A Chilly Confession Under Summer Skies

‘I-I’m sorry…’

“Ah, damn it…”

“Huh? What?”

“…”

“Um, Oppa? Did I do something wrong?”

‘He’s the type who can’t hide his emotions,’ I recalled, thinking of the hulking figure I’d seen earlier that day.

The guy had trembled like an aspen, unable to fully straighten his broad shoulders, his eyes darting up at me through his shaggy hair as if terrified of further torment.

Normally, I wasn’t one to dwell on past people or situations, yet today, for some reason, my mind kept returning to such trivial matters.

When I abruptly stopped walking and snapped, Kwon Ye-seul, who had been following me, visibly flinched in surprise.

“No, sorry. I misspoke.”

“Ah, yes. No, it’s fine.”

I quickly apologized, leaning against the building wall, and put a cigarette filter between my lips. As I tried to light it, the flint, perhaps damp from the infernal summer humidity, only sparked with a ‘tick, tick’ sound, refusing to catch properly.

After failing to light it a couple more times, my frustration grew unbearable. I let out a deep sigh and glanced at Kwon Ye-seul, who stood stiffly not far from me.

An artificial peach scent wafted distinctly from Kwon Ye-seul, who had recently broken up with her boyfriend of over three hundred days.

As a hot, humid breeze blew past, her long hair, straightened meticulously with a curling iron, fluttered around her.

A lipstick cap, peeking out from the pocket of her short skirt, dangled precariously at the edge, threatening to tumble to the ground at any moment.

Finding something amusing in the sight, I chuckled, letting out a soft puff of air.

“Why are you laughing?”

“Because it’s funny.”

“But, Oppa, can I ask you something?”

“What is it?”

Seeing me laugh as I looked at her, Kwon Ye-seul, perhaps sensing that the psychological distance between us had significantly narrowed, closed the five-pace gap and began asking various questions.

Most of her inquiries were, predictably, rather trivial. She asked if I had a girlfriend, how long I’d known her unnies who talked about me a lot, and especially how I met and became close with Choi Ji-won.

Her reaction was so precisely what I’d anticipated that I barely managed to suppress a sigh.

Moreover, a new fact emerged from Kwon Ye-seul’s questions: she was a year younger than Shin Jeong-hyun, Kim Seong-jae, and Choi Ji-won.

Being a year younger than high school sophomores meant she was seventeen this year. Although it was only a three-year age gap, as an adult, I found Kwon Ye-seul to be incredibly young.

I hadn’t brought her out with any ill intent, and what could I possibly do with a seventeen-year-old anyway?

I should have just spat on Kim Seong-jae’s face when he’d looked us over, me and Kwon Ye-seul, as we exited the room, exclaiming with a surprised ‘Ohh.’

“Um, Oppa, actually, I…”

“Hey.”

Realizing I wouldn’t finish this cigarette either, I called out to Kwon Ye-seul, whose lips were already parting, her eyes burning with a fierce determination as if she were about to confess.

Kwon Ye-seul, who had been staring at the ground as if she’d dropped something, suddenly lifted her head to look up at me.

“I left my phone behind.”

“Oh, where?”

“In the room.”

“…”

“Let’s go back in. Even in summer, it gets a bit chilly at night.”

Using the excuse of the chilly weather to indirectly convey my refusal, Kwon Ye-seul’s face, though timid in nature, was not without perception, and it flushed red like a baked sweet potato. It was late, and leaving a girl alone to enter the room first would look bad.

Thus, I patiently waited for Kwon Ye-seul, who had been thoroughly rejected before she could even utter her confession.

With her head drooping in dejection, Kwon Ye-seul licked her dry lips.

My prediction that she was the type who couldn’t hide her emotions had proven perfectly accurate.

“Watch your step, be careful.”

Though rejecting her confession made me uncomfortable, there was nothing I could immediately do. On the way back to the room, I diligently looked out for Kwon Ye-seul, making sure she didn’t trip over a slogan or stumble in the dim light.

However, still reeling from the shock of rejection, Kwon Ye-seul merely nodded her head in understanding. She didn’t actively speak to me or grab my shirt as she had when we first left the room.

She simply followed behind me, neither too far nor too close, her expression blank as she idly counted the patterns on the innocent hallway floor.

‘Perhaps I should have at least let her confess before rejecting her,’ I mused.

“What, Shin Gi-ro? Why are you back already?”

I stopped in front of Room 12, the largest of the thirteen rooms, and opened the door.

