He Knows Dongbaek

Over twenty years ago, Granny Yoon-hwa had been asked by a corporate chairman to perform a seven-day exorcism rite, and she had received Sehwawon as a token of gratitude. All Lee-seol knew about the origins of this place was that much. No one had ever told her who it was that gifted Sehwawon to Granny Yoon-hwa, or which corporate chairman it had been. She wasn't curious enough to ask, so she never did. So that's how it was…… So that was why, even against Granny Yoon-hwa's iron-fisted temperament, she hadn't been able to throw out Woo Tae-shin for his shameless demands — she'd had no choice but to take him in. Once she thought of it that way, the whole situation fell neatly into place. Why the great Granny Yoon-hwa herself was floundering, and why Tae-shin could sit there reigning with such composure.

"Oh, Agassi, please, just this once, turn a blind eye, willya? If the mistress finds out, she'll toss me out with nothing but the clothes on my back."

Tongyeong-daek clasped Lee-seol's hand in her own wrinkled, creased ones, pleading over and over. A lengthy tale followed about her grandson still being a student with all manner of expenses to cover. To be fair, even Lee-seol could see that this wasn't something Granny Yoon-hwa was likely to simply overlook. There was no need to stir up a hornet's nest. She had no intention of doing so anyway.

"Of course. Don't worry about it."

Lee-seol calmly soothed Tongyeong-daek with a smile. You promised me now, right? — having extracted that assurance several times over, Tongyeong-daek bowed her head again and again. Even on her way back to the servants' quarters, she kept glancing over her shoulder, and Lee-seol flashed her a bright smile that said, go on, hurry.

Truthfully, if it weren't for the current situation, it wouldn't have mattered one whit whether Chairman Woo or anyone else had been the one to give Sehwawon to Granny Yoon-hwa. But now, of all people, that family's one and only grandson had moved himself in. Better, perhaps, that she'd never known. His unwelcome intrusion looked set to stretch on far longer than she'd anticipated. That alone was the one thing that grated.

The water in the coffee pot had long since come to a boil. With a flicker of annoyance, Lee-seol brewed a cup of drip coffee, set a few candied jujubes on the tray alongside it, and climbed the stairs slowly. She had just ascended the last step and was about to set foot on the second-floor landing.

"Is that for me?"

She stopped dead in her tracks. Leaning against the wooden railing on the second-floor landing stood Tae-shin, at an effortless angle. Dressed in casual clothes, his hair still held a hint of dampness, as though he'd just stepped out of the shower. The water-slicked strands took on a faint greenish sheen. The scent of an unfamiliar shower cologne and skin toner tickled the tip of her nose. Everything that composed him was introducing himself as a stranger — an alien presence. And that very strangeness seemed to be coaxing her, insisting that it was all terribly charming and handsome.

Lee-seol, her climbing steps faltering for a moment, offered an awkward smile.

"……It's mine. I didn't think you'd want any."

"And if I had, you'd have brought it to me yourself, would you?"

The sly old fox. Lee-seol's wide eyes narrowed slightly.

"Here. Drink it, then."

Without a trace of regret, she thrust the tray in her hands toward Tae-shin. She had no desire for a draining back-and-forth. Just hand it over and be done with it. Coffee, after all — she could always go back down and brew another cup……

A face like a thoroughly irritated cat. Tae-shin didn't take the tray that had been shoved in front of him. No — he didn't spare it so much as a glance, as though it held no interest whatsoever, and simply stared at Lee-seol. Then he broke into a grin.

"I don't make a habit of taking what belongs to others."

……What was she supposed to do with that?

Lee-seol wet her lower lip with a light bite and simply kept looking up at him. He tilted his head at an angle.

"Your room must be on the second floor."

"……Ah. Yes."

With the central staircase as the dividing line, Tae-shin's guest room sat at the far end of the left corridor on the second floor, while Lee-seol's room occupied the far end of the right.

There was a fair distance between the rooms, so she'd thought they'd rarely run into each other by accident. She had briefly forgotten that they shared the same staircase.

Tae-shin stepped forward in one long stride and relieved her of the tray she'd been carrying.

"I'll carry it to your room."

"N-no, really. It's fine. You can just—"

Lee-seol flustered, waving her newly empty hand in the air. Her voice shot up half an octave in her haste to refuse — unmistakably, to anyone listening, the voice of a flustered woman.

"Which way?"

