“Did you two talk a lot on the way here?”
At the staff member’s playful words, Sungjin’s heart skipped a beat. His mind reeled at the thought that the entire conversation they’d just had would be broadcast. Still, should he be grateful that he hadn’t openly shown signs of being someone whose YES was men?
He could only hope that many more provocative incidents would happen from now on so that something like a special date would be completely edited out.
“Haha…”
When Sungjin avoided answering with a laugh, Yuwon immediately spoke up.
“Yes. I talked to him a lot. I’m very interested in Sungjin.”
“Ooh.”
The staff members let out brief exclamations. As Yuwon tried to ramble on more, not caring about the staff’s reactions, Sungjin quickly intercepted.
“Then where should we go now? The schedule you briefly explained earlier was…”
“Yacht snorkeling, right?”
Before Sungjin could even finish speaking, Yuwon interjected with a smiling face.
“Yes, yes, yacht…”
They’re not going to put just the two of us on it, right? As Sungjin glanced around cautiously, fortunately, there were two middle-aged men who looked like sea people at first glance, as if there was a separate captain.
“Yes. First, we’ll split into two boats and move to the snorkeling point. There, you two will enjoy the activity together on the yacht, and we’ll film and wait on the boat next to you. After moving to the point, the captain will also come over to our boat for a bit, so only you two will remain on the yacht.”
He thought there would be no chance of being left alone together, but it seemed they were determined to leave just him and Yuwon on the boat. His mind went dizzy.
Surely… he won’t push me off the boat…?
While Sungjin worried whether Yuwon might harm him, the staff members began loading equipment onto the boats one by one. The boats moored at the dock were one yacht for filming and one motor boat. Naturally, Sungjin had to board the yacht with Yuwon.
“All right then, if you two have put on your life jackets, we’ll depart.”
Yuwon, sitting facing him on the deck where the wind blew through, boasted terrifyingly handsome looks even while wearing a life jacket. A life jacket that would make an ordinary person look dull as if wearing armor looked like a cool lifeguard when Lee Yuwon wore it.
Sungjin deliberately turned his gaze toward the sea, thinking this didn’t apply to him. Before an awkward silence could flow, Yuwon spoke first.
“Have you ever been snorkeling?”
Since Sungjin hadn’t expected Yuwon to speak first, he answered in surprise as if he’d encountered a ghost.
“No?! It’s my first, my first time…!”
Then Lee Yuwon let out a snicker.
“Really? It’s your ‘first’ time.”
There seemed to be a lot of emphasis strangely placed on the word “first.” When Sungjin desperately clouded his eyes and shut his mouth like a clam, Yuwon asked again with a still grinning face.
“Are you afraid of water?”
Sungjin flinched with the back of his hand again, then spoke while trying to appear calm.
“I’m not afraid of it, just… I don’t really like swimming.”
He almost thoughtlessly answered that he didn’t like swimming pools but quickly changed course. He felt that if he said he hated swimming pools when they’d met at a pool party, it would only provoke him by telling an obviously detectable lie.
Unlike how he trembled in fear that even this answer might offend Yuwon’s mood, he continued the conversation with a more generous expression than expected.
“Why? Are you bad at swimming?”
It was a question he couldn’t answer clearly. The very young Sungjin was said to have quite liked swimming. At least until he entered elementary school. However, as he gradually grew, the speed at which he gained weight couldn’t keep up with his growth, so he became as skinny as a matchstick. From that point on, he was said to have started refusing to go to the swimming pool.
You made such a fuss about not wanting to go whenever it was time for swimming, so I canceled it.
Perhaps because it wasn’t a very good memory, it didn’t come to mind well, as if that part had been painted over, but it seemed like something had happened because of his skinny body.
Like many unqualified instructors of that era, instead of mediating the children’s teasing, the instructor had actually led it. Because the instructor made Sungjin, who kept sinking in the water because he was too thin, into a laughingstock, he gradually became more afraid of exposing his body in front of others.
