Rain Outside the Wheel
“Ah…….”
Lee-seol simply stood frozen stiff, staring up at him.
More immediate than the lingering sting of betrayal on her cheek was the strange sensation hovering around her lips, seeping in with startling speed.
Her head and her heart were both a chaotic mess, yet the man standing before her was impossibly vivid and sharp. Though she couldn't begin to guess what thoughts lay behind those eyes, his presence was undeniably, solidly real.
……This isn't right.
She was wiping her mouth with the back of her hand and trying, ever so slightly, to turn her face away when his large hand lifted her chin with the lightest touch. Lee-seol's eyes trembled into thin slits.
“How does it feel, stepping off the hamster wheel?”
“…….”
“Because I'm having a great time right now.”
A bitter smile was draped across his face. The hamster wheel. So Tae-shin had called Sehwawon a hamster wheel. It wasn't entirely wrong. It had been the same days, over and over, meeting the same people every single time.
She'd had no complaints. If she had any, she'd lived pretending she didn't. But that wasn't true anymore.
Her honest impression was that, in a way, it felt rather liberating. Even as she thought this whole situation was absurd and made no sense, something about it struck her, strangely, as exhilarating.
He slowly rubbed his thumb near her lips.
“If you hate it, say so. I don't have a taste for forcing anyone.”
Down the center of the darkened path, thick with the drumming rain, his face stood in backlit silhouette against the headlights, glistening with a beauty that served no purpose at all.
She knew well enough. The choice over everything that would happen from here on out was hers to make. Pushing him away, or accepting him—every part of it.
Woo Tae-shin seemed to know exactly what she was going to say before she said it. Otherwise, there was no explaining that seamless, natural insolence of his, worn into him like a second skin.
A vexing man. Once more, out of habit, Lee-seol blamed him for it.
The inside of her chest shivered. Her fluttering eyelids grew slower and slower. At last, Lee-seol's eyes closed completely. It was a signal of permission.
His intake of breath was rough. Then all her senses converged on the sensation of lips settling over hers.
Warm. Soft…….
It was far too unfamiliar to be a touch she could have associated with this man.
Tae-shin kept his eyes wide open as he quietly gazed down at the woman who had shut hers, obedient as a moon.
It was a green, watery kiss—shallow, naive. Like a child keeping time, they only rubbed their lips together, sluggish and unhurried. And yet, strangely, there was an ache in it that tickled something deep inside. Enough to make him want to linger and taste her properly.
“Are we just going to keep rubbing like this?”
The teasing voice rang in her ear, its meaning blatant enough for even a fool to grasp. Lee-seol's face went hot.
It dawned on her anew that an adult's kiss had a second act. She had already come this far. Retreating now wouldn't undo what their mouths had already done. Thump—a rebellious streak rose up from somewhere deep within, and there was no holding it down.
Her hesitation lasted briefer than she'd expected. Lee-seol rose stealthily onto her toes. Her rain-soaked sneakers slipped against the ground.
“……Like……this?”
She clutched his forearm hard. Her fingers kept tightening of their own accord. She mumbled the words while dodging his gaze—and even that small response was swallowed whole into his mouth.
It was all too raw. The feel of his tongue stirring the soft flesh inside her mouth, the yielding tangle of it; his large hand pulling her body flush against him; the hot, humid breath meeting hers at point-blank range—every last bit of it.
Cold rain was pouring down around them, and yet she was burning, gasping for air. She was so thirsty she thought she might die.
In the shoujo manga she used to pass around with her friends in middle school, a first kiss came with the sound of ringing bells in your ears. She and her friends had once put their heads together, wondering if it could really be true, and let their imaginations run wild.
But nothing so romantic happened.
At the tip of her nose, only the bitter scent of rainwater and the fragrance of water-soaked green leaves—and his own body's smell—swirled dizzily together.
It was a sensation unlike anything she had ever felt in her life, strange almost to the point of eeriness. Something she had guarded so carefully through all her days at Sehwawon seemed to be collapsing like a sandcastle.
The umbrella that had been shielding them from the rain rolled into the mud in an instant. The man devouring her lips without restraint cupped her cheeks in both hands, trapping her, and kept brushing his thumb over the split corner of her mouth. Under that rough-hewn tenderness, she felt close to tears.
Her breathing grew ragged. She felt like a fish suddenly flung onto dry land. Even so, this unfamiliar sensation was sweet enough to drown in.
Shoulders shuddering, she gripped his forearm tightly, and only then did his lips part from hers, slowly, with what sounded like reluctance.
