Unwelcome Reunion
The hotel where we had spent our pleasant time was a fairly sizable place that had recently opened in Suwon.
Naturally, it was overwhelmingly more expensive than a motel. There was no short-stay option either. Still, that was only in comparison to motels; next to the hotels in Seoul, it remained quite cheap.
I had told the taxi driver to take us to the best hotel in Suwon, so Yoo Dajeong shouldn’t have any complaints. I was the one who had boasted that my lower half was throbbing with need. If it had been a place charging millions of won a night, we would have been in real trouble.
Was that the reason? When we stepped out into the first-floor lobby, several familiar faces came into view. Members of Diamond Guild who had chosen this hotel as their lodging for the night were right there. They seemed to be just returning from dinner. As expected of a famous major corporation in the industry, they had picked the finest hotel nearby.
“Huh? Dajeong? I was wondering where you’d disappeared to, and here you are. What about dinner?”
“Yeah. I was just about to go eat.”
“What? This girl got herself a man?”
There were people Yoo Dajeong knew.
“Junghyeok…?”
There were people I knew as well.
“Why the hell are you here…?”
And a woman I knew all too well. The woman who had left me less than a week ago. The woman who had cheated with that bastard Min Hyeokju. It was none other than Shin Haneul.
At the moment Yoo Dajeong was off chatting with her company colleagues, briefly separated from me. I couldn’t understand why that felt like a relief. It wasn’t as if I’d been caught cheating, and I was already single.
I looked at Shin Haneul standing before me with a stunned expression. A pain like something carving into my chest rose up, sharp and faint. My heart was racing, yet it felt irregular, as if it had broken somehow.
Ah… so this is how it feels.
The feeling of meeting the ex-girlfriend who cheated and ran away.
“Ah… l-long time no see.”
“Why are you here, I asked?”
“Why? Am I not allowed to come to a hotel?”
I didn’t even know what I wanted to say to Haneul. Only an inexplicable irritation kept welling up. I had not the slightest desire to start over, yet I felt I could have spoken more kindly. This mouth of mine simply refused to move the way I wanted.
I had been at fault with her—that much was true. But I did not believe that fault was large enough to forgive her cheating. It had been the final test. Couldn’t she have understood just once? I wanted to ask, yet my lips would not part.
“That’s not what I mean. Why are you here? This isn’t even Seoul. Don’t tell me you followed me?”
Ugh. What kind of delusion was this girl having now?
“What are you talking about. Why would I follow you? You saw the news today, right? The Hwaseong Gate. Our company is involved, so I came.”
“Ah… I see. Huh? Then maybe…”
“Yeah. I met your wonderful boyfriend too.”
“……”
The reason Shin Haneul was at this hotel was obvious. That bastard Min Hyeokju had called her. Otherwise she would never be here. Strictly speaking, she was also a Diamond Guild employee, so I ought to consider the possibility she had come for work—but in that case we would have run into each other at the gate first.
By the way, why had that fucking bastard summoned her when his mana was already gone?
“I’m sorry. I really wanted to apologize to you.”
“No, it’s fine. I’m not affected at all, so just worry about your own future.”
“What?”
“Hoo… never mind. Just live happily. Don’t think about me. Or do you feel some kind of guilt toward me?”
“……”
I looked at Shin Haneul hanging her head dejectedly. At least she seemed to know she was in the wrong. If she was going to feel guilt, she should never have done it in the first place. It wasn’t as if I had committed some unforgivable crime. If she hadn’t liked me, she should have broken up first and then met another man. Instead, like someone waiting for me to make a single mistake, she had cheated with another man at the exact same time she took the mana test—and with an Awoken, the very thing I had so desperately wanted to become.
Haa… I wanted to pour out every curse I knew, but I held back because we were in a hotel lobby.
By the way, she looked unrecognizably different. She was dressed so gorgeously that one would say she matched this luxurious lobby perfectly. A look I had never once seen in the two years we dated. Even when she dressed up in the early days, it had never been this much. Money really was something else. She looked like a completely different person.
