Scorching Heat

Compared to Kang Sa-eon's family, mine was utterly ordinary.

My mother had been a housewife her entire life, and my father was a teacher. We weren't poor, but we weren't wealthy either — just comfortably well-off enough to get by. If I had to dress it up, I suppose the selling point was that we were a family of educators spanning two generations. Even that claim fell apart when I, the third generation, decided not to follow in their footsteps.

It wasn't the kind of background where you'd typically even meet a chaebol, let alone befriend one. And yet I had been friends with Kang Sa-eon for a full eighteen years.

Eighteen years of friendship with that walking personality disorder. I couldn't help but marvel at my own character, which rivaled the Buddha's. When I die, they'll probably find sacred relics in my ashes. I might even attain nirvana.

Which is to say, my unrequited love was both fervent and thoroughly undignified. If I sat down to catalog every way that man was the worst possible object of a crush — not to mention the worst friend, and frankly the worst human being — a hundred days and nights wouldn't be enough.

He was the kind of lofty young master who canceled plans at the drop of a hat and, as a matter of principle, never returned a call. I had to beg him ten times before he'd even consider gracing me with his precious face. It was so cheap and infuriating I wanted to quit him ten times a day.

And yet I kept calling. I kept showing up.

They say the one who falls first is the one who loses.

There was a stretch when I got so sick of my own one-sided clinging that I stopped reaching out... only to cave and contact him first before a year was even up.

Even then, Kang Sa-eon picked up without so much as an it's been a while. He probably never even noticed I'd been trying to cut him off. I doubted whether the thought of me occupied so much as a corner of his mind.

That we'd met at fifteen — that hypersensitive age of adolescence — and still remained in each other's lives as adults was entirely thanks to my own squalid, clinging attachment.

When Kang Sa-eon went abroad to study, I pestered him with emails. Whenever he was just about to fade from my mind, I'd call. When he enlisted, I dutifully visited him at the base even though he'd never once asked me to come. I'd assumed that even a handsome third-generation chaebol would get a little uglier and more pitiful once he became a soldier. Kang Sa-eon, of course, managed to look magnificent even in the military.

I visited so often it was exhausting, and still no one ever mistook me for his girlfriend. Whenever some well-meaning, unbiased soul dared to raise the possibility, Kang Sa-eon would go terrifyingly stone-faced and shut it down — as if he couldn't even tolerate the idea of someone thinking it in their own head.

"Is she your girlfriend, by any chance...?"

"Min Chae-yoon is a friend. I would ask that you never again give voice to such a disgusting misconception."

"Disgusting...?"

"Would you enjoy being asked if you were dating your little brother?"

"That would be disgusting!"

"Exactly."

Exactly, my ass. And I wasn't even a little sister — he went with little brother.

And I was standing right there listening to the whole exchange. Judging by my face, I probably looked like I was nodding along, thinking, Couldn't have said it better myself. But for someone secretly in love with him, Kang Sa-eon's dead-serious rejection cut deep.

Even so, far from letting it show, I had no choice but to stand there smiling blandly at his side. If he ever caught on to my feelings, he'd cut me off without a second thought. I already knew exactly what he'd say. You hid that filthy heart of yours and played at being my friend so well. Did you think I'd grow attached just from having you around and actually give you a shot? Was it fun, deceiving someone with that unbothered face of yours? And so on.

Kang Sa-eon clawed at people's insides with complete composure. He kept a blade in his mouth instead of a tongue. He was already the kind of man who was cruelest to anyone of the opposite sex who had feelings for him. I had no reason to believe I'd be the exception.

Still, there were days I let myself hope. We'd been friends since we were kids — surely he wouldn't cut me off overnight?

But to him, I was nothing more than an unwelcome witness — someone who'd been around so long that discarding me would feel vaguely unpleasant.

Not a friend. A witness.

The paltry title made me laugh. For all my pathetic clinging, it wasn't much of a prize.

And I, who couldn't even let go of that paltry title, was a little paltrier still.

"We're meeting, aren't we. Right now."

"Don't pretend you didn't understand. You're not stupid."

