Don’t worry. Nothing happened. You slept so still I almost wondered if you’d died. If anything… it was plenty comforting.”
At those final words, delivered in a hesitant voice, I lost the ability to speak. Choi Seol gave me a soft smile, then put some distance between us again and turned his gaze elsewhere. At the far end of the wide-stretched rice paddies, the long summer sun was slowly emerging, bringing the heat with it.
“My last memory right before I woke up at the hospital was searching for someone. I was desperate. After holding my grandmother’s funeral alone, scattering her ashes, I felt truly lonely. I really have no one left now. I really am completely alone in this world—I felt so lonely I thought I’d go mad. And it was cold. It was midwinter, so of course it was, but still.”
A faint chill that had settled at the tip of my nose was suddenly replaced by a feverish warmth.
A summer midday always made winter feel longed-for. So then, did winter long for summer in return?
“So I went looking. I missed summer.”
And there you were.
That’s what Choi Seol was saying. I couldn’t say anything in response. It didn’t matter. There was no one there waiting for an answer. Not yet, anyway.
