DDB Ch 3

The man stubbed out his cigarette on the rough plaster wall and approached her.

Thud, thud.

His slow, heavy footsteps made her heart tighten involuntarily. Sweat gathered on her tense palms as she gripped the hem of her cardigan.

Jiwoon looked up at the man who had come close.

‘A Korean?’

Only then did Jiwoon realize he was Korean.

His height, proportions, robust build, and sharp features – when hidden in the shadows of the warehouse, she had thought he was unmistakably Western.

At that moment, the corner of the man’s mouth slanted upwards.

“It’s you.”

His pitch-black eyes, like a dawn lake covered with frost, gleamed coldly.

“The thieving cat who’s been coming in and out of this warehouse.”

A shiver ran down her spine. A low, somewhat husky voice could sound so languid.

But more surprising was that this languid voice was simultaneously threatening. It felt like a well-sharpened blade was aimed at her carotid artery. Her pulse near her throat jumped in surprise.

Licking her tense lips, Jiwoon spoke.

“Aren’t you more like the thief…?”

Her voice trembled slightly at the end.

The man chuckled, “Is that so,” murmuring lowly.

“Assuming that’s true.”

He pulled out another cigarette from a silver cigarette case. Then, with a bored tone, he said:

“Don’t come here anymore.”

“…?”

Don’t come here anymore? What kind of bolt from the blue was that?

With a dazed, shocked expression, the man added shortly to Jiwoon:

“This place will be cleaned up soon.”

Then he lit his cigarette.

The way he looked at Jiwoon while inhaling the smoke felt obscene. Without moving a finger, just with his gaze, he seemed to expose her, rummage through her, and strip her bare, touching her skin directly.

Feeling an itchy sensation all over her body, Jiwoon turned her head and stepped back.

“What about <Guinevere>?”

“<Guinevere>?”

Walking to where the painting had been, Jiwoon spoke while following the trace of the now vanished painting.

“I mean the painting… I call it that.”

Perhaps because she named the painting, the man’s face twisted oddly. Then he looked at her as if she were some curious object.

“That’s…”

Pausing for a moment, Jiwoon looked at him intently, as if observing him, and continued:

“It resembles Guinevere from the tales of King Arthur. Chaste yet disheveled… a painting like that.”

“…”

The man tilted his head at an angle.

His gaze through the hazy smoke was so provocative that her face heated up for no reason.

Fixing his gaze on her, the man approached slowly.

Coming right up to her face, he chuckled.

“Cute, isn’t it? It’s not like it’s child’s play.”

Her heart turned cold in an instant.

Instinctively, she knew it wasn’t because he found her cute that he called her ‘cute’. Although the corner of his mouth was curved in a smile, his eyes, piercing into her, held no hint of amusement.

Instead, they darkened, becoming colder and drier.

Unable to easily avert her gaze from him, Jiwoon continued with a fragile silence.

It was the man who broke the brief silence.

Calmly withdrawing his gaze from her, he checked the time on his left wristwatch.

Raising one eyebrow, he let out a shallow sigh and lifted his head.

As their eyes met again, her heart thudded. Then, his long, straight finger touched her chin indifferently.

“The game is over. So…”

Yes, it seemed to be true.

As if dealing with her here had just been a short amusement, his indifferent face was filled only with a cold wind.

With that cold face, he said the one thing she least wanted to hear:

“Forget the painting, and…”

Perhaps that’s why, at that very moment, narcolepsy, like an unwelcome guest, crept up on her like a thief.

🐬🌊🐳

Two days later.

There was a light dusting of snow.

Jiwoon, wearing jeans and a padded jacket, hurriedly put on her snow boots and went out.

Since it was Friday evening, the central square was crowded. Tourists and locals mixed together, leaving no room to move. Perhaps it was because the Christmas season was starting. She had heard that a Christmas market was opening somewhere nearby.

Navigating through the crowd, bumping shoulders, Jiwoon turned the corner into a small tavern.

“Seo Jiwoon!”

Myungja spotted her and immediately raised her hand.

As Jiwoon’s gaze met hers, Myungja waved her long arms even more enthusiastically, almost as if her arms would make flapping sounds from how vigorously she waved.

“Did you wait long?”

“Yeah, about 30 minutes. I thought my butt would get numb.”

“Only 30 minutes? I waited for you for an hour last time!”

Saying that, Jiwoon ordered a beer from the bartender and sat down. Myungja’s freckled face scrunched up, and she pouted before drinking her beer straight from the bottle.

Shin Myungja, a neo-bohemian who came to Italy for a trip, met a fateful man, and instead of returning to Korea, settled in Florence.

She was one of the few people Jiwoon could call a friend in Florence, and she was also a major source of information, thanks to her boyfriend working in the Florence mayor’s office.

“How’s your body?”

“It’s fine.”

Jiwoon nodded with a smile at Myungja’s question.

Then Myungja’s face creased with concern.

“It’s because of the narcolepsy, right?”

“Well, yeah.”

Jiwoon nodded nonchalantly again and took a sip of her beer.

Narcolepsy.

Jiwoon, who suffered from severe insomnia, would experience narcolepsy like a time bomb whenever sleep deprivation and psychological stress coincided. Her body, which couldn’t sleep no matter how hard she tried, would suddenly fall into sleep like a thief sneaking up.

If that were all, it would be closer to a blessing. At least she could sleep comfortably.

“Where did you fall asleep this time?”

“Don’t you know?”

But narcolepsy isn’t such a kind disease. Not knowing when or where she would fall asleep was one thing, but the hallucinations upon waking were particularly tormenting.

Most narcolepsy patients experience sleep paralysis with hallucinations, but Jiwoon was different. Along with hallucinations, she exhibited symptoms of sleepwalking. Thus, whenever she fell into narcolepsy, her body would end up in a battered state.

“So, where did you wake up?”

Jiwoon fell silent for a moment at Myungja’s question.

Recalling where she fell asleep and where she woke up, the man’s face from two days ago came to mind.

The image of him arrogantly lifting his chin while taking a long drag from his cigarette wouldn’t leave her mind like a thorn stuck in her throat.

The man had caught her as she was falling into sleep due to the sudden onset of narcolepsy.

She definitely fell asleep in the warehouse.

When she woke up, she was lying in her own bed.

Could it be that man who carried her there? She still hadn’t found the answer to that.

But one thing was clear. This time, for some reason, she didn’t experience sleepwalking symptoms.

“Huh? Where did you wake up?”

“…Don’t know?”

Jiwoon answered reflexively before quickly snapping out of her thoughts. She remembered what the man had whispered in her ear just before she fell asleep.

“Forget the painting, and me. You weren’t here, and you saw nothing.”

Meeting Myungja today was to look into that.

“Enough about me, tell me more about what you mentioned on the phone. What do you mean someone died?”

This time, her narcolepsy episode lasted longer. Normally, it would be ten minutes, maybe two to three hours at most, but this time, she slept like the dead for a whole day. Then, she spent another day recovering.

After just two days off, it seemed a major event had stirred up all of Florence.

As Jiwoon prompted her, Myungja, true to her reputation as an information source, eagerly shared the news.

Apparently, early yesterday morning, the morning she had fallen asleep, the local mafia had been moving around noisily, looking for someone. They found the person within half a day, but he was already dead.

“You know that empty warehouse at the end of Belvedere Hill, right?”

A shiver ran down her spine.

“A body was found there.”

She then went into detail about what she heard from her boyfriend.

But to Jiwoon, Myungja’s words barely registered.

Realizing that the place where the body was found was the very warehouse she frequented, nothing else seemed important anymore.