“If you’ve got nothing to say, I’m going. I’m hungry.”
“Uh… yeah.”
As I turned to leave, Yoo Dajeong trotted over to my side.
“Junghyeok-ssi. Who is this person? Don’t tell me you couldn’t wait even a little while and already cheated?”
“No. Just someone I know a little. She’s from Diamond Guild, but you don’t seem to know her?”
“Hey, our company is huge.”
Yoo Dajeong clung to one of my arms like a child. The expression on Shin Haneul’s face when she saw that was truly a masterpiece. If I had to put it into words, it wasn’t exactly triumph, yet I felt as though I had somehow paid back a fraction of what I had suffered without even realizing it. Did she understand my feelings a little now?
Right in front of Shin Haneul I exchanged affectionate-seeming conversation with Yoo Dajeong. Even so, the way she kept watching us bothered me.
“Hmm? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Let’s go eat now.”
“Kang Junghyeok, wait a minute. Who’s the person next to you? Introduce me too.”
Suddenly Shin Haneul spoke in a dry voice. My ex-girlfriend and the woman I had met for the first time today and slept with. It was a story with me at the center, yet I felt as if I had been dragged into some absurd situation.
“Ah… same company as you…”
“Hello. I’m Yoo Dajeong. Do you work at our company?”
“Yes. I’m Shin Haneul.”
They were only ordinary greetings, yet somehow sparks seemed to fly between the two women. Yoo Dajeong, who had been holding my arm, suddenly linked arms with me completely, and Shin Haneul glared at me rather than at her.
“What kind of relationship are you two in?”
“Ah, I’ll explain. With Dajeong-ssi, today…”
“We’re that kind of relationship? Why do you ask? Can’t you tell from us being together at the hotel?”
Haa… why was this woman Yoo Dajeong doing this again? What on earth was I even doing here right now? A sudden headache seemed to strike, and I pressed a hand to my forehead.
“That kind of relationship? Hey, Kang Junghyeok. You tell me. What’s going on here? Did you cheat?”
“What does that have to do with you? And you’re the one who cheated.”
“Why is that coming up now? Excuse me—Dajeong-ssi, was it? When did you start seeing him?”
Ah… the situation was really flowing in an absurd direction. Still, Yoo Dajeong seemed to have roughly figured out the relationship between Shin Haneul and me. She sent me a meaningful look, as if asking how I wanted her to answer.
I would have to answer myself.
“I met Dajeong-ssi today. Do you think I’m like you?”
“Don’t lie, Kang Junghyeok. With your personality, you came to a hotel with a woman you just met?”
“What’s my personality like? Should I have cried my eyes out, stopped eating and drinking, and just lain around because my girlfriend cheated and ran away?”
“Lower your voice. Our company people are here.”
“You know how to feel shame, I see?”
Irritation surged up and I raised my voice. Everyone in the hotel lobby—Diamond Guild members, other guests, even the hotel staff—turned their eyes toward us. Perfect. Now the whole neighborhood would hear about it.
“Whether I met Dajeong-ssi yesterday or today and came to the hotel, what the hell does that have to do with anything? We’re already over. Or are you trying to pin cheating on me too so you can console yourself that I was a bad guy anyway and you’re not guilty of anything?”
“How can you say that? I was still always worrying about you…”
“Don’t make me laugh. If you were worried, you shouldn’t have cheated from the start.”
“There are too many people here, so let’s go outside and talk.”
“No. From now on I’m going to have dinner with Dajeong-ssi. I used up too much upstairs, so my stomach is empty.”
Shin Haneul made an incredulous face at my words. Deliberately, right in front of her, I pulled Yoo Dajeong—who had been quietly linking arms beside me—into a tight embrace around the waist. The expression that crossed Shin Haneul’s face then openly advertised how unpleasant she found it. Not good enough to keep for herself, yet too good to give to someone else—was that it? I snorted in disbelief.
