CH 77

I was slightly worried that he would immediately act on his words and do something more than just kissing. Fortunately, he seemed to have decided on something as he spun back around and said something a bit less intense, “Tell me some old stories.”

“Like what?” I replied automatically, then I realized that Woorim talked about kissing on purpose so I would readily accept whatever he asked next. Since the request was less explicit than expected, I happily agreed.

“For example, like when you were bullied back in the day.”

“Why that story?”

“Because I don’t want to be hated by you. I want to know what you dislike.”

Woorim studied a wall and beckoned to me. He seemed to have discovered something. I walked up to him. I didn’t necessarily want to reveal this to him, but I told him anyway.

“It wasn’t anything special. I was beaten up and ignored a lot. Even so, I wanted to continue attending a school with dorms, so I put up with it. If I caused issues, I might need to transfer elsewhere. I thought it would get better if I moved up a grade, but… that b*stard must have gone insane because he suddenly turned nice.”

I still remember that time. One day, he sat in the seat in front of me and announced, like it was something amazing. I wasn’t able to look at his face, so I only remembered his voice and tone that day. “I won’t bully you anymore.”

I thought, ‘So what?’

“…He said he decided to be friendlier to me. But that couldn’t make me like someone I disliked. Deciding to act nice now didn’t erase my painful past. Being nice to me couldn’t compensate me for his past actions.”

The glass vial with my grandmother’s raspberry seeds—those would never come back.

When I screamed at him, he snickered and told me to ask my mom to buy me a new one and threw my entire bag into the incinerator. He watched me cry until the bag turned to ashes as his friends held me down. My memories of that time halted.

“I kept telling him to stop and to go away because he made me sick. If he wanted to be closer to me, I told him we should live like we were strangers. I told him not to do anything. But when I told him not to touch me anymore…”

Bad memories were always retained in short episodes. I recalled the boy’s back as he stood precariously on the rails of the rooftop. His smile showed pure bliss.

Then, he said, “Will you be happy if I disappeared?”

“…Then he jumped off the rooftop. That was all.” That was all there was to it. All of this happened in less than a year.

Come to think of it, that kid was slightly similar to Hyehyun. His face, the atmosphere about him, and the way he talked were completely different, but the way he treated me was similar. What use was it now that I learned of it? It was long over.

When I approached Woorim, I saw a fireplace in the wall like one from an old picture book. It was never used, so there was no coal or ashes on the ground. The floor was spotless.

“There’s a door,” Woorim said.

On the inside was a door with a picture of a clover. Woorim bent over and crawled in to open the door. Either the door wasn’t greased or there was too much dust—it was difficult to open. Beyond the open door was a pitch-black, long corridor.

Woorim didn’t ask me to, but I followed him inside. The door was small, but the space that it led into was fortunately tall enough for male adults to walk in with ease. Woorim illuminated the corridor with the flashlight. There were abstract paintings of bizarre forms by an unknown artist.

Two pairs of footsteps echoed throughout the hallway.

“When he died, you must have felt relieved,” Woorim said as he walked ahead.

I lifted my head. “No, I felt pretty bad.”

Woorim must have been shocked as his pace slowed down. He looked back and asked, “Why?”

“How about you think about why I must have felt that way?” I suggested, then I walked past Woorim. Woorim had the flashlight, so to light up the way, he picked up his pace as well.

Afterward, I heard nothing from Woorim. It seemed like he was trying to come up with the answer to my riddle. However, he would never be able to figure out the answer—just like how Yeonseon was anxious and insecure no matter how many times I told him it was all right. And it was just like how Hyehyun Ham would never understand why I liked Yeonseon.

The hallway took us to a wide, open space.