WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Malfoid
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ The Dynamics of Pure Love and Overprotection ◈
Chapter 13
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I motioned for Baek Jungyeong to sit there. I couldn't bring myself to leave Kang Uihyeon's side, so I had to wedge someone else between us. That was the only way I could keep my resolve for long.
Baek Jungyeong, who had been hesitating with a bottle of Coke in hand, eventually sat across from me. His face held an oddly solemn resolve. He seemed to think of himself as some neutral party.
“Wrap it in lettuce and perilla leaves too.”
As I shifted my chopsticks from the pork neck I had been chewing like paper toward a sausage, a lecture flew at me from beside me. I silently layered perilla leaves and meat on lettuce, then stuffed it into my mouth.
“Have some rice too.”
Kang Uihyeon handed me a container of warmed instant rice, but I shook my head and pushed it away.
“Why?”
I wanted to maintain my lofty silence, but only a few minutes had passed before I was about to betray my own intentions. How was I supposed to not answer when he asked me that?
“Are you full already?”
“My stomach feels heavy.”
“That’s because you’re only eating meat.”
Kang Uihyeon let out a quiet sigh, rose from his seat, and walked over to the grill. When he returned, he held a bowl of kimchi stew broth. The spicy red soup seemed to settle my churning stomach a little.
“Try it with this. If your stomach feels better, have some rice too. Don’t pour alcohol into an empty stomach later. Make sure you eat properly. There’s indigestion medicine in the car, so tell me if you keep feeling sick.”
“But, hyung.”
Baek Jungyeong, who had only been shifting his eyes quietly, interrupted in a voice as small as an ant’s.
“Were you always this naggy?”
Baek Jungyeong might have spoken softly, but he had a talent for summarizing the scene he had just witnessed in a single sentence.
“...Naggy?”
Kang Uihyeon repeated the key word, looking as if it were the first time he had ever heard such a thing.
“Yes. Yu Chaewon isn’t a child, so why do you keep telling her to eat this and that? I’m the one who feels suffocated.”
Kang Uihyeon quietly set down his chopsticks. Then he simply stared at the table, as though turning over the meaning of Baek Jungyeong’s words. The stiffness around his eyes and the straight line of his lips showed just how displeased he was.
Startled by such a serious reaction, Baek Jungyeong shifted uneasily in his seat, while I silently glared at him. This was my fault from the beginning. I should never have dragged Baek Jungyeong, of all people, into sitting here when he had no social awareness whatsoever.
At last, Kang Uihyeon lifted his gaze and turned to face me.
“Does it feel suffocating?”
“No.”
I immediately shook my head. This had been Kang Uihyeon’s way since the day we met. For so long that what sounded like suffocating nagging to someone else felt like cozy care to me.
Baek Jungyeong was right that Kang Uihyeon treated me like a child. And I, too, wanted to be treated like an adult woman, like Jeong Sujin. Still, I did not want some stranger who knew nothing barging in to give his opinion. Whether or not I accepted this care was for me to decide. I did not want Kang Uihyeon to suddenly stop just because of someone else’s presumptuous remark.
“Hey, who are you to tell Uihyeon-oppa what to do?”
So I loudly snapped at Baek Jungyeong.
“Oppa has always looked after me like this, ever since I was little. If you feel suffocated, scram somewhere you can’t hear him. Why are you sticking your nose in where it doesn’t belong?”
Baek Jungyeong’s mouth fell open. He looked as though he wanted to protest that he was only sitting here because of me. But I ignored him and mixed rice into the kimchi stew Kang Uihyeon had brought me.
“Oppa, I want more pork neck. Pork neck tastes good.”
I forgot all about my resolve to distance myself from Kang Uihyeon and whined like a child. I even smiled with my eyes crinkling. Right then, all I could think about was soothing his mood and letting him regain the sense of usefulness he got from being responsible for me.
“Okay. Wait a moment.”
Without showing any annoyance, Kang Uihyeon went over to the grill again. As I watched his back while he put meat just for me onto a plate, all the resentment I had built up since last week vanished as though washed away. With Jeong Sujin gone, it really felt like things had returned to the way they were. Back when Kang Uihyeon never kept women around him and only paid attention to me, only looked after me.
