WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Malfoid
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ The Dynamics of Pure Love and Overprotection ◈
Chapter 28
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“Why?”
Kang Uihyeon kept pressing for a reason, as if he couldn't understand. It made sense. I had always been the one who wanted him to stay in this house. After clinging to his kindness for the past three years, even I wouldn't believe it if I suddenly said he was a nuisance.
“Mother isn't here right now, is she?”
He stated it as though he already knew the truth. The blank mask I had kept on since he arrived finally cracked. I let my confusion show.
“How do you know that?”
“I can tell from your face.”
Kang Uihyeon's large hand covered the top of my head.
“Your anxiety is written all over your face.”
I habitually lowered my gaze at his warmth, then jerked my head as if in a fit and slipped out from under his hand. I remembered that hand embracing Jeong Sujin. It had only been a few hours since I made up my mind, ignoring dozens of his messages, yet I was already losing myself beneath his hand again.
“Yeah, Mother isn't here. So leave. I think Mother keeps hiding because of you.”
“Do you want to be with Mother?”
“Yeah.”
“Don't lie.”
I glared at Kang Uihyeon with my eyes wide, but he was a man who wouldn't care about a look like that.
“You just want to be with someone. Mother is only a stopgap.”
Stopgap. If words could have a temperature, the word would have felt like Mother's chilling body warmth. Kang Uihyeon attacked me with cruel words, trying to strip me open.
There was nothing wrong with what he said. What I truly needed was family to live with in this huge house, not the lingering image of my dead mother. I had only used Mother's presence, visible only to me, to deceive myself.
“So what if she's a stopgap? Have I hurt anyone? Why do you care if I want to live alone, clinging to my dead mother?”
Whether Mother broke a cup or knocked over a pot of ramen, all I had to do was deal with it. I wasn't clinging to Kang Uihyeon and whining anymore, so there was no reason for him to accuse me like this.
“Don't use me as a stopgap either, oppa.”
“...What?”
A crack appeared on Kang Uihyeon's usually calm face. In the end, I was the only one my words would hurt, but even that small reaction brought a faint satisfaction.
“You still want me to like you, oppa.”
Even though he had already reached his destination, Jeong Sujin. Even after making me watch the two of them embrace, he still wanted me to welcome him.
“You pushed me away ambiguously because you knew exactly how I felt. You liked having someone cling to you, so you just let me. You were going to keep me around as a stopgap until you got a real girlfriend.”
Kang Uihyeon's heavy gaze flew straight at me. His eyes were so still that they looked ready to explode at any moment.
“Was it fun, coming to my house while you were seeing Jeong Sujin? Was it fun watching me get all nervous because I liked you so much?”
The tremor at the end of my voice spread through my whole body. Shivering as though I had chills, I grabbed Kang Uihyeon by the forearm.
“Just go. Please, go. It's already hard enough, so don't make it worse. I'm not going to like you anymore, so don't play with my feelings. Get out, please.”
“Is that true?”
Kang Uihyeon didn't budge despite how hard I pulled him.
“You really aren't going to like me anymore?”
That was all he could ask while standing there without moving. Was this what it felt like to see red? For a moment, I wanted to strangle him. Goosebumps raced up from the hand clutching his forearm.
“Yeah, I'm not going to like you! It's disgusting and irritating, I can't take it anymore! I fucking hate it! I said I hate it!”
I dragged Kang Uihyeon outside. He could have shaken me off anytime, but he reluctantly took a step. With a sigh, he put on his shoes and looked down at me, trying to say something, but I couldn't allow even a moment longer.
“Don't ever come back.”
I opened the front door myself and coldly shoved Kang Uihyeon in the back. Forced over the threshold, he turned to look at me. The hallway lights came on automatically, casting deep shadows across his face.
I couldn't bear to look at that face for long. I slammed the door shut and hurried away from the entrance. I couldn't bear the sound of Kang Uihyeon leaving or any sign that he was lingering.
At last, I was alone. Alone in a house where even my dead mother was gone.
