Chapter 47
It had been a week since Seolhwa returned to her family home.
A man had been holed up in his room, doing nothing but fiddling with his smartphone for hours.
His usual relaxed expression was nowhere to be seen; instead, he typed out messages with a troubled, exhausted look on his face.
“Seolhwa, did you get home safely...? No... This isn't it....”
Lying facedown on the bed, Hyeonwoo kept writing and deleting messages to his longtime friend.
It wasn't a confession; he simply looked pathetic, unable to send even a basic check-in.
“Sigh.... No, it's been too long to ask how she's doing now....”
Normally, Hyeonwoo would have texted around the time Seolhwa left this house by car to return to her family home.
But for some reason, now that a week had passed, he was only just wondering how to send her a check-in message.
“This is driving me crazy....”
If he'd missed the right moment to send a check-in, he could simply have not sent one, but Hyeonwoo kept writing and deleting messages anyway.
Simply because he wanted to know how Seolhwa was doing.
“She’s probably doing fine even if I don’t send this....”
Seolhwa had gone home with Minjun.
So she must have made it home safely and been getting along fine on her own.
Minjun might be a little mischievous, but he wasn't the kind of person who would harm his younger sibling.
Hyeonwoo certainly knew that.
Even so, he wanted to talk to Seolhwa.
He wanted to know how she was doing now.
He wanted to know what she was feeling now.
...He wanted to have a conversation with Seolhwa.
Those feelings made him want to message Seolhwa,
but the sensation of something lodged somewhere in his heart kept him from sending it properly.
“It’s just the kind of message I always send....”
What Hyeonwoo was trying to send was a simple check-in he sent to his friends all the time.
A check-in he'd always sent Seolhwa, too.
But now, each and every one of those messages felt impossibly difficult to send.
If the person causing him this hesitation had been an ordinary woman, Hyeonwoo would have realized his feelings in no time.
But the problem was that Seolhwa was the person inspiring these complicated feelings.
A friend who had been a boy only a few months ago.
When he first met her, she had merely struck him as an ordinary-looking, cute girl, but....
Somewhere along the way.... No, ever since the amusement park, Hyeonwoo’s heart had definitely begun to stir, little by little, and now—
“...No. That’s not it....”
But Hyeonwoo denied those feelings.
He insisted they were merely temporary feelings brought on by never having dated a girlfriend and having no experience with women....
That was the conclusion Hyeonwoo himself had reached.
So now that Seolhwa had returned to her family home....
He would be able to calm his heart, judge the situation rationally, and sort out these feelings.
...There had been a time when he thought that.
“...Delete.”
Hyeonwoo deleted the last message he had written and tossed his smartphone toward the sofa.
“Why am I really acting like this....”
He had thought that he would use this time without Seolhwa to sort out his feelings for her.
But in reality, far from forgetting her, his desire to see Seolhwa had only grown stronger.
He wanted to keep her by his side.
He wanted to touch her cheek up close.
He wanted to see that cute, silly grin of hers....
He knew he shouldn't feel that way, but the human heart didn't obey the mind.
“This is ridiculous.... Anyone would think we'd been apart for a year or something.”
The harder people tried to forget something, the more forcefully it came to mind.
That was why Hyeonwoo's desperate efforts to erase his feelings for Seolhwa
had paradoxically branded those feelings even more deeply into his mind.
“...This won’t do.”
If he stayed still any longer, he felt he might be swept away by his emotions before he even realized it.
So he decided to take a walk and calm his feelings for a while.
If he went outside for a quiet walk, these feelings would settle down at least a little....
“...I don’t have much to wear.”
Since he hadn't even done his laundry properly, he had fewer suitable clothes to go out in than he had expected.
Still, after searching, he just managed to find one decent cotton T-shirt, and since the weather was a little chilly, he threw a jacket over it.
“Should I go...?”
Thus, to keep himself from thinking about Seolhwa, if only for a little while, he headed outside beneath the moonlight.
======
“It’s a little cold....”
As soon as he stepped outside, a chilly breeze blew against Hyeonwoo.
Unlike the daytime, which had been growing hotter as summer slowly approached, the weather still carried a cool wind, but it didn't feel all that cold to Hyeonwoo.
“...This much cold is nothing.”
Just a week ago, Hyeonwoo had been living in a home far colder than this weather because of the Snow Woman who had been by his side, forcing him to keep the air conditioner running day and night.
On top of that, whenever Seolhwa clung to him without a thought, her uniquely soft, cool skin made the temperature feel even lower.
“Damn it....”
Hyeonwoo had gone out to suppress his feelings for Seolhwa, yet he felt disgusted with himself for thinking about her even as he walked.
The sight of Seolhwa clinging to him and asking him to play a game....
The sight of Seolhwa grinning happily and asking him to praise her after clearing a game stage....
