Chapter 2 – The Boundary of Lust (Part 3)

“Let’s never see each other again.”

Soo-yeon turned and walked away after leaving those words. She deliberately straightened her back so that her staggering steps wouldn’t be visible. She hadn’t shed a tear while looking at Min-jun’s face, but strangely, the moment she turned away, her nose tingled, and she bit her lip. She felt helpless in front of the sudden flood of emotions that washed over her like a tidal wave. Nevertheless, she kept walking forward, thinking of Min-jun watching her back. She feared that if she collapsed, he would run to comfort her and ask her to come back. As her emotions, which seemed about to burst, gradually subsided, an imposing figure appeared in her field of vision.

“Ms. Chae Soo-yeon, I almost got arrested because you didn’t answer your phone. Do you want to see someone get picked up by the police?”

Hee-tae, having spotted Soo-yeon inside the gallery, approached her with a delinquent air. Towering above the crowd, he clutched a bouquet of flowers as if it were a club to beat someone with. The flower heads drooped towards the ground, dangling precariously as if they might spill out at any moment.

He handed Soo-yeon the bouquet, and as she took it reluctantly, she realized it was large and heavy, adorned with all sorts of flowers. It had been a long time since she had received flowers, and ironically, they came from this man.

“I shouldn’t come empty-handed. Gotta have some manners, right?” 

“Thank you.” 

“The paintings are impressive. I have a keen eye for these things. Do you know how many I’ve sold?”

Listening to Hee-tae’s trivial chatter, Soo-yeon suddenly felt like crying. It was indeed a strange day. This wasn’t like her at all. She had coldly turned away from Min-jun with a composed face, and now, at the exhibition, she couldn’t bear the thought of crying in front of Hee-tae. Hee-tae looked around and spoke to Soo-yeon.

“This is your exhibition, right? Crying here would be quite the scene.”

“…Don’t you have the manners to pretend not to notice?”

“I’ve been pretending not to notice all this time, but you’re the one who looks like you’re about to cry.”

Soo-yeon realized that he had indeed been ignoring her tearful face while making trivial comments. Hearing that, she couldn’t bear to keep her head up any longer. 

Hee-tae didn’t take his eyes off Soo-yeon, who had lowered her head. Her pitiful appearance should have been amusing, but it oddly irritated him. It irritated him so much that he started to feel a bit pissed off. He wanted to lift her clothes and check the marks he had left on her body. He felt as if she might have shown that lascivious body to that idiot of a man. He feared that she might have ended up crying in front of him because she couldn’t control her lingering feelings. In the end, he made a vulgar comment in the exhibition hall where elegant gayageum music was playing.

“Did that guy find out that you sucked my d*ck so well while you were broken up?”

Hee-tae had never seen a couple break up cleanly in one go. There were many people around him who would break up and get back together repeatedly, despite claiming they were done. Such people often reconciled through s*x. Hee-tae had anticipated this when he saw Soo-yeon’s lifeless face. Normally, he would have already scratched at her insides upon seeing her tearful face, but he had pretended not to notice out of courtesy for once. This was her exhibition, after all, and he thought he should show some manners. However, his patience didn’t last long as his nerves started to fray.

“We’re outside here.”

Hee-tae met Soo-yeon’s sharp gaze as she reproached him. Her lack of response to his question about whether she had been caught was particularly annoying. She didn’t have this face when she cried so hard in bed that she could barely crawl. Soo-yeon, who used to curse and get angry easily, had returned to a face of suppressed emotions. He felt incredibly irritated, as if someone had touched what he had painstakingly enjoyed. It was even more infuriating because he knew he was the one who had intruded into someone else’s relationship. Hee-tae leaned toward Soo-yeon and asked in a whisper.

“Did that guy see the marks I left on your boobs?”

The moment his voice brushed her ear, Soo-yeon instinctively reached out her hand. With a snap, he grabbed her wrist, and a tense stare was exchanged. She swallowed her anger, forgetting the sadness that had made her nose tingle. Min-jun’s sudden appearance had already turned her insides upside down, and now Hee-tae’s sharp words were scraping at her. She wanted to slap his face for provoking her with vulgar words in a place where anyone could overhear. The most baffling thing was the angry look in Hee-tae’s eyes, which mirrored her own rage. Soo-yeon lowered her voice and spoke.

