After the visit to the gay bar, Cha Jae-woo stopped walking around shirtless in front of me. It seemed like it hadn’t been entirely without effect, and I was relieved.
With one of the immediate problems resolved, I put my attempts to find someone new on hold for the time being.
Getting burned so badly at the gay bar had taken the wind out of my sails, and it suddenly hit me — did I really need to try this hard just to meet someone new?
The fact that spring had brought a steady stream of social commitments was part of it too.
With plans booked every weekend, I wasn’t someone who had the energy to carve out additional time on top of that just to meet new people.
Because of that, the time Cha Jae-woo and I spent alone together also decreased noticeably. It felt a little bad toward Cha Jae-woo, who needed to find inspiration urgently — but for me, it was a relief in more ways than one.
If those days of having to lean on Cha Jae-woo had continued, I might have ended up depending on him without even realizing it.
If there had come another moment like the one after my mom’s birthday — when I’d been so sick and so broken — where I’d wanted to lean on him, I would have crumbled right then and there.
I might have clung to Cha Jae-woo, who remembered nothing, and cried my eyes out. And then I’d have begged him to get back together with me.
I was genuinely relieved. I was grateful to have been given enough time to find my footing again before it came to that.
And I reminded myself again. To keep the appropriate distance, just as I had been doing — and once the promised three months were up, to become complete strangers with Cha Jae-woo. For now, I decided to think of nothing else.
“Isn’t that a message?”
“Oh — it’s just spam. Don’t worry about it.”
I checked the message that had just come in, then turned the screen off immediately.
Cha Jae-woo seemed to find it strange that I’d checked it with such a serious look only to not even reply, and his face showed it — but I answered with a vague smile and left it at that.
Whether he picked up on the fact that I didn’t want to talk about it further, Cha Jae-woo didn’t press. I tossed my phone onto the sofa and pretended to refocus on the movie we’d been watching together.
It was a film I’d been fully absorbed in up until just a moment ago, but now I couldn’t get into it at all — still, I kept my gaze fixed on the screen.
The message I’d just seen was from my dad. After my mom’s birthday, I hadn’t reached out to either of them.
We’d never been close enough to be in frequent contact to begin with, so there was nothing strange about that — but my dad seemed to have sensed that something was off between me and my mom that day, and had been reaching out occasionally.
Not that he was checking in on me or asking how I’d been. The message he’d just sent was asking whether I really wasn’t going to come to Ji-hyeon’s — my half-sister’s — upcoming exhibition.
Beyond that, it was the usual — was I keeping in touch with my mom, she seemed lonely, maybe visit her once in a while, things like that.
But I knew. What my mom needed was my dad — not me. My mom loved my dad as her husband, but she didn’t love me as her child.
Well — I wasn’t my mom, so it wasn’t right to state it so flatly. How could I possibly know what was inside her heart?
But one thing was certain. To my mom, I came after my dad.
It wasn’t as if I hadn’t known. I had simply chosen to look away, telling myself that my mom cared for me and loved me, so it was fine.
But going through this had made me realize. The love I had for my mom was nothing more than a painful, one-sided devotion.
Even if my mom had some small measure of care for me somewhere in her heart, it was nowhere near enough compared to what I felt for her.
I’d always known that — and yet here I was, freshly disappointed in myself all over again.
As I could tell just from looking at my relationship with Cha Jae-woo — a relationship where one person’s feelings are disproportionately larger than the other’s doesn’t last.
A relationship sustained at the cost of one person’s one-sided sacrifice is bound to reach its end the moment that well runs dry.
I had felt it to my core through two one-sided loves — a blindly devoted, desperate unrequited love leaves nothing but deep scars behind.
So I would no longer love anyone alone. Whether that was a parent or a lover.
***
Tuesday mornings were often busy. Since the library was closed the day before, the return bin would be piled with books — and the backlog of reserved titles had to be processed as well.
In particular, Cha Jae-woo, being part-time staff, had to process all the returned books from the drop bin and also locate and handle the books requested through the automated reservation system — so Tuesdays were significantly busier for him than other days.
I was watching Cha Jae-woo push the book cart around searching for titles, and then followed an elderly patron who had come to ask for help finding a book.
“It said it was in the 800s section, but I can’t find it no matter how hard I look……”
“Large-print books are shelved separately over here.”
