Off Leash

After holding hands all the way from the car, it felt awkward to suddenly ask why he was still doing it. If she was going to call him out on anything, she should have done it back then. In the end, Hae-soo just brushed it off with a vague, uneasy face, as if it were nothing.

This really does seem like a date, though…….

Somehow, everything kept slipping past her in a blur—half-finished, glossed over. His hand, his kisses, not a single thing was clearly defined. She couldn't tell if this was right or wrong, but whenever she looked at his face—clean and cloudless as a clear blue sky—she wondered if she was the only one agonizing over nothing.

"Tell me if your feet hurt. I'll carry you."

Moon-yeol said it so tenderly, as if to dissolve her lingering doubts, along with that gorgeous smile that made her think, well, why not?

Hae-soo shoved her complicated thoughts to the back of her mind and smiled back, small and warm. He, still swinging their joined hands, spotted a convenience store up ahead and asked, "Want something to drink?"

"Hmm. Not a drink—an ice cream."

"Sure."

When they opened the freezer, it was lined with ice creams of every shape and color. Hae-soo reached for the sky-blue tube pop first, and Moon-yeol picked up the same. After paying, he was peeling off the wrapper when he frowned at the writing on the side.

"What kind of name is this?"

"What, Bongtta? Why, what's wrong with Bongtta……?"

What did the name even matter? When Hae-soo tilted her head at him, Moon-yeol suddenly burst out laughing. She'd seen him sneer and snort plenty of times, but never once had she seen him grin like this, open and unguarded.

She couldn't tear her dazed eyes away. Seo Moon-yeol, laughing out loud? The idea had never quite jibed with that cynical face of his, and yet somehow it suited him—left her feeling as though she'd been lightly thumped on the back of the head.

"Say it again."

She was still staring, half entranced, when he suddenly bent down and brought his face close to hers. She instinctively stumbled back, but he caught her arm and held it firmly. His urging eyes glittered so intensely it made her dizzy.

"Hurry."

"Say what……?"

"The name. Of this thing."

"……Bongtta?"

Moon-yeol clamped his lips inward and bit down hard. Anyone could see he was fighting a laugh.

He strained with everything he had to drag those curling corners of his mouth back down, faint vertical lines deepening on both his cheeks. At a glance they might have passed for dimples, growing more pronounced by the second—then vanishing without a trace. Because he'd failed to trap the laughter in his throat, and his head dropped forward as he broke into helpless, full-bodied laughter.

"What exactly is the funny part?"

If you're going to laugh, laugh with me. The words shot out before she could gather her wits, and Moon-yeol pressed the back of his hand against his gaping mouth, grinding the laughter down.

"It's not funny. It's cute."

"What is?"

"The way you pronounce it."

The pronunciation?

The more explanations he offered, the deeper the fog. Hae-soo looked down at the tube pop that was chilling her palm to ice and read the name slowly, again. Bongtta. Why on earth—

"Bong……"

The third or fourth time she murmured it, a shadow suddenly fell across her face. Half her field of vision went dark. Moon-yeol's lips brushed—quick, light—over Hae-soo's mouth, which had popped out from the words like a little round beak.

"I take back the cute part."

"……"

"Looking at it again, it's kind of obscene."

"……"

"So from now on, you only eat this with me."

He said it while tearing the wrapper off her tube pop in one clean pull. A beat later, the heat came flooding into her face.

Ugh, I missed the timing again. By the time Hae-soo came back to her senses, he was already nonchalantly twisting off the top of his own tube pop as if nothing had happened, flicking the severed end straight into the trash. Hae-soo let out a snort, then dug into an old claim of his.

"I knew that was a lie."

"What was?"

"You told me you don't even lick the lid off a yogurt cup."

"Ah. That one." He wrinkled the bridge of his nose and came clean. "Because if I was honest, I'd have said it grossed me out."

"That doesn't seem like you. I didn't take you for the type to care what other people think."

"Right. I don't, really."

Excuse me? That's completely contradictory. But what silenced her lips before she could argue was the deep, steady gaze he fixed on her.

"Except back then, there was a woman I wanted to look good to."

"……"

"A woman I wanted to call. Privately."

And I ended up being exposed anyway, huh?

Moon-yeol added the last bit with a mischievous glint, then bit into his tube pop and spun it lazily between his teeth. It was like, and yet unlike, the Seo Moon-yeol of that day, cigarette perched between his fingers.

Maybe that was why. The memory of facing him down in that narrow alley thick with the smell of grilling meat suddenly felt impossibly far away. Though truthfully, when she counted it up, not all that much time had passed at all.

"You really hold grudges."

"Not that I don't."

