Chapter 52: Fireworks

The seat behind me was empty. His bag was gone. He had left.

He was the type to skip school as often as other people ate, so it wasn’t unusual, but it was obvious he had gone home because of what happened earlier. His mood had soured. I sat down awkwardly in my seat.

Even with no one behind me, I felt a thorny gaze stabbing at me.

There was no way I could focus on class. For a long time, I thought about going to the villa, but I barely held myself back. Yoon Heesung was giving me a headache. I wanted to get away from him, to be somewhere he couldn’t easily reach even if I made up my mind to go.

Heesung didn’t come to school the next day, or the day after.

It wasn’t unusual for Heesung to skip school. So I didn’t contact him, and he didn’t contact me either. It became awkward between us, as if we had fought. We had been through so much together, but we had never had this kind of cold war. It had turned awkward over just one argument.

More than anything… knowing that all those visits to see me were lies left me feeling hollow.

See? If I don’t go to the villa, he doesn’t come to school either. He looked like he couldn’t tell a single lie, and then he said all those things that toyed with my heart. I don’t know why it stung, but it did.

And then I got scared all over again, realizing I was this messed up even when Heesung wasn’t around.

“Yunwoo, you’re skipping afternoon self-study today too?”

“Yes. I’m not going to do it until the CSAT.”

“Alright. You work hard enough, Yunwoo. I trust you.”

After telling Heesung I’d be doing self-study at school, I told my teacher I was going to skip it until the CSAT. I don’t know what that was about. Why would I leave it open so that if Heesung contacted me again and asked me to study at the villa, I could go at any time? I couldn’t understand my own heart.

But I wasn’t the one contacting him first, and I wasn’t visiting the villa either.

Why is my own heart so hard to figure out?

“Then I’ll get going, teacher.”

“Sure. Go ahead.”

The heat was fading as the CSAT got closer. The road home was cool, and the house without air conditioning was good for studying. By evening, it was even cold.

Today I came home and studied, then, as always, tore open a cup of ramen and put water on the stove. Since I stopped going to the villa, cup ramen had been my staple.

While waiting for the water to boil, I stared at the lid and lost my appetite. I turned off the stove and put the cup ramen back on the shelf.

I’d been like this a lot lately. Everything felt like a chore. Eating proper meals, changing clothes, all of it. I forgot things I planned to do, and I often started a load of laundry and forgot about it. At night, I couldn’t sleep well.

Then, suddenly, fear would ambush me. Not about anything else. It was about Heesung being alone. If I could at least see his face at school, it would be different, but now I had no idea what he was doing. When I started imagining what he might be doing right now, alone, I got goosebumps.

At times like that, I felt the urge to barge into the villa, but I clenched my fists and held back. We were going to live apart starting next year. I couldn’t start acting like this now.

The only thing that didn’t feel like a chore was sitting still and working through problems.

So today, I skipped dinner again and just held onto my workbook. Except for getting up to turn on the fluorescent light around sunset, I stayed on the floor the whole time.

How many hours had passed?

A call came in. The vibration snapped me back to my senses.

“…You scared me.”

The windows were already pitch black. It had gotten chilly in the mornings and evenings, and the sound of crickets had died down. Tonight, everything was still. The buzzing vibration was annoying in that silence.

‘Probably Mom.’

I assumed it was her and ignored it. I didn’t want to talk to Mom anymore. After that terrible fight and hanging up, neither of us had reached out.

But the noise stopped, then started again. At this point, I figured maybe something urgent had happened.

I hesitated and picked up the phone.

The missed call was from the only person saved in my contacts.

I called back right away. Before the ring had even finished once, Heesung answered. He asked irritably.

– Why didn’t you pick up?

“What happened to you?” I asked urgently, jumping to my feet. I had forgotten that we were in a weird, tense place. All the effort I’d put into pushing away my worry about Heesung meant nothing. I was helpless.

But Heesung only cared about the answer to his own question.

– What were you doing that you didn’t answer?

“……”

– Did you meet someone?

Only then did I let out a sigh. I rubbed my dry eyes with my palm.

His calm voice was annoying, but this was better. I knew Heesung wouldn’t back down until he got the answer, so I made up a decent excuse.

