“You’re not going to be stuck to my house forever. So no. You need to learn to survive out in the wild on your own. I know this sounds selfish, but I wanted to save you — not take you on as my responsibility…….”
It was, by Haeshin’s own standards, a composed answer. At that, Jinju snapped her head away and became completely absorbed in watching the rain fall.
A figure with pale, wheat-colored fur — a stark contrast to Jinju’s patchy coat — awkwardly folded itself down beside her.
The rain-soaked beach he’d seen a thousand times felt strangely unfamiliar today. Maybe because someone was sitting beside him.
The situation was embarrassing and a little absurd, yet he didn’t dislike it. No — if he was honest, he actually liked it. He went and fetched a box that had been lying around on the veranda, stuffed an old blanket and some heat packs inside, and moved it out to the yard.
In the meantime, Hwichan finished his shower and came out of the bathroom, shamelessly looking for a change of clothes. The same guy who used to be wary of even setting foot inside the house was now casually eyeing someone else’s wardrobe like it was the most natural thing in the world.
“Give me something to wear.”
“Now you’ve got the nerve to ask for clothes too?”
“Fine by me if you don’t. I’ll just leave naked.”
“Hey!”
Seeing that he genuinely looked ready to walk out in his wet clothes, Haeshin quickly grabbed whatever was nearest and handed it over.
“Wear this. The size is…… can’t help it. Everything’s going to be small.”
Even he could see it — the shirt clung to Hwichan’s frame like something off a TV fitness trainer who never missed a chance to show off his body. It looked uncomfortable. Haeshin swept a quiet glance over him from head to toe, and when his eyes landed on the distinctly outlined shape below the waist, he exhaled slowly until his stomach went hollow.
Haeshin’s face began to flush — and at the same moment, the sky let out a low rumble.
“Can’t tell if it’s summer or winter, honestly. Does Samsam Island always get this much rain?”
No, it doesn’t. Samsam Island was not a rainy island by nature. This was entirely Lee Haeshin’s fault.
“The weather service said it’d be clear today. The weather’s gone insane.”
Well, the meteorologists wouldn’t know I’m getting butterflies over you, would they. It’s not the weather that’s gone insane — it’s me.
While Haeshin fanned his flushed face with his hand to cool it down, the now-dry cat sauntered over to Hwichan and greeted him with an air of familiarity.
Hwichan bent down with a neutral expression and held his finger out to Jinju’s nose. The gesture was careful and unhurried — uncharacteristically so — and for no particular reason, Haeshin held his breath watching it.
Fortunately, Jinju sniffed at his fingertip, then began circling around Hwichan’s ankles with a low rumbling purr. Just for a brief moment, a faint smile crossed Hwichan’s face.
Not the sneer or the sarcasm he’d been showing all this time — a genuine, natural smile. Truly. Watching it quietly, Haeshin felt something ache in his chest for reasons he couldn’t quite name. He lingered in his own thoughts for a moment, then opened his mouth. There was something he’d been wanting to ask again, at least once.
“Hwichan. Do you still hate Samsam Island? There’s good food, and there’s a cat. The ocean, the mountains.”
The answer came without a moment’s hesitation.
“Yeah, I hate it. There’s good food everywhere else too, and there are way more cats off the island. If I want to see mountains and the ocean, I’d go to Jeju — where there’s phone signal and internet — before I’d ever come to Samsam Island.”
Haeshin dropped his gaze as though he’d expected as much, and continued.
“Was saving it pointless? Too nosy of me?”
It was, perhaps, a roundabout question. He was asking about the cat — and yet, not quite.
At that, Hwichan lifted his eyes and looked at Haeshin. Those eyes, which had always carried a sharp edge and a quiet weariness, held something different in them now.
“Maybe.”
“…….”
“But if you bathed it and gave it a name, and acknowledged it every time you passed by — then it stops being nosiness and becomes something else.”
“Something else like what?”
“Something else that’s good.”
Why did that short, plainly delivered sentence make him feel both a little sad and inexplicably glad. Haeshin smiled softly, nodding his head like a boy who’d finally received permission he’d been waiting a long time for.
“I’ll make sure it stops being nosiness and becomes something good.”
