Traffic Accident
“…….”
“…….”
Lee Hyesun’s hand drifted slowly toward mine where it rested on the armrest. A thousand thoughts tore through my head, and in the end I didn’t pull away—not from her touch, and not from the small flame kindling in her eyes. The accident happened in an instant. Until her soft fingers met my little finger, time seemed to crawl, and it looked as if it were the same for her. Thirst gathered, little by little, in the eyes fixed on me. I was probably no different.
“……People can see us.”
“……Ah, I—I’m sorry…….”
Startled, she snatched her hand back from where it had barely brushed my little finger. I turned my head in the same moment, flushed with embarrassment, and just then the bell rang and the lights dimmed. I let my eyes adjust to the darkness that announced the start of the performance.
……The timing’s a mercy, at least.
If I didn’t get a grip, I was going to make a real mistake. The sexual tension between us just now ranked among the three thickest of my life—a jolt so strong it brought back the moment I’d first discovered how to get myself off. It was only a touch, and yet it felt like a single drop of water splitting a boulder. The wall I’d been holding up inside me cracked clean through.
“…….”
“…….”
We didn’t exchange a single word, so completely that the conversation we’d just had might as well have been a lie. Even so, I could tell what she was thinking. It was probably the same as me. Talking about Hyunji had given us common ground, and once she’d laid out the story of Lee Chul-young, we’d become two people sharing a secret that belonged to us alone. On top of that, the tender talk about Hyunji had tangled the affection she’d been aiming at her daughter with the gratitude she’d been feeling toward me, and the whole of it had swung in my direction. Even between friends, that was the kind of pattern that turned into desire.
……I’m losing my mind.
If we’d touched while talking about Hyunji in some ordinary seat, in an ordinary way, it wouldn’t have come to this. The fact that we’d ended up inside each other’s space—that close—had done its share. It was too late now. I’d already noticed the relationship had changed. From here on, for Hyesun and for me both, the switch that made us see each other as man and woman had been flipped.
The problem is…….
The problem was that I’d liked it. I couldn’t even tell whether a relationship like this was something this world accepted. All I had was a hunch that, in a world without legal marriage, it would simply be a matter between a man and a woman. I could feel that a crucial choice had arrived. Dragging it out and letting the moment go stale would only make things worse. We’d end up neither one thing nor the other, and someday that might wound Hyunji.
……There’s no way around it.
Thinking of Hyunji, I set my teeth again. If this had been my old world, I liked her enough that I would have bought a ring at that jewelry shop on the spot and proposed. But whichever choice I made, the odds were high that Hyunji would be hurt. She’d be hurt watching me unable to hold a proper conversation with Hyesun—or else she’d be hurt by a boyfriend carrying on a romance with her mother. If anyone asked whose fault this was, it wasn’t anyone’s. For Hyesun it had only been the natural current of feeling. If there was a fault, it was mine, for failing to see which way that feeling would turn. But how was I supposed to have predicted it?
Nobody’s to blame, and Hyunji’s the only one who gets hurt.
Then I’d rather—. I didn’t know whether I could patch it. It was absurd, but I had to do what I knew how to do. If there was any way to comfort Hyunji’s wound, I was the only one who could. If I paid her more attention—in bed, and in the daylight—maybe I could make it work somehow.
……I don’t know. Damn it. Changsu, this is your fault.
The pressure was dozens of times worse than the day I’d filled out my college applications. It was the feeling I’d had in high school, a relay runner in the instant before the baton hit my hand. You might fall. You might get passed. That was a relay. But you only found out by running. And if I had to run anyway, I was going to take the lead.
“……Hhk?!”
I laid my hand over Hyesun’s where it fidgeted on the armrest. She jerked like a fish struck by a harpoon, clapping a hand over her mouth and swallowing her breath. Then, in the look she turned on me—as if she couldn’t believe it—the flame spread all at once.
“……Isn’t this what you wanted?”
“……Ah, y-yes, that’s…….”
“I don’t know. I don’t know if this is something I can do to Hyunji. I don’t know how the world will see it, either.”
I turned my gaze and went on, watching the moist eyes she kept on me from behind her hand.
“I don’t want to hurt Hyunji by leaving us in a relationship that isn’t one thing or the other.”
“Ah…….”
“……Let’s see it through.”
“……Sh-Shinwoo…….”
And then, as I slowly stroked the back of her hand and slipped my fingers between hers—
“Nngh—!”
Hyesun kept her mouth covered, and her waist snapped. Her face was tipped toward some point on the darkened auditorium ceiling, and the tendons standing taut along that white nape made it impossible not to know why. I was a little startled, but not enough to panic. Her head had probably been a tangle too, and my touch had struck the nerve.
“……Haa, nnh…….”
“If holding hands is enough to make you feel it, what are you going to do from here on?”
“……B-but, but……. It’s too stimulating…….”
She’d turned into something like a girl in her twenties, answering thickly, drunk on pleasure, and for a moment I thought she was cute and offered her a smile. If I’d decided to floor the accelerator, I was going to keep my foot down.
“Hold it in. If you want Hyunji to see you coming undone in front of her, you don’t have to.”
By then the lights had come up on the stage, and the soft voice of the strings began to fill the hall.
“I-I will…….”
“Was it that good?”
“……Mm……. I—I didn’t know I’d feel it, either…….”
“I’m glad you liked it. Now let’s watch the performance.”
“……All right.”
I opened her hand—tense all the way through my palm—and took it again, properly. Her palm was slick with sweat, but far from unpleasant, the damp warmth of it felt good.
“Your hand is warm, Shinwoo…….”
