ST 03

Chapter 03

“……”

“What if that man tries it with me once and says it’s no good and calls off the wedding? So you teach me directly how to do it with a man whose face I don’t even know.”

In the meantime, I had stripped off his shirt.

“You know I liked you. Since it’s my first time anyway, don’t you think it makes sense to do it at least once with someone I had feelings for?”

With those words, I grabbed the hem of his T-shirt and pulled it up.

Beneath his broad shoulders, the well-sculpted muscles boasted the same perfect balance as back then and now.

I let my eyes trail down his firm abs and the bare chest rising and falling slowly, then looked back up.

Bae Dohun’s eyes, which had been wavering, had turned fierce at some point.

“…What are you doing right now?”

Within his eyes, emotions that couldn’t be defined as just one thing rippled thickly.

“You didn’t understand? Or do you want to hear it again?”

I asked, suppressing faint anger at a distance where our breaths touched.

I lowered my head a little more.

It was an explicit expression that if he didn’t answer, I could do even worse things here.

At that moment, Dohun roughly gripped my shoulders.

A clear warning not to cross the line.

“Yoon Seul.”

My name flowed out in a sunken voice.

It had been ten years.

I never thought those two short syllables would sound so unfamiliar.

My body stiffened in an instant.

I felt like tears would pour out.

It was just a name—just a name, and yet he crumbles me like this.

“So now you acknowledge me.”

“Think rationally.”

“Do I look like I’m in any state to be rational right now?”

“…Please, just.”

The voice that came out like a sigh sounded like someone coaxing a child, and also like a pitiful groan.

Whatever it was, it was enough to drive me crazy.

That face, frowning as he looked up at me, was still perfect—then and now.

And that made me even angrier.

“Shut up.”

I slammed my lips against his just like that.

“…!”

It was a rough, clumsy kiss.

Teeth knocked together and there was a faint taste of blood.

The wet sound of mucous membranes meeting and parting filled the silence stickily.

“……”

It was something I’d done on impulse.

So naturally, I expected to be pushed away.

But the reaction I expected didn’t come.

Bae Dohun was frozen as he was.

There was force in the hands holding me, but it was so ambiguous I couldn’t tell whether he was trying to push me away or hold on.

At the close distance, I lost my words at the eyes I met.

“……”

It was the first time.

Since meeting him again, it was the first time I’d seen his face crumble like this.

Just that alone made my heart race uncontrollably.

I caught my breath and asked.

“Try pretending you don’t know this time too.”

“……”

“Try acting like it’s nothing.”

Bae Dohun’s jaw hardened.

There was no answer.

But that silence actually gave me certainty.

He’s not unaffected.

At least I’m not the only one who couldn’t escape from ten years ago.

“Dohun.”

I deliberately called his name slowly.

Our gazes caught and broke apart.

The rough rise and fall of his chest was felt plainly beneath my palm.

In that moment, just briefly.

Really just briefly, Bae Dohun moved toward me. It was a movement too clear to call a delusion.

And then hot breaths mingled.

Our lips met again, and this time I was the one being devoured.

“…!”

He pulled gently at my soft flesh as if sucking on it, released it roughly, then bit down deeply again.

The tightly closed cabin trapped the wet sounds entirely.

“Nn.”

As he bit my lower lip and tilted his head sideways, our noses brushed and the joined lips went a little deeper.

Dohun’s large hand brushed beneath my ear and slid to the back of my neck. The touch that seemed to forbid escape made my breathing quicken.

“Haa.”

As the distance closed, each other’s breath grew more vivid.

His other hand climbed from my side up along my ribs. Just before his fingertips reached the curve beneath my chest, I unconsciously swallowed my breath.

And in that fleeting moment, his movement stopped as if by a lie.

“…No.”

With the harsh sound of molars grinding, Bae Dohun pushed my shoulders.

Thanks to that, a distance enough for a fist to fit between us opened up.

It was only that much distance, yet it felt like everything was being severed in an instant.

“Go back.”

But this time it was different.

He spoke, panting in a voice so low it sounded desperate.

“Please, go.”

Yet contrary to his words, the hands gripping my shoulders didn’t fall away for a long while.

As if realizing that fact belatedly, Bae Dohun’s fingertips flinched.

And he slowly withdrew his hands.

Even in that brief moment, I didn’t take my eyes off his face.

The body that had leaned toward me first just moments ago.

The hesitation right up until he finally pushed me away.

All of it was the Bae Dohun I knew.

The eighteen-year-old who, every time he tried to act like nothing was wrong, only made it more obvious.

I wanted to live in an eternal summer with that version of him.

Tears burst out.

“…What you’re doing right now—is this really how you feel?”

Again, a short silence.

But this time the silence felt different from before.

