Chapter 17: The Lips She Couldn’t Stop Thinking About

“Let’s kiss.”

At Lee Young’s words, Sa Hae thought there was no doubt the effects of the Jade Rabbit’s medicine had not completely worn off yet.

The moment a veil descended over Lee Young’s large eyes and her unusually pink lips parted slightly, Sa Hae felt an unbearable impulse.

If he said this was the first time he had ever felt such an impulse, no one would believe him.
But it truly was the first time.

Even after indulging in all the drinking, women, gambling, and other pleasures that drove humans mad, Sa Hae had never once felt that kind of desire toward either a human or a yokai.

“……”

Then why was he reacting to this young human’s lips? Why couldn’t he tear his eyes away from them?

It had been a joke.

It had clearly been a joke, but in an instant, it had stopped being one. That fact tormented Sa Hae.

Yokai weren’t supposed to know anything about worldly troubles or inner turmoil, yet Lee Young, standing before him now, was turmoil itself.

Woof!

Then, as though shattering Sa Hae’s troubled thoughts, Tori’s bark rang through the room. Sa Hae immediately pulled the antidote he had stolen from the Jade Rabbit out of his pocket and popped it into Lee Young’s mouth.

“Ugh.”

“Chew it well and swallow.”

Sa Hae spoke to Lee Young as though his moment of turmoil had never happened. Lee Young stared at him with an expression that seemed ready to die of embarrassment, but soon frowned as a bitter taste spread throughout her mouth.

“This is from that rabbit bastard, isn’t it?”

“I thought you called him Teacher Jade Rabbit.”

“What teacher!”

Lee Young spoke as though she never wanted to think about the Jade Rabbit again, then gulped down the pill.

“What is this?”

“Something good for you.”

Was he really supposed to call this something good?

The Jade Rabbit had said it was an antidote, but Sa Hae wondered whether it really counted as something good.

Once Lee Young took it, she would no longer be looking at his lips. And, of course, Sa Hae would no longer be looking at hers, either.

“Ugh, this tastes really weird.”

Sa Hae merely handed her a glass of water in response to her complaining voice.

“Good girl.”

“What is this, seriously?”

“A medicine that’s supposed to make you healthier.”

The Jade Rabbit had given it to him after Sa Hae had made what was only half a threat: if the rabbit gave him another useless medicine, he would cook him into rabbit soup and feed it to Lee Young to restore her health.

Sa Hae was perfectly capable of doing it. And the Jade Rabbit knew better than to play another trick on him.

“A medicine that makes me healthier?”

“Yeah.”

Sa Hae felt the faintly sweet scent lingering around Lee Young gradually fading.

The medicine was remarkably fast-acting. So fast that, strangely enough, he almost felt disappointed.

“Once you take that, you’ll come to your senses.”

Sa Hae deliberately emphasized the words come to your senses.

He was saying it to Lee Young, but at the same time, he was saying it to himself.

If Tori hadn’t barked, Sa Hae probably would have kissed Lee Young again.

Even knowing that she was merely saying such things because she wasn’t in her right mind from the medicine.

“I’m seriously going to sue that Jade Rabbit.”

After swallowing the medicine, Lee Young returned to her usual self, as though she had never been the one blushing furiously and asking Sa Hae to kiss her.

The atmosphere quickly returned to normal, and Sa Hae smiled with an oddly bitter aftertaste lingering in his mouth.

“Yeah. That bastard deserves to get sued.”

“You went to see the Jade Rabbit again?”

“Yeah. Just for a little while.”

“You talk about going to Chiaksan like you’re popping over to the convenience store.”

At Lee Young’s words, Sa Hae merely shrugged and drank some cold water.

He needed the freezing water to clear his head.

The scent was definitely gone.

Lee Young might not have been able to tell, but Sa Hae could.

It had disappeared completely, yet for some reason, the stiff muscles at the back of his neck refused to relax.

“Go inside and get some rest.”

“What about you?”

“I’m going to rest, too.”

At Sa Hae’s words, Lee Young opened her mouth as though she wanted to say something, then simply nodded.

There was a strange feeling that the atmosphere between them was floating somewhere in midair, unable to settle anywhere.

But neither of them spoke about it first.

The moment Lee Young entered her room with Tori, she let out a huge sigh as soon as the door closed behind her.

When Sa Hae had put the medicine into her mouth, it had not been the bitterness of the pill that had made her tremble so much.

It had been the warmth of Sa Hae’s fingertip brushing against the corner of her lips.

