“No…. Jeonghan-ah, don’t do that. I was really happy. Don’t be sorry. Please…. Don’t do that. If you do that, I, I can’t look at you. How many things have I hidden from you…. I’m the one who should be sorry, why are you saying sorry to me….”
The face of Cha Jeonghan I barely looked at properly was also haggard. Seeing all too clearly how much thinking he’d done during that time, my heart crumbled and crumbled again.
“Today’s your birthday.”
“……”
“I opened my eyes in the morning and remembered I hadn’t made a restaurant reservation. We always had dinner together with your parents. So I called the restaurant and got as far as saying I was making a reservation for six people… and only then did I remember you weren’t at home.”
“……”
“I had no schedule either. You know. I always clear your birthday even if it kills me.”
“……”
“I had no face to see you, but today I wanted to see you. So I came. I didn’t come to tell you to leave. I didn’t come angry to confront you either.”
At Cha Jeonghan’s words, my heart hurt so much. Knowing that just as I hadn’t been doing well, Cha Jeonghan hadn’t been doing well either hurt so much that heat rose to my eyes.
“While waiting, I kept thinking. What should I say? What did I want to do coming here? I heard your feelings, and now I know well, and I know but I can’t pretend not to know. I don’t like waiting for things to naturally settle in some direction as time passes…. You know my personality is impatient.”
“……”
“I kept thinking and then I saw you.”
“……”
“When I saw you, the answer came out. The answer that wouldn’t come out like that.”
“……”
“I don’t want to lose you.”
At the words that he didn’t want to lose me, my heart fell with a thud. I was surprised because it was something I couldn’t have imagined while thinking about growing distant during the long time we’d been apart, and even in this moment, because I loved Cha Jeonghan, everything that made me up focused on him.
“…Even though I lied? Even though I deceived you for so long… While you told me everything, I hid everything like this… Aren’t you angry? You hate being deceived, hate when someone thinks everything through alone and then blurts it out like this… don’t you?”
“Yeah. I hate this kind of thing. I’m selfish, my emotions come first, so I hate situations where only I don’t know and get notified later and have to organize it alone. Since you can’t not tell me, you do tell me, but you want to avoid friction as much as possible, so you tell me at the very last moment and immediately disappear—that’s really the worst.”
“…Then why……”
“You said you love me.”
“……”
“You said what you were hiding from me was love.”
“……”
“I didn’t know either, but I guess love is something that doesn’t make you angry even when you hear it that way.”
“……”
“Yuhyeon. I don’t want to break our relationship either. I want you to continue being with me from now on.”
I knew well that Cha Jeonghan’s words weren’t an answer saying he loved me. It was saying he wanted to continue maintaining our relationship that had been stably maintained until now.
“I like you too. I didn’t know your feelings before, and now I know… That’s the only thing that’s changed.”
“…Right. Before, you didn’t know, and now you know my feelings. That changed. But Jeonghan. Because that changed… everything changed.”
“……”
“I like you as a friend…. Even just thinking of you as a friend in my life, you’re the most precious to me. If you take away my friend Cha Jeonghan from me, there’s almost nothing left.”
“……”
“But I… also love you a lot with feelings that aren’t friendship. So I was happy every time I touched you. It was scary, and I was on edge thinking it would end if I got caught… But still, in those moments, it felt like you loved me too, so I was happy.”
“……”
“Even though I loved you, we could have been good friends. Because you didn’t know. But not anymore…. Jeonghan, you know everything now.”
The fact that Cha Jeonghan had found out, just that one thing that changed, would shake up so many things between us.
“Can you treat me like before? Even doing one action, you’ll worry about it. You’ll worry whether that action will hurt me or make my heart flutter, and I’ll try to react like usual too but… I’ll speak a bit more calmly to make sure my love for you doesn’t show, I’ll hide my emotions a bit more when dealing with you.”
“……”
“…And then if you get someone you like?”
“……”
“It’ll be more awkward than now, and we won’t be able to turn it back. I don’t want to become an uncomfortable presence to you.”
