5. Awareness (2)
She regretted it the moment the words left her mouth.
Thanks to a bit of caffeine and a brief nap, the alcohol had completely worn off, yet she couldn’t understand why her lips were slipping out of control, running off on their own.
Seo Eungyu looked at her with an unreadable gaze. She met his eyes and pleaded desperately. Please refuse. Say you’re tired and you’re just going home.
“Okay.”
But he slowly nodded.
Moon Dawon suppressed the urge to smack her own mouth and guided him inside. As she climbed the narrow staircase, the man’s presence behind her felt like a massive wave. It felt as though it could transform into claws at any moment and sweep her away.
Fortunately, she didn’t run into any coworkers she knew in the hallway. She quickly opened the door and stepped inside. Standing in the tiny entryway with Seo Eungyu, she felt suffocated, her breath catching in her throat.
“Sit here.”
Moon Dawon pointed at the floor where a rug lay beneath the bed. The studio, half-filled by the bed, barely had any space to sit. A space that had felt reasonably livable when she was alone now looked like a tiny bird’s nest with the large-framed man inside.
It was a studio where only female employees lived, so quiet that there was almost no noise between floors. So she regretted not having bought a TV sooner. The silence piled up in layers, and the quiet building was no help.
“I had coffee earlier… Is cocoa okay?”
“Yes.”
When Seo Eungyu answered briefly and sat on the rug, the studio looked completely full. Watching him look around the room made her stomach burn.
She turned away and deliberately made noise as she rummaged through the cabinets. The sound of water boiling in the electric kettle swallowed the awkward air.
As she slowly stirred cocoa powder into the boiling water, she squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again several times. And she firmly resolved to leave work on time tomorrow and get proper sleep first.
They sat facing each other across a round floor table. With even the noisy boiling water gone, the room sank back into a creaking silence.
“You boiled it well.”
Seo Eungyu was the one who tried to start a conversation first. It was a valiant effort. It was a compliment that made it sound as though he had brewed a deep-flavored sungnyung over a mere cup of cocoa.
“It tastes good when you have it occasionally.”
He nodded at Moon Dawon’s reply. And again, silence followed.
She tried to recall what she usually talked about with her peers, but soon realized she couldn’t treat the man before her as merely a peer.
Seo Eungyu was her same-age direct superior, the root of the inferiority complex that had whipped her without rest for the past five years, and since reuniting, a man showing strange kindness.
“Do you remember the training institute?”
The man brought up the safest topic. Yet it was also a bitter one for her.
“When our team’s company promo video won first place.”
A smile rose to her lips despite herself. Her days at the training institute hadn’t been entirely agonizing. There had been a time when new hires, bound together by the pride of having joined a public enterprise, spent thrilling moments together.
“I have the video. Want to watch?”
“You still have that video?”
Moon Dawon asked back with wide eyes. She had changed phones long ago and deleted it without transferring it over.
Seo Eungyu tapped his phone a few times and placed it on the table. Loud music began to flow from the rectangular screen. She lowered her head and watched intently.
The promotional video began with a scene of Seo Eungyu wearing a horse mask and secretly tapping on a laptop. But the hacker was exposed by Moon Dawon, who wore a syringe drawing on her head, and was chased away while being pelted with carrot plushies she threw.
It was incredibly childish. It was a scene meant to express the company’s strong security, but imagining what the team leaders in charge of judging had thought when they saw it made her face burn. She had apparently filmed it thinking it was so much fun at the time, but it seemed the twenty-five-year-old her had been quite innocent.
It was when Moon Dawon raised her head with a disgruntled expression that Seo Eungyu’s face was right before her eyes, smiling brightly.
She slowly took him in with her eyes. Even five years ago, when they had spent so much time together, she had never scrutinized his face like this, so she couldn’t understand why her eyes kept drifting to him now.
The black pupils visible between his crescent-shaped eyes held a warm light. The harmony of his roundly raised cheekbones and loosely relaxed red lips was so natural that she wanted to smile along.
“Fun, right?”
He was speaking informally again. Her eyes narrowed.
“No. It’s embarrassing.”
“Why? It’s cute.”
“You’ve got incredible self-esteem too.”
“No, not me. You.”
Moon Dawon’s face turned a muddy shade darker than the cocoa. But Seo Eungyu ignored her and continued his absurd claim.
“Everything you did seriously was cute. Even throwing the carrots—you threw them seriously.”
“I threw them hard to hurt you. Didn’t you know?”
