A Name Like a Spell
Yeo-won was only flustered for a moment before she quickly grasped the meaning behind his words.
Given his impressive history of interrupting her, it wasn’t all that surprising. Just a little annoying, that was all.
Shin-wol added in a grumbling tone.
“You called me by name earlier.”
“Earlier?”
Yeo-won searched her memory at his remark. Now that he mentioned it, she recalled that when Shin-wol had come to fetch her earlier, he had only used her name. But that had been nothing more than a temporary measure to soothe him when he looked displeased. The situation now was entirely different.
“Ah, that was—”
“Call me by name.”
Yeo-won opened her mouth to explain, but Shin-wol was faster. He leaned back lazily in his seat and tilted his head at an angle. Even that quiet motion carried an eerie sense of pressure, and she unconsciously tensed.
“Go on.”
He urged her in a low, coaxing voice. Perhaps because the bus was dark, the golden light seeping into his eyes stood out clearly.
It was only a name. She should have been able to say it easily, yet for some reason her lips refused to move. After fidgeting with her pursed mouth, Yeo-won finally frowned and spoke.
“It still feels a bit…”
“Why?”
“It just doesn’t seem proper.”
“Hah.”
He let out an open scoff, then glared at her with clear displeasure. Yeo-won pressed her lips tightly together and avoided his burdensome gaze.
She simply felt that way.
Shin-wol had lived through an abyss of time too vast to measure, and the natural grace and majesty that radiated from every inch of him made people shrink back instinctively. Testing it once or twice might be fine, but continuing to call him by name felt strangely uncomfortable.
Yet Shin-wol, who could not possibly understand her heart, was simply irritated that she kept drawing lines between them.
She called both Cheong-sil and Dan-i by name, so why was he the only one denied that intimacy?
He swept his hair back in annoyance and muttered sharply.
“You did it earlier as well, yet now you openly treat me like an old man.”
Startled, Yeo-won looked at him again and shook her head.
“What? That’s not it at all. And when did I ever call you old?”
“Whether you say ‘sir’ or ‘old man,’ it amounts to the same. Before long you’ll be calling me ‘old geezer.’”
His strangely persistent attitude left Yeo-won visibly flustered. She could not fathom what he had latched onto so stubbornly.
If one were to be precise, she had merely added the honorific “nim.” Even now she was not truly calling him by name. Nevertheless, something about it clearly displeased him.
What an odd stubborn streak.
Watching him wear that unusually sulky expression, Yeo-won suddenly felt laughter bubbling up. Just a little—truly just a little—she thought he was cute. In the end she let out a soft laugh and patted the back of his hand in a soothing gesture.
“Why are you sulking over something so trivial? Calling you by name alone feels too much like speaking down to you, so I’ll call you Mr. Shin-wol. Is that acceptable?”
He gave no reply. Still, she could more or less tell. It was not entirely satisfactory, but it seemed to pass.
“Though I do feel a bit wronged. I don’t recall you ever calling me by my name, Mr. Shin-wol. Do you even know it?”
She spoke as though resentful, yet her voice carried an irrepressible hint of playfulness. It had been retaliation for the way he had teased her earlier, but the moment his face grew serious, regret flooded in.
She had asked on a whim, yet perhaps he truly did not know. Come to think of it, he had only ever called her “child” or “you.” It seemed he had never once used her name.
His lips remained firmly closed. Staring at those beautiful, tightly pressed lips, Yeo-won felt an unexpected ache in her chest. The silence itself seemed to answer for him.
She forced the corners of her mouth upward and waved her hands.
“Ah, never mind. I was just jok—”
Her hand, slicing through the air, froze mid-motion. She stared at him with a faintly stunned expression.
The instant their eyes met, it felt as though time had stopped.
His lips traced a perfect curve. The corners of his eyes folded like crescent moons. Within them, irises mingled with brown and gold sparkled as brilliantly as the moon itself.
With a face so distant it seemed unreachable no matter how many lifetimes one lived, in a voice as clear and still as the night sea, he whispered.
