WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Malfoid
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◈ The Dynamics of Pure Love and Overprotection ◈
Chapter 21
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4. Exchange Formula
“...you know? That's what was so funny.”
The white streetlights cast deep shadows beneath the roadside trees. People in lighter clothes and cars on the road hurried through the darkness. Uihyeon stared vacantly between them.
“So I told Gayoung not to do it. But do you know what Gayoung said?”
Just as the scenery beyond the car window passed Uihyeon by without a thought, Sujin's chattering beside him never reached his ears and scattered in every direction. It wasn't only because he had drunk for the first time in a while that he couldn't focus.
“Oppa. Oppa?”
Sujin eventually noticed something was wrong with him. The woman who seized his forearm as if urging him on looked clearly disappointed.
“Yeah, I’m listening. What did Gayoung say?”
“Are you tired?”
He wasn't tired. But in this situation, saying he was tired would hurt her less.
“Yeah, a little.”
“You went to the columbarium today, so it makes sense that you’re tired. Chaewon looked tired earlier too. Maybe we should have asked her to ride in this car with us.”
Fortunately, Sujin understood him quickly. Kind, uncomplicated people were easy to be around for that reason. They took words at face value.
“Does Chaewon get along well with Dogyeom oppa? They seemed distant today.”
“They’re like any other siblings.”
“I guess so. My friends who are sisters stay close, but siblings of different genders tend to grow apart as they get older. I hope Dogyeom oppa takes good care of her.”
They had been talking about Chaewon for too long. Uihyeon checked the navigation in front of him to see how many minutes remained until they arrived.
“Seeing them today, Chaewon and Dogyeom oppa looked so alike. Is that obvious since they’re siblings? They both have cat-like eyes.”
“Chaewon is more like a puppy.”
“Huh?”
Sujin tilted her head in confusion. But Uihyeon firmly stood by his opinion.
“She acts like a puppy.”
Yu Chaewon often came up in their conversations. He had introduced her to Sujin as someone he had known since childhood, practically a younger sister, and had once mentioned that he paid her more attention because of her unusual family circumstances. Now that Sujin knew it was the death anniversary of Chaewon’s parents, it was only natural for her to feel sympathy and worry about her.
But he didn't want to say much about Chaewon right now. Separate from the fact that today was difficult for her, every time he heard Chaewon's name, his mouth felt rough and dry. As if he had bitten into an astringent persimmon.
“How’s studying for your exams going?”
So Uihyeon changed the subject. He fixed his gaze on Sujin and struggled to hold back the thoughts that kept running elsewhere. There were about eight minutes left before they reached Sujin’s house. If he endured that long, he would be free to be alone and silent.
* * *
After returning home and showering, Uihyeon checked his phone first. There were no messages from Chaewon. He had told her to contact him if anything happened, but had nothing really happened all this time? Or did she not want to talk to him?
The latter was probably more likely. He had brought her to dinner with Sujin despite knowing exactly how upset she would be, and Dogyeom had relentlessly rubbed her the wrong way too. Chaewon’s pride must have taken a serious blow.
The next thing Uihyeon checked was Chaewon’s social media. The latest post on her neglected account was still a photo of the bouquet he had given her when she graduated from high school. He knew Chaewon only used social media to search for things or contact people, but checking it regularly had become a habit.
Uihyeon opened Chaewon’s follower list. On Han Jio’s account, there was a photo from an hour ago of his desk, with books and a tablet spread across it. It was painfully obvious who he had taken it for. Did he really think he could win Chaewon’s attention with a boring photo like that? Should Uihyeon call him innocent?
[Liked by chaeone_u and others.]
But Chaewon had pointedly tapped the heart. She hadn't sent him a single message, yet she had carefully looked at a picture posted by another man.
Uihyeon drew in a deep breath, then let it out. When he thought about how much one thoughtless heart from Chaewon would mean to Han Jio, heat rushed to his head. Chaewon was only casually playing around with Han Jio to draw Uihyeon’s attention anyway, so why put in the effort to like a photo like that? He couldn't understand it.
Next, Uihyeon moved his thumb to his closest friend’s contact information. The moment he pressed the call button, Dogyeom’s voice came through.
“Yeah. What is it?”
“Did you stop by home?”
“No.”
Dogyeom’s answer was so unconcerned that the temper sleeping quietly inside Uihyeon stirred. Shouldn't he fulfill his duty as family on a day like this? The taxi driver would be doing the driving anyway. Was it so difficult to go with her?
