Diamond Dust Novel - Chapter 16

That was the first sentence he uttered later, as we got into the car and drove out of the apartment complex.

“Yes, when I was very young.”

“How young is ‘very young’?”

“From the fourth grade of elementary school for about a year.”

Waiting for the right time to turn right onto the main road, he asked for permission to smoke a cigarette. When I nodded, he rummaged in the pocket of the jacket he had casually tossed onto the armrest, pulled out a cigarette, and put it in his mouth. Meanwhile, another car followed closely behind and honked briefly. Holding the cigarette between his lips, he turned the wheel and entered the road, then pulled out his own lighter instead of using the car’s built-in electric cigar lighter. Most of the smoke escaped through the half-open window.

“I heard you didn’t major in it, but do you not paint now?”

“No, I don’t right now…”

I already knew from Juhan Hyung that he had asked the teacher about me, but I didn’t think the teacher had told him everything. The teacher wasn’t the type to easily divulge anyone’s past beyond a certain line, and I was, after all, currently in a situation close to hiding.

Was he asking me questions merely out of politeness? Suddenly, on our third meeting? He didn’t seem like the type to volunteer such effort just to avoid awkwardness in this confined space.

As I was pondering this, giving meaningless glances at the passing scenery outside the window, he asked another question, exhaling the smoke he had inhaled.

“Director Han offered you a live-in helper position, didn’t she?”

This was the real point.

“I’ll be honest.”

“……”

“Even though you had contact when you were young, it was brief, and you’ve been living separate lives until you met again, so you’re practically strangers now. My position is that I’m worried about you letting a person like that into your house to live with you.”

The pause in his speech wasn’t because he was hesitating to consider my feelings while speaking; it was merely a gap created as he took a drag on his cigarette.

“Director Han is so fond of you and trusts you so much that I don’t think my words will get through to her, so I’m asking you directly.”

The distance from the teacher’s house to mine wasn’t short by public transport, but it wasn’t far by car. The roads, having just passed the rush hour, were still congested, and the car slowed to a halt at a traffic light, waiting to proceed straight toward the War Memorial.

He held the top of the steering wheel with both hands, leaning his upper body slightly against it, and turned to look at me. I met his gaze without flinching. The cigarette held in his left hand looked like it might touch his fine hair.

“I hope your life can be safe. Peaceful. And secure. Understand? Mr. Seo Yihyun.”

The man, who looked like the very symbol of a Golden Alpha from an elegant, sophisticated world, a person who probably hadn’t touched a speck of dirt, let alone filth, suddenly looked like someone from the underworld, who wouldn’t hesitate to use threats and underhanded tactics to get what he wanted. He looked more convincing than the head of the private investigation agency who had set up our burner phone and found us a room.

As I felt the first day, he was a person who didn’t care one bit about the feelings of someone outside his circle, especially when it came to protecting those precious to him. He wasn’t considering my feelings at all, nor was he concerned that such rude behavior might make me dislike or despise him. Even if I came to dislike him, it didn’t matter.

With the green light, the car started moving again. While we took a detour into an alley before the Namsan Tunnel and drove up the winding hill road, I openly stared at his profile without trying to hide it.

It was a gaze he couldn’t possibly miss, but he showed no sign of discomfort or even noticing it.

What should I say in response? Should I say, ‘Yes, I understand. I won’t do anything to the teacher’?

The very act of making such a promise about something I had no intention of doing felt strange. That kind of promise felt like an admission that I could have been a danger to the teacher, and I didn’t want to make it.

It was unexpected that he knew my name, after my age. And I certainly didn’t expect to hear my name spoken like this.

Just as I took my eyes off his profile, where he was calmly concentrating on driving, his phone rang. He looked down at the phone, vibrating with a light buzz, checked the caller ID, and clucked his tongue irritably before answering.

“Yeah… I stopped by… No, not right now… I’m driving.”

Although my knowledge of his personal relationships was extremely limited, his lack of sincerity suggested the call was from the passenger or someone similar.

Whatever the person on the other end said, he paused for a moment and glanced at me.

“No, no one. I’ll arrive without being late, so hang up.”

“He’s a temp.”

“Am I the same as that guy?”

“No, no one.”

The words he had used to refer to me linked up in my mind like a series. Predictably, even after ending the call, there was no explanation or apology for making a person who clearly existed into a non-person.

The large, decent-sized church, which seemed out of place in this neighborhood, was right ahead.

“You can drop me off there. In front of the stairs.”

I unbuckled my seatbelt as the car began to slow down. He pulled over a little distance from the bus stop.

“I have a question.”

“For me?”

“Did you really do this to Juhan Hyung too?”

His eyebrows knitted together, drawing his eyes closer. His expression suggested he didn’t know what I was talking about. Perhaps the one who hits easily forgets, but the one who is hit never forgets. Juhan Hyung had even considered scratching your car and running away.

I could now fully understand Hyung’s words that he felt the Director would pursue him and take revenge no matter what. I had just received a warning from him that bordered on a threat, like a boss from a dark organization.

“Don’t worry about the teacher… Director Han.”

He rested his left arm on the steering wheel, turning his upper body toward me, and looked at me with an expression suggesting he was being detained by a random person on the street and forced to listen to nonsense.

“I’m gay, you know.”

I don’t know why I said that. I’ve never been in a relationship, let alone been in love with anyone, gay or otherwise.

But the moment I saw his expression, where not just his eyebrows, but the pupils beneath them, twitched, I knew I had spoken the truth. I simply wanted to see him flustered.

