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The dull green roadster, driven by Lee Junggeon, swiftly scampered down the black road. With midnight approaching, the road lay desolate. It should’ve felt easier to breathe as we sped down the vast and open road, but for some odd reason, it just made me feel even more suffocated. Lee Junggeon had presented me with an assortment of forged documents and a passport, leaving me perplexed as to when he had managed to prepare them. Throughout the entire journey, from getting through security checks using those documents, boarding a car stationed near the institution, changing our clothes, and finally, our current state of speeding down the road, my violently fluctuating heartbeat showed no signs of steadying.
During my time in S.E., I was the type who could control my emotions well enough. Sometimes, they’d flood out through a tear in the seam, but I always managed to rein them back in. However, since departing from S.E., a myriad of emotions and thoughts surged within me, tightly entwining themselves around my being.
The issue was that the emotions engulfing me were more negative than usual. I thought I’d feel both relieved and refreshed once I escaped S.E., but strangely enough, the further I got from it, the more I began to shake. I tried to fixate my gaze on the lights of the swiftly passing street lamps, hoping to clear my mind. However, the rapidly changing scenery only served to heighten the dizziness in my head. In reality, though, it wasn’t the speed causing my nausea and dizziness; I was accustomed to high speeds. Regardless of our destination, Jung Haekyung always had a heavy foot on the accelerator, aiming to go fast, which always prompted my quiet protests as I clung to the handle attached to the ceiling, urging him to slow down.
「You think I’d let you die?」
Each time, Jung Haekyung would inform me about his latest experiment data. Reaction speed to stationary objects, reaction speed to moving objects, escape speed in car accidents, and so on and so forth. While I was surprised to hear the numbers gathered from using Jung Haekyung as an experiment subject, they failed to resonate with the ordinary me; I couldn’t find it in me to sympathise with him.
「Isn’t it said that, in the event of an accident, the driver instinctively swerves the wheel to safety? So, if a tourist bus were to encounter an accident, the seat right behind the driver supposedly has the highest chance of survival. If you ever find yourself on one, take that seat. I’ll suppress my survival instincts and prioritise the safety of the passenger seat. What do you think?」
How about you just drive safely in the first place? There was really no need for him to suppress any survival instincts, considering Jung Haekyung was unlikely to ever die in a car accident or anything of the sort. I was just worried about the other people who’d get caught up in the accident and myself. Nevertheless, I ceased my protests. I made a silent vow to occupy the back seat behind the driver if I ever found myself on a bus, but the opportunity never presented itself. Despite his penchant for speed, Jung Haekyung didn’t care whether I drove quickly or slowly or whether I wandered on the roads or switched lanes during the times I’d drive instead.
“Shall we stop by a rest area?”
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
Lee Junggeon’s voice jolted me from my thoughts. Judging by his inquiry about whether I was sleeping with my eyes open, it appeared he had called out to me multiple times.
“Tfr.”
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“Want to eat?”
“No.”
It was fascinating to me that cooked dishes were available for sale at such a late hour. However, there was no way that a potato or anything else could possibly slide down my throat right now. Nonchalantly purchasing baby potatoes or any other snacks at a rest area only served to make the situation feel even more surreal. I couldn’t believe that we were casually buying and indulging in baked potatoes slathered in butter at a rest stop while I was in the middle of being kidnapped.
Jung Haekyung would also make sure to stop by any visible rest areas, no matter his destination, to purchase me treats like walnut cookies, hot bars, or anything of the like. Whether he was on a domestic assignment or an international mission, he always made it a point to buy treats, breads, chocolates, and other stuff from the famous stores in the area he was dispatched to. Even though he wasn’t the type to eat things he had never tried before, he’d always buy a pile of food he insisted we had to eat and tell me to have a bite at the very least. He’d urge me to feed him candy or chocolate with my own mouth—a gesture he probably picked up from somewhere—and it often left me feeling like my tongue was paralysed. Come to think of it, I remembered Jung Haekyung giving me pudding when I first escaped from S.E. Chocolate, banana, and what was that last flavour…?
“Euijin-ah?”
My heart dropped when I suddenly heard my name. The person who called me that—though he was filling my head—shouldn’t be here right now. As I hurriedly turned my head to look for the other person, Lee Junggeon gently grabbed my shoulder.
“Nothing’s the matter, it’s just that you kept spacing out.”
“…What?”
“We’ve already left S.E., so I can’t keep addressing you as First Lieutenant Kim. Besides, you’re younger than me. Can’t I just call you by your name?”
“Oh…”
I stupidly nodded before climbing back into the car. It was funny how I was behaving so cluelessly, devoid of any sense of crisis, despite having made it this far. I couldn’t think of anything else when I was already in such a state. As we rejoined the highway, some time into our drive, Lee Junggeon asked, “Can I drop the formalities? Honestly, my ranking is higher than yours, and I’m older too, aren’t I?”
I replied with a simple “yeah,” seeing no reason to object. No one in S.E. would make such a suggestion, and even if someone did ask me something like that, I would’ve refused them since Jung Haekyung would dislike it, but there was no need to worry about such things now. Still, a small corner of my heart couldn’t shake off the discomfort.