I guided the patron toward the large-print section.
They were usually books sought out by those with poor eyesight, so I made a point of helping with extra care.
“Oh, here it is.”
“Thank you so much……”
The elder thanked me sincerely and made their way to the nearest open seat with the book in hand. It looked like they wanted to read it right there rather than check it out, so I turned to head back to the desk.
I glanced toward the window without thinking — and outside, the cherry blossoms were in full bloom. The warmer weather and lighter clothes had already made me aware that spring had come, but seeing the petals drifting in front of me made it feel all the more real.
I was past the age of getting worked up or giddy over the arrival of spring — so I simply stood there for a moment, taking in the blossoms.
“Spring really did come.”
It was a murmur I hadn’t meant to say aloud — but my heart felt unexpectedly warm. Maybe it helps to believe that no matter what comes, the cold winter will pass someday, and a spring of blooming flowers will follow.
After gazing at the flowers outside for a little while, I turned and headed back to the desk.
“Excuse me, could you——”
Running into Cha Jae-woo at the shelves on the other side of the library on my way back to the desk was entirely by chance.
I stopped walking and watched him. Cha Jae-woo wasn’t alone — a female patron was handing him something.
If it was just a request to help find a book, Cha Jae-woo could handle that on his own — but if it was any other matter, I’d end up being the one to deal with it.
He knew that too, so if it was something beyond his capacity, he’d come to me. I was keeping an eye on the situation when Cha Jae-woo happened to turn his head, and our eyes met.
The moment our gazes collided across the room, a look of dismay — or perhaps panic — spread across Cha Jae-woo’s face. He started fidgeting like someone who’d been caught in the middle of something they shouldn’t be seen doing, and then suddenly raised his voice.
“I — I have a partner!”
The problem was that his voice was loud enough to reverberate through the entire library. Thanks to that, a cold silence fell over the space in an instant, drowning out the soft classical music that had been playing.
Even I, who had been watching the situation unfold, was caught off guard — so it was only natural that the patrons quietly reading their books all turned their gazes toward them.
Even without anyone blatantly staring, the interest in their eyes as they stole glances at the two of them was palpable. Unable to bear it any longer, the woman bowed her head deeply, as though she were the one who had done something wrong.
Her ears flushed bright red, and she was visibly trembling — it was almost pitiful.
“I — I’m so sorry……”
Unable to withstand the weight of everyone’s eyes on her, she fled the spot as if making an escape. She’d worked up the courage to offer her number, only to be rejected publicly — the embarrassment must have been mortifying.
I watched the direction she’d gone, then turned my head — and met Cha Jae-woo’s eyes again. His face still couldn’t hide the flustered look, and he was just chewing his lip uselessly.
If someone saw him, they’d think he was the one who had been rejected, not the one doing the rejecting.
Normally I would have reminded Cha Jae-woo to keep his voice down — but right now, drawing any more attention to it seemed worse than letting it go quietly, so I left it alone and continued to the desk.
“Ha Yun——. Yun-su.”
Cha Jae-woo practically ran after me to the desk. I looked up wondering what it was — and right at that moment, Deputy Ye-jin stepped out of the office.
“You’re quite popular, Jae-woo.”
His voice had apparently been loud enough to carry all the way into the office.
“But this is a library, so please keep it down next time you’re turning someone down.”
“……Yes.”
Cha Jae-woo seemed to know he was in the wrong and nodded without protest. Deputy Ye-jin’s gaze then shifted to me.
“Yun-su, you have that training trip today, don’t you? I’ll cover the desk, so go ahead and get ready.”
“Oh, yes. Thank you. I’ll be off then.”
Come to think of it, today I had a morning work trip, which meant I needed to have lunch early and get moving.
I’d told Cha Jae-woo in advance so he already knew — but I gave him a brief look that said see you later, then went to the office to gather my things.
“See you later, Deputy Ye-jin.”
“That’s a rather sad goodbye.”
“Can’t help it.”
After exchanging farewells with Deputy Ye-jin, I turned toward Cha Jae-woo, who was still lingering by the desk.
“See you tomorrow, Jae-woo.”
We’d see each other at home later — but I kept to what our surface-level relationship called for.
But unlike usual, where he would have played along, today Cha Jae-woo said nothing and simply nodded.
That look — it seemed almost like he was reading my mood.
Well. Probably just my imagination.
