Episode 2
“Oh, it’s raining.”
Yoonjae, who had fed Aji a moderate amount of snacks, looked at the window making a swoosh sound.
The sky was dark and gloomy all day today, but it started to rain.
“It must be raining.”
The news kept talking about late monsoon season.
The rainy season, which usually starts in mid-June and ends in early July, has not started until mid-July this year, so wherever you go you can hear people talking about a late rainy season.
Whether it rains or the monsoon season begins, it doesn’t matter to Yoonjae.
Even if it rains, a high school sophomore is still a high school sophomore.
“It’s going to rain.”
But as Yoonjae was walking close to the window because she didn’t want rainwater to pour into the room,
Squeak-.
Yunjae looked down the window at the sound of the motorcycle.
‘Jeong Soo-hyeok.’
The one who got off the motorcycle was Jeong Soo-hyeok.
There is no need to rush even when getting hit by heavy rain.
‘What time is it now?’
Yoonjae glanced at the wall clock. 11:45 PM.
Yoonjae came back straight after finishing her academy class at 11 o’clock.
I think I’ll study a few more hours and then go to sleep.
But where was Jeong Soo-hyeok and what was he doing? Why did he come back at this time?
‘Aren’t you worried about the test next week?’
Well, what would a genius worry about? Even if you just look at it roughly, you’ll get perfect scores.
‘I hope you catch a cold.’
Bad thoughts began to creep up on me.
I wish he could get a bad flu while getting rained on like that.
Then at least in this final exam, she can beat Jeong Su-hyeok.
I want to beat Jeong Soo-hyeok just once, just once.
Yoonjae closed the window, pulled up a chair, and sat down in front of the desk.
I opened my workbook, but the problems didn’t catch my eye.
It was when I was nervously circling the same problem over and over again.
“I told you not to call.”
Yoonjae’s hands, which were messily painting the problem in black, stopped as she heard Jeong soo hyeok’s nervous voice coming from outside the room.
‘Who are you talking to?’
Yoonjae has hardly ever talked to Jeong soo hyeok, either at home or at school.
There is no reason to talk.
At school, we are in different classes so we don’t necessarily have a chance to meet each other, and we rarely run into each other at home either.
She herself goes straight to the academy after school and returns home well past 11 PM, like today.
When I return home after 11 p.m., the lights in the house are always turned off.
Jeong Soo-hyeok returns home around 1 AM, no one knows where he is or what he is doing, and during that time, Yoon-jae is solving her workbook in her room.
There is no need to leave the room just because Jeong Soo-hyeok is back.
Jeong Soo-hyeok’s room is on the lower floor, and her own room is on the second floor.
Each person uses a different bathroom.
The time I leave home in the morning is also different.
That’s enough reason to not meet each other even if we live in the same house.
So, rather, it was a bit strange to hear Jeong Soo-hyeok’s voice like this.
‘His voice seemed nervous.’
Yoonjae was surprised that Jeong Soo hyeok, who seemed so relaxed about everything, got irritated like she did.
Could it be that novelty arouses curiosity?
Yoonjae got up and walked to the door.
And then she opened the door slightly.
“I have nothing to say. I hope you never call me again.”
The voice was full of displeasure.
Yoonjae knows the unpleasantness that voice carries.
That’s hate towards the other person.
‘I told you not to call.’
When my mom called me before, I answered in exactly that voice.
At that time, hearing my mother’s voice just annoyed me and made me angry.
My parents divorced because of my mother’s infidelity.
She said she felt frustrated and angry because of her father’s always overbearing attitude at home, but that doesn’t justify her mother’s affair.
My mother frequented hotels with her college friends, and eventually my father found out, which led to a divorce.
Since the cause of the breakup was her mother, custody naturally went to the father, and Yoonjae could not follow her mother.
My father wouldn’t even let me see my mother.
But even if that wasn’t the case, Yoonjae didn’t want to meet her mother either.
