Unexpected Ch 5 part 2

When her eyes looked away because she was struggling to figure out where to look, his voice continued on.

“Someone even stroked it every day.”

When she heard this, she gasped and brought her hand to her mouth. She didn’t want her gaze to drop and kept them open and tense.

“She was the nanny that had been hired to our household. I heard that she had given birth to a child with much difficulty but lost it in an accident. When she was charged to take care of another child who was the same age as hers, I’m sure she was filled with regret.”

She tried to find the right thing to say and carefully picked her words.

“Are you sure it wasn’t something that happened by accident? Maybe when she was changing your clothes or giving you a bath?”

“She was only fixated on my genitals. As if she were touching the privates of her dead child. Every time she touched every nook and cranny, it felt like a hundred bugs were crawling all over me. It gave me goosebumps. But that wasn’t all. She even put her mouth on it. Even though I was half asleep, I still remember the way her breath caught. It sounded so lewd. Even though it happened so long ago, I remember it clearly.”

The moment she heard him say this, goosebumps began to rise along her skin, and she shivered. No matter how much someone doted on a child, putting one’s mouth on the genitals of a sleeping child was inexcusable and unacceptable.

Even though she had never experienced this herself, she felt incredibly repulsed. She wondered how much worse it could have been for him, the person who had gone through this.

Not knowing what to say, her lips remained closed shut. He raised his hand and lightly tapped his temple as he continued speaking.

“It seems that the experience has branded itself into my brain.”

People said that adding a pinch of salt to something sweet brought out the sweetness that much more. Similarly, the contrast between his calm voice and the terrible things he was saying seemed to make the horror much more pronounced.

“The things I felt while I was half asleep gradually became clearer. I realized that all the things I thought had been a dream were my reality. Even though I was young, I think I instinctively knew that this uncomfortable, unpleasant feeling was not right. Because I hated it so much that I didn’t want to sleep.”

ChaYoung remained at a loss for words and stared blankly at his face. In her mind, the fragments of the words ‘uncomfortable’ and ‘unpleasant’ whirled around her head along with an image of his young self.

“But I didn’t know how to say this or who to say this to. That woman was taking care of me in my mother’s stead. Even if I could understand what people were saying at that age, there was a limit to how much I could express what I wanted to say.

A strained groan flowed out of her lips.

“The final straw that shattered my patience was when the woman told me to call her ‘Mommy’ when we were alone.”

His eyes narrowed as he murmured.

“No matter how much I thought about it, I knew that the woman was not my mother.”

He carefully picked his words, and a dark shadow seemed to loom over his eyes, deepening his gaze.

“I was angry, and I felt that I needed to tell on her to the adults.”

‘That ahjumma told me to call her ‘Mommy’.’

“I practiced it on my own, and for some reason, my mother’s face popped into my head. That’s when I changed what I was going to say.”

‘My wiener is precious, so I’ll be the only one to look at it from now on.’

“I simply thought that as long as the ahjumma disappeared, everything would be fixed. But I never imagined that it would create such a huge ripple effect.”

ChaYoung swallowed her breath when she saw the slight hint of agitation in his eyes.

“Even if I was at an age where I could express myself with words, it was still a time when crying and throwing tantrums was a way to relay my feelings. But instead of revealing my emotional state in this way, I exercised control over my impulses and acted according to my plan. And that, in turn, was interpreted as evidence that I had been sexually molested for a very long time.”

A hidden and sensitive secret that shouldn’t be touched began to gradually reveal itself.

“The first thing I saw was my mother’s pale face. I realized that something had gone wrong, but I did not plan on avoiding the questions that were flying at me. The longer my answers became… my beautiful mother’s face, which had been as lovely as a flower in a vase, began to twist with rage. A sound that seemed to be wrenched out of her chest burst out of her lips. Her body writhed as if she were an animal being stabbed repeatedly.”

A strange, unfamiliar gleam flashed through his eyes. Possibly because she had only seen him to be an aloof man who didn’t have a care in the world, ChaYoung was surprised and slightly bewildered by this. She felt like her fingertips were growing numb at the thought of him as an underage boy who still needed a guardian.

“After that incident, many things changed. I liked that I wouldn’t have to deal with the disgusting things again, but it was tiring to suddenly become the priority over all things.”

He gave a lighthearted shrug. He added, ‘I was receiving attention not only from my family but from the other employees as well.’