Kim Seong-jae, who had been lost in his own imagination about whether my relationship with Kwon Ye-seul would progress, startled, his eyes darting between Kwon Ye-seul, still standing outside the door, and me.

It seemed he had even made a bet with Shin Jeong-hyun, as a couple of 50,000 won bills were clutched in his hand.

“No, what? What’s going on with you two?”

“What do you mean ‘what’? I just told you, I went out for a smoke.”

Annoyed by Kim Seong-jae’s meddling, which was far more than necessary for someone else’s business, I shoved his face with my palm. He was perched on the table instead of the perfectly good sofa. With his center of gravity suddenly shifted backward, Kim Seong-jae lost his balance and tumbled loudly to the table’s surface.

His frantic flailing, arms and legs thrashing forward, was quite a sight to behold.

I quickly leaned back against the plush sofa and painfully poked Kim Seong-jae’s side with the toe of my sneaker, signalling him to shut up and stop making a fuss.

“Someday, this youthful spring will pass!”

After the commotion subsided, Kim Seong-jae, having grabbed the microphone once more, sang the lyrics displayed on the screen in his usual pig-squealing manner. Shin Jeong-hyun, who had seemed to pay attention for a moment, was now engrossed in a phone call, his phone pressed against his ear as if nothing had happened. Judging by the conversation, it seemed to be a call from his girlfriend, with whom he had recently broken up and then reconciled.

Ironically, while he whispered insincere words of love into his girlfriend’s ear, he was openly engaging in affection with a woman sitting right beside him, his arm draped over her shoulder. Perhaps Shin Jeong-hyun, with his smooth, subtle philandering, was even more of a scumbag than Kim Seong-jae, who would charge in like a madman when he liked someone.

I suddenly felt a desperate need for some self-reflection, wondering how I had ended up surrounded by such thoughtless individuals.

“Oppa, seriously, what were you and Kwon Ye-seul doing outside?”

It was almost nine in the evening. As I silently counted the moments, wondering how much longer this meaningless time-killing would continue, Choi Ji-won abruptly leaned her head forward in front of me.

Choi Ji-won glared at Kwon Ye-seul, who had been silently staring at her phone, and twisted one corner of her mouth into a sneer.

“I just said I went out for a smoke.”

“Oh, come on, that’s not it. Kwon Ye-seul confessed to you, didn’t she?”

Inside the room, filled with the blare of music, any incidental sounds beyond the immediate conversation were easily drowned out by the voice of whoever held the microphone.

Furthermore, the seats in the room were spaced quite far apart, making it highly likely that people other than Choi Ji-won and me wouldn’t even be able to properly infer the content of our conversation, even if we spoke so openly.

“Why are you so curious about that?”

“Ha, so she did? I knew it. That b*tch has been asking where Oppa went for two months, and today she begged so hard to be allowed to follow you, even though it was a ‘no.’ Damn it, why is she acting so loose when she has a boyfriend?”

‘Still, this is a bit much,’ I thought.

Choi Ji-won, who had closed the distance even more than when she’d spoken to me rudely earlier, continued to badmouth Kwon Ye-seul as if she had always disliked her. I had never been interested in Kwon Ye-seul’s relationship status or any information about her, but hearing such unwanted details spewed like a machine gun into my ear was slowly pushing my patience to its limit.

Choi Ji-won’s behavior was entirely abnormal, as she seemed ready to tell me everything from why Kwon Ye-seul broke up with her boyfriend to the peer evaluations of Kwon Ye-seul among her friends. A faint sense of triumph and superiority even seemed to flicker across her face as she deliberately disparaged Kwon Ye-seul.

So, I decided enough was enough and tried to break off the conversation. I actually opened my mouth and told her to calm down.

However, in terms of timing, my phone, placed in front of Choi Ji-won, rang faster than my voice could register.

[Don’t pick up]

“Ugh, what the hell? Who set their phone ringer so loud, ruining the mood?”

Three characters appeared on the phone screen. As soon as I saw them, my expression hardened menacingly. Kim Seong-jae, who had been cheerfully singing, angrily put down the microphone, annoyed by the loud phone ringtone that was disrupting his performance. The music, now just an instrumental prelude without vocals, echoed loudly through the room. Shin Jeong-hyun, who had been engaging in affection with the woman beside him, assumed Kim Seong-jae was just being his usual boisterous self and didn’t pay much attention to us, and the same went for the other women, including Kwon Ye-seul.

Ah, except for one person.

Only Choi Ji-won, who had been watching me intently the whole time.