“Well then, thank you for the ride.”

I bowed my head, gathered my bag, and got out of the car. I wanted to turn around several times as I climbed the stairs, but each time, I tightened my grip on the bag strap and held back.

If I couldn’t hurt him, I wanted to shock him. Even if he was a rock as hard as a diamond, and the impact I hurled at him was merely a raw egg.

***

“What are you drawing?”

I stopped the hand that was scribbling various lines on the notepad Morae had torn for me with an economical ballpoint pen that contained red, blue, and black in one barrel, and looked up. Morae was smiling down at me.

“Nothing. My hand was bored.”

The background, which looked like waves, fire, and a whirlpool all at once, was dizzying even to me.

“Drink this. It’s on me, to celebrate your study abroad.”

Morae pushed the fruit punch, served in a generously sized cup, the signature of ‘A Scene in Bali’, toward me, then came and sat beside me. I kept the cup on the table and bent my head to drink through the straw, looking up at Morae with my eyes. Study abroad?

“In the neighborhood, they think I’ve gone to study abroad. Specifically, that I’m in Seoul preparing for study abroad.”

My brows and nose crinkled as a sudden large gulp of cold drink caused a sharp sensation.

I had heard last week that they were going to contact the investigation agency to find out how the situation was developing after we left, and it seemed the agency had contacted them today.

“What about Hyung and me?”

“The funny thing is, the adults seem to think it’s fortunate that all three of us disappeared, not just Seo Yihan and me. I’m supposedly in Seoul preparing for study abroad, and you and Seo Yihan quickly went to Yeongdeok to earn money because a good opportunity came up. That’s the current situation. They’re framing it as if they intentionally tried to separate me from him.”

It was possible to spin a story like that. After all, ‘Mr. Im’ had been creating tension, acting as though he would cause trouble any minute, even before we escaped. Though Morae was the one who actually caused the trouble first.

“Even so, who would believe that? Even if it were true, most people write their own novel about it and spread it around, choosing to believe that is the hidden truth. Knowing full well that no one believes it, I wonder if a thin veneer of propriety is really that important…”

Morae trailed off the last words in a mumble and leaned back loosely against the bench’s backrest.

“I left a letter causing such a scene, implying I would jump into the Han River if they tried to find me… so they might not be making any rash moves right now, but they will absolutely not give up.”

Morae, who had cooled herself down by taking three or four big sips of the peach punch directly from the rim of the cup without using the straw, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and added:

“We need to leave as soon as possible before that happens.”

I had met Morae when she was in her last year of high school, and she was in conflict with her parents over university. Her parents wanted her to go to university, even a third-rate one nearby, but she wasn’t paying any attention, so it was less a ‘conflict’ than a unilateral situation.

Hyung told me that her grades had been excellent until her first or second year of middle school. But knowing only too well what her parents expected of her, she began to feign misconduct to secure her freedom in the future.

She intentionally ruined her grades and sought to be a troublemaker. Her curfew got later, she decorated her room with B-grade movie posters that looked merely delinquent and bizarre to her parents’ eyes, and her clothing became slovenly. Skipping class to go surfing was common.

In this way, she transformed from a proud daughter with a promising future, who did everything above average, to a troublesome youngest child whom they were just thankful was getting by without major incidents.

Her parents believed this was adolescent rebellion caused by confusion over being diagnosed as an Alpha, but every single choice was hers.

“I will be with the person I want to be with and where I want to be. Since I’ll eventually live life on my own terms anyway, giving my parents false hope by being a studious model student… feels wrong for both of us. It’s better for them to gradually realize now that I have no intention of living the life they want for me.”

Morae had said that, but even when she turned twenty-four, her parents had not accepted the situation. They were denying who she was, what she wanted and what form of happiness she desired, under the guise that she was too young to make the right long-term choices for her life.

Morae had no interest in an elite university or a ‘good job’ with a high salary. She had no intention of taking a position in any of her father’s various businesses, which brought in billions of won in annual revenue.

What she desired was peace. Simple daily life, filled with healthy laughter and gratitude, true to herself, surrounded by the things she loved.

The waves, warm weather, and Seo Yihan. A bottle of beer and a surfboard. A paperback edition of a favorite book. That was all she wanted. She was a powerful person because she didn’t need more than that to be happy.

“The Mister is getting by as usual, too.”

“Yeah… thank you.”

Morae, who had been quietly looking at the tip of my pen, smiled, stretched out her arm, and lightly ruffled my hair. Then, she let her hand fall to my shoulder, embracing it, and rested her temple on my other shoulder.

We were sitting side-by-side, facing the front of the cafe. Since the folding front window was wide open, we could see the street through the green leaves of the plants decorating the cafe. A relaxed, exotic melody played on a ukulele, and at the table closest to the alley, a group of three or four people who looked about my age were laughing incessantly. It was peaceful.

If Hyung and Morae were to open a cafe on some island in the South, it would probably feel like this.

Open to anyone passing by, perhaps not stylish or trendy, but infused with the owner’s taste and life, without a single forced element, where they could dash into the sea with their boards whenever they had a free moment.

Seoul was not the final destination of Hyung and Morae’s elopement. Here, they could return to square one at any time. Although Morae’s fierce letter and the skilled detective from the agency had bought them some time, they couldn’t be completely at ease.

They would have to leave soon for a place with warm weather and waves. That was their long-held dream. The dream of two people who had belonged only to each other since they were much younger and felt most natural and comfortable viewing the world through each other. This current escape was just one leg of the journey toward that dream.