PBWY - 6

Yeonhee curled up on the bed. After last night, after learning his secret, she couldn’t even remember how time had passed.

Did he tell her to pretend not to know? Was that how everything would go back to normal?

“Just keep pretending you don’t know.”

After releasing his excitement, he said that calmly. It almost felt like there was mockery in his words directed at her.

After he went into the bathroom, Yeonhee spent time listening to the rain without doing anything, then called a taxi and returned home. He must have known she wasn’t there, but he never contacted her.

That was all. It was like a small dust particle falling away, and she separated from him, lying alone in bed. The night passed with the rain, sleepless.

Even if she were to throw herself into the pouring rain, the shock would not be washed away. She spent the day with the pain, and the lingering feeling of yesterday stuck to her like a residue. Her heart felt like it might burn.

“What was I to him?”

She fell into painful thoughts, but the answer came easily without much struggle.

“A sex partner. That’s all. I already knew that.”

Of course, she hadn’t known that he had been deceiving and toying with her.

Yeonhee looked up at the gray sky outside the window. The sky had cleared a bit, but it was still cloudy. She wished it would rain again.

Min Junghoon. He was a cruel man.

And she was a weak woman. She had been weak to her mother, and she was weak to him. Weakness and cruelty had thrown Yeonhee into a fiery abyss.

Yeonhee sensed an unsettling future ahead. It felt like an endlessly repeating cycle.

Just as she couldn’t leave her mother’s side, she felt she wouldn’t be able to leave him either. She had the feeling that she would foolishly walk the same path, endlessly treading the barren road that led nowhere, a foreboding sense that she would walk it unflinchingly.

A painful weekend passed.

As soon as Yeonhee arrived at work, she immersed herself in her tasks as if she had forgotten her worries.

She checked the emails she hadn’t seen all weekend and double-checked her schedule. Holding onto the phone, wrestling with it, she adjusted her work and soon it was almost lunchtime.

There was no response from Junghoon.

A resigned sigh escaped her. As the pen in her hand stopped moving, the same old thoughts rushed in again. Her vision went white, and a headache began to throb. She was sleep-deprived.

She couldn’t shake Junghoon from her mind, and she had spent the entire weekend with her eyes wide open. The lack of sleep had sent intuitive signals to her body throughout the morning: it was telling her to lie down and rest.

Her tired eyes were dry, and her body felt limp, like wet laundry hanging in the air.

Yeonhee staggered to her feet. She planned to have some coffee.

A little while later, when she arrived at the break room, she leaned against the table and struggled to hold herself up.

She added one, then two, then a third packet of instant coffee to her tumbler.

“Yeonhee.”

She heard a voice from behind her. Her hand froze. Even without turning around, she recognized the tone. The smooth, clear voice that ended every sentence precisely, calm and low.

It was Junghoon.

“Is something wrong? You look tired.”

What could be wrong? At the question coming from behind her, Yeonhee turned around with a dazed look. Before she knew it, Junghoon was close enough for her to smell his scent.

Yeonhee took a step to move away from him, but unfortunately, the table blocked her, and she couldn’t go any further.

His usual, nonchalant greeting came with no effort. His demeanor was so natural that it almost felt like a hallucination.

She never expected this response. She thought he would at least apologize or offer an explanation. She thought he would feel sorry and try to explain the situation. But he approached her in his usual, terrifyingly normal way.

She had a mountain of questions she wanted to throw at him. Why had he come to her of all people? Had there ever been any sincerity in his actions? Was all his tenderness just a lie? Had he enjoyed deceiving her all this time?

Soon, his hand reached the top of Yeonhee’s head. It was the same warm touch as always. Gently stroking her head, Junghoon tilted his head and met her gaze. His smile, with only the corners of his mouth turning up, felt somehow chilling.

“Why did you go alone on Friday? If you’d told me, I would have taken you.”

“...”

“What are you thinking right now?”

With eyes that seemed like they were about to examine her down to her very soul, he persistently probed her.

Summoning her courage, Yeonhee parted her lips.

“Don’t you feel sorry for me... Team Leader?”

The question, hesitantly spoken, sounded terribly pitiful.

“Why should I? It was you who didn’t recognize me.”

“You lied to me.”

“That’s not true. I just didn’t say anything.”