Instead of going to my room, I curled up on the sofa. It was a place where I could immediately tell when Mother came back. I closed my eyes, waiting for my only housemate to return.
Had Mother heard Kang Uihyeon spouting that she was a stopgap? I wished she had gone somewhere for a while instead of hiding where I couldn't see her. I wished she hadn't heard any of it.
The house was deathly quiet, so even the faintest sounds from the hallway drifted in. When I heard the elevator arrive, I quickly covered my ears with both hands. I buried my face between the sofa's armrest and cushions, trying to block out everything outside.
Giving up unrequited love took relentless effort.
* * *
Even though summer had begun, sleeping in the living room without a blanket must have been too much. I woke to the cold of early morning. Since it felt even colder, Mother must have come back.
“Where did you go again...?”
Still barely awake, I mumbled as I sat up. As I lowered my legs from the sofa, it felt like something seized the back of my neck and yanked it. But I was too groggy to recognize the warning my instincts gave me, and my feet touched the floor before I could think.
“Ah!”
I fell onto the floor with a cry. A burning pain tore across the sole of my foot. Something sticky ran down it.
My eyes flew open. I froze at the object inches from my face. Even if ice water had been poured over my head, I wouldn't have been this shocked. My heart, suddenly blanketed in frost, let out a creak.
A kitchen knife glinted in the bluish air of dawn. It stood upright, its spine facing down and its blade facing up.
I stared at the knife, forgetting even the pain in my foot. I hadn't taken it out from under the sink for months. The curved blade, aimed precisely at the sole of my foot, held a blue-tinged chill.
A fear entirely different from when I had fallen onto broken glass or when the ramen pot spilled pressed against the back of my head. Unable to move a single finger, I only shifted my eyes. I searched for Mother while hoping I wouldn't see her. I didn't want to believe she had tried to hurt me again.
Mother was behind me. Even though I couldn't see or hear her, I just knew. We had lived together for three years.
But I couldn't bring myself to turn around. I couldn't even think of confronting her. Afraid that the knife would pierce my chest instead of my foot next time, I couldn't make a sound. Dry saliva I couldn't swallow pooled in my mouth.
Then I heard someone entering the code into the door lock outside. I had changed it a few hours ago, so an alert beep sounded when the code was wrong. It came again, then once more, sharply breaking the silence of dawn.
On the fourth attempt, the front door opened.
The person who rushed inside was Kang Uihyeon. His gaze moved from me, sprawled on the floor, to my bleeding foot, then to the knife standing unnaturally upright.
Kang Uihyeon was only stunned for a moment. He ran into the bathroom, brought back a towel, and wrapped it tightly around my left foot. The pressure of the towel hurt more sharply than the cut from the blade.
“Come here.”
Kang Uihyeon slipped his arms beneath my back and knees and lifted me. His face had gone pale as if he had been stabbed himself. The line of his jaw, closest to my view, was rigid.
As Kang Uihyeon carried me through the entrance, I heard the knife that had been standing upright collapse sideways with a thud. Mother disappeared again, as she always did.
In the bustling emergency room at dawn, a patient whose sole had been cut by a knife was not a priority. I had to wait my turn on a bed, my foot propped on a cushion.
“The password...”
Kang Uihyeon, standing anxiously beside the bed, noticed my quiet voice and bent down.
“How did you figure it out?”
With so many questions piling up, I asked the most urgent one first.
“I heard you change it to eight digits while I was doing the dishes earlier.”
Kang Uihyeon answered while scanning the medical staff moving busily around us.
“Then it had to be someone's birthday or phone number. It wouldn't be Dogyeom's, and if it was related to your parents, I know them all.”
I had changed it to the phone number Father used when he was alive, but Kang Uihyeon figured it out and got into the house in only four tries. No wonder he had let me throw him out. I was the only one who had made a fool of myself again, causing a scene all by myself.
“How did you get here?”
The next thing I wanted to know was how he had come in at exactly the right time.
“Were you outside the whole time?”
“Yeah.”
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