Chapter 56: Shattered

Suddenly, a rumbling thunderclap sounded, and the already heavy rain grew even louder.

Rain poured down as if a hole had been torn in the sky.

Swaaa.

The rain seemed to hammer straight into my chest. The damp air settled around us, heavy and still. If a mood could be a color, this would be a stifling, deep blue.

“Agh!”

Heesung grabbed my arm and dragged me inside. I had no time to tell him to let go. He didn’t release me until we reached the living room.

Then he took a few deep breaths, like he was trying to swallow his anger. He pushed his hair back from his forehead.

“If you’d told me the truth earlier, I would have let it slide.”

“….”

“I’d have decided it was something funny and moved on. Why can’t you take a chance when I give you one?”

Rain hammered the ground outside. Pitter-patter, patter, swish. Even through that chilling sound, Heesung’s voice reached me perfectly clear.

His tone was mocking in a way I’d never heard. His voice was savage, his breath rough. All of it.

‘How did he know. How the hell…’

My head was spinning.

Heesung knew everything.

At the same time, a question surfaced. Was this worth getting this angry over?

I’d only imagined him being disappointed and hurt. I never thought he’d be furious.

It threw me off. Is this really worth all this anger…?

“…I didn’t mean to lie. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier.”

I took a deep breath. This wasn’t something I could brush past. Still, I’d come to at least see his face before I left. Being cornered like this felt unfair.

In the end, I had to bring it up to get this over with. I rubbed my face and forced out the uncomfortable names.

“…But Yeon Hoyoung, Kim Youngseok, and Im Namwoo too… all of them… Is that normal? How am I supposed to stay close to you after seeing all that…”

“Why are you bringing other people into this?”

Heesung brushed off those names with infuriating indifference. Not a flicker of hesitation.

“What does that have to do with you?”

“….”

“I’ve only ever been good to you.”

Heesung didn’t think he’d done anything wrong. So he was asking what the problem was. It felt like I’d been slapped in the back of the head.

He was angry because he truly believed that. Not a shred of guilt. He had no idea why I was uneasy around him, why I kept my distance.

He watched me get tormented by Kim Youngseok with his own eyes, and he could still say that. How?

But if I said that now, he’d ask why I was complaining after he’d dealt with the bully. Even if I explained… he wouldn’t understand.

I’d been right. There was a massive wall between us. We were speaking in the same words, but it felt like one of us was speaking a foreign language.

A wall would probably understand me better than Yoon Heesung.

“Are you done with your pathetic excuses?”

“….”

There really was no getting through to him.

Maybe he figured listening to me was all he owed. Heesung knelt on one knee in front of me and lowered himself to my eye level. The cold look in his eyes made me lose all will to fight.

When common sense failed this badly, I didn’t know what to say. I hung my head.

“I know. What’s the big deal about applying to a different university? If you want to go, I should just let you. That’s all it would take, but I can’t do it.”

Heesung said that in a calm, measured voice. He sounded like he was dying of frustration.

“I want to know what goes on inside your head. I want to know everything, but there’s no way I can. And that… it drives me crazy… it makes me feel…”

He trailed off, like he couldn’t explain his own feelings. Then he suddenly asked.

“Do you know what that feels like? Have you ever felt it?”

“….”

“Why aren’t you answering. Can’t you hear me? Or is your throat blocked?”

When I stayed silent, Heesung reached out. He grabbed the collar of my shirt and yanked me up. I choked and coughed.

“Kkh, ah, no, that’s…”

Shocked by the sudden violence, I stammered. Heesung glared at me like he might kill me. I felt the blood drain from my face. My heart juddered like it had broken.

“Why do you get cocky when I’m nice to you? So annoying.”

“Your, your hand, ugh, let go… please…”

“But seeing your face like this is nice anyway… I really must like you, huh?”

Those words made my skin crawl.

It was true. We’d held hands. We’d kissed. But… not anymore.

I’d told Heesung that if he went any further, I’d die. He actually listened to that much. He hadn’t touched me since.

Things had been painfully awkward after that.

