The Lowest Point

That day was one of the few vivid moments of my life.

The summer I was fifteen.

Just remembering it made the sticky, humid air of June close around my throat. Even now, I could see it the instant I shut my eyes.

Cicadas screamed as if they were dying, and even my lips tasted of salt against skin baked hot by the blazing sun. A boy with a still-childish face, half-devoured by shadow, was glaring at me.

That place looked like a different world. A windowless inner room — and unlike the sunlight at my back, hot enough to sting, a chill ran through the shadow.

He'd yanked his sleeve down in a hurry to hide it, but his pale forearm was scored with several vivid red lines. What flashed across that young face in that instant was humiliation and shame. Caught exposing something so private to a girl he'd never seen before in his life, he seemed, even with those wrecked arms, not to want help so much as to feel embarrassed. I had no idea what to do. Whether I ought to pretend I hadn't seen and leave him alone, or whether I ought to pity him — I couldn't tell.

The marks left by a thin, tough switch were so large even a big hand couldn't cover them all. The wounds looked like they needed treating first — but pressing on them like that didn't seem right, either...

As I stared at him like an idiot, the words gone from me, the boy snapped, sharp as a blade.

"Get lost."

There was no getting around it. My taste was completely fucked.

The boy I'd loved with that rotten taste of mine had grown up exactly as he'd been. And he'd grown up, truly, magnificently — into garbage.

The man slammed the door so hard it boomed the instant he came in, flung off his suit jacket, and panted, breathing hard. I looked over at the noise, but he didn't so much as glance at me, let alone say hello. He yanked loose his tightly knotted tie and squeezed his eyes shut.

Pale skin, a lean jawline stripped of any softness, and eyes that slashed sharply upward — all of it advertised his hypersensitive temper. Fine, well-kept straight hair scattered beside the temple his long fingers were rubbing. The crease along his straight nose told me the headache was back again.

"The smell's already on me."

Watching him crumple the discarded jacket and throw it on the floor as if it were filth, I stood there at a slant and shrugged. I'd been about to give him an earful for calling me over and then showing up late, but I dropped it at the sight of a face that looked ready to vomit any second.

If I waited, he'd tell me. I knew he wouldn't have called unless it was something reasonably urgent. I tossed out a question I had zero interest in.

"Who was it this time?"

"Don't know."

I hadn't expected him to, either.

"She pretended to stumble, hung off my arm, and looked up at me from below. Face like a praying mantis."

Must have been a beauty with big eyes, then.

His face went pale as he clamped his mouth shut mid-sentence, as if fighting down a surge of nausea.

"You could see the foundation packed into her pores and the bloodshot whites of her eyes, and she thought that would look pretty? Where the hell does that confidence even come from."

The poor challenger was paying the price for skipping her face mask the night before. I offered today's contestant my deepest sympathies.

"Do I look like some moron who'd fall for a pair of tits shoved against my arm?"

"A girl can hope."

"It was obvious she saw me as a blank check. Goddamn it, if I'd just stood there she was ready to sexually assault me in the elevator!"

"Oh, come on. No way."

Garbage spilled out of his mouth every time he opened it. Tear open the bundle of his words and it would be stuffed full of prejudice. I made a point of letting it go in one ear and out the other. That man was a patient. A sick person.

This man, Kang Sa-eon, hated people. Women, especially.

He said, crooked:

"Would've been a sight if I'd thrown up right in that face."

"You'd get sued. No — you'd be lucky if it stopped there. One line in the papers and you'd eat every insult in the book."

"I know. That's why I only say it in front of you."

"Saying it in front of me is a problem too."

"What, now?"

He snorted, tilted his head, then winced. I'd been about to ask why he'd called me, thinking he'd settled down a little — then I looked at him.

"I can't get rid of that squishy feeling of her against my arm."

"Not every woman is squishy. Some men are squishy too."

"It's not just the squishiness. It's the whole thing, skeleton included. It's repulsive."

He dragged a hand down his forearm, jaw clenched. I was about to tell him to knock it off, then I caught the tremor in his pressed-together lips and the bloodless white of his fingertips.

I remembered something he'd once spilled out.

He'd said that the soft flesh you see on the outside and the thorn-like bones hidden underneath seemed to demonstrate the dual nature of the creature called woman.

The face and voice that cooed and fawned in front of anyone who could offer an advantage. The eyes that read the room in an instant and calculated self-interest. The way they'd deliberately let a cold interior show, applying pressure the moment they decided you were of no use. The ruthlessness of using fragility as a weapon and inflicting wounds without a shred of hesitation.