“Why are you curious about that, Mr. Jang Hee-tae?”

Whether she had reconciled with Min-jun after sleeping with him once was none of his business. She couldn’t understand his aggressive attitude, as if she had cheated on him and then gone back. They had only shared their bodies and cried like animals on the floor. It felt strange that he had bought flowers and was having this conversation in her exhibition hall. It was just a physical relationship, and they had only met to sleep together. The whole situation felt bizarre.

“I was wondering why you kept seeing that idiot in the first place.”

Hee-tae said, leaning closer while gripping her wrist. Soo-yeon hated this moment, feeling as if his sharp gaze was digging out and exposing all her insides. She had disliked Hee-tae from the moment she first met him, with his quick wit and perceptiveness. In the end, he had noticed her deepest feelings and easily tore them apart.

“Is your life’s pleasure to live by filling in for someone lacking?”

“What nonsense….”

“Ms. Chae Soo-yeon, do you know what’s the worst feeling to have in a long-term relationship? It’s sympathy.”

Soo-yeon felt her heart drop with a thud. It felt like he had scraped out and shown her the feelings she had struggled to deny. Her heart sank so much that she lost strength in the arm he was holding. It felt like he was harshly hitting the feelings she had dressed up as affection and carried all this time.

She knew that what remained after the excitement faded and the lingering affection dried up was not love. But Hee-tae’s raw words were so painful that she didn’t want to acknowledge it.

“Because you pity him, you let it slide. Because you pity him, you forgive him. And in the meantime, your life is going straight to hell.”

Because she felt sorry for him, she tolerated him accumulating debt by claiming he would become a full-time investor. Because she felt sorry for him, she forgave him for neglecting her. To prevent the falling Min-jun from feeling sad, Soo-yeon folded her wings and crumpled herself up. Her studio was filled with paintings she had drawn but never shown to the world. She knew that if she displayed them, Min-jun would shrink away, so she even postponed her own future. As her festering insides were exposed, sharp anger burst forth.

“What do you know to speak so recklessly?”

“The misery of suckers getting exploited is always pathetically predictable.”

Hee-tae replied to Soo-yeon, who was fleeing from the cruel truth. There were terminally ill mothers who pitied their fifty-year-old sons who couldn’t take care of themselves, and children who painstakingly paid off debts incurred by their mothers’ gambling habits. Pathetically, they pitied the very cause of their lives sinking into the mire. They couldn’t even pity their own lives.

Hee-tae had never paid attention to such people, but Soo-yeon, who was just like them, irritated him. Seeing her eyes welling up with tears as she glared at him, he felt an urge to break that dam.

“But I’ve never seen a sucker who funds and opens her legs for a guy.”

“And what about you, coming all the way here, desperate for such a sucker?”

Soo-yeon could no longer speak kindly and retorted sharply at Hee-tae. He let out a hollow laugh, then clenched his jaw so tightly that his chin jutted out. It felt like being hit over the head, realizing his own situation wasn’t much different from hers.

Soo-yeon had a talent for elegantly using her refined lips to lash out at people. Each time she did, a chaotic desire for destruction boiled inside Hee-tae. He wanted to strip her completely, pin her beneath him, and make her cry in a mess. He wanted to overwhelm her with pleasure, drowning out any thoughts governed by her foolish regrets.

Soo-yeon turned her head away from his intense gaze and said,

“Get out.”

“You can’t go alone. You have to service the sucker who came here desperate for you.”

The moment his self-deprecating vulgar words left his mouth, Soo-yeon forgot to be conscious of the surrounding gazes. When Hee-tae wasn’t around, she could act like an adult and live with a semblance of grace, but in front of him, she always lost her fuse. She lowered her voice, so only he could hear and retorted,

“Then let’s go to the car. That’s what you came here for anyway.”

Soo-yeon glared at him as he let out a hollow laugh. Neither willing to back down, they arrived at the parking lot, and Soo-yeon was shoved into the back seat. She dropped the bouquet she was holding, and the flowers scattered across the floor mat. Soo-yeon wasn’t much different. No sooner had she been laid on the seat that Hee-tae followed, crashing his lips against hers. He thrust his tongue into her mouth as if exploring roughly and lifted her two-piece skirt. He pinned her hands down as she tried to pull her skirt down, forcing his body between her legs and thrusting.