“My mother promptly resigned from her job and went out to find a child psychiatric consultation center. With the exception of weekends, every weekday, I was taken to various offices where I received treatment through play, art, and music. It wasn’t like today where everything has been condensed into one practice, so my mother suffered a lot back then. I think she felt very guilty and blamed everything on herself.”

A bitter smile stretched flashed across his lips.

“Honestly, those psychiatric treatments were incredibly boring. I felt that I could just play as I wanted at the moment, but a professional therapist was always there to observe me and analyze my every movement. Because it was their job to find the problem and the solution.”

Even though ChaYoung could hardly believe that these thoughts came from the mind of a young child, having known Do KunHyung when he was twenty-two, she felt that it could be possible. Therefore, she felt that it wasn’t so absurd to imagine him piercing through the minds of the adults around him at that young age.

“It seems that I realized that the only way to escape this as soon as possible was to give them the answers they wanted. And I could tell it was working whenever I saw my mother’s face after she exited the consultation office afterwards. And like that, my treatment went from five days a week to three and then to one. My treatment days began to gradually decrease.”

“If you only pretended to be okay, then you didn’t get treated properly.”

She frowned as she looked at him. Whether it was because he had matured too quickly or because he was just born this way, he seemed to be tired of having lived through these difficulties. But on one hand, she also felt pity for him.

“My emotions and behavior seemed normal, and there didn’t seem to be any negative effects from what happened. I was simply satisfied by the fact that I wouldn’t have to see that woman ever again.”

“Are you a doctor, Sunbae?”

Her pointed question caused his eyes to crinkle into a smile as he laughed. However, there wasn’t any laughter in his eyes.

“……”

Unable to find the right words to say, ChaYoung let out a sigh and asked in a steady voice.

“In the end, you’re saying an unexpected problem arose from this incident, right?”

“Probably.”

He didn’t answer with much conviction.

Did he have nightmares? As she wondered what it could be, he remained silent.

She didn’t want to ask and put him in an uncomfortable position, but she anticipated hearing the truth of what happened. Her head became even more muddled with tangled thoughts.

As she recalled the reason why she had dragged him over to this bar, she heard his voice say, ‘That wasn’t something trivial to me.’

As she looked down at the table, she realized that she still had yet to hear the most important part of this story.

“The blood doesn’t flow there.”

When she heard his abrupt voice, she raised her head. She had been a bit out of it, so she thought she had missed something he’d said earlier.

“Pardon?”

“The corpus cavernosum.”

Corpus cavernosum? ChaYoung felt like she’d heard of it before…

When she remembered something related to it, she froze. By the corpus cavernosum, he meant…

“It’s exactly what you think. The erectile tissue of the penis.”

A man’s penis became erect when blood flowed into the erectile tissue. This was the science behind an erection. Recalling this, her face stiffened.

“I thought I was fine. But it turns out I wasn’t.”

The moment she heard his calm voice, she felt that this was the result of his childhood trauma. She began to attribute his rude words and abrupt behavior to this.

“I thought that if I made a conscious effort, I’d be able to forget about it. Because it happened when I was very young, and I could only recall fragments of it. But as more time passed by, instead of forgetting it, it got…”

His voice faded away, and his smooth brow furrowed.

“As I grew older and began to encounter more things, those fragments began to reveal themselves.”

He drew in a deep breath and swept his hand across his mouth. It was to be expected. The things he hated when he was young were only going to become clearer as he grew older and came across more things in his life. 

She wanted to console him, but she didn’t want to disturb a wound that she did not completely understand.

“By the time I was at an age where I noticed women, I honestly felt a bit disgusted. Just passing by them made me shudder. When I saw my friends get excited and aroused from watching porn, I couldn’t relate.”

“Haa. So why…”

She raised her voice at the pitiful story. She wanted to flick the forehead of the child who had deceived all the adults in his life.

“As you probably caught on, I kept my mouth shut and didn’t say a word about it again.”

Even though he should have sought help, no matter how late it was, she could already tell that there was no way he would’ve done this. She pouted at the thought. He tilted his head and realized how she felt. His lips smiled as he laughed.

“How can you be laughing right now?”

She glared daggers at him, but when she realized that she was overreacting, she quickly bit down on her lips. She wasn’t so close to him to be reacting like this.

Embarrassed by her over-the-top reaction to his situation, her hands clenched around her innocent glass of liquor.

“It was just a bit unexpected, that’s all.”

His low chuckle split through the awkward silence.

“Because no one, not even my family, has ever gotten mad at me before.”

“Aah. For a moment, I forgot that you are a precious person.”

