Chapter 16

Sa-heon rubbed his forehead with a tired sigh. Things were worse than he’d expected, and yet the sight of her, curled up small with worry written all over her face, made him want to laugh.

Honestly, this is going to drive me insane.

“Managing Director, is there still nothing at all coming back to you?”

Nothing coming back to me, my foot.

Her nagging was as endearing as a baby chick’s peeping, and her fretting was as adorable as a puppy with all the spirit knocked out of it. Dozens of times a day he caught himself thinking how neatly her features were put together, how delicately pretty she was.

Last night he’d tossed and turned until dawn in a strange, uncomfortable bed, and all the while Ji-an’s pale neck flushing red, her faintly trembling lips and her big, wavering eyes had kept floating in front of him.

“Not a thing.”

“And nothing came to mind even while you were talking with Secretary Han Ji-an?”

Nothing came to mind? Plenty came to mind.

I want to sleep with that woman.

Specifically, I want to have sex with her.

That was the sort of garbage filling his head.

“There’s nothing.”

Sa-heon answered calmly, the exact opposite of what he was thinking, and Chief Choi let out a helpless sigh.

“…I see.”

“Something’s bound to come back if I spend a bit more time with her. The doctor did say to talk with Ms. Han Ji-an a lot. Isn’t that right, Ji-an?”

Sa-heon turned to her with a bright grin. Ji-an gave a small “Yes,” and bit her lip lightly.

“Let’s talk about all sorts of things, you and I,” Sa-heon said affectionately.

And if it turned into a conversation of bodies, so much the better.

While Chief Choi was off on an errand to the supermarket, Ji-an showed Sa-heon a secondhand trading app.

“Managing Director, I installed this.”

She held out her phone with a smile, pleased with herself, tapped the app with the orange carrot drawn on it¹ and scooted a little closer to him.

“What is it.”

On a whim, he leaned his shoulder against hers, and he felt her go stiff. When he looked at her, hiding a laugh, she quietly peeled herself away.

“Ah, well. You said you needed a platform bench, didn’t you? People sell a lot of them on here. Sometimes they even give them away.”

“Give them away?”

“Yes. It’s when people give things away without taking any money.”

Ji-an typed ‘platform bench’ into the search bar. Maybe it was the kind of neighborhood this was, but a surprising number of usable ones came up.

“This one’s not bad, is it?”

She tapped a bench marked as a free giveaway. Long years of sun, rain and wind had clearly weathered it. It had the pale brown tone particular to pine, but the edges had darkened to a deeper chestnut, and with the marks of age all over it, there was no mistaking it for anything but secondhand.

“You’re telling me to use something secondhand?”

Sa-heon asked it with a soft smile, and Ji-an flinched and lowered the phone.

“It’d be a waste, wouldn’t it? You won’t even be using it for long.”

“A waste? Of what? Lying down on something somebody else has used, that’s the bigger waste of my body.”

“Yes…”

Ji-an nodded and let it go, as if she hadn’t had high hopes to begin with. But as she scrolled on through the app, her eyes suddenly lit up.

“Wow, look at this. The same seller’s giving away a rooftop garden set, too.”

On the screen, several little wooden planters, packets of herb seeds and a vintage watering can were laid out together as a set. Sa-heon answered as though he could hardly believe it.

“I’ll buy you every bit of that brand new. No, I’ll just buy you a field. You need farm machinery too?”

“…No, thank you.”

Ji-an gave up and took the phone back. Then a little “Oh” slipped out of her, more startled this time.

“What is it.”

How useless was it going to be this time? Sa-heon asked without much interest, and Ji-an hesitated before she showed him the screen.

“They must be good at knitting. Isn’t it just too cute?”

It was a crocheted turtle keyring, its shell worked in green yarn and its body in ivory, cute but a little clumsily made. Sa-heon’s brow creased slightly.

“It’s not that cute.”

“…I want it.”

Ji-an whispered it under her breath, and Sa-heon squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them again.

A blue cargo truck pulled up in front of the house, and Ji-an’s mouth fell slightly open. Chief Choi, who’d been hauled along the moment he got back from the supermarket, was riding in the back.

Sa-heon climbed out of the passenger seat, and out of the driver’s side came a middle-aged man with a dark, sunburned face and a broad, beaming smile.

“This Seoul lad’s handsome, and he’s awful good-natured besides! Hahaha!”

