Rendezvous (7)
“Ha-eun. Do you even realize what you’re saying right now?”
Her voice trembled slightly—whether from shock or from barely restrained fury, I couldn’t quite tell. Knowing her, though, it was almost certainly the latter. I lifted my gaze to meet Yoon Seo-a’s eyes.
No smile. No leisurely composure. Just a rigid, hardened expression, like a dragon whose reverse scale had been scraped raw and was seconds away from unleashing its full aggression.
“I don’t understand why you’re so angry, Seo-a. Isn’t this condition actually more favorable to you? I’m offering to cleanly forget everything you’ve done to torment me and start over from the beginning.”
“Don’t spout nonsense, Ha-eun.”
At my words, Yoon Seo-a shot to her feet and strode toward me in long, sharp steps. She came right up to my face, and in her agitated eyes I saw the reflection of my own smiling self.
“It’s not nonsense. If that’s what you want, I’m perfectly willing to forget everything that’s happened between us and build a new relationship—ghk!”
“Shut. Your. Mouth.”
A hand clamped around my throat, accompanied by a low, growling voice.
“You’re certainly sharp, Ha-eun. To hear my story and immediately come up with a method like this… If you were trying to provoke me, then I must congratulate you. You did an excellent job.”
“Ghk—well, thanks for the compliment…!”
“I’m not joking. Thanks to you, I’m genuinely angry for the first time in a very long while.”
And that was a good thing. Even as my breath was being cut off, I could smile with complete sincerity.
Of course I hadn’t made this proposal for Yoon Seo-a’s sake. I’d thrown it out precisely because I’d found a way to provoke her.
She had claimed her father was her weakness, but that wasn’t the true vulnerability. Her father was merely the trigger that activated the real one.
A reset of relationships. Having lost people she once called friends overnight, having every servant she’d spent years with replaced—again and again—she harbored an extreme terror of any relationship reset that occurred outside her own will.
I’d realized it from the final words she’d spoken as she finished her story.
‘Isn’t it ridiculous? I was the one who approached them all of my own free will and formed those relationships.’
As she said that, raw loss and longing had poured out of her without any filter. She probably thought she was speaking casually, but anyone could see it was her true feelings slipping free unbidden.
Of course, since I wasn’t Yoon Seo-a herself, I couldn’t be absolutely certain. But looking at how things had turned out now, my guess had clearly been correct.
I hadn’t expected her to react this violently to words from someone who, unlike her father, had no actual power to reset anything. Still, I gripped the hands choking me with both of my own and forced my voice out.
“Why don’t you—ghk—just smile that usual sly smile of yours and try it…!”
“Ha-eun. As you’ve already noticed, I utterly despise any change in a relationship that falls outside my will. Enough that even something said by the likes of you can make me this sincerely furious.”
“Ghk…!”
Her grip tightened. The thin thread of breath I’d still managed to draw was snuffed out completely.
Yoon Seo-a brought her face so close our foreheads nearly touched.
“I’m fine with becoming friends. If there’s a way for me to possess you completely, I’m more than willing to follow it. But to start over from the beginning at this point? That I will never accept.”
“The relationship that began when you blocked my path will continue exactly as it is. The way I tormented you, the way you finally lost control and slapped my cheek, the memories of that night we spent together—all of it!”
“So never again let me hear any useless talk about starting over from the beginning.”
“Kehk!”
With those words, the crushing pressure on my throat vanished all at once. I collapsed onto the floor, coughing violently and gasping for air.
If I ever suggest starting over again, she’ll actually kill me.
While I clutched my throat and struggled to regulate my breathing for a long while, Yoon Seo-a swept her hair back and spoke with a sigh.
“Even if you were the one who started it, you must never be the one who ends it. If our relationship ever comes to an end, it has to happen by my will—not yours, and not anyone else’s.”
“That’s… hah… pretty self-righteous of you.”
“So what if it is? That’s just one of my many charms.”
Normally she would have said that with a confident smile, but right now Yoon Seo-a looked oddly exhausted. Had that brief exchange drained her more than expected? As I thought that, she continued.
“As you suggested, let’s adjust our relationship a little.”
“Adjust it how?”
“I’ll properly respect you. I’ll stop the torment I’ve been putting you through, and I’ll also restrain myself from dragging you around.”
‘Restrain’ herself from dragging me around, huh. I looked up at her with a dubious expression, and she shot back a look that asked whether I had a problem with that.
In the past I would have flinched and lowered my head under that gaze, but doing so in this situation would only be the worst possible move among bad ones.