“……Yours too, Hyesun.”
“……Ah…….”
I hesitated a moment, then shut my eyes and said her name. She let out a gasp and covered her mouth again. Her face had gone scarlet; she had become simply a woman, and I smiled at her gently before turning my eyes back to the stage.
……Not a chance any of this is going to register.
In a situation this stimulating, I silently ordered the little bastard—risen as if he meant to tear through my underwear and my trousers—to settle down, over and over. For this one moment, I was profoundly grateful for that ability.
“……Haa…….”
……I’m seriously losing it.
Hyunji’s turn didn’t seem to have come yet. Onstage a ballerina who looked like the lead and a single male dancer were performing, and beside me I clenched my teeth against the lingering breath of Hyesun’s pleasure and the scent of her perfume. Call me a madman if you want. My brain was taking a stimulus so deep it felt as if it might melt.
……I have to get a hold of myself.
Hyesun was already past the performance. All her attention was on feeling my hand. Even so, an adult was an adult—her control of her expression was impressive. The face she turned toward the stage was ordinary, but the flush of heat in her cheeks and the sheen on her skin were, from any angle, plainly full of excitement. I glanced behind us. I wasn’t sure it was a mercy, but no one was near. The closest person sat at least ten seats away.
“……If you can’t hold it, should I let go?”
“No. Don’t. I’m holding it just fine.”
“Your face, maybe. Your hand is soaked.”
“Don’t worry. I’m Lee Hyesun.”
“……Do you know you’re secretly cute?”
“Wh-what did you say?”
“Fidgeting with your hand like that while you wear such a proud face. It’s a little cute.”
“What am I supposed to do when it feels this good? My chest feels like it’s going to burst.”
“I like it too. Your hand is soft and warm.”
“……S-so this is how you bewitched my daughter?”
“Did I bewitch you?”
“……Mm. It sounds so good. Keep praising me.”
I kept whispering, smiling softly as I worked my fingers. Her touch stayed careful, though. I could feel her trying not to spoil my mood.
……Strange.
But the reason I kept whispering was mostly to learn how she felt about this relationship. If it was immoral the way it would have been in my old world, I really had to stop. I didn’t want to hurt Hyunji badly enough to take society’s condemnation for it. And yet Hyesun, as if she had no such worry at all, felt only my hand and smiled brightly at the stage.
……There’s nowhere to dig.
Given the Hyesun I’d come to know, I doubted that needling her with words would land. The more a try failed, the more the lead would blur, and that took me further from what I wanted. I’d have to come at it from the side.
“……Don’t worry about Hyunji. I’ll soothe her.”
“Why Hyunji?”
“……You don’t even feel sorry? Seducing your daughter’s boyfriend.”
“Seducing. You’re the one who tempted me, Shinwoo.”
I was about to shoot back what do you mean, but the way she went on—turning her eyes to me as if it were nothing—stopped the words in my throat.
“Who told you to fit my heart so perfectly?”
“That’s my line. Who told you to look at me that hot?”
“……I just like hearing this so much. My eyes—you liked them that much?”
“Yes. I could feel all of it. You wanting me.”
“That’s right. I’m holding back from dragging you to a hotel this instant.”
“Is this how you do romance, too? This direct?”
“Is that strange?”
“Not at all. It’s very you, Hyesun.”
Her eyes and her expression nearly collapsed again at her name, and she caught them. When I smiled at her gently, she bit her lip and whispered.
“……I told you.”
“Yes?”
“I told you about that man, Lee Chul-young. How was I supposed to date…….”
In that moment her pupils danced, as if she didn’t know where to put her gaze. So when she’d asked if it was strange, she had really been asking because she didn’t know. It was real, then. Hard to believe—but there it was.
“……You mean there was no one after Hyunji?”
“……There was no one before her, either.”
Then she’d gone this whole life without a single romance? That couldn’t be. That was something for the clergy. But only now did I notice the awkwardness in the way she flushed, and in the fidget of the hand gripping mine.
“What man in this country would approach the woman who’d belonged to Chairman Lee? Not unless he wanted to be buried. It was the same if I approached them. The moment they realized who I was, they startled out of their skins. Get refused like that a few times and it wounds you badly. So I lived as if I were mad for work. And it only got worse…….”
I wanted to ask whether she hadn’t thought of solving it with money, the way things went in my line of work, but her tone said no, and I’d watched how she reacted, so I believed her. Besides, I wasn’t tactless enough to bring that up in this mood.
“So do I get buried?”
“No. That man’s dead and gone. What would it matter? But now……. I’ve gotten old.”
“You haven’t.”
“……What?”
“You’re beautiful now. Enough that I couldn’t stand not touching you.”
“……Ah…….”
When I squeezed her hand and whispered it, her face went hazy and came apart for a moment. It really was true. I could feel it through her whole body—she had no immunity even to a whisper like this. And it was a little funny how her way of speaking, the way she felt it, this dreamy loosening of her expression, resembled Hyunji. Stimulating, too, to think this might be what Hyunji would look like a few years on.
“Do you know something?”
“……What?”
“Hyunji felt it too, on our first date. During the performance.”
“……Sh-she did……?”
“Does talk like this make you uncomfortable?”
“N-no. It’s just awkward.”
“Then I won’t.”
“……You can. The truth is, I don’t think I can hold it. I—I was just now, too……. It felt so good.”
As expected. Even after I’d told her about Hyunji, there wasn’t a trace of caution, or apology, or guilt. If anything, she took it as stimulation. I wondered whether I ought to put that down to Hyesun’s character, but that wasn’t it. She thought of it as something perfectly natural.