LLU 76

Really, had Choi Junghan come to find me?

Even though it was only one year—a time that could not be called long—he, at thirty-three, had ripened. Unlike the wild and stubborn feeling from when we first met, he now exuded the fully deepened atmosphere of a man.

However, his face had become sharper in its lines. The shadows hanging under his eyes and the loneliness clinging to the corners of his eyes were things I could not have read from him before.

Perhaps that was why. He looked more arrogant and also more sensitive. His body still looked solid as ever, but the overall impression he gave off was somehow precarious.

Yes, no matter how much I doubted and questioned whether this was real, the answer that came back was always the same. Choi Junghan, who was holding my forearm and applying medicine, was a real person. He was not some illusion.

If he were merely a mirage, the gaze looking down at the wound with loose yet sharply honed eyes could not be this vivid. The touch of the hand tying the bandage tightly could not feel this real.

And yet I. Even though I knew he was real.

Why on earth, instead of stabbing him with the knife, was I just looking at him with eyes wet with tears? Why were my deadened cells all at once breathing as they smelled the invader’s body scent? Why, instead of pouring out words full of resentment and poison toward him, was I blankly entrusting my arm to him?

Was I going this mad?

No, perhaps I had already gone mad beyond any help… .

“…Let go.”

When I pushed his hand away with a hand that had no strength, Choi Junghan had already finished the treatment by firmly attaching an adhesive bandage over the bandage.

I opened my mouth to say something accusing, then closed it again. A powerful dizziness had suddenly risen. Was it because I had gone through too many blue and red nights lately? My vision spun and grew distant.

“It seems like you have anemia.”

“…….”

“Of course, it is inevitable that you would.”

Choi Junghan said as if spitting the words out.

“Lie down for now. That would be best.”

It was the same coercive tone as always. However, before I could even retort, Choi Junghan lifted me up from where I stood. The moment his hands touched me, my body flinched as if scorched by fire. The cells that had been breathing all flashed at once as if struck by lightning.

“Let go, you son of a…!”

But the words could not be completed. My vision spun again, and my brow furrowed mercilessly once more. The moment my body floated, severe dizziness struck again.

Choi Junghan laid me straight down on the bed. The veins bulging at his temple as he fiercely contorted his face were clearly visible.

Our gazes tangled thickly. The silence we created together was like sticky poison. That thing creeping slowly through the air could slowly kill me just by breathing it in.

“I am always watching.”

The voice of Choi Junghan saying that was no different from before at all. I looked up at him with my limbs helplessly sprawled out. My vision was clear, but no strength entered my body at all.

“I am always with you.”

Choi Junghan slowly bowed his head and kissed my forehead. Then he stood up and left the room. I heard the sound of his shoes leaving the room and the front door closing.

Come to think of it, he had come in without even taking off his shoes. The face of him bursting in holding the first-aid kit was vividly engraved in my mind. Trying to erase the meaningless scene from my mind, I closed my eyes in utter exhaustion.

The sleep that had only come after harsh self-harm rushed in like a storm. As tension slowly drained from my body, I fell asleep as if fainting. When I opened my eyes, an IV needle connected to a saline drip was inserted into the back of my hand.

I thought for two weeks. Should I run away to another region again? Should I take a leave of absence for a while, quit tutoring, give up the room, and live moving around here and there like before?

However, the more I made plans, the more emptiness seized me. Where could Choi Junghan not follow me? Perhaps even when I had run around the whole country dodging here and there, he had been watching me like this.

No, he surely must have. Just thinking that brought a dull helplessness that gripped me and kept me from moving.

While agonizing and going about daily life at the same time, I tore down and smashed all the densely placed cameras that stared at me. However, the moment I went out and came back, they were again in the same places. Like flies that kept flying in from somewhere no matter how many I killed.

In front of the lenses that persistently stared at me, I eventually gave up on eradicating them. I listlessly ate and slept. I showered and changed clothes. Then, when anger surged up, I smashed them all again.

However, no matter how much insomnia came, I did not self-harm anymore. Insomnia raised its head again. The dwarfed forearm slowly began to heal, but my mind grew hazier day by day. It felt like floating through a dream.

Whether I closed my eyes or opened them, Choi Junghan was there. Sometimes he appeared in the last form of treating me and kissing my forehead, sometimes in the initial form of slapping my cheek and choking my throat.

Unable to sleep, it felt like walking through hell. Hell. Could it exist anywhere else? If I did not attach that name to the place I was in now, where else should I put it?

On the fifteenth day, I made a decision.

I would no longer live like this.

“We’ve arrived, student.”

I paid the fare and got out of the taxi. My body, soaked in the warm air of the car, immediately felt the cold.

I tilted my head back and looked up at the building in front of me. It was the place where I had once been confined and desperately wanted to escape, and the place I had run away from on my own feet.

Now I was standing here entering of my own will. With the determination that I would no longer live like this, I buried the item I had brought deep inside my jacket pocket.

I did not know whether Choi Junghan was still living here. But I was convinced that he was here. There was no basis. It was just my intuition, honed from several years with him, speaking.

If that intuition was right, my fingerprint would still be registered at his residence. Back when I had deceived him for months to infiltrate his company, we commuted together and he had registered it. I too had opened the door with my fingerprint several times while acting out our intimate relationship.

