28. I wish our hearts would touch
I only left the bathroom after washing my hands until I was satisfied.
The sunlight coming through the window is faint. The sun on an autumn day had become noticeably shorter than yesterday, already tilting halfway.
But that didn't mean the end of today. Today wasn't over yet, and I wanted to see today's Arwin.
Even if it meant seeing him simply through a physical relationship.
Arwin lying next to me didn't say anything while meeting my eyes. He only breathed dry breaths.
Perhaps he was exhausted early in the continuous acts of the past hours.
A calm silence lingered between us, but I didn't feel a sense of duty to bring up any words. Because silence also felt like a language.
Arwin's breathing exhaled in the silence sounded like a beautiful melody, and his touch stroking my body was sketching a performance more magnificent than any musician.
Everything was harmoniously magnificent to an astounding degree, so it was rather unnatural to spit out language with sound.
"I postponed the engagement."
However, if Arwin wanted to break the silence, it couldn't be helped. He sketched language with an ecstatic voice, and that was a language much more magnificent than silence.
"Wow."
Although I already knew that fact because I eavesdropped with Dalton, I pretended to be surprised clumsily. Wouldn't it be awkward?
"Are you surprised?"
Arwin seemed to accept my exclamation at face value. My exclamation must not have been awkward. That was a relief.
"Yes, because I never imagined you would postpone the engagement so immediately."
"All things are hard to predict."
"Now. Being face to face with you at this late hour.... I expected it even less."
"Of course, me too."
Did you miss me?
I wanted to ask that, but instead of asking, I peered intently into his eyes. What lingered in Arwin's black eyes was indifference and a little languor.
Even if I ask such a question to him who has indifferent eyes, the returning answer would be obvious. Roughly 'Well' or 'I don't know well'.
There was no heat source in Arwin's tight black eyes.
Will the day come when a heat source forms in his eyes? I imagined Arwin's eyes filled with heat.
Strangely, it wasn't easy to imagine him wishing for something desperately. No matter how hard I tried, what lingered in my head was only Arwin's indifferent eyes.
What kind of world are Arwin's indifferent eyes looking at? I was curious about the world he would be looking at.
"Rosie asked. If I liked you."
Rosie, although it was an unfamiliar name, I could know at once who it referred to. It must be the name of the Princess beautiful like a sugar doll.
I also knew the content of the conversation he shared with her early on, but I pretended not to know. Rather, I asked him showing curiosity.
So that I can share a little more conversation-like conversation with Arwin.
"So what did you answer?"
His answer was probably 'I don't know well', right?
"I said I didn't know well. Because I can't gauge well what kind of heart a liking heart is."
I murmured the meaning of the word 'like' I defined, which I had thought of early on, to him.
"That is becoming desperate."
Arwin asked back.
"Becoming desperate?"
"Yes. The more you like someone, wishing for that person's gaze to touch you, wishing for their touch to reach you, and wishing for even their heart to reach you completely. Sometimes desperately. Sometimes too earnestly."
Perhaps I might have achieved the concept of liking to some extent. Because I could touch him if I reached out, and whatever world he is seeing, the image formed in his eyes right now was me.
A wish arose to touch Arwin. Although he touched my fingertips countless times last night, that didn't mean my desire was fully satisfied.
I reached out and swept back the hair flowing down Arwin's cheek. He entrusted his face to me completely without any resistance, rather as if accustomed to it.
"You said you liked me."
"That's right."
"Then do you wish for my gaze and touch to reach you, and furthermore, wish for even my heart to reach you?"
If I say yes, will you allow me your heart?
How will Arwin with a broken heart accept someone's confession?
Because his emotions were dull and dull again, he might treat the words 'I like you' like 'Hello'. As if hearing everyday language. As if not feeling the desperation contained in the words 'I like you' at all.
Thinking like that made me sorrowful. It was sadness about my sincerity not reaching the other person.
"I wish our hearts would touch."
Although I felt sorrowful, I answered honestly.
Even if my sincerity doesn't reach him. Even so, if I can't answer honestly today, it was clear I would regret it later.
Sixty days. Thinking of the short grace period remaining for me, I never wanted to create something to regret the next day. No, I shouldn't create it.
"I don't know that well either."
Arwin seemed frustrated because he couldn't understand the meaning of hearts touching. His straight eyebrows distorted, and he frowned slightly.
Arwin's distorted face was a rare thing to see, but there was no awkwardness. Because he was a man beautiful even with a frowning face. It must be a truly correct appearance.
"You don't have to know."
Because such things aren't things you can do as you please just because you know.
Hearts touching each other wasn't something easily achieved just by deciding to do so. It's just something that happens like a miracle.
Arwin approached soundlessly and hugged me. It was an expression of intention to stop the complicated conversation there.
Not long after, he made even breathing sounds. Did he fall asleep?
Although there were many things I wanted to ask Arwin, and many things I wanted to do with him, I left him asleep.