And the sight of Seolhwa sleeping soundly with an adorably defenseless face....
Images of Seolhwa's adorable appearance kept circling through Hyeonwoo's mind.
‘Judging by how I keep doing this.... I really do like Seolhwa—’
“Uuuu.... Meow, meow! Ugh.... Why are you so wary of meow....”
Just then, the extremely familiar voice of a girl suddenly rang out from that park.
It was the extremely familiar voice of a girl desperately begging someone while imitating a cat.
For some reason, he felt a sense of déjà vu, as if something similar had happened last time, too.
By coincidence, this was the park where Seolhwa had hidden from the rain on that rainy day.
“...No way.”
Instinct told him not to go that way, but Hyeonwoo's feet were already carrying him into the park.
“It can’t be....”
Hoping with all his might that it wasn't the one person he least wanted to meet right now, he walked toward the sound—
“...It’s Seolhwa.”
“Nyaang.... Hic...?”
For some reason, Seolhwa was there, dressed up prettily and talking to a cat.
======
“Sigh.... I can't believe I got caught again....”
Seolhwa, who had once again been caught trying to communicate with a cat, hid her flushed face, embarrassed.
“...Anyone would have tried talking to a cat like that at least once. So you don't have to be so embarrassed....”
“Shut up! There's a world of difference between doing that when no one sees you and getting caught!”
Even Hyeonwoo's attempt to comfort Seolhwa did little to console her after she had been caught doing the same embarrassing thing again.
“Ugh....”
“Haha....”
As they talked, the two walked down the nighttime street, keeping slightly apart.
Hyeonwoo had reluctantly maintained this slight distance because he found it difficult to approach Seolhwa.
“...By the way, weren't you staying at your family home? Isn't it still going to be a few days before the air conditioner is fixed?”
“Well.... I was at my family home until just now.... I felt cooped up, so I came out for a walk.”
“A walk....”
Seolhwa's family home and that playground weren't exactly close, even if the distance between them wasn't that great.
It was hard to imagine that she would come all this way for a walk simply because she felt cooped up.
‘And on top of that....’
Hyeonwoo furtively examined the clothes Seolhwa was wearing.
A demure outfit consisting of a blouse and a white skirt.
It suited Seolhwa, with her long, straight hair, but it wasn't exactly something to wear out for a walk.
All the more so for a friend who normally would rather die than wear women's clothes.
“Hey, that outfit is—”
“Wait, let me ask you something first.”
Hyeonwoo was about to ask about her clothes, but Seolhwa told him to answer her question first.
“...Why haven’t you contacted me in so long?”
“...Huh?”
Hyeonwoo couldn't hide his bewilderment when Seolhwa looked up at him with a slightly sulky expression and began demanding an explanation.
For the past week, Hyeonwoo had deliberately refrained from contacting Seolhwa even once in an attempt to sort out his feelings for her, even if only a little.
After a week, he'd finally given in and tried to contact her.... But in the end, he hadn't.
Hyeonwoo himself felt sorry about that, but he had never imagined that his friend would demand an explanation for not contacting her.
“Uh.... Well.... I-I had a lot of assignments.”
Hyeonwoo scratched his head and answered with a plausible lie as Seolhwa looked up at him.
He couldn't reveal the real reason.
“...Really?”
But unlike usual, Seolhwa didn't simply take Hyeonwoo's words at face value and questioned him again.
“It was just because you had a lot of assignments.... Right?”
“...I told you it was. I'm going crazy thanks to this professor who assigned us work right before finals.”
Hyeonwoo shrugged and put on a natural act, trying to hide the real reason from Seolhwa.
But even after hearing that, Seolhwa didn't withdraw her suspicious gaze and stared straight at Hyeonwoo as she spoke.
“Isn't something going on?”
“I told you, it’s not....”
Seolhwa kept pressing him, staring straight at him, while Hyeonwoo, who found it difficult to meet her gaze, continued making excuses with his eyes turned away.
Naturally, avoiding someone's gaze was an obvious sign that he was hiding something, and even Seolhwa didn't miss it.
Even if that wasn't why he was avoiding her eyes.
“...Really, really nothing happened?”
“Eek....”
Rising onto her tiptoes and stretching her arms out, Seolhwa held Hyeonwoo's face steady as she questioned him, looking straight into his eyes.
As Hyeonwoo looked at her face, his heartbeat gradually grew louder, and heat began to spread across his face as though it were on fire.
“N-no, nothing happened....”
“...Okay.”
After barely calming his heart and sticking to his story to the very end, Hyeonwoo finally seemed to convince Seolhwa; she withdrew her suspicious gaze and walked ahead.
‘W-what’s gotten into Seolhwa....?’
And Hyeonwoo could do nothing but stare at Seolhwa's back as she walked ahead, trying to calm his pounding heart.