Even when I was young, my mother cheating on us with another man was a source of my pain.
So I deliberately didn’t answer her calls, and I pretended not to see her when she came looking for me.
A year, two years later, my mother stopped calling or visiting me, and we lived without any contact for quite some time until I heard about the accident last year and attended the funeral.
The funeral was attended by only strangers.
There were people who pretended to know her as relatives on my maternal side, but they were all unfamiliar to Yoonjae.
Like people I didn’t know from the beginning, like people I had no relationship with.
“I’m hanging up.”
Jeong Su-hyeok’s voice was heard from about halfway down the stairs.
So it was heard all the way into her room.
If the call had been received from downstairs, Yoonjae on the second floor would never have heard it.
‘What’s going on on the second floor?’
After finishing the call, the sound of Jeong Soo-hyeok’s footsteps coming up the stairs rang in my ears.
Yoonjae tried to quickly close the door, fearing that she would be caught eavesdropping.
But Jeong Soo-hyeok’s voice was faster than the door closing.
“Did you overhear?”
It was a cold voice.
It was some kind of ridicule and disgust.
Funnily enough, the first words I exchanged with Jeong Soo-hyeok, the first words Jeong Soo-hyeok uttered to me, were ridicule mixed with disgust.
“Don’t tell me, you listened everything on purpose?”
But Yoon Jae also has something to say.
Eavesdropping? Who? Me?
Isn’t it the fault of one party to go all the way up the stairs to make a call that could have been made downstairs?
“Then you came all the way up here to talk on the phone so I could hear you? Isn’t that funny? Who wouldn’t hear you talking so loudly on the phone?”
“You opened the door and heard me.”
“It’s my room, so why can’t I open it? Then why did you come up here and do all this nonsense?”
Now that it’s come to this, we have to come out strong.
If you get pushed here, you’ll be labeled as an eavesdropper.
We need to change the situation by placing the blame for the beginning of the mistake on Jeong Soo-hyeok.
“I need to use the bathroom.”
“There’s a bathroom in your room downstairs. Why are you using it here?”
“I think the faucet in my bathroom is broken. There’s no water coming out of the shower.”
“Then you can wash yourself tomorrow. You can call someone tomorrow and have it fixed.”
“I came here after getting rained on.”
Yoonjae knows that too.
Because just a little while ago, I saw Soo-hyeok getting off his motorcycle in the rain through the window.
Since he wasn’t wearing a helmet, he probably got hit by the heavy rain, and that’s probably why his hair is wet now.
“I was drenched in rain and didn’t even wash up and just went to sleep. What if I catch cold?”
“That’s your problem. Who told you to ride a motorcycle in the middle of the night.”
The bathroom on the second floor is Yoonjae’s personal space.
My father, stepmother, and Jeong Soo-hyeok always use the bathroom downstairs.
There is a bathroom in the living room, another bathroom attached to my father’s bedroom, and a bathroom attached to the room that Soo-hyeok uses.
What is unique about this house is that there are bathrooms
attached to the two rooms on the first floor, a guest bathroom in the living room, and a bathroom facing Yoonjae’s room on the second floor.
Ultimately, each room was designed with one bathroom to avoid invading what should be the most private space.
Ironically, it was my dead mother who designed this house.
Her father was a humanities professor and her mother was an architecture professor.
My mother actually enjoyed drawing architectural drawings, and she designed and built this house herself.
But she didn’t live in this house for long.
The delicate and cute spaces on the second floor for Yoonjae are all her mother’s work.
Even the bathroom.
But you want to use that bathroom?
The main things is, a man using my bathroom?
No, to be exact a man like Jeong Soo-hyeok using my
bathroom? No chance.
“Wipe yourself properly and then go to bed. I don’t like other people using my bathroom.”
“You’re not going to obstruct everyone from using that bathroom for the rest of your life, do you?”
