“What? Did I do this to bring her down?”
When he returned home, he sighed with frustration. He recalled the meeting with Chunduk the day before.
“What, what? Are you going to hit me with a book?”
As Gyeonhui approached, Chunduk asked with cautious eyes.
Gyeonhui raised the thick book up without saying a word.
“Ahkkkk!”
Chunduk screamed while blocking his head with both his hands. However, after a while, he noticed that nothing happened, and he opened his eyes.
“What are you doing? I was going to put it back on the shelf.”
Gyeonhui smiled as if he had witnessed something funny and placed the book onto the bookshelf behind Chunduk.
Realizing that Gyeonhui had teased him, Chunduk’s mouth remained agape while he was staring at him.
“I have to finish our conversation. I thought I could get them into our department store because I felt sorry that you threw her aside, but the team leader came and stopped me. Their products weren’t great, so I told him to stop doing business with them.”
Chunduk even simulated what he did by throwing a light kick into the air. Gyeonhui immediately scowled.
“I know why you broke up with her. She wasn’t worth it.”
Chunduk seemed to be having fun, and his mouth was twitching like this amused him so. While Gyeonhui watched, he started to spear to Chunduk.
“That’s not what I’ve heard.”
“What?”
Chunduk seemed surprised.
“I heard that they didn’t want to work with the ‘parachute-like president who came down from nowhere because there is nowhere for him to go but downward.'”
Chunduk’s face reddened. He was furious but kept smiling, pretending to be relaxed.
“That’s ridiculous, I know you’ve just made that up.”
“Oh, you caught me. Right. That was all me, just my thoughts.”
Gyeonhui smiled and made Chundeok angrier.
“You’re going to fall for the rest of your life as long as I’m here.”
“You, you bastard…”
Chunduk grabbed Gyeonhui’s collar. Then, Gyeonhui twisted his wrist and pushed him down to the floor as if Geyonhui had set a trap.
“Ugh…You!”
Chunduk fell to the floor while shouting at him.
“You know it was just self-defense, right?”
Gyeonhui, with cold eyes, sat in his seat while looking at Chunduk, who had fallen. After a while, Chunduk couldn’t endure his anger anymore and left the office, roughly closing the door.
That was it.
“Ridiculous.”
Although Gyeonhui thought about what she told him again, her words were still ridiculous to him. However, he didn’t want to explain the situation.
“Ugh.”
Suddenly, his ankle swelled.
At that moment, he dropped the coffee cup he was holding.
‘Clink’ The coffee cup that fell to the floor scattered everywhere. She came to his mind as he grimaced with unbearable pain.
“What the hell is this… again?”
He struggled with the pain while holding his sprained ankle. It was a pain that taking a few medicines would not heal. This pain in his body was not one that originated on his body.
“… Cheonsun.”
With a flushed face, he struggled to find the cause of the pain.
Then, he grabbed his coat and exited the office limping.
***
“It doesn’t seem to stop.”
As Sun sat at a convenience store table, she talked to herself while looking at the sky. The rain was getting heavier and soaking the world.
Sun took a sip of beer with a bitter expression.
“…It doesn’t taste good today, nor is it getting me drunk.”
She had already drunk three cans of beer, but she didn’t get drunk because of her mood.
Sun embraced both of her knees and moved her gaze to the street.
She was the only one lurking around the darkened streets.
The dark streets with orange-colored street lamps were the very symbol of her loneliness itself.
Even if it disappeared, the world didn’t seem to care.
She felt that the world was only full of unwarranted rain.
With the awful loneliness within her, she buried her face between her knees.
She was so lonely.
She was terribly lonely, but she had no choice but to endure her loneliness.
She hugged her knees harder, but her freezing heart didn’t get any better.
“Were you looking for me?”
When that sigh came out, someone jumped into the rain and entered the convenience store’s door, yawning.
“Hah… Hah. I found you.”
She looked up at that person’s voice as he exhaled.
“Huh?”
When Sun identified the familiar face, her eyes opened wide and couldn’t say anything.
He was breathing wildly while looking down at her. The rain was ceaseless, but he didn’t even have an umbrella. It seemed like he was wandering in the streets.
“Did you find me?”
“Yes?”
Sun opened her eyes wide as she asked in disbelief.
“Were you looking for me?”
Eunwoo pulled out his phone with a spring-like smile and shook it in front of him.
The screen showed a missed call that came from her phone number.
30. I’m sleeping.
“Hah…”
Sun remembered that she briefly pressed the call button. Eunwoo, who had already sat beside her, looked at the table while drying his wet hair.
“What is this? You do not even have some snacks to pair with your beer. Wait a minute.”
Eunwoo stood up again and entered the convenience store.
After a while, he returned with a bunch of snacks in his hands.
