If You Think of Me as Your Young Master

"So, um. This. It's nothing, really."

He'd babbled himself into a place where shutting up would have been the smarter move. For the first time in his sixteen years of life, Ruby seriously wondered if he was about to drop dead on the spot. And that was when the spinning bear claw-machine doll stopped with a jerk.

Haeseo had grabbed it.

"Whoa, you won this yourself? I heard that Hyejin girl who runs the place is notorious for scamming people out of their money."

"I was just bored, so I tried it, and it came out."

"That's amazing!"

Well. It wasn't much of anything, really. Watching Haeseo hop around clutching the doll, Ruby noticed that — unlike before — the lies were now flowing out smooth and easy.

He shoved his still-trembling hand deep into his school uniform pocket and slouched against the wall, all so he could wipe the cold sweat from his palm without getting caught.

"Up close, it's even cuter. I actually wanted one of these."

"You can have it."

"Whoa. Seriously?"

"Yeah. Take it, noona. It's actually... you know."

"Hm? What was that?"

"...I won it for you."

Ruby swept his hair back, eyes dipping shyly downward as he said it.

"Really? Thank you! Since it's from you, Ruby, I'll use it to the very best of my ability!"

At Haeseo's delighted thanks, Ruby's shoulders swelled with pride. Of course a gift from someone you liked would make you happy, right? And this was only the beginning. He was going to keep her jumping so high and so often her feet would barely touch the ground. That is, if she became his girlfriend, that is.

"Actually, that's perfect. I needed something like this."

Needed? What possible use could an ugly muscled-up bear have? At the odd phrasing, Ruby lifted his head.

Haeseo, who had been standing right in front of him moments ago, was already over by the flower bed. She'd hooked the doll's strap onto the very top of a support stake and fastened it down tight so it wouldn't fall.

Hung from a green pole like it was being sent to the gallows, the little bear swung silently back and forth in midair, not even a squeak left in it.

"Ta-da! A bear scarecrow."

"......"

"It's way better than I expected, honestly. See, the ring's all shiny. And the birds were sneaking bites of the fruit, you know. This should help with that, right? Ahh, thank goodness."

Tatata-tak — like kindling blackening as it burns, Ruby's heart was quietly charring to ash, and Haeseo had no idea. She was even clapping for it. Her signature praise-clap, no less.

"Noona. I... gave that to you, though."

Ruby muttered, sinking low. Come to think of it, she'd said she'd use it well — not that she'd treasure it. Normally, when someone gives you a doll, the latter is... what you say, isn't it?

"Hm? Yeah, right. Thanks, thanks. Do you want anything? I'll repay you."

Watching Haeseo boom her thanks out loud and clear, Ruby's heart — which had soared all the way to the edge of the sky — deflated like a hot-air balloon losing altitude. Psuuu-shh.

Haeseo's face, gazing blankly at him, was as fair and untroubled as ever. Not even a flicker of the warmth she'd shown that girl she'd cornered for information about the doll machines.

Thud.

What had been his heart only moments ago dropped heavily, all the way down to the soles of his feet.

"Repay me... Oh, right. Actually, that guy who got punched — he's a friend of the guy who confessed to you."

Ruby's patience had run thin, so he finally spit out the words he'd swallowed earlier. If honesty didn't work, then damn the torpedoes.

"What? Your friend? Then who— wait. Why would a high schooler punch a middle schooler who was just standing there minding his own business?"

Haeseo, who'd been grinning along without a care, transformed in an instant, huffing with indignation. The plump flesh of her cheeks twitched and rippled. Watching emotions rise and move inside that face — one that looked about the size of his own fist — was, admittedly, devastatingly cute.

"Because that guy — that hyung — figured since you live here, you must be loaded, so he confessed just to use you. He's a complete idiot."

Perhaps the shock hit harder than he'd expected, because Haeseo's face darkened.

"So if that bastard ever talks to you, don't even answer. Ignore him. Hell, just come get me. I'll—"

"I'm sorry."

"Huh?"

At the sudden apology, Ruby's gaze cooled several degrees. Sorry for what, exactly? Surely she didn't mean she'd actually wanted things to work out with that bastard.

"I guess living inside this estate causes misunderstandings. I'll explain to him personally that I'm not actually the daughter of this house. I just live in the employee housing, that's all."

"No — what? Why?"

Why on earth would she owe that bastard any explanation of something so personal? A fire lit itself in young Ruby's eyes.

"You wouldn't want to be misunderstood over nothing either."

"Why would I care?"

Even under that blazing stare, Haeseo let out a long, exaggerated hoooo of a sigh and shook her head slowly from side to side.

