Off Leash

The moment Hae-soo woke and looked in the mirror, she felt a deep wave of relief that her mother wasn't home. Her lips were swollen enough to look suspicious to anyone who saw them.

"……I can't live like this."

She gripped the edge of the sink and hung her head. A mere minute or two of kissing couldn't do this to a mouth — so then just how long had she been clinging to him, exactly? She couldn't even fathom it. And in a wide-open public place, of all things.

For the first time in her life, she resented alcohol. Hadn't she heard it drilled into her ears all through school? All those rumors about who did what with whom, where, while drunk.

She couldn't speak for anyone else, but Hae-soo had always been confident that such a thing would never happen to her. Not once had alcohol ever derailed her life. It had been possible only because of a famously grueling training regimen.

One day, not long before she started university, Hae-soo had sat her mother down at the kitchen table and, with grim determination, laid out everything she'd bought from the convenience store. Five bottles of soju, five bottles of beer, and — as drinking snacks — a single bag of shrimp crackers.

'You learn drinking from adults. So Mom, teach me.'

That was what she'd said, holding out a soju glass to Jeong-ae, who was staring at the spread in bewilderment, asking what on earth all this was.

Jeong-ae, who neither liked alcohol nor could hold her liquor, tried to talk her out of it — what use was there in learning to drink from her? — but Hae-soo wouldn't budge. Like it or not, she'd be attending drinking gatherings often from then on, and she figured she ought to at least know her own limit.

'Is this kid sharp, or just plain strange…….'

Jeong-ae had clutched the back of her neck in exasperation, but thanks to that strange escapade, Hae-soo made it through her entire university years safe from any drink-fueled disasters. In every situation, she drank only as much as she could handle. She swore on her life she'd never once ruined anything by over-drinking.

Right. Definitely never. At least, not until yesterday.

Folding away the memories of her reckless younger days, Hae-soo squeezed toothpaste onto her brush. Her careless brushing stung the center of her lower lip. The instant her tongue touched the spot, Moon-yeol's face flashed into her vision, dizzying and unbidden.

She blinked it away, managed to banish the afterimage, and set her hand moving again. Then, as she scraped her tongue, the sensation of him sucking hard on that tongue came flooding back, vivid as ever.

Stop. Shake it off. Brush again. Stop again. What should have been a three-minute routine dragged past five before it finally ended. Hae-soo emerged from the bathroom utterly drained by a single round of tooth-brushing. Her mind was more exhausted than her body. It was a mercy they'd only kissed. If things had gone any further……

'Want to come to my place?'

Throwing herself spread-eagled across her bed, she replayed the instant she'd nearly wavered at those words. Her head was hotter than the floorboards already baking under the underfloor heating. She cranked the fan on full blast and rolled this way and that, spiraling into despair over how on earth she was supposed to face Seo Moon-yeol now. Then her reason stepped in and laughed coldly at her.

You idiot. It's vacation.

"……Oh."

The body that had been rolling across the floor went slack. She should have been relieved, but all she felt was an inexplicable pang of disappointment and loss. Hae-soo pressed her cheek against the sticky floor and blinked slowly. What was she even doing this for? What did she want with that guy?

Just then, her phone buzzed once.

Assuming it was Jeong-ae, she stretched out a clumsy hand. She'd sent her mother a photo of the Jeju sea that morning, and sure enough, a reply had come asking her to take more and send them — a reply Hae-soo had sent without meaning a word of it.

The messages weren't from Jeong-ae at all — they were from Moon-yeol. Hae-soo, staring up at the screen from flat on her back, nearly dropped the phone onto her own face. She hastily fumbled it back into her grip and looked again. In the meantime, another had arrived. No — two.

It wasn't hard to picture the face he'd be wearing as he taunted her, and she pressed her lips together to keep from laughing. She winced at the sting, then let out a small chuckle despite herself. To the man who had probably stopped mid-toothbrush just as many times as she had, Hae-soo sent her reply without a moment's hesitation.

