By Zephyria A few more articles had been added, but they were the same as what he had seen in the afternoon, and he couldn’t see any new photos.
It was unclear whether he was relieved or disappointed by the fact that there were no updates. Shoving his phone into his pocket, Choi Hong-seo let out a long breath as if taking a deep breath.
He thought he wasn’t that drunk, but by the time he was pressing the password for his apartment door lock, a considerable weariness had set in. He desperately wanted to lie down. He was glad he could probably fall asleep immediately without having any useless thoughts.
As the front door opened and the sensor light turned on, Tiffany, who had been drinking water on the floor, looked over. As he took off his shoes and stepped inside, she scurried away to the cat tree. Her behavior, avoiding a person she saw for the first time, felt inexplicably disappointing today.
Without even putting down his bag, he went straight to the cat tree and tapped the front paws of the cat lying there.
“Tiffany, are you mad because I came home late?”
She didn’t answer this time either.
“Or is it not something to be mad about? Whether I’m here or not… you don’t care?”
In the dim light filtering through the window, she stuck out her small tongue and licked her lips. Watching her, Choi Hong-seo let out a weak laugh, and a question suddenly arose in his mind.
If he had always preferred dogs to cats, why did Park Dong-ha end up raising a cat as a pet?
But it was just a fleeting question. It wasn’t something to dwell on seriously.
Tiffany, who had allowed him to touch her paws for a while, seemed to have gotten annoyed and pulled her paws away. Choi Hong-seo took off his bag and headed to the bathroom.
However, even after turning off the lights and lying down, he couldn’t easily fall asleep. After showering, his mind seemed even clearer. He tossed and turned for a long time, watching the light filtering through the partially closed blinds.
The anxiety he felt when he felt cut off from the world still lingered, so he couldn’t close the blinds completely. Still, when he felt anxious, he would look up at the cat tree at his feet. The rustling and playing sounds of Tiffany moving around the small apartment occasionally served as welcome white noise for Choi Hong-seo.
Today, she was curled up asleep in the basket of the cat tree.
Vrooom, vrooom.
The vibration of his phone, placed next to his pillow, made Tiffany perk up her ears and immediately lift her head.
Even though the vibration wasn’t strong, she was a light sleeper. Choi Hong-seo, who quickly reached for his phone to turn off the vibration, froze.
He was so shocked his heart felt like it stopped, but he couldn’t even sit up. As if a ghost were behind him, he held his breath under the covers, his eyes wide open.
Carrot Seller.
The name that appeared on the illuminated screen was clearly Carrot Seller.
His stopped heart immediately began to beat powerfully. It was an abnormally fast pace. It felt like a throbbing lump of blood was about to burst out of his body.
Soon, his whole body trembled. The breath he had been suppressing grew rough. He roughly swept his hair back and sat up. Kneeling, he clutched his phone in both hands and stared at the name on the screen.
He had given him his number for consultation. However, all calls regarding setting the consultation time and place had been handled by Manager Kang. He had never spoken to Lee Hae-sung on the phone. He hadn’t even given ‘Yoon Hye-an’ his number. Moreover, this number… this was his personal cell phone, a private number he didn’t give out to just anyone.
Was he calling Yoon Hye-an now?
Or was he calling Choi Hong-seo?
While trembling, holding the phone as if it were a bomb, the vibration subsided. Like a child who had stopped sobbing and finally fallen into a deep sleep. The screen went dark again.
Tears suddenly began to flow.
Once the tears started, he couldn’t stop them.
Still clutching his phone in both hands, his upper body collapsed. His shoulders shook, and irregular sobs escaped. Lying face down on the bed, kneeling, he looked like a sinful devotee offering a prayer of repentance to God.
He wanted to answer the call. Like before. He wanted to be someone who could readily answer his call, saying, “Yes, it’s me.”
He wanted to talk about how he spent his day, how he spent the time they hadn’t met… trivial things until he fell asleep. Like before.
