Idol of the Heavenly One - Chapter 69.1
After his confession ended, the air between us felt thick and uncomfortable, like a summer room gone damp after rain had fallen. Even breathing felt heavy. I was sure both of us felt that way. We simply sat side by side on the old plastic chairs in front of the stationery store, watching the schoolyard tinted by the colors of sunset, letting time pass quietly. I didn’t need to check a clock to know that the sun was slowly sinking, and that somewhere in the schoolyard, the laughter of children who hadn’t gone home yet was scattering away with the wind.
In the end, I was the one who broke the silence first.
“Did you go to school here?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s kind of amazing.”
It wasn’t amazing, really. Of course, he would have met me if he went to this school. But I had nothing else to say, so I just added that, like a bit of sweetness left in my mouth.
After a brief pause, Baek Jae-heon asked,
“Did you live nearby?”
I shook my head.
“No, in the next neighborhood. I worked here.”
“Here? But you weren’t a teacher.”
“Right. I worked in the administration office.”
“Oh, that makes sense.”
He said he had checked to see if I was a teacher here but couldn’t find me, and his expression looked as though a long-held question had finally been answered. The subtle relief at the corner of his lips stirred something in my chest again. Just how much had this kid liked me, to cling to the memory of my existence that desperately?
Then suddenly, a chill crept down my back.
“Wait a second. I was in my late thirties back then, right? And he… how old was he?”
Even giving it generously, there must have been at least a twenty-year age gap. And he said he liked me? When that fact sank in, I broke out in goosebumps. The thought that I had already kissed and hugged this boy, who had been that far younger, filled me with something closer to fear than guilt. I glanced at him, bewildered.
“You…”
“Yeah?”
“Your… taste…”
“My taste?”
“You like older men… is that it?”
The words left my mouth and my face immediately burned. It felt like guilt itself was tightening around my throat. Sure, now we looked like we were the same age, so I had thought it was fine. But emotionally, our roots were different. He had said he had been looking for me since back then.
Baek Jae-heon shook his head shortly and firmly.
“No.”
“Right…?”
“Yeah.”
But his expression looked irritated, as if he had swallowed something wrong. As though wondering what I took him for. Then he took a breath and continued in a low voice.
“At first… it was really just admiration and gratitude.”
“…”
“Then longing settled in, and I even started to resent you.”
“…”
“But when I saw you again, along with all those feelings, something else grew too.”
“…”
“Anyway, I’m not into older men, so please relax your face.”
A sigh escaped me. If nothing else, that was a relief. At least his type wasn’t “older men.”
Trying to steer the conversation elsewhere, I asked another question.
“You said this is your fourth life. How old were you when each one ended?”
It felt too cruel to use the word “died,” so I phrased it differently. Baek Jae-heon seemed to understand right away and calmly answered.
“The first and second lives ended when I was twenty-one.”
“Both ended early.”
“The third one ended at eight.”
“Eight?!”
The words burst out of me, and my heart dropped.
“Yeah. I was running away with my mom… and that man, when he lost control, swung a knife and… it happened by accident.”
“What? He stabbed you?”
“I’m not defending him, but it really was an accident. That man didn’t have the guts to actually kill anyone.”
“…”
Curses rose to the tip of my tongue, but for some reason, they wouldn’t come out. Maybe it was the idol-like self-restraint drilled into me over the years. Instead, a deep, heavy sigh escaped. Accident or not, if he hadn’t swung that knife, there wouldn’t have been any accident at all.
I clenched my teeth and said,
“He’s not even a real father. That man.”
He gave a short nod.
“Yeah.”
After taking a breath, I asked again.
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