“What?” Haeshin asked back.
Hwichan didn’t seem to care what his expression looked like — he grabbed his wrist and yanked. Haeshin’s leg caught on the threshold and he stumbled, but Hwichan just fixed him with a glare and kept dragging him along.
“Hey. Hold on……”
A half-hearted attempt at resistance, but it was useless. Hwichan planted him in the entryway and stood there fuming for a long moment before rummaging through the drawer of the TV cabinet in the cold, dark living room.
The house didn’t get much sun even during the day, so it was dim. Somehow he’d been managing in here without even turning a light on.
He was clearly living here full-time, yet strangely, the place had no smell of a person in it.
Half-skeptical, Haeshin reached over and clicked the living room light switch by the entryway. As expected, nothing came on. So he’d just left it as-is after saying he’d clean out the breaker box. Apparently it had stayed that way.
“This is unbelievable, honestly.”
Hwichan couldn’t hide his anger any longer and grabbed a small empty box from inside the drawer and crushed it before throwing it aside. The empty box, labeled Waterproof Bandages, looked like it was several years old. It bounced across the living room floor with a hollow clatter.
“Nothing works in this place. Not a single thing that’s actually intact.”
Who that was aimed at, Haeshin wasn’t sure — but he felt instinctively that those words were ones Hwichan was using to wound himself.
Nothing in this damn house — and what little there is, it’s all worthless. Hwichan muttered it to himself like a lament, not really meaning for anyone to hear. But in the cave-still quiet of the living room, Haeshin couldn’t not hear it.
“I’m fine. Just now — I hurt myself because I wasn’t thinking.”
The self-critical gaze snapped sharply toward Haeshin’s hand. The bruise that had risen blue was already darkening to black, spreading across his knuckles.
“Why. Because you’re a merman so you’re fine?”
Then came something entirely out of nowhere.
“Do mermen heal bruises faster? Do their bones not break?”
“What are you talking about……”
“Does that look like a fine hand to you? Is there something in your eyes? Can’t die in water, gets hurt and acts like nothing happened. Must be nice.”
Haeshin’s temper flared and he nearly let it out, but he took one long, slow breath instead. He’d always known Hwichan was a person bristling with spines like a hedgehog — but since what happened at the community center, his words had gotten noticeably sharper.
From what he’d overheard against his will about Hwichan’s family history, Haeshin understood the reason behind the habitual self-punishment. But understanding the reason didn’t mean he was going to stay quiet about it.
“Don’t talk about yourself like that.”
Haeshin stepped out of his shoes and came to stand in front of Hwichan. It was a completely different attitude from how he usually let unkind words wash right over him.
“Say it one more time like that. Just once.”
“Why. Are you going to hit me?”
“……”
He talks like he wants to scrape someone raw — and yet he still drags himself out to the water’s edge every single morning to watch Haeshin dive. That doesn’t make any sense. ……No, it wasn’t that it didn’t make sense. It was that it was starting to make sense, and that was what scared him.
Someone who’s been hurt enough by people to keep all his edges sharp — and yet he’s worried I might die. He didn’t know how to begin to measure the depth of that.
Hwichan seemed like he needed to do something, anything, even without a bandage — he rifled through this and that and eventually even pulled open the refrigerator door. He was looking for an ice pack, it seemed.
But the ice pack in the freezer was already half-melted and mushy. The freezer must have been broken too.
Haeshin felt guilty even though it wasn’t his fault.
“……”
A brief silence settled. Hwichan looked at Haeshin with an expression that could’ve been sadness, or anger, or just general exhaustion with everything.
“You’re really…… getting on my nerves.”
If there’s a temperament I’m going to have to carry for the rest of my life, it’s all your fault. Haeshin grumbled inwardly and threw an awkward glance down toward Hwichan’s feet.
Hwichan showed no intention of breaking the awkwardness and stayed silent. Then all at once he scrunched up his face and said something sharp again.
“Why do you do this to me?”
“What?”
“Killed my own parents. Eating up someone else’s food. Now making the one person who worries about me a cripple. Guess this is what they mean by bad luck being contagious.”
Why those few lines, delivered without a single change in tone, hurt so much.
Haeshin’s eyes went sharp and he stared back at Hwichan.
He knew — even Haeshin himself could tell — that the person Hwichan was angry at wasn’t Lee Haeshin. He was punishing himself.
“You smashed your hand because of something I did wrong. I have bandages at my place. Ointment too. Just use those.”
“Right. Your place has bandages, ointment, ice packs. Enough time to make side dishes nobody even asked for and carry them over. And yet I’m the one who can’t figure out why someone with nothing keeps sticking his nose in.”
Haeshin’s expression went flat and serious.
“I told you to stop talking like that.”
“Are you pitying me?”
At that, Hwichan wasn’t deflated in the least — he spoke as if emptying out everything he’d been carrying.
“You knew from the start, didn’t you? On an island this small there’s no way word didn’t get around. You felt sorry for me because both my parents drowned? You regret all that nonsense about merfolk? You saw the state of this place and thought he doesn’t even live like a human being, and that was pitiful to you? You figured as long as I’m eating you won’t have to deal with a corpse, so you bring over side dishes and things like that.”
“Hey.”
“That’s why you were good to me. Because what other reason is there to be good to me. Why go around carrying side dishes with your hand looking like that. Where do you get paid to——”
Just around the time Haeshin heard where do you get paid to——
Hwichan’s face snapped to the side. With a dull sound, his body — half a head taller than Haeshin’s — lurched.
“Why — why do you talk like that.”
Hwichan was the one who’d been struck. But it was Haeshin whose voice broke.
“I didn’t know anything. What you went through, why you hate the water so much — I didn’t know any of it!”
If I’d known everything about you the way you say — I wouldn’t have walked into a storming sea right in front of you. I couldn’t have brought myself to call the ocean beautiful. I wouldn’t have told you I was a merman.
I wouldn’t have taken your hand and gotten on a small boat that could capsize in rough waves. I wouldn’t have thrown off my padding in the dead of winter and jumped into the water without thinking to save a cat.
What do you know about what’s inside me!
Haeshin gritted his teeth and shouted. It was close to a full-throated cry.
“Fine — yes, I gave it all because I felt sorry for you! Because every morning you drag yourself out to the water despite being scared out of your mind and I couldn’t stand it. Because you take every harsh word and instead of getting angry you just turn it on yourself, and you hole up in this run-down shack of a place barely existing — I couldn’t stand how wretched that looked, so I gave it all — is that what you wanted to hear? Are you satisfied now?”
And then Haeshin let out a broken sob — loud and unguarded, like a child. I’m doing something, but I don’t know what I’m driving it into. I don’t know where it’s supposed to go. I don’t even know why I’m doing it in the first place.
Hwichan stood there for a moment, lips parting and closing, like something had been knocked out of him.
“And — hic — do you have garbage in your mouth? Why do you say things that hurt people like that……”
“……”
“Hhh — my finger hurts like hell, you jerk……”
Haeshin, who had somehow ended up swearing, sniffled through clear tears and pressed the fist he’d hit Hwichan with tight. The bruise that had gone black from getting caught in the door was spreading sideways now.
Hwichan didn’t say anything for a long time. His sharp gaze couldn’t leave the bruise.
“……Why are you doing this.”
“Hic, hhh……”
“Why are you a mess too, hyung.”
We’re strangers. Hwichan murmured it and turned his bloodshot eyes toward the window.
“We…… my place has bandages.”
“……”
“Let’s go to my place.”
Haeshin, belatedly embarrassed, tried to swallow down his crying. Because the one who ought to be crying — it wasn’t him. It was Hwichan.
