# Chapter 135
Today was the day Ban Hajun’s first TV commercial would air. Even though it would all appear on the internet later, Ban Hajun kept calling repeatedly, saying he couldn’t watch it alone, making such a fuss that Mo Eunje pretended to give in and got into the car that came to pick him up. Even if they watched it together at Ritz Ville, Tae Igyeol probably wouldn’t care, but Mo Eunje didn’t want to bring someone into a home without its owner.
Sitting side by side with Ban Hajun on the officetel living room sofa, the guy who Mo Eunje thought would make all kinds of exaggerated reactions seemed nervous, unable to hide his anxiety. They had already eaten half of the spicy tteokbokki and fried chicken they’d ordered for dinner. Since they heard the commercial would air during the middle of a drama rerun, they had turned on the drama from the beginning to make sure they didn’t miss the timing.
Since it wasn’t a drama Mo Eunje usually watched, he couldn’t concentrate at first, but as he ate tteokbokki and chicken while Ban Hajun gave a concise explanation of the plot, he could quickly follow along. After looking up information on his phone, the drama seemed interesting and the cast was impressive.
In the drama, an actor playing the character “Jeong-jun,” who was standing at a crossroads in life, took a marker and wrote down his jumbled thoughts in a question-and-answer format on the window of the bus where he was staying. Soon, the actor’s voice narrated what was written on the window.
– “Can I love someone who lies? No.”
– “Then what should I do now?”
– “Stop being indecisive and make a decision.”
Mo Eunje, who was bringing a boneless chicken piece dipped in tteokbokki sauce to his mouth, suddenly had a powerful realization. After his conversation with Grandmother, he had been struggling with the same conflict for three days without reaching a conclusion, but now he had found the clearest method.
Most things tend to become clearer when organized in writing rather than just thinking about them in one’s head. Despite being a writer by profession, he had stupidly only now found the cleanest way to sort things out.
Since his own nose was three spans long, Ban Hajun’s first TV commercial wasn’t what was important right now. Mo Eunje needed to suppress his avoidant tendencies and take time for self-reflection. Just like the character Jeong-jun in the drama, he too needed to stop being indecisive and make a decision. He couldn’t leave their completely messed-up relationship unattended like this.
He had indirectly consulted with various people, including Grandmother, Kwon Jiyeon, Jang Jiha, and novelist Lee Choyoung, trying to get others’ opinions for reference, but asking for thoughts from uninvolved people was meaningless. Those were their choices, their values, and the lives they lived. Therefore, the most important thing Mo Eunje needed to do now was to look into his own heart.
Whether he lost Tae Igyeol by continuing to go on like this or lost him after loving and breaking up, if the results were the same, it was right to choose the option that would leave him with fewer regrets. As Grandmother said, to avoid regrets, he needed to think only of himself and be honest with himself just once. He belatedly reminded himself of the eternal truth that nothing is more precious or important than oneself.
“Hey, give me some paper and a pen.”
“Suddenly? Don’t tell me you’re going to copy that?”
“Yeah. If I don’t do this right now, something terrible will happen. Hurry, paper and pen.”
“…You really are something else.”
Though grumbling, Ban Hajun brought what appeared to be the blank side of a script and a pen. Mo Eunje appreciated Ban Hajun’s consideration in neither bringing up the subject first, nor pretending to know, nor showing curiosity about Tae Igyeol being in America, despite knowing about it. If Ban Hajun had interfered in this situation, Mo Eunje’s head might have exploded.
Mo Eunje pushed the chicken and tteokbokki on the lift table towards Ban Hajun and seriously began writing down questions one by one. He put effort into each letter, trying to write neatly and with sincerity. He didn’t have the luxury of caring whether Ban Hajun was looking or not. That’s why he didn’t even realize his actions were being recorded on video.
- How do I think of Tae Igyeol?
The very first question he wrote was incomparably difficult. But having steeled his resolve, he had to write his honest feelings.
- So, do I like Tae Igyeol with feelings beyond friendship?
Faced with a question several times harder than the first, his chest felt tight as if blocked. As he calmly wrote the answer, his heart pounded wildly as if he were committing a crime. His mother’s voice suddenly came to mind, saying he was talking nonsense when he jokingly asked if he could date Tae Igyeol, but trying to shake it off, he listened only to the unique feelings within himself.
- Can I stay friends with Tae Igyeol for life?
Out of habit, he was about to write “Yes” while deceiving his own heart, but after writing “Ye”, he crossed it out with the pen. Having decided to be honest, having resolved to gather his courage for the first and last time, he couldn’t deceive even himself like this.
He repeated this process of asking himself questions and writing answers sincerely and with focus seven times, then checked and double-checked several times to ensure there were no strange parts. While he judged that this would be enough to convey his feelings, somehow it still felt insufficient, and he needed a bit more clear self-conviction.
“…”
He had read something like this once. If you want to know who will be the most precious person to remain by your side until the end, write down the names of about twenty close people and erase them one by one.
Everyone around him was precious, and ranking them seemed childish, but after biting his lip and thinking for a moment, Mo Eunje began writing names one by one on another piece of paper. Since he would erase all but the last one anyway, ten names would be enough rather than twenty.
Tae Igyeol. Grandmother. Mom. Dad. Aunt. Ban Hajun. Gye Minho. Uncle. Tae Iden. Grandfather.
Without room for deliberation, ten names were quickly filled. Many other close friends and acquaintances came to mind, but he deliberately ignored them.
