Only You in That Place (6)
"Hey! Kwon Minjae!"
The voice cut through the heavy sheets of rain and found my ears. I turned my head to look, and there was Nari, umbrella in hand, staring straight at me.
Honestly, at first I wondered if I was just being twisted about it—if she was only calling out to mock me for walking home soaked to the bone.
So I gave her a quick glance, then looked away again and tried to keep walking.
"Hey! So now you're just ignoring people when they talk to you?"
Somehow she managed to stop me again. Then, carefully, she tilted the umbrella a little toward my side.
The gesture caught me off guard enough that I just stood there watching her, saying nothing. Wondering if she had some angle. Maybe I was being a little wary of her. Maybe more than a little.
"L-let's share it… This isn't the kind of rain you can just walk through."
It was a development I genuinely hadn't seen coming. We were practically enemies at this point—I never would have expected her to suddenly offer me something like kindness.
Even when we'd run into each other briefly before and talked, Nari had made it clear she wasn't rooting for me.
Which meant she clearly still disliked me. Not "probably"—of course she did.
I could tell myself I was the only one who'd been wronged, but looked at another way, Nari had been hurt by me first, too.
So that meant we probably just hated each other.
And yet here she was, suddenly holding an umbrella over my head?
"I'm fine. I don't need that kind of pity from you."
"…I know. I know how fake this looks. I'm not exactly doing it because I want to, either. It's just—someone's walking through a downpour like this, and I couldn't pretend I didn't see it. So stop arguing and just share the umbrella."
At the point where I was already as soaked as I was going to get, I wasn't sure it even mattered much. But I went along with it anyway.
Well… and the truth was, this wasn't the kind of romantic rain you wanted to keep standing in.
So we walked in silence. Unlike earlier with Yuna, we kept a rigid, knife-edge distance with the umbrella handle between us, matching each other's awkward pace.
There wasn't even room for our shoulders to brush. Which meant both of us already had our outer shoulders exposed to the falling rain, getting wet all over again.
Ssshhhhh.
Nothing filled the space between us but the sound of the rain.
"Coming back from the club?"
"Yeah."
"And… things with her? Are you doing okay?"
"Yeah."
"Th-the project… the competition?"
"That's… not really something you get to ask about, is it?"
"……."
Nari seemed unable to stand the silence between us. She kept fidgeting, throwing out one question after another.
Her questions didn't particularly move me one way or the other. What did surprise me a little was how ordinary she seemed on the surface.
In other words… Nari looked more okay than I'd expected. I already knew what kind of situation she was in right now.
She was on a downward slide in her own field, drowning under a flood of hate comments. And yet she looked surprisingly put-together, which I found a little strange.
I couldn't even begin to guess how strong her mental fortitude had to be.
"Why'd you stop talking casually to me? Isn't that kind of childish? It's like you're putting on a whole show about how much you can't stand me…"
"Because that's how it is. I can't treat you the way I used to. That's just obvious, isn't it?"
"……."
I kept answering her with the same guarded, cold, cold tone. Eventually Nari seemed to close her mouth for good. Fed up, probably. Talking to someone who answered like that was hard work, after all.
Well, it wasn't as if I'd said anything wrong. I had no interest in getting on her good side, either. So I didn't particularly care. Even if the conversation just died there.
And before I knew it, we'd walked all the way to my neighborhood.
I hadn't expected her to come this far with me… She could have just caught a bus somewhere along the way. And her place wasn't even in this direction.
"I'll go from here. Sorry. For making you come all this way…"
It left a faintly unpleasant taste in my mouth, like I'd somehow ended up indebted to Nari. After freeloading under her umbrella all the way to my front door, and only then saying something like that.
The moment it looked like I was about to step out from under the umbrella and head straight inside… Nari said something in a rush.
Like someone who'd been waiting a long time to get the words out.
"That thing you said about wanting to keep working together… You were the one who said it to me first back then. S-so… what do you think about that now…?"
Ah…
I had said that. That I wanted to keep working with Nari going forward.
And Nari had answered me.
Once the competition is over… if you still feel the same way, I'll think about it.
At the time, I hadn't understood what that meant. But I knew now. It had been an act from the very beginning. And I'd gone and told her that, happy about it, without having a clue.
Even in that moment, Nari had already been carrying the thought of betrayal in her head.
