Did the kiss not satisfy him? No, if he disliked it, why did he rub our lips together for so long? And the face I saw while kissing didn’t look like he disliked it.
“I’m going.”
Jiwoo turned his back without me even answering. Then he bolted forward. Unbelievably, he actually started running.
I stared at Jiwoo’s rapidly retreating back with a dumbfounded expression before coming to my senses. Without knowing why, I chased after him.
“Wait a moment!”
At first, I thought he was too fast to catch up, but gradually his running speed decreased. Jiwoo, who had been running well, suddenly staggered as if dizzy and stopped. He leaned against a wall and lowered his head. In that gap, I quickly caught up to him.
“Are you okay…”
I swallowed my rising breath and spoke quickly before stopping short. Because Jiwoo pulled me into an embrace again. Just like when he was crying earlier, desperately, like a drowning person grabbing a buoy.
“Just hold me.”
His trembling voice was faintly heard. I was too dumbfounded to speak. I peeled off Jiwoo, who was clinging to me like a baby koala. Then I stepped back and said,
“No, whatever it is, even if something didn’t satisfy you, how can you just suddenly leave like this?”
Jiwoo, rejected after reaching out to me, held both hands awkwardly in the air, not knowing what to do. I’d only pushed him away a little, but his reaction seemed too excessive, and only then did I realize something was off.
“Jiw…”
“It’s noisy.”
“What?”
“I said it’s noisy!”
Without time to stop him, Jiwoo shouted and pulled me into his arms again. At his sudden action like a seizure, people passing by glanced at us with puzzled expressions.
Embarrassingly, despite calming down a bit during the kiss, Jiwoo was trembling again. I held him protectively with my arms around his back and moved to the side of the street.
“I won’t be noisy, so calm down.”
“No, it’s not that…”
“I understand, so try taking some deep breaths.”
Did something happen in Chile? Why has he become so unstable? It was completely different from his first impression of seeming indifferent to everything. I didn’t even know which was the real Jiwoo.
“Hoo… ha.”
Jiwoo deeply inhaled as I instructed, then exhaled at length. I gently stroked his back and asked,
“If you want to go home, you can just go. I’m not stopping you, so why are you running away like that?”
Whether he still hadn’t calmed down or didn’t want to answer, Jiwoo said nothing. I waited until his gasping breaths gradually subsided, then gently pulled him away.
“I’ll take you home. That’s okay, right?”
If I left him like this, I’d be too anxious. I worried he might refuse and run away again, but fortunately Jiwoo was docile.
I called a taxi on my phone and got in the back seat with Jiwoo. He still held my hand tightly with an anxious face. Jiwoo told the taxi driver the location, and after that, the taxi was quiet for a while.
We passed through a neighborhood I’d never been to before, then drove for quite a while toward the outskirts. With each uphill climb, the walls of the surrounding houses grew higher.
And finally we arrived at our destination, and I ended up getting out of the taxi with Jiwoo. I was just going to take that back and go home too…
“Seoun-ah.”
I was staring blankly at the rear of the disappearing taxi heading back the way it came when I heard Jiwoo’s voice. When I turned my head, I saw his pale face.
“Are you feeling better now?”
“Yeah, thanks for taking me.”
“It’s nothing, you took me home many times too.”
There wasn’t a single person on the street. Not even the common buildings, just an endlessly continuing road with high walls. And next to Jiwoo stood a gate rising high like a fortress entrance.
“Have you eaten?”
Jiwoo asked, watching me raise my head and look around. That extremely ordinary question suddenly sounded strange. I stared blankly at Jiwoo before shaking my head.
“Not yet.”
“Really?”
“Yes. What about you, Jiwoo-ssi?”
“Me neither.”
“Ah…”
A brief silence flowed. We just looked at each other wordlessly. Jiwoo was the first to speak.
“Want to eat before you go?”
Ssi, fuck. I had a bad feeling about this.
I smiled awkwardly and nodded.
***
This day had finally come. I’d been mentally prepared for a while, but now that it was reality, I felt like I was losing my mind. No, but still, Jiwoo cried so much today that he’s exhausted, so maybe he’ll fall asleep right after eating.
