Lie Again! Chapter 105

<Chapter 105. In the Middle of Summer (4)>

 

It was late at night when, after gathering in the living room to wait for the two of them, they received a text saying Emily had been found and promptly fell into a dead sleep. Jin had certainly fallen asleep while barely finding a spot to lie down, yet now a pillow was tucked under the back of her neck and a thin blanket covered her body.

 

“Evan, did you do this? I’m fine, so cover the others. They look cold.”

 

Jin spoke as she stared blankly at Joey, who was sleeping curled up like a shrimp at her feet.

 

“They won’t die from a little cold.” 

 

The heartless words fell flat. Evan remained focused on her left hand, not even glancing toward Joey.

 

A ticklish, tingling sensation woke Jin once more just as she was about to drift back into a nap. This time, it wasn’t her palm, but deep in the fleshy mound connecting her palm to her ring finger.

 

“It’s ticklish.”

 

Her sleepy eyes quietly followed the tip of the pen as it moved rhythmically over her hand.

 

“Is it?”

 

Evan gave a casual reply and continued what he was doing.

 

The black ballpoint pen drew circular lines, turning her fair hand over like a pancake. Perhaps it wasn’t drawing well, as the tip moved back and forth over the same spot several times.

 

It was her own hand anyway, so she wondered why he was being so secretive. Whenever she craned her neck to see what he was doing, he blocked her view with his hand. Eventually, Jin left her hand to him and watched the sky as it began to brighten. The bluish air was gradually bleeding into white.

 

After she had yawned a few times, Evan finally pressed the pen down one last time and released her hand.

 

“Why are you yawning so much?”

 

“Ah, because I was waiting for Emily and Ruth yesterday…”

 

Jin stopped mid-sentence while opening her palm and let out a chuckle.

 

“Are you an elementary schooler?”

 

Evan shrugged at Jin’s teasing.

 

EVAN.

 

Jin scanned Evan’s name written in large letters across her palm with smiling eyes. 

 

The traces of overlapping lines from where it hadn’t drawn well at first, and the name written a bit more neatly than his usual scribbled handwriting. 

 

Looking at it quietly, Jin discovered a black line drawn inside her ring finger and tilted her hand back and forth in the dawn light.

 

The line he had been so engrossed in drawing was a ring. A black ink ring consisting of a single, simple line.

 

“You should have at least set a gemstone in it.”

 

“Diamonds were a bit expensive.”

 

Evan, who had been staring at Jin’s hand with his face buried in his arm resting on the sofa cushion, played along with the joke. Jin laughed softly and rolled over from her lying position to face him.

 

The distance between their two faces narrowed in an instant. 

 

“Give it here.”

 

Jin snatched the pen out of Evan’s hand and pulled his left hand toward her.

 

He surrendered his hand obediently and watched what Jin was doing. Because his face was buried in his forearm, all he could see from his perspective was the tip of the pen moving busily.

 

A sharp yet ticklish sensation brushed across his palm. 

 

A circle, a straight line. Then a circle and a straight line in the exact same place again. 

 

Evan calmly followed the path the pen was drawing, but he lost track at the next intersection. 

 

It looked a bit like the alphabet letter E, or perhaps a drawing made entirely of straight lines. After pondering for a moment, he gave up on tracing the incomprehensible letters and lifted his eyes. 

 

The white face looking down at his palm was clean. Between her eyes, which were more swollen than usual from a lack of sleep, her focused pupils were clear. 

 

She was cute. Following her slightly moving head, the hair tie that had been precariously holding her hair back wobbled gently before finally slipping off helplessly. The hair that spilled down by her ear hid the girl’s face.

 

“Jin, now that I look at you, you look like the Doughboy.”

 

Evan chuckled as he reached out with his right hand to tuck her hair behind her ear. Jin took out her phone to search for the Doughboy, and her eyes immediately turned into triangles as she glared at him.

 

“You’re…”

 

“Handsome even in the morning?”

 

“No. You look like that. That one. You’re both green.”

 

At a loss for words, Jin pointed randomly at the first thing that caught her eye. Her finger pointed to a green cat plushie sitting quietly on the living room table. It was the prize the two of them had won from the balloon dart game the previous evening.

 

Evan let out a hollow laugh at the sight of the cat that looked like a squished potato.

