One Reason
I suspected something risqué might have happened when we woke up in the same bed. But he lay curled at the very edge, the blanket rolled into a tight bundle beside him, while I had kicked the covers off and sprawled diagonally across the other side. The sleepy “Ten more minutes” he’d mumbled when I woke him, the docile way he agreed to breakfast, the still-heavy look in his eyes—everything pointed to one obvious answer.
Cha Jun-jae, hidden behind black glasses and a baseball cap, was already on his third cup of bitter black coffee. The café specialized in lattes, yet here he was. In the early morning, the corner table without an outlet sat far from anyone’s notice. He cleared away the three mugs lined up beside my yogurt bowl. Apparently ravenous, he ordered a sandwich and yet another coffee. By the time he returned, I had already set down my spoon.
“Eating well this early?”
Irritation seeped into the motion as I pushed the yogurt bowl aside. Yesterday I had only guessed. Today I was certain. What Cha Jun-jae wanted from me wasn’t a woman. What he desired had nothing to do with sex. He simply wanted the human being named Song Eun-dam in his sights forever. Pure, unadulterated, without a single additive. That was why he had said it was fine even if I hated him. This was the morning after his bomb of a declaration, delivered in that take-it-or-leave-it tone. Neither of us could sit here lazily sipping coffee. In a way, I had been robbed of the spotlight of a lifetime yesterday.
Frustrated, I yanked off the cap I’d been wearing. I raked a hand roughly through my tangled hair and stared at him. Cha Jun-jae, biting into his sandwich and glancing my way, didn’t look fully awake. I’d thought he’d slept deeply. I’d even stolen the blanket, so I’d assumed he’d slept very deeply.
He gazed at the cat perched on the red roof outside the window, eyes unfocused. He seemed to have forgotten whether we were in Korea or on Dalos Island. My dissatisfied gaze wandered across his face until it caught on the sauce smeared beside his mouth. He had managed to get it everywhere, the slob. I didn’t know why it bothered me so much. Before I realized what I was doing, I reached out, wiped the corner of his lips, and brought my sauce-stained finger to my own mouth. Behind the lenses, Cha Jun-jae’s sleepy eyes flew wide open.
“Sorry. I can’t stand seeing stuff on people’s faces.”
The apology felt necessary. Cha Jun-jae stopped chewing. One cheek stayed puffed out, his eyes drowned in shock, and his lips remained slightly parted. His cheeks flushed the same pink I had seen last night. The changes were so raw, so unmistakable, there was no ignoring them.
And because of that, I was the one who ended up flustered.
“I overdid it, didn’t I.”
Even after the string of apologies, Cha Jun-jae remained frozen. The stiffer his posture became, the longer the silence and locked gazes stretched, the more often the café bell chimed.
In that moment I learned one refreshing truth.
Cha Jun-jae talked a big game, but he couldn’t do a damn thing to me.
For a long time he had been enemy number one, someone I had to avoid at all costs. Maybe because of the resentment I’d carried toward him, I had never once considered approaching him as a man and a woman. Besides, what would be the point? Thousands of moths already swarmed around Cha Jun-jae.
I had no desire to join that pathetic lineup. I refused to become like them, aching for scraps of love. But if our positions had reversed, the story changed. This side wasn’t the moth brigade. That side was the one begging to be looked at even once a month. Cha Jun-jae didn’t know himself at all. He didn’t know the part of himself that desperately wanted to steal the finger that had just wiped his mouth.
“Is it good?”
My belated question snapped him back. Cha Jun-jae swallowed the bite and answered without lifting his eyes.
“It’s… passable.”
“One bite.”
The root of the feeling that made him imitate me, follow me, cling to my ankles—it was worth studying. A fresh, green curiosity had bloomed toward the person called Cha Jun-jae. The vivid red emotion I felt toward him for the first time in my life was stirring in my chest, quietly drowning out my inferiority complex.
