Chapter 71

Chapter 71

Honestly, I’d expected this to some degree ever since I heard that my sister was caught up in a dating rumor.

It wasn’t that my sister was the kind of person who had trouble earning others’ favor in terms of looks or personality—it was just that her unique temperament had made her past relationships rocky.

Yeah, so… I expected it, but still.

“Anyway, sis, how long are you staying? Are you going to be here a while today?”

Still, there’s no helping that it left a bad taste in my mouth.

The child plastered a bright smile over the pitch-black irritation settling in her heart.

My sister seemed to notice the tiny gap the child had shown for a moment, her expression turning subtle, but thankfully, instead of pointing it out or mentioning it, she answered with a faint, hazy smile.

“I’ll probably be here until tomorrow. I’d like to stay longer if I could, but I have a request that just came in, so I can’t leave my spot empty indefinitely.”

“I wish you could stay a little longer.”

“I’m sorry. I’ll make sure to free up some time next time, okay?”

Even though she thought it wasn’t something my sister should apologize for, the child didn’t voice that thought. If my sister stayed with her a little more often and a little longer, even out of guilt, there was nothing bad about that.

…Of course, she knew this was a terribly selfish thing to do.

“…Ah, see this. As expected.”

As if to say he already knew about the small spite the child had pulled, the man was looking at her with a rather subtle expression.

It was a look that seemed to say he wanted to say something, but for now, he’d hold back because of the sister beside him.

‘There’s no way a guy like this is just a “work colleague.” …Ah, but maybe my sister’s the only one who thinks that.’

Something like this had happened back when my sister was in college, too. She said she’d just brought along a classmate who wanted to volunteer, but the person in question was clearly carrying ulterior motives at a glance.

The child deliberately put on a mischievous smile and suddenly clung to my sister. My sister let out a light laugh, unflustered by the child’s sudden action. Saying that Yujin had gotten clingy after not seeing her for a while.

“Sis, I’m hungry. Let’s eat together, quick.”

“Okay. Let’s eat first and talk then.”

Yujin’s still growing, so she needs to eat well. If she does, she’ll definitely end up taller than my sister someday. A voice dripping with affection for her fell from above her head, sweet as honey.

Was it because of that affection pooling sweetly in her ears? Her face felt hot. The child, not wanting to be caught with that expression, deliberately buried her face in my sister’s embrace.

Luckily, the child’s sister was a very kind person, so she didn’t shake off or push away the child who was practically clinging to her despite saying she was hungry. It was a faint, pitiful sort of kindness.

* * *

Dinner was very delicious. …To be honest, at least it wasn’t bad. Considering that even my dulled sense of taste—since I started suffering from Mana Rejection Syndrome—had received a fairly decent stimulus, it must have been a ‘very delicious’ meal by normal standards.

“Hello.”

“…Hello. Your name was Yujin, right?”

“Yes. I’m Lee Yujin.”

Of course, what mattered in this situation wasn’t whether the seafood pasta I just ate was delicious or not, but the conversation with the person right in front of me.

The child looked at the man standing tall under the sunset, where a strip of blue wrapped around the edge of red like a ribbon.

“What should I call you?”

“Call me whatever you want.”

“Then I’ll just call you ‘you.’”

As expected, without my sister around, he wasn’t putting on any pretense. That was almost a relief. It was better to receive sincere dryness than kindness that wasn’t even in his heart, not a single shred of sincerity.

The child stepped on the long shadows stretching under the red sky as she approached the man.

“You know, I have something I want to talk to you about. Is that okay?”

Just then, my sister was still tending to a little girl who wasn’t even five years old yet, helping her eat. So it was enough time—just a little while, probably less than ten minutes—to have a conversation with this man.

“…Sure. Do as you like.”

Luckily, the man didn’t refuse. At the very least, his attitude showed he properly recognized that ‘Lee Yujin’ was someone precious to ‘Yoon Seohee.’ The child deliberately pulled up the corners of her mouth in a clumsy smile and pointed at the outer wall of the building across from them.

“Then let’s go over there. The kids don’t really come around there.”

At the place the child pointed, a crooked outer wall and a huge persimmon tree right in front of it created a dark, secret-room-like shadow.

The man confirmed where the child’s fingertip was pointing, then silently moved forward. Was it that he didn’t want to mix words with others, or that he didn’t want to talk to her?

After thinking for a moment, the child came up with a rough answer. Probably both, she figured.

