TW 14

Chapter 14

“You like me, don’t you?”

Hae-il looked straight into Danbi’s eyes as he said it. To be honest, he had not said it with any real certainty.

There had merely been a few things that had caught his attention. The hesitation when he told her to throw the ball at Suhyeon, the trembling of her eyelashes when he moved closer, and the way her gaze had, at some point, begun avoiding his eyes.

They were nothing more than small signs that made him suspect she might have feelings for him. He was accustomed to receiving that kind of attention from girls, and he had simply assumed Danbi was no different from the others.

Ah…….

But before his words had even faded away, Danbi’s face flushed so red that it looked as though it might burst. Her eyes had grown wider than usual, glistening with moisture as they fixed solely on him. In that moment, Hae-il was seized by a strange sensation, as though an unexpected wave had swallowed his heart whole.

Raw emotion that she did not know how to conceal spread through his mind like red ink. Its excessive clarity even evoked a kind of fear. It was an unfamiliar tremor, as though everything he had once been accustomed to was collapsing.

Her face looked surprised, frightened, and perhaps even a little sad. If the abstract emotion called love could take on a visible form, wouldn’t it have exactly the same face as Danbi did right now?

Even such an absurd thought flashed through his mind.

Faced with an unadorned and painfully naked outpouring of emotion unlike anything he had ever witnessed before, Hae-il felt his own mind growing hazy. He could not bring himself to look away from her face. Danbi had always been someone who rarely revealed her emotions, sometimes seeming not merely expressionless but almost dry and brittle. Perhaps that was why the impact struck him all the harder.

So she could make a face like this.

It was a new discovery he had never even imagined before.

“I-I’ll go first……. I’m late for the academy…….”

Danbi hurriedly blurted out the words in a voice that was almost on the verge of tears, then abruptly turned and ran away. Her long hair fluttered behind her, leaving the sweet scent of shampoo in the air.

Hae-il stood there dazed, with no choice but to watch her slender figure grow farther and farther away. Like someone swept away by an unexpected current, he temporarily forgot even how to move his body.

That was when it happened.

Cold droplets of water began falling from the sky, one after another, striking Hae-il’s still-numb mind.

Rain.

A sudden summer shower pouring down without warning just as summer approached.

Coincidentally, just like her name, Danbi, which means a welcome rain, the rain had begun to fall.

Normally, a sudden shower like this would have brought him nothing but irritation. Yet strangely, he did not find it unpleasant now.

Instead, it felt as though something heavy that had been settled deep inside him was being washed away, leaving room for him to breathe. He even felt a strange sense of liberation.

Hae-il made no attempt to avoid the increasingly heavy rain. He simply stood there and let himself get soaked.

Amid the students hurriedly running toward their respective destinations, he slowly began walking, as though wandering through a dream.

In the empty space where she had hurried away, Hae-il’s faint humming mingled with the sound of the rain and scattered into the air.

It was a strange melody, somewhat different from before—slightly buoyant, almost as though he were in high spirits, yet even he did not know what it meant.

✶ ✶ ✶

After that day, Danbi began to be unmistakably conscious of Hae-il.

Whenever their eyes happened to meet or their bodies came close to each other, she would startle, her face immediately flushing like an unripe apple, before hurriedly looking away.

“Hey, Lee Danbi.”

“Huh? Wh-why……?”

Danbi’s reaction aroused a new interest in Hae-il.

From the moment he clearly realized that she liked him, Hae-il began to quietly enjoy Danbi’s innocent and clumsy reactions.

“Nothing. I just wanted to call you.”

It was somewhat like the amusement of a child exploring a new toy, but at the same time, there was also the curiosity of a primitive man discovering a tiny spark of fire.

Hae-il deliberately tapped Danbi’s pencil case with his fingers to draw her attention, or casually folded and unfolded the corner of the textbook she was concentrating on, watching her reactions.

Each time, Danbi’s shoulders would flinch. She would sneak a glance at Hae-il, gauging his mood, before finally managing to say a single thing.

“Hey…… don’t…….”

Her timid voice was not threatening in the slightest.

That faint voice, barely more than a tickle against his eardrums, only stimulated his mischievous impulse.

He wanted to tease her a little more.

He wanted to see her desperately floundering in the puddle he had created.

“No. I want to.”

“…….”

Watching her small hand nervously grip and release her pencil, Hae-il smiled inwardly.

Her awkward silence and anxious breathing felt like a private piece of music meant for him alone to enjoy.

