MERRY 32

Standing next to him, I hesitated, debating whether or not to voice what had just crossed my mind before changing course. I felt a bit reluctant to use our shared experience as a weapon—it left a gritty, unpleasant taste in my mouth—and since all our problems stemmed from the void that had grown between us, that seemed like a better angle to attack.

“This attitude of yours, treating me like I’m some incarnation of sex… I guess you’ve formed that opinion based on my sex life, but it’s really unfair. You’re the one who used to say you weren’t interested, and now you’re acting like this? Honestly. And it’s ridiculous how you treat me like the only promiscuous one here. What about you? Have you just not had sex at all since you left me?”

Go ahead, try to refute that.

“I’m not trying to talk about sex. And…”

“There you go, changing the subject again. You always do that when you’re at a disadvantage.”

“I was speaking. Listen until I’m finished.”

Adjusting his glasses out of habit, Ethan met my crooked gaze. He was incredibly upright.

“Impossible things rarely happen.”

Entranced by the emerald light fixed in his eyes, I failed to follow the movement of his handsome lips. However, his low voice, sounding like he was reciting poetry, carried his words and pinned them accurately into my ears. After quietly savoring them, I blinked rapidly. My eyelids obstructed my vision, but I couldn’t stop them.

“Huh?”

“If there’s nothing else to do, go inside. I should get off work, too.”

“Wait. Just a second.”

By the time I managed to open my eyes properly, Ethan had turned his head. It didn’t look like mere lukewarm indifference; there was a hint of avoidance. He might have been regretting saying something unnecessary. But there was no turning back now. I’m not such a fool that I’d let prey escape right in front of me.

“You haven’t had sex? Not even once since then?”

I brought my lips close to Ethan’s ear to ask, and I saw his shoulders flinch with my own eyes.

It must be true. It seemed Ethan Reed had been living a life of chastity all this time.

Had he been shut away alone in a cabin in the woods for the past few years? If not, how could anyone just leave a man this stunning alone?

Either everyone had collectively decided to become eunuchs, or a terrifying curse was triggered the moment they were captivated by his beautiful eyes, turning their genitals to stone. Or perhaps Ethan Reed had some functional issue with his body. The latter seemed the most plausible.

Ethan looked uncomfortable as my gaze drifted pointedly downward.

“Stop looking.”

Realizing words wouldn’t stop me, he covered my eyes with his hand. As I rolled my eyes through the gaps between his fingers, he eventually turned his back to me and took a step away. I stared blankly at his back before approaching and resting my chin on his broad shoulder.

“Your ears turned red.”

If they get any hotter, they’ll turn pink just like your lips.

∞ ∞ ∞

It’s hot. My breathing grows heavy. Every time I lift my head, beads of sweat gathered in my hair pour down. I rub the nape of my neck as if wrestling with the thick humidity. When I stroke the burning skin and pull my hand away, the air hitting it feels remarkably cool. Soon after, tiny goosebumps break out on my skin to chill the heat.

The fierce activity sensed by my body—the rising and falling of my temperature, the racing heartbeat—is vividly real. The heat that had subsided returns to wrap around my entire frame. My muscles expand, and my lungs feel tight, as if unrefined air has leaked into them.

I could have pushed myself until I boiled over and exploded, but I slowly lowered the speed of the treadmill. I had started running just to cool down a body I’d already trained for nearly two hours, but I ended up overdoing it. Soothing my inner self that felt one with the soul of a racehorse, I wiped the sweat from my chin.

I quenched my thirst with bottled water and did some light stretching. My body felt heavy, as if my pumped-up frame were filled with thoughts instead of muscle.

“This is all your fault.”

A message had arrived from the man perfectly suited for shifting the blame onto. It had been sent not long after we parted in front of the apartment.

Passing the locker room, I leaned my back against the wall, stopped, and checked my phone.

Stalker

Weren’t you going home?

True to his title, he seemed curious about my schedule.

“Good intuition.”

