To the Butterfly with Broken Wings - 4
“Is holding hands not allowed?”
She squeezed my hand even tighter.
“Answer me.”
The strength in her grip was almost more than I could bear. Whether she wanted a quick reply or not, noona’s hand only grew stronger.
But this wasn’t something I should be answering.
“It’s not that, but… the way you’ve been acting like we’re lovers this whole time is a little ridiculous…”
“And what’s the reason I can’t? I’m Kang-to’s lover. No matter what anyone says…”
“It’s only been three days.”
“In those mere three days, Kang-to looked after me. In those three days, the one who gave me peace was Kang-to. No one else—only Kang-to!”
Jin-hee looked our way as if her head were throbbing.
“So what are you going to do about it? Do you agree with what she just said?”
Agree?
“…Yeah.”
“Then what do you want to do? If you send her to university like this, there’s going to be trouble. There’s no way of knowing why she changed this much—or even that she changed at all. So I don’t understand why she’s this obsessed with liking you either. That’s why I want to ask. Kang-to. Do you really like Na-bi unnie, or do you just feel sorry for her?”
As for that answer, of course—
“I love her.”
I could say it without hesitation. Why that was the case didn’t matter anymore.
Jin-hee’s eyes locked onto Na-bi noona.
“Then I’ve heard the circumstances too. Now I can finally ask. Na-bi unnie, why do you like Kang-to?”
“Is liking him not allowed? Is just liking him forbidden?”
“It’s not that. But at the same time, it is. That’s why I’m asking.”
“Asking what?”
“If the person you met back then hadn’t been Kang-to, would you still have fallen in love? You might have just been searching for somewhere to belong, right? So even if it hadn’t been Kang-to, you probably would have liked them anyway.”
That single sentence became the fuse.
The one line that should have been stopped lit something deep inside noona.
“No.”
The eyes that turned toward us then—
“It’s really not…”
—were reflecting something, but—
“No. I was happy because I had Kang-to. If someone else had taken that photo, I would have just run away. It was Kang-to. It was Kang-to. The one who came looking for me, who came to see me—it was Kang-to, and that’s why it was good.”
What shone in those eyes was a car racing through the night until dawn.
“If it hadn’t been Kang-to, I wouldn’t even have thought of meeting anyone. I met him because it was Kang-to. Because it was that kind Kang-to. What do you even know about him to talk like that? I met Kang-to earlier than you and knew him better. Who are you to claim you understand him?”
It was a car.
A runaway car.
Noona wasn’t even touching the brakes.
“Unnie? Hey—”
It wouldn’t stop.
No—because it had been touched, it refused to stop.
“Kang-to is the man I’ve known since I was six. Even when he introduced me to other kids, I never needed anyone but him. The reason I studied so hard, the reason I raised my grades that high—it was all for Kang-to.”
If you looked back, it was true.
After noona’s parents died, she had done everything desperately just to survive—studying, working part-time jobs, never missing a single thing.
‘You look tired these days? You’re the only one who ever says that to me. But what choice do I have? If I want to get into Hankuk University and work hard, this is the only way.’
‘Study, work, where’s the time to sleep? Sleep when you’re dead… or maybe sleeping doesn’t mean anything at all. Still, if I want to get into Hankuk, there’s no other way but to push myself, right? Or are you going to take responsibility for me?’
‘Well, you don’t have to take responsibility right now. For now, I mean~ Later, when we’re adults, just buy me a meal sometime~’
Hankuk University. The reason noona clung to it so fiercely was only one thing.
‘Why do I want to go there? It’s nothing special. I just wanted to become a woman someone could rely on.’
She had only wanted to become someone others could lean on.
That was all.
But for certain reasons, noona—
“But I failed. Everything failed. And even so, the only one who accepted me like this was Kang-to. So is liking him not allowed? Are we not allowed to like each other?”
“That feeling is just obsession.”
“I know. It’s obsession. But… but Kang-to… Kang-to accepted me. He didn’t run away when he saw the failure I’d become. He didn’t run away even when he saw me like this. Then… then isn’t that enough?! I… I… Kang-to, Kang-to, am I… am I that unnecessary to you? Is this just obsession? Is it only my obsession?”
In truth, it was obsession.
Anyone looking would see it as noona’s obsession.
But I was the one who had done it, wasn’t I? Chasing after her, wanting to know what had happened—
If you looked closely at everything I had done, in the end…
In the end, I was obsessed with noona too.
“No. It wasn’t just noona’s obsession.”
“Hey, Lee Kang-to! You—”
Jin-hee, who clearly had a lot more to say, only sighed and started drinking her coffee.
