MOON Ch 29

“Oh my. Chaeon. What is this, why are you so thoroughly drenched, kid?”

A servant who was just decorating the main house stairs with fresh flowers asked in great fluster at Chaeon’s appearance. Putting strength into her arms cradling the vase tight, Chaeon chose her words for a moment.

“Ah, because the flowers fell into the fountain, while salvaging those…”

“Oh dear. While taking time out from studying for the CSAT to help your mom and do minor chores, you’re suffering; you’ll catch a cold. Hurry and go change your clothes.”

“Yes. Thank you for worrying about me.”

As cold as the weather had become significantly, the water inside the fountain was icy cold too. Due to the air of Songbaekwon—which was uniquely cold because it nestled close to mountains and forests and was situated on high ground—Chaeon’s body trembled violently. However, to say that it was a trembling brought on merely because of the cold…

Was it because she ran into him after a long time—he whom she had avoided all this time due to the embarrassment of having been caught stealing glances? Even at a distance, the moment her eyes met his, her chest felt as if it sank with a thud. Bound by his gaze staring as if to snatch her up, she had almost sat right there for a long time. In the end, flustered, she ended up showing a unsightly appearance like this, though.

Letting out a sigh as she left the vase in the reception room and came out, Chaeon ran head-on into Yeonjun, who was entering through the main house entrance just in time.

There was Heejung’s request too, and since she had hardly walked toward the main house side for some time, Yeonjun was also a face she saw for the first time in a long while, as much as Taeha. As Chaeon stopped her steps, he, twitching his eyebrows, tilted his head obliquely as if to show off.

“It’s been a really long time, Chaeon.”

“…Hello.”

Yeonjun, who was about to say something as if displeased, scanned Chaeon closely and hardened his expression.

“You, right now…”

His gaze, which chose words for a moment, wandered before looking into Chaeon’s eyes again.

“Did you come all the way here looking like this?”

“Pardon?”

Taking off the long cardigan draped over his shoulders, he immediately wrapped it around Chaeon’s shoulders. The length that fell below his buttocks was so big and long for Chaeon that it came down almost to her ankles.

“Just what on earth happened for you to be like this?”

Receiving the same question when she had already given the same answer to the servant a moment ago, her answer felt somewhat drained of strength. As Chaeon remained silent in fluster, he asked with a gaze that was somehow sharp:

“Did you not meet anyone on the way here?”

Well, since the person who saw this whole appearance was Jang Taeha, to say she met no one already was a contradiction, but somehow it felt like she shouldn’t tell that fact just as it was. Chaeon hesitated a bit and nodded her head.

“Yes. I just came right in to leave the vase in the reception room.”

He, who clenched his molars tight for a moment like a person holding back something tightly, patted Chaeon’s shoulders and let out a long sigh.

“As soon as you go, take a shower with warm water. You’ll catch a cold. Return this later.”

Meeting after a long time and receiving only one-sided consideration again made her feel sorry. Chaeon carefully tried to take off the cardigan draped over her shoulders.

“Um, but the clothes you lent me before…”

“Don’t mind it.”

“Pardon?”

Yeonjun, slightly furrowing his brow, draped the cardigan over Chaeon again and even buttoned the buttons completely.

“Because it didn’t matter even if I couldn’t get that back, in the first place.”

When Chaeon was about to ask something at the answer whose meaning could not be known, Yeonjun caught his breath for a moment and said once more:

“Shall we talk again later? Tell me then, too, why it was so hard to see you in the meantime.”

Yeonjun turned away just like that, avoiding Chaeon’s gaze as she narrowed her brow in wonder.

Since that day Chaeon was called like that to Jang Taeha, her visits to ask about problems she didn’t know or saying she wanted to read books had decreased sharply, so his nerves were on edge to the utmost. Though he guessed that Chaeon’s mother, Ms. An, must have made some request, he felt that there must surely have been something more besides that.

That day, the piano melody heard in that room. That Jang Taeha let ‘that piano’ be touched by someone else’s hands was an utterly unfamiliar thing, but… he saw Chaeon’s back profile heading toward the staff quarters as she descended the stairs as if fleeing with her ears flushed red. Where she had thrown and left the clothes he had put on her was as clear as day.

At the face he barely saw after about a week had passed, he almost lost his composure. Not stopping at that, a thoroughly drenched appearance like that… Yeonjun quietly clenched his teeth with a harsh face, then rubbed around his eyes nervously.