But he only smiled, faintly. Ah, that face. The same stubborn, immovable one he'd worn while barricading himself into Sehwawon. He pivoted lightly on his heel. His intention to carry it all the way to her room was written plainly across him. Pleading that she was fine wouldn't get her anywhere. With a slight slump of her shoulders, Lee-seol reluctantly began trudging toward her own room.

"It smells lovely in here."

Lee-seol cleanly ignored his voice at her back and quietly opened her door. The room was cool for a summer's evening. Thin white curtains billowed slowly in the night breeze, and on the desk lay her planner, flung open just as she'd left it that afternoon. Lee-seol slipped inside with quick steps and snapped the planner shut first thing.

Did he see it? She knew full well he was too far away to have read what was written inside, yet some reflex made her glance back at Tae-shin. He was simply admiring the room at his leisure, looking faintly amused.

"The atmosphere is quite different from mine."

Tae-shin remarked after taking in the room, leaving a brief impression. Structurally it differed little from the guest room, but the traces of daily life lingering here and there came through undiluted. A thin cardigan with a sweet-pea pattern draped over a chair, charming little knickknacks arranged about the place, the rumpled bedding, and so on.

She has rather modest, homey tastes, he thought. Precisely the level suited to a country girl. Tae-shin's gaze happened to land on the cluttered desk. Books of mismatched heights were crammed haphazardly onto the shelf, and even that hadn't been enough space — several more stacks of books stood piled in tiers at one corner of the desk.

Setting the tray quietly down on the desk, he absently picked up one of the books lying nearby.

"Dongbaek."

Farther Than It Appears. It was Dongbaek's second poetry collection, mailed to her by Jung-min, Lee-seol's editor, along with congratulations on its publication. Held in his large hand, the small paperback-format book looked like a child's possession. His long, knotted fingers began slowly turning the pages.

It's nothing, truly nothing. And yet, inexplicably, she was nervous. Standing rigid, Lee-seol stared blankly at his large hand as it turned the pages one by one, then suddenly asked:

"……Do you, by any chance, know Dongbaek?"

"Of course I do. 'To the Lost Rainwater.' It's a favorite of mine."

Lee-seol's startled eyes trembled, thin and fine.

To the Lost Rainwater was the title of the poem that had won Lee-seol her first emerging-writer award. She'd conceived it one rainy day while gazing out the window — rainwater scattered across the world, unable to find its way, pooling in one place and quietly vanishing. She had spun the image into a poem. The judges' appraisal said it gave voice to the hearts of today's rootless generation of young people, and it took the prize. Since it was the work that had opened the door to her life as a writer, she couldn't help but hold it dear.

……That's impossible. This was a first. Apart from the words exchanged by mail with her editor and the stiff assessments of the judges, she had never once heard another person's impression of her work aloud, with her own ears.

Tae-shin doesn't know that she is Dongbaek, the very author of that book. In a way, this was the purest impression he could give — one offered without any awareness of who she was. Lee-seol's heart began to beat a little faster.

"……That's…… surprising."

"In what way?"

"I didn't think you'd have much interest in…… this sort of thing."

Lee-seol chose her words as roundly as she could. But it was the truth. Every year, dozens, hundreds of newcomers appeared like comets only to fade without ever catching the light and vanish without a trace. A man so busy he had to carve his time into minute-long slices would have had no hours to spare for leafing through a mere poetry collection. And yet here he was, willingly killing time in this backwater Sehwawon — and claiming to know Dongbaek, no less. What a strange man. A truly strange man.

A sudden urge to probe further welled up inside her, but she had a feeling that digging carelessly would give away entirely who this Dongbaek was. He was sharp-eyed, after all.

"I'm quite fond of this sort of thing, actually."

"……"

"It must seem to you, Shin Lee-seol-ssi, that I'm a rather cold-hearted man."

Tae-shin answered without a shred of embellishment, then slipped the poetry collection under his arm with the ease of flowing water. Lee-seol, unable to find a single word in reply, only pressed her red lips together.

"I'll be borrowing this, then. I'll return it before long."

"……"

"Until tomorrow, then."

It wasn't a request for permission — it was a declaration, pure and simple. And yet there was no way to stop him. No, the thought of stopping him never even occurred to her. How could anyone stand in the way of a man who intended to read Dongbaek? It was simply unthinkable.

"I'll see you tomorrow."

He spoke of tomorrow as though it were the most natural thing in the world. As though avoiding him were a thing that simply could not be done.

"……W-wait just a moment."

Lee-seol called out to stop him.