Chapter 12
“If you don’t have any other plans today, how about a drive with me? Want to get ready and come out? I’ll wait in the car.”
Jisu unconsciously swallowed hard at the sight of him not hiding his desire for her yet politely stepping back with such manners.
The sound of her swallowing was so loud that the heat rose beyond her face all the way to the tips of her ears. Jaegyeom’s ears also turned red as he watched her, but Jisu, who was in no state to notice the color of someone else’s ears right now, nodded frantically and shut the front door for the time being.
“A drive… that’s a date, right? What do I do. What do I wear? I’m in trouble.”
Leaving Jisu behind, who had no idea her muttering would carry all the way to the hallway, Jaegyeom smiled and went down the stairs. Fortunately, the junk car was gone, but beer cans and plastic containers from hangover soup were still scattered across the first floor of the building. In the midst of that, it was so absurd that the bouquet he’d supposedly bought with his own money had disappeared with him that Jaegyeom laughed to himself. After cleaning up neatly, he got in the car.
The first date with Jisu was certainly a deeply exciting thing for Jaegyeom as well, but thinking about having to tell the story of how Kim Jaegyeom became Yoon Jaegyeom brought back what had happened that morning in Pyeongchang-dong, and he couldn’t help but feel his heart sink.
Sunday afternoon, the Korea University campus was a spectacular sight with ginkgo trees turned yellow.
“Wow, it’s been so long since I’ve been to school. I think it’s my first time since graduation.”
Jisu’s voice was pleasant to hear. Walking through the campus, which wasn’t very crowded because it was the weekend, Jaegyeom brought up something from the past as a topic between them.
“I was living in the US, and after my mom passed away I came to Korea, but my family registry hadn’t been sorted out. I took my mom’s surname from the moment I was born.”
“Ah, so that’s why…”
He added an explanation that because the school system was different from the US and he had to match the academic level in Korea, he was the same age as her but was assigned a lower grade. His surname was corrected to follow his father’s after he graduated high school, he said.
“The first day I transferred to Gyechon High, it was truly shocking.”
“Ah… the transfer student welcome ceremony.”
Because it was such a small school, rumors about a transfer student spread throughout the entire school within 30 minutes in the morning. And it was a natural rite of passage for the entire student body to come see the transfer student. People used to call it the “transfer student welcome ceremony.”
“Did you know the male seniors even followed me to the bathroom?”
“To the bathroom? Why?”
“…To see the size.”
“You’re crazy!”
Jisu’s face turned bright red in an instant. Jaegyeom just laughed. It was true, after all.
“Everything about life in Korea was unfamiliar, and it was my first time at that school too, so it was hard in various ways. I only said what was necessary and barely opened my mouth. My Korean pronunciation was still a bit clumsy back then, so I think I was also embarrassed. I’d never experienced so many people paying attention to me all at once.”
“I bet.”
“A few people asked my name so I said Kim Jaegyeom, and if I answered honestly when they asked where I was from, the next thing they’d say was obvious, right?”
“Yeah. If you said you were from the US, they’d immediately say ‘Speak some English.'”
“Exactly. So I answered that I was from Seoul. After that, since I didn’t show any will to continue the conversation, most of my classmates gave up on me within a day.”
Jaegyeom, sitting side by side with her on a bench in the shade and telling her his reflections as “Kim Jaegyeom on his first day transferring to Gyechon High,” looked at Jisu.
“I had run away to the bleachers during lunch. But far away, a female student was walking toward me. Thinking she was another person coming to gawk at me, I lowered my head first.”
“…”
“But that girl just plopped down near me. And she started solving a workbook.”
“…I had a feeling, and sure enough, it was me.”
Jaegyeom had thought he received all the attention he’d get in a lifetime in that single day, but it was also strange that there was someone who didn’t have even a grain of sand’s worth of interest in him. So he asked first. “Why did you sit here, of all places?”
“I like that zelkova tree. And besides, if it had been spring back then, maybe because it was the only tree that wasn’t a cherry blossom…”
“Right. That’s what you said. ‘Cherry blossom petals don’t fall under this tree.'”
“I’m really boring.”
“No. I went to school for the fun of watching you. I told you. You’re my first love. After the day we first met, I deliberately sat a bit far away in case I’d bother you, but whether I was there or not, you had no interest in your surroundings at all.”
