Through his blurry vision, he could see people moving busily about. Whether they were heading to catch a train or had just stepped off one, he couldn’t tell, but as always, everyone seemed preoccupied with getting where they needed to go. Some, apparently in a hurry, passed through the spaces between the homeless people huddled about with their shoulders drawn in tight — their expressions making it clear they were either afraid of being bothered or simply disgusted by the sight.
“Mommy, what are those people?”
A guileless child passing by pointed at the homeless people lying sprawled across flattened cardboard boxes — and at Munyeong himself, crouched among them — and asked. The child’s mother, as though her child had been exposed to something shameful, hastily covered the child’s eyes and answered firmly.
“Don’t look. Goodness. Even in this day and age, there are still people like this.”
The mother cupped the child’s face in her hands and quickened her pace.
“Why? What kind of people are they?”
The small child — barely tall enough to reach her waist — held onto her mother’s hand and couldn’t stop her curiosity, asking again.
“If you don’t study and spend every day just playing at the playground, you’ll end up like those people.”
“If I play all day I have to sleep here?”
“Yes. You’d have to live like that, without even a home. Pitiful, isn’t it? You understand? So from now on, you listen to what Mommy says and study hard, okay?”
Using the moment as a lesson, the mother hurried them past as though she might be contaminated just by proximity. Munyeong watched blankly as the child and her mother gradually disappeared from view.
An idle thought drifted through his mind at their overheard conversation. Would things have been different if he’d had a mother too? If he’d had parents, would he have turned out normal — not having to sit here like this, pathetically, like everyone seemed to think? Munyeong leaned his head against his knees, which were pulled up to his chest, his face already disheveled after just a day.
It had been a long time since he’d slept rough on the streets, and his body ached all over. His mind felt a little hollowed out, and he didn’t want to think about anything, so he spent a while just sitting there blankly, watching people go by. The ground was cold against his backside and his body trembled, but nothing about what he was supposed to do next was coming to him.
The desire to simply do nothing — just like this — was overwhelming. He wanted to rest for a little while. Munyeong leaned his face against his luggage and lay down on the cold floor. He could feel the continuous weight of people’s stares, full of contempt. Every time those familiar yet never-quite-familiar hostile gazes rained down on him one after another, Munyeong eventually squeezed his eyes shut. He was tired, and he was worn out. Limp and defeated, Munyeong curled his body inward.
Everything had been fine. He’d managed without parents, managed without money — all of that had been fine. But this time it was too much, too overwhelming to bear. Debt. Collateral. Guarantees. He couldn’t believe that the things he’d clawed together through sheer endurance had been taken from him in an instant. No matter how hard he worked, no matter how relentlessly he ran forward, it felt like he was always standing in the same place. After gritting his teeth and pushing through all of that, the road had looped back to here — and that alone felt utterly hollow.
Munyeong slowly opened his eyes and stared at his phone, its screen dark. He knew he needed to track down Shin Juho first, but he felt too drained to move. Even after years of being close, when he actually tried to think about where Juho might have gone, no answer came easily. He called him his one and only friend, and yet he knew next to nothing about him.
Had they only ever been friends in name? Had both of them — him and Shin Juho — simply stuck together because neither of them had anyone, latching onto whoever was there? Was that why trust could shatter so easily between them? Was that why selling him out had meant nothing to Juho? Or had he been too arrogant, too complacent? Had he taken the idea of trusting someone too lightly? Was it his fault for wanting to believe in a friend, for wanting to be there for a friend? Life was too hard.
What made it even more crushing was the fact that, in the middle of all this, the person who came to mind was Yeon Haejeong. Even when he deliberately tried to push the thought away, the only thing that rose to the surface was Yeon Haejeong. He had quit a job he’d poured himself into — because seeing him was too painful, because he felt like he shouldn’t — and yet, as though quitting had meant nothing at all, Yeon Haejeong kept floating through his mind.
He’d thought that if he lived peacefully again, the way he used to, things would naturally fade with time. But everything felt hollow now. Living, the feeling of having forgotten Yeon Haejeong — all of it felt like it had been spinning in place. In the end, it was as if someone were pushing him around in circles just to make him despair over the same circumstances, again and again. To despair, to be crushed endlessly. To submit, because there’s no escaping it anyway, and just live like this. Because someone like you has nothing better to look forward to.