He responded leisurely, still the same relaxed Min Junghoon.

Like a man who had never once bowed his head to apologize, he was both arrogant and confident.

A light of resignation rose in Yeonhee’s eyes. Right. From the beginning, they were beings who could never understand each other. So this conversation felt like a futile race on a track with no finish line.

She lowered her head, feeling like tears were about to fall, but soon her chin was lifted. Junghoon gently grasped her chin. Looking into her eyes, which seemed ready to shed tears, he spoke.

“Did I give you any false hope?”

Yeonhee’s eyes trembled with a pitiable sadness.

He clicked his tongue, as if pitying her.

“I told you to pretend not to know. If you keep showing signs like this, it’ll get a little annoying...”

“...”

“Just like before, we’ll have meals together, watch movies, and have sex. When I play the foolish team leader, you smile. It’s easy.”

Junghoon lightly lifted the corner of her lips with his hand. Following his touch, Yeonhee forced a smile, her eyes still damp with tears.

As he slowly traced her lips with his, he continued.

“Nothing will change. I can give you something similar to the love games people have. So... if you don’t like it, say so now. I’m not going to cling to you like a pathetic fool.”

His soft voice dripped with coldness.

Yeonhee shook her head as if in a trance. As her head moved slowly, drops of tears fell. His warning, laced with thorns, gripped her heart. A vein of blood seeped through the jagged thorns.

Even though she couldn’t sleep from the shock, she wasn’t thinking of leaving him. His cold face, though unfamiliar, was a face she wanted to keep facing.

Not yet. Not yet. She wasn’t ready to close her heart.

Yeonhee struggled to move her frozen head. No, it’s not that. I don’t dislike it. It’s not that I dislike it. She swallowed down all her resentment, hatred, and bitterness towards him.

The coldness melted from his eyes.

A soft kiss landed on her forehead. It was the usual him. The warm and gentle Min Junghoon she had known. No, the Min Junghoon she had thought she had known.

“Ugh...”

With a painful groan from her throat, Yeonhee closed her eyes. She couldn’t bear to look at his face. She nodded, feeling like the most foolish idiot in the world.

Above her, his gentle voice echoed.

“You thought it over well, Yeonhee.”

“......”

“If you act cute, I’ll treat you like I did before.”

Tears fell silently to the floor.

Turning away from the blade-like reality, she threw herself toward the blind love. She kept biting down on the painful seed, knowing it would tear her apart in the end. She knew it would turn into a burning flame that would consume her.

Her pride crumpled easily before him. It was light as cheap paper, thin and fragile. Humble and weak.

She resented him, but she couldn’t blame him. She hated him, but she shouldn’t. All emotions were deeply hidden beneath the pain of love. The moment she exposed that truth to him, she knew it would truly be the end.

Jeonghoon’s kind arm wrapped around her. Held in his warm embrace, Yeonhee breathed like a person lost in deep sleep. It felt like her body was sinking into an abyss.

She sank deeper and deeper, to a place so deep and distant, she couldn’t even struggle.

After that, she lived as though she had forgotten everything. She turned away from the truth and only saw the smile. Unable to close her heart to him, she nodded at the whispers to pretend not to know.

She ate up the false emotions and masked kindness, blocking her eyes and ears as she ran toward the filth.

Like an ordinary couple, they went on dates and sometimes had sex. She was happy but uneasy. She knew there was something lurking behind his kind appearance.

It felt like stepping onto the edge of a steep cliff.

“How is it? It’s different from what you usually drink.”

“It’s a bit bitter, but it’s fine.”

“Good.”

Drinking the wine he had poured, Yeonhee leaned back against the sofa.

His house, now familiar. But since that day, it never felt comfortable—an unfamiliar space. Here, Yeonhee had spent a lot of time with him. Today was no different.

Soon, Jeonghoon leaned over her, kissing her. The rich, sweet scent of wine gently enveloped them.

Yeonhee closed her eyes, feeling him enter as she parted her lips. The entwined tongues were hot, and the hands undressing her were gentle.

Swallowing the rising sorrow, she accepted him. Moisture gathered in the corners of her eyes.

Do you know? The heart that can’t let go of you in the end. This misery and despair. My love, so pathetic and desperate, unable to escape from your cruelty,

Do you know even a little?