"What do you mean, why? It'd be a problem if people thought I was family with the master's son, wouldn't it?"

"That's exactly what I'm asking — why would it be a problem?"

The conversation kept careening off into nowhere, and Ruby felt like he was going to lose his mind from the frustration. Hesitating over what to say, Haeseo finally delivered the most definitive answer of all, flat and matter-of-fact.

"You're the young master. And I'm basically a servant."

"......"

"So I'll handle it nicely. If I keep pretending out in public, madam might get the wrong idea, and... I don't want to be misunderstood like that."

Ruby's mouth hung open, and no words would come.

Class difference. Not once, not a single time, had he ever let something like that divide him from Haeseo. Which meant this was the first he was learning that Wi Haeseo had been conscious of it all along.

So it hadn't been that she was only two years older than him. More than any of that, what mattered to her was that he was the young master. Only now did everything click into place, puzzle piece by puzzle piece.

The way she'd indulged him without a trace of annoyance when he trailed after her like a persistent little shadow. The way she'd fussed over the smallest scrape as if it were a catastrophe. It was because he was the young master she was obligated to serve. Not pure affection for him, but a kind of labor.

His skull throbbed as if someone had actually taken a swing at the back of his head. Even his vision blurred to black at the edges before swimming back into focus. As the silence stretched on, he could see that small head fidgeting in front of him — tilting to the right, tilting to the left, studying him. That habit he'd always found so adorable was, he now understood, her way of reading the moods of the person she served. The thought made his chest ache.

Whoosh — Ruby turned his head away, pointedly, so she couldn't miss it. Because he couldn't bear to meet her eyes.

"Ruby-yi... are you maybe mad?"

That honey-melting voice, trying to smooth things over — he could not let himself be won over by it. Not that Wi Haeseo meant anything by it, of course. He'd just be the only one swaying.

He learned for the first time in his life that when you're embarrassed enough, you feel like you might cry. But Ruby could not let her see even that, so he turned his back on her, resolute.

"Ruby......"

Leaving that pitiful little voice behind him, he clenched his fists. Maybe the real problem was that he'd come on too strong all this time. He needed to put distance between them — needed to make her see him not as the young master she'd grown up alongside, but as a man.

"Don't talk to me."

"Huh?"

"If that's how you think of me — as your young master — then don't talk to me at all."

"......"

"......"

He was the one who had created this silence, and yet Ruby was the one being crushed under its unbearable weight.

"......"

"......"

The same dead time looped around again. Tch. Fine, then, don't talk— stubborn, impossible Wi Haeseo. Some noona she was.

Ruby made the hardest decision of his life and slowly peeled his weighted feet off the ground, as if dragging an anchor behind him. He didn't look back. Turning her heart around might be beyond him for now — a person couldn't rewrite a belief she'd carried her whole life in a single moment, after all.

From this very moment on, he decided, he would wait until Wi Haeseo spoke to him first. He'd always been the one seeking her out, every single day — so surely, once she felt that empty space where he used to be, she'd miss it too.

Lips jutting in a pout, Ruby swept out of the employee housing garden in one clean motion. His hope was that, in the time he wasn't there, her mind would fill up with him instead — ironically, completely.

He wanted Haeseo to grow restless without him, was the thing.

Not just vanish into thin air!

The moment Ruby heard, over dinner, that Haeseo's grandfather — the estate's longtime gardener — had retired and stepped down, he'd bolted from the table and run straight over. But the room she'd lived in, in the servants' annex, was already completely empty.

Ruby didn't have a single one of Haeseo's contact details. It wasn't as though either of them lacked a phone — it was simply that Haeseo had always been at his house, so he'd never felt the need.

If he'd truly wanted to find her, it wouldn't have been hard. But why would he have to?

"Shall I give you Teacher Wi's contact information?"

"No need."

As if serving him a plate of something bitter, Haeseo had left without so much as a forwarding word. Maybe she'd figured she didn't owe him anything anymore — he wasn't even her young master now. That was all he'd ever amounted to, to Wi Haeseo.

Ruby clenched his fists so hard the bones stood out white beneath the skin, and hurried out of the housing compound. Gnawing at his lower lip, he'd made himself a promise. Fine, then. If this was how it was going to be, he'd see it through to the bitter end.

He would never, ever be the one to seek Wi Haeseo out first. Not until she came to him on her own two feet. With that vow, Ruby had returned to his room — and then lay face-down in his pillow without moving an inch.

...Damn it. I should have just endured it back then, even if she saw me crying like an idiot.

And then he cried, a little — enough to stain the pillowcase. He swore on his life it would be the last tear the man in him would ever shed.