Munyeong felt the weight of everything’s futility and squeezed his eyes shut again. He wanted to sleep. He wanted to sleep and not wake up. It would probably be fine if he just fell asleep here and never came to.
It was just then.
An unexpected voice fell from above his head.
“Can you actually sleep?”
Munyeong’s eyes flew open, his expression close to shock.
“H-how did you…….”
That couldn’t be right. Munyeong stared, hollow-faced, at someone who had no reason to be here — who couldn’t possibly be here. He looked as though he’d seen a ghost.
“…Fuck, you’ve really turned into a complete bum.”
He scanned Munyeong’s appearance — hardly any different from the homeless people scattered around them — and muttered with irritation.
Munyeong was looking right at him with his own eyes, and still couldn’t believe it. Was he dreaming? Had he fallen asleep already and was seeing a hallucination?
“In all my years of living, of all the things…….”
Yeon Haejeong swept his eyes over Munyeong’s shabby, grimy state and couldn’t even muster a laugh — he was too stunned. Too dumbfounded to finish his sentence, he just let out a short, disbelieving exhale.
“What are you doing here?”
“Ah…….”
Munyeong couldn’t say anything. His thoughts had come to a standstill and no words would come out.
“You — if something happened, you should have——!”
At Munyeong, who just stared up at him blankly with a vacant expression and couldn’t even give a single answer, Yeon Haejeong let out a voice seething with something churning deep inside him. Looking at Munyeong’s face — the days of hardship written plainly across it — Yeon Haejeong pressed his fingers to his forehead, his own face reeling, his fingertips trembling.
“What are you doing.”
“…….”
“Are you going to get up or not?!”
Yeon Haejeong shouted at Munyeong, who was still dazed and couldn’t collect himself. Munyeong scrambled awkwardly to his feet at the outburst. Even as he moved, his face made it clear he couldn’t make any sense of what was happening.
“Give it here.”
Yeon Haejeong snatched away the single piece of luggage Munyeong was holding and with his other hand grabbed Munyeong’s arm — hovering there, not knowing what to do with himself — and pulled him along. Biting down hard on his lower lip as if to suppress his agitation, he dragged Munyeong forward without a word.
Munyeong was being pulled along without even knowing whether his own legs were working properly. As he was dragged, he stared at Yeon Haejeong’s profile — still flushed with anger — with a vacant, dumbstruck expression. He knew he should say something, but his voice wouldn’t come.
The place Yeon Haejeong had dragged him to was his foreign car, parked in front of Seoul Station. He shoved Munyeong into the passenger seat and forcibly shut the door. Munyeong, bundled into the passenger seat as if he’d been abducted, followed Yeon Haejeong’s trajectory with his eyes as he rounded the hood toward the driver’s side. His face was still hazy and blank, as though he were wandering through a dream.
“Put your seatbelt on.”
He said it firmly. Munyeong let out a small “Ah…….” and raised his hand slowly. But his mind was too muddled, and he fumbled uselessly at the wrong spot — so Yeon Haejeong leaned his body over into the passenger side and buckled it for him. At the face that had come right up close before his eyes, Munyeong swallowed a sharp intake of breath. Unlike him — who had spent the night out on the street — a warm, luxurious fragrance reached his nose.
“…….”
“…….”
Despite the surreal turn of events, the inside of the car was filled only with silence. Munyeong, who had a mountain of things to ask, couldn’t bring himself to open his mouth easily given his nature, and Yeon Haejeong — perhaps because the sight of Munyeong having spent the night homeless on the street had shocked him — fumed but didn’t speak either.
After driving in silence for a long while, the car came to a stop at a place Munyeong had been to before. A high-rise building that seemed to pierce the sky — and at its very top floor, his penthouse.
“Get out.”
At the short command, Munyeong stepped out of the car looking flustered, but still couldn’t understand why Yeon Haejeong had brought him here. Reading Munyeong’s expression of complete bewilderment, Yeon Haejeong clicked his tongue and said curtly:
“Aren’t you going?”
Going where, exactly.
“…W-where…….”
Munyeong fumbled over his words awkwardly, and Yeon Haejeong let out a short sigh.
“You’ve been here before. You don’t remember?”
“……The Managing Director’s house…….”
“Yeah, my place.”
“……Why would I…….”
