“Why do you keep holding my hand?”

Da Jung softly objected as she pulled her sleeve free. She then brought in her luggage, shopping bags, and plastic bags somewhat noisily while avoiding Kyung Jun’s eyes.

“Did you buy everything properly? You always forget one or two things.”

Kyung Jun’s long gaze lingered on Da Jung’s face before disappearing. After a moment of silence, Kyung Jun seemed to have made up his mind and spoke in his usual playful tone.

“Yoon Da Jung. What do you take me for? I’m perfect, you know? Look. Three pairs of sleep socks. Five pairs of sleep pants.”

Kyung Jun took out the items he had bought one by one and placed them in front of Da Jung. Da Jung checked the items against her notebook.

“No, silly. Five pairs of sleep socks. Three pairs of pants.”

“Didn’t you say five pairs of pants?”

“When did I say that?”

“Wow, she made a mistake and now she’s insisting.”

Kyung Jun clicked his tongue. Da Jung glared at him with wronged eyes and reached for her phone.

“Who’s insisting? Let me check the message. It clearly says…”

As they bickered over the plastic bags and phone, Da Jung lost her balance and fell into Kyung Jun’s arms. In that brief moment, she tried to avoid his embrace by stretching her hands towards the floor, but she slipped even further due to the plastic bags.

Kyung Jun caught Da Jung, who was about to fall sideways, with his arms and held her in his embrace. Da Jung, flustered and not knowing where to look, quickly extricated herself and spoke haphazardly.

“Fine! Let’s say you’re right. You bought everything well.”

She then took her luggage into the bedroom and neatly organized it in the storage cabinet. Kyung Jun’s indifferent voice sounded from behind.

“Should I use the second-floor room?”

“…Lee Kyung Jun. Are you staying overnight?”

“Why ask the obvious? Shall we drink beer and sleep in the living room?”

A brief silence followed.

“…No. You’re a man.”

Da Jung came out of the room and sat on the sofa. Kyung Jun opened the refrigerator door and ate a sausage.

“I feel oddly good and bad at the same time. Why are you suddenly drawing a line?”

The look in his eyes as he closed the refrigerator with a thud and turned to Da Jung was deep. His slightly raised eyebrows and protesting face looked quite serious. Without the smile that had always made him popular with women, his face now had a rather dry impression.

“I’m not drawing a line. I came here alone to rest. To clear my thoughts a bit.”

“Am I a disturbance?”

“…A little.”

Da Jung mustered the courage to speak. She explained that the original purpose of coming here was because of burnout. That she had been struggling every day, witnessing life and death. That in fact, she hadn’t fully overcome the deaths of her father and brother yet. As she spoke, she deliberately denied the man’s kind gaze that kept popping up between her words.

She didn’t want to admit that she was already thinking about him much more than she had realized.

“I said I’d come every week.”

“Don’t do that anymore. I can manage well on my own.”

“You want me to leave today too?”

“…You can stay and hang out. But sleep at another pension.”

Kyung Jun crossed his arms and looked down at Da Jung obliquely. As a heavy silence settled, Da Jung quietly averted her gaze.

“Da Jung. We fell asleep together in the living room not too long ago.”

“…”

“Alright. If you really don’t want me to, I’ll look for a nearby pension and make a reservation, but I feel hurt.”

His tone was serious, without any fluctuation.

“We’re going to drink too. How am I supposed to drive to that reserved pension?”

Kyung Jun staying overnight was as light an issue as a feather. No, it wasn’t even an issue at all. Da Jung knew too well the source of her own worries. She was concerned about the man in Room 101.

Why am I like this?

Even the feelings she didn’t want to acknowledge were actually a tickling breeze. Da Jung tightly closed her eyes. The fact that she had fallen for him much faster and deeper than initially planned came as a confusion.

How could she leave him after a month with such a weak resolve…

She made a resolution to become even stronger.

‘The guy I’m interested in doesn’t have much patience.’

She erased the voice fluttering in her heart. Then she looked at Kyung Jun. He was staring at her with a slightly sulky expression.

She felt uncomfortable at the thought of disappointing an old friend. She ignored the man’s lingering gaze. She had nothing to explain or be understood by him. Right. Originally, that man and Da Jung were nothing to each other, and Kyung Jun was a long-time friend.

“…Okay. You can stay overnight.”

“Yes! Saved on room fees.”

As a gentle smile returned to Kyung Jun’s face, Da Jung faintly smiled back.

Nevertheless, an unresolved residue floated in her heart. She couldn’t find the right term to define this uncomfortable and anxious feeling. She just felt frustrated.

Kyung Jun asked about trash disposal, grill usage, and water stains, but she couldn’t answer properly, lost in her own thoughts. The shadow of the man leaning against the wall, offering morning coffee, stretched long in front of Da Jung.

It shimmers. Like a mirage on a spring day.

It was crazy. At that moment, her phone vibrated briefly with a ‘ding’.

[This is Lee Jae Ho.]

There was a thud as if Kyung Jun had dropped something heavy while organizing various things. Thanks to that, Da Jung could quietly hide her own heartbeat, which was thumping at a similar volume.

Right. What fell was not her heart, but Kyung Jun’s luggage.

[Are you thinking about me?] [Why does it feel like I’m the only one thinking about it.] [Yoon Da Jung, are you perhaps experienced?] [Managing multiple prospects? Don’t do that. No matter how many fish are in that pond, I’m the best.]

