The Endless Rehearsal
This conversation had been looping for dozens of minutes. I knew she was deliberately tormenting me. But the wounds that had never been properly treated burned with such agony that I could barely stand it.
"...I like you."
"How much?"
She smiled sweetly, waiting for my answer.
"More than anyone else in the world. Now please, just take me to the hospital... I won't run. I swear."
"Hmm~? Doesn't sound sincere. Again!"
"Jimin, if I collapse here you'll be sad too, won't you?"
"Babe, do you like me?"
"I like you, I like you! Please just listen to me, please...!"
"Getting angry when you like me so much? Rehearsal from the top!"
"Please... I like you. I really, truly like you, so let me go now..."
"Sounds like you're only saying it to get out. Again~"
"I like you, Jimin."
"Hehe?"
"I like you."
"How much?"
"More than anyone else in the world. So much I can't even put it into words."
"Is my babe finally starting to mean it a little?" She laughed.
"Yes, so please..."
"Then second round! Babe, do you love me?"
"Ugh... You... seriously..."
"Why are you getting mad... Hing... Then from the beginning again! Babe, do you like me?"
I couldn't give in. My body and mind were at a complete disadvantage, but I refused to lose.
"I like you..."
"Then kiss!"
She leaned in, offering her cheek. I pursed my lips toward it, but before they could touch she turned her head and pushed her mouth forward instead. Our lips met.
"Chu~ Babe, you're such a pervert... If you wanted that, you could've just said so."
She pressed her mouth to mine again. Her tongue slid in. I have to endure this...
"Slurp... smack... slurp..."
Endure it...
"Smack... My babe really does like me so, so much."
She sat back down in the chair.
"Right? Babe, do you like me?"
"...I like you."
"Do you love me?"
"I love you."
"Really love me?"
"I really love you."
"Truly?"
"I truly love you."
"Hmm~?"
"Now untie me. I need to get to the hospital right away... Please."
"Babe, if you don't truly love me, wouldn't it be better to just die? I still can't feel your sincerity!"
"I really do love you. I don't want to die like this... Our love would end too, right? Please let me go."
"Pfft! Oppa, it's hilarious how desperate you are, just saying anything that comes to mind!"
Jimin covered her mouth with her sleeve and laughed.
"Khh... kkk... kkkk! Ah, I really live for moments like this because of you, oppa~"
"Jimin, please let me go... It's not too late. I won't tell anyone."
"Isn't it more beneficial to never let you go and make sure you can never speak again?"
"Please, Jimin."
"Hmm~?"
"It hurts too much... It started hurting even worse after we had sex earlier. I think the wounds tore open. Please let me go..."
"Don't worry, oppa! Let's skip the hospital and keep playing."
"I was stabbed with a knife... How the hell am I supposed to not go to the hospital...!!"
I ground my teeth so hard they felt like they might crack. Jimin laughed again.
"Oppa, you're such a worrywart. Do you really think I'd let you die? Fine, I'll compromise. Let's go now! The hospitals should be opening soon."
Hurry...
"But... if we go out like this you might run away, so give me your home address and that whore's address first!"
...I felt like I was losing my mind.
"...Fine, I'll tell you. Just please get me to the hospital first..."
"Dad! Do you know a good hospital?"
Professor Kim jumped up from the living room sofa in shock.
"J-Jimin, what on earth..."
Professor Kim looked at me. I looked back at him. I could picture him sitting anxiously on that sofa all night without sleeping a wink. I wondered if he could guess what had happened to me. He clutched his head as if dizzy and spoke.
"...Let's just go quickly for now."
A heavy atmosphere filled the examination room.
"We've disinfected and sutured one wound on the shoulder and three on the waist..."
The doctor continued with a suspicious look in his eyes.
"The wounds were quite old and had opened further, so it nearly became life-threatening."
"That's a relief... Right, oppa!"
The girl gripped my hand tightly, her eyes filled with genuine worry.