With a confused mind, I walked behind Jiwoo thinking such thoughts before raising my head. No, but this place isn’t some fortress, so why is it like this…
We passed through a maze-like garden and arrived at the front entrance. Even when I saw the building jutting up above the high wall, I thought it was strange. Because there wasn’t a single visible window. Like a giant black concrete prison. No, even prisons have windows, don’t they?
The wall was so high that I thought only the upper part was like that, but even from in front of the entrance, it was the same. It was my first time seeing such a building, so I couldn’t help but be flustered for a moment.
“Come in.”
While I hesitated, Jiwoo, who had opened the door, stepped aside as if telling me to enter first.
“Ah, yes. Excuse me.”
I held my breath without realizing it and went inside. As the middle door opened, a middle-aged woman appeared.
“Welcome.”
“Ah, hello.”
I returned the greeting to the woman who bowed her head. Jiwoo, who entered behind me, said as he passed by her,
“You can leave work. And don’t come tomorrow.”
Wait, who is she? Aren’t you going to introduce us? Since he said to leave work, is she someone who works here? But normally when you meet someone for the first time, don’t you at least introduce them?
I stared blankly at Jiwoo’s back as he went inside, then bowed again.
“Have a good evening.”
“Ah.”
Then Jiwoo stopped walking and turned his head as if something occurred to him.
“Don’t come the day after tomorrow either.”
“Yes, then I’ll be going.”
I was speechless at the strangely quiet and solemn atmosphere. The unidentified woman went back inside the house without making a sound. Jiwoo reached out his hand to me as I stood there blankly.
“Come here.”
I reflexively took Jiwoo’s outstretched hand. He took me with him as he walked. The inside of the house was dark overall, as if the lights were off. Moreover, from the walls to the floor to the furniture, it was as if all color had been stolen—everything was black, gray, and white.
If you took a picture here, you’d believe it was a black and white photo.
The place Jiwoo took me to was in front of an elevator. When he pressed the button, the door opened. It was exactly like an elevator in an apartment. So inside the house…
The elevator door closed as I entered. Jiwoo pressed the button marked B2.
“What do you want to eat?”
“Just anything…”
“Want to eat ramyeon?”
Suddenly? And of all things, ramyeon? I smiled, pretending to be as casual as possible, and nodded.
“Yes, that’s fine.”
The second basement floor was also generally colorless and dark like the interior of the first floor. Jiwoo went to the kitchen, which had no sense of life at all, like a model house no one had ever set foot in, and opened and closed a cupboard.
Then the one next to it, then the next, then the next.
“……”
I slowly went behind Jiwoo.
“If there’s no ramyeon, we can eat something else.”
“Ah, found it.”
Isn’t this his house? What’s there to search for… Ah, maybe he doesn’t usually eat ramyeon? Then Jiwoo pulled out a crinkly plastic bag of ramyeon.
That was the ramyeon Seogong used to like. So when he was about… 13 years old… Plus, it had been discontinued several years ago.
“There are only two. Should I just boil two? If it’s not enough, you can add rice.”
“Mm.”
I took the ramyeon from Jiwoo’s hand and first looked for the expiration date. As expected, it had already expired 3 years ago.
“Do you have rice?”
“Yeah. Probably?”
“Then instead of this, should I just make you fried rice? You have kimchi, right? Some ham or… anything to put in fried rice.”
Jiwoo went to the refrigerator without a word. I also looked inside the refrigerator from behind Jiwoo. Inside the huge refrigerator, there were only four 500ml bottles of water sitting alone.
“Guess there’s no kimchi.”
“……”
“Let’s go upstairs.”
So we rode the elevator again to the first floor. The kitchen on the first floor was excessively clean too, but at least it had more of a lived-in feeling than the one downstairs.
There were even three refrigerators, full of all kinds of ingredients from land, sea, and air.
“Can’t I put this in and make fried rice?”
“What kind of meat is it?”
“I don’t know. What’s this? Why is newspaper in the refrigerator?”
With an uncareful touch, Jiwoo rustled and fidgeted with something wrapped in newspaper.
“It looks like mushrooms.”
“Can’t you put mushrooms in fried rice?”
“Don’t you have other vegetables? Like onions…”
“I don’t know. I’ll look here, so you check over there.”
Jiwoo said, pointing to another refrigerator. I rummaged through the other refrigerator with a bewildered expression.