Those two little words set her whole face ablaze. Her chest went ticklish and warm, and she laid the hand holding the phone over her heart and pressed down, slow and steady. Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump. On exactly the fifth beat of her heart against that hand, his reply came.

Next time.

The words, nothing more than a passing joke, imprinted themselves vividly behind her eyes. Wanting to lock them somewhere they could never leave, Hae-soo let her eyelids fall shut.

Her belly burned unbearably hot. The sizzling start of summer had begun.

It was the fifth day since Jeong-ae and Se-bin had gone down to Jeju Island. It was also the day of Hae-soo's intern orientation.

"I know, don't worry. How's Jeju? Are you having fun? Is Se-bin giving you a hard time?"

Jeong-ae would probably never know, not for the rest of her life, that it had been that sweet Park Se-bin who once got Hae-soo ostracized at school. Se-bin would never confess her own wrongs, and Hae-soo would never say anything that might wound her mother's heart.

Se-bin was Jeong-ae's pride — the fruit of a youth she had poured herself into building. She was precious to her in a different sense than Hae-soo, whom she was obliged to raise as her own child. It seemed Jeong-ae found the meaning of her life in the fact that she had raised, with her own two hands, an infant who had lost her birth mother — raised her healthy and bright.

That was why Hae-soo hadn't spoken up back then either. She'd been afraid Jeong-ae might blame herself for Se-bin's sharp, spiteful temperament, as if it were her own failing.

Her mother, of course, had no way of reading any of this, and went on chattering excitedly.

"We can come together next time. Next time, let's just the two of us go somewhere even better than Jeju."

Jeong-ae burst out laughing like a schoolgirl. Behind her, Se-bin's voice came through, calling for her.

"Wait — Mom, when are you coming back?"

She asked hurriedly, but the line had already gone dead. Hae-soo stared blankly at her phone for a moment, then got ready to head out. Unable to decide what to wear, she put on the same skirt suit she'd worn to the interview.

'You looked so pretty that day.'

As she pulled her heels out of the tiny shoe rack and set them down, Moon-yeol's smile layered itself over them. She smirked and slid her feet into the shoes. The feeling of them cradling her feet was, as ever, reassuringly solid.

The message came just as she stepped through the side gate of the estate. She replied with a simple yes, and the answer shot back with knife-like speed.

She couldn't think of a single excuse to refuse. No — truthfully, she no longer wanted to refuse. Walking carefully down the sloped streets of Seongbuk-dong, Hae-soo tapped at her phone with hands even more cautious than her steps.

No, I can't.

Yeah, let's meet.

No, I can't. Let's meet. Where should we go?

They all amounted to the same thing anyway, so why was she agonizing like this? She typed and deleted, typed and deleted — and then suddenly the screen changed. Executive Seo Moon-yeol. The man, unable to bear the wait, had called her.

"Hello?"

"I was in the middle of writing one."

Yes. Let's meet. Words that hadn't come easily even in writing were proving anything but easy to speak aloud. She flicked her tongue over her lips, and an awkward silence stretched out before she could help it. He guessed her answer on his own and threw out the words for her.

The way he added, in a grumbling undertone, that she'd said no yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that, was so petulant that a laugh slipped out of her. Touching the center of her lips out of habit, Hae-soo opened her mouth.

"Okay. Let's meet."

The swollen, bitten place had healed — there was no reason left to hesitate.

The banner hung on the training room wall set her heart fluttering. She was as nervous as she'd been the day she first walked through her university gates, utterly lost in the swirl of it all — when someone gently tapped her on the shoulder.

"Hello? Um — do you happen to remember me?"

She turned to see who it was: the man who had gone into the interview room with her. Everything else about him had faded, but the sheer volume of his voice — loud enough to wear a megaphone around his neck — had left a lasting impression. When Hae-soo gave a short, wary nod of acknowledgment, his face relaxed in relief.

"Ah, you do remember me. What a relief. I was worried I'd be greeting a stranger for no reason. Oh, right — congratulations on getting in. Cha Hae-soo, isn't it?"