Chapter 7
The merciless downpour the day before felt like a lie. The sunny, cloudless sky was brilliantly clear.
Mwee-eh, mwee-eh-eh, mwee-eh-eh-ehā
The sound of cicadas drifted in through the classroom window.
Seim, who had been filling out the class logbook at the teacher’s podium, glanced outside for a moment.
Even if it made your ears throb, this was a romance you could only enjoy in early summer. Once midsummer arrived, the classroom would be buzzing with the sound of air conditioners.
“Teacher! Can I go now now now?”
A voice came from below, out of sight. Seim leaned over and looked down at the child who barely reached half the height of the podium. The kid, already wearing their backpack, had even grabbed their shoe bag.
“Yeah. Hyeyul, you have to bring your homework tomorrow, okay?”
“Yesss!”
As the last child left, the classroom fell silent. Seim slipped the completed logbook into a folder and got ready to leave. She was closing the windows one by one when the front door of the classroom suddenly opened.
She turned to see a man with a gentle face peeking inside.
“Ms. Han, you worked hard again today.”
Kim Jae-wook, a classmate from elementary, middle, and high school, worked as a teacher at Mangul Elementary School. He was also her benefactor, having introduced her to an after-school instructor position on Mangul Island, where jobs were scarce.
Seim smiled faintly and slung her eco-bag over her shoulder.
“Are you done with your busy work?”
“Yeah, parent consultation week ends today, too. Here, I don’t have anything to give you, butā”
He approached and suddenly pressed a glass bottle of orange juice into her hand. The kind that comes individually packed in gift boxes.
Out of nowhere, the scene from her front door this morning flashed through her mind. She had definitely been relieved that nothing had been left there, but then why did it suddenly pop into her head? She felt a contradiction.
“Thanks.”
“Let’s leave together. I’m getting off early today, too.”
Though it had been sparse the past few weeks, they usually left together when Jae-wook wasn’t busy. Sometimes, when the conversation ran long, they’d even have dinner together.
Maybe because of the recent gap, Jae-wook’s chatter didn’t stop even as they walked across the playground. He seemed unusually excited, which amused Seim. She paused while tilting her juice bottle and asked,
“You’re getting off early, so what are you going to do?”
“Exactly. Will you hang out with me, then?”
“Maybe I will?”
Jae-wook snapped his two fingers with aĀ tang.
“Oh, then let’s go to my place for the first time in a whileā”
Suddenly, Jae-wook’s gaze froze as if turned to ice. Following his line of sight, Seim’s eyes also widened.
The car parked at the school gate, and the face of the person sitting on its hoodāboth were familiar.
His hair, slicked back with wax as if he’d been somewhere, had not a single strand out of place. The impeccably tailored suit was the same, but the glossy sedan also felt utterly out of place in this shabby neighborhood no matter when you saw it.
Cha Tae-mok slowly straightened his long legs, wearing his characteristic indifferent expression. His even more subdued gaze swept over her hand holding the juice bottle for some reason.
When his eyes lifted again, they were noticeably displeased.
Seim held his gaze for a moment, then turned on her heel.
“Yeah, let’s go. To your place.”
She passed through the school gate, avoiding the side where his car was parked. Jae-wook hurried after her in a half-trot. But he kept glancing back, as if he too could feel the man’s gaze fixed on them.
And thenā
BAAAMā!
A horn blared through the quiet surroundings. There was no mistaking the source of that noise. Seim paused mid-step, swallowed a sigh, and quickened her pace again.
But a voice from behind her snagged her ankle.
“Hey, Han Seim-ssi. I won’t say anything about you skipping out without paying, so come over here.”
Skipping out without paying?
That was ridiculous.
She let out a short, exasperated laugh and chose to ignore him. She didn’t want to be rattled by his teasing provocation.
Jae-wook, tilting his head at the unusual atmosphere, leaned closer to Seim’s ear and whispered,Ā What’s going on?Ā whenā
BBAAAANGā!
The horn blared even more harshly than before. At the same time, their footsteps stopped.
“Take one more step from there. Even the most virtuous bastard starts to go crooked.”
Even in a loose tone, it was clearly a warning. Afraid of what he might add, Seim finally turned around. Immediately, she saw the corners of his mouth curl into a smirk of victory.
The casual posture of him standing with one arm pushed through the open window also grated on her nerves. He had turned her insides into such a mess.