“Dajeong-ssi. Let’s go. Let’s eat something delicious.”
“Yes.”
I had come downstairs feeling good after the hot time we had spent above. I felt sorry to Yoo Dajeong that an unwelcome guest had turned things into this mess. Moreover, it had ended up looking as if I had used her in my dealings with Shin Haneul. I would at least have to buy her something delicious.
I turned around calmly. I saw Shin Haneul’s lips trembling as if she wanted to say something, but I ignored it. I hoped this would put an end to everything between us. I had become a different person from the past, and I intended to live in a completely different way from now on.
I thought the matter would pass quietly like that—yet who could have known this was only the beginning.
Yoo Dajeong and I left the hotel and, as if nothing had happened, found a decent restaurant and enjoyed a pleasant dinner. I had worried there might be nowhere open so late, but we discovered a place that suited us perfectly, which was truly fortunate. Yoo Dajeong hopped around happily like a child, and the sight even made me feel as though some pure-hearted feeling of my own was reviving—an illusion, of course. The only flaw was that it wasn’t pork belly with soju.
Up to that point everything had been good. The problem began the moment we returned to the hotel.
Shin Haneul was still waiting for someone in the lobby, exactly as she had been before we left for dinner. I wondered for a second whether she had been waiting for us—no, for me. That, too, turned out to be a misconception.
Right after we stepped into the lobby, another person entered. He was the very person she had been waiting for, and someone I also knew.
“Hyeokju oppa!”
Shin Haneul called Min Hyeokju in a highly excited voice, as if she wanted me to hear it. The whole display was exaggerated, clearly meant to be shown to Yoo Dajeong and me. The instant she called him “oppa,” I realized she had not called me that even once today. We were the same age, but my birthday came earlier, and I had always had a romantic attachment to being called oppa, so I had wanted her to address me that way.
Ah. Now her oppa was no longer me. I fully understood that fact for the first time. I keenly felt that we had become complete strangers.
“Junghyeok-ssi. What’s wrong? Is it because of those people?”
“No. Let’s go up.”
I tried to simply ignore them. After all, I had already taken my revenge. Min Hyeokju was no longer an Awoken. The man Shin Haneul had cheated with was now an ordinary civilian. He might still have money saved up, but a man who had lost every ability he once possessed as an Awoken could never live a proper life from here on. So I would ignore them and live my own life.
But then—
Slap!
Min Hyeokju struck Shin Haneul across the cheek. The sound was so loud it carried all the way to where we stood in front of the elevators.
“O… o-oppa… what are you doing…?”
How hard had he hit her? Shin Haneul could not withstand the heavy palm of the suddenly violent, sturdy man and collapsed to the floor. Clutching her struck cheek, she looked up at the man who had attacked her.
“Fuckin’ bitch. This ish all your fault. You know?”
Min Hyeokju was heavily drunk. Had he gone on a binge because he could not endure the loss of an Awoken’s power?
The elevator I had called had already arrived, yet I did not step inside. I kept staring toward the lobby. Hmm… of course, how that bastard lived from now on was none of my business.
“Ah, it hurts… please let go… why are you so drunk!?”
“You crazy bitch, you wanna die?”
Raised voices continued without pause in the lobby. Security approached, but upon recognizing that he was an Awoken of Diamond Guild they could neither intervene nor leave. Ah—was it because of the jacket he wore, the one with the Diamond logo? I recalled hearing that only Awoken were allowed to wear the Diamond Guild member uniform.
Min Hyeokju did not stop. One of his hands had been gripping Shin Haneul’s hair the entire time, and she simply cried and endured every humiliation. The scene had already dragged on for several minutes.
“I’m sorry. Dajeong-ssi, go up first. I’ll come soon.”
“What are you planning to do? You know that man is an Awoken, right?”
I pretended not to hear Yoo Dajeong’s voice and walked out toward the lobby. I could not simply leave Min Hyeokju and Shin Haneul like that.