I opened my mouth shamelessly. Without hesitation, Cha Jun-jae handed the sandwich over. I took it and bit down once, then again. I ate messily, smearing sauce just as he had. Any other man would have snatched it back the moment I opened my eyes, but Cha Jun-jae gave it up with a mild expression. Instead he watched quietly—very quietly—then said,
“Isn’t it dirty? The sandwich.”
“…The sandwich?”
“I was eating it. Your mouth touched it too.”
I chewed and swallowed quickly, then shrugged.
“It tastes good. And it’s free. You know, right? That I crashed and burned spectacularly.”
After that we drank coffee and caught up on each other’s lives. It might have been the first truly normal conversation we’d had in years. Getting back to normal had been incredibly difficult and painful, but here we were.
Late last year he had won Best Supporting Actor at the Arts Awards. The film was praised for catching both critics and audiences. He had played a supporting role that felt like a lead. Around the same time, my own film was nominated at the Seoul Independent Film Festival. I wasn’t an actor. A senior had tempted me with the dual role of assistant director and co-writer, and I had taken the bait.
Back then I had been working in the directing department before my uncle used a connection to get me into a company. I quit without hesitation and spent the entire year with senior Eun-i making that film. There were almost no theaters willing to screen it, so no money came in. Most of the public didn’t even know the movie existed. Still, we decided any award would count as success. It would be our first step as directors, after all. Yet even the honor of a nomination proved to be our limit. Miraculously, we didn’t win a single prize.
I had stormed out of the company swearing I would show them something, only for the result to fall short. Deeply discouraged, senior Eun-i announced she was quitting filmmaking and returned to her hometown to tend the grape fields.
Left alone, I rushed to prepare the next project. A small production company I had ties to liked my scenario and offered me the director’s chair. But the offer was pushed back—start in March, wait until May—until it fell through again and again. Around autumn, just as I decided to travel for the sake of my mental health, a modest investment came through like a miracle. The talkative, trouble-ridden shoot was locked in for next year. Movies cost a fortune. A serious fortune. Cold reality stared me in the face.
“I like free things because I’m broke. From now on, whenever we meet, you’re buying all the food. You’ve got plenty of money.”
After many twists and turns I had managed to enter the same university and department as Cha Jun-jae. He majored in acting, I in directing. He got in through early admission, I through the regular exam. Even so, once I jumped into the film world, I was grateful for my talent in directing. Film director. It sounded cool, didn’t it? I wanted to become a master who used, commanded, and taught actors like Cha Jun-jae at will while sweeping every international award. Reality, however, was a penniless rookie director begging actors to buy her meals. As if my meager talent ended here. As if his lofty talent floated somewhere far above.
“Why do you think it failed?”
I had been playfully refusing to return the stolen sandwich. Was he really asking the assistant director of a failed film to dissect every reason for its failure right to her face? I gave a bitter smile meant to tell him to drop it. Cha Jun-jae refused to back down, his gaze calm and steady.
“Audience numbers don’t determine a film’s worth. Record barely had any theaters screening it.”
“……”
“Yet it still got nominated. The only shame is that it released too late.”
This time I was the one left stunned. An earthquake must have shaken my eyes as I slowly set the sandwich down. When old classmates who knew I had worked with senior Eun-i offered polite remarks like “I saw it, it was good,” that was already lucky. Some delivered harsh criticism, others blamed the current film market, still others sneered that audience taste was garbage. All of them claimed they were trying to help, yet none of it helped. We had been torn apart—I ended up on Dalos Island, senior Eun-i back in her hometown. The thought that this same cycle repeated with every film was simply horrifying.
And today I was being comforted by the voice of Cha Jun-jae, the man I had hated with every fiber of my being.
“Eun-dam’s movie is… how should I put it…”
The words that followed from Cha Jun-jae were,
“Watching it makes me want to live.”
In the end, he wrung tears out of me after all.