Chapter 7

Seo-ha faltered at Jun-hyeok’s next words.

“Who ever told you dying makes you free.”

Afraid she would slip if the conversation went on like this, Seo-ha changed the subject.

“Before that — I think I’d feel a little freer if I were allowed to take this jacket off.”

Jun-hyeok snorted and rebuked her.

“If you’re going to take it off, take every last thing off. Otherwise keep it on.”

At the memory of the slip she had made earlier, Seo-ha’s cheeks flushed peach.

Just then, Jun-hyeok’s phone rang. The moment he rose from the sofa and stepped away to take the call, Seo-ha let out an enormous sigh.

Being with Han Jun-hyeok kept her so tightly wound that every fine hair on her body seemed to stand on end. Let him vanish for even a moment, and it was as if the oxygen she had been short of were filling her up again.

“Hm, what is this…?”

The pocket of the jacket he had put on her was bulging. That must have been why the jacket felt so uncomfortable, even though it swamped her.

Pricking her ears toward where Jun-hyeok had gone, Seo-ha took stock of the space around her. Everything was quiet. Her hand groped furtively along the cloth and slipped into the pocket, where her slender fingers carefully traced the outline of something heavy and well-balanced. Seo-ha’s eyes narrowed for an instant.

“Ah, this is….”

The first thing her skin met was soft leather laid over heavy metal. When she took hold of the lens bezel, the familiar, minute resistance of the focus ring caught at her fingertips. Her fingers knew the small dial beside the shutter and the jutting film-winding lever without needing her eyes to confirm a thing.

Some things in this world could be known without sight, and this was one of them.

“…Leica CM.”

The murmur was brief, but it came close to certainty.

The focus ring, though, sat subtly out of true. Seo-ha turned it the way her hands knew and set it exactly on the distance-scale mark. Beneath the smooth friction, the feel her fingertips remembered came through just as it should.

Only then did a smile tug at the corner of her mouth, broad enough that the dimple she kept hidden showed itself.

“…Outside my type, my ass.”

Jun-hyeok shook his head as if at something pathetic.

He might have called Seo-ha a greenhorn, but his gaze stayed snagged on her stark-white legs. Even pressed flat against the sofa, they had a sleek line without an ounce of slack anywhere, and it grated faintly on his nerves.

Give the pointless posturing a rest.

Mocking himself silently, Jun-hyeok looked Seo-ha over from head to foot. He stood propped loosely against the corridor wall, beyond the reach of her sight, his eyes quietly sharpening as he tried to catch the faintest waver in her expression.

Before long her lips parted slightly. Regrettably, the whisper didn’t carry that far, but Jun-hyeok could easily guess what she had murmured.

“Leica CM.”

That one word spread an afterimage of the past through his gaze, and a faint ripple ran across it.

Then a dimple surfaced in Seo-ha’s cheek. He had never seen a smile so defenseless, and a startled laugh escaped him before he knew it.

So she knew how to smile like that, too.

She glanced around for a moment, then drew the camera carefully out of the pocket.

No matter how I look at it, it doesn’t seem like an act….

Her pupils sat slightly off focus, yet her long fingers felt their way over the camera with delicacy.

He watched her a while longer, then gave a small, deliberate cough and pushed himself off the wall. At the sound, she hurriedly tucked the camera back into the pocket.

Walking as slowly as he could manage, Jun-hyeok came around to the front of the sofa and spoke as though he had seen nothing.

“Ah, sorry. An important call came in.”
“Yes, it’s fine.”

Jun-hyeok perched on the marble table in front of Seo-ha and leaned in. When his long leg came up against her knee, she must have been startled, because she shrank deeper into the backrest. That irritated him for some reason, so he deliberately shifted his leg until it brushed her calf.

Her shoulders flinched visibly.

“You said you’ve never had a man.”

When Jun-hyeok dragged the mortifying subject out again, Seo-ha was flustered, her eyes wavering.

“And since you brought it up first, you must have come here already braced to sleep with me.”