What on earth had the two of them talked about on the way? He wasn’t exactly the kind of man people called good-natured. Ji-an blinked, trying to make sense of it.

“Wh-what is all this?”

“I went and got what we needed.”

“What we needed?”

At a jerk of Sa-heon’s chin, Chief Choi hopped straight down from the cargo bed, and he and the middle-aged man shouted back and forth as they carried the solid-wood platform bench.

“A little more to the right. That’s it!”

After that, the man carried up the rooftop garden set, a parasol, a sunbed and even a cooler box with his own hands, then wiped off his sweat with a good-natured laugh.

“Put it to good use, Seoul lad!”

“Thank you. Please give my regards to your wife as well.”

“Oh-ho, of course, of course.”

He waved with a wide smile, then drove off in his truck and was gone. Ji-an watched it disappear, leaving nothing behind but dust, and for a moment she was lost for words.

“Was that gentleman the seller?”

“The seller’s husband, to be precise.”

“He brought it all over for you?”

“Yes.”

Wasn’t the unspoken rule of secondhand deals that the buyer came to pick things up? He loaded all of that up and delivered it himself?

“And what’s the rest of this?”

“No idea. They just gave it to me.”

Sa-heon shrugged and laughed.

Ji-an stared at him for a moment, dumbfounded. He had clear-cut features and a sharp jawline, and even when he smiled there was something cold about him that made him hard to approach. On top of all that, he had a quietly sociable streak. It was a face you’d be hard put to find in Dansol-ri, or anywhere in Ollyeong County for that matter. So that was why. Ji-an laughed faintly to herself.

“Here. The ugly thing.”

Something was thrust out in front of her so suddenly that Ji-an started and took a small step back. She wondered what it was, but it turned out to be the turtle keyring from earlier.

“…Thank you.”

Sa-heon set the knitted keyring on her palm.

Ji-an turned the little turtle over between her fingers, and a soft, downy texture met her fingertips. In person it was even more raggedly stitched than in the photo, and all the cuter for it.

Maybe it was because the whole situation was absurd, or because the clumsy turtle was so ridiculously soft. Or maybe it was because this man was funny, having gone to collect one thing and come back looking like he’d cleaned out somebody’s entire household.

Before she knew it, the corners of Ji-an’s mouth had curved up. Why did she keep wanting to laugh?

“It’s cute.”

In the end she let out a small laugh and looked up at him, her eyes crinkled. Sa-heon was staring straight at her.

“Worth the trip, then.”

He held her gaze a long while as he said it. Ji-an pressed the back of her hand hard against her cheek and lowered her eyes.

Sa-heon lay stretched out full-length on the sunbed in his sunglasses, eyes closed.

The top two buttons of his white shirt were undone, baring the line of his throat, and his sleeves were rolled to the elbow. The warm early-summer sun fell evenly over him.

“Nice weather.”

He said it with satisfaction and tucked his arms behind his head. Not a cloud in the glaring sky.

A green concrete floor with its paint flaking here and there, a rusted railing, the drone of an air-conditioner unit from the building next door. It was a shabby little space, but with Sa-heon lying in it, it could have passed for the private poolside of a five-star hotel.

How long had it been since he’d felt this at ease? He didn’t think he’d had a proper rest since he’d started college.

A cold can of beer would hit the spot right about now. Should he ask Ji-an to have one with him?

Even with his eyes closed, every time he tried to dredge up anything he might remember, his thoughts came back to one woman.

He was laughing at himself when he heard footsteps on the stairs leading up to the roof. Sa-heon sat up and looked back, and his eyes met Ji-an’s as she came up with a bag of bread in her arms.

“Unnie told me to bring these up to you.”

Today Ji-an wore a white T-shirt and jeans, and in the sunlight she looked damn pretty.

“Ji-an-noona!”

A booming voice came from behind her. The high-schooler in glasses Sa-heon had seen a little while ago was rushing up the stairs.

“Why are you carrying something this heavy all by yourself, Noona? You should’ve asked me to help!”

“Bread’s not heavy. Still, look at you, trying to help your noona. Our Paul’s all grown up.”

Paul’s face fell at being treated so plainly like a child. Sa-heon, who’d been sitting up on the sunbed, got to his feet.

“Tell your unnie thanks for me, Ji-an.”

The firm line of Sa-heon’s chest showed below the undone buttons of his shirt, and his hard forearms, bared by the rolled-up sleeves, gleamed in the sun.