And the petty cowardice of being willing to betray, and discard, anything at all in order to protect themselves.

"That's just different from person to person. It's not because someone's a woman or a man."

I argued that those weren't uniquely female traits, but it never got through to him.

"Men are stupid, so it shows. They can't hide it cunningly. Because they're stupid."

"You said 'stupid' twice."

"I'm a precise person."

"Precision, my ass."

I could guess where every one of Kang Sa-eon's prejudices against women had come from, and from where I stood, it was clearly not hatred so much as terror. So I could cut him a little slack. Dig too deep, though, and we'd end up fighting.

Because I knew the experiences he'd gotten from his grandmother and his mother had taken root deep in his head.

The effort to wrap terror in the packaging of hatred was a bluff adults reached for easily. That he belonged to a fairly typical category himself, even as he cursed men for being stupid, was proof enough.

"What if you looked for an athletic A-cup? Try changing your type."

"You're disgusting. How many times do I have to tell you it's a problem that comes before taste? And no matter how flat they are, they'd still have breasts attached."

"Who's the disgusting one here. Or just turn your eyes toward men entirely."

"Are you kidding me? You think I'd get turned on by a man?"

Didn't like women, didn't like men. What a picky palate.

"You never know. Use your imagination. Squeeze your eyes shut."

"I just got goosebumps. Right now."

"Let me see. Oh, it's real. That's hilarious."

I traced a fingertip along the thick forearm below Kang Sa-eon's rolled-up sleeve. I could feel the raised goosebumps.

"Look at you, living up to the title of Princess. You get goosebumps from a little imagination?"

"Who's a princess?"

"You. You are."

Mouth of Terror. That's you.

Every word that spilled out of him in front of me was the kind of garbage that would set off a social firestorm if it ever leaked. The fact that I wasn't the thorough type who recorded everything as a habit was an enormous stroke of luck for him.

If you only looked at what showed on the outside, he was a typical drama leading man.

I offered this regrettable man my deepest sympathies. That face and that physique were simply a waste.

The face currently snorting as if this were all too absurd was neat and clean. It was a face no one could deny was handsome. Right now he was frowning hard enough to crease it, but in front of other people he generally put on a blank, taciturn act.

Even I occasionally overheard the nonsense praising Kang Sa-eon as the perfect man.

And honestly, even setting looks aside, a third-generation chaebol heading the Strategic Planning Division of Gangju Group was the kind of man you'd want to get thoroughly involved with at least once. Of course, if you knew what he was actually like, you'd run for the hills.

No matter how tall and handsome he was, no matter that he was the heir to one of the country's leading chaebol groups — the classic male-lead specs you'd find in any drama — the moment you found out that what sat inside all that was a princess with misanthropy and gynophobia, you'd run, and you'd be right to.

I laughed at myself, coldly.

A man any sane person would keep well away from. The kind of human being who'd tangle your whole life if you got involved even by accident. A man anyone who valued and supported women's rights ought to despise. And yet I—

Looking at Sa-eon's even forehead and the few strands of hair mussed from his temper, I swallowed, stretching my neck. Unlike my face, which was probably frozen stiff, my heart had been racing itself ragged from the moment he stood in front of me.

My life had been ruined from the moment I realized this love.

My parents had given me a proper education and passed down sound values and decent judgment, so how my taste had ended up this thoroughly wrecked was a mystery I couldn't begin to solve. No — was this even taste? Wasn't it just an accident?

If I'd known it was a ruined love, if I'd thought of it as an accident, I shouldn't have done something as stupid as taking a job at Gangju Group headquarters. But I hadn't wanted to let go of the thread connecting us completely, so I'd walked into this company of my own accord.

It was, without a doubt, a stupid and enthusiastic unrequited love.

I hadn't wanted to hear the nonsense that I'd gotten special treatment for being an old childhood friend, so I'd been pretending not to know him, staying uninvolved — and yet one message telling me to come quickly had me running right over. That alone was proof I was already in the swamp. The one hopeful part was that the Princess still didn't know.

I traced this wrong connection back to find where it had gone wrong, and arrived at the conclusion that the meeting itself had been the mistake.

"So. Why'd you call me? I'm busy."

I was, in fact, busy. Lunch hour was almost over.

"Let's do a job together."

Sa-eon's voice was low. When I looked at him, that piece of garbage said, with a serious face:

Looking back on it, this was the lowest point of my unrequited love.

How did I ever fall in love with you?

If pitiful you hadn't been so lovable, I might not have had to laugh at myself like this.