Chapter 21…
I could have just waited at home and gone back to school with my parents tomorrow, but the moment Eric spoke a little pityingly, I immediately felt concerned…
But crying over spilled milk wouldn’t help. I said I would see my parents off on their trip and then return to school in my friend’s car.
Arrival. The same place you dropped me off yesterday.
Eric’s car arrived almost at the same time my parents left.
I looked at the familiar, large car through the window and quickly grabbed the cookie box.
As I hurried toward the meeting spot, I saw Eric standing outside the car with the door open. Fortunately, he seemed more lively than he did in the video call, and his expression was bright.
When he saw the cookies my mom had worked so hard to bake and pack, he smiled warmly.
“Wow, seven kinds of cookies. You must’ve worked hard preparing these.”
“There aren’t enough ingredients, so a few might not taste very good.”
“They don’t look that way at all.”
Maybe because of my mom’s cookies, the ride back to school felt much more comfortable than yesterday.
Eric, not caring that crumbs were falling in his expensive car, grabbed a cookie and even offered me the whole box.
When I took a bite of the Brussels cookie my mom had lovingly made, he asked,
“Yesterday, when your dad came to pick you up, I think he called you by a different name. Is that a nickname you use only at home?”
“Huh?”
I didn’t immediately understand what he meant, but then I remembered my dad calling me “Biiya!”
So I shook my head and explained,
“It’s not a nickname, it’s just my Korean name. ‘Bii’ is my name, and ‘ya’ is just a Korean sentence ending used to address someone familiar.”
“Your Korean name is Bii? The pronunciation is a bit tricky.”
I nodded and explained the sacred and poetic meaning behind the name “Bii.”
The characters ‘Bi’ and ‘I’ are Chinese characters, each with their own meaning, and combined they convey the idea of ‘adding benefit’—a positive meaning.
“Wow, that’s incredibly grandiose.”
Eric burst out laughing as if it were ridiculous.
“It’s nothing like your Swedish name. In Swedish, ‘bi’ just means bee. Honeybee, that is.”
“Honeybee?”
This time, I was the one flabbergasted.
“So all this time, every time someone heard my name, they thought ‘bee, bee’?”
“Exactly.”
Eric teased me, puckering his lips and imitating a bee’s buzzing.
“That’s impossible. No one’s ever said that to me in the past seventeen years.”
“It suits you, though. How did everyone resist saying it?”
I was astonished at Eric’s strange perspective.
“Suit me? Even though I’m not particularly tall in Sweden, I’m definitely not tiny like a bee. And even Liam, who loved insects so much, never teased me that my name sounded like a bee.”
Meanwhile, we arrived in Östermalm.
As we drove along the quiet lakeside, Eric casually asked,
“The weather’s really nice. Want to go swimming?”
Stockholm is surrounded by lakes, natural swimming spots everywhere, but it was already autumn, so there weren’t many days left for outdoor swimming.
His words were tempting, but I exercised patience this time.
“Swimming is always nice, but I can’t. Without swimsuits, if we swim in our underwear here and get photographed, I’d have to transfer schools again.”
Eric let out a soft laugh like a sigh but didn’t deny my reasoning. Instead, he cleverly offered another bait he knew I’d like.
“Then how about trying a rowing boat?”
A rowing boat?
I had wanted to try it once with Liam…
The boat was nice and the weather was perfect, but was it really okay to spend time outside alone with Eric?
As if reading my hesitation, Eric added,
“The school and dorms will be empty, so the area near the boathouse will be even more private. And you don’t have to take your clothes off to row.”
Was my expression that transparent?
Before I could give a definite answer, he chuckled and said to the driver,
“Drop us off at the boathouse.”
“You should take that off. Loose clothes often get tangled with the oars.”
Following Eric’s advice, I left my hoodie in the car and stepped outside.
I had always watched rowing from the river, but this was my first time seeing the boathouse up close.
The huge wooden door, much larger than it seemed from the river, had a massive lock. Eric casually took out a key and unlocked it.
“Is it okay to just open it like that? Rowing boats are really expensive.”
Eric shrugged.
“If anything goes wrong, the person who gave me the key will take care of it, right?”
Hearing this answer with zero seriousness, I realized who he was. Eric Brangel was, after all, the owner of Brangel.
With a creak, the heavy door swung open.
Inside the high-ceilinged warehouse, rowing boats of various sizes were neatly arranged, and the afternoon sunlight streamed in, illuminating the damp wooden space brilliantly.
Dust particles floated like gold dust in the air.
Eric pulled out a boat that seemed way too long for just the two of us and brought over a pair of oars.
―Thud, thump.
Even the sound of the oars hitting the floor made them seem heavy.
Seeing my expression, Eric smirked mischievously.
“Let’s see the athletic skills of a black belt princess, shall we?”
Black belt athletic skills, my foot!
It didn’t even take an hour for me to prove I had no talent for rowing.
The boat was too narrow, and the oars were ridiculously long and heavy.
All Eric wanted was for me to push the oars forward in sync so they wouldn’t tangle, but even that was difficult.
The moment our long oars got tangled, I panicked, and trying to move mine back into place, I immediately lost balance.
“Bii, stay still…!”
Before Eric could finish his warning, the boat tipped over, and we both fell into the lake.
―Splash!
Without even needing to see who went first, we both popped our heads out of the water, holding onto the boat, and burst out laughing.
“Ha ha ha ha!”
Not having swimsuits seemed meaningless now—we were soaked from head to toe in our clothes.
“You okay?”
Eric asked, smiling from ear to ear, then quickly turned his face away.
I had already seen him laughing, so I laughed a bit more in disbelief.
“Of course. Have you ever fallen into the water during training?”
Eric shrugged, still looking away.
“When I was a freshman. But Liam had flipped the boat on purpose as a prank. Falling like this unprepared is a first.”
After we left the lake, dripping wet, Eric pulled the boat onto land and flipped it over.
“Wait a moment. I’ll get a towel.”
A little later, he came back into the boathouse holding a large, bright yellow towel.
Seeing it, I asked,
“Is there only one spare? Do you want to use it first?”
Instead of answering, Eric quickly pulled off his wet T-shirt.
Beneath it, his broad shoulders and firm chest, bronzed from summer sun, glistened with water.
“I’m fine.”
He wrung his dripping T-shirt like a dishcloth and said casually,
“It’s almost dry anyway.”
“Uh…”
I looked down, trying to avoid staring at his flawless upper body, and noticed my own soaked clothes.
Under my light-colored T-shirt, my underwear was visible. Only now did I understand why Eric had been avoiding eye contact.
Good thing it was a simple black design…
Feeling embarrassed, I accepted the towel and draped it over my shoulders.
“…Thanks. A veteran rower got soaked because of me. Sorry.”
“It’s refreshing, and it feels good. It’s really warm today.”
The gentle autumn breeze fluttered through Eric’s wet blonde hair, making it look effortlessly handsome.
