“You didn’t dislike it?”
His voice, threaded through the cigarette smoke, was as low and acrid as the smoke itself.
“You didn’t dislike it?”
Was he testing her?
Oscar turned toward Seo-ah. The habitual smile had vanished without a trace, leaving behind something like a god presiding over the underworld. Wrapped in hazy smoke, his gaze fell on her as if passing judgment on a sinner.
“Really?”
“……”
Staring at her as though condemning her, Oscar raised the cigarette held between his long fingers to his lips. He drew deeply, tapped the pale ash into the ashtray, and spoke.
“I can’t believe you.”
After uttering words steeped in doubt and disbelief, he seemed to withdraw inward. The darkness of the windowless, dim reception room appeared to spread outward from him.
He exhaled smoke several more times. Then, as though he had reached a conclusion, he opened his mouth again toward Seo-ah, who stood there, lost and overgrown like a weed.
“Then.”
“……”
“That thing you didn’t dislike.”
From within the red-tinged gloom, the man who seemed carved from darkness whispered.
“Try it again.”
He pressed harder on the woman who had dared to shake him.
“That’s how I’ll believe you. Isn’t it?”
The acrid darkness emanating from the master of the mansion seeped into the stranger.
Seo-ah felt as though she were standing in a fog-choked forest, unable to see even an inch ahead, let alone find a direction. If she turned back, a pale darkness blocked her path. If she tried to move sideways, she could not even grasp where the edge lay. The only light visible in that vast obscurity was a small flame, producing acrid smoke and black ash.
That single point of light glimmering in the dimness resembled a will-o’-the-wisp4.
Will-o’-the-wisps, said to appear near graves, were among the frightening stories that had kept her awake as a child.
“Master, do you know about will-o’-the-wisps? Were there anywhere you lived? They say they lure people in and devour them. You must never follow them.”
As always, her master had merely shrugged. Yet on nights when that story returned to her, she could not sleep. She would toss and turn until she eventually crept into her indifferent master’s room. He was like an animated piece of metal, but even so, he never turned her away when she came, unable to rest.
The girl who had earnestly warned her master never to follow such fires now found herself unable to resist stepping forward—even knowing that the fire burning before her was far more terrifying than any will-o’-the-wisp.
The space between them felt filled with something unseen. With each step she took, resistance washed over her, as though she were pushing through a storm. But that was not a reason to stop.
One step.
Then another.
The closer she drew, the more it felt as though even the flow of air had halted. The smoke that had drifted from Oscar’s lips stilled the moment she moved.
One step.
Then another.
Her steps were hesitant, unsteady—yet they did not stop, nor did they retreat. She halted only a few paces before him.
Standing there, Seo-ah held her breath, feeling as though the man before her were pouring himself into her.
His words stirred her heart again.
He had told her to try again—the thing she had not disliked.
That thing she had not disliked.
She had no choice but to recall memories she had tried desperately to bury.
The first sensation that surfaced was cold air brushing against her skin. Goosebumps rose, but only briefly, before being overwhelmed by the firm, burning body that had surged over her like a tidal wave.
Everything had been a first. There was not a single act from the previous night that had not been.
If the things that had crashed over her like a flood were to become something she did not dislike—if she had to prove that to him—
What, then, was she supposed to do?
If yesterday’s events were truly not something to dislike, then—
She…
The pain that had churned deep inside her, to the point of erasing shame; the hot, damp sensations that had persistently brushed the tips of her breasts—places she had never consciously touched, not even with her own hands—those intensely secret, private things—
At that moment, a scene from a night walk with her master flashed through her mind.
It was about a year before her coming-of-age ceremony, wasn’t it? Around the time the marriage prospects of her similarly aged nieces and nephews were being settled.
Her grandfather, whose health had already begun to fail, would sometimes come to see her. He would look at her in silence, then leave just as quietly. She knew, without being told, that he felt deeply apologetic about her marriage—about the fact that it could never be arranged.
Apologetic… to her?
There was no reason for that. It was simply the natural course of things, wasn’t it? Seo-ah had only ever worried about his health.
The first—and last—time the thought of marriage had brushed her mind was the night she saw a couple standing beneath a willow tree, bathed in moonlight.
The pale light clung to the branches, and beneath them the two people gazed at one another with smiles so gentle they made the heart ache just to witness. Still smiling like that, they drew closer, cautiously.
Like the willow’s slender branches cradling moonlight. As if afraid that touching might hurt, or that the other might slip away if they moved too quickly. They leaned against one another and stopped there.
Not having a marriage meant that her own life would never hold a scene like that. That was what she had thought then.
And now, the reason those two people—so precious to each other that they didn’t know what to do—had surfaced in her mind was simple. They were the only lovers she had ever seen.
She felt unbearably ashamed, borrowing someone else’s precious memory like this. But nothing else came to her. She had to do something. And so she had no other choice.
That day—like the lovers who had swayed beneath the willow’s shadow—
Seo-ah stepped toward Oscar.
With one step, his polished black shoes overlapped hers. With the next, the boundary between two separate people collapsed completely. Her first, trembling breath drew in acrid smoke; with the next, the warm scent of damp wood pierced the tip of her nose.
Like cold air hovering above ice, a shimmering warmth radiated from his body. The distance was terrifyingly close. She could not bring herself to look up.
There was only one thing she wished for.
Seo-ah closed her eyes and prayed inwardly.
Please… me—
As if afraid that touching might hurt, or that touching might push him away, like willow branches swaying in a thin wind—
Seo-ah rested her cheek against Oscar’s chest.
The world narrowed again. In that narrowed world, time, too, seemed to halt.
“……”
“……”
The loud thudding by her ear was—perhaps—her own heartbeat.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
What if he hears—
The foolish thought didn’t last.
“Ha.”
The breath brushed hotly through her hair. Perhaps because all her senses were fixed on him, Seo-ah looked up without realizing it.
Oscar was staring at the ceiling.
A blue vein pulsed along his exposed neck, as though he were restraining something.
Without warning, his head dropped.
Before she could react, she met the gaze of blue eyes hardened with anger.
“……!”
A frigid, white gale seemed to rake through her from head to toe.
Would it feel like this—to stand before the master of a temple one entered without knowing one’s place?
His sapphire eyes held contempt, disillusionment, and mockery.
Cold sweat gathered where the gale had scraped her skin. Seo-ah tried to step back. No—she meant to.
“Ah—!”
Oscar seized her wrist mercilessly. Beyond his gaze, a chilling blue flame flickered, and Seo-ah quickly lowered her eyes.
His gaze remained fixed, unyielding, on the face of the woman who could no longer look up.
After glaring at her as though to bore straight through, he finally raised a cigarette to his lips. Held between his long, straight fingers, it glowed red and released a thin plume of smoke.
Only then did Oscar realize—after a long time—that he could not taste it.
He felt neither the acrid bite filling his lungs nor the sharp sting at his nose.
At last, he dragged the hand holding the cigarette up to his face and rubbed his eyes slowly. He stopped like that, covering them.
Within his grip, he could feel it clearly.
The woman’s slender wrist was trembling.
—