She spoke abruptly to disguise the embarrassment she felt. Just as she was about to bring her glass of lukewarm liquor to her lips, he poured more liquor into a new glass full of ice and handed it to her. Then he took his fork and picked up some salmon salad and brought it up to her lips as he spoke.

“I’m sure they were fond of me. Because I was the most pitiful person in their lives.”

No matter how she looked at it, this wasn’t something he should say while holding salmon salad. Her mouth opened in disbelief, and the salmon salad slid inside.

“For my parents, they were more worried that I was having a gender identity crisis. Because while I was at an age where my blood should be boiling for women, I didn’t pay them any attention. Therefore, I had no choice but to tell them. That I was in perfectly good health, but that my body would not react to the opposite sex. It didn’t mean I didn’t desire them. I even told them that I woke up to erections every morning.”

Even though ChaYoung was sure that this piece of information would turn his household upside-down, he said the words as if they didn’t mean anything. Not only that, he said this completely sober-minded. Looking at him in disbelief, ChaYoung slowly chewed on the salad and swallowed before opening her mouth again.

“It seems that the one who needs liquor isn’t me. It’s you, Sunbae.”

She took the glass she received from him and handed it back. He lightheartedly shrugged and replied.

“If you’re trying to tempt me, then I’ll take it.”

As she watched him stretch out his hand to take it, she remembered how he had said that he didn’t want to drink because he wanted to take her home himself. By giving him liquor, it was no different from tempting him.

She was about to vehemently deny it when she suddenly tilted her head. Something she had overlooked just passed through her head.

“Wait. Does that mean you’re fine now? Last time, you were definitely…”

Hadn’t he said that she was the first woman who had ‘stood him up’? And after that, he had often said things that were quite sexual in nature or were blatant innuendos. By ‘stood him up’, he wasn’t talking about his back or hips.

“At my parents’ insistence, I did go to get some consultation regarding my condition, but even up until the pointI returned to university, nothing helped.”

That wasn’t true.

“Back then, you were definitely…”

As she repeated herself like a parrot, her brows furrowed. What she had seen in front of her apartment the other day… The large bulge in his pants that she thought she had imagined. None of it seemed to match what he was telling her right now.

“I guess you can say things changed when I returned to university.”

Lost in thought, she lifted her head and looked at him. She gazed at him, curious as to what he was going to say now.

“I was attending a language arts class that had many students. Whether you had been pushed or whether you had tripped on the leg of a desk, I’m not sure. But you lost your balance and grabbed onto my back to stop yourself from falling.”

Had something like that happened? She tried to remember, but she got nothing. It did happen a long time ago, and it wasn’t like she had done it intentionally, so she couldn’t remember.

“So what are you saying? Did it feel as if electricity ran through your entire body? You turned around and fell in love at first sight?”

“No.”

He answered in a firm voice not a second after she asked her question. ChaYoung pouted.

“I didn’t feel anything. As if nothing happened.”

Overcome with embarrassment, her curiosity as to what happened next completely disappeared. Every time a word left his mouth, she felt like her feelings were being lifted up and down.

Had she been expecting him to have fallen in love at first sight as he nurtured this pure love all this time? Feeling a bit disappointed, a scoff burst out of her lips.

“That’s why you caught my eye.”

But when she heard the following words, her head turned back to him. However, she couldn’t bring herself to look him in the eye and kept her gaze on his jaw.

Under her lowered gaze, his lips moved.

“Because there hadn’t been a woman I felt nothing for until then.”

His low voice rang deep. Her flip-flopping heart suddenly calmed. She unconsciously raised her eyes. His dark eyes did not tremble as they stared at her.

Although the sentence alone sounded a bit like childish grumbling, it could also sound like a line that came from a romantic comedy.

Similar to other cliche lines like ‘You’re the first woman to ever hit me’ or ‘You’re the first woman to talk to me like that’. Only the verbs and adjectives were different.

However…

“That’s why my eyes kept being drawn to you.”

He repeated this once again as if to emphasize the point. His eyes were almost embarrassingly earnest that she grew flustered.

“At first, I thought that it was a coincidence to always find myself wherever you were. But I soon realized that I was the one who was chasing after you.”

He stopped speaking for a moment as his lips stretched into a smile.

“I was absolutely shocked. Because it bruised my pride. Even after I realized the truth, I couldn’t accept it.”

“Is that why you were always staring daggers at me?”

Even though she didn’t remember much, she still clearly recalled the way his intense gaze felt. Because of his stare, she often wondered whether he liked her.

