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On the day when Jang Yoonsung asked me for my real name, he didn’t spill anything to Chairman Jang. It was okay if it was out of sympathy for his grandfather but I didn’t care if he cared to zip his lips for me.
Through the carelessness of time, everything became in my favor. The longer I spent with Chairman Jang, the closer we got and the harder it was for Jang Yoonsung to reveal the truth. But I still wasn’t relieved yet.
Whether it was because Jang Yoonsung was trying to delay the ending of the show, he wouldn’t call me Han Jiyoung even if he died. He asked for my real name several times and he was annoyed by how I was adamant on not telling him so, he continued calling me ‘fake’. Even if he didn’t kick me out of the house that instant, he had no intention to cooperate and directly called me ‘fake’ in front of Chairman Jang.
Fortunately, Chairman Jang thought his suspicious grandson was only pulling on innocent Han Jiyoung’s legs. Like how a guilty conscience needs no accuser, I only grew frightened.
To me, Jang Yoonsung was a time bomb but our daily lives didn’t change much. We could become neither friends nor enemies so we vaguely coexisted. As always, I could not cope up with the endless leisure time I had while Jang Yoonsung tried to make the best of it. When we came face to face sometimes, he would tease me how I was a fake and poke fun but besides that, there was no other reason for us to meet even if we were bored.
By that time, I became quite used to the villa. There were people there, who left a worn out bicycle a long time ago, and riding that I visited the village some miles away. Most of it was rice paddies, fields, and crowded small houses similar to a typical countryside. There was also a small store that sold a plethora of items. Between the time of traveling to and fro, most of my time would be spent there, devouring cheap snacks that weren’t available at the villa. So I came down to the lower neighborhood about twice a week.
That day too, I put up with listlessness all morning, and around the afternoon, I was taking out my bike. Jang Yoonsing was spraying water on the garden as if he had nothing better to do.
Still, Jang Yoonsung was better off than I was. He used to drive his car to the city from time to time. As Jang Myeongsoo entrusted such a role to me, ‘I was adopted to the U.S at a very young age.’, because of that I couldn’t make up any pretext to visit the city once. It was not that I could not stand it, because it hadn’t been a very long time since the last time I had been to one. Jang Yoonsung noticed me as he heard the bicycle rattling behind him.
“Where are you going?”
“In the neighborhood down there.”
“Riding that?”
The bicycle was rusty in some places but it wasn’t something I couldn’t ride at all. I nodded and Jang Yoonsung scanned me from top to toe before asking again.
“In your pajamas?”
Was there a problem with my clothes? I glanced at my clothes. It was just a long dress, shouldered by a cardigan, similar to what I wore casually.
“So?”
“Are you filming a sports drinks commercial? It’s dangerous.”
It was certainly inconvenient to ride a bicycle in a long skirt. But it couldn’t be helped. All the clothes I had were all skirts of a similar style. Since I was already an adult man, I couldn’t look like a woman if I wore only a wig so I chose such a method to deal with it.
Besides pants are of course…
“All this time I rode it well so don’t bother.”
“Wait. I’ll take you there in my car.”
Jang Yoonsung said he would get his car keys. It was a long distance to walk to, a very short distance by car, however, a suitable distance by bicycle. Besides, if we were going there by car, it would be meaningless anyway.
“It’s inconvenient. I’ll just go there with this.”
I dragged my bicycle past Jang Yoonsung. Shortly after taking a few steps, Jang Yoonsung chased me again and grabbed the bicycle.
“You’re being pretty nosy…”
“No, let’s go together. There’s nothing to do.”
It was boring, it was monotonous. Wouldn’t that be the only feeling we could relate to? Jang Yoonsung quickly got on the bicycle and there was no excuse to turn him down.
I sat on the backseat which seemed to serve a purpose for loading things and I held on to the guy by his waist. The bicycle we both rode on, staggered out of the villa and soon began to run downhill. Jang Yoonsung pedaled excitedly as he asked.
“What business do you have there?”
“I want to have ice cream.”
“There are some at the villa.”
“Not those ones.”
There was ice cream at the villa. It had a strong dairy taste, and it was the kind of ice cream I wouldn’t be able to afford in my life because it was so expensive. At first, I licked it up deliciously but during the summer, I thought I would prefer those ice creams that could be munched on. Just in time, I found that corner shop so I took a few 1000 won notes and offered it there.
Jang Yoonsung nodded as my purpose and final destination were already revealed. Swish, the win touched my face and I liked the bitter smell of the fresh grass that came along with it.
Perhaps, Jang Yoonsung and I were both sick of the boredom and we somehow got dumbfounded. Seeing how we ran down the hill, we must have forgotten that we also had to ride up the hill at the end of the day.
“What do you want to have?”
When we arrived at the store, Jang Yoonsung asked while looking at the ice creams stuffed in the refrigerator, “Is there anything good?”
“Is it because you are raised as something precious…”
What I wanted to ask was if he ever had put those things even close to his mouth but Jang Yoonsung realized what I was about to say and was irked.
“Does that even happen? I just don’t like having ice cream generally.”
“Then let’s have something different. There are drinks inside too.”
I took a chocolate ice pop. Jang Yoonsung stared at the amount I took, he also took the same as me, never minding the drinks.