“I’m kidding.”

He lightly tapped the back of her hand with his pinky finger.

It was a signal telling her to relax, but instead, she froze even more and could not even breathe.

Feeling sorry for her, he turned his gaze away. Only then did he hear the sound of her finally exhaling.

He could not help but let out a laugh.

Because she gave him such clear reactions every time, this ill-natured curiosity of his never seemed to wear off.

“Um……. Han Hae-il.”

At the familiar voice coming from behind him, Hae-il turned his head.

Danbi was approaching with a sheet of paper in her hand.

“This, the teacher asked me to give it to you……. She said your parents’ confirmation was missing…….”

“Hae-il.”

Cutting her off, Hae-il snatched the paper from Danbi’s hand.

He could feel the faint warmth her hand had left on the edge of the paper.

“……Yes?”

“Not ‘Han Hae-il.’ Call me ‘Hae-il.’”

His voice was quiet but firm, and Danbi’s shoulders trembled slightly.

There had been a time when she casually called him “Hae-il-ah.”

Hae-il had already noticed that, at some point, she had deliberately begun keeping her distance.

Seeing the sincerity hidden behind that clumsy defense mechanism so clearly, Hae-il found the situation even more interesting.

“It’s so cold and formal. What’s with ‘Han Hae-il’?”

“No, I just…….”

Just then, Lee Suhyeon came into view at the other end of the hallway, walking with his friends.

Hae-il deliberately met his eyes and, as if to make a point, wrapped an arm around Danbi’s shoulder.

Danbi’s body flinched in surprise, but she did not dare shake his arm off.

No—in more accurate terms, she had frozen so completely that she did not even have the courage to push him away.

Suhyeon stared blankly at the scene before eventually disappearing among his friends as though trying to hide himself, unable to conceal the bitterness on his face.

There were unspoken rules in the world of men.

Just as Suhyeon’s friends had never dared approach Danbi while he was interested in her, now that Hae-il had crushed Suhyeon through sheer force, no one would dare touch Danbi.

Hae-il felt a thrilling sense of victory rising from deep within his chest.

As expected, victory was always sweet and addictive, no matter how many times he tasted it.

“Um…… Hae-il, this…….”

Perhaps he had pulled her too hard.

Danbi was almost completely buried in his arms. Her slender breath tickled the back of his neck.

For an instant, an unexpected softness and a yielding sensation pressed against the area around his solar plexus.

Ah.

He realized what had happened with a brief, almost breathless exclamation of understanding, but he did not loosen his arm.

Instead, the more Danbi struggled faintly to escape his embrace, the more he exerted an invisible force, pressing her closer to himself.

Eventually, as though she had given up on resisting altogether, Danbi weakly lifted her head and looked up at him.

Only her cheeks were particularly flushed against her small, pale face, making her look like a perfectly ripe peach.

Her watery eyes resembled those of a frightened baby rabbit, while her neatly raised nose and red, moist-looking lips……

He had never paid much attention to her appearance before.

But seeing her this close and examining her carefully, he realized that she was actually quite pretty, with delicate and well-proportioned features.

And her figure, too……

Only now did he understand why Suhyeon had been so persistent with Danbi.

Unlike her quiet and composed appearance, she sometimes surprised people with unexpected quirks. She was also diligent and faithfully carried out whatever she was supposed to do.

More than anything, there was something quite cute about the way she became completely flustered in front of him, constantly watching his expression because she did not know what to do.

And this small warmth helplessly nestled in his arms, unable to resist him in the slightest, was strangely not unpleasant.

She likes me.

That realization once again filled Hae-il’s heart with a pleasant arrogance.

Well, it’s only natural.

A man like me—what woman wouldn’t end up liking me?

“Hae-il…….”

Flustered by the warmth of his body and the breath she could feel from such close proximity, Danbi desperately tried to avoid his gaze.

But Hae-il clearly understood what she was trying to do.

Rather than letting her go, he pressed himself even closer and deliberately locked eyes with her.

Like a spider enjoying the final fluttering movements of a butterfly caught in its web, he savored her embarrassment for quite some time.

And finally, as though nothing had happened, he grinned and released her.

“Why are you so tense? I was just teasing you.”

He turned around and leisurely walked down the hallway.

He could feel the confused gaze fixed on his back, but he did not care.

Without bothering to hide the smile at the corner of his lips, Hae-il quietly hummed to himself.

They were the relaxed footsteps of someone who knew he was the one in control.