I'd just been mocking myself for being an idiot, and now the man who'd made me into one was telling me I wasn't stupid. The irony of it. I found it so funny I just sat there staring at him, until Kang Sa-eon added, impatiently:

"When I say let's meet, I mean it literally. Let's meet."

"As in, let's date?"

"Are you insane?"

He spat it out on reflex, like a wild animal leaping to its feet, then clamped his mouth shut with a look of discomfort. At least he hadn't forgotten he was the one asking a favor. Watching his expression flip from one extreme to the other was like watching a particularly entertaining beast. I cocked my head, prompting him to go on, and he spoke reluctantly.

"You must've heard about it."

"About what?"

"Why do you keep playing dumb? That... that rumor."

"I make it a policy not to make friends at work."

"So you're proud of being bad at office politics."

"Please. I'm still better at it than you."

Sa-eon's face twisted, the muscles along his jaw going taut. "A jawline like a cliff's edge" is an embarrassingly overused phrase, but my literary gifts weren't up to finding a better one. Even in a moment like this, he was unnecessarily handsome. Why had Kang Sa-eon been born a third-generation chaebol only to let a face like that go to waste?

He dragged a large hand across his jaw and lips, looking agitated, then let out a burst of breath, unable to contain himself. It was comedy, really — a man this impatient, out there being praised as a calm, capable heir.

"That woman I last went on a blind date with."

"The one you had dinner with twice?"

"Yes. That woman has been, goddamn it, spreading a ridiculous rumor."

"A rumor?"

"That I..."

He clearly hated having to say it out loud. A few possibilities had already occurred to me. Still, I waited in silence. After years of suffering through unrequited love, I'd grown twisted enough to enjoy watching this man — the one who'd parked me safely in the friend zone and never once looked my way — squirm.

"That I'm gay."

"..."

Hold it in. You have to hold it in....

Kang Sa-eon covered his face with his palm. I held my breath with everything I had. The moment I inhaled, something else was going to come flying out. I was shaking from the lack of air when he glared at me fiercely and spat the words through his teeth like a curse.

I burst out laughing.

Serves you right, Kang Sa-eon.

How I became friends with a chaebol heir like Kang Sa-eon was a connection that started with my grandfather.

My grandfather was a local notable in Gyeonggi-do Gwangju and an educator — he'd been the homeroom teacher of Kang Sa-eon's father in high school. That alone wouldn't have been enough to keep the families in contact, but Grandfather had also been a longtime friend of Kang Sa-eon's grandmother. Thanks to that connection, I'd been coming and going from Kang Sa-eon's grandmother's house since I was little.

"Chae-yoon, take this over to Jeong-i's house for me, would you?"

"It's so hot out, though."

"So you want your grandpa to walk it over in this heat? Aigoo, I raised a granddaughter for nothing!"

"Jeong-i Halmae isn't in any hurry."

"Jeong-i Halmae says she wants to see our Yoon."

I really loved my grandfather. He was a kind, easygoing man who laughed at everything with a gentle heh-heh, and he doted even on a granddaughter who did nothing but glue herself to the sofa.

Jeong-i Halmae was the same. Every time I went over on an errand, she'd sit me down, bring out snacks, or ask me to read to her. After just a few lines, she'd stroke my hair and tell me what a lovely voice I had.

"Our Yoon's voice is as pretty as a nightingale's."

My father and mother held back on affection, worried their only daughter would grow up spoiled. "A teacher's child can't go around acting poorly" was their constant refrain, so the way Grandfather and Jeong-i Halmae told me I was cute, I was pretty, no matter what I did — it was so sweet it made my teeth ache.

I grumbled out loud, but I still took the slim book Grandfather held out and left the house.

Walking through the midsummer blaze, I was glad I hadn't made Grandfather do it in this heat.

The asphalt sizzled underfoot, and the humidity was oppressive thanks to the nearby stream and woods. I should've brought a parasol. I hadn't even put on sunscreen, and I was a little worried about burning. Mother was bound to nag that I always came back from Grandfather's looking dark as a country mutt. That wasn't Grandfather's fault — it was because I was lazy.

"Halmae! I'm here!"

Jeong-i Halmae's house was about a twenty-minute walk from Grandfather's.

When I was little, I'd come and gone without knowing a thing. But at fifteen, I was old enough to have overheard what people said about this house.