Don't Cry Here
They moved straight to the hotel bar. Shin Jeon-ho, who'd suggested they have a drink, had brought her upstairs and deliberately taken a seat dead center, as if he wanted everyone to see. Thanks to that, she was absorbing every sidelong glance with her entire body.
I shouldn't have come. In the end, she'd been led all the way here. Not of her own will, of course — she'd been all but dragged against it.
"Have a drink. I picked this out spe-cial-ly to commemorate meeting you, Go Eun-jae."
Shin Jeon-ho knocked back his drink from a rocks glass first, then spoke. She was already regretting having come.
"It's good, I'm telling you. You have to actually taste something to know if it's good. Just sitting there staring at it like that isn't going to tell you a thing."
Shin Jeon-ho stared straight into her eyes and flashed a sly, leering grin.
A strange current passed between them. Eun-jae's brow furrowed deeper and deeper. The more it did, the more delighted he looked.
"What looks good usually tastes good, too."
Unable to take it any longer, Eun-jae grabbed the glass in front of her and flung the contents into Shin Jeon-ho's face.
"Ha, fuck. Haha."
Shin Jeon-ho wiped the liquor running down his face and burst into loud laughter.
She knew perfectly well that what he'd just said hadn't been about the drink at all. The unbearable humiliation had moved her body before her mind could catch up. But even knowing what she'd done, she didn't regret it. Even if it killed her, she couldn't endure another second of this.
That worthless match, that arranged marriage — she could just overturn it all.
"This is fun."
Her slender shoulders trembled. Eun-jae rose from her seat, putting as much strength as she could into her shaking legs to hold herself upright.
"I was going to go easy on you because you looked so pathetic, but you're really not going to work out."
Shin Jeon-ho muttered it coldly, then stood. He stepped toward her and snatched her wrist. The sudden yank twisted her heeled ankle, and she crumpled to the floor. He didn't care in the slightest. He started walking, dragging her along.
"Let go! L-let go of me!"
She screamed herself hoarse, but the man's expression didn't so much as flicker.
A piece of trash beyond any hope of rehabilitation, whose name had landed in the papers more than once. And yet not a single person watching her being dragged away stepped forward.
"Hic. Hh—"
She thrashed, trying to get to her feet, but there was no matching the pace of his long strides. Her knees and palms scraped across the floor as she was hauled away.
A man's dress shoe stopped in front of her knees. Shin Jeon-ho's steps halted with it.
"I don't know what the hell a bastard like you thinks he's doing to a person."
A cool, familiar voice dropped down over her head. The faint musk of a man's cologne brushed the tip of her nose, and Eun-jae squeezed her eyes shut. She didn't need to lift her head to know who it was. She had no idea why he was here, but it felt as if her heart had dropped out of her chest.
"The hell is this idiot."
Shin Jeon-ho muttered it as if the whole thing were a joke. She could almost see the unflinching look on his face as he shot back. Even so, he tightened his grip on her wrist. Pain bloomed where he held her.
"I don't believe I ever said I was 'that guy.' So why the attitude? Don't tell me — are you a son of a bitch?"
Was Cha Mu-yeol even the kind of man who talked like this? The complete absence of manners in his tone was jarringly at odds with that pleasant voice.
"Ha. What the hell. Who are you?"
"I'll have to try harder. If you can't even recognize my face."
"Hey, fuck. Don't get in my way. Get lost."
The moment Shin Jeon-ho reached for Mu-yeol's shoulder to shove him aside — tak. His arm was seized, and his brow twisted violently.
"Ugh. You little shit. Do you even know who I am, pulling this? You don't know me?"
"I know you. The one famous as a piece of trash who can't even be recycled. As if there's a single person in this scene who doesn't know who you are. You're selling yourself far too short."
Mu-yeol pulled Shin Jeon-ho toward him and murmured it low. Without a flicker of expression, he put crushing force into his grip, and a crack appeared in Shin Jeon-ho's face.
"And you. Keep your eyes open when you walk around. Don't go failing to recognize my face."
"Ack, fuck. Let go while I'm still asking nicely. Let go, you son of a bitch."
Mu-yeol stared down at him, at the reddened face panting with rage. Then, with unhurried ease, he twitched the corner of his mouth and jerked his chin toward Eun-jae's wrist.
"That hand. Let go of it first, and I'll let you go."
"The hell are you — you son of a— aagh!"
Mu-yeol bent Shin Jeon-ho's arm back with casual force, stepped in closer, and murmured low into the man's ear, for him alone.
A moment later, Mu-yeol tossed him lightly to the floor, and Shin Jeon-ho went sprawling. The man glared, panting, but without getting a word out he scrambled away from the spot.
Mu-yeol slowly lowered his gaze. The woman was still sitting at his feet, her head bowed.
"Ha."
How was it that he only ever saw her like this. Her hair was a wreck, and the state of her was so wretched that he took a moment to steady his breath and swallow his anger. Her bag lay spilled open beside her. Everything that had been inside it had tumbled out.
Mu-yeol's pitch-black eyes found her right arm. That still-unnatural, impossibly slender arm, as if it might snap.
He slowly lowered himself onto one knee in front of her. Without a word, he picked up her bag and began putting her things back inside.
Tak.
Eun-jae snatched the bag from his hands. Then, with her left hand, she hastily swept the scattered items off the floor and stuffed them in. But whether because her hands were shaking, or because it was her left hand — watching things keep falling back to the floor, the emotion she'd been holding in finally burst.
"Hh-hic."
She bit down on her lip, trying to swallow the tears, but it was useless. Eun-jae sobbed, tears falling in drops.
"If you're going to cry, go cry somewhere else. Don't sit here doing this."
Mu-yeol took her and left.
Eun-jae wept for a long time, as if crying were the only thing she knew how to do. And beside her, Mu-yeol waited in silence, saying nothing.
"Just... please go."
"Go Eun-jae."
"Please... I'm begging you."
Was it because she looked so wrecked — because of the state she'd been left in? Sitting on the floor, Eun-jae had pleaded with him through her tears as he tried to take care of her. Just go, she'd said. She wanted to be alone.
But Mu-yeol didn't grant her request.
"Asking me to look the other way and walk off while you're like this — that's asking a bit much, don't you think."
He took the pleading Eun-jae and put her in the car. Then he drove, without any particular destination, toward a nearby park along the Han River.
About an hour had passed, perhaps. Her sobs had ebbed away, and inside the silent car there was only the rain.
"Have you finished crying?"
At Cha Mu-yeol's question, Eun-jae wiped both eyes in turn with a handkerchief. The handkerchief in her hand was one he had given her, too.
She said nothing. As her mind slowly returned, she could finally see the state of herself that he'd spoken of. Her black stockings, torn open at the knees. Beneath them, raw red scrapes. And her left wrist, where she'd been grabbed, was swollen and flushed. Once in the lounge, once at the bar — Shin Jeon-ho had seized her so roughly that the throbbing pain was considerable.
"...Thank you."
Eun-jae bowed her head toward him. The moment from just before flashed across her eyes. She knew that regretting it now was meaningless. But she regretted it all the same.