 

“I think we need to get your vision checked.”

 

“Just admit it, Evan. You look exactly like it.”

 

Oh my, Evan! Why are you up on the table? Oh, wait, it was a doll after all? As Jin made a spiteful fuss, Evan’s face turned incredulous. He had made one comment about her looking like a steamed bun and received ten words in return.

 

“You weren’t this kind of person when I first met you.”

 

“So? Do you hate it?”

 

“That’s why I like it.”

 

The moment he answered, Jin stopped her moving pen. Evan pulled his hand back to check what Jin had drawn and burst into a chuckle.

 

“Is it a flower ring?”

 

He rotated his hand, inspecting the small flowers drawn in overlapping layers around his ring finger.

 

“I was generous and set them all with diamonds. If you had said you hated it, I was going to just make it out of copper.”

 

“How kind. It’ll be worth quite a bit if I sell it.”

 

“I’m sorry, but you can’t give this to anyone else for the rest of your life.”

 

“I like the sound of that.”

 

Jin capped the pen and rolled onto her side.

 

The white light of dawn poured over Jin’s face as she blinked her still-sleepy eyes. Evan’s eyes followed the peach-fuzz glowing softly under the daybreak.

 

When the girl covered her mouth and gave a small yawn, moisture gathered in her eyes. As he stared at her eyes, which looked like black jewels scattering light here and there, the girl noticed his blatant stare and moved her lips to ask.

 

What?

 

Evan stared at the movement of her red lips before silently shifting his gaze to his hand. Then, he followed the foreign characters written intricately in the center of his palm and read them aloud.

 

“Lee Jin.”

 

“What? How did you read that?”

 

“I was debating between ‘Jin’ or ‘Lee Jin,’ and I guess I was right.”

 

Lee Jin. 

 

Her name, written in unfamiliar characters. Black hair, black pupils, soft features. All over again, the fact that this girl in front of him had come from a place as distant as these characters hit close to home. And that in a little while, she would leave again for the place she came from. 

 

“…”

 

Evan, who had been staring quietly at the characters engraved on his hand, clenched his left hand tight. Jin let out a sigh that sounded like a laugh as she gazed at what he had hidden inside his fist. Then, her gaze collided with his eyes, which looked like a transparent pond or a lush green forest.

 

Sometimes, another person’s thoughts can be grasped as clearly as if they were one’s own. Even without trying to understand their intentions or reading their mood. Like water flowing from high to low, like the natural progression of day becoming night and night becoming day again—it happens quite naturally, without a moment to be surprised.

 

For instance, it was like that between her and Minchae in the past, or the way her mother and father looked while they worked together. And it was like that now.

 

Jin naturally understood why Evan had woken up at dawn to hold her hand while she was deep in sleep, and why he had painstakingly engraved her name with something like a ballpoint pen that would disappear after a few rubs. Because it was the same heart she had prayed with while engraving her own name on his hand.

 

To quiet the sudden surge of anxiety, to become the courage to endure the chaotic times, and for each other’s names to become a mark that wouldn’t be erased for a long time, continuously reminding him of her.

 

“Hand.”

 

“…Do you think I’m Freckle?”

 

Jin suddenly held out her palm. It was her left hand with Evan’s name written on it. Though Evan grumbled in dissatisfaction at her offering her hand as if training a dog, he still placed his left hand on top of hers.

 

“Freckle doesn’t give his paw even when asked.”

 

He’s haughty, unlike someone I know.

 

Jin giggled and moved her fingers to weave them between his large hand.

 

“Do you want to come up? Let’s sleep a little more until the others wake up.”

 

His large frame rose from the floor and he lay down length-wise between Jin and the back of the sofa. Jin shared half of her pillow and blanket, rolling the other way to tuck herself into the boy’s arms.

 

The familiar scent of soap rose from his T-shirt. Jin took a deep breath, hidden from Evan. The calm air of dawn and the warmth rising from his warm skin mixed together to fill her nasal cavity. The strength gradually left her body.

 

Jin listened to the low, steady sound of breathing above her head and slowly fell asleep.

 

The boy, holding the girl who had fallen asleep so quickly, buried his face in her black hair and moved his lips as if to say something. They were words he couldn’t say while she was awake because they were far too ticklish.

 

One month later, Jin left Florida.