So… what was she doing bringing that up to me now, like it was something good? There was no way I still felt the same way I had back then—no way I still wanted to keep working with her.
"What kind of answer are you hoping for? Obviously…"
"Ah! No… Sorry. I think I said something pointless. Right? Okay, I'm going."
She was the one who'd asked—and then she cut me off before I could finish answering. She turned on her heel and walked away right then and there.
I'd been about to say that of course I had no desire whatsoever to work with her now.
She must have known that was what I was going to say. She must have felt it. That was probably why she'd cut me off mid-sentence.
Still, I had no idea what sudden impulse had made her act like this. Asking me that question… it almost sounded like she wanted to work with me again.
Give me a break.
How thick did your face have to be to even think that? How little did you have to think of me to say something like that out loud?
And what new scheme had she cooked up to come at me with words like those?
Maybe she was putting on another act for some purpose of her own. After going through something like that once… of course nothing about Nari looked sincere anymore.
I'd become someone who couldn't take what was right in front of him at face value. Someone who'd lost the ability to trust.
The next day.
The moment I opened my eyes… I knew right away.
I wasn't getting up.
A body ache, maybe… All the strain of juggling part-time work and the project had piled up, and yesterday's rain had been the thing that finally set it off.
Ah… I really couldn't afford to be sick right now.
The second-round deadline was right around the corner! But… there was no way I was making it to campus. Or maybe that was actually for the best—I could recover a little at home and then dive straight into the work.
With that in mind, I messaged Yuna first.
That I was sick and probably wouldn't make it to the club today. And because it felt like I'd been putting on some kind of tough-guy act yesterday for no reason, sending that text left me a little embarrassed.
Oh—right. Today was a work day at the part-time job.
That thought only hit me after the fact. Which meant… I wouldn't have been able to go to the club anyway, because of my shift.
Now it just looked like I was deliberately trying to score points with Yuna.
Haa… this had turned into a pretty awkward situation.
Setting that aside for the moment—what about the job…? I hadn't even been working there that long. Was it okay to already be calling out?
But I really was sick… There was nothing I could do about it.
I messaged the owner first, at least to let him know. Fortunately, he was fine with me taking the day off.
I'm really sorry, and thank you. Next time I come in, I'll work twice as hard.
I made that quiet promise to myself and tried to lie back down and sleep. Even though it was summer, a chill was creeping through me—enough to make it clear my body was nowhere near normal.
Her reply came almost immediately. Four question marks packed into a single message.
I wasn't even sure where to start answering—or whether I was supposed to answer all of them.
At her question… I found myself typing out a refusal on instinct. But then I changed my mind. I hurriedly deleted the whole message and rewrote it as a request instead.
In other words, I was finally starting to take the warm hand Yuna was holding out to me. And I wanted to see her, too.
So even though the usual me would have turned her down, this time I decided to just be honest and lean on her.
Yuna seemed to like it when people leaned on her, anyway. And looking at her writing, it was clear that—
Ah, stop. Stop thinking about that.
That piece might not even have been written with me in mind. It could have just been something she put together to turn in for an assignment… And even if she had been thinking of me when she wrote it, it was still only a story, wasn't it? She'd just taken inspiration from me—the rest of the plot, the way it developed, none of that had anything to do with real life.
And if she really had written it with me in mind… then aside from the ending, it was a romantic piece. A piece that made it sound like Yuna liked me, too.
So there was zero point in me freelancing my own conclusions from it. The ending I wanted kept shifting depending on how I looked at it.
So just stop thinking about it.
Why was I even still hung up on that writing? Either way, Yuna was here with me now… and I liked her. Those were the only things that were real, right in front of me.
Maybe it was just that—now that I'd fallen for her, she was the only thing that filled my field of vision, and that was making me overthink everything.
Getting closer to Yuna meant seeing more sides of her I hadn't known before. That was only natural.
I should be glad about it. Learning new things about her meant we were getting closer.
So I wasn't going to sit here alone assigning meaning to nothing and fretting over it by myself. That would just make me the same person I'd been when I was pining after Seoa.
I was done with that damp, brooding version of myself. I'd hated that side of me, too.
What I needed to do right now wasn't tangle my head up worrying about things like that. It was to focus on nothing but winning the competition.
And… after that, I would tell Yuna how I felt.
Yeah. That day would probably be the happiest day of my life.