What was he saying? Da Jung couldn’t fully understand his intentions, but she felt strangely excited.

Had she been waiting all this time for a call from the man who took her number? She couldn’t understand her own feelings lately. The heart was good at lying and was very fickle.

[I am thinking about you.]

She sent a short reply.

[Just me?] [I’m quite concerned. Being alone with a man. Touching carelessly too.]

Her arm holding the phone felt like it was falling to a distant place. Along with her arm, Da Jung’s entire body seemed to float and endlessly fall somewhere. It was a very strange feeling of falling, afraid that the end of that fall might be comfortable.

The experienced one is Lee Jae Ho. A very high-level player.

[I want to go and ring the doorbell.] [Me. Should I come?]

Da Jung was startled and opened the window to write a reply, hesitating with her fingers trembling.

“Hey! Yoon Da Jung. What are you doing that you’re not answering?”

“Ah.”

Da Jung quickly looked up.

“Sorry. A friend contacted me.”

She hurriedly turned off her phone and looked at Kyung Jun. Kyung Jun was standing with scissors and tongs.

“I asked where the charcoal and grill are. I’ve been asking for a while now.”

“In the storage behind the building.”

“Okay. I’ll be right back.”

She opened her phone again. Her heart was racing. It felt like Kyung Jun would come back in and grab her phone, asking who it was that was captivating her attention so much. Even though she knew he wasn’t that kind of friend, she was strangely nervous. Her heart was pounding as if this innocent act was somehow wrong.

She wanted to reply, but was at a loss for what to write.

Her fingers moved towards the keyboard as if about to create text immediately, but she had nothing to say. She was afraid that if she replied to the man she was concerned about, saying she would be careful, it would give some concrete meaning to this relationship.

But if she didn’t reply, she worried that he might become upset. He really shouldn’t come.

She didn’t want to reveal that the man in Room 101 was Lee Jae Ho.

“Da Jung. It’s all ready. Come out. Bring the beer.”

[My friend ended up staying overnight.]

Da Jung quickly wrote a somewhat dry reply as she stood up. She took out beer from the refrigerator and was about to carry it out on a tray when she felt odd. After staring at her phone for a moment, Da Jung finally sent one more line.

[I’m sorry.]

**

The man sitting on the sofa with a somewhat fierce expression stared at the chat window for a long time.

I’m sorry.

The woman’s awkward expression was contained in the plain four-character reply. Her cheeks, which would have unknowingly reddened after blurting out her sincerity while hesitating, unable to do this or that, came to mind. Would she be flustered, not knowing what to do?

Apart from his angry feelings, the fact that Da Jung was apologizing was quite a nice consolation for Jae Ho. The fact that her friend ended up staying overnight became something to apologize to Lee Jae Ho for. His chest felt tight.

“She’s thinking about me well.”

A chuckle escaped.

When Kyung Jun’s car arrived, Jae Ho was on the second-floor terrace.

“She smiles so prettily.” Muttering to himself, he captured Da Jung’s movements in his eyes. Her smile, devoid of wariness, brightly flew and embedded itself in Lee Kyung Jun, and Kyung Jun couldn’t hide his excitement. He even raised his lecherous hand to stroke her hair.

Jae Ho clenched both fists. When he stretched out his arm to put it around her shoulder and held her hand, blood rushed to his head and he couldn’t think straight. He only realized later that he had half-turned his body to separate them immediately.

For a fleeting moment, what Jae Ho’s pupils caught was Da Jung’s gaze, looking towards him with her head slightly raised. In the gaze she threw into the air, seemingly troubled while pushing Kyung Jun away, her heart, already considerably tilted towards him, was contained.

So he could endure it. Because it was the heart he gladly wanted.

[I’m sorry.]

This message, too, was an extension of that. Despite still being annoyed by the existence of Lee Kyung Jun, Jae Ho could smile a little.

“Shall I annoy him more?”

At that moment, he received a call from his manager, Byung Hoon.

[Hyung! I’m going crazy!]

“Why?”

[What do you mean why? How can you say ‘why’ after locking me up in this countryside?]

He could imagine Byung Hoon jumping up and down without even seeing him.

[Wow, there’s really nothing to do here. They even turn off all the lights at night, you know? I’m even tired of looking at the sea! Can’t I come visit you? Oh, please. Hyung. Hyuuuuuuuung.]

Jae Ho chuckled.

[Hyung, hyung. Or at least tell me about your love life. Is the Perfect Destiny Project going well? How was the first meeting? Did the plan succeed?]

Did the plan succeed?

He recalled her clear face with round eyes that grew twice as big in front of the red-burning sunset. That face that said, how could I meet the Lee Jae Ho I’ve been dreaming of here?

The eyes that tried to hide their trembling.

The touch that tried to suppress excitement.

You met a man who seems like destiny, what are you afraid of that you can’t approach?

He concluded that he couldn’t say it was a success yet. Jae Ho finally gave Byung Hoon an assignment.

“Just do one errand for me, Byung Hoon.”

Byung Hoon was so pleased even with that, he excitedly said he understood and hung up. The reddening sunset suddenly caught Jae Ho’s eye, and he slightly opened the window.

A smell wafted in.

A pungent smoke that stung his nose came from Room 102, where they seemed to be preparing charcoal. His mood soured. It looked like they were planning some lovey-dovey couple activity.