Saliva, tangled past the point of knowing whose it was, stretched in a long thread between them. Tae-shin gave a short laugh and licked the corner of his mouth, gathering up the last of that trace. Goosebumps raced down her entire body.
“Not going home tonight?”
The low, murky voice was draped against her ear. It sounded like an invitation to some wicked game. Lee-seol bit her lip hard and managed an answer.
“……No.”
“You're not off to that friend of yours's place, or whatever he is?”
Lee-seol shot him a fierce glare, rubbing her mouth conspicuously with the back of her hand. The man had a gift for choosing exactly the words that stung. Smiling with easy grace, Tae-shin made a sweet proposal.
“Then shall we go see the sea?”
His earlier words surfaced faintly in her memory. Let's sneak off to see the ocean without Granny Yoon-hwa knowing—that was what he'd said. Could there be a more perfect day for it than this one?
There was no other answer to give. Lee-seol parted her trembling lips.
“……Let's go. To see the sea.”
She wanted to go. Anywhere. And if it was a world she didn't know, all the better.
With the beautiful young mistress gone, the air in Sehwawon had settled into something heavy and suffocating.
Tongyeong-daek, tidying the living room, stamped her feet in place as she watched the raindrops thickening outside the window.
The root of this whole disaster was her own worthless gossiping mouth.
That afternoon, while sorting the recycling, Tongyeong-daek had come across a phone box. It had been tucked away among the other recyclables, hidden with a strange, almost comical thoroughness—as if someone desperately didn't want to be caught.
The only person around here who could have bought such a new-model phone was that rich, handsome guest who'd turned up at the old manor a little while ago. The young mistress might have had a passing interest in such things, but under the mistress of the house's iron rule, she'd never have dared buy one.
Ah, then that means— could it be that the Managing Director hadn't bought it for himself, but had given it to the young mistress as a gift?
Tongyeong-daek clapped her hands together, delighted with her own well-oiled reasoning. The girl was already being tutored in bride lessons right down to flower arranging—if her prospective groom was none other than Managing Director Woo of Haeun Group, who wouldn't welcome it?
Grinning, she'd let her imagination gallop ahead, finished preparing dinner, and gotten into a fine round of chattering with the other servants.
'It seems to me like the Managing Director's taken quite a shine to our young miss. Fancy gifting her something that expensive…….'
'What did you just say?'
'M-mistress, that is, I…….'
She'd been caught red-handed by the mistress of the house herself, mid-gossip about Managing Director Woo and the young miss Lee-seol with the other servants. Perhaps because she was a woman who received a divine spirit, her timing in appearing was uncanny—like a ghost's.
Faced with the mistress's glacial fury, Tongyeong-daek had no choice but to confess everything, guesses and all.
That she'd found a brand-new phone box while sorting the recycling.
That she suspected Managing Director Woo had given it to the young miss as a gift.
The moment Granny Yoon-hwa heard it, she raced upstairs to the second floor without listening to a word of Tongyeong-daek's desperate attempts to hold her back. Soon after, a great shout came echoing from the direction of Lee-seol's room.
Tongyeong-daek and a couple of the other servants poked their heads out from the second-floor landing, casting furtive glances toward the young miss's room.
Twice, the sound of something striking—sharp enough to tear the air—rang out.
There had been times the mistress had disciplined the girl, yes. But she had never once raised a hand to her in anger.
The situation was getting worse by the minute. Yet not one of them could interfere. If it had been Gyeongsan-daek, who had left Sehwawon, perhaps—but no one else dared.
The servants soon scattered, each acting as if they had seen and heard nothing. Only the irrepressibly nosy Tongyeong-daek crept cautiously toward the room the young miss had fled.
From inside the room came the sound of someone murmuring—over and over. Something indistinct and nameless crawled up Tongyeong-daek's spine, dark and ominous.
“Mistress……?”
Gulp. She swallowed drily and peered inside, and her eyes went wide as saucers.
“I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry…….”
She caught sight of the old mistress's back. Granny Yoon-hwa was kneeling awkwardly on the floor, rubbing her hands together in endless, fawning apology.
Not even noticing that someone had entered the room, she simply stared blankly up at a single point in the empty air, repeating the words I was wrong over and over.
A chill she couldn't put into words skated down Tongyeong-daek's spine. She and the mistress were the only two in that room—yet it felt, unmistakably, as if someone else were there.
“M-Mistress!”
Bewildered, Tongyeong-daek rushed to Granny Yoon-hwa's side. The old woman's eyes as she turned around were rimmed red with blood.
“It can't be…….”
With those broken, dying words spilling from her lips, the aged body pitched over sideways, just like that. A blinding bolt of lightning ripped the rain-heavy sky wide open.