Even If It's Not Love

Because of these secret spaces, they called five interior design companies. Each company was tasked with making two secret spaces, and only part of the house’s floor plan was disclosed. Even the companies that said it was difficult to proceed with this kind of work did it without complaining when they saw the amount of money offered by Woo-hyun.

After such a complicated process, it took six months for the basic structure of the house to be set, and another month for the detailed interior to be done.

Compared to the interior construction, the design was easily decided. Woo-hyun handed over most of the decision-making power to Yoo-hwa, except for the kitchen, which was a dining area, and his own space, the study. Since Yoo-hwa was also not very demanding, the house ended up being neatly decorated with timeless materials. One of the things that took the longest was the garden.

“We don’t need to plant anything. I don’t want it.”

Woo-hyun said in passing. Yoo-hwa quickly understood what he meant by that.

The garden was a place where life was born and existed, but also disappeared. Withering was going to be seen in some way, so if it was a burden to witness such a thing, it meant that there was no need to decorate it.

After thinking about it for a while, Yoo-hwa decided to decorate the garden. The area around the fence was decorated with evergreen trees in a way that was not excessive, and on the ground, artificial grass was laid for easy maintenance.

It didn’t have a gorgeous feeling because there were no flowers, but the greenness had more charm all year round the more one looked at it. Since they were evergreen trees, it didn’t seem like they changed at all, so it was fun to find the subtle differences.

While the evergreen trees were changing slightly, the daily life of Woo-hyun and Yoo-hwa also began to take place. The friction that arose from minor habit differences was adjusted through mutual yielding, and the meal times were generally consistent.

When resting, Woo-hyun would watch the news, and Yoo-hwa would rest her head on his legs and read a book. They learned that it was comforting to be in the same space even if each of them was taking a break. They made delicious meals and childishly decided who would do the dishes with rock-paper-scissors.

Then, after a few times, she realized that Woo-hyun was purposely losing to her. She realized that after doing only scissors.

When the weekend’s drowsy afternoon sunlight pushed deeply into the room, they lay in bed, rolled around, touched each other, and kissed. When the cool windy weather came, there were times when they kept the window open and stayed there quietly while embracing each other. Then, they would impulsively get dressed and go out on a drive, drink coffee in a scenic spot, and come back. Special days existed as usual.

Like twinkling lights in the night scenery.

As usual, as she waited for Woo-hyun to return, Yoo-hwa looked at the evergreen trees outside the window. Today, the evergreen leaves looked darker under the gloomy, grey sky.

“Relationship…”

She heard herself in a sigh. She didn’t think much of it even as she muttered, so she tapped the innocent wall with her toes.

She missed the enrollment period at the University of Broadcasting and Communications and decided to attend the following year, but there was still quite some time left. While looking around for a place to learn, she found a humanities lecture from a writer she used to like and applied for registration. Fortunately, it was close to home, and she only needed to go once or twice a month so there was no pressure.

She only heard the lecture three times over the course of three months, but she learned a lot. One of the things she learned was to pick a word and think about it.

“Although the best way to write is to read a lot, I have a special way. I think long and hard about a single word. So, to put it simply, write it down and think about all the things that are related to it. Then, try writing a novel, a poem, a sentence, or whatever. If you do that, even if you listen to one thing, a lot of thoughts will come to mind in an instant. That’s when you get a lot of ideas.”

“I don’t know how many of you are going to do this, but shall I give you some homework while we’re at it? Can you write down the things that come to mind when you hear the word ‘me’ for the next lecture? Of course, you don’t have to do it if you don’t want to. I’m not forcing you.”

Since then, a word has been given each time as a homework assignment. In the first lecture, it was ‘me’, in the second lecture, ‘you’, and in the third lecture, ‘relationship’.

Compared to ‘me’ and ‘you’, which were easy to write about, ‘relationship’ was more difficult.

“Relationship, relationship, relationship…”

She propped her chin on the windowsill and thought about all the relationships she had had.

She was once someone’s daughter. She was also the friend of someone who didn’t even know if she was alive or dead, and to the world, she was the daughter of a murderer. After that, she suffered as Kim Yi-woon’s older sister for a long time.

And now…

Her eyes widened as she realized that her vision had turned blurry. It seemed that at some point, she had brought her face to the window out of habit. The window clouded with her breath, as if it was foggy. Her head went blank because her vision was blurry. Yoo-hwa slowly wrote something down on the window with her fingernail, as if possessed.

Sin Woo-hyun’s

Kim Yoo-hwa

The area her breath created on the window was small, so she could only write that much. Yoo-hwa looked quietly at what she had written and gave a faint smile. As soon as she saw the name Sin Woo-hyun, her fiercely wavering mind instantly calmed down.