Off Leash

He hated how it clung to his clothes, and he hated the sight of himself puffing away like some nicotine addict. Hyeon-seok had once needled him about smoking for show, and by any honest measure the jab hadn't been entirely wrong. Whenever he watched the idiots at the school smoking area hacking and hawking and spitting phlegm, the urge to quit would strike him out of nowhere.

Right. If it doesn't look cool, why even bother lighting one? Utterly useless habit.

Admitting that the thing in his shorts showed no signs of dying, Moon-yeol stubbed out his second cigarette halfway through. Three sticks, four, even an entire pack—none of it seemed likely to help.

He waved a hand to scatter the smoke, then lifted the hem of his t-shirt to his nose, a habit by now. Beneath the base notes of his usual cologne hung a sharp, grassy stench. His nose wrinkled all on its own.

Meanwhile the film had passed its climax and was drifting toward its ending. From the look of it, the parents were going to die, leaving only two young sisters alive.

Then, without warning, he wondered what Cha Hae-soo was doing in the car. Through the whole movie her small face had brimmed with such gravity that she'd looked less like someone watching a cheap horror flick and more like someone watching a documentary.

Moon-yeol had spent the film half-watching the screen, half-cataloguing the shifting expressions on Hae-soo's face. She, in contrast, had kept both eyes locked squarely on the screen the entire time. It had been, frankly, outrageous. Insulting, even.

What were those insolent eyes fixed on now?

Was she buried in the movie again? Or was she watching him through the heavily tinted glass?

He raised his wrist and checked the time. If anything, plenty of time had passed—enough to refill the underwear she'd so carelessly shed ten times over.

And that wasn't all. She would have retied her hair, smoothed down the hem of the blouse that had ridden up. She might even have reapplied the lipstick he'd smeared away. In which case, by now she might well be leaning out of the passenger seat, waving at him to give it up already and come back.

Moon-yeol clicked his tongue at the motionless sports car. She was either angry, or pretending to be angry—one of the two, he decided. Neither option struck him as particularly welcome. He turned back toward the car.

Click.

As he opened the door, Hae-soo stopped rubbing her eyes and looked up. "Oh, you're back?" Her voice was thick. Puffy lids. A reddened bridge of the nose. Moon-yeol couldn't help himself.

"Were you crying?"

Hae-soo clamped down hard on her lower lip, and her face began to crumple, slowly, from the forehead down. Before long she heaved out a sigh and grumbled under her breath, brimming with indignation.

"This movie's labeled wrong. It's not horror. It's a drama."

Moon-yeol let out an empty laugh and dropped his forehead against the steering wheel. It was the moment the thing he'd gotten so furiously hard quietly gave up on everything.

"I said I'll drive you home."

"It's a quick walk from here."

"Why are you so stubborn?"

Hae-soo laughed without a word and unbuckled her seatbelt. She was holding firm on getting off near the subway station by her house, and Moon-yeol had clearly read the situation all wrong.

"Be honest with me."

"About what?"

"Some guy's shown up at your place and made a scene before. Hasn't he?"

He asked it like a detective interrogating a suspect. Hae-soo didn't bother denying it—because a memory had surfaced. Back in high school, a notorious troublemaker from the boys' school nearby had gotten blind drunk and come kicking up a fuss.

How had he learned an address she'd never given anyone? Cha Hae-soo! Cha Hae-soo! Get out of this neighborhood! The boy had bellowed her name, kicking and pounding the mansion's massive iron gate, and it took a call to the police before he finally quieted down. Chairman Park, the mansion's owner, had been so deeply displeased by the incident that Jeong-ae had been sweating blood for weeks. As for Park Se-bin's reaction—well, no need to say.

You're not sneaking boys into the house when Dad and I aren't around, are you?

Se-bin had glared at her with arms crossed and contempt in her eyes, and after that day she'd had two more CCTV cameras installed around the estate.

Go on, get caught doing something. I'll throw you out on your ear.

The target of Se-bin's scheming, all her dodging and sneaking behind Jeong-ae's back, was of course Hae-soo and no one else. She was a girl who couldn't live without Jeong-ae—desperate, obsessed with having her all to herself. It had gotten so bad that after Hae-soo's college acceptance, Se-bin had actually pestered Chairman Park and Jeong-ae into setting her up with a place of her own.

Just think about it. Do you have any idea how far Hae-soo's school is from here? The bus, then the subway. Over two hours of commuting every single day—how exhausting would that be? And besides, they've got those women-only studio apartments near campus these days, apparently really nice. Completely safe, they say.

Hypocrisy didn't come much thicker than that. Worse, Jeong-ae—taken in by Se-bin's pleading—had gone to Hae-soo and suggested she look into renting a room of her own. Possibly a cat thinking of the mouse, and possibly not even knowing it.

