“If you can’t avoid it, it’s right to face it.”
As I said this, I put strength into the hand I was holding. The sight of us holding hands was just as strange as him placing his hand on my head, so I made a motion to pull my hand away, but Rashanin wouldn’t let go. I slightly raised my head to check Rashanin’s face. The hospital room was dark, and with the streetlight from outside the window backlighting him, only the area around his chin was faintly visible.
While checking his face, I attempted to pull my hand away, but Rashanin didn’t budge. Why is this vampire really acting like this?
“Won’t you let go of my hand?”
“No. Because you’ll dodge again this time too.”
I had nothing to say in response. With the feeling of ‘fine, do as you please,’ I let out a deep sigh, and I felt Rashanin laughing silently through our clasped hands and in the air.
I felt somewhat relieved by the faint vibration.
“But really, what brings you here? In the middle of the night.”
Since just holding hands felt a bit strange, I asked the question I’d asked earlier again. Visiting hours wouldn’t stop Rashanin, but the fact that he came here was surprising in itself.
“Elisabeth kept nagging me to go see you in person since I was the one who hurt you.”
“Elisabeth-ssi?”
“Yeah. She’s the one who hurt you, so if she’s that worried, she should come herself. But she says nonsense about how a lady shouldn’t meet a strange man in the dead of night. As if she’s some kind of lady.”
The last part was almost a grumble to himself. Though Rashanin had been speaking bluntly from the start, this was the first time he’d shared his inner thoughts so freely. From just those few words, I could tell that he and Elisabeth were quite close.
They seemed close enough to ask favors of each other and grumble about it while still doing those favors. I didn’t understand what was going on when they’d been fighting like they wanted to kill each other during the day.
“If it’s not rude, could you tell me what happened between you two?”
“It’s personal, so it’s hard to tell you.”
Both the curt tone and the content sounded very familiar. I tilted my head, unable to remember well because of the medication, when Rashanin’s laughter was transmitted through our hands.
“When you asked me what part-time job you were doing, you answered like this.”
“Are you teasing me?”
“I wanted to feel what it’s like to say something like this.”
“And I suppose you wanted to make me feel what it’s like to be rejected.”
I deliberately left out the subject, but there was no way Rashanin wouldn’t understand. The man laughed, his shoulders shaking. If the hospital room had been a bit brighter, I could have seen him genuinely smiling. I felt a bit regretful.
“It’s true that I don’t really want to talk about it. But I want to make it clear that it’s not my fault you got hurt.”
“Are you avoiding responsibility?”
“It was Elisabeth who struck the back of your head with her fist, and it was also Elisabeth who came all the way to Korea to pick a fight with me.”
“Probably, Rashanin-ssi did something terrible to Elisabeth-ssi and came to Korea without apologizing.”
“Do I look like a man who would do something terrible?”
“When it comes to matters between men and women, unless you’re one of the parties involved, you can’t know, can you?”
“Even with a head injury, you don’t lose a single argument.”
“It sounds like you’re hoping my brain activity has declined enough that I’d stutter. I’m hurt.”
“You’ve become caustic.”
While reproaching me for becoming caustic, Rashanin didn’t seem to dislike it and laughed. Then he took one more step closer to the bedside. Only then could I see his face properly.
His genuine smile was still attractive. However, more than his wonderful smile, what caught my eye was his white cheek. There had definitely been a long wound with blood flowing from it. And that was just this afternoon. But now, not a single scar was visible.
“What’s wrong?”
“Your cheek is clean. Are you alright?”
“Ah. You seem to have forgotten who I am.”
Rashanin grinned and stroked his cheek. Right. I’d forgotten. He was a vampire. I was an idiot for worrying about scars remaining on his face even in the midst of that mayhem.
“So then. Why did Elisabeth-ssi come to Korea?”
“You change topics quickly too.”
“Don’t dodge the question.”
“She came to beat me up.”
“What?!”
