Moonlight at His Door
Tae-shin stopped dead in his tracks and slowly turned to look back.
It had been a distinctly impulsive summons. Something hadn't sat right with her, enough to call him to a halt—yet now that he stood waiting, she had nothing to say. Her lips flickering, she squeezed the words out.
"That... that book. It's one I'm fond of. So..."
Before she could finish, his face and hand drew suddenly, startlingly close. Lee-seol's eyes went round with surprise.
A lukewarm breath drifted near, then scattered. He was far too close. Pressing her lips shut tight as a clam, she simply watched what he was doing.
His large hand calmly swept her tangled hair back behind her ear. A trivial, unremarkable gesture—yet her heart was pounding with an almost eerie breathlessness. Then he broke into a quick smile.
"I'll treasure it."
Tae-shin straightened his bent waist, slow once more, gave a crisp nod with a perfectly composed face, and left the room without a ripple.
Lee-seol stared at the firmly closed door. The turmoil left behind, alongside the cooling coffee, was hers alone to bear.
Deep in the night, Lee-seol tossed and turned beneath her covers for a long while.
No matter how tightly she squeezed her eyes shut and begged for sleep, her feet kept fidgeting of their own accord. Sleep simply would not come. Could it be the coffee she'd had so late in the evening? No—the coffee was only an excuse, and she knew it. Galling, but true.
Woo Tae-shin. That insufferable outsider.
When he had first turned up at Sehwawon, stirring up trouble between her and Granny Yoon-hwa, she had wished he would leave the place as quickly as possible.
"Of course I know it. 'To the Lost Rain.' I like it."
But what about now?
She hated to admit it, yet he had made her curious.
She had buried the fact that she was Dongbaek deep, hidden it where no one could ever sniff it out, and there was no one at Sehwawon with the slightest interest in poetry. Ask any of them whether they knew Dongbaek, and nine times out of ten they would give her a look that said, what a bizarre question.
Meeting someone here who actually knew Dongbaek was a first. And the fact that he had picked out the very work she treasured most and told her he liked it had set her heart fluttering. A strange exhilaration ran through her whole body, curling her toes again and again.
Who would have thought that in less than a single day her opinion of him would flip like a child turning over its palm? She felt a flicker of self-mockery at her own fickleness, simmering hot and cold like porridge over a fire.
One thing hadn't changed: he made her uncomfortable. And yet some part of her wanted to poke and prod back, to slyly coax out of him the reaction she wanted, just once.
"I quite like this sort of thing."
"..."
"I suppose I must look terribly heartless to you, Shin Lee-seol-ssi."
Tae-shin's parting words circled in her head, over and over, before finally dissolving.
On the surface, his words were tempting. Like a devil whispering that there were all sorts of fascinating things you knew nothing about.
No. Don't think about it anymore. Don't.
Lee-seol curled herself up and buried her face deep in the pillow. But like a stain that only darkened the more you scrubbed at it, he refused to leave her mind.
There was no falling asleep now.
Kicking off her thin summer blanket, she bolted upright. The coffee had clearly done its work. Having rationalized her insomnia yet again, Lee-seol eased her door open a crack and slipped carefully out into the corridor.
Pale moonlight poured through the window at the far end, washing the hallway in a faint glow. Tonight, for some reason, the corridor seemed longer than ever.
And from beneath the door of the guest room at its end, light was seeping out.
It was the dead of night. What could he be doing at this hour? Reading the book he'd borrowed from her?
Just entertaining the possibility made her feel strangely giddy.
No—surely not. He was the managing director of a company; he was probably poring over documents. Or maybe he'd simply dozed off and forgotten to turn out the light...
Besides, anyone who slept with the lights on would be worn out the next day.
...Right. This is for his sake.
Lee-seol crept toward his door, step by careful step. Lest even the shuffle of her slippers disturb him, she muffled her footsteps as much as she could.
Standing before the door, she tilted her ear toward it. Nothing in particular sounded from within. See? He's obviously fallen asleep with the light on. And so Lee-seol kept feeding her curiosity one excuse after another.
She had marched boldly up to his door and even pressed her ear against it, but that didn't mean the courage to fling it open had arrived.
Had she ever agonized this much over gripping a door handle? If her conscience had truly been clear, there would have been no reason to hesitate at all. In the end, the only thing standing in that hallway facing her was her own excuse.
