Chapter 172: Overlapping Shadows (3)
Chapter 172: Overlapping Shadows (3)
“…Stop saying such cheesy things. It’s embarrassing.”
“You’re wearing a mask and sunglasses anyway. You don’t even need to care about people staring.”
“But they already know it’s me.”
“How would they know?”
“Is there anyone else you’d be holding hands with besides me?”
There wasn’t.
Jo Minjoon simply looked at Kaya. At that moment, Kaya was extremely grateful for her sunglasses and mask. If her face had been exposed, she was not confident she could have responded casually to the way he was looking at her. Maybe it was because of her cold, but the hand Jo Minjoon was holding felt almost feverishly hot.
“Why did you stop contacting me?”
“Sorry.”
“Is it because of what you mentioned before? That something came up?”
Kaya did not answer. He did not really need to ask. There was only one reason she would avoid his calls and messages like that.
Kaya quickly slipped her free hand into the pocket of her hoodie. Jo Minjoon looked at her with concern.
“You’re cold, aren’t you? Should we go somewhere warm?”
“…Hey. Today’s high was twenty-seven degrees.”
“Oh. Right.”
Jo Minjoon answered with a foolish expression.
Ignoring the gazes around them and the smartphones pointed in their direction, the two walked casually as though no one else existed. It was only after they left the airport that they realised they did not actually have anywhere to go.
Jo Minjoon looked perplexed.
“Where should we go?”
“What? You came all the way here without even deciding that?”
“I didn’t know I’d actually get to spend time with you like this. But are you feeling all right? You seem to have a slight fever.”
Jo Minjoon placed a hand against her forehead, then touched the side of her neck to check her temperature.
Kaya stared at him incredulously.
“I understand the forehead, but aren’t you being a little too forward touching my neck?”
“I don’t know. I seem to remember someone kissing my neck last time.”
“What? Which bitch—” Kaya frowned for a moment before remembering what had happened in Florence. “…Oh. That was me.”
She muttered the last part with an oddly blank expression.
Jo Minjoon laughed.
“So what do you want to do? Rest? Go sightseeing?”
“I’m hungry. I want to eat.”
“Oh, I know a place. Kaya, do you want somewhere fun or somewhere fancy?”
Kaya took off her sunglasses. Her heavily made-up eyes glared at him.
“If you keep making fun of me, don’t blame me if I hit you.”
“And the place you brought me is a hot dog shop?”
“You said you were hungry. Besides, you’ll be surprised once you try it. This place is pretty famous in Los Angeles.”
The place Jo Minjoon had brought Kaya to was a single-storey restaurant downtown. Besides its hot dogs, it was known for Belgian-style chips and Belgian beer, but its most distinctive feature was the hot dogs themselves. Customers could choose from a wide variety of toppings, sauces, and sausages, although the sausages were clearly the restaurant’s greatest attraction.
Kaya stared at the menu in disbelief.
“Jalapeño sausage, Italian vegetarian sausage, apple sausage, mango sausage… snake sausage? What the hell is this place?”
“Isn’t it fun? I don’t think I’ll be able to stop coming here until I’ve tried every sausage they have.”
“…You were going to bring me here whether I chose fun or fancy, weren’t you?”
Jo Minjoon guiltily turned his head away.
After ordering, he took Kaya’s hand again and led her towards the far end of the counter, where they were least likely to attract attention. Once they sat down, however, he could no longer keep holding her hand, so he reluctantly let go.
Kaya noticed.
“You seem pretty used to this. Do you have a lot of experience?”
“No. I’ve never done this before.”
“You’ve never dated anyone?”
Jo Minjoon hesitated.
The thirty-year-old Jo Minjoon had dated before. The current Jo Minjoon had not.
He had no idea which answer he was supposed to give.
That hesitation alone was enough to make Kaya’s gaze sharpen.
“So you do have experience. Was she pretty?”
“…No. I don’t have any experience.”
“Now you’re lying too. I thought you said you wouldn’t lie to me.”
“I’m serious. I don’t have any. And in the first place, why am I having to defend myself over this?”
“You really don’t know why?”
“Yes. I’m asking because I honestly don’t know.”
At his genuinely puzzled expression, Kaya stared at him suspiciously.
