Caught.
Hyungnam calmly lowered her eyes to her plate. If she met his gaze now, she would let out a laugh, and then he would immediately realize she had been thinking of him as some low-class thug.
When you’re playing dumb, acting busy works best.
Hyungnam busily worked her fork as she answered.
“I was just… wondering what you have to do to earn people’s respect.”
Eunhyung set the plate of pork cutlet, now sliced into small pieces, back in front of Hyungnam. Then, reclaiming his own half-cut portion, he let out a breathy laugh.
“You don’t even know that? You gotta become the boss.”
“…”
“Then your lackeys tell you every damn day. ‘I respect you, boss.’ ‘I looove you, boss.’”
He rattled the words off almost automatically, as though they had once been worn into his tongue. Hyungnam wrinkled the bridge of her nose slightly to keep herself from laughing.
“So even you used to say things like that, Manager.”
“Used to. To the chairman.”
“…”
“But I’m not going to anymore.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t respect him. Senile old man.”
He picked up his knife again and began cutting his own pork cutlet.
The noise around her evaporated, leaving her ears strangely numb. The silhouettes of the murmuring people turned translucent, like apparitions, and only Choi Eunhyung remained in sharp resolution. Just like that time their eyes had met while he had a cigarette between his lips.
Her gaze traced his outline. Hair swept back any which way. Elegant features wasted on a gangster. Curving muscles that proclaimed his youth, and the pale, sturdy skin covering them.
Hyungnam had to admit it. She was perfectly attracted to his appearance, at least.
But that alone could not give birth to romantic feelings. Those were noble things. Precious things. Treasures.
They aren’t meant for someone as lowly as me.
Unless Hyungnam was a princess, Choi Eunhyung could never be a prince on a white horse.
Hyungnam worried the tender flesh inside her lip between her teeth. The unfamiliar emotion made her thoroughly nauseated. It felt as though her head and her heart were going their separate ways. Just as the fact that Choi Eunhyung was a violent gangster refused to align with the man he had shown her, ordinary common sense kept threatening to become meaningless before this strange new feeling.
Don’t think about it any further.
Hyungnam pressed the smallest piece of pork cutlet firmly with her fork. When she cautiously put it into her mouth, warm, sweet-and-tangy sauce spread across her tongue.
The salivary glands beneath her ears prickled.
She got a similar sensation whenever she smelled Choi Eunhyung’s cologne.
At that realization, Hyungnam stopped chewing for a moment, looking appalled.
Now I’m sitting here thinking about Choi Eunhyung because of a taste, too. Every time I think about him, there’s that strangely unpleasant, thrilling sensation. What, is my conscience hiding in my salivary glands?
Hyungnam pressed at her throat a few times and shot back,
“Make sure you do become the boss.”
“…”
“Then I’ll tell you, ‘I respect you, boss,’ too.”
“Why’d you leave out the next part?”
Hyungnam stared at Eunhyung for a moment as though he were ridiculous, then promptly buried her face over her plate and devoted herself to eating.
He had not expected an answer to the joke in the first place. Eunhyung chuckled to himself as he finished cutting up his own pork cutlet as well. Then he set down his fork and knife, looked at the plate, and paused to steady his breathing.
A large, round pork cutlet. Reddish-brown sauce steaming over it. Two pieces of young-radish kimchi arranged beside it, a spoonful of canned beans, a green chili pepper, and seasoned soybean paste.
And one round scoop of white rice.
Beside the rice, its round shape slightly disturbed, the pale green peas had been neatly picked out and gathered together.
For a long while Eunhyung neither touched the food nor cracked another joke. He merely stared at the crown of the girl’s head as she steadily ate one piece of pork cutlet after another.
His gaze slid over the maid’s fair skin as though licking it, then settled on the little hand gripping the fork. Beneath his pitch-black eyes, something dark and furtive that he had kept quietly submerged began to stir.
“…You did say the next part.”
Hyungnam raised her head, cheeks stuffed full, as though asking what she had said, but Choi Eunhyung looked as indifferent as ever.
“Eat.”
At the jerk of his chin, the girl obediently buried her head over her plate again.
Eunhyung shook his head as though disgusted with himself. His face hurt from holding it so rigidly.
It’s definitely a disease. A disease where I can’t stop myself from laughing.
No. That diagnosis is wrong.
A disease where I keep laughing whenever I look at the maid.
That’s more accurate.
The abrupt outing ended with an unfamiliar emotion lodged irritatingly in Hyungnam’s throat.
Not a single word of friendly conversation passed between them on the drive home either, but at least this time Hyungnam did not have to hold on to the overhead grab handle. Unlike when they had first left the house, Eunhyung drove considerably more gently.