After taking a deep breath, I placed my fingerprint on the elevator pad. Slide. The door opened, and the button with his floor number lit up automatically.

My heart began to beat faster with a dull thud. It was not only because of what I was about to do. Right now, I was going toward Choi Junghan of my own accord, on my own feet. Thinking of the face I would soon face made my chest feel heavy as if pressed by stone.

However, the face reflected in the elevator wall mirror was calm and composed.

Today, I would finally become free.

If the thread tying Choi Junghan and me was so tenacious and strong that it would not break, then one of us just had to let it go.

And the only way that could happen was for one of us to disappear. Whatever came after that—the noisy cries, the heavy and sharp responsibilities given, the endless nightmares, the devastated field of my heart—I could no longer care about any of it.

The front door, which had always been guarded by bodyguards, was now without a trace of people. I took a deep breath and reached out. Instead of pressing the bell, I placed my iris and fingerprint on the pad. Slide—the sound of the keypad opening could be heard.

I slowly stepped inside. A familiar scent rushed at me. For a moment, it felt like I heard the clinking of chains in my ears. A distant feeling soaked me in helplessness.

I closed my eyes tightly and stopped walking, then took a deep breath and opened them again. I crossed the endlessly wide-feeling house and headed toward the living room.

The entire house was dark. Music I had heard somewhere was flowing from deeper inside.

When I finally reached the living room, the dark space was red as if countless rose petals had been crushed. The mise-en-scène projected on the huge screen was familiar. The whispering Chinese language and the flowing gorgeous Latin music were the same.

“I’ll drink well.”

Choi Junghan’s voice from the movie theater, saying that while raising his glass as if toasting, came back to life.

However, my gaze was not on the screen but on the monitor installed next to it. In the orderly and flawlessly dense array of screens, they were all displaying scenes in one tone.

“…….”

My throat tightened. In front of pure madness, what surged like a tidal wave was bewilderment.

In more than ten monitors, scenes from every corner of my empty house unfolded.

I lost all movement and expression and stood frozen in place.

While I had writhed in such agony, he had been here watching my daily life. As if watching a sports game. Or as if watching a pornographic film.

Facing Choi Junghan, who had apparently enjoyed my unhappiness as a side dish like that, the act I was about to do gained its justification on its own. I became convinced. The hatred toward him was now so deep that it could dig no further into the bottom. It was intense and clear enough that I would no longer be confused.

“Welcome. Want a drink?”

Choi Junghan, who had been leaning leisurely on the sofa, picked up the remote and spoke to me. When he pressed the button firmly, the richly pouring sound stopped abruptly. Only the painfully bright gorgeous colors illuminated the dim room.

He remained seated in comfortable attire. On the table in front of him were a wine glass and bottle. His eyes, speaking in a relaxed voice, pretended to be drowsy at first glance, but I knew he was a person who rarely got drunk.

I approached him closely. When I silently took the wine glass, Choi Junghan poured the alcohol for me. I stood and waited for the glass to fill.

And then I poured the red-filled glass straight over his head.

The dark red liquid flowed down his sharply raised nose bridge and the clearly defined lines of his face. The deep, elegant fragrance filled the surroundings.

Choi Junghan accepted it without any sign of surprise. Rather, with his eyes gently closed, he wore an almost reverent expression as if receiving a baptism. His face, thoroughly soaked in wine and shining in the darkness, looked not pathetic but even more intoxicating.

He slowly opened his eyes. His glistening gaze through the dripping red liquid was sharp.

“I’ve waited a long time. I’m glad you came.”

He whispered. A cold rage boiled up. I grabbed his collar with all my strength. The solid body that had never given me an opening even for a moment willingly let itself be pulled.

“Why did you let me go?”

I growled like an animal with him right in front of my nose. The breath I had blocked to the limit barely escaped in a handful along with the question. My body trembled steeply like a traveler standing at the edge of a windy cliff.

“That last day, in the movie theater. You drank it knowing what it was.”

“Ah, that.”

Choi Junghan smirked. His smug lips twisted upward. His eyes narrowed as if recalling a fond old memory.

“You wanted it.”

“…….”

“So I just let you do it.”

From the concise and clean resonance of his words, I could feel it. His voice resonated purely without any lie or pretense.

I was the one whose words were actually blocked by the high-purity truth of Choi Junghan. I no longer knew what emotion I should have. How on earth was I supposed to accept the fact that Choi Junghan had left me alone for a whole year for the sole reason that “I wanted it”?

“Then… then… why did you come find me again?”

I squeezed it out from my throat that had stuck shut. A parched voice barely flowed out.

“Because for one year I let you do whatever you wanted.”

“…….”

“Now you have to give me my turn.”

I wanted to dismiss what Choi Junghan was saying as a dream.

And understandably so, because his gentle voice was dreamlike rather than real. Everything was unreal. The damp air soaked in wine, the red-tinged scene in the room, and even myself standing here facing him right now.

“What do you want? Is this… this way of monitoring every detail of me what you want?”

“No. What I want is you.”

His eyes, unwavering like a reptile’s, turned toward me.

“I want you, Oon-ah.”