"...You must be very careful from now on. Come to the hospital immediately next time. The emergency room is always open."
"...Yes."
Between the constant pain and my exhausted mind and body, I could barely form a proper reply.
"Be sure to take the antibiotics on schedule. If anything feels wrong, come back right away. And absolutely no strenuous activity. Rest at home until everything has fully healed."
"Yes, let's rest at home!"
"...Yes."
On the drive back, Professor Kim kept glancing at me through the rearview mirror.
"Oppa, you'll need to rest for at least a week, right? I'll nurse you myself!"
Professor Kim would never help me. Helping me would mean sending his own daughter to prison. I had to handle this carefully.
"...Yeah."
"Take a break from school too! I'll take the week off with you!"
"..."
Jimin clung to my arm, constantly rubbing herself against me. I wanted to abandon everything and run, but the fear of what would come after paralyzed me.
"Oppa, so we're dating now, right?"
"..."
"Oppa, let me ask one more time~ We're dating now, right?"
".....Yeah."
She beamed with pure joy.
"Dad! I finally have a boyfriend. I did well, didn't I!"
"Y-yeah."
Professor Kim tried to stay composed, focusing only on the road.
"Oppa, I won't tie you up anymore! We're officially dating now, and you're too weak from being stabbed to run anyway!"
Jimin laid me down on the bed.
"Should we sleep together first? I've always wanted to fall asleep holding you tight like this..."
She lay down beside me. Whether from blood loss or the lingering terror of death that had crashed over me like a tsunami, I couldn't summon any strength.
"Oppa, can I kiss you?"
"..."
When I stayed silent she slowly pressed her lips to mine. I accepted the kiss, which held no lust at all. The strength and will to resist her were fading little by little.
"...Can I do it one more time?"
"..."
She came close again and kissed me.
"...Oppa, I love you."
She kissed me again.
"Oppa, I love you."
She kissed me.
"I love you."
Again.
"I love you..."
Again...
"...Oh, right. I never called that unnie."
Jimin got up with an annoyed sigh and started looking for my smartphone.
"Where did I put it? It was definitely in this room... Ah! Found it."
She turned it on.
"Ew, oppa. Look at this. She's completely insane, isn't she?"
The phone showed an unbelievable number of missed calls. The KakaoTalk alerts below were probably just as bad. The silent mode I had set to avoid interruptions whenever I was with her had created this result.
"Pfft! Imagining her panicking all alone is so satisfying."
Jimin climbed back into bed and pulled the blanket over us.
"The doctor said you need a week of rest anyway, so let's rest. We'll just leave her like that! Oh, another call. You can't reject this one. She'd know you turned it down. She already knows you're looking at the screen and will keep calling like a maniac if we reject it. Just leave it!"
Jimin set my phone on the floor. I could perfectly picture what Soyeon must look like right now.
"...Can I kiss you again?"
"...Do whatever you want."
As if those were the words she had been waiting for, she stopped asking and simply kept seeking my lips. By the time I gave up counting how many times we kissed, Jimin spoke again.
"Oppa, how long did you date that unnie?"
"About a month."
"Not that long then. That's good."
"...Jimin, why are you doing this to me?"
"Doing what?"
"Why are you doing all this to me?"
"Because I like you, oppa."
"..."
"Because I love you, oppa."
"What about the two years you mentioned before?"
"...Oppa, are you curious?"
"...Yes."
Jimin wrapped her arms around me tightly.
"Oppa, I know everything."
"...Know what?"
"All your old stories."
"What?"
"That you suffered something terrible in middle school, that you're grateful to your high school friends—I know all of it."
How...?
"That you treasure your family, and why you decided to become a counselor—I know that too."
"..."
"And I also know about the girl you met in middle school."
That was a story only I knew. One I had never told anyone. The only time I had spoken about the girl I met in middle school was to my three closest friends and... in the assignment I wrote on the first day.
"...So you read it."
"Dad let me help grade the assignments."