This time, it was unmistakably addressed to Hwichan — not the cat. But Hwichan offered no particular response to that promise. Instead, he let Jinju’s affections wash over him, and for once, laughed out loud.
While I was looking for a ladder for you, you must have been standing in your own front yard, wondering what to do with a tiny life that had wandered in out of nowhere. And then, worried the cat might get hurt, you filled a shopping bag with clothes and tucked it inside. That’s when you came to find me.
He’d felt a little annoyed watching the cat get bathed earlier, but thinking back through it all, something soft and warm stirred inside him.
I hope you open up here soon too. Like Jinju.
It’s not like I’m expecting this unrequited thing to actually go anywhere — so I just hope you can rest here, spend a warm winter, and go back home when the spring blossoms come. Then at least I won’t be left feeling unsettled.
“Anyway, shouldn’t you go wash up? You smell like the sea.”
No — before you leave to meet the spring blossoms, I’d like you to get one flick on the forehead from me first.
“Hmph. That mouth of yours. A disaster, that’s what you are. An absolute disaster.”
Haeshin grumbled as he shut the bathroom door with a thud.
Hwichan watched his retreating back for a moment, then quietly hid his freely blooming smile behind the palm of his hand.
“For someone calling me a disaster, he’s awfully easy to deal with.”
The two of them, smelling of fragrant soap, chatted idly with the cat between them. The sea-salt and pine scent they’d each carried before had been replaced — now they both smelled exactly the same: cheap soap.
Most of what was murmured between them as they lay on the floor was teasing or bickering, and every time, Haeshin swung between warmth and irritation — but he wasn’t tired. Not even a little.
It was as if a tightly sealed clam had quietly begun to spit out its mud. Haeshin had no special power to make someone open up to him, but Hwichan wasn’t the type to shut his back on people outright. So with just a little lukewarm warmth added to the mix, he had, bit by bit, begun to open his mouth.
They soaked some dried pollack strips they’d found in the house and gave them to Jinju, and thankfully, she ate them well. Hwichan looked as though he was barely suppressing the urge to fuss over her in the most embarrassing way possible, and Haeshin found it so endearingly ordinary — like any other young guy his age — that he burst out laughing without meaning to.
“Still, being with you is fun. Was this house always this loud?”
So Haeshin let it slip out, just like that. Hwichan’s expression turned complicated.
“What’s with you. You’re not even an old man. The way you talk, you sound like a child stuck in a grandpa’s body.”
The awkwardness was written all over him. And that clumsy sincerity of his made Haeshin’s heart thud even harder.
The rain pours like monsoon season. Warm, damp air filled every corner of the old house to the brim.
Right up until the Village Chief came hammering at Haeshin’s front gate.
“Lee Haeshin! Haeshin!”
3
“Haeshin! The electricity went out again!”
“What? Again?”
“Honestly, global warming this, global warming that — I bet that’s what it is.”
The earth was probably feeling wrongly accused. Its rising temperature had nothing to do with this downpour. The fact that this wretched weather was Lee Haeshin’s fault was something Haeshin himself understood better than anyone.
And so, exhausted as he was from pulling an all-nighter and then bathing the cat — barely able to keep his eyes open — Haeshin couldn’t refuse when the Village Chief showed up uninvited and pushed him to go around fixing the village’s electricity.
At this rate, the Sea Dragon King shares some blame too. If a real flood breaks out from all this, who does he plan on pointing the finger at?
Haeshin made it through nearly seven houses. Some had lost all power entirely; others had only the lights go out. The Village Chief’s house, being one of the newer ones, had stayed unaffected.
A full day of labor left his body feeling wrecked. When he finally came to his senses and looked at the clock, it was already well past evening.
Hwichan’s probably gone home on his own by now. Jinju must be alone.
They say pain sharpens the mind. Maybe it was from being run so ragged — but with body and spirit both worn out, the rain that had been pelting Samsam Island had, at some point, completely stopped.
This would be a good chance to check the fuse box at Hwichan’s place.
“Village Chief, does the community center have a ladder?”
“It does. What do you need it for?”
“I want to take a look at Hwichan’s place too.”
“Did the power go out there as well?”
“He mentioned yesterday the lights weren’t working.”
