Salieri's Confession
If I were still an immature high schooler, I wouldn’t have taken those words at face value. I would have misunderstood, assuming he was just teasing me. But Cha Jun-jae had long passed the age where he’d risk everything to toy with a woman, and I was never the type to give particularly entertaining reactions anyway.
Cha Jun-jae was my Mozart. Not as someone who sparked inspiration, but as a person blessed with innate talent I could never overcome in my lifetime. I wasn’t even qualified to be Salieri, so I had no right to feel jealous of him. Though I claimed to be the protagonist of my own life, standing beside Cha Jun-jae made that belief feel impossible. It was as if I had become the seventy-second supporting character whose name never appeared in the ending credits.
So this was the day I confessed that he should stop invading my life, that the kindness he offered like some gracious favor was utterly insignificant. Could it even be called a confession? It was closer to resistance. For more than twenty years I had lived holding my breath, propping up someone else’s spotlight. Through school, through college, and even in my career, Cha Jun-jae had become an unavoidable giant.
I had handed over every important season of my life to him. It was only natural that I refused to surrender the last remaining stronghold. Yet at the table where I finally confessed my long-held discomfort, Cha Jun-jae blushed. He admitted he felt jealous. Instead of excitement, his words filled me only with bewilderment. After acknowledging his jealousy, the shift in Cha Jun-jae’s eyes brought me nothing but that same absurdity.
“The reason I ate dinner with you today is… because there’s something I want to tell you.”
Fire flared inside me, rebelling against Cha Jun-jae’s attempt to change the genre. I had originally planned to end our relationship with beautifully crafted lines full of rhetorical flourish. I had never intended to show him my raw, ugly emotions. I wanted to wrap up the past calmly and elegantly, at least from Salieri’s point of view.
But Cha Jun-jae jealous of my relationship with a restaurant staff member? Cha Jun-jae blushing at me? It was impossible. It should have been impossible. My flustered, wavering heart was driven to the edge. The feeling spread into unbearable displeasure.
“I hate you.”
It had come down to this conclusion. The sentence written in truth had finally shown its face to the world. The thorn lodged in my heart was yanked free. How long had I waited for the prelude to my revenge? Having thrown off all pretense, I sank deep into the chair’s backrest. My tense shoulders loosened, and my eyes closed with them. Yet when I opened them for a brief moment, Cha Jun-jae’s face was perfectly calm, perfectly at peace. He could not have missed the thorn I had thrown back at him. He simply gazed at me with a serene expression, as if he had heard nothing at all. That look slowly settled my agitated heart. What kind of expression had I expected from him? Tears? Panic? Or pain?
We hardly ever spent time together. We barely exchanged texts. Yet Cha Jun-jae, who arbitrarily declared himself my closest friend, sometimes seemed strangely perceptive. He didn’t want to date someone beneath his level, but rejecting me outright would make him look like the villain. So every time, he used my name as the perfect excuse. I have plans with Eun-dam today. I have to go to the academy with Eun-dam. Those so-called plans were always about catching a ride in the academy car. Meanwhile, I had to endure the venom and jealousy hurled at me by people who had been rejected without ever knowing why.
So this level of calm made no sense. I wanted him to fear the sword and spear I had forged through years of pain. Before jealousy. Before calm itself.
“Didn’t you hear me? I hate you. I hate you. I really hate you. We’re not friends. We’re alumni. Alumni who should have stopped seeing each other at thirteen because of our parents, yet you keep sitting in front of me. I hate it. I hate it. I really, really hate it.”
I had thought the words I’d only ever spoken inside my head would feel incredible once they left my lips. But somehow the other party’s polite refusal to accept them felt strange. I sounded like a childish girl throwing a tantrum, while he observed me like a detached third party. The satisfaction wasn’t as refreshing as I had imagined. I bit my lip until it bled. I was just lifting my glass, thinking I might as well drink the wine, when Cha Jun-jae, who had seemed prepared to spend the night in silence, finally answered.
“I know.”
The wine glass never reached my mouth. It returned to the table. A server carrying an enormous seafood platter stopped beside us. The waiter delivering our food couldn’t intrude on the atmosphere and quickly left after mumbling something vague.
The scent of flame-cooked seafood shamelessly stirred my appetite. My hand moved to the fork while my eyes stayed locked on Cha Jun-jae. My head throbbed.
“You knew?”
“Yes. I’ve known for a long time.”
“Did it show that obviously?”
“It did. From the beginning.”
At this point I no longer saw any reason to keep up appearances. I had tried so hard never to let him notice, yet everything I did had apparently been pointless. It was less infuriating than it was heartbreaking. All those years I had poured more effort into than studying or romance had become worthless. It felt as devastating as watching stocks get delisted.
“I want to drink until I can’t think anymore.”
Cha Jun-jae, eyes lowered, reacted to the word “drink.” He slowly lifted his head and met my gaze. Then, with lips that looked a little dry, he spoke.
“Me too.”
The answer drew a snort from me before I could stop it. Tonight was no longer my confession time. It had become Cha Jun-jae’s. I leaned closer to the table and pressed him.
“I hated you. You knew that. So why did you never once show it? Did it really not matter to you at all whether I hated you?”
“Eun-dam.”
Maybe it was the alcohol, but my mouth refused to stay quiet. The look in Cha Jun-jae’s eyes, the one that made people suspect he might be a masochist, suddenly changed. His gaze darkened like the night sea surrounding the island. It seemed to say: You have never seen the emotions I keep here. Deep, dark feelings buried by time. I didn’t know how to describe them. They were simply very effective at closing my mouth. Cha Jun-jae leaned toward the table just as I had. Before we realized it, we were nearly forehead to forehead like the couples at the other tables. The yellow lighting seemed to shine only on the two of us.
“I don’t mind that you hate me.”
“…You don’t mind?”
How could anyone not mind? If they were human. Being disappointed in a goldfish that fails to recognize its owner isn’t because one doesn’t understand a goldfish’s memory. Humans naturally develop some expectation of reward, large or small, when they pour affection into something. Though our relationship had never been entirely our own choice. Our parents had intervened as well. It sounded as if, since it wasn’t a bond built through mutual effort, it was fine to ignore it.
“How can it possibly not matter?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
It wasn’t a lie. Cha Jun-jae’s calm eyes refused to waver. The lead in this confession time had passed to him. After all, I had taken the role of the one asking absurd questions. Once again, I had been pushed out of the protagonist’s seat.
“I just—”
“Just… just what?”
Cha Jun-jae blinked slowly at my question. His unfocused eyes seemed to be looking at some scene from the past.
“I just realized I can’t endure the time spent apart from you.”
The moment those words reached my ears, my eyes, my mouth, every fine hair on my body rose in shock. I looked at Cha Jun-jae’s gradually lowering head from a different angle. Only then did I begin to understand the emotion held in his eyes.
“You can hate me. You can curse me. If you want, you can do anything you like.”
“…What?”
“Why did you come here?”
“…”
“For the past three months I’ve known. When I don’t see you, when I can’t meet you, I start to become strange.”
“…”
“If you want money, I’ll give it. It’s fine if we meet and do nothing. Tell me what you hate and I won’t do those things either.”
“…Cha Jun-jae.”
“So tell me.”
I couldn’t trace its origin. It was an emotion that had aged so long it had turned into madness.
“What I need to do to stay by your side.”