Episode 55

[Seonhwa]

where r u?   09:52

asleep?   09:59

I’m going ahead??   10:35

I’m off

(emoticon)   10:43

Mun Seonhwa had already left thirty minutes ago. Since it was now past 11:10, she was either just about to arrive or had already arrived and gone into the building.

[Me]

omw   11:10 1

Where are you going first?   11:10 1

I contacted Mun Seonhwa, but whether she had met someone or was looking around at something else, no matter how long I waited, the 1 did not disappear. She had always been like this since we were kids, so I let it slide and pressed Back.

When I returned to the chat list, I saw messages from my family telling me to be careful, but I soon forgot about them. Instead, there was something else that caught my eye the most. As if possessed, I entered that chat room.

[Kang Jegyeong]

Text me on Kakao when you get here   11:02

Seeing him tell me to text him when I got here, it seemed he had already arrived. He had worked at that hour before dawn and had barely fallen asleep, yet apparently he had managed to get up bright and early.

When I saw his KakaoTalk message, the bean-sized tension in my chest abruptly began swelling larger and larger. The reason I had made such a fuss about finally having an IRL showdown was probably because the reality of meeting Retake hadn’t sunk in. But now that the day I would actually meet Retake in person was right in front of me, I felt restless.

What would he look like? On camera, he had looked pretty slender, but still, since he was a bodyguard, he had to be tall, right? He’d be about the same height as me, if not taller; he definitely wouldn’t be shorter. I already knew his voice well enough… Would he have a soft and gentle face like his voice? Or would he have a rough, strong impression befitting his job as a bodyguard?

Unable to control the thoughts tangling in my head, I read the white speech bubble containing those six syllables one more time, then turned off the screen. Then I pointlessly pressed my lips together and released them as I looked out the car window.

The car sped down the road, but only the structures right in front of us whipped past; the huge buildings far away merely changed angle while staying in place. It was like my own heart, which stayed perfectly carefree before something happened, only to make a fuss once it was right before my eyes.

There was now less than an hour left before I met Retake.

* * *

While I gazed endlessly out the window like someone with some unspoken story, we ended up arriving at the venue.

We parked in the parking lot, and I entered the stadium with my uncle. The weather was hot and humid, so I took off the jersey I had worn just in case and tied it around my waist. Even so, with the rainy season coming soon, it was the kind of day when it wouldn’t have been strange for rain to fall, so I was glad there wasn’t a single dark cloud in sight.

The first-floor lobby was packed with people. Seeing that made my heart race in a different way from before. I held tightly onto my uncle’s wrist. Even if I looked like a little kid on a field trip with an adult, there was nothing I could do about it.

Some people were lined up to receive their tickets, and many others were sitting on the prepared sofas, talking to one another. Since it was almost lunchtime, there were also quite a few people passing by me on their way outside to eat. They said the arena was on the fourteenth and fifteenth floors, but seeing how many people there were on the first floor, I figured the upper floors must be even more packed. The fact that seven hundred reserved tickets had sold out in less than a minute said it all.

Once I was buried among the crowd, who had little interest in their surroundings and were busy chatting with one another, my stomach started to turn. I tried hard not to pay attention to those people and let my gaze wander. At the same time, I stayed on edge, wary of anyone other than my uncle approaching me.

Since I had an invitation and didn’t need to get a ticket, we passed by the area where people were lined up for ticket issuance and went straight to the elevators. There, too, it was full of people maintaining only enough distance to insist they weren’t part of the same group.

To distract myself, while waiting for the elevator, I repeatedly recalled that I had been told to come to the thirteenth floor first. Then, when I became aware that my hand had settled near my mouth, I took out my phone. After wondering what to do with it, I soon opened KakaoTalk and sent Retake a reply.

[Me]

Arrived   11:48 1

Around the time I was fidgeting with my thumb, waiting for the 1 to disappear, several elevators arrived. Squeezing in among the people, I barely managed to board one. The elevator lit up multiple floor buttons at once and rose, loaded full of people.

“The thirteenth floor, right?”

My uncle asked quietly by my ear. I merely nodded once while keeping my eyes fixed on my phone screen.

