You in childhood and you as a complete adult.
If I hadn’t known, I could have lived burying it away. The sense of separation from those I don’t even remember, which I’d had to become accustomed to from the very beginning of my life. Like that directionless sense of loss that had slowly dulled over a lifetime, this too could have slowly dulled. Or I could have lived without knowing it hadn’t dulled.
Burying it away, being buried, becoming dull. If I could have lived like that.
If only.
“I still like you… It would have been okay not to know…”
“…”
“I didn’t want to think… that I wanted to go back…”
If I thought such things, it felt like the longing I’d tried so hard to pretend not to notice would overflow. Then I would surely collapse. The feeling of being surrounded by a dizzying cliff beneath my feet. If even the place where I’d barely managed to set foot after escaping from my collapsed world crumbled, soaked in longing, if I fell into that dizzying place—I was afraid of what would come after.
I was always in the same place.
“…You like me? Really? Still?”
After my festered confession burst out, Eorin, who had been silent for a while, unexpectedly muttered that. It was a voice drained of strength as if quite shocked. But soon again, words came back in a low murmur.
“…You buried away… your feelings of liking me?”
“…”
“I… I couldn’t even bury them. I had no place to bury them.”
At the incomprehensible words, I blinked my eyes.
“That I… liked you.”
Liked me? I opened my eyes wide in surprise. I felt tears flowing out drop by drop and rolling down my cheeks.
“Twelve years.”
“What…”
“It’s been twelve years.”
“…”
“I don’t know if you were able to bury it, but I couldn’t do that… so for a full twelve years, I’ve liked you. You. I’ve spent nearly half my life liking you.”
Eorin gasped for breath. Though no tears were flowing, I thought Eorin was crying. The hand gripping my shoulder was hot.
Slowly, Eorin’s face approached me. Eorin, with eyes closed, tilted his head toward me. Eorin’s lips touched the corner of my mouth. It felt so terribly unreal that I could do nothing but stand still. The kiss that fell dryly without even a smacking sound was brief, but I could tell even in that instant. There was no smell of alcohol from Eorin’s mouth.
“That’s right, I’m petty. I married to gain power, and I endured without looking for you. Because if I didn’t have power, you would disappear. Because I would have to just stand there like an idiot and watch again! …But, but now, I have the ability to protect you, and people to help me, so the world I’ve built up… seems quite solid. When things got to this point, I thought, ah, this much should be enough for me to protect at least you. Now I can finally love you without worry…”
Love.
At that one word, the dam I’d built collapsed. My sobbing grew increasingly fierce.
“There’s no one as petty and selfish as me. It’s always been like that. Even crying like this, it was always you who reached out first. Then I would pretend not to notice, pretend to just happen to follow the hand you extended, and love you like that…”
Eorin kissed my cheek. And Eorin’s lips that rose up like that erased my tears.
“Even after bringing you here gathering every excuse, I was watching your reactions worried you might reject me, wondering if you didn’t like me anymore, so I couldn’t even confess, and only now am I barely able to approach you… I’m really pathetic and unsightly. You probably didn’t know Kim Eorin you loved was this kind of person… but still, this is me. I’m sorry. Because I’m a coward…”
“Hic, uugh.”
“I’m so pathetic that there’s no one to take me away but you. So please take me away, Chiwon-ah.”
“Huuk, huwaah…!”
“Please… love me…”
During the time without you, I had such a hard time…
Eorin whispered that. Only after spitting out those words did Eorin finally drop a single tear. I raised my trembling hands and grabbed onto Eorin’s collar. Feeling my touch, Eorin trembled for a moment, then cupped the back of my neck and kissed my cheek. I pulled Eorin’s waist into an embrace just like that.
Only after not avoiding the kiss and even being embraced did Eorin finally find my lips. Through our touching lips, Eorin’s sobbing was transmitted.
Only then did I know. Eorin was truly very fearful. Moreover, weak and full of wounds. Just as much as me.
There was much to say. But not now. Now, simply being together was enough. We cried a lot with our heads leaning on each other’s shoulders.
In those tears, many things melted away.
**03. Spring at Seventeen**
I still remember it vividly. The color of the sky that day, the temperature of the wind, the pulse of summer just beginning. And the clumsy and lovely tree scent that was budding inside there.
Grandfather was a person who was unusually fond of children. From what I heard, he was completely different until I was born, but since I only saw him smile with such contentment his mouth would fall open whenever he saw children, I had no way of knowing.