Just then, a bald white man covered in tattoos approached carrying a plate of hot dogs, chips, and sauces. His arms were as thick as a woman’s thighs, but when he spoke, his voice was unexpectedly high.
“You came again, Minjoon. I saw the video after your last visit. Absolute taste, huh? Now that I think about it, you could probably identify every ingredient in these toppings and sauces.”
“Should I not eat them, then?”
“Of course you should. What kind of restaurant takes food away from a customer because his tongue is too sensitive? I’ll be happy if you enjoy it.” He glanced at Kaya. “Same goes for your girlfriend. Hope you two have a good time.”
Apparently, he did not recognise Kaya.
Perhaps he genuinely did not know who she was. Unless someone watched a lot of television, they might fail to recognise even a famous Hollywood actor. The only reason he had learned about Jo Minjoon’s absolute taste was because other customers had talked about it after Jo Minjoon’s previous visit.
Kaya watched him leave.
“…He didn’t recognise me.”
“Are you disappointed?”
“No. It’s actually kind of nice. He treated me like an ordinary customer. These days, wherever I go, people know I’m Kaya Lotus, and it gets exhausting. Besides, what they’re looking for is the Kaya Lotus they saw on television, not the real me.”
Kaya lowered her mask and took a bite of her hot dog.
She had ordered an apple-chicken sausage made from chicken marinated in apple sauce. It was topped with cinnamon-and-apple-jam sauce, bacon bits, and onion.
Jo Minjoon’s hot dog used lamb sausage with chipotle chillies, topped with diced bell pepper grilled in truffle oil.
(Translator’s Note: Chipotle — A ripe jalapeño chilli that has been smoke-dried, producing a distinctive combination of heat, sweetness, and smoke. The technique originated in Mexico and has roots in pre-Columbian Mesoamerican food-preservation practices.)
Just as Jo Minjoon was about to take a bite, Kaya’s eyes lit up as though she had suddenly remembered something.
“Anyway, let’s continue what we were talking about. You said you were asking because you didn’t know?”
Instead of answering, Jo Minjoon took a large bite of his hot dog.
Kaya stared at him for a moment, then suddenly leaned forward and bit into the opposite end.
The crisp bread compressed between her teeth, and for some reason, Jo Minjoon found himself noticing every detail. Her white teeth breaking through the sausage casing, the brief glimpse of her tongue as she ate—it all seemed to happen in slow motion. He felt strangely guilty, as though he were looking at something he had no right to find erotic.
He could not tell whether Kaya was actually eating slowly or whether his nerves were simply making it feel that way.
Kaya looked at him.
“Hmph. I’ll let you off because the hot dog is good.”
“You’re going to get me sick.”
“If you were worried about that, you shouldn’t have held my hand.”
“You can wash your hands.”
“…Oh, so you calculated all of that in advance?”
Kaya answered sarcastically.
Jo Minjoon sighed, then leaned towards the hot dog in Kaya’s hand and took a bite from exactly the same spot she had bitten.
Naturally, no system window appeared announcing something ridiculous like Kaya’s saliva has been detected as an ingredient.
Jo Minjoon looked at her.
Kaya looked back at him, visibly more nervous now.
“There. Now I’m definitely going to catch your cold. Thanks to someone.”
“…You said it would be fine if I took care of you.”
“Will you?”
“What about you? Will you take care of me?”
“If you want me to.”
Kaya smiled at his answer.
For a while, the two simply ate in silence. When they were almost finished with their hot dogs, Kaya finally spoke again.
“What if… hypothetically, I did something really terrible to you? What would you do?”
“What do you mean, what would I do?”
“Would you still see me again? Could you forgive me?”
Jo Minjoon could not understand why she was asking. As far as he knew, there was nothing she had done to him that should make her feel guilty.
He studied her quietly.
The smoky make-up around her eyes was sharp and clear, but her actual gaze was clouded with a worry he could not understand.
He answered while looking directly into her eyes.
“Depending on what happened, I might be able to forgive you or I might not. But I’m sure I’d see you again.”
“Why?”
“I don’t think I need to answer that.”
“…Yeah. I guess you don’t.”
Kaya fell silent again.
Jo Minjoon picked up a chip about the length of his finger, dipped it in wholegrain mustard, and ate it. It was surprisingly spicy. He dipped another one and held it towards Kaya.
