Delusive Fate

#016

Ki Baek-woo and I hugged each other tightly, covered in sweat, tears, and snot, feeling each other’s warm body heat.

Thump-thump. Our two inexperienced hearts were beating fast and hard against each other’s chests, a jumble of fear, relief, and affection. Even then, we who had survived together were able to leave the orphanage through my awakening.

Although the test results showed that my ability was only a C-rank flame type, awakened ones were needed wherever there were gates, so I could earn money.

Fourteen years old. Small and thin from malnutrition, naive from incomplete education. That’s how I was, always treated as a nuisance at the gates. The adults who became my teammates found me annoying, and no one taught me how to fight against destruction.

It didn’t matter. I didn’t care how irrelevant people treated me. All I needed was Ki Baek-woo. Only Ki Baek-woo. We had to survive together, until the end. I desperately went from gate to gate, saving money.

We had to survive. You have to survive to get paid, and you need money to escape the chicken coop-like orphanage with Baek-woo. With only that thought in mind, I struggled to survive. To do so, I didn’t hesitate to act cowardly.

If someone tried to use me as a shield in the face of danger, I would somehow throw that person into the mouth of destruction to save my life. If people were getting hurt and dying in unexpected battles, I would flee, splashing through the puddles of blood they had spilled.

I had a talent for finding hiding spaces like a field mouse or a cockroach. Until the fight was over, I would hide in a safe place, covering my mouth and holding my breath. With my vile, cowardly, and unsettling life preserved, we finally left the orphanage with Baek-woo and moved to a small boarding house.

“Hyung, it’s sunlight.”

“Wow, really. The sun is coming into the room.”

“It’s bright and warm… like you, hyung.”

Ki Baek-woo stood still in the middle of the tiny room, muttering. His voice was small, like talking to himself, but not inaudible. I found Baek-woo’s random comment cute, so I poked his side and giggled.

“You’re saying that’s like me?”

“Yeah… it’s like you, hyung. This place is really nice…”

Ki Baek-woo, who was good at saying such embarrassing things softly. As he blinked slowly, mesmerized by the light, I thought for a moment that he looked just like the cat I had seen on the street a few days ago. A black cat curled up on the rubble of a collapsed building, basking in the sunlight. It was a peaceful sight just to look at.

“Baek-woo, do you know what photosynthesis is?”

“I do.”

“How do you know? The country collapsed when you were seven. Do seven-year-olds know about photosynthesis?”

“I saw it in a book. We had over 50 volumes of a children’s biology encyclopedia at home, and I memorized all of it. Photosynthesis is when plants use chloroplasts to convert sunlight into energy.”

Ki Baek-woo’s eyes sparkled. A slight blush appeared on his fair cheeks, seeming a bit proud. I gave him a double thumbs up in agreement.

“Wow, that’s awesome… You’re really smart. Genius Ki Baek-woo, let’s do photosynthesis from now on.”

“But, hyung… I want to if you say so, but… humans can’t photosynthesize because we don’t have chlorophyll…”

“No, we can.”

“We can’t…”

“Hey, Ki Baek-woo. Don’t you trust me? Have you ever seen me lie?”

“No! I believe everything you say, hyung. You’re the only one I trust in this world.”

“Then lie down on the floor here. Where the sunlight is coming in.”

“Okay, got it.”

“This is how we do photosynthesis. Understand?”

“Yes, I understand.”

That day, in the small one-room apartment where our only belongings were an old, musty blanket we had smuggled from the orphanage, we did photosynthesis for the first time. As time passed and the sunlight moved, we would wriggle like worms to follow it. Each time, we would turn our heads to look at each other and giggle.

Walls stained with mold and mouse droppings, wallpaper patterns spread messily. A large cream-colored light pouring through the tiny window beyond.

The happiness of that time, which could only be explained by the ticklish heart that had no words to express it.

That’s why even after we moved to a new house in Zone A with Ki Baek-woo’s awakening, grew up to become adults, and defined our relationship as lovers, we would still do photosynthesis on lazy afternoons as if by agreement.

It was the same on the day I first brought up the story about Jung Yi-dam. We were sprawled out lazily on the floor, facing each other. Ki Baek-woo looked at me with a slightly sulky face. “Lee Han-sol,” he called my name and then asked,

“Do you want to see that healer? Why do you want to see her?”

“Well, because she’s an S-rank healer.”

“Why do you want to see an S-rank healer?”

“No… it’s just that she’s amazing. She’s kind of awesome, right? The world’s first S-rank healer. It feels like just being near her would cure incurable diseases, make muscle pain disappear, and chronic fatigue vanish… Don’t you want to see her, Baek-woo?”

Ki Baek-woo’s furrowed brow for no reason was funny. I poked his cheek, which looked especially white in the sunlight, with my fingertip. He made an old man-like sound, “Ahem.” As he grabbed my hand touching his cheek and lowered it, Ki Baek-woo said in a scolding tone,

“Lee Han-sol hyung. Call me Baek-woo, not Ki Baek-woo, while I’m asking nicely.”

“Come on… Anyway, Baek-woo, don’t you want to see her?”

“Not at all.”

“Eh, you’re lying.”

“Listen, Lee Han-sol hyung. I’m your boyfriend… Can you say ‘liar’ to your boyfriend? Don’t you know the only things you can say are ‘I love you, Baek-woo,’ ‘Let’s kiss, Baek-woo’?”