But he couldn’t.
Should he answer the call calmly as Yoon Hye-an and pretend to be surprised that the caller was Lee Hae-sung?
Or should he answer as Choi Hong-seo, pretending he already knew his private phone number, which he had never given out?
Choi Hong-seo, who had been sobbing for longer than the phone had vibrated, lifted his face, feeling a strange sensation on his fingers.
“……”
Tiffany, who had approached without him noticing, was licking the hand clutching his phone.
With her usual expressionless face, the cat licked Choi Hong-seo’s knuckles with her small tongue, then lay down in front of him, exposing her belly. It was a signal that she wanted to be petted.
She looked so proud, as if she thought that just by petting her, all his sadness would disappear, that she possessed such great power. He laughed. Wiping his tear-streaked face, and shedding new tears on top of it, Choi Hong-seo could still laugh.
For the first time, while petting Tiffany’s warm, soft belly, he buried his face in her fur and shed tears.
‘Carrot Seller.’ He had been satisfied just by secretly saving his number under that name. He hadn’t even expected to receive a call from that name again.
One missed call from ‘Carrot Seller.’
To the current Choi Hong-seo, that felt like a greater miracle than waking up in Yoon Hye-an’s body.
Clutching Tiffany tightly, he curled up next to her and clung to the small creature’s warmth.
He was very grateful to Yoon Hye-an for leaving Tiffany behind.
■
The back of the man sitting in the low-backed chair remained still for a long time. The study, lit only by a floor lamp in the corner, was dim.
Despite being exhausted from returning home after midnight, Lee Hae-sung had been holed up in the study for over 30 minutes without even changing his clothes.
In his suit, with only his jacket removed, he was frozen with his elbow resting on the armrest and his chin propped in his hand. He was staring intently at the items on the table in front of him.
The loosened ribbon dangled long below the table, and a dark purple, long box had revealed its contents. A tie, placed diagonally between the thin sheets of tissue paper that had been spread out. A diagonal stripe tie mixed with blue and gray.
“Hmm…”
Lee Hae-sung let out a heavy groan from between his closed lips and slowly wiped his mouth. As he twisted his body, his shirt rustled against the back of the chair.
He looked again at the small card spread out beneath the tie. He didn’t dare to pick it up again.
‘To me, Vice President… you seem like someone who can do anything… who can do anything in the world.’
Did that child know that he had gained strength from those words, which felt almost naive, those childish words without any logical basis?
Perhaps he had intended to ask Yoon Hye-an about that.
Did that child know how precious he was to him, and that his feelings hadn’t been conveyed sufficiently? Did he know that he wanted to love him more, for longer, together… Perhaps he had intended to ask Yoon Hye-an that, like someone seeking out a shaman to commune with the deceased out of frustration.
Lee Hae-sung stood up and picked up a memo from the desk in the study.
Yoon Hye-an’s contact information was written in Manager Kang’s handwriting.
Standing at the desk, he took out his phone and dialed the eleven digits.
It wasn’t to say, “I received the gift well, thank you.” It was no longer meaningful to question what the stripe tie meant, how he knew the words written on this card, or if he had deliberately imitated the child’s handwriting… Yoon Hye-an no longer tried to deny the fact that he ‘knew.’
Before the call even rang ten times, Lee Hae-sung hung up.
He placed his phone on the desk, almost throwing it, as if he couldn’t believe what he had intended to do.
He walked to the window as if fleeing. He parted the slats of the tightly closed blinds with his fingers and looked out through the gap.
If Yoon Hye-an had answered the phone, what would he have said?
He tried to look away, but he couldn’t deceive himself.
“Hello, it’s me, who is this?, This is Lee Hae-sung…” Such words would have been exchanged. No, perhaps he already knew this number.
‘I received the gift you sent through Manager Kang well.’
And then, regardless of what Yoon Hye-an replied, he would have said this.
‘Can you come here now?’
It was a frightening thought.
■