Love, I’ve always believed, can only flourish between people who are alike. It’s the simplest path to happiness. Shared values, comparable family backgrounds, the same tier of education and wealth, even a similar degree of attractiveness. Like attracts like. I was a clever child; I understood this was the fast track to the contentment everyone else seemed to be chasing.
Then, the year I turned seventeen, I was forced to admit I was in love. Maybe it had been from the very first moment, a truth I was only now allowing to surface. But I prided myself on being rational, on being logical, so I dismissed it. A simple high school crush. I tried to brush it aside as nothing more.
But the feeling coiled inside me, tightening its grip until it was a knot in my throat, threatening to choke me.
“Daechi Station, please.”
The city at dawn slides past the taxi window, a blur of gray and pale light. A message, as sudden and unwelcome as an unscheduled summons, had shattered the quiet of my morning.
I’d read it, sat frozen on the edge of my bed for a long moment, then rose with a curse muttered under my breath. The house was empty save for the housekeeper asleep on the floor below. No one would know I was gone. And so, I left.
While I waited for the taxi by the gate, my eyes fell on a motorcycle parked against the wall of the house across the way. The family there was new, having moved in a year ago after the previous owners left without a word. I’d never met them, which wasn’t unusual in a neighborhood of high walls and guarded privacy. The bike suggested they had a son, probably older than me.
Sometimes that motorcycle was left out carelessly by the gate; other times it was shoved into a corner of the alley, bound by a heavy chain. For some reason, it reminded me of myself. I stared at it for a moment before the taxi arrived, and I turned away to climb inside.
I tried watching the scenery during the ride, but my stomach, always prone to carsickness, began to churn. I gave up and closed my eyes.
For the last year, my stomach hadn’t been right; food sat like a stone inside me. I sighed, trying to loosen the familiar tightness in my chest. It was a practiced habit, this suppression of any unsettling emotion. With enough effort, I could maintain a composed exterior—the same one I wore now as I paid the driver and walked into the hotel.
Inside, I bit down on my lip. My hand tightened into a fist, then relaxed. Focusing on the slip of paper I was clutching, I found the room number and walked down the hall until I stood before the correct door. I raised my hand and knocked three slow, deliberate times.
“Park Seo-joon. Open up.”
Only silence answered. Irritated, I stared at the blank wood of the door, then let out a sharp breath. I pounded on it again, much harder this time.
“I said, open the damn door!”
The whole situation was disgusting. My skin crawled just imagining what had happened in this room overnight, but still, I couldn’t leave. He had asked me to come. I was here, enduring this revulsion, because Park Seo-joon was the one who had infected me with this sickness in the first place.
“Why the hell would you call me here after some useless one-night stand, you worthless bastard?”
God, this is unbearable.
The life of an eighteen-year-old.