The distance to their destination wasn’t far. After all, they were moving within the orphanage grounds, so it couldn’t take long. The child stepped a few paces away from the man, who stood tall like the persimmon tree right beside her, and opened her mouth.

“Hey, do you like my sister?”

It was a truly abrupt question.

The man, as if quite flustered by the sudden question, slightly furrowed his face, which had been expressionless the whole time.

“I’m not in that kind of relationship with Seohee.”

“I didn’t ask what kind of relationship you have with my sister.”

It wasn’t that she didn’t know what kind of relationship her sister and the man had that made her ask this. To be precise, she already knew that at least the man and her sister weren’t in what people commonly called a ‘dating’ relationship.

The child grabbed the hem of her clothes fluttering in the wind with her tiny fist and looked up at the man.

“I’m just asking in the literal sense. Whether you like my sister.”

“……”

The man, as if struck speechless, narrowed his brow without saying anything. At first glance, he looked like someone baffled by an absurd question, but from another angle, he also looked like someone who’d been hit right in the sore spot and was thoroughly flustered.

The child silently waited through the man’s silence, which lasted long enough for the second hand to have ticked thirty or forty times.

“Do I… have to answer that?”

That was the answer that came after such a long silence. The child tilted her head slightly and replied.

“If you don’t want to, you don’t have to. I’m just asking because I’m curious.”

“…Then I’ll refrain from answering. I don’t want to talk about this kind of thing with you.”

It was a very euphemistic yet firm refusal, but at the same time, it was an answer that allowed her to roughly guess what he hadn’t said. The child silently met the man’s gaze, fidgeting with her fingertips.

“Then can I ask one more thing? Of course, if you don’t want to answer this one either, you don’t have to.”

“Go ahead.”

“Uh, then… hey, what kind of relationship do you want to have with my sister?”

This time, too, the man’s face slightly furrowed. But this time, he didn’t immediately refuse or turn away from the question. He slowly opened his mouth, returning his furrowed face to its original expressionlessness.

“An unchanging relationship.”

His voice was as indifferent as if he were tossing a worthless pebble onto the roadside. But the green eyes facing her held a sincerity that was incomparably heavy and deep.

After thinking and pondering for a long time, the child finally managed to open her mouth.

“Unchanging?”

“…It means I want a relationship that doesn’t change.”

“I didn’t ask because I didn’t know what it meant.”

As if she would ask because she didn’t know the meaning of the word. The child pouted her lips and glared at the man.

“That’s not the kind of answer you usually get when you ask something like this. What I expected was, you know, dating or friends. Something like that.”

“I have no interest in such vague relationships.”

“You’re a really weird person.”

Come to think of it, he really was a weird person. It was a bit odd for her to say it herself, but the fact that he was seriously engaging in a conversation with a child, and that the answer he gave to her question was this abstract, were both strange.

In the sunset that was tinged with a bluish aura at its edges and settling down red, the child quietly watched the man standing at a distance, neither affirming nor denying her assessment of him as a ‘weird person.’

“Then one last time, I’ll ask you again. Do you really not like my sister?”

“……”

The man’s gaze, which had been fixed on some unknown place, finally met the child’s face. The child held her breath for a moment and looked into the man’s green eyes.

Even though his pupils were filled with green, a color that usually represents living, breathing things, there was no trace of life in the man’s eyes.

Was that a denial? Or was it an affirmation?

Perhaps it was avoidance and escape.

“She’s too precious a person for me to dare hold in my heart.”

The man’s brown hair fluttered thinly in the wind.

“My relationship with Seohee is enough as it is now. No, if this current state can just be maintained, I have nothing more to wish for.”

Without realizing it, the child let out the breath she had been holding. And then, she released the words she had been holding under her tongue.

“So you can’t say you ‘don’t like’ her, can you?”

“……”

The man did not answer.

But sometimes, silence means more than words spoken aloud. The child nodded once and turned away.

“I see. I don’t know about anything else, but at least I’m relieved you don’t seem like the kind of person who’d take my sister away from me.”

The long shadow cast behind him rippled like a wave.

“Thank you for answering everything I asked. Well then, I’ll go ahead to my sister first.”

And the child hesitated no longer.

Ignoring the shadow cast behind her, the red sunset trailing a tail of blue light in the distance, and the tall man alone digesting a truth he could not bring himself to speak, the child simply headed toward her sister.

‘What a relief.’