But it wasn’t because he liked her. It was because his pride had been bruised.

She was glad she hadn’t asked him about it back then. If she had asked him if he was looking at her because he liked her, she might have been laughed at, and she would never be able to face him again.

“I became erect¹.”

The moment she soothed her feelings, she heard his words. She coughed in shock.

She wondered if she had misheard. To understand what she had just heard, she needed time.

So he was saying he became ‘erect’ and not ‘wiener stood up’, right?

“Excuse… me?”

“When it gets hard and bigger due to sexual arousal.”

The moment she heard his reply, she recalled one of their earlier conversations.

“You were the first woman to stand me up.”

“Ha.”

He watched as her lips parted in shock and continued.

“If you want to get angry and curse, go ahead. I know that it sounds very much like sexual harassment.”

His calm voice faded away, and he kept his mouth shut like a criminal waiting for judgment.

Normally, she would have reacted firmly and without hesitation, but right now, at this moment, she couldn’t muster an ounce of hostility. She only felt that this was all a bit absurd.

“What did we do for you to get aroused?”

They had never even held hands. Even when they were in the same group for projects, they only met when the whole team was present. They had never been together alone to talk and swap stories. Therefore, she found this difficult to believe. 

“I’m not sure. I was also confused because I didn’t know the reason either.”

And then, like a man who was confessing to a priest, his voice grew quiet.

“Whenever I see you, I can feel my body reacting on its own. It’s the first physical reaction I’ve had towards the opposite sex. I wonder if my body has gotten over its psychological indifference and is now back to normal. But even if it isn’t, it hasn’t reacted to any other woman like this.”

ChaYoung didn’t realize she was that special to him. She wondered whether she should be happy about this secret she had discovered after seven years or whether she should find it ridiculous.

“While I was attending university, it’s always been you. But I couldn’t let that show, so I was frustrated. Because even I knew that I was acting like a crazy bastard.”

On one hand, it sounded like an ardent love confession, but knowing the context around this conversation, she felt that her heart should not be fluttering from his words.

“Days passed, and time went on. Graduation day came in a flash. That’s when I realized that I wouldn’t be able to see you anymore. I felt extremely anxious, and I needed to say something.”

“Ah…”

Her eyes shook as she remembered something. He nodded.

“I asked you to go out with me.”

“To be exact, you said, ‘Do you want to try dating me?’”

She added as a rebuttal, but his expression showed slight surprise.

“It must have left quite an impression.”

“You never showed any signs of being interested in dating, so it was like being struck by lightning.”

Thankfully, she wasn’t such an idiot to accept his shocking confession. If she had been blinded by his perfect looks, she might have become giddy by that confession, thinking it was so cool of him.

“Do you know that you asked me on graduation day? When you came into the department office to return your gown, no less.”

He said that he had needed to get the words out no matter what. Because she knew this now, she didn’t feel restless as she recalled the confession from the past.

“Because my head was filled with thoughts…”

“But you gave up very quickly, too.”

After she hinted at her rejection to his confession, he had merely turned around with a ‘Well, it can’t be helped.’ Before her heart had a chance to flutter, the situation had concluded. It ultimately became a passing memory.

“I acknowledge that, too.”

“Aren’t you acknowledging everything too easily? It scares me.”

“Because I was too arrogant and clumsy.”

“I feel like I need more context.”

When she furrowed her brow, he let out a ‘Mmm…’ as he thought about what to say. Then he opened his mouth.

“I didn’t expect you to say no. I… You may not believe this, but I filtered out a lot before I said what I said.”

When she heard his unexpected remark, she scoffed.

“Even if I lived a life of privilege, I can’t just go up to you and say, ‘My body only seems to react when I see you, so why don’t we test it by sleeping together.’”

As he claimed that he wasn’t so crazy as to do something like that, ChaYoung wondered if she should be angry or thankful for his unlimited grace and consideration. Although she couldn’t make heads or tails of it, she could understand his thinking, so she kept her mouth closed and merely looked at him.

“I was already in an unexpected situation, and when you rejected me straight away, that was all I could say.”

“Well, it can’t be helped.”

She recalled that there was no hesitation in his clear voice.

“It was the first time I’d met someone who told me outright that they didn’t like me. I didn’t want to cling onto them and try to beg for their favor either. I didn’t know what to say in response, so I just acted calm, cool, and collected.”

After hearing his explanation, she felt like she understood what he meant when he said he was ‘arrogant and clumsy’.