Coming out to the garden and meeting the cold wind, his chest seemed to settle down a bit. Yeonjun felt fine goosebumps rising at the cold wind touching his flesh revealed below his short sleeves, and walked slowly on the grass.

Chaeon possessed a unique aura that he wanted to capture more than anyone he had met in his life. However, not being able to find a sense of direction as to how and with what to capture it, he couldn’t tell at all even when looking into the sketches he had lightly drawn over a few days during which he had merely watched over her for quite a long time.

Then, that desire based on art was mutating in a strangely peculiar direction. I want to draw, I want to sculpt. From such a heart, gradually to I want to see her smiling face, I want to hear her voice, I want to see her for a long time. To such a heart. It was a feeling he felt for the first time from another person after his emotional circuit broke down.

At long last, now when Jang Taeha’s gaze reached Chaeon or he looked for Chaeon, it reached the point where he felt an anxious heart somehow. Was it a impatience felt when someone else tries to approach first something he wanted to capture inside his painting because it was pretty, because it was to his taste?

Without realizing it, at the feet of Yeonjun, who was walking through the garden while biting his lips tightly, something got caught with a thud. As he narrowed his eyes stealthily and lowered his head to check, it was a single flower whose moisture was bone-dry. Situated in an unfitting spot as if someone had dropped it urgently, out of the blue, alone.

“…”

Yeonjun quietly picked up that flower. As he turned his body around with a somewhat chilling feeling, what was visible right head-on was unluckily the large window bordering the terrace. Jang Taeha’s room. Probably, a position where gazes would directly meet if one stood here.

‘Did you not meet anyone on the way here?’

‘Yes. I just came right in to leave the vase in the reception room.’

Why…

Yeonjun, who glared piercingly at the window from where he stood, crushed the flower held in his hand mercilessly. The water-colored petals fluttered powerlessly as if foreseeing their destruction and fell down at his feet.

∞ ∞ ∞

CSAT D― 30

Checking the notification ringing on the D-day calendar, Chaeon quietly closed her phone. At the hour when regular classes ended, Chaeon quietly packed her bag among the kids who were making rustling sounds and preparing to leave school one by one.

It had been a long time since her school life became quiet without any particular noise. To the kids who occasionally expressed goodwill and said they wanted to get close, she was detached; even upon hearing sounds that seemed like whispering with hostility behind her back, she was detached. As always, with her unique indifferent personality, these were days of letting everything just pass by like that.

Just as she was exchanging greetings in return with a reasonably favorable attitude toward the kids who offered awkward greetings to her and moving her steps, someone called Chaeon to a halt from the end of the hallway.

“Just a moment, Yoon Chaeon!”

“…”

Same grade, different class. He was a familiar boy she had occasionally run into in the hallway. Because every time he ran into Chaeon up close in the hallway, the surrounding boys would let out strange cheers like ‘Oooh!’ mostly in that manner, she had noticed that much—that he liked her.

As Chaeon stared intently while holding her bag strap tight as if asking if he had something to say, he, scratching the back of his neck as if a bit embarrassed, thrust out a blue canned coffee toward Chaeon out of the blue.

“Um, you. Occasionally when you get something from the vending machine, you definitely drink this.”

“Ah.”

“Earlier, I tried to get a Zero Cola, but accidentally got this without knowing, so if you’re okay with it, you drink it.”

In fact, rather than liking canned coffee in particular, it was closer to eating it to endure because she was the type to have a lot of morning sleep, but it was also a bit annoying to respond to that in detail.

“Thanks. I’ll drink it well.”

“Uh, um. Uh… Here.”

Receiving the canned coffee handed out by the boy whose cheekbones area turned reddish, the surface of the can was cold, rendering all the words he had babbled and laid out previously useless. No matter how one looked at it, it was a temperature obvious to have been gotten a moment ago.

“Then, see you again. Bye.”

“…”

Going as far as to lie to give something the other person would like, trying to append even one more word, and pouring one’s heart in that manner. Will a day come when she herself does such a thing to someone too? Chaeon, who was standing while staring blankly at his receding back profile, cast her eyes downward.

A person she likes… Chaeon, who was staring quietly down at the can held in her hand, was startled out of her wits by the face of one person that flashed through her head in an instant, and almost dropped the can. No way. Why on earth did this face pop up right now at this time?

Shaking her head violently, she moved her steps quickly as if trying to erase the face floating around like a lingering image inside her head.