Lips trembling, Lee-seol swallowed drily.
What do I do? Open it, or not?
Hesitantly her hand stretched toward the handle—then stopped short. A long sigh burst from her mouth.
What on earth am I doing in the middle of the night...? The dawn moonlight must have scrambled my senses. Just as she turned to retreat to her room—
Click. The door slid quietly open.
"I was wondering who it was."
"..."
"Ah. The Agassi herself."
A slightly husky, languid voice washed over her like tepid water.
Choking down the scream that rose in her throat, Lee-seol stumbled half a step backward. Goosebumps rippled up her spine.
Agassi. An honorific, unmistakably—and yet his insolent tone made it sound like the purr of some incorrigible rake. As if he were asking, with mock courtesy, what could possibly have brought a lady of high standing to a man's door in the dead of night.
Blinking, Lee-seol gazed up at him in a daze, his figure hazy against the pale backlight of the moon. He looked like some enormous boulder no one could hope to scale.
"What business brings you to the guest room at this hour?"
His resonant voice was pitched low. She had a fine excuse ready, one that would have made her look the very picture of altruism—but her tongue would not turn.
"...I—I wondered if you might have fallen asleep with the light on, Director."
"Aha."
Lee-seol stammered out the excuse she had prepared. Tae-shin tilted his head. That curt reply, tossed off so dryly, was suffused with an unmistakable air of disbelief.
Rustle, rustle. Somewhere far off, the sound of sasanqua camellia leaves stirring in the night breeze brushed past her ears and was gone. The cool lines of his eyes narrowed, slowly.
"And yet, Shin Lee-seol-ssi, you are remarkably defenseless."
"..."
"Or is it simply that you don't know much about men?"
Following his gaze, Lee-seol belatedly remembered what she was wearing. Beneath the thin white linen nightdress she wore for early summer, she had nothing on but her panties.
In the dark pre-dawn light, the silhouette of her body showed straight through the fabric. Heat flooded her face in an instant. She threw her forearm over the soft swell of her chest and hunched her shoulders.
"...I'm sorry."
To be seen like this by a man not her husband—it was the first shame of its kind she had ever known, and she was utterly at a loss. In the end, sliding her eyes away, all she could manage was an apology that fit nothing at all.
"What is there to be sorry for? If anyone's sorry, it's me."
Arm braced against the doorframe, he tilted his head and looked down at her, askance.
"I take it you didn't come because you wanted to see me."
"...That's not—it isn't."
"No? Then was there some other business we simply had to see to, at this late hour?"
At that, heat flared across Lee-seol's face. She had, in fact, come about other business—but...
What exactly he imagined that "other business" to be, and how he might twist things if she confessed the truth—there was no telling at all.
Her flushed face caught the moonlight and turned faintly luminous. Tae-shin narrowed his long eyes and quietly studied his unexpected uninvited guest.
In the young woman's eyes, every emotion shimmered plainly: tension and hesitation, wariness, embarrassment—and curiosity. She was still conspicuously unpracticed at hiding what she felt. Like a newborn fawn, barely into the world and already wondering at the humans in it.
Beautiful. A little ominous, and strange, too. When had he last felt an impression this fresh?
Come to think of it, nine years had already slipped past. Time had flowed away with a speed no hand could have caught.
That she should have grown into this in the meantime and appeared before him—it felt, somehow, a little like cheating.
Tae-shin's brow knitted slightly, and before he knew it, his hand had reached out toward her cheek. In the instant his hand extended, he briefly forgot why he had come to this old house at all.
The woman, faintly startled, drew her shoulders quietly in. Only then did he come somewhat back to himself. His fingertips faltered in the empty air.
"..."
"..."
The night wind came rushing through the window left slightly ajar, sending the woman's long hair whirling in a dizzying dance. Even that made her look like a beautifully carved doll.
A strange silence stretched on. It was Lee-seol—watching the slow rise and fall of his throat with a gaze that seemed, somehow, thoroughly bewitched—who snapped out of it first.
"...You should... go to sleep. It's late."
Head bowed low, Lee-seol hastily brought the encounter to an end.
Tap-tap-tap. The heels of her dragged slippers rapping the floor, she fled down the corridor. Behind her, that relentless gaze kept pouring into her back.
Don't look back. Absolutely not.
I never should have come here. I should have just gone to sleep. But contrary to her thoughts, her heart was pounding, wild and disorderly.