Chapter 38

The next day, I woke up to the sound of stomping.

What? Is there another war happening somewhere?

I walked out of my room in a haze. Following the sound, I headed to the kitchen. Lee JiHan was sitting at the kitchen table. With newspapers laid out on the table, he was pounding dried pollack.

“What are you doing? I asked.

“I’m going to make dried pollack soup,” Lee JiHan replied while hammering away.

“I mean... We didn’t even drink,” I said. “Why the soup all of a sudden...”

“I may not have drank, but I feel like I have to relieve the indigestion I feel,” he replied.

It’s probably a need to relieve anger not indigestion, I thought as I watched the shards of dried pollack flying every which way.

“Na AhJung, you can go sleep some more,” Lee JiHan said. “It’s going to be a while before the soup is done.”

It’s not the soup that’s going to take a while, it’s the time your anger needs to subside, I assumed as I looked at the unnecessarily large pile of dried pollack next to Lee JiHan.

Thinking that I could not let this continue, I sat in front of Lee JiHan. “I think there was a misunderstanding.”

“Misunderstanding?” Lee JiHan stopped his hammering and looked at me.

“The secret about JiKyung that I found out about four years ago was by chance,” I said. “JiKyung didn’t tell me. I just happened to have unluckily witnessed it.”

Lee JiHan’s expression didn’t change one bit.

“If it wasn’t for that incident, JiKyung wouldn’t never have confessed to me that he was gay,” I said. “So, what I’m saying is that JiKyung didn’t confess the fact to me because he trusts me more or is closer to me than you.”

After my explanation, Lee JiHan let out a huge sigh. In a deadened tone, he said, “It doesn’t matter how you found out about my brother’s secret.”

“What?”

“Either way, you found out about it four years ago and kept that secret for him for four years,” he said.

“Yes.”

“So, saying that, my brother had four year’s worth of opportunity to tell me about it,” Lee JiHan said.

“Opportunity? What opportunity?” I asked.

“The time to fix the fact that a stranger knew his secret when his brother didn’t. He had four year’s time to undo that, but my brother didn’t. He didn’t even want to change that fact.” Lee JiHan put a dried pollack in front of him and smashed it as he said, “Instead, he took that time to plan a contract wedding.”

He seemed to be looking at a person who wasn’t me and slammed down the pollack again. “He was planning to fool me my entire life!”

Even though his anger was not directed at me, I swallowed nervously.

***

Only after we had finished eating breakfast did I get my phone back.

Since he knew about it already, I thought it would be better to explain the situation as soon as possible. A contract was still a promise. I was sorry that I couldn’t keep it. I had to apologize and beg for his forgiveness. I rushed to my room and turned the phone on.

Ding! Ding! Ding!

I headed to my bed as the overflow of missed messages came pouring in. As expected, all the messages were from JiKyung.

[What’s happened? Is what Lee JiHan said all true?]

Looking at JiKyung’s messages, I was able to feel his anxiety and fear. I needed to hurry up and call.

Nodding my head in determination, I was about to call JiKyung when Lee JiHan opened my door and entered.

“If you’re going to call my brother, then you will call with me present,” Lee JiHan said while striding toward me.

“Uh, that’s a little...” I was about to try to dissuade him when I heard a woman’s voice through the phone.

[The person you have dialed can’t take your call right now. At the tone please record your message....]

“Huh?” Thinking it strange, I looked at my screen.

I definitely called JiKyung... Why is his phone off? Wasn’t he anxiously waiting for my phone call?

“What is it?” Lee JiHan asked.

“JiKyung’s phone is off,” I replied.

Not believing me, Lee JiHan leaned toward the phone and put his ear to it. I pushed the phone right next to his ear so that he could make sure I was telling the truth.

“Hmm. It is off,” he said.

“Or what? Did you think I was lying to you?” I asked with a pout.

Lee JiHan crossed his arms and replied back confidently, “You two with your friendship deeper than love. How can I trust that you aren’t planning another scheme?”

The fact that we had planned a scheme was a little too true, so I flinched guiltily. But, a friendship deeper than love? I felt that it was unfair to be accused of that, so I opened my mouth to retort, “It’s not deeper than love, OK?”

“If it’s not deeper than love, then you should have just stayed friends,” Lee JiHan shot back with a serious face. “Why did you decide to become husband and wife even though you knew that my brother was gay? Didn’t you know that if you got married like that, you would never be loved by your husband for the rest of your life?”

“I knew that, but it didn’t matter,” I answered with my head down.

Avoiding Lee JiHan’s gaze, I texted a message to JiKyung to call me back when he received it.

“Why didn’t it matter?” Lee JiHan asked in a serious tone.