“You’re not going to bully Shin So-hye either, right?”
“I never paid any attention to that coward in the first place.”
“And leave me alone during lunch. I have friends too.”
“Didn’t we just agree to be friends? In that case, it might be nice for me to meet your friends and talk with them as well.”
Introduce Yoon Seo-a to the other two? For a moment I pictured the three of them having tea together.
The very person who had been tormenting me, sitting with the two who had been seething with frustration because they knew I was being bullied yet could do nothing about it…
No matter how I looked at it, the only outcome I could imagine was pure catastrophe. Whether she noticed my worry or not, Yoon Seo-a spoke again.
“Don’t worry. I have no particular intention of fighting with your friends.”
“I’m not worried about you. I’m worried those two will get angry.”
“If that happens, I won’t back down either. It wouldn’t be so bad to show them who holds the upper hand while we’re at it.”
That’s exactly what I’m worried about. I shot her an irritated glare, then pushed myself up and looked in the mirror.
Just as expected, clear handprints remained pressed into my neck. The skin was already beginning to flush red; it would probably last several days. For a while I’d have to cover my neck with my hair.
If I put a cold compress on it the moment I get back to the dorm, it might settle a little… While I was thinking that, Yoon Seo-a’s voice came from behind me.
“Ha-eun.”
“What?”
“About what you said earlier—that if our first meeting had been better, we could easily have become friends. Was that true?”
“Of course it was.”
I spoke toward the Yoon Seo-a watching me through the mirror.
“I know it’s a little weird to say this now, but… I’ve got a bit of a face-obsessed streak.”
“Face-obsessed…?”
“It’s slang for someone who falls for a person just because they like their looks, no matter what else is going on.”
“Hmm… So that means you like my face, then?”
“I guess that’s how it works out…”
Yoon Seo-a’s expression instantly turned sly, and only then did I realize I’d misspoken—but once words leave your mouth, you can’t take them back. I trailed off awkwardly, trying to dodge, and she let out a soft chuckle.
“Fine. I’ll let it go with that answer for today.”
“Yeah…”
“But next time I fully expect a proper answer, so prepare yourself.”
I had no idea what I was supposed to prepare, but I nodded anyway to show I understood.
Then Yoon Seo-a stepped closer, caught my chin, turned my face toward her, and pressed her lips to mine.
It was a light kiss—no tongue, just a soft press and release. I stared up at her, dumbfounded.
“This much is fine, isn’t it? Between friends.”
“Friends don’t kiss each other…”
When I answered in a thoroughly exasperated voice, Yoon Seo-a gave me a bright, refreshing smile.
“Then let’s call ourselves closer friends. I believe the English term is ‘best friends’? That should define our relationship nicely.”
Best friends don’t do that either, I muttered inwardly.
Yoon Seo-a let me leave the infirmary without further fuss.
She did drop a few hints about staying at her dorm for a while first, but I refused firmly. Going back there after what had already happened once would be the act of an idiot.
Fortunately, her promise to respect me hadn’t been a lie. She didn’t resort to her usual roundabout threats; she simply stepped back.
“It actually worked out somehow…”
Honestly, an enraged Yoon Seo-a could easily have done something far worse than anything she’d done so far. Triggered by her trauma, she might have locked me up entirely or tightened her grip even harder.
But if I hadn’t taken this gamble, even without that extreme reaction I would still have been slowly consumed by her. The fact that we could improve the relationship at all was probably because she didn’t see me purely as an object—she saw me as a person she wanted to possess completely.
“Still… walking around without underwear is making me weirdly nervous…”
It was a long skirt that fell past my knees and had a proper hem, so even if the wind blew it shouldn’t suddenly flip up—but there was always the “what if.”
Fortunately, nothing happened before I reached Lily Hall. The streets were quiet since afternoon classes were still in session. Only after I passed through them and entered my room inside Lily Hall did the relief finally hit me.
“I need to wash up and sleep already…”
I’d rested a little in the infirmary, but between last night and being tormented by Yoon Seo-a nonstop since morning, the fatigue was no joke. The moment I arrived in my room and let my guard down, exhaustion crashed over me and my eyes started to close.
Still nodding off, I stripped, took a quick shower, changed into something comfortable, and threw myself onto the bed.
“Ah—my phone’s dead…”
I remembered the drained battery too late, but I was already lying down and couldn’t be bothered to move a single finger.
Su-ryeon will wake me when she gets back anyway. It’ll be fine if I charge it then. With that thought, I closed my eyes.
A vague sense that my body felt hot was the last thing I registered before my consciousness sank downward.