“You...”
Baek Jungyeong across from me spoke with difficulty.
“You’re kind of strange. You know that?”
Though Baek Jungyeong called me strange, his gaze was fixed on Kang Uihyeon. There was no longer any admiration for Uihyeon-hyung in his crooked eyes. Only discomfort and doubt remained.
What did it matter? I did not care if I looked like some erratic crazy bitch to others. As long as my name was the only one on Kang Uihyeon’s list of people to protect. I did not simply want to be his girlfriend. Becoming the one and only thing to Kang Uihyeon was the goal of my entire life. There was no reason to announce that to everyone.
* * *
After we had finished all the meat and before the drinking began in earnest, I was sitting across from Baek Jungyeong. We had split into two teams for random games, and my opponent was the classmate who had just called me strange.
“Okay, get ready!”
The senior acting as host slid a sheet of white paper between Baek Jungyeong and me, blocking our view of each other. I closed my eyes and waited for the signal.
“Start!”
The instant I opened my eyes, the white paper was removed. My eyes, tense with effort, fixed on Baek Jungyeong’s face. His eyes did the same.
We engaged in a fierce staring contest. As the murmuring around us grew louder, Baek Jungyeong’s eyelashes began to tremble. His nostrils flared nonstop, as though he was about to laugh. The man’s ridiculous expression was cheating in itself.
“Hey, you can’t sneakily close your eyes.”
The host watched Baek Jungyeong’s eyes in a stern voice. The man staring at me turned redder and redder. After his eyelashes, even the muscles around his mouth started twitching.
“Team B wins!”
The host, who had been judging closely, raised my hand. Baek Jungyeong collapsed to the side like a deflated inflatable doll. He belatedly covered his bright red face with both hands, but he could not hide his heaving chest.
Feeling pleased, I stood and returned to where I had been sitting in the back. But Seo Minji had taken my spot, or rather, the spot beside Kang Uihyeon. When our eyes met, Seo Minji turned away and pretended to speak with someone else.
...There was another little nobody acting up without knowing their place.
For a brief moment, I hesitated before going over. I was caught between my resolve not to hover around Kang Uihyeon and my desire to reclaim the place that should rightfully be mine. But the feeling that I did not want to let someone take what had originally belonged to me won out.
I slipped one foot between Kang Uihyeon and Seo Minji’s knees. Then I twisted my ankle back and forth, pushing their thighs apart on either side. The moment a little space opened up, I quickly wedged myself in and turned sideways, presenting my back to Seo Minji.
A disbelieving huff came from behind my shoulder, but I did not turn around. Who told them to covet someone else’s seat? I had already made a firm decision to put distance between Kang Uihyeon and me, yet little nobodies who were not even Jeong Sujin were taking advantage of that gap to linger around him. It irritated me to death.
“Jungyeong’s face is still red.”
I was fuming alone over my complicated feelings when Kang Uihyeon’s quiet voice interrupted my thoughts. Baek Jungyeong, with his head lowered as befitted a loser, was walking toward where Team A was gathered.
“Is he really shy?”
Kang Uihyeon guessed why Baek Jungyeong’s face had not returned to normal, tapping his knee with his fingertips.
“He says he gets intimidated whenever he sees you, but he doesn’t look scared at all.”
After assessing Baek Jungyeong to himself, Kang Uihyeon suddenly looked at me.
“What were you thinking?”
“Huh?”
“What were you thinking about during the staring contest with Jungyeong?”
Kang Uihyeon asked me seriously, as though he were asking a professor about something he did not know. I did not understand why he was curious about that, but I answered earnestly.
“I thought Baek Jungyeong’s face was ugly. And that I absolutely could not laugh.”
Kang Uihyeon only nodded at my answer. His profile as he applauded the students stepping up for the next game was like a finely woven tapestry, but it was filled only with detached indifference.
Even so, I believed Kang Uihyeon had been reassured by my answer. If he had not been satisfied, he would have kept asking questions one after another. Passing in one go meant that I had lived up to his trust.
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