“I definitely heard about the side effects from Su-hyeon sunbae, but is this how it turns out… Hey, sunbae—does the side effect of that stuff the user took transfer to other people?”
She was asking whether the effects of the drug Na-bi noona had taken had somehow passed to me.
Even if they had, I still loved noona.
I still didn’t really know why.
There had clearly been something, but I couldn’t remember it.
I just… liked her, so I liked her?
“No. That’s impossible, and the effects don’t transfer through physical contact either. This is simply affection.”
“Affection?! So sunbae, you know exactly what happened to Na-bi unnie, you know everything that went on, and you’re still saying he loves her out of affection?”
“Is that not allowed?”
If you like someone, you can like them.
Su-hyeon sunbae said nothing more after that—as if he himself were living the same way and saw no reason it should be forbidden.
Then he took away the empty coffee cups.
And Jin-hee—
“Unnie, come with me for a second.”
She grabbed noona’s wrist as if she meant to drag her off by force.
In the end, noona simply followed.
“Wh-what are you… Ah. …Okay? Then I’ll go.”
“Ugh, why is everything like this here… I want some headache medicine…”
Na-yeon slammed her forehead against the desk a few times and then stopped moving.
“Ha. If we end today’s meeting like this, it’s obvious what’s going to happen, so I’ve got nothing left to say.”
“What… kind of thing is going to happen?”
“Are you seriously asking?”
Na-yeon looked at me, then at Na-bi noona.
“Why do you think Jin-hee came to see you today? She’s the one who got rejected by you and then gathered all the girls in our club for a drinking party.”
“So…?”
“Are you really that clueless about how this is going to play out, or are you just trying to piss me off?”
“Neither. Sorry.”
“If you know, then think a little before you open your mouth next time.”
Then she spoke again.
“Must be nice for you. Getting to watch a girl fight that only happens in romantic comedies.”
“What?”
“Jin-hee came to get another chance with you. Neither she nor this one over here ever imagined something like today would happen. And Na-bi noona probably didn’t either.”
A second confession, and a confession that we were already dating.
Whether we were truly dating or not, I still didn’t know—but my heart had only ever held one person.
“I want to be with Na-bi noona.”
“Yeah, your opinion never changes, does it. Fine, then let me ask you one thing. Why do you want to date Na-bi noona? There has to be a reason. Even if people say love doesn’t need a reason, something must have triggered it. What the hell was that trigger?”
That trigger.
Even if love itself needed no reason, there had still been a starting point.
“Honestly… honestly, I don’t know. Even when I first set out to find Na-bi noona, and even now when we’re living in the same house—I just thought I had to be by her side. Even without knowing why she felt so anxious, I still thought I had to stay next to her.”
“Okay, then if you go back to when you were kids, do you think the answer will come out?”
“I don’t know. To be honest, it won’t.”
Yeah. I was an idiot for expecting anything from you.
Na-yeon slammed her head against the desk again.
“Anyway, from now on there’s nothing I can do. And Na-bi noona saying she wants to go to school—can’t you talk her out of it?”
“…Why?”
“Looking at the state she’s in right now, do you really think she can attend school properly?”
Honestly, I felt the same.
Even cyber university would be fine—I just wanted her to finish somehow—but that probably wasn’t the path noona wanted.
Still, noona kept wanting to stay with me.
So what should my answer be?
“I’ll make it possible somehow. I’ll live with noona and do everything I can.”
“Really? You think you can? A butterfly that didn’t just fall into a swamp but into the ocean—one that can’t fly anymore because of the salt water—you’re going to make her fly again with your own hands?”
I still didn’t know what had happened to noona.
I still didn’t know what kind of disaster she had gone through.
But even so, the reason I wanted to attend university with her was only one thing.
I wanted noona to fly again.
Noona had said it herself—that even someone like her had been accepted by Kang-to.
Then making this version of noona fly again was my role.
Not anyone else’s—mine.
“Then the best you can do is going to be harsher than you ever imagined. I won’t understand why you decided to take noona outside no matter how many times I hear it. That’s only natural. But if you’ve made up your mind to do it, then from beginning to end you have to handle it yourself.”
The reason I had to take responsibility was only one.
“That’s your burden from now on. If you decided to pick it up for no reason, don’t even think about putting it down. Calling a person a burden might make you feel bad, but the character for ‘person’ is two people leaning on each other.”
Because I had decided to do it.
And so—
“I believe you’ll take good care of Na-bi noona. You might think I’m cold, but there’s basically nothing the rest of us can do for you.”
“…I know.”
Outside, the two of them were talking about something I couldn’t hear.
Just as I thought I should go stop them, she added one more thing.
“If you can, try hard all the way to the end.”