In the moment I was being introduced as a transfer student in front of the teacher’s podium in an elementary school classroom, I had displayed incredibly clumsy Korean.
The dozens of curious gazes fixed on me curved into smiles and soon burst into laughter.
Then they started passing remarks back and forth to each other like, “Looks like he can’t even talk right!”
The teacher settled down the noisy atmosphere and said, “Our Haehyeon came from America, so that’s why. He speaks English very well, but he’s good at Korean too, so let’s all get along.”
I had never been mocked for my awkward pronunciation before, so I was a little frozen in place.
During recess, a few kids came up to me and tried to talk, but seeing me stammer nervously and mutter in English, they just snickered and whispered among themselves.
“They’re all so stupid. Mom, I want to go back to America. Send me back to America!”
Having failed to make friends on my first day as a transfer student, I cried in front of my mom the moment I got home.
It made sense — in my eight years of life, I had never once been without friends, so loneliness and isolation hit me full force.
My flustered mom did her best to comfort me, but that night, I secretly soaked my pillow with tears again while she wasn’t looking.
I have lots of friends too, normally!
I felt so wronged thinking about Nate, Eddie, and Grace — friends from my class who had cried when I left America.
The next day, my mom soothed my puffy eyes with an ice pack and walked me to the school gate.
I waved at her with a smile on my face, then turned away with a dark expression and walked into the classroom.
I hadn’t been looking forward to that day even one bit.
As I was heading to my seat in the back row, I noticed a boy sitting in the desk next to mine — the one that had been empty the day before.
He was staring blankly out the window with an expressionless face, so I could only see his profile… and, well, I had never seen anyone who looked like that before.
I quietly approached and sat down in my seat.
I had deliberately scraped the chair loudly when pulling it out, so he must have sensed my presence — but my seatmate didn’t look back.
“Hey……”
I did something I hadn’t been able to do the day before.
I poked my seatmate’s right shoulder repeatedly with my finger, calling out to him — not knowing what he was thinking.
At that moment, what filled my mind wasn’t the fear that this kid might ignore me too, but a stronger desire to look directly into my seatmate’s eyes.
I wonder how pretty his eyes would be?
“……”
The boy, who had been resting his chin in his hand, seemed to belatedly realize someone had called him, and he turned toward me very, very slowly.
Indifferent dark eyes.
Without thinking, my lips fell open.
He’s really, really handsome.
“O-oh, hi?”
I was embarrassed about my strange pronunciation — but thanks to secretly practicing over and over before bed the night before, my pronunciation was accurate.
It would’ve been even better if I hadn’t stuttered.
“I’m Shin Haehyeon. I just transferred here.”
“……”
He silently gave a slight nod, then turned his head away.
The classroom soon filled with kids arriving at school, becoming loud and lively.
Since the teacher hadn’t come in yet, the kids were busy chatting among themselves, running around, and laughing.
My seatmate seemed entirely unaffected by that atmosphere, staring only at the clear sky outside — nothing worth looking at.
What is he thinking about?
While he gave the sky that indifferent gaze, I sat beside him and kept watching him.
He’s a curious one.
In that moment, I made up my mind that I would become close with this nameless seatmate.
……Even now, I still don’t know what Kwon Wookyung was thinking back then.
I had written “Kwon Woogyeo” properly up to that point and then ruined the final consonant.
I tried to erase it sloppily with an eraser and only made it smear.
“Well, it’s not like I ever knew what was going on inside his head……”
Even when we used to be together every single day, I never fully knew what he was really thinking.
I closed the notebook and leaned back against the chair.
The phone sitting on the desk had been silent for hours.
It made sense — there was no one to contact me except family.
Earlier, while at the hospital and fiddling with my quiet phone, I realized too late that I had forgotten to ask for Kwon Wookyung’s contact information.
Why did I forget something that important?
Without his number, there was no way to bother him with pointless texts like “What are you up to?”
Is he home again today?……If not, nothing I can do about it.
With the thought that I should casually stop by next door, I came downstairs.
I paused briefly in the entryway to check my appearance — thankfully, I no longer looked particularly haggard or sickly.
I put on the green sneakers that Haejun hyung had bought me and opened the door, and Haeyong burst into excited barking — “Woof woof!” — running around with joy.
He was bounding over with a ball Haechan hyung had thrown in his mouth, hopping around in a way that made it obvious he was in the best mood.
“Where are you off to again?”
Shin Haechan, on the other hand, had been playing with Haeyong with an indifferent expression — but seeing me step outside, he frowned.
