The Offer

Rainwater running down the umbrella borrowed from the restaurant dripped at my feet, spattering onto my sneakers and the cuffs of my jeans.

It wasn't heavy rain, but neither was it a drizzle light enough to ignore without an umbrella. A foreign man with his windbreaker hood pulled up was heading toward us, a Golden Retriever leading the way.

"Hi." "Hi." When the man, his jaw covered in a golden beard, came close enough for his expression to be discernible, the two exchanged brief greetings.

"Your dog is handsome."

He said.

"Whenever it rains, he makes a fuss about wanting to go out, so here I am."

He smiled at the man's reply.

"Bye." "Bye." As the man brushed past me, he smiled at me too. I returned a faint, barely noticeable smile and stepped aside to let him and the dog through.

His SUV, which had been in the external parking lot, was approaching the restaurant entrance. Teacher's car had been brought around first. Since she had another work-related appointment afterward, she had asked him to drive me home in her place and left about three minutes earlier.

"Thank you for dinner today."

I tilted my umbrella slightly to shield myself from the headlights of the car pulling up close to the curb as I thanked him.

"I'll walk for a bit to… sort out my thoughts, then take the bus home, so please don't worry about what Manager Han said. Well then..."

I couldn't see his expression clearly because the umbrella blocked my view. It wasn't entirely unintentional that I avoided looking at him. I stepped away from his black lace-up shoes — which suited his more casual Saturday evening attire — and walked past him toward the uphill road the foreign man had just come down.

"I was going to have a drink to sort out my thoughts, too."

I stopped and turned around at the sound of his voice echoing my own words. Holding his umbrella with one hand tucked into his pocket, he watched me. In the rain, every scent becomes stronger. I seemed to recall hearing somewhere that one could wear less perfume on a rainy day. Like a wave that approaches just far enough to wet my toes before retreating, his scent lingered at the tip of my nose, then vanished without reaching deeper.

"Would you join me?"

The inertia of the life I'd lived until now urged me to refuse the offer, turn around, and flee home. But the new stimulus, sweetly paralyzing that inertia, made me want to breathe in his scent and taste it. I didn't know where within me such impulse and greed had come from. Even if they had once existed, they should all have died out by now. His eyes, so pale they seemed liable to disappear at any moment, looked unusually blue.