As if answering Jaegyeom’s upright gaze, Jisu’s eyes also sparkled with many-layered hues.
“Back then, I’d come to Korea suddenly without my mom and felt like I was alone in the world, and suddenly I had to follow my father’s surname… with the behind-the-scenes of my birth that even I found hard to accept, I thought I shouldn’t dare approach you, whom everyone praised with one voice. So I planned to confess impressively when I became an adult.”
“…”
“Thanks to you, I endured the days alone in Gyechon. In spring and autumn at the playground, on rainy days or in summer and winter at the library. I was happy to be able to see you studying every day.”
Jaegyeom took Jisu’s hand.
“Im Jisu. Will you go out with me? I’ve already greeted your mother, so I’m thinking about marriage too. I’ll make you happy.”
“…”
Jisu couldn’t bring herself to open her mouth because she felt her voice would come out a complete mess, but instead she answered Jaegyeom’s words by nodding right away.
The two held hands and for a while quietly gazed together at the campus where autumn had arrived.
On the way back to Jisu’s house, Jisu asked something she’d been curious about.
“But did you really come up from Gyechon last night to see me? I called you while drinking… that’s not it, right?”
“I came to Seoul for a family gathering… and I happened to be wanting to see you, Im Jisu, when you called me.”
Since the topic came up, Jaegyeom added a brief explanation about his family situation. That they only gather for his father’s birthday, and about his relationship with his stepmother.
“She doesn’t like me. Literally, since I’m in the position of an ‘illegitimate child,’ she probably loathes and hates me terribly. And now that I’m not even a Kim but a Yoon, even more so.”
“Hatred… did you receive a lot of it? Like what appears in dramas…”
Jisu’s face naturally furrowed as she imagined Jaegyeom’s past, which must have involved extreme cold treatment, but Jaegyeom shook his head.
“She may have felt that way emotionally, but she never showed it at all.”
“…That’s a relief in some ways, but it must have been really hard anyway.”
Just as her clumsy comfort was stroking Jaegyeom’s wounds, today Jaegyeom’s car parked in one of the spaces in the studio apartment parking lot where Jisu paid monthly parking fees. Between the two, with the engine sound gone, only silence remained.
“…When are you going down to Gyechon?”
“Now. I’m planning to leave right after I see you get inside. I’ve finished all my business.”
“You must be tired.”
They got out of the car, held hands, and entered the building together. The old studio apartment building had no security device at the shared entrance and no CCTV. It was a five-story building with no elevator, and the first unit on the second floor was Jisu’s space.
The speed at which they climbed the stairs together was quite slow. At their fingertips, held together, both could feel a pink, appropriately warm, and slightly sticky regret. When they finally reached the second floor, Jisu mustered her courage first.
“If you don’t absolutely have to go down today, shall we do what we talked about earlier now?”
“What we talked about earlier?”
“That… what you were going to do when we got to my place.”
Jaegyeom recalled the daytime conversation.
“Ah, the movie?”
“No. Not what I suggested, but what you said you wanted to do…”
Jaegyeom let out a hollow laugh because Im Jisu, spitting out such fatally provocative words yet unable to meet his eyes, was adorable. There was no reason to refuse, and he was simply glad that it wasn’t only him being impatient but that Im Jisu also wanted him.
The moment the front door opened, they could go right inside, but his patience ran out even for that, and in the end Jaegyeom kissed Jisu. Jisu’s back touched the front door.
The feelings of wanting each other, which had been hovering precariously, blazed at the edges of their lips as if to burn each other. The lover’s breathing and the wet friction began to fill the hallway cozily.
“Nnng.”
At the small moan that burst out ringing in her throat, Jisu was so startled she nearly fainted, held her breath, and snapped her eyes open. Jaegyeom stepped back one pace. In their meeting gazes, the desire for each other ran deep.
“The passcode, it’s still a bit awkward for you to tell me, right? You press it.”
Jisu, who had been about to turn to open the door, pulled Jaegyeom back again. Before their lips touched, she said softly.
“0430. You open it.”
“That’s Im Jisu’s birthday.”
Their lips, hotly locked again, made Jisu flutter and stimulated Jaegyeom. After the front door, opened by Jaegyeom’s hand, closed shortly after, the two people’s early autumn night rose hotter and more viscous.
