CH 19

I took out my phone, thinking if I should message him asking if the guests have left yet. However, the entrance door to the building opened and Jang Yoonsung and a woman walked out. Without realizing, I lowered myself in the car and tried to examine the guest’s face. But he soon turned his back and blocked her, so I couldn’t see the guest’s face clearly. However, Jang Yoonsung was smiling and I stared at him blankly.

Come to think of it, when was the last time I saw Jang Yoonsung smiling at someone other than me? Jang Yoonsung didn’t even laugh as much when he was with his friends. Not even with Seo Kijoon, who always took care of him to the point of looking like a saint.

The woman got into the back of her car while I was gripping onto the steering wheel, mulling over useless thoughts. Like any other car in the parking lot, the car used by the guest was expensive. Jang Yoonsung saw the guest off with a sincere smile and the car soon departed. The scene gave me a peculiar feeling of surprise. When have I met her before? –But as I was thinking about it, Jang Yoonsung tapped on the glass window of my car.

“What are you doing here? If you are here, you should come in.”

“Ah? No, I just got here.”

I didn’t mean to observe them covertly, but somehow I was the one being flustered. Most likely because I felt like I knew that woman, whose face I couldn’t even see properly. I wanted to get out of the car pretending to be oblivious, but my body, which felt weak, suddenly stumbled.

Jang Yoonsung quickly grabbed me and helped me up. I walked again as if I was in the wrong.

“You just came?”

Jang Yoonsung chased behind me as if he didn’t believe me.

“Yeah, yeah…I like your car. No, it’s because your car is good. It felt nice so I was resting there for a moment.”

Even though I wondered what nonsense I was babbling, I had no choice but to mutter whatever came to mind.

“This car?”

“Yeah, this car.”

When Jang Yoosung asked me, sounding confused, I nodded frantically in response. He first looked at the car and then back at me and eventually burst into laughter.

“Take it, then.”

“Oh…huh?”

Dumping a secondhand car that would have a lot of maintenance costs on me. Thinking about it, I stopped walking and stood still. Jang Yoonsung, who also stopped walking when I stopped, looked down at me.

“You’re acting strange. What’s the matter?”

Jang Yoonsung’s hand touched my forehead. I thought he would check if my temperature was up, but it was as if he was checking if there was something under my bangs… and then he met my eyes. As if I was bewitched, I stared at his brown eyes and suddenly shrugged his hands off.

“No, it’s nothing.”

“Right. Let’s go up.”

It was probably Jang Yoonsung deciding to let go of the matter, so he accepted my words rather easily. But then he put his hands around my waist as if he was helping me. No, it was not for support, but rather as if he was walking with his lover on the streets.

“I’m okay now… so you can let go of your hand.”

“You never give in on anything, do you?”

Jang Yoonsung eventually plunged his hands in his pocket, like they had nowhere to go. Give in. Is that something I can do for someone like Jang Yoonsung?

As I entered the elevator, I pushed the buttons on the far ends.

“Did you choose a movie?”

“Yeah.”

“Which movie did you choose?”

“Something I want to watch.”

We talked about that during the time the elevator was moving up. He told me that he had wanted to watch it at the movie theater, but the screening ended while he was busy and he had eventually forgotten about it. When Jang Yoonsung asked me what my favorite genre of movies were, the elevator dinged to tell us that we had arrived.

In the living room where I took off my shoes, there was a clear sign that someone was here and had just left. On the table were two tea cups, a paper envelope, and pictures of women taken neatly. Only then did I realize that I almost missed something important.

“Who was here?”

If I said that I knew the woman who dropped by and thought that the fact that the woman dropped by wasn’t weird, Jang Yoonsung would definitely try to make connections between those facts with his ghostly intuition.

“You asked that quite quickly, even though you saw me with the woman. Lee Hakyung, are you really not interested in me? ”

Jang Yoonsung was holding a teacup in order to clean the table and said so, dissatisfied. Even if I didn’t know who she was, I wouldn’t have misunderstood her. He was smiling affectionately but it didn’t seem to be an expression directed to someone of the opposite sex.

“My sister-in-law.”

Jang Yoonsung confessed, as if he realized that feeling me out in that subject was in vain. Then he left the teacup in the sink.

I was right. She was Lee Eunjo. Why did I assume that this place was left out of his family’s reach? At the moment when I thought of Lee Eunjo, I regretted coming there. I almost wanted to say that it would be better to pretend nothing ever happened.

“You sister-in-law? Does your family come here often?”

“No. I usually drop by my parents’ house.”

If I hadn’t left for the store today or if I had come back a little earlier, I might have encountered her. Nevertheless, Jang Yoonsung continued to talk casually.

“It’s alright. They aren’t the type of people who interfere with who I’m living with.”

It didn’t matter if he was staying with someone else but it did matter when it came to me. Jang Yoonsung seemed to have forgotten everything, given that he thought that it was okay for me to meet his family. It wasn’t that uncomfortable for him.

“Still, I don’t want to clash with your family members. Either way…”

After the promised time, we would never meet again, whether he recovered his memories or not. Jang Yoonsung frowned a little as if he had noticed what I meant.

“Okay. Don’t worry about it. It will never happen again.”

I picked up the papers on the table. At first glance, it was a document about someone else’s personal information.

I picked up a picture that stuck out of the papers. It was a picture of a woman with light makeup on and a beautiful impression. For men like Jang Yoonsung, it was assumed that there could be only one use for those kinds of pictures.

“You’re meeting with her?”

