Rendezvous (6)
Even after she finished cleaning the floor, Yoon Seo-a did not stop. She lifted my limp, spent body onto the other bed and went so far as to strip and replace the sheets that had been thoroughly soaked from our earlier activities.
The practiced ease of it was so absurd that the question slipped out before I could stop myself.
“You’re really not a first-timer at this. Don’t tell me I’m not the only one you’ve done this to?”
“Is that about after I enrolled here, or before?”
“…Never mind. I shouldn’t have asked.”
When I answered in a weary voice, Yoon Seo-a gave a soft little laugh.
“Don’t worry. Since enrolling at Private Acacia, it’s only been you. Oh—wait. Was that jealousy rather than concern?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You think I’d get jealous over something like that?”
I might have felt pity or sympathy for whoever else had the misfortune of getting caught by Yoon Seo-a, but jealousy? That was pure nonsense.
I made no effort to hide my irritation. Yoon Seo-a finished aligning the corners of the fresh sheets, straightened, and spoke.
“Just kidding. I know better than anyone that Ha-eun wouldn’t get jealous. We’re not that close yet, after all.”
“You don’t need to add ‘yet.’ It’s never going to happen.”
“You never know.”
She winked. A full-body shudder ran through me. As I wrapped my arms around myself and stared at her as if she were something repulsive, she came closer, perched on the edge of the bed, and asked,
“Is that all you’re curious about?”
“You talk like you’d actually tell me if I asked.”
“Yes. If Ha-eun is curious about something, I’ll tell you everything.”
“…What?”
What kind of sudden change of heart was this? I stared at her with open suspicion. She only smiled.
“I believe that with the person who will become mine, there should be no secrets. Of course, Ha-eun shouldn’t hide anything from me either. That’s how perfect mutual trust is built.”
“I’m not a thing. And I still don’t know whether I’ll even become yours, so where does this confidence come from—telling me everything?”
“Not confidence. Certainty. Ha-eun becoming mine is simply an inevitable fact.”
Hah. Is that so.
“Then tell me one of your weaknesses. Make it as fatal as possible.”
“Ha-eun really does hate me, doesn’t she? Even though you were moaning so much in bed.”
“Wouldn’t it be weirder if I liked you?”
And the sounds I made in bed were unavoidable. That wasn’t a sensation you could simply will yourself to resist.
I glared at her venomously. Yoon Seo-a only shrugged.
“All the people I’ve liked before liked me back, you know.”
“Maybe they did. I don’t. So cut the crap and spill your weakness.”
“Alright. Then would you lend me your ear for a moment?”
“What are you trying now?”
“Because it’s a secret. If anyone overheard, it would be a disaster. The only person I want to tell is Ha-eun.”
We were the only two people in the infirmary—who exactly was supposed to overhear? But if I refused, she would only start saying something even stranger, so I reluctantly nodded.
Seeing my permission, Yoon Seo-a slowly approached and cupped a hand around my ear. I swallowed hard and waited.
“My weakness is… my clitoris.”
“…Huh?”
The words she whispered were so absurd that I felt like an idiot for having tensed up listening.
I turned my head with an expression of pure disbelief. She smiled sweetly.
“More than touching my breasts or inside my vagina, if you just gently caress my clit, the climax builds right away.”
“That’s not the kind of weakness I was asking about?!”
Sure, it could technically be called a weakness—but that was not what I wanted! When I shouted in outrage, Yoon Seo-a giggled.
“Hehe. I know. I know that’s not the kind of story Ha-eun wanted. But you should understand—saying I won’t hide anything doesn’t mean I’ll volunteer information you didn’t even ask for.”
“You’re just playing word games…!”
“So from now on, when you ask something, it would be better to be specific and clear.”
I swallowed the seething anger and tried again.
“Fine. Then I’ll say it properly this time. Tell me a weakness that could lead you in the most unfortunate direction possible. Exclude anything sexual or anything like it!”
“Ha-eun, you’re scary.”
“Say that after changing your expression.”
She had the face of someone watching a pet do tricks—what was supposed to be scary about that? At my rebuke, Yoon Seo-a smoothly switched to a prim expression.
“Alright. Since Ha-eun wants my weakness so badly, I’ll tell you. My weakness is my father.”
“Be more specific.”
“If everything you’ve suffered at my hands reached my father’s ears, I would become as unfortunate as Ha-eun wants.”
“More nonsense…”
I was about to snap back when a scene suddenly flashed through my mind—the conversation between the doctor and Yoon Seo-a.
If the old master finds out, he’ll raise hell again.
It’s fine. Father dotes on me terribly.
Come to think of it, the doctor had said “again.” This wasn’t a one- or two-time thing; she had been caught by her father and scolded multiple times.
But for all that, Yoon Seo-a hadn’t seemed particularly afraid. Was it a lie after all?