Sa Hae had looked completely unmoved when she asked him to kiss her.

But Lee Young hadn’t been.

Even after taking the medicine, her heart was still pounding.

“Do I have some kind of heart condition?”

Of course not.

Lee Young knew better than anyone that the reason her heart was pounding had nothing to do with heart disease.

A sudden heart condition wouldn’t make Sa Hae’s lips, which she had never paid attention to before, suddenly become impossible to ignore.

“…”

So, in simple terms, she had just been rejected by her grandmother’s yokai friend.

He had seduced her with the most suggestive voice in the world when he had asked, Want to?

But the moment she genuinely said yes and went along with it, that yokai who supposedly knew every pleasure under the sun had panicked and backed away.

“Am I really that unattractive?”

Yes, she knew.

She knew Sa Hae hadn’t rejected her simply because she wasn’t his type.

Even if he was a yokai, he still had a conscience. Kissing his friend’s granddaughter would probably have felt wrong.

The kiss in the bathtub had happened only because of that damn Jade Rabbit. It had been an unavoidable situation caused by the medicine.

“…”

Thinking that, Lee Young pouted and lay down on the bed.

Even when Tori whined beside her and licked her hand, there was only one thing filling Lee Young’s mind.

Sa Hae’s lips.

She lifted a hand and touched her own lips, remembering the warmth of Sa Hae’s lips against them and the warmth that had lingered at her fingertips.

Her cheeks flushed red.

Meanwhile, Sa Hae was in the bathroom.

He stood beneath the cold shower, quite literally trying to cool himself down.

Unless he had gone completely insane, he couldn’t understand why the image of Lee Young repeatedly asking him to kiss her kept drifting through his mind.

“Did that bastard give me something weird again?”

As the cold water poured over him, Sa Hae wondered whether what the Jade Rabbit had given him was truly an antidote, or perhaps some other kind of love potion.

His eyes gleamed dangerously.

Because otherwise, this made no sense.

Lee Young seemed completely fine now.

So why…?

“I’ve really lost it.”

Sa Hae lowered his head, muttering the words under his breath, then raised it again and tried to focus on the freezing water pouring over him.

But neither the cold water cascading over his head nor the restless heat coursing through him could completely occupy his thoughts.

His attention remained somewhere beyond the bathroom door.

Beyond his bedroom.

Past the empty hallway and the stairs leading up to the second floor.

Past the second-floor hallway.

Beyond a white door.

On the other side of it was the person who had stolen every last bit of Sa Hae’s attention.

The sound was faint now, but if he concentrated, he could even hear her breathing.

Lee Young was lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling, lamenting her situation to the three-legged dog yokai beside her.

Sa Hae was certain the Jade Rabbit had somehow slipped some strange medicine into him without his realizing it.

There was no other explanation.

Thus passed a troubled night for both a human and a yokai.

****

After that, Sa Hae and Lee Young’s days passed as they always had.

At least, that was how it looked from the outside.

They were ordinary days. As ordinary as they could be.

But whenever Lee Young happened to sit across from Sa Hae, she sometimes found herself staring at his lips without even realizing it, as though hypnotized.

“Tori…”

Woof!

“Do you know something?”

Sitting at the counter of the bookstore, Lee Young stroked Tori’s fur as the dog sat comfortably on her lap, speaking as though she were under some kind of spell.

Her languid, dreamy voice really did make her sound bewitched.

“Uncle is… handsome, isn’t he?”

The moment Tori, who had been giving a few small barks as though answering her, fell silent, it certainly couldn’t have been a coincidence.

But Lee Young, unaware of this, continued rambling.

“I didn’t realize it before, but he really is handsome…”

Lee Young thought back to Sa Hae driving her to the bookstore that morning.

With his hands on the steering wheel and his eyes fixed ahead, Sa Hae’s face possessed more than merely neat, handsome features. There was something magnetic about him that drew the eye.

His long, elegant eyes. His straight nose. Even his red lips.

There wasn’t a single feature that failed to catch her attention.

“He’s a real heartthrob. Handsome, and pretty-looking, too…”

Even Lee Young thought it was a little ridiculous that she was saying such things aloud.

But this was simply an objective observation.

Anyone would admire a beautiful face when they saw one. She was no exception. It was only natural to have thoughts like that when faced with someone so handsome.

Of course, when Lee Young was muttering all this, Tori’s ordinarily adorable face seemed to grow just the slightest bit cold.

But that was surely nothing more than Lee Young’s imagination.

Probably.

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