And our grandfather who loved children was a successful businessman and had a lot of money. A very, very large amount. So he decided to use the money he’d been earning without purpose just for the sake of earning to help the world’s children who were living in difficulty.
After establishing a child support foundation, Grandfather also built an orphanage for children who had lost their families. And then he would often visit the orphanage and come back to tell me stories about what children he’d met. Since his excited appearance was one of the things I liked, I listened to his stories in silence. What snack the child he met today said they liked, how they smiled, how cute they were.
But there was one child who often appeared in Grandfather’s stories. The reason I remembered that child was because it was the first time Grandfather showed a pitying expression. Grandfather would say that talking about someone always requires care, so he would only tell me about the cute and good aspects of the children he met that day, but when it came to that child, there were many times when he would lose his words while fiddling with my hand even while talking.
“When you lose family at too young an age, you mature quickly. Everyone does. But that child…”
Saying he kept worrying, Grandfather often visited that orphanage. I also went a couple of times, but Grandfather didn’t let me inside the orphanage, saying that us meeting might not be good for either of us.
Like that, I turned fifteen, and holding Grandfather’s hand, I visited the orphanage once more. However I acted outside, in front of Grandfather I became just a young grandson. When Grandfather left me outside the orphanage as always and went inside, I leaned against the car and looked at the orphanage roof visible beyond the wall.
I knew the reason Grandfather brought me to the orphanage. And also the reason he brought me to the door but didn’t let me inside the orphanage. Grandfather wanted to raise me as a person who should naturally give if I had things like he did. But he must have also worried whether there would be a child who would be hurt seeing me, or whether I would be hurt seeing a child who was hurt.
The me of that time had already decided on Grandfather as my life role model. So don’t worry—I was planning to follow in Grandfather’s footsteps. Even if I couldn’t become as kind a person as Grandfather, I wanted to become as close to that as possible. When I was standing there vacantly thinking such thoughts, I received a shock that turned my world upside down.
It wasn’t that I’d been hit by something, or that the sky color had suddenly changed or the ground had shaken. A single pheromone had just newly budded, that was all. But the moment I smelled that scent, I felt as if color was finally being painted onto the world.
Though the world until then hadn’t been colorless, all sorts of things came at me much more vividly. That pheromone wasn’t even dense but just seemed to seep in, yet at the tree scent mixed with the dry sunlight of early summer, I couldn’t come to my senses for a while. Not staggering was all I could manage.
“What is this smell?”
When I barely opened my mouth and muttered that, one of Grandfather’s secretaries who was standing with me said:
“What smell are you referring to?”
“…Don’t you… smell this?”
“I’m not sure what smell you’re talking about…”
That person was an alpha, and that tree scent that was still vivid was clearly a pheromone. But to not smell such a full and intense scent—I couldn’t understand. I had to stand there dazedly and watch helplessly as my world turned upside down. There was no sense of rejection at all. My heart just beat strangely fast.
“The eldest child is suffering from manifestation fever, and it’s continued for a whole week now. They showed him to a doctor but they said the cause was unknown and there was nothing to do but wait. They say manifestation fever occasionally lasts long for some children, but…”
On the way back, Grandfather said that with a worried face. At the word “eldest,” I knew that the owner of that tree scent was that child Grandfather had talked about several times.
“…What’s their name?”
It was a question I’d never once asked. But the reason I was asking now was because I’d become curious what kind of name one would need to have to contain such a scent.
“It’s Chiwon. Yoo Chiwon.”
Yoo Chiwon. It was a name that some might laugh at. But I blankly rolled that name around in my mouth.
Yoo Chiwon.
I didn’t know then that it would be a name I wouldn’t even be able to properly call, afraid it might wear away, and would just hold onto longingly.
About two years after that, on the way back after middle school graduation ended, Grandfather, who had made time to come see me, gently brought up the topic. That he was going to enroll the eldest child of First Orphanage at Haebam High.
“You mean Chiwon?”
“You remembered?”
How could I forget? Because that day still popped into my mind unexpectedly. That day had become completely one with the words “early summer” inside me. So just hearing the word summer immediately drew out that day’s scenery, that pheromone vividly.
“The orphanage is right next door, but since the school he originally attended isn’t around here, he won’t know any friends, so he might have difficulty adjusting. I’m a bit worried.”
“…I’ll look after him.”
“Will you do that?”