After paying the bill, we sat on a wooden bench under a tree and held the ice cream close to our mouths. He copied the same with his sloppy hands and it was clear that that young master never had an ice pop in his life.
“It is sweet and bland.”
Jang Yoonsung looked at the ice cream weirdly and checked the nutrients table on the package.
“That’s the charm.”
Jang Yoonsung stared at me as I was saying something wise.
“Miss Fake, how old are you?”
“Twenty.”
I skillfully recited Han Jiyoung’s age. Jang Yoonsung squinted, disliking my answer.
“You know that I’m older than you by a year.”
If I didn’t tell him the truth, he would at least make me call him ‘Oppa’.
“It’s because I lived in the U.S”
“You know how to speak English?”
“Let’s just do it the Korean way.”
Instead of retorting, Jang Yoonsung just bit on his ice cream. It was an expression of disapproval and I looked at his face wet with perspiration from pedaling too hard earlier. The expression was funny, however, he looked fair and pretty.
My eyes darted back and forth from his fair skin to my arms tanned by the summer sun. It was something astonishing.
***
We sat there for a long time after finishing the ice cream.
We didn’t talk much. We appreciated the things that were in front of us and talked briefly about the villa. While we did, Jang yoonsung addressed me with the nickname ‘fake’ and tried to dig up my real name and age.
I didn’t care whether I was fake or not. I also didn’t want to become Han Jiyoung. Rather, Jang Yoonsung wanted me to be someone real and not fake.
After a while, I became aware of the sky that began to turn red. The sun came down in the blink of an eye.
As the night would dawn soon, the roads would become darker so we hurried out with our bicycle. Running downhill, the heavy bicycle ran beyond one’s capacity. In the meantime, the rain came over us, and we eventually decided to get off the bicycle and started to walk.
The raindrops slowly became heavier. It was still a long time to reach the villa but an ambiguous place to go back to the village. Jang Yoonsung, said it would be better to call a car and then rummaged through his pockets.
“Oh, I left my cell phone.”
He didn’t even bring his wallet, let alone his cell phone. That day I had the experience of buying a 3rd generation chaebol, an ice cream.
“I have mine.”
Jang Yoonsung, who seemed unprepared, I lent him my cell phone for him to have a look. Jang Myeongsoo told me not to leave any traces of me there, so it was almost a new phone. I couldn’t even give Chairman Jang my real phone number.
“I think it’s dead.”
Jang Yoonsung clicked the button and then held out the unresponsive phone to me. Come to think of it, when did I last charge it? It was a phone with little use and only had the number of Chairman Jang and some people from the Taewon Group, including Jang Myeongsoo. I made personal contact with my old phone which was hidden in my room.
Because of the heavy rainfall, the overgrown trees couldn’t become our makeshift umbrellas. We remembered there was a roofed bus stop in between the villa and village and started walking towards it. By the time we arrived at the bus stop, we were already drenched.
While we waited for the rain to stop, I squeezed out the water from my wet skirt. I was worried about how my wet wig looked but it was dark around Jang Yoonsung’s face so I didn’t worry because he wouldn’t be able to see clearly.
When the cold air touched my wet clothes, I immediately felt a chill. When I curled to myself, trying to maintain my body temperature, Jang Yoonsung repeated what I had been doing earlier and dried off his hair and clothes by brushing off the wet droplets, and then started speaking.
“Wouldn’t it be better to take that off? Although it would be colder that way.”
Jang Yoonsung pointed at my cardigan with my chin. Since I was wet already, my silhouette was most probably exposed but I still couldn’t take it off. I was wearing a sleeveless cloth underneath and was not very thick. It was very dangerous to leave everything just because it was dark.
“No, it’s not that cold.”
I lied calmly but I still couldn’t hide the coldness I felt on my back.
Jang Yoonsung’s hands suddenly touched my face. Even though his hands were wet from the rain, I could still feel its warmth. Jang Yoonsung made sure with his hands that I was shivering from the cold.
“Who says you are not cold? You are shivering. I’ll run and get the car.”
If he knew that I could also run as much as he could, he wouldn’t have said it. Should I say I would run with him? Wearing the wet and slippery sandals, it wouldn’t be as easy to run as I usually did. Even the solid grains of dirt stuck on my feet bothered me so I looked down at the floor and found that my skirt was wet and sticking to my legs.
I wasn’t sure. Would it be okay to ride a car in that brightness?
I raised my head again and checked the rain. I wasn’t sure if the rain slowed down, but eventually, it became lighter. The noisiness as if the forest was crying slowly became voiceless.
Jang Yoonsung looked around as if he was about to start running. I reached out and grabbed his sleeves. The skin that was touched was warm.
“Let’s just wait a little more.”
He tilted his head as if he was possessed by the warmth. When was the last time I depended on someone? I rested my cheeks on Jang Yoonsung’s shoulders and it seemed to become warmer. The thin sandals that touched the floor were quite comfortable. If I knew that it would have that kind of effect on me, I would have borrowed someone else’s shoulders a few times. Among the rain, a strong wind passed by.
“It’ll stop soon.”
I persuasively muttered under my breath even though Jang Yoonsung had already given up on running and was waiting still.