Wondering what was wrong, I looked at him the same way, and Choi Seol soon shook his head.
“It’s nothing. I just think you made a good choice.”
“Right? I told you, coming here was the right call.”
It wasn’t like I hadn’t considered a jjimjilbang or a motel either. But at the time, Choi Seol had been in no state to give any input at all. Dragging along someone who’d turned into a stone statue, this place had been the closest option, and once we’d arrived, the laundry service had turned out to be a stroke of luck. Either way, thanks to my foresight, we’d ended up able to spend the night comfortably, which made me feel a bit proud. It had also taken a good deal of the tension off my shoulders.
“By the way, aren’t you hungry? We haven’t even had dinner.”
Now that my mind had settled, hunger was starting to creep in. I twisted open the cap of a water bottle, thinking I’d at least fill up on water first, when—
“Huh?”
“What’s wrong?”
“No, it’s just—”
The cap had turned far too easily. Which meant it had already been opened once. I glanced at the water bottle in front of Choi Seol, then looked back at the one in my own hand. It wasn’t by much, but the water in this bottle was lower than it should’ve been. It seemed Choi Seol must have handed me the wrong one by mistake, but somehow the words wouldn’t come out.
“No, nothing. Anyway, going out’s pretty much off the table because of the clothes situation — can we order delivery here? Or room service would be fine too, if that works.”
I decided to let the water thing slide and brought the conversation back on track. Choi Seol looked a little puzzled for a moment, but went along with the conversation easily enough.
“I think I saw a menu under the TV stand.”
“I’ll go grab it, then.”
I set the water bottle back down on the table and went to where Choi Seol had pointed, bringing back the menu.
“Oh, they’ve got chicken. Pizza too. There’s sausage, though that’s probably more of a drinking snack. Looks like the only rice option is breakfast, but what do you think? Want to just get this stuff?”
“Sure.”
“Okay. Let’s order some beer too, then. What do you want to eat?”
“Everything on there looks good.”
I’d been holding the menu open to show Choi Seol, but I paused.
“Everything?”
“I don’t think the portions will be that big.”
“I guess… that’s probably true.”
Choi Seol wasn’t wrong, but my eyes had already locked onto the prices on the menu. If we got all of this, how much would that even come to? Each item was at least twenty thousand won and up, good lord.
I shot a look at Choi Seol. I’d meant to glare, but it just came out as a look.
“How about we just start with the chicken and pizza for now… how’s that?”
“…..”
“Then this one too, that’s three… or should we add this one, making it four?”
“Whatever, sure, go ahead.”
Whatever, my freezing ass. Just four items alone came to well over a hundred thousand won. Between the hotel fee and the laundry charge, what we’d spent at the hotel alone had already exceeded my monthly living expenses.
Did this guy eat this much back home too? If anything, I’d been the one stuffing food at him, not the other way around — he’d never had that much of an appetite before. Or maybe it was stress eating? Looking at the state he’d been in today, it made sense, in a way. I had my own moments of losing control over my appetite sometimes too. But why did it have to explode right here, of all places.
Forcing down the urge to argue, I handed the menu back over to Choi Seol.
“You order, then.”
“Got it.”
“And, um.”
I sneaked a glance at Choi Seol, who’d just picked up the phone.
“The money…”
You’re definitely going to pay me back, right? You’re not just going to skip out on it or anything, are you? I’ll actually get it tomorrow once we’re at your place, right? Countless things came to mind, but not a single one of them would leave my mouth.
“…Just tell them to put the charge on the room.”
“Got it.”
“Actually, never mind, everyone does that nowadays anyway, so there’s no need to say anything else.”
“Right.”
…In the end, I couldn’t say it. I didn’t want to look like the kind of person who tagged along playing guardian and then got anxious over money. I’d long since realized that this kind of pride did absolutely nothing for me out in the real world, and it wasn’t like I went around letting people stiff me or biting my tongue elsewhere — but somehow, only in front of Choi Seol, I felt my resolve weaken. He was the one person I didn’t want to show that side of myself to.
“They said there’s a lot of items so it might take a while, so I asked them to bring out whatever’s ready first.”
“Huh?”
“Figured you didn’t hear me.”
“Oh, right. Good call.”
It seemed he’d noticed that I’d been too lost in thought to catch the phone call, even sitting right next to him. Am I just the easy mark here? Someone with sharp instincts like him couldn’t possibly not notice me fumbling around like this, and the fact that he was acting so calm about it made me a little suspicious too.
Now that I thought about it, Choi Seol had been oddly unbothered about spending my money this whole time. Could he secretly be some Gangnam gigolo, or someone who specializes in milking people for cash?
Just as the seeds of fresh suspicion were taking root, Choi Seol turned his gaze back toward the window. I shook off the thought and looked the same way. It was a spot with a direct view of the stream.
“It’s really pouring.”
The sky was still dumping rain just as hard as when we’d first arrived at the hotel. The wind seemed to be picking up too. If this had been a traditional hanok, we probably would’ve been able to take in the full sensory experience — the sound of the rain, the damp smell of earth — but the city’s double-pane windows didn’t let any of that through. It felt cozy yet a little wistful at the same time.
“The stream’s probably going to swell up a lot.”
Choi Seol murmured quietly. It seemed he’d been looking at the stream too.
“Still, it won’t overflow. It’s never happened before.”
“Right, the banks are high enough.”
Ah, that’s right.
