I Don't Like You
Aware of the eyes turned their way from the other tables, Lee-kyung dropped his voice in warning, as if to tell her to shut her mouth already.
“That’s enough.”
“……”
“You haven’t changed. Not one bit.”
He let out a hollow laugh, then kept his mouth shut for a long while before finally fetching a fresh bottle of soju and knocking back several glasses in a row.
If she was honest, she had pushed it on purpose. She wanted to crack that stubborn pride of his, even if this was what it took.
Won-young waited in silence for whatever he would say next. She only hoped he wouldn’t notice that she was holding her spine even straighter than usual, so the tension inside her wouldn’t show. Seonbae saw through people more easily than he let on. She couldn’t afford to let her guard down for even a second.
By the time the soju they had emptied in a blur had run dry again, he finally spoke.
“Won-young.”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t like you.”
Her gaze stayed on the lips shaping the words. How can a mouth that pretty say something like that? Her heart twisted. He doesn’t like me? After grilling all that meat and piling every last piece onto my plate? That doesn’t make any sense. Seonbae isn’t the kind of person who makes time to eat with just anyone. There’s no way he doesn’t like me.
While she sat there stunned, Lee-kyung went on.
“Liking you stops right here. You’re a junior from home, we went to the same school, and there was a time I taught you how to draw. Noh Won-young, you’re kind, you’re diligent, and more than anything you’re sweet. I like that. But as a woman, I don’t. Even now, the moment you fixate on one thing, you can’t see anything else. And when that thing turns out to be me—back then and now—it’s too much. I can’t carry it.”
“……”
“So get a grip.”
He got up again to fetch more alcohol. Won-young felt as if she had been struck across the face; both cheeks stung.
She had never dared imagine it. That he had found her—so hopelessly gone for him—a burden.
She needed to think it through calmly. Seonbae was better at lying than he looked, a man who came at his real feelings sideways. This time she couldn’t let herself be fooled. She hadn’t known that before, and that was why she had been the one to say they should break up. Things had to be different now.
And yet she was afraid. What if every word of his is sincere? If he really felt that way because I was too much for him, then what am I supposed to do?
Lee-kyung came back with the drinks and unhurriedly refilled her empty glass.
“What are you thinking? Shocked?”
“Wouldn’t you be?”
When she looked at him with eyes that seemed ready to spill over, he answered lightly.
“Did you misunderstand me? Because I never once missed your calls in nine years?”
“……”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have picked up.”
“Seonbae!”
“Right. Seonbae. Let’s keep it exactly there. Meet like this sometimes, have a drink, share a meal. If our schedules line up, travel with Ji-an, the three of us, the way we used to. Just that much. Won’t that do?”
She needed to say no, but her lips wouldn’t part so easily.
Won-young still couldn’t forget. The wound he had given her that winter had tormented her over and over through the years that followed. Bright and tough as she had always been, the moment she crossed over to Japan she shut herself away.
Burnout. What took her was a lethargy bound up with severe depression, a numbness that came to rule her entire inner world. She met no one. She only shuttled between home and school. At twenty-three she graduated without incident and landed the job she had wanted, and those were still the unhappiest days of her life.
Afraid she would only grow unhappier, she moved on impulse to Florence, the same way she had fled to Japan that first day. Living in a room smaller than three hundred square feet, scraping together living expenses and tuition on top of it, was no small hardship. Even so, she didn’t want to lean on her parents. She cut back on sleep to work part-time alongside her studies, and at last she graduated from her second university.
What let her hold on so fiercely among friends of extraordinary talent was nothing but her own stubborn refusal to become any more unhappy. The wound Lee-kyung had left was that deep, and that large. She wasn’t entirely blind to how hard the backlash might hit later, this thrashing of hers to stay beside him.
Even so, there would be no retreat. She had come back. She was here, at his side.
“Ryu Lee-kyung.”
“What.”
“I like you. I’ve started liking you all over again. I like you, Seonbae.”
Won-young tipped back what was left of her drink in one clean swallow. She didn’t care what came of it. I just want to be beside you. Even if all I ever get is the sight of your back, that’s enough. Even if you don’t take my hand and walk off alone somewhere far ahead, I won’t get angry the way I used to. I’ll just walk quietly beside you. From now on, I want to walk through your time with you.
Caught in the strange look he was giving her, she grew awkward and ended up laughing.
“Ah—ah! Hn, s-stop. Seonbae, stop! Ah!”
Tears welled between her tightly shut eyes. The hand that had barely been clinging to the table jerked, and the strength went out of both her legs. Even so, he drove into her from behind without tiring.
“Isn’t this what you asked for?”
“Hhh, please…… it hurts. It hurts too much.”
The corner of Lee-kyung’s mouth lifted.
“You like this kind of thing, Won-young.”
Without warning he smacked her ass. The jolt sent a crackle through the place where they were joined, and in an instant that spot flared hot. Cold sweat broke over her now. His large hand pressed down on her waist, spread her thighs, and stirred deeper inside her.
“Well? Feel good?”
“……No. No!”
She had been bent over for minutes, unable even to straighten her back, taking him hunched like that, and her whole body prickled with the strain. The hot, slick length that kept pushing into her felt strange and unfamiliar.
“Want me to lift your head?”
“Nn—hn.”
He seized the back of her head, bowed like a drawn bow, in his hand. The grip was too hard, and a short, choked cry tore out of her. Even then he offered not a word of apology. He focused only on thrusting into her.
Won-young’s brows twitched. Through the clothes half stripped from her, he stared greedily at her bared breasts, then twisted a nipple hard.
“Hah, aah—ah!”
Her body jolted again and again. His body shoving roughly into that narrow space was already more than she could take, and the nipple crushed without any regard for rhythm drove her pleasure to a peak that tormented her. Below her navel, she trembled.
“Spread your legs a little more.”
Seonbae’s low, heavy voice was sweet. Without meaning to, she clenched hard around her hips, and he made a lewd sound and licked her cheek with his tongue. The stimulation was so fierce her eyes flushed red.
“Hah, nn.”
His hot lips touched near her neck, then, drawing in a thin breath, he left the mark of his teeth. She thought she might lose her mind. Unable to hold on, she broke under his petting again and again and spilled her moans. His soft tongue licked her nipple as if savoring it. He sucked so hungrily the flesh swelled and grew soaking wet. Strength gathered in her toes. Her legs shook.
Chup. Slurp. For a second she even thought she heard a wild animal lapping at its food. Had Seonbae always been this rough?
“Want to try it too?”
“Nn, huh?”
Before she knew it he had pulled out and was lightly shaking himself in front of her. It had swollen to such a desperate size it looked ready to burst within seconds unless someone bought it time by singing through the national anthem. To Won-young, whose face had gone helpless, he turned a lethal gaze and pressed her, a little forceful.
“Don’t want to?”
“That’s……”
Before she could answer, it surged in—his pushed into her mouth.
Big. Big. Too big!
She wanted to spit it out that instant, but Seonbae wouldn’t be reasoned with. The eyes locked on hers burned like flame.