Sencha Replica - Side Story 23

Side Story 23

Strangely, after defining my tangled feelings with a single word, the heat that had risen to my head suddenly subsided.

As the heat went down, I realized I had gotten unnecessarily angry over something that didn’t warrant such a reaction. And I felt ashamed. Some feelings should be kept hidden. I had shown too much.

Ah geez, feeling regret belatedly, I tried to leave again irritably, but Cha Gweonwoo turned me around. And he met my eyes.

“I’m sorry.”

I thought thorns had sprouted in my heart. I thought they were thorns because they kept making my heart prickly, but it turns out they were just ice.

“I was worried you’d be concerned if you watched.”

With his apology as he met my eyes, the fierce thorns in my heart melted away like spring snow.

Cha Gweonwoo apologized repeatedly, to the point where the one who got angry felt more embarrassed.

He said he did it because he was worried I’d be concerned if I saw him getting hurt. Because he keeps getting hurt, he did it because he was worried I’d be concerned. He said he was wrong, that he was short-sighted.

To Cha Gweonwoo, who was acting so kindly as if he would accept any of my tantrums, I shamelessly laid out all the feelings that had been knotted up inside me.

“You tell me not to whisper in your ear, but why do you seduce others? It’s annoying.”

“I was wrong. But I didn’t seduce anyone.”

“You did seduce them.”

“Okay. I seduced them. I was wrong.”

“…Ah, why do you seduce! Why do you seduce! Why do you seduce!”

Cha Gweonwoo, who had been hit on the arm, apologized again and kissed my cheek. I wasn’t in a good enough mood to accept kisses yet, so I wiped my cheek with the back of my hand. Just when I thought I was about to forget, I remembered what Cha Gweonwoo had said to his junior.

‘Come watch again tomorrow.’

It was too kind. It was really too kind. I wanted to jump off a 121-story building out of envy. As the voice came to mind again, I huffed and said to Cha Gweonwoo:

“Tell Doweon to come watch tomorrow too, quickly.”

“Doweon, come watch tomorrow too.”

“Tell Doweon to come watch every day.”

“Doweon, come watch every day.”

As he said this while putting a hat on me, even the feelings that had been clumped together like the dregs at the bottom of a cup of misutgaru dissolved. Cha Gweonwoo, who sensed this uncannily, slightly pushed his cheek towards my lips. He was asking for forgiveness now. I resisted for a moment with a sullen face, but then pretended to give in and gave him a kiss. Then, embarrassed, I quickly changed the subject.

“I want to eat sundaegukbap.”

Cha Gweonwoo acted as if he would buy out all the sundaegukbap restaurants in the country, and by the time we returned to the car, half-clinging to such a Cha Gweonwoo, my mood had completely improved. I’m not usually that simple, but Cha Gweonwoo was expert-level at handling me.

***

Until we left the training ground in the car, I thought we would eat a hearty sundaegukbap at a nearby famous restaurant and then go home for some physical “reconciliation” under the guise of making up.

But one phone call to Cha Gweonwoo was the problem. I answered the phone before he could stop me when I saw the familiar name pop up on his phone.

“Hyung, I’m in Seoul now!”

The Busan esper said he had come up to Seoul on vacation this week. When I asked him, “Then who’s protecting Busan?”, I got cursed out.

“Ah, fuck! You’re saying the same thing as someone else! Can’t I take a vacation? I couldn’t even go when everyone else was on vacation! There’s someone who took over a month off to come all the way to Busan, why can’t I take time off! I worked my ass off until last month!”

As I was getting an earful of those curses, Cha Gweonwoo pressed a button on the steering wheel to hang up the call. However, the Busan esper was not the type to give up just because we hung up. He’s the type to keep calling until the other person picks up.

Therefore, the Busan esper kept trying to call until our car arrived at the sundaegukbap restaurant, and Cha Gweonwoo, who had parked the car in the parking lot, blocked my door as I tried to get out and answered the Busan esper’s call. Although I couldn’t hear well because of the almost perfect soundproofing, judging by his lip movements, it was a string of curses.

From what I overheard of the phone conversation, the Busan esper said he was bored because he had no one to hang out with after coming all the way to Seoul on his hard-earned vacation. Cha Gweonwoo flatly refused, saying he was busy. The Busan esper said he expected that and asked for Doweon hyung if Cha Gweonwoo was busy. For a very brief moment, I thought, “Where would the two of them go?”, but Cha Gweonwoo firmly told him to get lost.

Even until we sat down facing each other at the square table, the Busan esper hadn’t hung up. Cha Gweonwoo, who had been tormented by me earlier and was now being tormented by the Busan esper for round two, rubbed his face vigorously with his hands, clearly exhausted.

The Busan esper would hang up, call again, hang up, call again, and seemed ready to come find us if we hung up again. Cha Gweonwoo was suffering, but I’m sorry to say it was a bit funny from an observer’s perspective.

“So where are you? So where are you? So where are you?”

His voice was so loud that I could hear everything even though Cha Gweonwoo had clearly turned the volume down to the lowest setting earlier. If he’s going to call like this, wouldn’t it be better to just tell him to come here? I thought to myself.

“Eating.”

“What are you eating? Let’s eat together! I haven’t had dinner yet!”

“Sundaegukbap.”

“Ah, shit! You’re lying! You’re trying to keep me from coming, right? Hyung, you never eat meat that’s been in water!”