Ha. I burst out laughing. It was ridiculous how he could say such nonsense with a straight face.

“Oh, I really shouldn’t have accepted your confession. Now I can’t even speak freely.”

“Don’t look at others.”

“When did I look at others?”

“You said that healer looks pretty good. That you want to see her. Say those things only to me.”

“Oh, really?”

“Hurry up and say you understand. Say those things only to me, Han-sol hyung. Quickly, promise Baek-woo.”

“Oh, geez, move away, I got it, aah…!”

Ki Baek-woo, who had been slowly approaching, finally embraced me with his whole body, his back to the sunlight.

Our lips overlapped, pressed together, and then his slick tongue entered my mouth, stirring stickily. That day, the kiss Ki Baek-woo gave me. Ki Baek-woo’s gaze saying that everyone else but me was outside his interest, Ki Baek-woo’s body language saying that the only thing he wanted to know about was the tiniest grain of Lee Han-sol, whether it was a great healer or whatever.

“Mmm… you, pervert…”

“It’s because I love you…”

Under the sunlight, Ki Baek-woo’s large hands, warmer than the sunlight, slipped under my t-shirt. His hands caressed my lower abdomen, solar plexus, sides, armpits, and chest as if wanting to touch every inch of my skin. Our joined lower bodies felt uncomfortably erotic.

Ki Baek-woo’s thing, poking my thigh hotly as if desiring only me in the whole world.

“I love you so much, I can’t help it…”

We kissed over and over and tangled our legs over and over. Until the sun moved to the next room and eventually disappeared into night. As if we would be connected forever and never separate… That day, it was certainly like that.

However, on the day Jung Yi-dam finally appeared in Zone A. I felt it.

“What’s wrong?”

“Huh?”

“You’re not looking at my eyes. That healer came today too, so you must have been busy. Did something happen at the center?”

“Healer… no, nothing happened… I’m just a bit tired, that’s all.”

Ki Baek-woo smiled awkwardly, looking at the bridge of my nose. It was an unfamiliar expression that the seven-year-old Ki Baek-woo had never shown until he became twenty-two years old. It was the day when Ki Baek-woo, who had been with me for a long time, clearly didn’t look at me for the first time.

At that moment, I felt a strange chill. Not knowing what kind of change it was.

***

Noticing the change was easy. That was both the advantage and disadvantage of something unchanging. From when I was ten until I became twenty-five, from when Ki Baek-woo was seven until he became twenty-two. We were always the same to each other. We always thought only of each other and always focused only on each other.

So it was easy to notice. Ki Baek-woo was changing, little by little, but definitely.

“Baek-woo.”

“Yeah?”

On a holiday afternoon when dark clouds were floating in the clear sky. A foreign movie past its season was playing quietly on the TV we had left on.

The movie was boring and quiet, and it often rained. It was a repetition of tedious images that felt drizzly throughout the screen. The reason I didn’t turn it off or change the channel was partly because it was a famous Hong Kong movie whose title I had heard several times, but also because Ki Baek-woo was watching it intently.

How cute, watching a movie like that so intently…

Instead of the movie where a married man and woman were having repeated trysts in gloomy places, I was watching Ki Baek-woo. Ki Baek-woo lying lengthwise on the sofa, using my thigh as a pillow.

I passed the time by brushing up his bangs or pressing his plump lips. As I lovingly looked down at his white face that showed no reaction no matter how much I fiddled with it, I suddenly felt I should ask now. It was a question that had been lingering in my mind for days.

“Has something been going on lately?”

“Something… going on?”

Ki Baek-woo’s gaze, which had been fixed on the TV screen, rolled towards me. Our eyes didn’t meet. Ki Baek-woo’s gaze returned to the TV even before reaching my eyes. I smiled meaninglessly as I smoothly brushed his side hair behind his ear.

“Is work difficult or something?”

“No…”

“Is the center or other hunters bullying you?”

“No…”

“Right. Who would bully our precious Baek-woo?”

Instead of Ki Baek-woo’s answer, I heard the sound of rain. I looked up and saw that it was raining again in the movie. Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung ran under a shabby eave.

This movie is too drizzly. Why do people praise this as such a masterpiece? Is it fun to watch two people with wives and husbands wandering around such dirty streets, having a love that feels like betrayal?

As I thought about people’s incomprehensible movie tastes, I placed my hand on Ki Baek-woo’s shoulder. I felt his muscular shoulder flinch for a moment.

Ah, another unfamiliar reaction.

I glanced at his face, but Ki Baek-woo was pretending nothing was wrong and continued watching the movie.

Is that really interesting…

I looked down and asked again.

“Then Baek-woo, do you have any worries lately?”

“……”

Ki Baek-woo didn’t answer. In the quiet living room filled only with the sound of rain from the movie. Suddenly I heard a man’s voice and looked up, but it was Tony Leung muttering in the TV. White subtitles appeared at the bottom of the screen.

‘Many things start without me knowing.’ (In the Mood for Love, Wong Kar-wai, (2000))

At that moment, it started pouring outside as well. It had been cloudy all along, and now it seemed a downpour had finally started. I looked at the rain falling in sheets through the living room window for a moment, and then said as if talking to myself,

“It’s raining, Baek-woo… just like in that movie.”

“No.”

I quickly looked down at Ki Baek-woo at the sudden firm voice.