Hae-soo had refused flatly. Move out for whose benefit, exactly? She'd gritted her teeth and clung on, scraping by. If she ever left, it would have to be with Jeong-ae, no exceptions.

Which meant that, until that day came, she'd have to keep her head down. So she'd never have to hear the nonsense about dragging men into the house. So she'd never end up the sole one thrown out over some manufactured pretext.

Swallowing the surge of resentment all over again, Hae-soo met Moon-yeol's eyes. He, waiting for an answer, gave one handsome brow the faintest twitch.

"My mom would get worn out if she saw you. She'd absolutely grill me with question after question."

Since she couldn't lay out the whole tangled story, this was the best she could manage. Hae-soo took hold of the door handle, lips parting to say be safe—but Moon-yeol beat her to it.

"If she asks, you could just tell her, couldn't you?"

"Tell her what? That you're a classmate?"

Our Madam Oh Jeong-ae is a trusting little lamb, to be sure—but she's not entirely without perception either.

Hae-soo shook her head as if to say never mind, and pulled the handle. Any later and she might miss the last bus. At her hurried movements, Moon-yeol tilted his lips close to her ear.

"No. Not a classmate. Not when we're the kind of pair who holds hands and kisses."

Hae-soo froze halfway through the open door. The thing she'd wondered about all day. The thing she'd wanted to ask. The thing she'd wanted to know—and yet hadn't dared say out loud, afraid it would sound like nagging, like begging.

What are you and me? What exactly are we?

To the question mark she'd turned over inside herself again and again, he bluntly slammed down a period.

"Boyfriend. Or lover."

"……"

"Pick one."

There are no other options.

His eyes, meeting hers mid-air, said it quietly. Hae-soo couldn't make a sound, like someone with a hand around her throat. Because if she opened her mouth, her heart might leap out instead of her voice. That was how startled she was. How flustered. Or…… maybe, just maybe, how glad.

As though he'd read the tangle inside her, Moon-yeol pressed a featherlight kiss to her lips. Then he pulled back all too soon, his brow creasing.

"According to some punk, what we're doing is supposed to be a fling. Some subtle, slow-burn thing."

"……"

"I can't do that."

"……"

"I'm running on an empty tank of patience as it is."

Moon-yeol let out a breath, the tip of his nose nearly touching hers. He tilted his head as if to deepen the kiss—then frowned and drew away. His starving, covetous gaze wandered across her ear, her lips, the line of her throat, like a hand caressing them.

It was an unguarded, dangerously candid look. Moon-yeol seemed to realize it too; abruptly his face smoothed into an expressionless mask.

A man somehow clumsy and impatient in a way that wasn't like him. Hae-soo bit down gently on the soft inside of her cheek and took a deep breath.

Dating Seo Moon-yeol.

It wasn't that she'd never imagined it. The day she'd clinked champagne glasses with him, after that faintly tender kiss, she had kept asking herself: What would it be like to date him? Could she even? Did she want to?

Only the last question had an answer she could make out, however dimly.

Do I want to date him?

……Yes. I think I do.

She'd thought that while lying on a damp, searing expanse of asphalt, melting like caramel. Like indulging in a waking daydream.

"So pick. Boyfriend. Or lover. Which is it?"

"……I don't like either one."

She said it because, for some reason, he annoyed her—he'd so easily nodded along, this man who wouldn't even say the one word she'd never hear again once they were together: be mine. Skipping clean over that crucial sentence—Moon-yeol's boldness was outrageous. This time, she wanted to be the one doing the teasing, the one who left him aching.

"Let's just call it a fling. A casual thing."

A fling.

Moon-yeol scoffed in disbelief, wearing the look of a man who'd just heard something he wished he hadn't. Somehow, that expression of his was rather endearing. Hiding the smile spreading across her mouth, Hae-soo pushed the door open and stepped out. She climbed down from the strange low-slung door with something approaching competence now, shut it firmly, then bent her knees to peer in through the window. Zziing—the glass slid down.

"You couldn't handle it."

"Handle what?"

"A fling with someone like me."

"Is that a threat?"

"A warning."

"What kind of warning?"

He rested his left arm along the steering wheel, twisted his upper body fully toward her in the passenger seat, and said it with a lazy curl of his lips.

"Courtship."

The two syllables struck her ear like a lightning bolt. Some nameless shudder, starting at the crown of her head, crackled down along her nerves.

"I'll sweep you off your feet as hard and as bright as I can."

"……"

"Hang in there, Cha Hae-soo."

The dark glass slowly swallowed his face. Before his bent knees had even fully straightened, his car roared to life with a thunderous growl. That conspicuously white sports car merged swiftly into the crowded stream of traffic.

It felt like poking a hornet's nest. Some part of her suspected she had, indeed, kicked off something she'd regret.