I gazed at Choi Seol. I’d definitely thought of it back when we were crossing the bridge over the stream, but at some point I’d forgotten. It was a memory. But it seemed I’d ended up remembering it again for nothing. My heart was reacting as if welcoming back the old memory. Pressing down on my chest so it wouldn’t show, I deliberately asked Choi Seol in a higher tone than usual.
“Do you remember, by any chance?”
“Remember what?”
“Back then, on a rainy day like this, we met under that tree by the stream, remember?”
I wonder if you’ll actually remember. I had almost no expectations. I’d already tried this once before, and it had ended in failure. They say people sometimes recall forgotten memories after visiting a certain place or hearing a related word, but you’d been indifferent to both. Now it was raining. I wondered if the weather might give even a little meaning back to your memory.
“I remember. At the time, I thought, what kind of lunatic is wandering around by the stream on a rainy day without any fear. Went to check, and there you were.”
So the answer had been the weather, after all. I deliberately fought the urge to bring my hand to my face, since I wanted to check whether it had gone red. Instead, I looked at the water bottle I still hadn’t taken a single sip from. My thirst had started a long time ago by now.
“I had it all factored in when I went there. I told you, that place has never once overflowed.”
“Wasn’t it because you forgot your umbrella?”
“…Wow, you really do remember things well. Is it because for you, it was just a few months ago?”
“I suppose.”
Choi Seol answered briefly and turned his head back toward the stream. His face looked deep in thought. As I waited quietly, a calm voice eventually came.
“To be honest, it’s not like everything from when I was seventeen comes back to me as vividly as if it were yesterday. Some parts feel distant, sometimes. It’s more like — the way you’d describe something from ten years ago, that kind of feeling. So every time that happens, it hits me all over again. Right, I really did lose my memory. I’m not seventeen — I’m twenty-seven-year-old Choi Seol.“
A smile, just as bitter as his voice, formed on Choi Seol’s lips.
“But everything that happened with you, Han Yeoreum, comes back to me crystal clear. Clear enough to picture right in front of my eyes.”
Choi Seol met my gaze.
“It’s strange. Why is it only you?”
“I don’t… know either.”
Given what had happened in the bathroom, something about that made my heart skip uncomfortably. Just as I was about to awkwardly look away again, Choi Seol’s next words caught me.
“I think I know.”
The look and the tone directed at me carried something different in quality from when the conversation had first started. Sweet, ticklish, like it might carry the scent of a green summer apple. Maybe that was why Choi Seol suddenly felt frightening to me.
“Anyway, what happened earlier today with your real father?”
It was in moments like this that I realized just how selfish an adult I was. To preemptively shut down anything that might become a problem for me, I’d dragged up a topic that might be one of Choi Seol’s wounds. As expected, his face, which had looked like it might melt into sweetness, turned somewhat grim. At least it seemed I’d succeeded in changing his mood. But the bloodthirsty air radiating off him made me feel like I might get hit, and my body shifted back without meaning to.
“Exactly what it sounds like. My biological birth father.”
“…..”
“I thought he was dead when I was a kid, but once I grew up, he showed up right in front of me. Alive.”
His tone turned bitter, as if it were truly regrettable. Choi Seol stared back out the window. This time, it seemed like he was looking past the stream, at something beyond it.
“I still don’t know the full details. What I heard from Grandma starts with my mom, who’d been doing fine in college, suddenly cutting off contact for a year and then showing up with me. And not long after that, she passed away. Having a baby alone must have been incredibly hard on her.”
Every word he spoke calmly carried weight behind it.
“Obvious, right? My mom got bitten by a dog. And not just any dog — a nasty, well-connected, powerful son of a bitch who tore her life apart. And then that same son of a bitch came looking to bite someone again. Saying he needed me. That was right before I started high school.”
Choi Seol let out a hollow laugh, as if it was absurd even now, thinking back on it.
“So I went through a bit of an unseasonable rebellious phase. Thought if I acted out like crazy, I might be able to do some damage to that person. But turns out a measly seventeen-year-old brat couldn’t even leave a scratch on a son of a bitch like that. If anything, it just felt like I was the one losing out more, the more I tried. But the feelings welling up were too much to control, so I ended up acting kind of twisted about it.”
It was a heavy story to take in. Probably more so because of the guilt mixed in. This was a conversation I’d started for my own sake, after all. Not knowing where to put my hands, I ended up picking up the water bottle I’d set aside earlier, just for something to do, and replied casually.
“That’s barely even rebellion. You just glared at people and knocked over a few chairs — other than that, you studied hard, got along fine with everyone, total model student.”
“You think?”
“Yeah. If you were gonna go off the rails, you should’ve at least gone full delinquent at school.”
“I’d hate to be lumped in with trash like that.”
“I don’t want you to be like that either. I’m just saying, that’s all.”
It was just that manga and other media tended to glamorize delinquents so much — in reality, they were just a pack of criminals.
“But didn’t you actually get into fights with them too? Was that rebellion too?”
At his entrance ceremony, Choi Seol had drawn attention for his looks and grades, and afterward, he’d become famous for beating up every delinquent in sight.
“Well, that too, I guess. They picked fights with me first, too. I’m not really the type to just sit there and take it.”
“I heard it wasn’t just ‘not taking it’ — you turned them into mincemeat?”
“That’s the rumor getting exaggerated. I just stomped them down enough that they’d never try touching me again. By now, their arms and legs are probably all perfectly fine and they’re out there walking around just fine.”
“Was that really that easy? Did you learn some kind of fighting technique, or martial arts or something?”
“I learned some.”
“Seriously?”
I’d just been throwing it out there, but apparently it was true. My two hands, still holding the water bottle, suddenly came together respectfully.