“I’m buying them.”
Eunwoo sat, picked up a can of beer on the table, and sipped it.
“Ku… it’s good.”
Eunwoo smiled and picked up a can of beer and gave it to Sun.
Because of his relaxed smile, a slight smile came to her face too.
“Well, Labong is in the clinic. If the rain stops, let’s go pick him up.”
Upon hearing his words, she nodded and replied.
“How was your business meeting? Did it go well?”
“… No. It didn’t work.”
“Really? Damn… I guess they just don’t know what looks good.”
Eunwoo spoke as if he had just heard something ridiculous.
“I think there’s already another company that they wanted to do business with. I don’t know the details.”
She said, without speaking about Gyeonhui.
“Those people, they’ll regret it later. I’m sure.”
Eunwoo responded as if he had also lost the job.
“Thank you for comforting me.”
“I’m not comforting you. Sun, the picture was excellent.”
His mischievous, serious face made her laugh.
“Thank you. Thank you for your encouraging words.”
Eunwoo paused for a moment and looked at her.
“You know what? You blink more when you’re feeling good.”
Eunwoo looked at her with his chin on the table.
“Do I? I didn’t know that.”
Sun looked in the mirror with a pleased expression before looking at his face.
“Should I be blinking like this?”
She blinked her eyes toward Eunwoo for a moment. Eunwoo nodded silently, and she looked back at the window to check her face.
“People don’t really know who they are at all. They aren’t aware of how they blink their eyes and how attractive they are.”
Eunwoo looked at her face that was reflecting in the window and spoke quietly.
“What? What did you say?”
She asked if she had misheard him.
“No, it’s nothing.”
Eunwoo shook his head with a smile. The rain slowly dwindled and soon ceased.
“It stopped raining.”
“Then, let’s pick up Labong.”
Eunwoo rose from his seat with a smile.
“Yes.”
Sun had put her feet to the ground with that answer and winced.
“What’s wrong?”
“Um, It’s nothing. Let’s go. Go.”
Sun smiled casually and stepped away. Every step she took was so painful, but she didn’t succumb to her pain.
***
Sun and Eunwoo walked past Gyeonhui, who was seated in the back seat of his car.
As they passed, he lowered the window and looked at their backs.
“Hey, Gyeonhui. Didn’t you say she injured her ankle?”
Ojae, who was sitting in the driver’s seat, looked at him and asked.
“… She’s injured.”
He could still feel the throbbing pain.
“Really? She looks okay, though. No, it looks like she’s limping a little bit…”
Ojae pushed his head out and examined her more closely, but he shook his head as if he wasn’t sure.
Sun’s face was full of laughter. Looking at her face, no one could see the pain she was feeling.
“So, is she enduring the pain?”
“… I really don’t understand how she can stand it.”
Gyeonhui mumbled to himself while he looked at her back as it moved farther away.
He thought a lot as he saw her walking casually with her injured ankle.
Ojae was still watching Gyeonhui and opened his mouth carefully,
“Honestly… It might be too late for me to tell you this, but there’s no one like her these days.”
“What do you mean?”
“Remember when you were in that accident?”
Upon hearing Ojae’s words, Gyeonhui remembered the incident when he hit the guardrails.
“You were passed out at that time, and she was covered all over with wounds. She pulled you out of the crushed car, and her palms were all torn apart. Her arms were all scratched while doing it too, but she was only thinking of you the whole time.”
Gyeonhui scowled after hearing this story that he never knew.
“I heard this later, but on that day, she wasn’t supposed to give her blood to you at that time because it had only been a few days after she donated her blood. She was also having her period that day. She did it all for you, and she finally collapsed after the blood transfusion.”
Ojae sighed, seemingly sorry for the memories of that day.
“… That day?”
He couldn’t believe it.
“Yes.”
“The organs in her abdomen scrambled, and her back seemed like it broke, but she donated the blood? Does that really make sense?”
He scowled as if he had heard something unbelievable. In a stressful situation like that day, Sun suffered all that pain to save him.
Ojae nodded as he realized the meaning of Geyonhui’s words.
“Love is a wonderful thing because it makes everything possible. I can’t even imagine how much pain she felt… yet she still endured it all.”
Ojae sighed, seemingly sad with his thoughts.
“Why are you telling me this now?”
“How could I not tell you when you go crazy over the slightest changes that would happen to her? You always go crazy like that.”
Ojae told him everything that he had been holding back for a long time, even when he wasn’t comfortable doing so. Usually, Gyeonhui’s anger would have struck Ojae now, but the back seat remained quiet today.
Ojae snuck a look into the rearview mirror and checked the back.
“It doesn’t make sense…”
Gyeonhui bit his lower lip and looked at her back.