"Je t'aime," Seol-Hwi said. His eyes were filled with crystals—shimmering, wet, sharp, and hopeful—but Sebastian looked at them as if they were a foreign script he had no interest in deciphering. He didn't see the pain; he only saw the moisture.
"Pourquoi?" Sebastian asked.
The question was quiet, nearly drowned out by the roar of an overhead announcement and the rhythmic thud of rolling suitcases, but Seol-Hwi heard it with haunting clarity.
'Why?'
Seol-Hwi couldn't answer. There were no words in Korean or French that could explain a feeling that simply was. He just loved him.
He stood there, paralyzed, wondering how Sebastian could even ask that. After... All they had done together.
...
Seol-Hwi had worked at the French embassy for five years. He had translated for dozens of men, but none had ever made him lose his professional footing like Sebastian. Sebastian was a businessman who had come to Seoul to open a new branch—tall, blonde, and perfectly composed. He was the kind of man who drew every eye in a room, but for months, he had only seemed to have eyes for Seol-Hwi.
They had spent every day together. They had shared a bed more times than Seol-Hwi could count. In those moments, Seol-Hwi felt they were building something real. It was strange, but it was comforting.
Sebastian was a perfect gentleman; he always held the car door open, he checked Seol-Hwi's temperature when he looked tired, and he would smile into Seol-Hwi's eyes with a warmth that felt like a promise.
But now, at the gate, that warmth was gone.
"Are you... coming back?" Seol-Hwi managed to ask.
Sebastian tilted his head, looking genuinely confused. "Why would I come back? The project is finished. You were a wonderful translator, Seol-Hwi. Truly helpful."
He said it with a polite smile, the same one he gave to waitresses and hotel staff. Seol-Hwi felt his heart crack.
"Am I... coming with you?" he asked, his breath catching in his throat.
Sebastian looked genuinely confused. He reached out, pressing the back of his hand against Seol-Hwi's forehead. He held it there for a moment, checking for a fever, but found none.
"I don't know what is going through your mind today, Seol-Hwi, but perhaps you should go home and rest. You seem unwell. Thank you for everything."
As Sebastian began to pull his hand away, Seol-Hwi's fingers gripped the hem of his sleeve. He couldn't let go. He just couldn't.
He understood French to the bone but this time, he just didn't understand.
Why was it so easy for him to leave?
"Sebastian," he called, his voice thick with a French accent he had perfected over the years. "Je t'aime."
Sebastian blinked, taken aback for a split second. Then, he simply asked, "Pourquoi?"
The question was flat, a genuine request for information that Seol-Hwi couldn't provide. At that moment, the terminal speakers chimed, a final boarding call for the flight to Paris.
Sebastian nodded to Seol-Hwi, a polite acknowledgment of their time together. He leaned in, placing one last, brief French kiss on Seol-Hwi's cheek—the kind of casual, social gesture he gave to everyone he knew, the same gesture Seol-Hwi had misinterpreted as love—and then he turned.
He walked toward the gate, disappearing into the crowd without a single look back.
Seol-Hwi stayed at the gate until his legs felt like they would collapse. He eventually found himself at a bar, the only place where the silence wasn't so loud.
He drank until the world blurred, but even the alcohol couldn't drown out the loop of memories playing in his head.
He beat himself up with every detail. Where did he go wrong? Was it his vocabulary? Had he mistranslated a look, a sigh, a touch?
He thought of the way Sebastian had held the car door open every single time. 'Gallantry', he realized now, his heart twisting. 'None of it was love. They were just upbringings.'
He thought of the nights they spent together, those were just casual physicalities, it seemed.
He thought of the days Sebastian had checked his temperature, his cool hand resting on Seol-Hwi's forehead with such apparent concern.
'Professional maintenance,' he mocked himself as he downed another scotch. 'He just needed his translator to stay functional.'
Even the smiles—those private, lingering smiles across a dinner table—were nothing more than the effortless charisma of a man who was raised to be charming to everyone in his orbit.
Seol-Hwi felt like a fool who had spent months reading a manual as if it were a poem. None of it was love.
It was just etiquette. It was just Sebastian being French. Nothing more, nothing less.
He had mastered the language, but he had failed the most basic cultural test. He had mistaken mundane manners for a soul-deep connection.
"I am pathetic,"
He buried his face in his hands, wondering if he would ever be able to hear a French accent again without feeling the sting of his own stupidity.
"I've seen you at the embassy before, haven't I?"
Seol-Hwi's eyes were hazy as he looked up. A man was sitting across from him. He was also French, but he didn't have Sebastian's cold perfection. He looked more rugged, more present.
"I'm Luc," the man said. He didn't wait for an invitation. He reached out, his thumb catching a stray tear on Seol-Hwi's cheek and lingering there.
The touch was warm, but Seol-Hwi's heart only felt a cold sense of dread.