Even though he had been the one to tell me to contact him when I arrived, he did not check KakaoTalk even as I passed the second floor, the third floor, the eleventh floor, and reached the thirteenth. Not that it had been any more than about a minute. Was he doing something else? Well. He was Retake, after all. If he met a fan, he’d have to provide some fan service too.

Aside from my uncle and me, about three other people got off on the thirteenth floor. One of them must have gotten off by mistake while trying to go to the fourteenth floor, because they said, “Ah, sorry. I’ll get back on,” and boarded the elevator again.

This place was much quieter than the first floor. Most of the people here were staff members who seemed to have matched their outfits, wearing black shirts with the word STAFF printed on them as they hurried busily here and there, and there were not many people who looked like ordinary visitors. Even those few were carrying something around, so though they weren’t wearing the group uniform, they were clearly personnel.

Where was I supposed to go now? They had said that as long as I arrived before twelve, a staff member would come for me, but there was no one who looked as if they had come to pick me up. All I could see were staff members rushing around in every direction, each searching for their own work.

For now, I should grab anyone and ask. There were staff members everywhere; surely not all of them would say they didn’t know. Just then, I saw someone sitting on an indoor bench talking to a staff member who looked relatively free, so I headed that way and was about to say, Excuse me. But before that, my eyes met those of the person sitting on the sofa, and my lips closed on their own.

The man with strange light-brown eyes stopped talking the moment our gazes collided and glared fixedly at me.

Had they even invited celebrities like this onto the commentary team? Thinking that, I did not avoid his gaze and faced him straight on, but even after several seconds passed, that person continued to stare daggers at me. It wasn’t as if there was something on my face. I blinked to signal that I had no ill intent, but the man remained the same.

Out of nowhere, I had been dragged into a staring contest. I tried to maintain my expression as best I could while attempting to understand the situation. Was he someone who knew me? No, there was no way. Even the photos of me attached to internet articles had been edited together moderately enough to look like someone else, so I didn’t have to worry about an ordinary person recognizing me. If he were an old classmate of mine… there was no way I wouldn’t remember a face like that.

“Do you know him?”

My uncle, standing behind me, asked in a voice only I could hear, but I did not answer and instead returned that damn stinging gaze. Why the hell is this bastard glaring at me?

As we glowered at each other without saying a word, the people nearby began taking interest one by one, either passing by while watching us or stopping in place. I faintly heard one of them ask the staff member who had been talking to that man what was going on, as if they thought a fight had broken out.

As the blatant battle of nerves seemed likely to continue until someone intervened, I slowly began to get irritated, and my face twisted more and more fiercely. When the words, Are you not going to lower your eyes? had risen all the way to my throat, my uncle noticed my state and waved his hand, blocking my view.

“Yeong-ah, stop it and let’s go. What are you doing?”

When I was already heated up, it didn’t sit well with me to be the one to back down, but as my uncle said, there was too little time to waste standing here like this. Retake must be waiting for me with his neck stretched out. Spending time like this on some unlucky-looking bastard was a waste.

Just let me catch you again later. Swallowing my anger, I treated the man, who was still glaring at me, as if he did not exist. Then I spoke to a nearby staff member and tried to ask where demonstration participants should go…

“Yeong-ah?”

If only that voice hadn’t called me.

It was an extremely familiar voice. A voice so deep and sweet it made me wonder if natural honey made inside Krubera Cave, said to be the deepest cave in the world, would taste exactly like this.

At the sudden call, the anger simmering inside me cooled in an instant. That was how startled I was; I immediately turned my head and searched for the source of the voice.

…But strangely enough, in the direction the voice had come from, there stood the very person who had been staring at me so murderously just moments ago. The ferocious gaze that had seemed rude enough to be unbelievable had vanished without a trace, and he was looking at me with his eyes round and an expression so gentle it seemed impossible. If my memory had been bad, I might have mistaken him for a different person for a moment.

The voice I had just heard had definitely been Retake’s.

…No way.

While I opened my mouth but failed to continue speaking, the man sprang to his feet and approached me. When my uncle, a bodyguard, grew wary of him and tried to shield me while moving me back, the man stopped short mid-step.

“I didn’t know I’d be meeting you like this. You’re Bread-nim, right? Honey Bread-nim.”