She was pleasantly full, and the car vibrated softly beneath her. Her tired eyelids kept tugging downward. She scolded herself, but she could not fight off sleep.
She was certain she was staying alert, and then—
Her head dropped forward.
“…Huh.”
Startled, Hyungnam jerked upright and stole a sideways glance at Eunhyung. He was driving with one arm propped against the window. He did not so much as glance her way, staring straight ahead with a blank expression.
Good. Looks like he didn’t see me secretly nodding off.
Hyungnam clenched and unclenched her fists hard for no reason, trying to chase away the sleep.
She never noticed the left corner of Eunhyung’s mouth twitch in the windshield reflection.
The car entered Pyeongchangdong. As it powered its way up the steep hill, Eunhyung kept shifting gears.
Click. Click.
There was something so crisp and decisive about the motion that Hyungnam found it very grown-up.
Not legally adult. Actually grown-up.
An adult with experience, someone who could always figure out some way to survive.
Feeling her body tilt backward as though she were sitting inside a launching rocket, Hyungnam gave a quiet, incredulous snort.
Look at me assigning all kinds of meaning to the way he shifts gears. To someone I hadn’t even spoken to until a few days ago.
“What’re you looking at?”
Hyungnam immediately tore her gaze away from his profile.
Impossible though it was, she could almost hear her own eyes rolling in their sockets.
She stiffened her toes pointlessly and answered,
“I wasn’t looking.”
I really wasn’t.
I absolutely did not look at those melancholy eyes, or that primly closed mouth, or the Adam’s apple that sank and rose every so often.
No matter how pretty it is, it’s still a gangster’s face.
Hyungnam turned her head away altogether and pretended to be interested in something else. She grabbed the crank on the car door and turned it twice. The window lowered halfway, and cold air rushed in.
It felt as though the heat inside her cooled, at least a little.
She stared blankly out at the passing scenery until a row of black cars parked along a residential alley caught her eye.
Hyungnam frowned slightly and even twisted around in her seat to look back, but no matter how closely she studied them, they were cars she had never seen before.
She generally knew the makes and colors of the neighbors’ cars.
That made it even stranger.
Cars that shabby and old don’t fit this neighborhood at all. And there aren’t just one of them, but three parked in a row. Is somebody having guests over?
When Hyungnam turned forward again, Eunhyung asked,
“What.”
“Nothing.”
“It’s outside.”
Eunhyung snickered as he turned the wheel.
Hyungnam’s brows twisted in irritation.
And she decided to completely retract everything she had thought a moment ago about him seeming like an adult.
The mansion was still silent, cold, and devoid of any sign of life.
Hyungnam went in ahead of Eunhyung, kicked off her shoes, and pressed the light switch. The living room brightened beneath an old-fashioned fixture with five tulip-shaped shades, except one bulb appeared to be nearing the end of its life and was flickering.
Hyungnam looked up at it.
It blinked irritatingly with irregular little ticking sounds.
Blink, blink.
Blinkblinkblink.
The faint tension that had left her brow returned.
Light bulbs burn out all the time.
All you have to do is replace the dead one.
An omen with no justification crept down from the ceiling and dropped heavily onto the crown of her head.
Hyungnam looked around for Choi Eunhyung.
He already had one hand on the guest-room doorknob. His biker jacket was halfway peeled back to his shoulder blades, so apparently he meant to change clothes.
What is this feeling?
Hyungnam removed her hand from the switch and stared blankly at the flickering light for a long moment.
The telephone rang, slicing sharply through the deep silence.
Hyungnam startled so violently at her own nerves that her whole body shook. She might even have let out a small scream.
Clearing her throat, she hurried to the telephone. She lifted the receiver, which rested almost like a mounted specimen on top of the old-fashioned cream-colored base, and held it to her ear.
“Pyeongchangdong residence.”
“Manager Choi there?”
That rough regional accent.
Park Shineok.
The old scars along the insides of her arms, forgotten for so long, suddenly itched as though they were having a fit.
Come to think of it, it is about time for him to come back from his trip.
Which meant it was almost time for Choi Eunhyung to stop acting as chairman and leave this house.
Hyungnam slowly rubbed the receiver with her thumb and worried her lower lip.
Only after Park barked, “Hey,” impatiently did she open her mouth.
“He is. Shall I put him on?”
“Forget it. Tell Manager Choi to get the hell outta there, now.”
“What?”
But Park Shineok had said something strange.
Unlike usual, his voice was urgent, almost frantic. Listening more carefully, she could hear chaotic noise around him as well.
He isn’t calling from some quiet hotel room?
When Hyungnam stupidly asked again, Park spoke rapidly, as if frustrated with her.
“The cops are comin’. You tell ’em you don’t know where Manager Choi is.”