She looked at it for a moment before opening her mouth like a baby bird.
Only after she had chewed and swallowed did she speak again, making her voice sound as casual as possible.
“My dad contacted me.”
Jo Minjoon’s expression stiffened.
He knew a little about Kaya’s father. The man had been violent and had disappeared after getting Grace pregnant with Gem.
Perhaps Kaya read his thoughts from his face, because she quickly added,
“Not that dad. My… biological father.”
“…Your biological father?”
“Yes. He contacted me. He said he wants to see me.”
Jo Minjoon did not know what to say.
He knew nothing about Kaya’s biological father. Perhaps the two had never met in his previous life, perhaps it had never become public, or perhaps Jo Minjoon had simply missed whatever article mentioned it.
This isn’t the time to think about that.
“What else did he say?”
What mattered was the present.
Kaya did not need the strange person from the future who happened to know things about her life.
She needed Jo Minjoon.
Kaya hesitated before answering.
“He said he doesn’t want anything. Not money or anything like that. He just wants a little time to meet me and talk.”
Jo Minjoon quietly looked at her.
He thought he understood why she had avoided him for so long.
She had wanted to overcome this by herself, without relying on him.
But she was not telling him now because she had given up on doing it alone. If anything, she was probably speaking because she had already managed to overcome part of it on her own.
Had she still been completely trapped by the problem, she might never have told him at all.
She might have taken it to her grave.
Jo Minjoon cautiously took her hand.
Kaya stared at a burnt chip on the plate.
“At first, I didn’t want to meet him. I waited almost twenty years, and now he thinks he can just show up and meet me whenever he wants? Thinking about that made me furious.”
“…But part of you still wants to see him.”
Kaya frowned.
The expression held sorrow and longing, a heart wavering with hope, and at the same time a desperate attempt to cling to her pride.
“I really, really hate him. How could I not? Someone abandoned his daughter and disappeared, and I’m supposed to call him my father? There’s no way I should want to see someone like that. After everything Mum went through raising me by herself, he suddenly comes back after all this time and says he wants to meet me just because we share blood. It makes everything feel too easy. Too light. It feels wrong.”
“It isn’t wrong.”
“…Why not?”
“Because no matter how badly you want to reject it, you’re still his daughter. I understand why you feel the way you do. In the end, the decision is yours and no one else’s. But Kaya, I just don’t want you to make a choice you’ll regret later.”
His words seemed to reach somewhere deep inside her.
Kaya remained silent for a while, then pulled out her phone as though she had finally made up her mind and called her agent.
“Yes, it’s me. Do I have anything scheduled tomorrow? Good. I need to meet my father. Tell him to come to Los Angeles by tomorrow. No, don’t buy him a plane ticket. If he really wants to see me, he’ll find a way to get here himself. Yes. Thank you.”
She hung up.
Jo Minjoon looked at her worriedly.
“…Are you sure it’s okay to decide something that important so suddenly?”
Kaya slowly shook her head and bit her lip. When she looked back at him, her eyes were wet.
“If I don’t decide now, I’ll just keep putting it off. And yes, I might swear at him when I see him. I’m pretty sure I could say every horrible thing that exists in this world. I’m not confident I’ll understand him at all. Because Mum was there, I never even had the chance to miss having a father. And he’s completely responsible for that. I don’t know if I could ever forgive the pain of what he did. But I still need to meet him.”
“You don’t have to forgive him. You don’t have to understand him either. If you want to swear at him, swear as much as you want. And if you want me there, I’ll stay beside you.”
Jo Minjoon spoke softly, his voice filled with concern.
Kaya looked at him with a sad smile.
“…Right. You said that before too. That you’d take care of me.”
Jo Minjoon only smiled.
Kaya’s gaze fell on the burn scar visible above his collar. She stared at it for a moment before speaking slowly.
“I’m saying this with completely innocent intentions, so listen to it like you’re a little boy.”
“…What is it?”
“You promised you’d take care of me. Keep that promise. I have a cold right now.”
“Sure. But what does that have to do with being innocent?”
“I want someone with me until the moment I meet my dad. No…” Kaya looked directly at him. “I want you beside me.”
She hesitated briefly before finishing.
“…Will you stay with me tonight?”