Nothing more than her name, yet Yeo-won’s throat tightened as though she had longed to hear it for an eternity. It felt as if every tangled thread inside her had snapped apart and then rewoven itself into a single cord.
And at the same moment, she understood.
He truly was a fox. A cunning fox that bewitched human hearts.
She could finally grasp, at least a little, why the nine-tailed fox appeared in so many old tales as the root of all evil. Without such language, these beings would remain forever out of reach.
The unfamiliar, intoxicating beauty that refused to let the eye turn away—if one were human, one would gladly drown in it rather than refuse.
Yeo-won clenched her weakening fingers tightly, struggling to hold onto her senses. Yet if she kept looking at him, nonsense would surely spill from her lips, so she turned her head away.
“It was a joke. Just keep calling me the way you always have.”
She tried to sound casual, but her voice trembled ever so slightly. The heat blooming across her face burned unmistakably.
It was fortunate the bus was dark. Otherwise he would have seen how red her ears had become.
Yeo-won pressed a hand to her chest. To calm her wildly racing heart, she gazed out the window and swallowed repeatedly.
Her reflection in the glass between the curtains revealed every thought on her face. Fearing Shin-wol behind her might notice, she drew the curtain shut.
They were almost at Inwol.
Until they arrived, she could only pray desperately that both her burning face and the heart pounding all the way to her skull would settle down as though nothing had happened.
*
After many twists and turns, the bus finally reached the Inwol terminal.
A glance at her watch showed it was already well past eleven, and the passengers all looked thoroughly exhausted.
Yeo-won was no exception.
It had been an exhausting journey in every sense.
When she looked back, Shin-wol was ducking as he stepped off the bus. A timely breeze lifted the bangs that had half-covered his forehead, making them sway gently.
As if the motion annoyed him, the simple act of brushing them back drew every remaining eye in the terminal. No matter how many hours they had spent on the bus staring at that face, it was not a countenance one could grow accustomed to.
Yeo-won barely composed her expression and headed for the exit.
“Now that I think about it, you took the bus again?”
“We promised to travel this way.”
“I thought you disliked buses?”
“It is less dislike than discomfort. I have rarely sat in such a cramped space.”
“Ah, that makes sense. Inwol is so far away that sitting for a long time does make your backside sore.”
“Far, is it? Yes… this is what you call far.”
Shin-wol murmured quietly, as though he had learned something new. Seeing him like that, Yeo-won felt secretly relieved. The conversation was flowing more naturally than she had expected. Just as she was thinking how fortunate that was, a low chuckle drifted down from above her head.
Yeo-won looked up reflexively and met his gaze.
“Still, it was not entirely unpleasant. Having you beside me kept the journey from growing dull.”
At that moment a strong wind rushed past. Yeo-won’s hair whipped wildly in every direction before settling again like dissipating foam. Shin-wol reached out and carefully plucked the stray strands clinging to her forehead, one by one.
“It proved a rather enjoyable experience.”
His voice, meant for her ears alone, sank heavily into her chest. At the same time, the image of him wearing a sorrowful expression while thinking of Mun-a flashed through her mind.
If I die, will he sit alone in that palace and remember me?
Will he recall today?
And like that, playing baduk with no opponent, will he pass decades… centuries…
Yeo-won sucked in a sharp breath and turned her head to escape his hand.
Realizing her mistake, she hastily combed her hair with her fingertips and laughed awkwardly to cover it.
“Then I’m glad. There’s a hotel nearby—shall we head there?”
Shin-wol’s hand paused briefly, then slowly fell. He was far too perceptive not to have noticed that she had pulled away. Yeo-won looked at him, silently begging him to pretend he had not.
Whether the plea reached him or not, he simply nodded without a word.
Yeo-won smiled in relief and tugged at his sleeve.
At that instant, a cold droplet struck the bridge of her nose.
“Huh?”
She tilted her head toward the sky. The night was so thick with storm clouds that even the moon had vanished.
Plop. Drop.
One by one the droplets began to wet the ground, then without warning the rain crashed down in a fierce torrent.