Chapter 18
At the end of that road, in a quiet place pretty far from where we’d been staying, we were finally able to warm ourselves up. Renting the entire house there cost about the same as a single room at the previous boarding house. The owner was an elderly woman with poor eyesight, and the room—which hadn’t been used in god knows how long—was covered in a fine layer of dust. We swept and cleaned the room thoroughly without even bothering to unpack our stuff properly first. At some point, the woman had started a fire, and warmth gradually began filling the room.
By the time we finished cleaning, it was past midnight. I lay on my side on the bedding and watched Hyunjae. Thanks to the kind-hearted old woman, we’d been able to have a late dinner of sweet potatoes and chestnuts.
“It feels like we’re visiting grandmother’s house in the countryside.”
“Yeah.”
“Though I’ve never actually seen our grandmother’s face.”
Hyunjae smoothed down my hair and smiled. Then he called my name softly.
“Chanhee.”
Instead of answering, I turned my head to look up at Hyunjae, who was sitting up. He leaned down from above and pressed his lips against mine. What I thought would end as a brief kiss quickly turned into something intense and tangled. Hyunjae began devouring me like he wanted to consume me whole. His hand slipped behind my back, and I felt myself being lifted slightly. As if defying gravity, I was pulled up into Hyunjae’s arms while we kept kissing.
No matter how much hardship and painful trials they’d endured to mature early, it was impossible for two seventeen-year-olds to handle a situation like this skillfully or be particularly considerate of each other. We kissed without stopping. I felt like I’d lose consciousness from the continuous, unfamiliar, overwhelming stimulation. And just like that, a very long, dreamlike night slipped by.
After his previously vague feelings had been confirmed, Hyunjae seemed to have become more assertive. More precisely, he didn’t want to leave my side for even a moment. We spent most of our days sitting on the beach, staring at the horizon and touching the waves. Hyunjae even wanted to come with me on a trip to the supermarket twenty minutes away. It wasn’t that I couldn’t understand. Actually, because I liked that clingy side of him, I went along with it without complaint.
On exactly our third day in this house, we ran into a man at the supermarket. As he was opening the packaging of the cigarettes he’d bought, he studied us carefully as we walked in. I could tell instinctively that this man had been sent by Father. My first thought was that we couldn’t let him find our house. Fortunately, since we already knew about the back door of the supermarket, we managed to slip past the man. Just to be safe, we wandered around the beach for a long time and only went home after the sun had set.
Hyunjae was especially anxious. Of course, since he didn’t want me to notice, he was pretending not to be, but it was obvious. Every night, Hyunjae would suddenly jolt awake as if from a nightmare and watch me sleep for a long time. I already had terrible sleep quality to begin with, so as my anxiety increased, falling asleep became even harder.
Maybe that’s why, when I saw that man standing in front of our gate a few days later, I actually felt strangely calm. There was nowhere in this country Father couldn’t find us. Maybe I’d unconsciously assumed all along that this escape would end with us going back home.
“This is someone else’s house.”
The man’s face was as unpleasant as my own. Just looking at him, you could tell how violent he was. Father had probably hired subcontractors who specialized in tracking people down.
“Are you the young master Yu Chanhee?”
“Not a young master, but yeah, I’m Yu Chanhee.”
The man let out a coarse laugh.
“Then the one behind you must be Yu Hyunjae.”
I was a little surprised to find Hyunjae standing behind me. He was looking at the man with a completely blank expression. Though he didn’t say anything, coldness dripped from Hyunjae’s face.
“I don’t really want to waste effort on a couple of runaway kids, you know? Let’s just quietly go back to Seoul, yeah?”
The man mocked us while trying to coax us along.
“What happens if we refuse?”
“Well.”
The man kicked the gate with a loud bang. Since it was such a quiet neighborhood, I found that obnoxious noise especially grating.
“Are you going to hit us or something?”
“How much of a troublemaker must the young master be for his father to tell me to bring him back even if I have to half-cripple him?”
I burst out laughing. I touched my face. Though they’d faded considerably, prominent bruises still covered my face. It wasn’t because I was a troublemaker that Father did this—that’s just the kind of person Father was. Hyunjae placed his hand on my shoulder while keeping his guard up against the man. I patted his hand as if to say it was fine. Seeing this, the man sneered again.