My hand, which was about to place chopsticks in front of Cha Gweonwoo, hesitated. Ah…? Does he not like sundaegukbap? As I watched his reaction, Cha Gweonwoo, with reddened ears, took the chopsticks from my hand with an expressionless face.

Does he really not like it? Should I say we’ll eat something else? I was pondering this when Cha Gweonwoo warned in a rather ominous voice:

“If you keep talking nonsense, I’ll hang up.”

Sensing danger from his tone as he tried to end the call, the Busan esper hurriedly said:

“Ah, okay! Okay! Then just give me their number!”

Cha Gweonwoo’s hand, which was about to hang up, stopped.

“Whose?”

“You know, that person! The one you said you liked and brought…”

“…”

It might have been better if he hadn’t hung up. But because a flustered Cha Gweonwoo hung up, the atmosphere became even more uncontrollable. A heavy silence hung over the empty table where only chopsticks had been placed.

Thinking it was fortunate we hadn’t ordered yet, I stood up abruptly. In this atmosphere, I couldn’t sit face to face and eat sundaegukbap that Cha Gweonwoo didn’t even like.

My heart, which had easily softened at stage 1, was now even more tightly bound at stage 2. Now that I’ve heard that junior is “the junior he brought because he liked them”, I can’t even touch my own heart.

I don’t think I was angry. It was a bit different from how I usually feel when I’m angry. Earlier, the anger in my heart that couldn’t stay still for a moment, like dried squid on hot stones, was now as calm as the sea after a storm.

“Let’s eat something else.”

I said to Cha Gweonwoo, who had followed me out, as I re-wrapped the scarf I had just taken off.

“You don’t like sundaegukbap anyway, right?”

My voice was unbelievably calm, as if I couldn’t believe it was coming from my own mouth.

As I tried to open the locked passenger door, Cha Gweonwoo opened it for me. I got into the passenger seat and thought about other foods. Actually, I don’t think I was that keen on it either, but damn it, now it feels like it has to be sundaegukbap or nothing.

“What that guy said earlier…”

“Is there anything you want to eat?”

The two people’s words clashed like swords. Cha Gweonwoo seemed to want to talk more about the phone call he had hung up on earlier, but I wanted to talk about what we were going to eat now.

Come to think of it, Cha Gweonwoo didn’t eat much of the clam kalguksu, gamjatang, shabu-shabu we had recently, or the bossam. He said he doesn’t like meat that’s been in water, so gamjatang, shabu-shabu, and bossam probably weren’t to his taste, and maybe he doesn’t like seafood much either. And I ate all of that saying I liked it. Suddenly, I was annoyed by all of that too.

Why do I know so little?

Meanwhile, Cha Gweonwoo said again that he would eat whatever I wanted to eat. He said anything I liked was fine with him. Then, if I said I wanted to eat something, he grabbed his phone as if he would search the whole country to find it, and looked at me.

“Spinach-flavored…”

His hand, which had been busily writing down “spinach-flavored”, waited quietly for my next words.

“Spinach-flavored… pork cutlet waffle.”

“…”

“Truffle mushroom dog poop. Pigeon chicken fry.”

“…”

“Ah, I just don’t want to eat.”

I opened the passenger door I had just closed and got out. I didn’t want to eat anything. I just wanted to go home and cook some ramen. As I raised my hand in the air to catch a taxi, Cha Gweonwoo called my name and grabbed me. I shook off his hand and turned around.

“I asked if there was anything you wanted to eat!”

I thought a storm had passed through my heart, but it seems it was before the storm. Belatedly, an anger too huge for me to handle came like a tsunami.

“You don’t need to eat food you don’t like because of me! That’s why I asked what food you want to eat!”

“I’ve never eaten food I don’t like. When I’m with you, I just…”

“You said you don’t like meat that’s been in water!”

“…”

“Someone who knows you better than me said so. If you don’t like meat that’s been in water, why did you go to eat it!”

“…”

“Why don’t you tell me anything and make me look like a fool? Why do you make me feel sorry, why!”

I felt so ashamed and embarrassed for eating heartily, saying it was delicious, in front of someone who couldn’t even eat well. I clenched my trembling fingers into a fist. Everything is annoying.

Cha Gweonwoo, looking stunned as if he’d been shot in the head, couldn’t apologize or make excuses. I turned around abruptly and tried to catch a taxi again. Cha Gweonwoo grabbed me again. His eyes looked like they were about to collapse. His pupils shook incessantly as if he sensed some kind of crisis.

“Doweon-ah, I…”

Cha Gweonwoo, his face turned pale, finally opened his mouth.

“I… Doweon-ah, I can’t do without you.”

Lies.

I roughly shook off Cha Gweonwoo’s hands begging me not to do this and got into the taxi that had just stopped in front of me.

Lies. All lies.

I don’t know who the real Cha Gweonwoo is anymore. He probably said he liked gamjatang to me, but told others he absolutely hates meat that’s been in water. He told me he likes spending all twenty-four hours of the day with me, but maybe he was thinking why I don’t go home and keep staying with him. I thought he was only kind to me, but he was kind to his junior too.

‘You brought them because you liked them, right?’

He tells me he can’t do without me, but somewhere else…

‘Come watch again tomorrow.’

He might be telling that guy he can’t do without them. I felt suffocated, as if my solar plexus was blocked. I pounded my innocent chest with my fists, and when that wasn’t enough, I banged my head against the window.

Lies. They’re all lies. I don’t know who the real Cha Gweonwoo is anymore.