"Are you coming with me or not?"
Yi Jung's voice registered in her ears, but it didn't really sound like a question, more like he was angry, or accusing, or trying to sound cool but really sounding angry, or some combination of those things. Ga Eul blinked, distracted for a split second by the way the rain and ocean spray had plastered his white shirt to his torso, then tucked hair behind her ears self-consciously. She did not need to be noticing things like that right now! But why had he come? If it had been any of the other guys she had no doubt they might have had a few teasing words for her, but then that would have been the end of it...
She frowned, realizing he was waiting for an answer.
"You know," he said, now in a conversational tone, as if the brief silence between them had given him time to re-establish his composure, "you are causing a problem."
She made a sound of incredulity. "Unbelievable," she muttered under her breath, and then, more loudly, "It seems like you've forgotten who brought me here."
He smiled and his expression grew pained, though it was cultivated. "Don't be offended, but it wasn't my idea."
Honestly...he is such a... Ga Eul narrowed her eyes at him across the stretch of water. "You practically kidnapped me."
"That was Jun Pyo's idea."
"And do you go along with all of his ideas?" she said saucily.
"I had my doubts that this was a good one," he said, sighing. "And you are going to prove me right, aren't you?"
"Don't trouble yourself on my account," Ga Eul said, turning her head away to gaze off to her right, though it was hard to look as dignified as she'd have liked considering the rain flattening her hair and dripping down along her folded arms.
Yi Jung dropped his own head for a moment as if seeking strength, perhaps patience, from some other source. "Are you going to come, or do you need me to bring you over here?" He sounded skeptical.
"Do whatever you want," Ga Eul replied. She was mad that he was acting as if this were all her fault. It wasn't as if she'd drifted away on purpose. It wasn't as if she had even asked to come here. She'd been tricked into it. And she would never have gone anywhere with So Yi Jung even if he had asked her. So she didn't feel inclined to accompany him anywhere now either.
"I'd love to put you on the plane and send you back to Korea," Yi Jung groaned. He looked up again and around, possibly hoping for such a plane to materialize right there.
"Look here," Ga Eul said sharply. "It's becoming apparent that you have a rather low view of women, but you should know I am not cargo, to be put anywhere."
"Low view of women...where did that come from?" Yi Jung applied pressure to the handle, sending the watercraft forward to gently bump against the shore. He disembarked, pulling it up just enough so that it wouldn't float away, and crossed over to where the paddleboat floated, doing the same. Turning now to look at her, he said, pleasantly, but with a touch of steel in his voice, "I don't think you know enough about me to make that judgment."
She rolled her eyes. "Perhaps not, though a reputation has to count for something."
With this parting shot, she turned and began to navigate the pebbly beach, up towards the tree line.
"Where are you going?" Yi Jung demanded. "Come back here. Do you expect me to chase you through the forest? I don't usually play these kinds of games in weather like this."
"I'm not running," Ga Eul retorted over her shoulder. "And I am not playing. I simply don't want to talk with you any longer." She was quite pleased with herself for the authoritative tone in her voice when she delivered this statement, which sense immediately evaporated when she lost her balance over a slippery rock and stumbled.
She was not entirely sure how Yi Jung managed to get there so quickly, but suddenly there he was, right beside her, one hand on her arm and another around her waist, helping her up. Tilting her head back to look at him, she caught his expression of concern just seconds before his brow cleared and he said, "Be careful."
Self-consciously, she pushed him away. "I am fine."
For a few moments they stood like that, the sound of their breathing not quite drowned out by the lightest of rains, both momentarily numbed by the sudden awareness of societal obligations intruding, and their own wishes to say what they would have liked, and then Yi Jung said, coaxingly, "Our friends are worried about you..."
Ga Eul couldn't help but respond to this appeal to her sense of duty. Rather meekly, she let him take hold of her hand again, and when he tugged, back in the direction of the shore, she did not resist being led.
It wasn't until he helped her to board the jet ski and, climbing in front of her, told her to hang on to him that she balked again. It was not out of coquettishness, as it might have been in other girls, but rather that she had a very firm sense of what was proper. When he glanced around to see why she wasn't complying, Ga Eul at last, tentatively, placed her hands on his shoulders, deciding that this was an acceptable alternative to actually embracing him from behind. As it was, just touching him of her own accord was embarrassing enough, and she didn't know if their seclusion made the situation better or worse.
Yi Jung said, "You're going to fall off," and gunned the engine to prove his point. The startling lurch of the machine, which until now she had never ridden, caused her to squeak in fright and throw her arms around him out of sheer reflex.
"That's better," he said, with a laugh in his voice.
Ga Eul squeezed her eyes shut in humiliation, and pressed the side of her face against his back...which, though damp from rain, felt nice and warm and secure. If only she didn't feel like she hated him right now. If only she could survive as long as it took to get them back to the beach...