Chapter 24.2

Chapter 24.2

When he handed the driver a ten-thousand-won bill given to him by Miran, the driver, who had been frowning, looked up at André’s face and hesitated. Clearly flustered, the driver pondered for a moment before gesturing for him to just go ahead. André gave a slight nod in acknowledgment.

[Thank you.]

“Ah, yes. Thank you, thank you. Welcome to Korea. Wow, he really is big. Are foreigners this big?”

Leaving the bus driver, who gave him a thumbs-up, behind, André took a seat in a nearby empty spot. He looked out the window with an indifferent expression. As the twilight fully lifted, the street began to buzz with the early morning’s busy and lively atmosphere.

His destination was a bar in Itaewon called Cactus. He planned to inquire about any lost items and then decide on his next move.

If this were New York, his bag would likely have been ransacked, with his wallet and passport long gone, and discarded somewhere in a slum. He wouldn’t have even bothered to look for it. But this was Korea.

Without the presence of drugs and firearms, Korea’s safety was almost like an amusement park compared to New York. Aside from the occasional casual derogatory terms like “foreigner” or “Yankee,” assuming foreigners couldn’t speak Korean, the civic consciousness here was relatively high compared to other developing countries.

After living in a country where you could leave your bag unattended in a café without anyone touching it for three years, he had come to expect a modicum of conscience even from petty thieves.

As André slowly read the route map on the wall, his thoughts drifted far away, eventually flowing back into the small attic room.

The impulsive kiss Miran had given him just before falling asleep clung to his consciousness like a leech. The kiss she gave him, looking up with dazed eyes and reaching out as if asking to be held, was not the kind of kiss shared between one-night stands.

It was a much more intimate and personal kiss than one driven by mere desire, and he was so taken aback that he froze, unsure of how to react.

After doing such a thing, she had the nerve to smile innocently while lying beneath a man she had just met, and then she even drifted off to sleep. It was a situation that made him sigh involuntarily.

By the time his arm, which had remained still to avoid waking the sleeping woman, began to cramp, her arm slipped off his neck. In the midst of this, his body, pressed against her soft form, responded again. Feeling a sense of self-reproach, André abruptly stood up and stepped away from the bed.

Someone needed to teach her that such intimate kisses shouldn’t be given to just anyone, especially before she met a bad man who would take full advantage of her.

‘Of course, even if that happens, it’s none of my business.’

André went to the bathroom, wet a towel, and wiped his traces off her body. Then, he took a long cardigan from the clothes hanging on the rack and loosely draped it over her arms. Fortunately, she was so deeply asleep that she wouldn’t have noticed even if he had carried her out.

After pulling the crumpled floral quilt up to her neck, he looked down at Miran with a deeply contemplative gaze before turning away coldly.

He quickly washed up in the bathroom, put his shirt back on, and strapped on the wristwatch he had left on the dresser. It was already 2 a.m. Normally, he would have taken a taxi, but all he had was the 30,000 won Miran had given him.

Deciding to catch a bit of sleep until the first bus, he dragged his duffel bag to the door and leaned against it. He was startled awake by the vibrating alarm on his wristwatch.

It felt like only five minutes had passed, but the watch already showed 4:30 a.m. Stretching his stiff neck and blinking his dry eyes, he rubbed his face and sprang up briskly.

Slipping the duffel bag he had been using as a pillow over his shoulder, André approached the bed where Miran lay purely on impulse before leaving the house.