No, if I had to be honest, it wasn’t just any ordinary sense of discomfort. Every time Lee Junggeon engaged in small talk and addressed me as “Euijin-ah,” my heart would race and then plummet. I hadn’t experienced an ordinary daily life—where someone would kindly call my name, engage in casual but friendly banter, and look me in the eyes while conversing—with anyone other than Jung Haekyung in over two years.
I wanted to push him out of my thoughts, but I couldn’t. He had firmly entrenched himself within me, spanning from the crown of my head to the tip of my toes, and made me think, look back, and censor my every action. I only remembered the things I did with him, and I only thought of the things I had seen with him. It was so damn ridiculous. The farthest we had reached was a rest stop, and not even two hundred kilometres into our journey, I started feeling like giving up. Even I thought that was stupid of me. I shouldn’t have embarked on this journey in the first place, and if I had already started, I shouldn’t be looking back.
Regardless of what I was thinking, the car continued to speed along. The sound of airplanes taking off and landing intensified, and in the distance, Hwedong International Airport came into view. The lights of the airport glowed magnificently even in the late night. The closer we approached, the more impatience stirred within me. I chewed on my lips before impulsively suggesting, “Should we grab something to eat?”
Lee Junggeon gazed at me with a hint of confusion in his eyes upon hearing my words. Naturally, it must have seemed odd for me to suddenly express hunger, especially after declining his offer of potatoes just an hour earlier at the rest stop. Nonetheless, Lee Junggeon nonchalantly said, “They should have something for sale at the airport, no?”
“That… I want to eat sashimi.”
I opted for what I considered the least likely option to find at an airport. Even outside an airport, the chances of stumbling upon a place serving sashimi in the middle of the night were slim to none. Stupid. Moron. Idiotic bastard. I wanted Lee Junggeon to stop the car, even as I kept cursing myself nonstop. At the same time, I wanted him to ignore my ridiculous opinion and drive to the airport. All this time, I’ve been shifting responsibility onto Jung Haekyung, and even now I was handing my right of decision over to Lee Junggeon. Where had my willpower gone? Unbeknownst to me, my judgement and decisiveness were slowly eroding. How did I become such an idiot? I lowered my head due to the rush of shame my words brought me. A while later, I heard Lee Junggeon’s voice.
“There aren’t any sashimi restaurants nearby, so how about we go for sushi instead?”
Lee Junggeon’s calm tone bore no trace of bewilderment. I laughed. I was laughing at myself. The restaurants I frequented the most with Jung Haekyung weren’t sashimi restaurants, but rather sushi ones. Even though he didn’t eat raw fish, he’d order the priciest menu items, while I opted for dishes like steamed eggs, fried tofu rice balls, or smoked salmon.
It all began with a passing comment about how the food in the sushi comic we read together looked appealing. From that moment on, Jung Haekyung would spend all day searching for sushi restaurants, and when we ventured out together, there was a one-in-three chance we’d end up at a sashimi or sushi establishment. We even made a direct trip to the overseas sushi restaurant that served as inspiration for the comic. I told him that I didn’t want to go abroad for such a reason. No, the thing is, I couldn’t go anywhere outside S.E. on my own. While my outing restrictions were lifted, the only place I could be alone outside S.E. was our home, a place where only Jung Haekyung had the power to open and close the door. To say that it was “our home” was such a hilarious thing.
“Are you scared?”
Lee Junggeon’s voice buzzed in my ears. I was scared. Scared that I’d get caught, scared that, even if I did manage to safely get away, I would be condemned to a life of perpetual panic and fear. I was scared that, despite there being a chance that Jung Haekyung and S.E. wouldn’t bother chasing down my useless self, I’d still have to live while trembling in Jung Haekyung’s shadow. Even in our current situation, not even three hours had passed, yet I found myself incapable of thinking about anything other than Jung Haekyung. I was scared that, even if I boarded a plane at the airport and set foot on foreign soil, nothing would change at all. Despite having spent a longer time overseas than in Korea, I was now scared of going abroad. The path leading to the place Jung Haekyung warned me not to go felt scary.
Perhaps taking my silence as a positive, Lee Junggeon suddenly stopped the car in the middle of the road. I lifted my head, thinking that this seemed even more dangerous, despite the early dawn with no other cars in sight. I pressed the emergency light button, wanting to live even in our present circumstances. I was about to tell him it was dangerous when Lee Junggeon asked me again, “Do you want to go back?”
I found myself unable to answer his question. Even in my mind, the emergency light button was flashing nonstop. Go back? To S.E.? To Jung Haekyung? If I go back now, will it seem as though nothing had happened? Will I resume my routine morning, living just like I did yesterday? In reality, I was unsure which option was better. To exist on the palm of Jung Haekyung’s hand, or to live under the shadow of a non-existent him. I was reaching a point where I didn’t know what to do, having never thought, never acted, and never done anything of my own will. Not since I entered S.E.
I couldn’t live like this. I couldn’t keep allowing others to decide my life. I decided to move my paralysed head, which kept rejecting my thoughts, and finally made up my mind. The moment I opened my mouth to answer him—
Bang!
My body violently shook from the sudden shock. The car had been struck from behind. Fortunately, the impact seemed to have been at an angle, sparing me from any injuries aside from the forceful shaking. Lee Junggeon, touching the back of his neck, exited the car. I followed suit, stepping out as well.
Oooooooh!This is getting intense! I smell gunpodwer!sniff sniff
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