SIN | CHOI MUJIN/JUNG TAEJU

6 SINS

❝IT WAS A SIN FOR A MAN HIS AGE TO OBSESS OVER A MUCH YOUNGER WOMAN, BUT CHOI MUJIN NEVER HAD MORALS ANYWAY❞

Mujin was still nowhere to be seen by the time Aera had finished her dinner and settled into the master bedroom to sleep. She figured that if he tried to lie down in the same bed later on in the night, she'd simply kick him out. After all, as far as she was concerned, she and him were complete strangers without her memories. She tossed and turned in the bed, contemplating Taeju's recent confession.

Was it really a one-sided love? He had omitted information before, so was it possible that he was hiding something else?

Plagued by her thoughts, Aera became restless and decided to go outside to keep her mind off of the current circumstances. Controlled by her muscle memory, she found herself driving a motorcycle parked outside of the residence to an unfamiliar location as if she had visited it several times before. She stopped her motorcycle's engine, but remained seated as she took in her surroundings. A large lake came into view with rocks and boulders of varying sizes strewn across the sandy ground and across the large lake was a multitude of lit up skyscrapers. Although she wasn't sure the area's exact significance, deep down inside she felt comforted by its existence. As she hopped off her motorcycle and walked closer to the lake to get a better view, she noticed an expensive black vehicle parked to the right with its owner leaned against it.

"Why are you here, Aera?" Mujin asked her without turning around to confirm the identity of the intruder. She wondered how he knew it was her without seeing her with his own two eyes. Mujin was well acquainted by the sound of Aera's footsteps to the point where he recognized it anywhere.

"I couldn't fall sleep." She confessed as she neared him. "I wanted to go outside to clear my head. It's as if muscle memory brought me here. This place... it looks foreign to me, but it feels like I've been here many times before."

"Drink this." He handed her the grey tumbler he had been drinking out of.

"What is it?" She inquired as she looked at the grey tumbler suspiciously. "You're not trying to drug me and then murder me, are you ahjussi?"

"If I wanted to murder you, I wouldn't go through all the trouble of coercing you to drink out of a tumbler, Aera." He closed the distance between them. "Because you would've been killed the second you arrived."

She glared at him before deciding that the old geezer really did have a point. She sniffed the suspicious liquid before tentatively taking a few sips. The moment the liquid hit her tongue, her mind was painfully graced with another past memory.

"Were you waiting here for a while?" Twenty-year-old Aera asked Mujin as she arrived at the lake.

"Hmm." Mujin turned his head to the side to face her and nodded his head.

"Here you go." She sighed as she handed him a grey tumbler and he smiled in return.

"What's in here?" He asked her as he twisted open the cap of the grey tumbler and sniffed its aroma.

"Chamomile tea. It's supposed to help with insomnia. I know you have trouble sleeping." Aera replied and Mujin smiled before lifting the tumbler to his lips and taking a sip of the liquid.