“So the rumors are true.”
I raised my eyebrows. I couldn’t tell if our running away had become such a big deal that it warranted the grand word “rumors,” or if the man was just making a fuss.
“That the two young masters of that household fell for each other and ran away together.”
“Oh.”
I let out an exclamation like I was genuinely surprised.
“For one of Father’s stupid employees, you’ve made quite a plausible deduction.”
The man’s expression hardened noticeably. Apparently no longer willing to be patient, he strode toward me and grabbed my hair without warning. Immediately, Hyunjae drove his fist into the man’s face without hesitation. The man went down instantly.
“Don’t touch him, you crazy bastard.”
“Fuck…”
The man glared at Hyunjae while wiping blood from around his mouth.
“Now I want to touch him even more.”
The man rushed at me instead of Hyunjae. I barely dodged his punch. Then I kicked him in the stomach. The man went down again. His pride apparently wounded pretty badly, the man glared at us while spitting on the ground.
“Fuck, getting my ass kicked by kids while on the job. This feels like shit.”
“Then why don’t you just leave?”
Instead of answering, the man rushed at us again. Since it was the same attack pattern, I dodged more easily this time. Just as I was thinking, “stupid bastard,” I felt intense pain shoot through my stomach along with the warm sensation of blood flowing.
“Ah, fuck… Mister, you play really dirty…”
I was familiar with this unpleasant feeling of flesh being torn by metal. The only difference from before might be that I hadn’t been stabbed deeply enough for it to be fatal, since I’d pulled back in time. Unlike me, who was optimistically thinking that at least I wouldn’t die, Hyunjae looked absolutely furious. Hyunjae lightly kicked the man’s hand to make him drop the knife, then struck him near the solar plexus. The man’s body flew to the edge of the yard.
“Hey! Take it easy!”
Without answering, Hyunjae pressed his knee heavily on the fallen man’s chest and started beating him relentlessly. Since I was well aware of Hyunjae’s grip strength and potential, I ran to him while clutching my bleeding stomach. The man was already unconscious with his eyes rolled back. His ribs were probably broken.
“I said stop it!”
I grabbed Hyunjae’s shoulder and shook him. Only then did he stop punching and slowly turn to look at me. I tried to make an expression suggesting this level of injury was nothing, but I couldn’t tell if that’s how Hyunjae read it. My vision suddenly spun, probably from the blood loss. As I collapsed, Hyunjae caught me, and I blacked out.
When I opened my eyes, my stomach had already been carefully bandaged. I anxiously worried that I might have returned to that exhausting age of eight again, but fortunately, the pain in my stomach and the distinctive salty smell of the seaside reminded me that I wasn’t dead yet.
I slowly sat up. The laceration should’ve been stitched, but since we probably couldn’t go to a hospital, blood was still seeping slightly from the open wound. Being careful not to let the blood soaking through the bandage stain the blanket, I got up completely and opened the door. Hyunjae was nowhere to be seen. After putting on the coat hanging in the living room, I went out to the yard.
And there I witnessed a truly bizarre scene. Under the faint moonlight, Hyunjae was standing alone in the middle of the yard, dressed exactly as he had been earlier. To be precise, he wasn’t exactly alone. The fallen man was right there in front of him. Hyunjae kept staring at the man. It was a coldly detached expression I’d never seen before.
Sensing my presence, Hyunjae slowly turned his head toward me.
“Is that guy still not awake?”
Hyunjae kept staring at me without answering. He’d withdrawn his cold gaze, but his face remained expressionless.
“It’s freezing out here. Let’s go back inside…”
I stopped in my tracks as I was walking toward Hyunjae.
The man’s neck was bent at a strange angle, and his skin had turned blue. It was a sight that could hardly belong to a living human being.
I looked at Hyunjae again. Unlike moments ago, this time he wore an expression like he was about to cry.
“Chanhee…”
I unconsciously took a step back from Hyunjae.
“You won’t abandon me, will you?”
For the first time, I detected intense desperation in Hyunjae’s words. Even that display of excessive devotion to me without asking for anything in return was merely one facet of that desperation. Hyunjae’s eyes gleamed strangely in the moonlight. I slowly nodded.