“A walk.”
“You really can’t sit still for a second. What are you, Haeyong?”
“What are you on about. I’m heading out.”
“Take Haeyong with you then.”
“No. If he walks with me, Yongyong can’t run properly.”
Haeyong had started to follow when he noticed me leaving, but when hyung picked up the ball and called him over, he turned and ran back that way.
I walked slowly and arrived in front of the gate next door.
I punched in the code and opened the gate — and beyond it, what I had expected to be quiet was actually bustling.
Two unfamiliar men who appeared to be gardeners were tending to the trees and plants that had been left neglected.
One of them, who was up on a short ladder trimming branches, caught my eye, and I gave a light nod of greeting.
“Hello. You’re working hard.”
“Yes. Do you live here?”
“No. I’m a friend of the owner. Is he inside by any chance?”
“He’s been here since we started working.”
Good, he’s home.
He said he moved away. I guess the abandoned house was weighing on him.
I had been wondering whether I should ring the bell, but the front door was slightly ajar — which made that moot.
Puzzled, I pulled the door open and stepped one foot inside — and immediately, an unfamiliar voice drifted out from within.
“Wookyung, do you know how many places are looking for you right now? Why are you suddenly saying you want to rest instead of striking while the iron is hot?”
“I told you, I’m not feeling well. The project’s done, so a few months off is no problem.”
“Not feeling well, my ass — you look perfectly fine to me. Everyone knows that’s not something that can be fixed and that it doesn’t cause major issues normally. This is not the time to rest! There are so many places looking for you — ads, scripts! Just look at these.”
“I’m not going to do any of it, so why would I look?”
“At least skim through them, come on? How long do you think it takes to go through these?”
I hadn’t meant to eavesdrop.
The frustrated man’s voice was high and fast, driving itself directly into my ears.
There was no gap to make my presence known.
“Haah. There’s even a car commercial — how much of a waste would it be to pass that up? Let’s at least shoot that one. It won’t take long.”
“Hyung. I……it goes all the way up.……I can even feel it.”
In contrast to the somewhat worked-up man, Wookyung answered in a quiet, exhausted voice — but the words were too faint to catch precisely.
“Wasn’t that supposed to be better after treatment?”
Whatever he’d heard seemed to be a shock — the other person’s voice shot up and then dropped sharply.
“……”
“Ha. And the medication?”
That answer didn’t reach me at all.
I knew full well that continuing to eavesdrop was rude.
But the words “treatment” and “medication” had frozen my body in place, and I couldn’t bring myself to leave.
He said it was nothing.
If it’s nothing, why is he receiving treatment? Why is he taking medication?
After that, whether they were speaking in low voices, only a murmur seeped out from inside.
“……I’ll let them know for now. A short break shouldn’t cause too much damage. But it can’t drag on too long.”
“Yeah.”
“But what is this place? I had no idea you had a house like this.”
“Hyung, you can go now.”
“Why are you kicking me out the second I get here? Geez, fine, I’m going.”
The man’s voice grew progressively clearer.
As footsteps approached the door, I quietly slipped my body outside.
But before I could close the door that had been left open, the man appeared first.
“Oh? And you are……?”
The man with short cropped hair spotted me through the gap in the door and narrowed his eyes. He looked guarded.
“Ah, hello. The door was open, so——”
I fumbled, gripping the door and shaking it slightly.
“I’m a friend of Wookyung’s.”
Probably……?
As I bowed my head in greeting while holding the door, the man stepped closer to the entrance and looked at my face.
“I’ve been managing Wookyung this whole time and I’ve never seen you before……”
And then, as if talking to himself, he muttered, “Does Wookyung even have friends?”
His tone implied there was no way that could possibly be true.
Did he really spend the last several years only working, without making a single friend?
If so, maybe the social skills I had barely managed to cultivate in him had completely scattered without a trace.
Come to think of it, the man’s face was familiar.
He was the manager who had helped Wookyung out of the movie theater that day.
While I was marveling at the existence of a celebrity’s manager, the man turned his head and called out:
“Wookyung, you’ve got a visitor!”
“……Who?”
Kwon Wookyung appeared with his arms crossed, looking tired.
I was still standing at the entrance — the manager, not yet fully convinced, was blocking the way in.
“Says they’re a friend. That right?”
Wookyung glanced back and forth between me standing in the doorway and the manager, then slowly let his arms fall, raised one hand to cover his face, and leaned against the wall, muttering something — but his voice was too low to hear.