She leaned back and drank the now-cold cocoa. Sweetness clung to the membrane inside her mouth. The man leaned his upper body forward by the same distance she had retreated.
“Did you hate me even then?”
“I hated you from the start.”
She wanted to see his smile disappear, but he showed no sign of that and kept grinning. He stopped the video and, after rummaging through his camera album, showed her a photo.
It was a drawing of Seo Eungyu’s face that she had drawn on the first day of the training institute, after receiving an assignment to draw a portrait of the team member sitting across from her.
Full of motivation from day one, unlike the other employees who only roughly sketched with pencils, she quickly colored it in and even added flowers and sparkling effects around his face. Thanks to that, her team received bonus points.
“You said I was handsome back then.”
“What is the reason you drew these flowers and sparkles?”
The specialist instructor invited for the icebreaker asked her.
And the answer she had given was…….
“Because he’s handsome.”
Moon Dawon’s face flushed red as she recalled another embarrassing memory. A good night’s sleep was out of the question again today too.
“Hating you and you being handsome are two different things. I’m not someone who denies the facts.”
Seo Eungyu nodded as if agreeing, but seeing his snickering expression, it was obvious he hadn’t properly listened to her words.
“But why are you saving this kind of photo? Delete it, quickly.”
When Moon Dawon reached out, he quickly hid the phone in his chest. She scoffed in disbelief. The thought that he had saved it for years just to tease her like this if they ever met again was amusing.
“If you’ve finished drinking, leave now.”
She checked that his cup was empty and stood up. That was enough courtesy.
Seo Eungyu approached from behind as she tried to wash the cup at the sink. His presence was not a wave, but a tidal wave. The gaze touching her left cheek was scorching. How many more humiliating memories was he going to dredge up? The man standing firm behind her was loathsome.
She felt him step back. He seemed to be preparing to go home now. But he soon came back to her side. She looked to the side after rinsing the cup.
Seo Eungyu was holding a tissue. As she shook her wet hands over the sink, he carefully wrapped his hand around her jaw.
Moon Dawon unconsciously held her breath and gazed at the man with unfamiliar eyes. His gaze was fixed on her lips. She couldn’t feel any grip strength in the hand holding her jaw, yet strangely, she couldn’t move.
He raised the tissue and rubbed her upper lip. The crimson mucous membrane inside was revealed. He gently wiped her lower lip as well. Again, the smooth mucous membrane appeared clearly before hiding itself once more.
Moon Dawon, who had been holding her breath all the while, felt heat rising to the tips of her ears. Until his hand cleanly withdrew, she couldn’t even blink once.
“There was cocoa powder on it.”
Seo Eungyu showed her the powder on the white tissue. She nodded silently. A completely different kind of silence settled between them.
“I’ll go. The cocoa was good.”
He left the greeting in a low voice and headed out the entryway.
Only after the door closed and the door lock clicked did a heavy breath burst from her. But even after she could finally breathe, she leaned against the sink for a long while.
* * *
“Hah….”
Seo Eungyu, who had taken a taxi back to the restaurant where they had eaten dinner, got into his car parked behind the building.
Yesterday too, he had abandoned his car in the company parking lot to take Moon Dawon home, and today he had done the foolish thing of leaving his car in front of someone else’s restaurant and coming back just to stay with her a little longer.
His hand was still clutching the white tissue tightly. He couldn’t bring himself to throw away the tissue stained with brown cocoa powder and had brought it out just like that.
It had been that urgent a moment. If the time he had waited had been even a little shorter, it would have been dangerous enough that he would have hastily pressed his lips against hers.
But even now, safely away, he couldn’t let go of the tissue. Moon Dawon’s lips had touched this.
Seo Eungyu carefully unfolded the crumpled tissue. After staring briefly at the part stained with cocoa powder, he placed it directly on his own lips.
He took a deep breath in and out. The tissue fluttered slightly before sticking to his lips again.
His coat hem slowly slid down. His right thigh, encased in dress pants, had swelled thickly, fully revealed.
It was fortunate that it was a cold winter where he could wear a coat. If it had been summer, he would have been caught in his aroused state right in front of Moon Dawon. If that had happened, she would have looked at him with an even more disgusted gaze.
The sweetness of the cocoa seemed to pour over his face. It felt like he could reach climax from this contact alone. Beneath the crumpled tissue, his tongue swept over his lower lip.
The black sedan parked behind the restaurant did not depart for quite some time.