Because no one wants to become a laughingstock that anyone can easily mock in front of others.
After that, he became even more distant from swimming. Even when his family suggested they all go to a water park together, Sungjin stepped back. If he ran into a classmate at the water park and they gossiped to other children about how unsightly and skinny his body was, there was no worse situation than that. As he gradually advanced through the grades, he avoided it even more.
He didn’t dislike or fear water. He wasn’t particularly bad at swimming either. Though the memory of learning when he was young had mostly faded, he felt like he could at least do survival swimming.
Sungjin answered while reading Yuwon’s expression.
“No, it’s not that I can’t do it.”
Then Yuwon tilted his head with a somewhat indifferent face like a curious cat.
“You’re not afraid of water, and you’re not bad at swimming. Well… even if it’s your first time, it should be fine.”
“Haha…”
Sungjin only laughed without either denying or affirming. That was Sungjin’s way of avoiding an answer. Yuwon glanced at such a Sungjin as if observing him, then turned his gaze to the distant sea.
Yuwon’s bangs fluttered in the refreshingly blowing sea breeze. The sight of his slightly long straight hair becoming disheveled was like a scene from a CF. It was somewhat unreal that such a spectacular scene was unfolding at a distance he could touch.
He’s really pretty…
That’s why his fingertips grew even colder. Because he didn’t know what this pretty person who hated him was trying to do or what he wanted. After their brief conversation ended, while Yuwon looked at the sea and Sungjin looked at the floor, the captain gradually began to slow down.
“We’ve arrived. I’ll stop here. I’ll go over to that boat and wait, so well…”
If a typical male-female couple had been on board, he might have added words to have a good time, but as the scene of two men sitting across from each other blankly on a yacht wasn’t very familiar, the captain trailed off his words and turned off the engine.
Sungjin prayed that he wouldn’t leave just him and Yuwon behind and depart, but that didn’t happen.
“……”
“……”
Finally, when only the two of them remained, all that was left to do now was to create the picture those many broadcasting staff and safety personnel on the boat opposite wanted to see.
“The water’s still a bit cold… but it shouldn’t be too bad to get in.”
Yuwon first stood up and walked toward the ladder connected to the sea, then bent down and put his hand in the water.
“Yes, it’s not very cold.”
It was fortunate that the water wasn’t cold. Sungjin could only stand there blankly, not knowing what to do next. Yuwon, facing such a Sungjin, recalled the information he’d heard earlier and opened his mouth.
“You said this is your first time snorkeling, right?”
“Ah, yes.”
“The waves aren’t that high anyway… so just come down slowly.”
Then, holding his share of goggles in his hand, he jumped into the water first. Splash—with a refreshing sound of water, Yuwon immersed his body in the sea. Thanks to deliberately taking the boat to a calm spot where waves hardly hit, below his feet was only the deep blue open sea. That process seemed like nothing to Yuwon.
Sungjin carefully walked out following Yuwon to where the ladder was, but when he actually tried to go down, fear came first. It was because he had never done such a thing even once until now.
“……?”
Yuwon, wearing a life jacket, calmly balanced himself and waited for Sungjin to come down. Sungjin had also thought it wouldn’t be too difficult since Yuwon had handled it so simply, but his feet stopped at unexpected fear.
“…Uh.”
Is it really okay to just go down here? Below his feet, numerous fish were freely moving in schools. At that moment, an article Sungjin had seen a few weeks ago came to mind. The phrase that said these days, due to global warming’s effects, sharks were occasionally spotted even on the southern coast lingered in his head.
Even if not a shark, what if there’s one among those many fish that bites my foot? He also remembered the story of a company colleague who went on a honeymoon last year and received treatment after being bitten on the hand by a fish while snorkeling. What if he got stung when poisonous jellyfish were said to be so rampant on Jeju Island’s coast these days?
All sorts of strange worries chained together and held Sungjin’s ankles.