"And among them you read mine..."
"...I did!"
A storm of complicated emotions made it hard to even speak. Shame at having my secrets exposed, resentment toward the professor who had shown them to someone else, bewilderment, disappointment, embarrassment, and... rage.
"...What does any of that have to do with you liking me?"
"...Please don't get angry..."
"At first I was just curious. Who wrote it? What did they look like? What kind of person were they? ...I got completely absorbed in the writing."
I couldn't let my emotions explode now. I had to listen until the end.
"Oppa, you lived such a sad life."
Jimin stroked my hair, gazing at me with pity.
"You're a pitiful person, oppa."
"But I became pitiful too."
...The girl's voice began to tremble.
"My mom was incredibly kind. She was the most beautiful, the coolest person."
Her childhood memories slowly softened the anger burning inside me.
"We went to the aquarium together once. The fish were so big they scared me. But when Mom held my hand, I wasn't scared at all."
For the first time, the girl's eyes weren't fixed on me with obsession. She was looking at me, yet seeing the past.
"When I got my first perfect score in math, Mom took me to the best pasta restaurant. I'd never tasted anything so delicious. She told me that when I got a boyfriend later, I had to bring him there on a date. That's why she called me here instead of to school. Oppa, the food there really was amazing, wasn't it?"
"..."
"And because I loved singing, whenever we went to karaoke she would only listen to my songs."
"But Mom had always been an incredible singer! Really. I told her I wanted to sing as well as she did, and that if she waited a little I'd sing even better than her. After that she never sang again. She only listened to my songs. She said she couldn't wait for me to become better than her, so she stopped singing completely."
"Then one day after a long time she sang again, and she was terrible! It was so funny I couldn't stop laughing, and I even got kicked out once for not singing."
"And when I told her about you, oppa, Mom got really upset. She said you shouldn't read other people's private things. That it would make them very sad. So she told me to meet you and apologize in person. Only then would I be a good daughter, she said."
"So I went to school with her to meet Dad. And that's when I saw you... I don't know why I like you. From the moment I met you, I could only think about you."
The girl's rationality was slowly peeling away. In its place, her sadness and loneliness clung to every word.
"I told Mom I liked you. We promised that when I became an adult we'd figure out together how I should apologize and win your heart. But the next day she died. It was a traffic accident. When I went to see her, people blocked the door and wouldn't let me in."
"...Why?"
"Mom had been crushed under a truck from the waist down. They said it would be too horrible to see, so I shouldn't look."
"...I see."
"But then they suddenly told me to come in. So I did, and Mom was calling my name. I went to her, and she was covered by a blanket, but everything underneath was red."
The scene played out vividly inside my own head.
"Do you know what Mom said to me?"
"..."
"She said she loved me so, so much, and to live a good life."
The girl's eyes glistened with tears.
"After that... I tried to live kindly. I studied hard, didn't fight with my friends, didn't fight with Dad."
"But holding on until I became an adult was too difficult. I missed you so much, wanted to see you so badly, liked you so much... It became unbearable, so I asked Dad what I should do."
"He said since you were his student, he'd arrange for us to meet during the counseling practicum. He told me to apologize then and become close. But when I got home, he said I wouldn't be able to see you for two years."
...So that's what happened.
"After that I got angry at Dad every single day. Mom always said fighting with Dad made me a bad child, but we fought so much."
Tears streamed down the girl's face, leaving long wet trails.
"I'm becoming strange."
Tears fell from my own eyes.
"I don't know anymore either. I know I should live kindly, but I'm becoming stranger and stranger."
"I don't know either."
"I don't understand why we ended up like this, oppa and me."
"Me neither."
"...Oppa, do you like me?"
"..."
"...No, you must be scared."
"..."
"...I'm getting scared of myself more and more."
I took the girl's hand.
"If you hold my hand, does it stop being scary?"
"...It doesn't feel scary... Hic..."
The girl broke down sobbing.