I answered him lightly as if it wasn’t anything important, “I told you before. Seeing my divorced mother, I realized that a husband’s love disappears as fast as it appears, so I thought it wasn’t a big deal to not have it in the first place. When love disappears, you end up living through loyalty. So, living with JiKyung from the beginning as a friend didn’t seem like a bad deal. And, I wanted the money...”

I had already completed my message, but I pretended to be still writing it.

After a short moment, Lee JiHan said, “So, you chose a marriage that would guarantee money over love?”

I nodded with my head sunken low at my past deed. Although it was embarrassing, I told him the truth. “Back then, I thought that was the most important thing in marriage. Now, even if I can’t get married, I want to have a chance at dating you. It would be the greatest luck of my life. That’s why I broke off the wedding. There’s nothing more important to me than you. I’ve never felt anything deeper than this love before.”

It was my truth, but the words just didn’t seem to be enough. I lost my confidence. I raised my hands above my lowered head. With my thumb and index finger crossed, I created a small heart.

Lee JiHan was quiet for a moment. In a low voice, he said, “Your heart is small.”

“What?” It wasn’t the answer I had been expecting, so I raised my head and looked at Lee JiHan.

With an expression full of disappointment, he said, “Last time, you made a heart for my brother pretending to love him. This one is smaller.”

“Oh, is that so?” I put my two hands together in front of my chest and made a bigger heart.

Lee JiHan’s expression still didn’t lighten. He raised his arms over his head in the shape of a big heart. “You made a huge heart over your head like this. Don’t you remember?”

I copied his action and made the biggest heart I could, extending my elbows as high as possible.

“It wasn’t this big,” I said looking straight into Lee JiHan’s eyes. I was trying to make him know that it was true with my eyes.

Finally, Lee JiHan’s expression broke into a smile. His frown melted away into a laugh.

I had lifted my hands so high that my shoulders and sides were cramping, but I didn’t think to put it down. I wanted to keep looking at that smiling face.

***

Waiting for JiKyung’s call, I had my phone gripped tightly in my hand wherever I went. Even after I got into Lee JiHan’s car and arrived at the hotel, JiKyung still had not contacted me.

At the hotel lobby, I called him one more time. His phone was still off.

“Maybe he’s busy?” I hung up in confusion.

Lee JiHan grabbed my empty hand after returning from the front. “Let’s go.” He dragged me to inside the hotel.

I resisted and asked him nervously, “You said we were going to go exercise, but isn’t this a hotel?”

“The health club I go to is in this hotel,” Lee JiHan replied nonchalantly.

“What? Out of all the health clubs you can attend, why would you work out at a hotel?” I asked. “Hotels are for sleeping!”

“This health club is designated for members only, so the facility is good,” Lee JiHan said. “That’s why I come here. You’ll be attending it also.”

“Is... Is that so?” I shrugged not believing him.

Really. How good could a health club at a hotel be?

“You’ll see when we get there,” Lee JiHan said smoothly while pulling me.

I followed him without a choice, but I couldn’t shake off my suspicions and remained nervous. Why a hotel of all places... Why a hotel?

As we got on the elevator, Lee JiHan pressed the button. The door closed, and the elevator slowly rose to the floor chosen.

When we arrive... It won’t be a room, will it? My heart started to beat out of my chest as I imagined our bodies together. Lee JiHan’s idea of exercise might not be what I’m thinking. Ah, what do I do? What do I do about this?

I was so nervous, my heart felt like it was going to explode. In one hand was my phone, and in the other was JiHan’s hand. So, I couldn’t even bite at my fingernails. Not being able to even chew my fingernails made me feel like I would go crazy.

Oh. I didn’t pay much attention to my underwear! I wore whatever!

Unable to free my hands to chew my nails, my teeth chattered loudly at my nervousness. In that moment, the elevator arrived at its destination. The door opened.

“Ahh!” Scared, I screamed and clutched Lee JiHan’s hand.

He looked at me as if I’d lost it. “What are you so afraid of? What, do you have some exercise trauma?”

I blocked my mouth with the hand holding my phone and screamed inside my head, I would have had to have done it before to have trauma!

In a soft voice, Lee JiHan said, “I’m not going to go hard. I’ll take it nice and slow so, don’t worry.”

Is it just me thinking that sentence is erotic?! Just me?

I stared into Lee JiHan’s eyes with my cheeks blushing furiously. He turned his head away from me and exited the elevator. I resisted the urge to scream again and followed him with my eyes closed shut.

Lee JiHan stopped when he arrived to the destination. “It’s here.”

Oh, what do I do! My undergarments don’t match!

I peeked through my eyes to look in front of me. My eyes grew wide at the unexpected scenery in front of me.

“Oh, what the...” My beating heart stopped as if it had been doused in ice water. “It’s really is a health club,” I mumbled in a low voice.