Letting out a long breath, Seim closed the distance between them with angry steps.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
As if asking whether that was even a question, he tilted his head sideways.
“Han Seim-ssi says she’s going to another man’s house for the first time in a while. Do you think my eyes are spinning or not?”
“First, take your hand off that horn.”
“Ah, did you not like that?”
I shouldn’t have done that,Ā he muttered, withdrawing his hand from the horn. Then he rubbed between his eyebrows, the gesture not gentle.
“Tell your companion to get lost. I don’t think pretty words are going to come out of me right now.”
His gaze, not even glancing sideways but piercing straight through her, was fierce. A wave of anxiety hit her: if he got any more upset, he might confront Jae-wook directly. If the two of them stood face to face, just the physical difference alone was considerable.
Seim quickly averted her eyes and forced a faint smile.
“Jae-wook, I’ll contact you later.”
Jae-wook nodded reluctantly and turned his back. She watched his figure, which kept looking back at her, gradually grow smaller, all while feeling Cha Tae-mok’s eyes follow him.
When she finally looked up at him with resignation, a sneer fell from above her head.
“‘Later,’ my fucking ass.”
A strange stubbornness rose in her.
Was it an overreach to say that his mutter felt like arroganceāthat she would never be able to escape from him? Furious, her lips parted of their own accord.
“Jae-wook isn’t just ‘another man.'”
It was a remark blurted out in a moment of competitive spite, but it seemed to land a significant blow. His already unwavering pupils grew colder and more rigid.
Seim, calmly meeting his eyes, clenched her empty fist. It seemed she had finally found a way to push him away.
“We’re seeing each other… with good feelings.”
At that, a hollow, deflating laugh came back. Cha Tae-mok, scratching the corner of his wrinkled eye as if wiping it, shot back with mockery.
“Call it dating if it’s dating. ‘Good feelings’āwhat, are you some fucking celebrity?”
“In a little while, it’ll be datingā”
Seim, who had been about to add hastily, shut her mouth. If her words ran too long, she might actually get caught.
“Anyway, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t come looking for me like this anymore.”
“You think that bastard who talks about ‘good feelings’ while trying to get into your pants is good? That guy who doesn’t even have the guts to fight back when told to get lost?”
“That’s because he’s kind.”
“Ah, kindā”
He clicked his tongue in annoyance, then suddenly closed one step of distance.
“That’s called being stupid, Seim-ah.”
“Don’t speak about him like that.”
“So, does the woman who’s ‘seeing’ him with good feelings know that she kissed me?”
“…”
“See? I told you, he’s stupid.”
The longer the conversation went, the more she felt like her tail was being stepped on. Seeing his relaxed demeanor, it seemed he had already seen through her flimsy lie.
Seim averted her eyes from his gaze and changed the subject.
“That kiss was a mistake.”
“A kiss by accident. You’ve gotten pretty cheeky while I wasn’t looking.”
“While you weren’t lookingā”
Choking up, she lifted her lashes, then closed her mouth for a moment before opening it again.
“While you weren’t looking… I got even more pathetic.”
If her flimsy lie about having a boyfriend wouldn’t work, there was only one option left. She had wanted to avoid it as much as possible, but at this point, she needed to draw the line… she had no other choice.
“I failed the teacher certification exam again this time. I ran out of all my savings, so I had no choice but to come back.”
She confessed her current situation, not much different from the twenty-three-year-old Han Seim he would have last remembered. Or rather, the current her, perhaps even more wretched.
“I’m not a real teacher, just an after-school instructor. I’m twenty-eight, and I don’t even have a few hundred thousand won to my name.”
It was a sad thing. Having to feel the gap between them grow wider as the years passed.
Without giving her any time to adjust, he just kept rising higher and higher. And as he did, she couldn’t help but feel herself sinking lower. The miserable feeling she had felt when they reunited on the playground a few days ago came back to her unbidden.
“No, I just… I just don’t have anything.”
Back when she had ended things, she hadn’t added any reason at all. Because Cha Tae-mok must have known anyway. Not saying it out loud was, ridiculously, her last shred of pride.
But at twenty-eight, five years later, she had finally been able to let it go. She had admitted it, and so she could accept it.
“The universe cruelly didn’t favor me either. So to live like everyone else, I have to work that much harder. So what I’m saying is…”
Seim calmly conveyed this chilled resignation.
“Please don’t mess with me anymore. I’m asking you
