Epilogue 1 – Nights of the Four Seasons (Part 1)

Someone asked Dowook. 

‘Why do you like that girl so much? What is it about that girl that makes you so desperate?’

Questions he had heard so often that they were ingrained in his ears. There were so many people who asked that it was hard to pinpoint a specific one. His parents, grandparents, half-siblings, friends, and even countless women he couldn’t remember had asked similar questions.

Dowook had no reason to answer. It wasn’t something he had particularly thought about. By the time he came to his senses, it was already that way.

“What on earth is it about her? What is it about Woo Junhee that makes you like this…!”

It was when he was twenty. Even then, he heard a similar question from a girl his age.

“They say you go to the Gangnam academy district every day to get materials for college entrance exam lectures? The rumor has spread everywhere. They say you take those materials and give them to Woo Junhee, who’s stuck in the countryside. That you’ve been doing that since spring until now. I couldn’t believe it when I heard it.”

“Aren’t you from Hanyanghoe too?”

Ha-yeon glared at him at his lazy, almost dazed words. It was Ha-yeon who had been sitting next to Dowook throughout the Hanyanghoe meeting that day.

“Woo Junhee doesn’t have feelings for you. If she did, she would have accepted you long ago. She’s just using you because you’re rich and useful. She knows you like her and is taking advantage of it!”

Her hysterical voice was annoying, but it was more bothersome to respond. He took out a cigarette from the pack on the glass table and put it in his mouth.

“Has she ever given you any certainty that she likes you? Has she promised you anything about the future? She’s too sorry to give you certainty and too afraid to make promises because they might become excuses. She just wants to use you as much as she wants without giving you anything. And yet, what are you doing alone? Aren’t you embarrassed?”

As he was about to light the cigarette and lie down on the sofa, Ha-yeon grabbed him by the collar and pulled him up.

“She was like that in high school too. She would be obedient, but when things didn’t go her way, she would hide and run away. Then you would chase after her, comfort her, and cater to her.”

“You have a good memory.”

Dowook said with a faint smile, and Ha-yeon’s cheeks turned red.

“We were in the same class for three years in high school.”

“Were we?”

Dowook answered indifferently. Ha-yeon’s face turned red with anger again.

“Wake up. Woo Junhee is playing with you. Don’t you know that yet?”

“I know.”

“What?”

“I said I know.”

“You know, but why….”

“Because I’m letting her.”

Ha-yeon’s face went blank for a moment. She bit her lip. She clenched her fists, looked at the floor, furrowed her brow, then lifted her head and glared at Dowook again.

“What is it about her? What on earth is it about Woo Junhee that makes you like this?”

Ah, that tiresome question again. 

He took the cigarette out of his lips and exhaled a long plume of smoke.

“What does it matter to you?”

Through the dispersing smoke, Ha-yeon’s eyes seemed ready to spill tears at any moment. Her wounded expression was bothersome. He flopped back onto the sofa.

Ha-yeon said something more, but as usual, Dowook didn’t listen. He followed the trajectory of the smoke with his eyes.

There was one thing Ha-yeon got wrong.

‘They say you take those materials and give them to Woo Junhee, who’s stuck in the countryside. That you’ve been doing that since spring until now.’

It had been over a month since Dowook stopped doing that. Woo Junhee said she didn’t need them anymore. She told him not to come until the college entrance exam was over. She said it was a distraction. She wanted to focus on the exam. It wasn’t long now.

Dowook complied with her wishes. It wasn’t long now, as Junhee said. Until the day he would hear her answer. Until the day she would finally be his.

When that day comes, Dowook will hold Junhee tightly. He will grumble and punish her twice as much for using and tormenting him all this time.

Just as he waited for her, this time she will wait for him. He will make her say the words he wants to hear until she’s exhausted, no, even after she’s exhausted, he will make her keep saying them in his ear, and he will make her share three meals a day with him. He will pour out all the pent-up frustration, and he will make her explain why she made him anxious.

That she actually liked him. But she pushed him away because she had no room in her heart due to studying. That she missed him too.

He imagined and deeply inhaled the cigarette. 

Ah, I need to quit smoking before Woo Junhee finds out. That uptight girl will definitely dislike it, thinking it’s thuggish.

He deeply inhaled the cigarette. His mind took a crooked turn. It’s been over half a year since he became an adult, and he still has to be mindful of Woo Junhee even about this. He started smoking because of Woo Junhee. Because she made him so anxious.

“Damn difficult Woo Junhee.”

He muttered gloomily. By then, Ha-yeon, who was already fed up with him, had left the room.

In the end, he put out the cigarette. As soon as the flame was extinguished, he felt bored. He crushed the extinguished cigarette in his hand. Ashes fell onto the carpet on the floor.

Next to him, the idle dogs of Hanyanghoe were drinking, singing, and dancing. He watched their antics with unfocused eyes. Someone did a ridiculous dance, stumbled, and fell to the floor. They laughed among themselves, but Dowook didn’t find it amusing.

It was boring, there was nothing to do, there were no cigarettes, and no Woo Junhee. Only then did he think for the first time. 

What is Woo Junhee to me? When did I become so hopelessly infatuated with her? 

He traced back his old memories.

Following the thread of memory, he went back to when he was thirteen, in the fall, on a Saturday afternoon. The sun was white and hot, the sky was blue, and the wind was cool, it was a slightly strange day.

‘I’m Woo Junhee from Nonsan.’

That girl’s eyes were unusually bright.

Maybe it was because the autumn sunlight was extraordinary. Her eyes sparkled like golden sand, and her clinging gaze was annoying. That girl, who looked at him with some expectation and admiration, was unbearably annoying to Dowook. As usual, when he saw such eyes, he wanted to crush everything contained in them to the ground.

Her rustic clothes, rustic hair, rustic accent, rustic smile. He disliked everything about her. Yet she was a girl who received the affection and attention of people at the event. He found it annoying that she was pleased and happy with that attention, acting like the main character.

Her face, smiling bashfully, was full of love. The face of a child who had been loved abundantly in daily life. Young Dowook sneered at that face.

He wanted to remind her of her reality. He wanted to warn her not to dare look at him curiously like a zoo monkey. He wanted to mock her, asking if she liked him after just a few minutes of facing him today.

In fact, you’re just a plaything my grandfather picked for me. You’re meant to take my bad luck in my place, and he accepted you, ‘Woo Junhee’, to use as a pawn against my half-siblings.

But now that ‘Woo Junhee’ turned out to be a girl, she was no longer needed. 

What can I do with a girl like that? How can I beat my half-siblings? 

He had vaguely thought that the name ‘Woo Junhee’ belonged to a boy.

When those golden eyes finally twisted, Dowook felt a sharp pleasure. The eyes that had looked at him with expectation and admiration now contained twisted contempt and hatred. She no longer dared to have impure expectations of him.

Seeing her hiding behind her parent, clinging to her tears and trembling lips, Dowook smirked. He quite liked the sight of her. Her eyes, which had been as bright as the sun, lost their light as they were filled with tears.

Only then did the twisted feelings he had throughout the event subside. His heart faintly throbbed. It felt like discovering a new kind of fun. Even after the event ended and she disappeared, Dowook recalled her face and laughed. He thought about seeing that girl again.

Back then, he was that kind of kid. His small heart was full of resentment and anguish, and he felt relieved only when he destroyed whatever he could get his hands on. Whenever someone approached him with tickling expectations, he had to break them to calm his sharply edged mind.