“You let Chaewon go home alone?”
“She said she wanted to go separately. What was I supposed to do?”
Uihyeon closed his eyes slowly. A woman’s voice drifted through the phone. It was probably the girlfriend Dogyeom had started seeing two or three months ago.
“She contacted you, right? What, is she upset because she had to go home alone? Hey, you know her. Pretending to be pitiful is her specialty.”
As Dogyeom assumed, Chaewon should have called long ago to whine at him. But Uihyeon’s phone remained quiet. There could be many reasons. Since it was such a day, she might be exhausted. She might be mindful that Sujin was with him. She might not have the energy to pretend she was fine while holding on to her battered pride.
None of those suited the persistent, blind Yu Chaewon.
“Didn’t you hear what she said today? She said she’s all grown up. She’s an adult, so leave her alone.”
“Fine. Bye.”
After ending the call with Dogyeom, Uihyeon immediately moved his finger toward Chaewon’s number, then stopped. If she wanted to contact him, she would do so first. His role was only to look after Chaewon in Dogyeom’s place, not to sort through every emotion she couldn't handle. That had to remain entirely her responsibility.
Sitting on the edge of his bed, Uihyeon switched his phone from vibrate to sound. He turned the volume all the way up so that his wine-heavy head could wake at any moment, even after falling asleep.
The last thing he checked was his photo gallery. Even without sorting it separately, he found that photo at once. The backs of a man and woman standing before a pink painting. A girl with black hair falling to her waist beside a man with broad shoulders. It was a picture of a couple standing close together, yet unable to hide their awkwardness, a photo he had taken himself of Chaewon and Han Jio on their date.
He found himself looking at this photo every so often. He didn't know why, but it was like repeatedly touching a hangnail. It kept bothering him if he left it alone, but he knew it would get infected if he ripped it off outright, so he could do nothing.
Lately, he had been looking at it more often. He needed to do something, whether that meant cutting it off with nail clippers or something else. Uihyeon pressed the trash icon at the bottom of the screen to delete the photo. But when another message appeared asking if he wanted to delete it, he couldn't bring himself to press confirm and exited the gallery.
He put his phone beside his pillow and lay flat on his back. A sensation of constriction slowly spread inside his solar plexus. Whenever he thought of Yu Chaewon, his chest shrank like crumpled paper, leaving him stifled. It had already been nearly a year since he first began feeling this way.
Uihyeon turned onto his side, facing his phone. It made breathing a little easier. In the dim room, the screen remained dark and asleep.
* * *
Yu Chaewon was like a puppy. Not in appearance, but in the way she behaved.
A friend’s much younger sister was like one of those Maltese or poodles you saw when visiting that friend’s house. Like a pet you only had to shower with affection and feed treats, with no responsibility whatsoever. All you had to do was feel pleased as it adored you, whether it became spoiled or not.
Uihyeon had looked after his friend’s younger sister not because he was especially kind or generous. It was simply because she was cute. She listened to him better than her own older brother and beamed whenever she saw him, so he had no reason to turn her away. Sometimes he deliberately pretended not to notice because it was cute how she followed him around.
Even when Chaewon reached puberty and only greeted him quietly before rushing into her room, he hadn't taken her feelings seriously. People her age were often shy. Even when Chaewon timidly held out snacks she had cutely wrapped for Valentine’s Day or Pepero Day, he had only laughed it off. It was as though an invisible tail were spinning in circles behind her.
When Dogyeom left to study in the United States and Uihyeon enlisted, he began to wonder as he received Chaewon’s letters without fail at the military base. She didn't even send her own older brother a single message, so did she really like him that much? People said there was a pure, unconditional affection from a pet you raised. Was it something like that?
It wasn't burdensome, even though he had no intention of returning her feelings. Chaewon liking him had been natural for so long that there was nothing strange about it. He doted on her, and she followed him. The more she obeyed him, the more he praised and cherished her. His relationship with Chaewon rested on that exchange formula.
He couldn't understand it whenever Dogyeom felt embarrassed because of his sister. Who in the world would feel pressured because a dog at a friend’s house behaved cutely in front of them? You just patted it for being good.
Of course, he had never said that aloud. Uihyeon himself knew that his way of thinking was somewhat different from other people’s. It wasn't serious enough to require a hospital visit, but he recognized that there was a slight flaw in the calculations he made in his head when dealing with people.
Footnotes:
Pepero Day is a Korean gift-giving occasion on November 11, commonly marked by exchanging Pepero snack sticks.
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