Under the Same Umbrella
"Just share mine."
"It's too cramped. Use this."
"No. I'm sharing an umbrella with you, Seonbae."
Won-young's stubbornness left Lee-kyung with nothing more to add.
She bit down hard on her lip. His scent had grown stronger than it was a moment ago, and she endured the urge to bury her face against his chest.
I want to be someone good. Not the shallow kind of woman who shows up after years, drunk, and falls into his arms. I want him to see me as all right. I don't want Seonbae to hate me.
Those were the only thoughts that circled her as they walked beneath the same umbrella. She had no idea where they were headed next, and it didn't matter. For as long as they moved through the rain, her mind refused to rest.
Even now he kept her on the inside of the sidewalk. She never noticed that the umbrella, tilted too far to one side, had left one of his shoulders soaked through. She only called to him, soft and low.
"Seonbae."
"Yeah."
"Are you glad I came back?"
"Yeah."
"Happy to see me?"
"Yeah."
"Should we start seeing each other often again?"
"No."
At the end of the street Won-young stopped, and Lee-kyung stopped with her.
Her gaze wavered. She had known he would answer that way and asked anyway, and it stung her pride more than she cared to admit. Embarrassed, she papered the moment over with a deliberate laugh.
"That's too much, Ryu Lee-kyung. I could kill you."
"Again?"
"Yeah."
"You drunk?"
"No."
"Liar."
"I said I'm not drunk."
He drew his hand from his pocket and touched her cheek. The moment her flushed skin met the back of his hand, she nearly cried out.
Don't act so calm and tender. Please.
She shot him a glare, and Lee-kyung smiled.
"I'll get you a taxi. Go home."
"…"
Having turned her heart inside out, he flagged a cab with blunt finality and pushed her into the back seat.
"Text me when you get there."
The gentleness of it only irritated her.
Seonbae's always like this. He takes you all the way to the top, then makes you climb down alone. I really hate it.
"I said text me when you arrive."
"No. I won't."
A hand reached through the window and pinched her cheek, light and quick. She yelped—a short, sharp cry—and he laughed, bright and unguarded.
"Text me. Don't get cute."
In the end he sent her off alone. The umbrella he had bought for her, the one that had hung from her wrist the whole way, he pushed in after her as well. Won-young closed her fist tight around the handle.
From that night on, Won-young crashed into the quiet of Lee-kyung's days. Whenever she found a gap, she turned up at his studio, spent a noisy stretch of hours there, and went home again.
Knock, knock. She rapped on the door of the room where he was deep in his work and stuck her face through the opening.
"Seonbae, when exactly are you planning to eat dinner?"
"Later."
Won-young glared. His eating habits were a genuine disaster. After a light brunch of a sandwich and coffee that morning, Ryu Lee-kyung had now gone eight hours without a single bite. Waiting for him to come out, she felt as if her back had stuck flat to her stomach. How could anyone paint all day and never eat?
Look at him. A man so twisted his appetite dried up and died.
She pressed down the anger boiling up from below, smoothed her face with an effort, and spoke.
"Let's go get dinner. I want meat. Buy me meat."
"I told you to go home and eat. You've been waiting this whole time?"
"Yeah. I wanted to eat with you. If nobody's there to nag, you'll skip dinner again."
"So you're going to be here every evening?"
Won-young nodded. She had nothing else to do anyway. It had been barely a week since she returned to Korea, and she had come back meaning only to rest for a while, without a single plan in her head.
And right now, Seonbae matters more to me than anything.
"Yep. I don't know about anything else, but for the time being I'm eating dinner with you every night."
His brow creased.
"You really have nothing to do, huh."
"Nope."
"Must be a nice life."
"Excuse me?"
"Wait ten more minutes. I'll wrap up and we can go."
"Ten whole minutes?"
"Too hard?"
"No. My stomach's stuck so flat to my back I could probably pull on a pair of size-zero jeans I've never once fit into, but you're buying me an expensive meal anyway. I can wait that long."
He jerked his chin toward the hall. Out. Won-young fumed to herself, shut the door, and left.
A few days of the same pattern seemed to have worn on her a little. Even so, she had come back. She had truly come back, and she believed that somehow everything would be all right.
The next day she came to his studio again. After breakfast with her parents she stopped by Ji-an's Flower Shop and bought an armful of flowers. She was filling a vase and setting the stems when Lee-kyung's voice came from behind her.
"Nothing to do?"
It cut straight to the bone.
Won-young pretended not to hear and kept her attention on the flowers. When she gave him nothing, he brewed himself a cup of coffee and disappeared into his workspace. Once she was sure he was out of sight, she poured the coffee he favored into a glass.
Seonbae had always liked coffee with a deep, heavy aroma. The bitterness had once kept Won-young from drinking anything too strong, but year after year of trailing after him had changed her taste along with everything else. She carried the cup to the window and tried, alone, to imagine how he must have looked out at the world through that clear glass all this time.
She had nearly emptied it when Lee-kyung, gone for a while, showed his face again.
"What are you doing. Over there."
His flat gaze settled on the corner of her mouth. Won-young shrugged.
"Just thinking. If I come every day, does it bother you?"
She hoped he would say no. Then again, maybe it would be better if he said that it did.
"Not really."
Of course. I can never predict him. She studied his face in silence. Dressed lightly, he felt different from the man she had seen a few nights ago at the pojangmacha, that tented street stall—at ease, unhurried.
"How have you been feeling lately, Seonbae?"
"Hard to say. Neither good nor bad."
"Yeah? Then how do I look?"
"You look good."
"Do I."
"Quit the useless talk. If you're bored, come draw something. Let me see what Noh Won-young can do these days."
She wrinkled her nose.
"No. I'm not drawing."
"Why."
"Why do you think. You'll tear into me again. Did you draw this with your hands, or your feet? I can recite your lines without even hearing them."
A soft puff of laughter escaped him, bright and sudden. Dangerous. That smile of his, right now.
As if she had briefly forgotten that this was the man who once owned the smile she had loved most in the world, Won-young turned her head in a hurry.
Loving someone looked like the easiest thing in the world, when in truth it was the hardest. To love a person other than yourself was to love that person's entire world—and that world might be full of things you did not love. Things that pierced you, broke you, ruined you, until you, raked open by the wounds, were the one who finally said goodbye.
Before she knew it, Lee-kyung was standing beside her. Whatever she had been gazing at while she drank her coffee, he took in slowly with his own eyes.