“Yuhyeon.”
“I’ll organize the officetel and move out as soon as I find a place. For the manager work, I’ll talk with Dongyun hyung and the company, and when a new person comes, I’ll hand over everything and make sure there’s no disruption to your schedule. The stuff at your house, like I said before, is almost all things you gave me…. Tell me what would be more comfortable for you and I’ll organize it that way.”
After my words ended, Cha Jeonghan didn’t say anything for a moment. His gaze looking at me didn’t move, so I lowered my head first to avoid his eyes. The continuing silence was awkward, but still, because I was with Cha Jeonghan, I could endure it.
Cha Jeonghan lowered his head in the awkward silence. He looked both angry and at a loss for words. After not continuing his words for a long time, he slowly raised his head and looked at me. The voice coming from between his lips was low and heavy.
“Fine.”
“……”
“You can find a place and organize the officetel, you can talk with Dongyun hyung and the company to solve the manager work, you can organize the stuff at home the way I say…. Yeah, all of that can be organized that way… but what about me?”
“……”
“How are you going to organize me?”
“……”
“After you organize everything, are we just not supposed to contact each other from now on?”
“……”
“I can just continue with the new manager without any disruption to the schedule? Yeah, there was such a thing…. I worked with Ji Yuhyeon for a long time before. We can just do this?”
Organize. How should I organize the relationship between Cha Jeonghan and me? More than the house or stuff, the thing that actually needed to be organized first was our relationship right now. The word organize seemed too stiff and cold, but I had to organize this relationship with Cha Jeonghan.
“Yeah. You’re right too.”
“……”
“There will be restrictions on actions. Even if I joke around carelessly like before, I’ll think I went too far, and you’ll think you reacted too much to the joke, so we’ll both watch each other’s reactions and it could get uncomfortable. I know.”
“……”
“I know, I know everything… but Yuhyeon. I want you to be here. I want you to be with me like you’ve been with me all along until now. I know it’s a selfish feeling.”
“……”
“I know…. But I can’t live without you.”
“……”
“You thought every time I said I can’t live without you, it was just a habit, something I said without meaning. It’s real. I lived because of you, I looked forward to tomorrow because you were here. I can’t do without you, Ji Yuhyeon.”
Seeing Cha Jeonghan acting like a very anxious person, my heart wavered. It was even more so because I knew all of his unstable times. My heart hurt more remembering all those times I held the wavering Cha Jeonghan, made eye contact with him, and listened to his stories whenever he was lonely and in pain.
“Just keep loving me.”
“……”
“Let’s be together, Yuhyeon. How can we end this? How can I live without you?”
The permission to keep loving and the words asking to be together were sweeter than any words I’d ever heard. Even after finding out about my love, I wanted to cling to Cha Jeonghan pretending not to know anything, to him who didn’t blame me and asked to be together. Though I couldn’t quite grasp it yet, I thought maybe if I tried hard, I’d get used to the newly established relationship and it would be okay. But there was no name for the relationship that would be newly created between us.
“…How can we be together when I love you?”
“Why can’t we? Now I know, so you can just think comfortably. If I’d been displeased hearing you say you love me, I couldn’t say this, but I wasn’t. I wasn’t displeased, and rather, I thought I could get along even closer with you.”
“……”
“I like you too. If only one of us could live, I like you enough to unconditionally save you. Is the love you talk about so different from the feelings I have for you? It’s feelings of caring. You’re important to me, and I’m important to you.”
“……”
“Do you not want to be with me? Is the name of the emotion that important? Enough to end the time we spent together for 13 years?”
I wanted to be together. Whatever emotions Cha Jeonghan poured on me, I wanted to show him all my love as it was. 13 years, 14 years, 15 years…. I wanted to spend all the time attached to us with Cha Jeonghan.
“…The name of the emotion is also important to me. It wasn’t important until I told you. Because all I needed was to be with you under any name. But now… you know.