When I looked at her with open suspicion, she said,
“Hmm. It seems you don’t believe me.”
“I already heard from your own mouth that your father dotes on you terribly. Of course it’s hard to believe he’s a weakness.”
“Now that you mention it, I did say that, didn’t I?”
Yoon Seo-a clapped her hands as if she had completely forgotten.
“You said there might be things you don’t say, but nothing you hide. Did you lie?”
“Of course not. That Father dotes on me terribly, and that if everything so far reached his ears I would become unfortunate—both are true.”
“Both are true?”
“Yes. Hmm… where should I start….”
Resting her chin on her hand and tapping her fingers lightly, Yoon Seo-a slowly began to speak.
“In middle school, there was a girl I liked for the first time. Not as much as me, but she was quite pretty. I wanted to have her, and I did. Luckily, she liked me too.”
She had been doing this since middle school? Yoon Seo-a continued without noticing the strange look I was giving her.
“We were like that for a while, until one day Father called me to his study. Before I even sat down, he said to me—”
She looked straight at me.
“‘I’ve heard the story. This father of yours has taken care of it properly, so something like that will never happen again.’ I left the study without even understanding what he meant. What do you think happened after that?”
“…What happened?”
“The girl I liked and her entire family vanished overnight.”
Vanished? At that chilling word I froze. Yoon Seo-a laughed lightly and waved it off as if it were a joke.
“Of course, I don’t mean vanished in a scary way. The next day at school they said she’d transferred. Sudden family circumstances—moved to a completely different region. Even though there had been no talk of it until the day before.”
“Something like that happening overnight—you couldn’t not know why. It was right after Father told me that.”
“After that, all the servants who attended me were replaced. People I’d known for years, and I never heard a word about where they went. Just like that girl.”
“As time passed I made several more people I liked, but every time it reached Father’s ears, the same thing repeated. And each time Father would comfort me, saying, ‘It’s not your fault. The people teaching you wrong things are the ones who are wrong.’”
“Isn’t it funny? I was the one who approached them and formed the relationships because I wanted to.”
Indeed—if that was true, I understood what “dotes on me terribly” meant. And why her father was a weakness.
Was this what twisted paternal love looked like? As the thought settled, a sudden question slipped out.
“Wait. Then even if I tell your father, the one who ends up suffering is me, right?”
“And I’d become unfortunate too. Because I wouldn’t be able to see Ha-eun anymore….”
The way she trailed off as if the mere imagination made her sad looked utterly detestable. She wouldn’t get a single scratch—how was that a weakness?
“Something else! Isn’t there something else? Where I’m fine and only you get hurt!”
“I like how direct Ha-eun is being, but unfortunately my goodwill ends here. If you want to hear more… you know, right?”
“That again?”
Does she never get tired of it? I grumbled as I sat up and grabbed the clothes hanging on the curtain rod.
“I’ve thought this for a while, but your approach is all wrong from the start.”
“My approach?”
“If you want to make me yours, you should earn my goodwill. Who would want to become yours if all you do is grab weaknesses and shake them?”
“Everyone did, though.”
At her casual tone I clicked my tongue without meaning to.
“That’s not becoming yours in any real sense. That’s just a slave following because they have no choice.”
“Hmm… So if I start treating you well from now on, you’d become mine?”
“You think that happens overnight?”
After zipping up my skirt, I turned to face her.
“People never forget pain, even if they experience it for just a moment. We evolved to avoid danger through experience. To erase that memory, you have no choice but to overwrite it with better ones.”
“But if you suffer pain for a long time, no matter how hard you try to cover it with good memories, it doesn’t cover easily. Instead you become more wary, more suspicious. Because you think the situation might flip at any moment. Because you don’t want to suffer again.”
Probably, even if Yoon Seo-a became a good person starting tomorrow, I would never believe it.
I would definitely think she was hiding some ulterior motive, plotting something.
It couldn’t be helped. The distrust she had planted in me had roots that deep.
Our first meeting had been off from the start, hadn’t it?
“Then I don’t really see the need to change my attitude now. Either way, I can’t make Ha-eun mine, right?”
“That’s why you should have been kind from the beginning. Then I might have become friends with you.”
At least her looks were appealing—we might have become friends before long. And unlike Su-ryeon or Chae-rin from other classes, we might even have grown closer.
But now those were all meaningless hypotheticals.
“Still, it’s not like there’s no way at all. If the relationship is bad, there’s a method of building it from scratch again.”
“…From scratch?”
After fixing my appearance in front of the mirror, I turned to face Yoon Seo-a, who wore a puzzled expression.
With a young lady’s greeting—lifting the hem of my skirt with my fingertips and slightly bending my knees—
“It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Yu Ha-eun from Class 1-D. Would you tell me your name?”
When I showed a soft, gentle tone and smile completely different from usual, Yoon Seo-a’s always composed face twisted as if she had not expected this at all.