She hadn’t yet worked out exactly what he was driving at, but he wasn’t wrong, so Seo-ha nodded slowly.

“Does that mean you’ll play the wife faithfully too, at least until you die?”

If that was what he wanted, she would do anything, so long as it got Cha Mi-yeon away from her side.

“If you’ll only marry me, I’m prepared to work hard at every obligation.”

Honestly, for the sake of perfect freedom, Seo-ha didn’t care how this body of hers got used.

Jun-hyeok let out a snorting laugh.

“Working hard won’t get you there.”
“Whatever it is you want, if it’s something I can do, I’ll try.”
“And how would you know what I want?”

Going by the nuance of the ‘playing the wife’ he had mentioned, he probably meant something closer to the sexual side of things, and poor eyesight was no reason she couldn’t manage that. Han Jun-hyeok’s thinking, though, seemed to run a little differently from hers.

“Must be your age after all. You’ve no idea how frightening the world is. The way you toss the word ‘die’ around proves it.”
“I’m not that young.”

The words were barely out when Jun-hyeok gave her ankle a light tug. Her slim white legs slid helplessly until they met his knee, and her back sank into the sofa. He slowly bent down over her.

“And even less idea how frightening a man is.”

His face came close enough for his breath to touch her, and Seo-ha instinctively turned her head away. Because she couldn’t see, she felt the air vibrate all the more keenly, felt his warmth against her skin, and her heart slammed again and again.

Jun-hyeok’s fingertips grazed the underside of her chin and turned her averted face back toward him. The touch was light, with no hard grip in it, yet the feeling of being overpowered stopped her breath.

“And you can’t even handle one little touch like this.”

His lips, murmuring the words low, brushed faintly over her lower lip. In the dizzying silence, Seo-ha could almost feel his unseen gaze roaming over every inch of her face.

He brought his lips slowly to her earlobe and whispered.

“So cute, pretending you’re not a brat.”

Han Jun-hyeok always moved faster than Seo-ha could predict, and what came next was enough to make up for all his rudeness.

“I’ll accept the proposal, so breathe properly, would you.”

He said it as he pulled her upright by the wrist, then drew back. Only then could she finally let her breath out.

“There’s just one condition.”

Seo-ha laid a quiet hand on her chest and waited without a word for him to go on. Settling her startled heart came first.

“Die when you die, but not without my permission.”
“Sorry…?”
“It means that from now on the power of life and death over you is mine.”

Unable to tell what sort of word game this was now, Seo-ha tilted her head. Not being able to read him worried her, yet at the same time she grew certain that a visually impaired wife he felt no affection for could hold his interest for no more than an instant.

“If you don’t like it, we stop here.”

If she passed on Han Jun-hyeok, who knew when another chance would come around? Seo-ha had no wish to squander her precious young days waiting on a moment that never came. Besides, from what she had seen of him so far, he wasn’t a bad prospect for a husband. His one drawback was that there was no telling what on earth he was thinking, but at least he didn’t stir revulsion in her. Even that unannounced contact a moment ago had only startled her; it hadn’t been unpleasant in the least.

Seo-ha nodded.

“All right.”
“Good. Then that makes it a verbal contract. I’ll have the written one ready soon.”

He had said he was a businessman, and he did seem a thoroughly meticulous one. Seo-ha, understanding the situation well enough, told him she would wait for the contract.

“I should be getting home now. I’ve been away quite a while. My mother will be waiting.”

The skin where his hands had touched her kept prickling, and Seo-ha wanted out of a space where it was only the two of them. Jun-hyeok, though, tapped the toe of her slipper and barked, as if she were being absurd.

“Go? Go where, exactly.”
“Home…?”

Seo-ha echoed, dazed. Her own face must have looked utterly dumbstruck, too.

“This is your home now.”

Seo-ha’s small, neat lips parted slightly again, and Jun-hyeok drove one more wedge in.

“I said it was our place.”

At that, Seo-ha thought it over for a moment. In trying to dodge the waves, had she leapt straight into a terrifying typhoon?