Even If It’s Not Love

e holding a pencil in that thin hand.
Even though the hand holding it for a long time seemed to hurt, Yoo-hwa wrote frantically.

“You said you wanted to be a writer, right?”

Instead of answering, Woo-hyun took a memory out of the sudden memories that occurred to him and asked.
Writing passages that one could relate to although they were difficult to understand, Yoo-hwa’s dream was naturally to be a writer.

At that time, as soon as he heard Yoo-hwa’s hope for the future, he thought that it suited her well enough to make him nod his head unknowingly.

He didn’t know why he remembered this and why he asked, but Woo-hyun looked at Yoo-hwa with an expectant look.
He didn’t think she would be happy, but Yoo-hwa’s expression was so rigid that it exceeded his expectations.

“I did.”

Yoo-hwa replied faintly, to the extent that it could only be heard if he was listening attentively.

“But not anymore.”

Yoo-hwa said that and tried to take the load from Woo-hyun.
Woo-hyun easily avoided Yoo-hwa’s hand.

“It’s not heavy.”

“It looks heavy.”

As Woo-hyun refused twice, Yoo-hwa took a step back as if she couldn’t help it.

Most of the houses on both sides of the alley had their lights turned off.
The lights were on in about one every three houses, but, even so, it was so quiet that it was doubtful whether people were living there.
The wind blew over the silent world.

“Do you… have a dream?”

Yoo-hwa cautiously asked him a question as they walked uphill.

“A dream?”

Woo-hyun briefly asked.
At the same time, his lips crooked, like a person who heard something they couldn’t hear.

“Yeah, a dream.
Something you want to be.”

He didn’t know that words that felt so distant and uncomfortable could come out of Yoo-hwa’s mouth.

“I don’t have anything like that.”

As he started getting blood on his hands and began to realize that money was above people, he only had one goal.
He knew it was called a dream because dreams and all those fluffy things like rainbows don’t come true.

For him, for example, was to live a normal life.
These kinds of things.

“What about you?”

Woo-hyun asked Yoo-hwa, who had come a step closer than before to have a conversation.
Even so, they were walking about three steps away from each other.

“… I don’t have one either.”

After giving a concise answer, Yoo-hwa walked silently while looking straight ahead.
It was after discovering a congratulatory flower wreath discarded in the corner of the alley that Yoo-hwa’s steps went off track.
Asking him to give her a moment, Yoo-hwa stood still in front of the atrociously abandoned wreath.

It was a wreath that had been discarded illegally, with its message removed so that it was impossible to know what it was celebrating, and all its teeth were falling out.
It was dumped in a deserted neighborhood because it cost them money to have it handled.