Now he had to remove them one by one from his life.
The article had said not to feel sorry or guilty when crossing off each name. But as he was about to draw a line over the names, guilt began to creep in. Pulling himself together, Mo Eunje took a deep breath and drew lines over the names one by one.
Tae Igyeol. Grandmother. Mom. Dad. Aunt. Ban Hajun. Gye Minho. Uncle. Tae Iden. Grandfather.
As he drew the lines, he had the reasonable suspicion that he might have unconsciously written the names in order of importance. Thinking that if that was his true feeling, there was nothing he could do about it, he drew lines over “Aunt” and “Grandmother” with a trembling hand. It felt uncomfortable, as if he were committing a terrible sin.
But no matter how he tried to rearrange the remaining people, he simply couldn’t eliminate any more.
Tae Igyeol. Mom. Dad.
The mere assumption of removing any one of these three people made his breath catch and something hot well up inside him. Annoyed by his blurred vision, he blinked hard several times and bit his lip firmly. He drew a forceful line over one name and immediately crumpled the paper. He crumpled it so tightly it couldn’t be unfolded and put it in his pocket. It seemed it would take some time for his heart to calm down.
“…”
It was when he returned to reality after being lost in his own world for a while. He found himself making eye contact with Ban Hajun, who was holding up his phone.
“What? What are you filming?”
“Your butler would be so moved if he saw this, wouldn’t he?”
“Ha, you’re such a jerk. How do you always manage to act like this?”
“Right? Where else can you find a friend like me? I’ll accept your thanks in Korean beef when Tae Igyeol returns. Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve greased my stomach with something high-end.”
Shaking his head at Ban Hajun’s excited chatter, Mo Eunje took photos of the questions and answers he had written on the paper with his own phone. When he searched for the New Orleans time, it was 5 AM. Tae Igyeol would be sleeping now, so Mo Eunje would be anxious while waiting for a reply after sending the message, but his heart was so urgent that he didn’t want to delay even a moment. No, if he delayed, the courage he had worked so hard to summon might crumble into hesitation and faltering, and then he might try to run away again. After checking the content one final time, Mo Eunje sent the photos to Tae Igyeol.
Hiding his irresistible and overpowering feelings under the thin shell of friendship didn’t make those feelings disappear.
&
It had been a series of days that felt like his heart was being carved out.
Having failed to fall asleep again today, Tae Igyeol was lying in bed looking at his phone. He had countless photos of Mo Eunje taken secretly. Time quickly passed as he examined each one carefully, and soon it would be time to get up.
The most recent photo was of Mo Eunje sleeping on the hospital sofa. As he flipped through the photos one by one, he traveled back to the more innocent past. Even though they were all of Mo Eunje’s face, perhaps because he had looked at them so much, he could clearly recall the place, situation, and time of each, and there wasn’t a single moment that wasn’t precious.
The reason he collected all his previous phones whenever he upgraded to the new model of the series he used was because they contained photos of Mo Eunje. Although he transferred the photos to his new phone each time, the sentimental desire to preserve that exact moment intact made it impossible to throw away even a single meaningless device.
“…”
When he lay in bed, he sometimes fell asleep, and often cried.
Today he could do neither, so he planned to lie down for about 30 minutes more before getting up and going out. Outside the room, he could already hear his grandmother, who had woken up, washing up.
Tae Igyeol’s daily life in New Orleans was monotonous. He would jog around 5 AM, come back and shower, then have breakfast with his grandparents at 6:30 AM. In the morning, he would find small things around the house that needed repair and tinker with them, and after lunch, he would lie on the water in the pool, feeling the hot sunshine all over his body. Though his arm wasn’t completely healed yet and he needed to be careful, he could still gently cut through the water. Although it was regrettable that he couldn’t go golfing with his grandfather because of his arm, when he entered the pool, his grandmother would come out to the patio to drink tea or knit while watching over him, allowing him to dispel his anxiety and gain some peace of mind for a while.
When his grandfather returned home around 5 PM, they would all have dinner together at 6 PM, and from 7 PM to 1:30 AM, he would stare at stock market windows. Ironically, he was making profits more frequently while at his grandmother’s house than when he was in Korea.
Since last week, he had been taking his grandparents out for lunch every day, and yesterday he bought a golf club for his grandfather and a tea cup set for his grandmother. Honestly, he was a bit surprised that the tea cup set, which would have to be thrown away if broken, was absurdly expensive.
When he accompanied his grandmother shopping, items that looked unfashionable caught his eye. But since they were all things to Mo Eunje’s taste, whenever he saw such items, he wanted to give them to him as gifts. As he bought this and that one by one while thinking of Mo Eunje, he had accumulated so many that he wondered if he could take them all back to Korea. However, today too, after eating lunch out, he would drop his grandfather off at the golf course and then walk around the shopping center with his grandmother, who enjoyed sightseeing, and would probably buy more gifts for Mo Eunje.
Tae Igyeol, who had been endlessly gazing at Mo Eunje’s photos, got up with one minute left before 5 AM. As he was changing clothes to go jogging after tidying his bedding, his phone, placed on the bedside table, rang with a message alert.
Since he hadn’t received any contact from Mo Eunje since coming to America, he expected the message to be from either the group chat, which was mostly filled with useless chatter, or from Tae Iden, who shared uninteresting news from the filming set, so he paid it no mind. But after changing completely and picking up the phone with a reluctant hand, seeing the sender’s name made his heart feel like it dropped to his feet, and he almost lost his grip on the phone.