There are three blood vessels in the heart.
Each lives and breathes, pumping out hot blood. The blood pumped through the blood vessels is delivered evenly throughout the body.
I was born without one of them.
Although rare, it was like a congenital defect only a few are born with. Not just a defect, but a fatal defect.
Was it around six years old when I knew the fact that my heart was different from others? It must be around then.
I couldn't run well since childhood, and sometimes couldn't even breathe properly.
My parents, busy making a living and indifferent to their child, visited a doctor for the first time only when I gasped for breath almost dying. In other words, that was when I was six.
The events of that time were a part I remembered distinctly, rarely among the blurred past memories.
Old memories tend to crumble, but I remembered the view of that day, the air hovering around me, and the smell seeping into my nose tip accurately.
The doctor's house smelling of medicine enough to sting the nose, the wind felt colder than usual, and even the doctor's eyes looking down at me without emotion.
I also remembered clearly what that doctor said back then.
'There are three blood vessels connecting the heart and the body, but you were born without one. Living with two blood vessels is close to a miracle, but even that isn't intact. There is a worm gnawing at the heart near your heart. It's called a Kissing Bug, and it's a quite terrible worm. It doesn't die naturally, cannot be killed arbitrarily, and it feeds on your blood vessels. That guy is hiding in your blood vessel, gnawing at the remaining blood vessels. The guy is looking forward to the day he presses his lips against your heart after eating up both blood vessels. A worm living solely to kiss the heart, isn't it terribly romantic?'
'If that worm kisses my heart, what happens to me then?'
'Then you die. Because the blood pumping out from the heart is no longer delivered to the whole body. Since you lost all delivery passages called blood vessels.'
The doctor spat out the word dying without emotion. As if he didn't know the ominous resonance that word possessed at all.
Maybe he became dull to death because he witnessed many people's deaths.
That day, it was the same for me acting without emotion.
Even after hearing about the serious defect existing in me, I didn't cry. Because six-year-old me couldn't properly perceive the concept of dying.
Just, I only thought, why can't I run like other children? In my six-year-old world, not being able to run to my heart's content was the saddest thing.
Only when my eyes seeing the world broadened could I recognize the energy of death. However, I still thought lightly of it.
Because the fact that I would die someday was too vague.
People tend to think vaguely about anything unless it is an immediate matter. Even if it is something one shouldn't think vaguely about.
It was three months ago that dying really approached realistically.
There was a day when I couldn't breathe enough that it wouldn't be strange if I died soon. My airway became thin apart from my will, and then my breathing sound also became thinner and thinner.
The brain constantly demanded new oxygen, but the airway refused it. No, it wasn't that the airway refused, but saying the heart couldn't function properly was a more appropriate expression.
At that moment, what I felt was 'death'.
It seemed as if someone taught me, who thought of death vaguely in the past, this is what death is. In a quite extreme way.
Fortunately, I didn't die then. As time passed, my breathing found its usual trajectory.
As soon as my breathing found stability, I visited a doctor after a long time. The doctor who examined me recited my symptoms briefly and simply.
The worm living in the heart ate almost all of one of the remaining two blood vessels. The guy will damage all my remaining blood vessels. And when all remaining blood vessels are gnawed away, I will die.
Since the speed at which the guy gnaws the blood vessels is so fast, all my blood vessels will be gnawed away within three months at the latest. Therefore, I die in three months.
The doctor practically sentenced me to death.
As concreteness was added to the vague period, only then did I feel fear of death.
Dying meant disappearing from this world forever. Dying without achievements for someone to honor, without even properly spending the money I earned, and without even loving someone passionately.
It was futile and futile again. What did I live for all this time, and what should I live for during the remaining period?
The one who caught my eye then was Arwin. Arwin living in the world with indifferent eyes, looking more aloof from death than anyone.
I remembered the sound of my heartbeat beating fast whenever I saw him. Hearing the heartbeat beating passionately when I am about to die soon was a very good thing. Because it made me feel the fact that I was still alive.
How passionately can I love him while I am alive? Can I love him enough to throw away all of myself?
I loved Arwin. I loved him to the extent I couldn't gauge how much more I would come to love him.
I didn't regret loving him. That was my sincerity that wouldn't change in the past, now, and in the future.
"I wonder when you will know this heart of mine."
Arwin, whom I love with all my heart, was still asleep. Looking at the sleeping Arwin, I fell asleep without realizing it.
As soon as I fell asleep, I dreamed. It was a dream where the worm gnawing my blood vessels appeared. A dream I dream somewhat often.
The behavior of the Kissing Bug in my dream was always the same.
Once the guy started, he dug into the wall of the blood vessel as if the braking device was broken, and drank the blood crossing inside.
My blood vessel, my blood. I watch my intact things being damaged.
The hot blood that couldn't reach the worm's snout surged like flooding through the perforated blood vessels. Those bloods wandered inside my body deviating from the path set for them.
Where would my wandering blood be by now?
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