“So I let her hit me once. Both to show I understood why she was angry and to compensate for the trouble of an old friend coming all this way. But I had no intention of getting hit twice. Elisabeth was being greedy. So this incident is Elisabeth’s fault.”
I understood half and didn’t understand half. One link between the events was missing. My head wasn’t working as well as usual, but after thinking carefully, I spoke.
“What made her so angry that she came all the way to Korea to hit Rashanin-ssi?”
Rashanin slightly narrowed his eyes, as if I’d hit the mark. It was an opportunity.
“Does it have to do with the reason Rashanin-ssi came to Korea?”
“This is turning into an interrogation.”
“Rashanin-ssi.”
“I know you have good instincts, but I don’t want to talk about it.”
That was the second time. The second time he’d said he didn’t want to talk about it.
If there was any wisdom I’d gained in life, it was that what I dislike, others dislike too. Everyone gets annoyed when you keep asking about something they don’t want to talk about. I couldn’t ask why again to a man who’d refused twice.
I relaxed my shoulders and looked up at Rashanin without saying anything. His gaze fell to my face. His calm violet eyes seemed lost in thought. All the while, he held my hand and fidgeted with it. The feeling of his warm fingers intertwining with mine was indescribably subtle. Actually, thinking about it, two men holding hands in a hospital room late at night was an extremely strange sight. If any passing nurses spotted us, or even if Seong-jin barged in, it would be very troublesome.
I wondered whether to just pull my hand away while Rashanin’s grip had loosened, or ask one more time for him to let go.
“It’s not like it’ll wear out, so why?”
The master of mind-reading, Rashanin-ssi, emphasized that it won’t wear out and gripped my hand tightly.
“It will wear out.”
“What an expensive hand.”
“Why are you doing this?”
Instead of playing word games like ‘when will you let go,’ or ‘it’s an expensive hand so let go,’ I decided to take the direct approach.
“Because it feels good to touch. It’s soft.”
Depending on the situation, those words could sound quite meaningful. The time and place were more or less okay, but the other party was wrong. It wasn’t something to say to a man with bandages wrapped around his head.
“Your fiancée’s hand would probably be softer.”
“Puhaha.”
Elisabeth’s hand, rose-like and radiant, was obviously going to be softer than mine. So I told him to go touch her hand instead, but Rashanin let out a strange breath.
“I have no interest in whether Elisabeth’s hand is soft or not, and if I grabbed her hand, my wrist would be cut off.”
“But she’s your fiancée. Yet you can’t even hold her hand?”
“Officially, she is my fiancée, but unofficially… To put it mildly, it would be right to say we’re rivals.”
“Rivals?”
“The Lord of Saxony and my father didn’t get along very well, and one day my father took me along to Saxony and…”
Rashanin, who was about to tell some secret story, suddenly shut his mouth. After a strange atmosphere flowed for a moment, he clicked his tongue and finally let go of my hand.
“You’re a skilled interrogator. When you look up at me with such pitiful eyes, I end up telling all sorts of stories.”
The feeling of warmth disappearing was ambiguous, so I was lightly clenching and unclenching my hand when Rashanin put an unfair accusation on me. When did I look up at Rashanin-ssi with pitiful eyes?
“I didn’t look at Rashanin-ssi with that intention.”
“You know that being unaware of it is even scarier?”
“Misunderstandings are scarier. They lead to fights.”
“I can’t fight with someone who’s sick. I had something to say but can’t remember it, so I should just go.”
“Yes.”
“And you know, I was a bit hurt. What if you didn’t invite me to sit down until the very end.”
“…!”
Only after being pointed out by Rashanin did I realize that he’d been standing the whole time. The chair that Seong-jin had sat in was right next to me, but I hadn’t been aware of it at all.
“Couldn’t you have just sat down?”
“I was waiting for you to invite me.”
“That’s…”
“No need to blame yourself. Just don’t do it next time. Be a more polite and considerate person.”