I stayed in my lane, and he stayed in his. But now this, and he’s saying…

‘Is he telling me he likes me?’

‘This guy was really out of his mind.’

Heesung let go of my collar. I coughed painfully, almost falling to the floor before managing to steady myself on my knees. I decided to just be honest.

“Hah, I… I wanted to go to a different university than you. Haa, that’s all. I wanted to be apart… hhup.”

I hoped he’d give up and let it go. Since it had come to this, I thought he’d drop it.

But I’d touched the wrong nerve again. Heesung spoke in a hollow voice.

“When you say you don’t like something, I don’t do it. When you tell me to stop, I stop. I do everything you ask. Why? Why do you want to be apart from me?”

“It’s not that I stopped liking you. I don’t hate you…”

That was the problem. If I truly hated him, I wouldn’t have agonized over this. I wouldn’t have deliberately applied to a school lower than my grades. I did it because I still liked him.

I was the one who was suffocating. But Heesung let out a big breath like he was at his limit. Then he muttered impatiently.

“Ugh, I really can’t talk to you. Why won’t you listen?”

“I listen to you. And what’s wrong with going to a different university? I told you, I wanted to go to a different one. I wanted to be apart from you. Because, because you scare me.”

I liked Heesung, but I was afraid of him too. Heesung didn’t treat people like people, and that scared me.

“You’re scared of me?”

“….”

I stopped moving. I even forgot to breathe.

“Really?”

Heesung closed the distance in one stride. He knelt in front of me, brought his eyes to mine, and spoke in a low voice.

“I’ve only ever been good to you, even while pretending to be something I’m not.”

“….”

“You’re scared of me.”

His voice sounded almost wounded.

“I wanted you to see me in a good light.”

That was absurd.

“You really know how to make a person feel like nothing.”

Heesung stood up.

“Yunwoo. But not yet. I still like you.”

Only then did I notice how quiet it had gotten. Once I closed my mouth, the silence pressed in, solemn and heavy. No one had come to the annex today, either.

It was just the two of us.

“I’m not going to be nice to you anymore.”

It felt like a sign, a foreshadowing of what was coming. I forced myself to swallow and lifted my head. My eyes were still wet with tears from being choked moments ago, and my face was flushed with heat.

“And you can’t leave me yet.”

I could feel Heesung looking down at me as I sobbed. His eyes were stubborn, relentless. Just like always.

Then he looked around, as if searching for something. He found what he wanted and picked it up. In the dim light, I couldn’t tell what it was.

I flinched and fell back, sure he was going to throw it at me.

Instead, Heesung walked over, knelt, and smashed it against the floor.

Crack!

Shards scattered in every direction.

The sound of something hard breaking wasn’t new to me. Pieces shattered beyond recognition rained down. I slowly lowered my eyes.

I heard a faint squeak. What Heesung held in his hand was the neck of a bottle. He’d broken a piece of pottery in the villa.

But he didn’t discard the sharp edge. He gripped it tight in his fist. The veins stood out on the back of his hand.

“….”

I knew what he was going to do. It was instinct.

‘He’s going to cut me with that. He’s going to make me like Im Namwoo, Yeon Hoyoung, Kim Youngseok.’

The people Heesung had beaten to a pulp flashed through my mind. ‘Should I run? No.’ He’d catch me in a second.

First, I had to stop him from doing anything. I grabbed his wrist.

“I, I was wrong! Heesung, don’t. Okay?”

“What do you think I’m going to do that you’re telling me not to?”

Heesung frowned. Unlike his calm face, I was panting like I’d sprinted. My vision wavered.

“Yoon Heesung. Put that down. I was wrong. I’m sorry. I, I won’t go to university. It’s all my fault.”

“See? People can never know what’s inside someone else, right?”

Heesung started saying something out of nowhere.

“People go on about how I don’t understand, how I need to learn. But looking at this, you and I aren’t so different.”

“I, I was wrong. I just won’t go to university, all right? Huh? Put that down and talk to me, please…”

“And that’s why you’re still spouting nonsense about not going to university.”

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