I had been holed up in the fitness center the whole time instead of going home. It was because I judged that moving would be good for shaking off intrusive thoughts.

I worked out. Going now.

While responding faithfully to the stalker, I felt a pang of guilt. Because my head was entirely filled with Ethan Reed, I had to be wary of his keen intuition. I searched for a rebuttal in case he pressured me by saying, “You weren’t working out; you were busy thinking about me.”

After hearing you say you haven’t had sex since you left me, how could I not think about anything?

“Not even once…”

That means there wasn’t a single time—a single moment where you got hot. Something different from the heat caused simply by the weather, different from muscles swelling from intense exercise, and different from the breathlessness caused by lungs failing to keep up.

As someone who knows just how hot of a man you can be, I truly can’t even fathom it. How could you do that? Didn’t you crave that heat? Were you living in an extremely hot country or something?

I started imagining Ethan dripping with sweat under the scorching equatorial sun but stopped. It was because he appeared in my mind naked and drenched in sweat. That body, without a single stitch of clothing, was a construct of my own memories.

“The pervert isn’t me, it’s you.”

I was disciplining myself with repeated mutterings when a man passing by with his hat pulled low flinched.

“Ah, sorry. I wasn’t talking to you…”

Before I could clear up the misunderstanding, he quickly hurried away and vanished. I could probably find him if I scoured the locker room and the gym, but that seemed too obsessive and would probably make me look even weirder. He’s likely a resident of the apartment anyway, so I’ll run into him eventually. Feeling optimistic, I headed home.

I agonized over which movie genre would be most effective for clearing my head, but the plan went awry. The moment I finished washing up and threw myself onto the sofa, the bomb known as Ethan Reed went off in my head again. In this godforsaken situation, the only thing providing any comfort was the self-praise that my memory is extraordinary.

Countless scenes from the early summer of the year I knew Ethan unfolded vividly. A single scene, embedded in my mind like a piece of shrapnel from the explosion, pulled me toward the far reaches of my memory, so I lay down clutching a cushion and closed my eyes.

On a certain weekday evening, Ethan and I were sitting across from each other in casual clothes at a pub popular with the “suits.” A waitress with a cute, high ponytail kept casting glances at the customers who didn’t quite fit the scenery. When I responded to her with a crinkled-nose smile, Ethan asked in a confrontational tone.

‘Is that a habit?’

‘Huh?’

‘Smiling at just anyone.’

‘Anyone? Her name is Jessie. She just said her name; did you forget already?’

‘So you smile at people if you only know their names.’

‘I can even smile at people when I have their names wrong. Mr. Alex Howard.’

Alex Howard. It was an alias Ethan had used once. Far from reflecting on having deceived me, he had spouted the kind of nonsense I usually would: ‘Mr. Howard was busy, so I came instead.’ Then, as if realizing that wasn’t like him, he moved on as if nothing had happened and nothing had been said.

He criticized my smile again.

‘If you smile like that, it’s easy for people to get the wrong idea.’

‘Did you? I’d like to hear specifically what kind of wrong idea you had.’

I curled the corners of my mouth and rested my chin on my palm. After a brief wait, Ethan’s gaze met mine.

‘You guessed wrong. I’m saying other people might, not me.’

I was disappointed by the indifferent response, but not enough to lose heart. I smiled even more deeply and tapped my foot. It was easy to find and touch Ethan’s long legs under the small round table.

‘In case you think it was an accident, I’m telling you, I did that on purpose just now.’

‘You have bad foot habits. What would you have done if I were wearing my favorite trousers?’

‘Stop by my place next door and leave your trousers. I’ll wash them for you personally.’

‘I assume that’s a ploy to invite me over.’

‘Since you know, you could just give in. This is the fifth time I’ve been rejected.’

‘It’s the fourth.’

Ethan was not an easy man. His stiff attitude only made me burn for him more.

‘One day, I’ll definitely succeed.’

‘We’ll see.’