Part 20

The Happening At BiBokCheon - Alone with JaeShin

[After the previous scene, above:  Jaeshin dresses Yoonhee, and sits outside the room to  think. Sunjoon comes back and tries to walk in the room to  sleep, but Jaeshin stops him. It looks like Jaeshin is drunk and confused while Sunjoon is just sad and angry. Jaeshin doesn't want Sunjoon going in the room, and they start throwing punches. Yongha comes to try and  stop them, but they keep going at it, and they wake up Yonghee.  Yoonha and Yoonhee  try to break up the fight. They  stop, unable to explain why they were fighting. Sunjoon storms  off to sleep in the room, and Jaeshin similarly storms out, but out of  SKK. Nobody hears of Jaeshin until this next scene.]

[Next scene: Yoonhee has been bathing at BiBokCheon in the very late  hours of the night so that the other students don't see her but there are some lower-level students nearby who have followed her just to scare her, but she hears them coming. She scrambles to pick up her clothes and runs into the nearest storage warehouse, where everything is dark. Jaeshin, who was resting there (he was hurt from a wound while he was in his guise as the Hong Byeok Seo) sees her silhouette, with her hair in a mess and covered with straws. He thinks he is seeing a ghost, and faints  (I think also part of it was because he was severely  wounded). The lower level students who were near the  storage house hear Jaeshin's voice and flee, but then  wonder what Jaeshin and Yoonhee are doing together at the storage warehouse this late at night. And the rumor starts that the two of them had spent the night together...]

Yoonhee dresses herself completely and sees that Jaeshin  is unconscious. She shakes him, telling him he  should sleep at the room, but he doesn't wake up. She  checks if he is drunk, but she can't smell any alcohol.  She punches him lightly, and starts getting worried. She  starts hitting him harder and then finds that he is  bleeding from his side. Shocked, she stammers, "you're ...  you're not dead, right? open your eyes! Just a little bit,  please..."

Jaeshin opens his eyes slowly. "Is that .. you... shik..?"

"Yes! I am shik. I'm Daemul Yoonshik!" 

"Why are you..  here?"

Yoonhee starts crying. "Thank goodness..Thank god.." Her  mouth forms into a smile even as she is crying.

Jaeshin says, "Punk, you were beating me up so freely when  I was out, and now that I am awake, you're gonna cry?"

"Ah! since when were you awake?"

"Since you started giving me a beating. Anyone would wake  up to that."

Yoonhee gets up, and says that she will bring a doctor, but Jaeshin grabs her wrist, and tells her that she  can't tell anyone. She tries to leave, but Jaeshin yells,  "I told you you can't!" And with that shout, his pain  comes back and he puts his hand on the wound on his side.  Yoonhee cries and says that then she will just bring Yongha, and Jaeshin yells, "You can't tell Yongha! You can't tell Garang (Sunjoon)! You can't tell anybody, even if I die!"

Yoonhee cries, but realizes that if she can't tell anybody, she'll have to treat him herself.

"I'll be back with things to wipe your wound."

"Just go; pretend you didn't see me."

"If you don't want me to punch you again, then stop saying  things like that!" Yoonhee runs out the door, and Jaeshin  smiles weakly.

Yoonhee comes back with water and clean towels. When she comes  back, Jaeshin is sitting up, trying to stay conscious. He  smiles at her as she starts undoing his clothes. He says,

"Slow down. If you keep pushing against me like this, I might  actually do something to you."

"In your condition?"

"My side is hurt, but my "thing" is still fine."

"What would you have done if you hurt that great mouth of yours?"

"Are you going to keep talking back like that? Where's the crybaby that was just here just a minute ago?"

"And are you the man who was just struggling to stay alive? I should have beat you more when I had the chance."

Yoonhee wipes the blood off his body;  his chest, stomach, and arms are fine, but his side almost seems like the  organs will pop out of it. She wipes the wound carefully, and frowns, to which Jaeshin says,

"Sorry."

"What?"

"I know you can't look at wounds and blood very easily."

But as Jaeshin says this, he realizes that it isn't  because Yoonhee can't handle blood, it is because she is a  woman that she kept refusing to tend to his wound on his butt back in the beginning of the school term.

Yoonhee asks how he got so hurt, and he evades the subject  by asking her what was she doing her pretending to be a ghost, with her  hair all messed up like that. Jaeshin slowly takes his  hand to get straw out of her hair, and doesn't take his  hand out of her hair. So soft--this kid is such a woman. "Your hair  feels so much different than my hair," he says. Yoonhee  is busy tending to his wound, and doesn't notice the  change in his gaze. So she answers, "hair is different  from person to person, as personalities are."

Jaeshin  becomes really sensitive to her touch on his body, and  pulls her to him, catching her in a hug. This catches  Yoonhee by surprise, and she tries to push him away, but  he is holding her too firmly.

"What do you think you're doing! Let me go!"

"How are you so ...soft?"

"I.. I'm a man! Why are you doing this!"

"How are you so soft, even though you are a man?"

"Let me go!"

"You're so soft; why should I even care that you're a man?  It's fine if it feels this good to hold you."

Yoonhee struggles for a while, and Jaeshin finally lets  her go. Yoonhee backs away from him, and says, "This time  your joke went too far! If you held on any longer, I would  have hit where your wound was." Jaeshin smiles, "that's  why I let you go." He laughs.

The next day, Jaeshin has again disappeared without a  word.