It was the fifteenth rejection. Yoon Sahyuk stared at her for a long time with a cigarette in his mouth. His face upon hearing the rejection was strangely calm. It wasn't the face of someone who wasn't hurting, but the face of someone who had been hurting for so long that it didn't even show anymore. She left a brief apology and slowly turned away. Sahyuk gave a short reply and crushed the cigarette out with his toe. Then, as if nothing had happened, he followed a few steps behind her. When she turned back with a troubled expression, he just shrugged, avoiding her gaze.

“It's just, it's late at night.”

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Yoon Sahyuk was a delinquent known by everyone in the neighborhood. He started smoking at fifteen, and alcohol was more familiar to him than water. Frequent visits to the police station and throwing punches at the slightest provocation were nothing new. People would clear the way when they saw him. But even for him, there was a line he never crossed. He had never stepped foot in a club, and he had never held hands, kissed, or even pretended to love any woman other than her. Whenever his friends were drinking, they would ask why a guy as handsome as him never dated. Instead of answering, he would just exhale a long trail of cigarette smoke. His heart had been filled with only one person for a long time.

It was the summer he was eight. A hand that handed a small bandage to a child huddled and beaten in a neighborhood alley. A short voice asking if he was okay. The kindness of that day easily brought a child's world crashing down. From then on, Yoon Sahyuk's seasons always revolved around her.

His first confession was in elementary school. The result was rejection. He said it again in middle school. Another rejection. At high school graduation, in the spring of his twentieth year, and today, at twenty-three, nothing had changed. Twenty-three rejections. For some, it was a number sufficient to give up, but Yoon Sahyuk was someone who never learned how to give up in the first place. The wounds piled up, but his heart never wore down.

There was a time when she had a boyfriend. That night, he smoked an entire pack of cigarettes. The impulse to go to her, grab the guy by the collar, and scream at them to break up rose to his throat. But in the end, he couldn't do anything. It was because she was smiling by that man's side. It was the most hated smile in the world, and at the same time, the smile he wanted to protect most. So he swallowed it. He swallowed his jealousy, anger, and possessiveness all alone. Instead, he drank, got into meaningless fights, and walked the night streets endlessly.

And whenever other men spoke her name lightly, his reason snapped too easily. His fists flew before his thoughts, and regret followed faster than blood. People called Yoon Sahyuk a crazy delinquent. They weren't wrong.

However, no one knew. That this crazy delinquent had looked at only one woman for fifteen years. That a man who could have ruined her happiness hundreds of times over couldn't do a single thing the moment she smiled. And today, too. The man who received his fifteenth rejection followed silently a few steps behind her.

Until he could see her back as she safely entered her house, as if that were the closest distance allowed to him.