"That sounds like a promise to torment me about it forever."

"So behave yourself."

"Behave how, exactly?"

"Start by coming over to my place this weekend."

The answer came out of Moon-yeol instantly, as if he'd been holding it in reserve. But it wasn't the speed with which his mouth opened that caught Hae-soo's attention—it was the content.

His private space, so meticulously his own—and a man this self-interested? She couldn't help turning the invitation over and over in her head.

"Your…… place?"

The trouble was, Moon-yeol wasn't the only one with an agenda. If anyone else had said it, Hae-soo would have dismissed the whole stunt without even bothering to listen. But she was undeniably swayed.

Frankly, she was tempted. The place where he began and ended every day. How could she not be curious?

"Yeah. Come over. I'll cook for you."

"You can cook?"

"No. I'm going to start learning tomorrow."

"What kind of answer is that?"

"There's a few days left until the weekend, so if I study hard until then, I'll have one dish mastered."

He'd go that far just to get me over there. She was leaning toward the conclusion that this was no casual invitation she should lightly accept—when he smirked and walked it back.

"Kidding. I can make a few simple things. Less cooking, more, well—assembly, honestly."

"Say something that kills the mood like that, and no one will come."

"Cha Hae-soo will."

"I didn't say I was going."

"You're not coming?"

Rather than commit to an answer, Hae-soo spun on her heel and started walking. She didn't want to give him a clear yes. That easy confidence of his, so certain she'd say yes—there was something insufferably smug about it. Fine, I'll go. But I'm making him sweat for it first. Vowing as much, she finally sucked on the tube pop she'd been holding this whole time and swallowed.

"You really won't come?"

Moon-yeol ambled up on those long legs of his and asked, head cocked sullenly.

Ah, so refreshing. The sweetness spread across her tongue and pulled a laugh right out of her.

After an hour or so of walking by the lake, they grabbed a quick dinner, and the sun had started to go down. The sky had turned some ineffable shade caught between violet and pink. If anyone asked Hae-soo to name the most romantic color in the world, she thought as she sat beside Moon-yeol on a lone wooden bench, it would be this one, right now.

"Should we head out?"

"Yeah."

Once the sun had fully slipped away, they bought a coffee each and drove back to the drive-in theater. A sign at the ticket booth had already gone up: SOLD OUT, and the parking lot was packed tight with cars of every size, not a gap to be found.

Is everyone here on a date, like us?

Hae-soo gave up on the idle curiosity and let Moon-yeol escort her into the car. He turned on the radio and dialed it to the frequency printed on the ticket. When the time came, the screen blazed white. There was exactly one film playing here, no choosing required.

"Fair warning—I'm great with horror movies."

It was her way of saying: if you were hoping to watch me fall apart in terror, drop that hope now. Moon-yeol released a theatrical sigh and knocked the words right back at her.

"That's a relief. At least one of us can handle it."

"You can't?"

"Hate them most of all."

"Liar."

"You've never seen a grown man cry during a horror movie, have you?"

It was an act—no matter how she looked at it. His eyes were crinkling with suppressed laughter while an ominous sound effect swelled to fill the car.

The film opened on an abandoned American mansion, crows cawing against a grey sky. The washed-out colors slowly brightened, rewinding the story back in time. A couple and their young children climb down from their jeep and gaze up proudly at their new home. Having no idea their lives are about to be ruined from the ground up……

We got a house this big and beautiful on our budget!

It hurt already, watching the family grin at each other over their stroke of luck. If a deal seems too good to be true—cheap to the point of being free—maybe don't shout lucky and wonder for a second if there's a catch.

Through the clichéd opening, Hae-soo was inwardly drumming her feet with impatience. Sure enough, it was the youngest daughter, barely six years old, who was playing in the attic and stumbled onto something sinister. The curtain rises on misfortune, and the hapless family—entangled in a tragedy that has nothing to do with them—fights tooth and nail to survive against some unknowable presence.

Whenever she watched movies like this, Hae-soo felt sadness more than fear. She couldn't help resenting it—why did it always have to be people who'd done nothing wrong? The righteous-ghosts-punishing-the-wicked Korean horror formula might be childish and predictable, but it was a hundred, a thousand times better.

In the middle of that sigh of pity, a hand shot out of the closet and seized the eldest daughter by the hair. Given all the ominous foreshadowing, Hae-soo wasn't startled in the least.

"Oh, that's scary."

Just then, Moon-yeol—commenting on a scene that was, as horror went, an outright failure—pulled at Hae-soo's hand with a wounded look. She turned to stare at the absurdity of it, and he murmured again, "It's scary. I'm scared."

"……Right. Terrifying."