It was a situation where more and more things seemed to be cornering him. The cornered sewer rat rapidly poured alcohol down his throat to escape reality. But rather, like a reaction, all kinds of thoughts rose up even more.
“People say when you drink alcohol, worries and concerns disappear…”
Saehyeon, who put down an empty can on the bench, tilted his head as if puzzled. Somehow, the more he drank, the heavier his chest became and all kinds of resentment and worries seemed to surge up from inside.
Until now, Saehyeon hadn’t had the leisure to think complicated thoughts at ease. When he suddenly woke up, everything had changed or disappeared, and he had to earn money to survive immediately. Added to that, his body wasn’t well and he had a child attached to him, so that said it all.
But now, unemployed and with alcohol in him. All sorts of things wriggled and raised their heads through his loosened mind.
“Unemployed and a beggar bastard… That’s harsh.”
He let out a deep sigh while naturally opening the second can. The sigh was filled with deep dismay.
Only after being cornered and leaning on the influence of alcohol, Saehyeon could finally end his denial of reality. This had been a game he was bound to lose from the start.
The option of saving money to receive treatment had been unrealistic from the beginning. At first, he had charged in with high spirits. But that was momentum he could have because he didn’t know reality, in addition to his original personality.
Saehyeon didn’t know that maintaining a minimum life without any particular luxury required this much money. Or that earning that money was so difficult.
Even earning it so hard, there were many months with no money left, and even the months with some only had a pittance. The speed at which money accumulated was very slow.
Usually in such situations, increasing jobs would be the method. But in Saehyeon’s case, doing that would mean getting employed in the afterlife, so this was also out. Even leaving it alone, he was at the level of counting seconds until he died young, so there was no need to deliberately shorten his life.
‘…If I really die, what about the child.’
Since he was thinking about dying young and life spans, there was one more thing that came to mind. It was the child’s problem. Besides his own hopeless physical condition, Saehyeon was viewing the child’s present and future as homework that needed to be solved.
The last remaining conscience, the awareness of a normal person even if just a pittance, poked at his heart every day. Asking if he was really going to leave the child like that.
It was a childhood spent in a single room alone with a father who was sound neither in mind nor body. There was no way that could be happy. What if one day that sole guardian suddenly died of illness? It would clearly be the worst finale to an unhappy childhood.
‘That must not happen.’
The absence of a guardian they had relied on with all their heart was bound to leave a great wound on the child. Especially if there had been other options to survive… needless to say. Saehyeon knew better than anyone the feelings and circumstances of a child left alone like that.
In the midst of such a situation on a worsening path where he was desperately maintaining the status quo and his body was gradually getting worse, suddenly. It was a situation where a solution had dropped from the sky. If he wasn’t a fool, he had to grab it.
But the problem was that the solution wasn’t an object or grades that could be won through effort. It was alive, unlucky, and complicatedly entangled with himself.
“Should I just close my eyes tight and lie down for now?”
Saehyeon carelessly stretched out his body and tilted his head back. The back of his head pressed painfully against the angular edge of the bench, but rather that sensation felt good. It was a similar feeling to when he stabbed his thigh with a mechanical pencil while staying up all night studying or tore off a hangnail next to his fingernail.
He knew he was in a position where he had to bow down and beg Gil Taeseo. First of all, everything would only be established if Gil Taeseo accepted, but anyway, setting aside that premise, Gil Taeseo was like a painted cure.
But that was too difficult for Saehyeon. It might be because he had only learned the method of always gritting his teeth and raising his head stiffly. That was the only survival method given to the human called Lee Saehyeon.
That thing his father harshly demanded, his mother urged with love, and Saehyeon completed after stepping through it all. Even after losing everything he had obtained by wielding it like a weapon, only that spirit seemed to remain deeply rooted.
The other person was also to blame for the intensification of such mental problems and stubbornness. Wasn’t it ‘that’ Gil Taeseo? To cling to him asking for help. It was something he couldn’t do with a sober mind.
“No, really, what am I supposed to say? Do you get pregnant alone, take responsibility? Your child is inside this?”