“I was studying, and I wasn’t looking at my phone… I didn’t know. Who would I meet?”

– Really? You’re not studying now?

“I’ll study a bit more and sleep… What are you doing right now?” I asked, tense.

But Heesung suddenly ordered me.

– Come out.

“What?”

– Come out.

The call ended with that command.

I couldn’t believe it, so I checked the phone, but the phone Heesung had bought me was already back on the home screen. The top left read 11:48. I’d figured it was late at night, but it was almost midnight.

And Heesung had called me out at this hour.

“……”

Was this part of his strange behavior too?

Even so, I stood at the front door. Never mind the fact that I’d jumped up the moment I answered. I was already standing at the front door, as if about to run out.

One foot was already half in a shoe.

It was absurd. But calling me this late meant it wasn’t a small matter. What if he got hurt again? I held my phone and ran, feet pattering against the ground.

It was dark everywhere, but it was a road I’d walked so much that my body remembered it. When the asphalt ended and the sand began, I could even feel the familiar sensation of sand kicking up over the tops of my feet with every step.

But… maybe it was the dark. It felt especially eerie today. There was only so much I could rely on the moonlight, and the moon wasn’t that bright today. The light didn’t reach my feet. The temperature had also dropped sharply, since it was night.

Or maybe it was because I suddenly felt a sense of doubt about what I was doing. Everything suddenly felt hopeless.

My run gradually slowed. I was out of breath, and my mood sank fast.

Nothing was going the way I wanted. It felt like I was ruining everything I did.

Before I knew it, I was dragging my feet, lost in thought.

I’d come running in a panic at a single phone call from Heesung, and yet I’d been saying I wanted to get far away. I was sure that was the right answer, but could I really endure it? Could I help but worry about what Heesung would do next?

Would next year be different? I’d be an adult soon. Would something change?

…Even then, I’d probably still be the same me.

It was at that moment, when I felt like I’d been thrown alone into a vast open sea, that the ground below my feet lit up.

‘What?’

I raised my head. Fireworks were shooting up into the sky. Puff, bang. The popping sound was cheerful.

I let out a gasp.

A ball of light shot into the sky and scattered in every direction. Just as it split and seeped into the darkness, a new ball was decorating the sky.

Next to it, a beam of light cut through the dark. It rose into the black night sky and stretched out a long arm as if it would touch the moon. Beneath it, fireworks in Christmas tree colors burst open.

Then the light gathered at the center spread outward in a golden circle. Like a last gasp, the final sparks were the most intense and vivid.

I tilted my head back, not realizing my neck was aching. I stood with my mouth slightly open.

I couldn’t believe it. Fireworks, out of nowhere.

If not for the faint smoke left in the sky, I would have thought I was dreaming.

“This is all I can do since I’m alone.”

But as if to stop that illusion from settling, a firm hand lifted my arm and pressed a long stick into my palm. The end of the stick crackled and burned. Orange flame rose and lit up the area.

I stared down blankly at the fire consuming itself, then slowly raised my head.

Heesung’s face was dappled with firelight. It sparkled and glowed at the same time.

“Do you like it?”

“What… is all this?”

“You said you wanted to try it.”

Did I say that? I stood there blankly, and Heesung frowned.

“You said it while we were watching the movie. That it was pretty. That you wanted to try it too.”

At his added words, I finally remembered. The memory came back very slowly. It was something I had said and forgotten.

“Did you see how it reflected on the water?”

Heesung set fire to my unsettled heart.

“It was hard to get. There was nowhere around here that sold them.”

He muttered that it might be because the season had passed or because this was a small town, but he’d gone somewhere far to buy them.

“Do you like it?”

Heesung asked again.

I knew he wasn’t showing off. He never showed off. I already knew a lot about him by now.

I remembered that when we watched that movie together, he had no reaction to the fireworks. He even poured cold water on them, saying they were illegal.

“……I like it.”

I wished my voice would be carried away by the wind, and not reach his ears.

But he smiled brightly, as if he had known what I was going to say the moment I parted my lips.

It felt like even the night air had grown cooler.

📚 Also on NHV Novels

Could It Be That I’m Actually the Strongest Final Boss?

ComedyFantasyFemale Protagonist

Read Now →
Not interested