“No.”

It was a sharp reply as if he didn’t think about it at all.

“Why? She’s really pretty.”

“I don’t know. I don’t want to meet someone that way.”

Jang Yoonsung didn’t want to do it because it was a marriage of convenience. Indeed, he once crossed oceans to break the marriage that his grandfather set up, so it wasn’t possible even then. Thinking that far, I couldn’t hold back my laughter. What happened to that person? The person who wasn’t even beautiful like the person in this picture.

“Who knows, you might be made for each other.”

The picture in my hand was yanked out of my grip when I muttered the following. Jang Yoonsung then looked at the picture of the girl attentively as if he was checking it.

“Of course, we won’t know about that but I’m more curious about this. Why would a man who kissed another man smile at a picture of a woman? Is she your type?”

“You are misunderstanding something, when I did…”

I hadn’t finished talking but the way he looked at me was different. It was a face that expected me to say something confusing again.

“I don’t do that. It was an accident with you.”

My voice came out properly, but I inadvertently avoided looking at him. It was funny to see that Jang Yoonsung did not remember all the times we kissed before because of the accident. Jang Yoonsung then bent down and suddenly looked at me, before he asked me as if he was really curious.

“Does Lee Hakyung kiss a girl like that? Your girlfriend must be as tall as me then…”

“What do you…”

I was going to ask what he meant but I realized it right away; the way I kissed him while holding his neck seemed to have left quite an impression. I left a lot of things behind when I set off from the villa, but I couldn’t get rid of my habits.

“What does it matter to you about what I do and who I do it with?”

“I’m curious.”

An honest man always baffles an untruthful man. The answer was so plain that I froze, speechless.

Jang Yoonsung continued while putting the photos and the papers printed with personal information back into its file.

“Because I’m interested in you.”

He then put them in a random paper bag, as if he’ll never open it up again. Jang Yoonsung told me to wash up and come back like he wasn’t expecting anything from me after saying that.

After I washed up, I found the paper bag ended up in the trash can. Stupid. If he had directed the interest he had in me to that girl, life would have been so much easier. It might have been because his life wasn’t lacking in any aspects, because the fact was that he was using a person to recover his memories, and with that insignificant reason he was keeping me at his house. It all seemed like an arrogant game.

In that regard, I had at least one thing that was better than Jang Yoonsung. At least I wasn’t stupid like him even if I acted cold. I stared at the discarded paper envelope and eventually returned to the sofa, sitting down.

“Right, tomorrow I…”

Jang Yoonsung, who was saying something while putting down the beer he brought from the refrigerator, paused for a moment before he opened his mouth again.

“No, do you want to come with me?”

“Where?”

“Gangwon-do.”

“Gangwon-do?”

Without him adding any details, I knew where Jang Yoonsung was heading. But wasn’t it a place with no one there? Jang Yoonsung pressed the playback button with the remote control after he sat next to me.

“There is a villa in Gangwon-do. I left it empty for a long time after my grandfather died, but my sister-in-law said earlier that she wanted to remodel it.”

“Ah…”

The villa seemed to have been empty all those years. Jang Yoonsung opened a can of beer and handed it to me.

“I left a lot of things there and I didn’t want anyone else to touch it. Maybe I should go and get it.”

I took a sip of my beer and nodded. Jang Yoonsung asked again, fumbling with the cracker with cheese on it.

“Will you come?”

“If you treat me to something delicious.”

Jang Yoonsung smiled as if he was new to the conditions that I offered kindly, and put the beer in his mouth. He looked like he would never treat me to something that wasn’t delicious.

Soon, the movie started. We closed our mouths and stared at the screen. Jang Yoonsung watched the movie with a serious face as if he didn’t use the movie as an excuse.

How long has it been since the movie started? It had been long enough that the occasional reach towards the snacks and beer had stopped. Jang Yoonsung, who was calmly watching the movie, suddenly rested his head on my thigh without my permission.

“You’re heavy.”

As I complained and shook my legs a little, he stuck his head to my legs so that his head didn’t move at all.

“Just for a moment.”

It wasn’t really that heavy either. It was a pleasant weight. The movie which lasted two hours would be ending shortly. So I stopped replying and focused on the screen again.

However, my concentration was quickly disrupted. It wasn’t that the movie was boring, but I had to try concentrating on the movie even more because I wanted to shrug off the glaring eyes that were looking up from my leg.

I wished that time would go quicker. If I lowered my head, and met his eyes, something might happen.

It was only after the scene changed several times that I looked down at Jang Yoonsung’s face on my knees. Contrary to my common worries, Jang Yoonsung was asleep.

The appearance of his eyes closed tightly without fluttering made him look like he wasn’t alive. It was even more so because I couldn’t hear his breath over the constant sound from the speaker. I patted the sleeping man on the shoulder.

“Are you sleeping?”

I talked to him bluntly. Still, he didn’t wake up, so I carefully put my hand on his cheek. Feeling the warmth, he seemed to be alive. Why did he have sleeping pills in his room when he was able to fall asleep anywhere? He didn’t wake up as if he was deep in his slumber, no matter how I patted his cheeks.

After doing that for a long time, when I looked up, the ending credit was rolling. I didn’t even  remember how the movie ended.

“Hey, the movie is over. Go to your room and sleep.”

This time, I shook his arm with a little more force. However, Jang Yoonsung mumbled under his breath like he was telling me not to disturb him. He hummed under his breath and snuggled deeper to my side.

You said it was just for a moment.