At this moment, the 28-year-old Lee Saehyeon who had run away behind the oblivion of memory was both resentful and enviable. Saehyeon curled up his body while putting down the second empty can on the seat next to him. Over his tilted face and pressed cheek, half-closed eyes blinked slowly.
“These days even in dramas or web novels, if such lines come out, I think they’d get massively cursed at.”
The muttering voice soon stretched out long, and the end of his words became slurred.
He had thought there would be no advantages to this damned body. But looking now, it seemed to have quite good cost-effectiveness for getting drunk. The small and weakened body with low durability quickly became dead drunk with just a little low-proof beer. The intoxication that rose late because he hurriedly pushed it in with a troubled heart quickly overtook reason and body.
That wave didn’t want to be lonely, so it carried drowsiness at his side. Getting drunk and falling asleep outside where cool wind still blew was clearly not a good choice. But Saehyeon didn’t resist the oncoming sleep.
The current situation wasn’t unfamiliar. It was something he had experienced a few months ago too. In other words, it had been like this when he woke up in the 28-year-old body too. He only had memories of getting completely drunk, sleeping and waking up, but the world had been turned upside down.
‘Could it happen again this time too?’
Such hope grew vigorously, feeding on the alcoholic energy, and occupied his consciousness. If in fact all of this was a dream, and he could just open his eyes in his twenty-year-old studio apartment. It would truly be the best.
Besides this irrational hope, there was also something he believed rationally. The drunken habit he knew of himself was returning home. Like a pigeon with homing instinct, when Saehyeon got completely drunk, he would always crawl into the place he was most attached to.
It was truly a ghostly thing. It would have been embarrassing if he had gone to his family home, but he went back to his studio apartment exquisitely. Anyway, he thought that if it came to it, he would return home on his own and sleep.
Since he had shaken off all obstacles, there was nothing to worry about. The speed of blinking gradually slowed and now didn’t rise again. Like that, Saehyeon threw his body to the sleep demon that came half voluntarily, half forcibly.
However, there was something Saehyeon had overlooked. Originally, the person themselves didn’t know their true drunken behavior.
Additionally, some peculiarity was added. The reason why 28-year-old Lee Saehyeon had absolutely never put alcohol to his lips. The point was that 20-year-old Lee Saehyeon didn’t know that.
“……”
How much time had passed? Saehyeon, who suddenly came to his senses, blinked his stiff eyes. He had thought the weather was gradually warming up, but the cold had already thoroughly permeated his body that was like a straw doll woven loosely.
Saehyeon, whose body was trembling, suddenly realized that what he was holding in his hand was warm. It was hot to the point of almost getting burned, beyond just warm. It was several minutes later that he recognized the heating element tightly gripped in his hand was a cell phone.
Once he realized its identity, a strong impulse came. That he had to make a call right away.
“Ah, call… I need to call.”
But, to whom exactly?
The head that had been muttering blankly dropped. Whether because of the cold weather, the body that had been stretched back had at some point become a posture hugging his legs with both arms. Putting his head on top of that gave a perfect sense of stability.
If it hadn’t been for the shadow caught in his vision, he would have fallen asleep again immediately.
Saehyeon’s gaze followed the shadow as if possessed. White sneakers touched the end of his gaze, and it was only after some more time that he realized it was a person.
At first, he thought they were just passing by. But even after watching for a long time, the sneakers didn’t move. Saehyeon, who finally recognized they weren’t a passerby, began to examine that person carefully.
The man standing tall in front had a slightly strange outfit. Above the white sneakers with heels crumpled up as if hurriedly and roughly shoved on were sharp black suit pants.
His eyes naturally traced upward. The hem of a black coat hanging by the legs, long legs that had to be climbed for quite a while. A black shirt wrapping a heaving chest. And up to the face devoured by shadow.
Unfortunately, the face couldn’t be seen properly. In abandoned spaces, even broken fixtures were bound to be neglected, so the streetlight located near them wasn’t lit. In the dimness, the two people quietly faced each other for a while.
“……Who… are you?”
Just then, the wind that blew shook the man’s clothes. The wind also carried a scent to the tip of Saehyeon’s nose, who was crouched across from him. A scent that was still vivid despite being diluted, somehow familiar.