I didn’t miss it.

“……”

He stared at me with tearful eyes for a long while, then avoided my gaze.

After forcibly swallowing the wavering light from moments ago, when he finally looked at me again, he had returned to the face of Kang Dohun—the one I didn’t know.

“Yes, it is.”

The knife-sharp affirmation and the razor-edged voice building a wall cut sharply into my ears.

No, it’s not.

I shook my head in denial.

Someone who felt nothing wouldn’t have tried so hard to push me away.

He wouldn’t have called my name, wouldn’t have reached for me only to withdraw his hands.

And above all, he wouldn’t have tried to come toward me just now.

“…Fine.”

I wiped my tears and obediently pulled back.

“I’ll stop here for today.”

“……”

“But don’t pretend not to know anymore. Not the us from back then.”

He was still frozen, and in the end he didn’t answer.

But it didn’t matter.

If he denies it, I just have to make it so he can’t.

Tonight, I had already heard all the answers I needed.

The summer I was eighteen.

I was somewhere in a seaside village I was visiting for the first time.

The briny scent of the sea coming through the windows piercing my nasal passages wasn’t so bad.

Even though it was a summer breeze carrying damp humidity, it somehow felt refreshing.

Cheonghae was a far more peaceful place than I’d imagined, and that made me like it all the more.

Cheonghae. Cheong        meaning blue, Hae meaning sea.

A village embracing a beautiful sea that boasts clean water colors just as the name “blue sea” suggests.

From the very entrance of the village, the atmosphere was completely different from the gray city of Seoul covered in tall high-rise buildings.

I opened the car window all the way and let the pouring wind hit my face.

Then, as we turned onto a curve, Mr. Byeongun—who was carefully turning the steering wheel so my body wouldn’t tilt to one side—caught my eyes through the rearview mirror and spoke.

“Miss, I looked into it and the Cheonghae High school uniform will take some time—about one more week. Transfer students are rare here, so the uniform supply seems to be a bit slower than other places. And the school said they’d prefer you wear your previous school’s uniform rather than casual clothes when attending.”

“That makes sense.”

There was no benefit to standing out on the first day anyway.

After all, in just one week I’d be wearing the same uniform as the students here.

With those words, the car carrying me and Mr. Byeongun drove smoothly along Cheonghae’s coastal road.

Beneath the clear sky, Cheonghae’s water sparkled. No matter where I turned my head, there wasn’t a single place that wasn’t beautiful.

A few months ago, the Chairman told me to go down to a quiet place and assigned Mr. Byeongun to me.

He didn’t explain why.

He only said I didn’t need to come up to Seoul for a while, and that if I needed anything, I should speak through Mr. Byeongun.

In effect, I had been removed from his sight.

“Miss, we’ve arrived.”

Cheonghae High School.

I leaned my head out and slowly scanned the letters carved into the outer wall by the school gate.

Perhaps because it was early Sunday morning, there wasn’t a single person visible on the sports field.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?”

“I’m just going to look around for a moment. What could happen? I’ll be right back!”

I opened the car door.

The moment I set one foot outside, I made a visor with my palm against the sunlight that poured down as if it had been waiting.

“It’s quite……”

I’d assumed it would be small since it was a small school in the countryside, but Cheonghae High’s sports field was quite spacious and the buildings were by no means small either.

But since it was the weekend, all the doors were locked.

I immediately started wandering around looking for a door left open by mistake.

It was right after that when I discovered the gymnasium building.

Not the pale tangerine-colored building unique to Cheonghae High, but a building with a pure white arched roof.

I lightly pulled the entrance door.

Creeeak-.

“…!”

The door I’d shaken without much expectation unexpectedly pulled open easily.

There was no particular sense of anyone inside.

Just then, a faint smell of bleach pricked my nose. It seemed there was a swimming pool inside this gymnasium.

Past a long hallway in the rather spacious interior, I turned a corner and saw a thick iron door.

When I pulled the handle, a large swimming pool appeared.

“It really is a pool.”

At that moment, I heard splashing from the lane farthest from the entrance.

At the end of my unfurled gaze, someone was swimming leisurely along the lane.

Looking closely, it was a boy gliding through the water.

Each time he alternated his arms and cut through the water, the finely woven muscles on his firm shoulders and back moved in smooth lines.

A moment later, when he reached the end of the lane and lifted his head out of the water—

I had no choice but to understand the feelings of a sailor who had encountered a siren during a voyage.

It was the first time in my life I’d felt so helplessly captivated by something.

Maybe that’s why.

I didn’t realize that the step I took to approach him was on water, not solid ground.

“…Huh?”

When my other foot, the one still on solid ground, also slipped and I lost my balance—

I sank beneath the water’s surface with a single scream.