My whole body felt like it was drifting — like dust floating through empty air. My mind was hazy, as though someone had taken hold of my brain and was kneading it, and I couldn’t tell what was a dream and what was real.
A precarious feeling wrapped itself around every inch of me, like an aquatic plant with no ground to take root in, left to drift.
I forced my heavy eyelids open, and the blurry view gradually sharpened until it came into focus. A familiar ceiling came into view — I was definitely in my room.
I remembered going out to celebrate my mom’s birthday, coming back empty-handed, and collapsing into sleep — but everything after that was murky.
My memories had gaps scattered through them, like someone had rummaged through my head and left everything in a mess. I hadn’t been drunk — I’d been completely sober — so it struck me as strange that something like this could happen.
“Hey, Ha Yun-su. Snap out of it.”
A familiar voice pushed through and I turned my head, only to meet Cha Jae-woo’s eyes — dark circles sitting heavily beneath them.
The haggard look on him was worse than mine, and before I could properly be taken aback, I blinked a few times trying to get a read on the situation, then pushed myself upright and leaned back against the headboard.
“How long was I asleep?”
I opened my mouth and asked without thinking, and my voice came out cracked and grating. My throat stung like I had a throat cold, and I furrowed my brow — and Cha Jae-woo handed me a glass of water.
I swallowed a sip of the water he’d given me, and the sandpaper scratchiness in my throat eased a little.
Ah — I tested my voice with a hum, and it didn’t crack the way it had before.
But even though I could speak somewhat normally again, I couldn’t quite find the words. I sat there staring blankly into the air for a moment, and Cha Jae-woo spoke first.
“You came home like that, couldn’t get up, and slept the whole day.”
“……Is that so?”
No wonder my body felt heavy. Standing in front of my mom’s door for over an hour waiting for her had clearly taken its toll — it seemed like I’d come down with body aches.
I hadn’t worn an outer layer then, thinking I’d be getting in the car quickly — so it wasn’t all that surprising. I’d always been susceptible to the cold, and I caught colds at the slightest thing.
The reason I’d been hit harder than usual was probably mental. Even so, she’d been the one who suggested we eat together — I hadn’t expected my mom to stand me up like that.
At the same time, I found it a little absurd. If I was being honest, it wasn’t as if I’d had absolutely zero sense that something like this might happen.
From the moment my mom agreed so readily to having dinner together, there had been a nagging feeling. My mom and I weren’t close by any stretch — we barely kept in contact.
And yet I was the one who chose to ignore that — so if it was a case of reaping what you sow, I had nothing to say.
“I made porridge, so eat some and go back to sleep if you want.”
Cha Jae-woo’s face said he had a lot he wanted to ask — but it seemed like he was holding back out of consideration for my state.
I was out of it too, and I didn’t feel like laying out the whole story of that day in detail. Even if I did talk about it now, it would amount to nothing more than venting.
Still, I owed at least a bare minimum of courtesy to the person who had stayed by my side without a wink of sleep.
“……Thank you.”
My voice barely came out — it practically sank into the floor. At that faint, fragile sound, Cha Jae-woo turned away without a word. Whether he hadn’t heard it, or heard it and chose to pretend otherwise — I didn’t know.
Through the wide-open door drifted a savory, rich smell that tickled my nose. It seemed Cha Jae-woo was warming up the porridge.
The appetizing smell should have stirred my appetite — but the exhaustion was heavier. In the end, I fell asleep to the sound of the porridge bubbling away.
***
“Yun-su, are you not feeling well? You don’t look great.”
At Deputy Ye-jin’s question, I smiled with just my eyes over my mask.
“It’s just a cold — I’ll be over it soon enough.”
I’d even worn a mask to hide how rough I looked, so I couldn’t say I wasn’t sick — I gave a vague answer, and a look of concern passed over Deputy Ye-jin’s face.
“The temperature swings have been intense lately — perfect weather for catching a cold.”
“They really have.”
I was glad she didn’t ask how I’d ended up catching one.
Not that it would’ve mattered — I could’ve made something up — but right now I was running on empty, and I didn’t have the energy to spare even for that.
In the meantime, Deputy Ye-jin had stepped briefly to her desk and returned with something in hand.
“It’s vitamins. It’s nothing much, but take these and get well soon.”
“Thank you, Deputy.”
I accepted the vitamins quietly, though honestly it wasn’t anything serious. At first I’d been hit hard enough that it felt like body aches — but by now I’d mostly recovered, just a slightly swollen throat remaining.
I was mentally drained, not physically in bad shape.
The one who was actually pushing their body to a worrying degree wasn’t me — it was someone else entirely. I found myself glancing over without thinking and watching Cha Jae-woo moving busily.
Before I knew it, Deputy Ye-jin had gone over to Cha Jae-woo and was holding out the same vitamins she’d given me. But Cha Jae-woo shook his head and declined. Very like him — he doesn’t eat things given to him by others. I watched him for a moment, then put the vitamin in my own mouth.
Swallowing the tablet and liquid vitamin together, a sourness that went beyond tangy spread across my tongue. Not a flavor I personally enjoyed — but I swallowed it quietly for Deputy Ye-jin’s sake.
“Jae-woo said he’d pass — he said he doesn’t like sour things.”
“Oh, is that right?”
It wasn’t that Cha Jae-woo disliked sour things — it was that he didn’t eat things given to him by others. But he apparently had just enough social awareness not to say that outright.
Then again, even on my mom’s birthday, he’d helped me when I was scrambling over a restaurant reservation and even came along to pick out a gift. The memory of that day came back to me, and I absently checked my phone.
Since that day, not a single call had come from my mom. Not even a message.
She’d agreed to have dinner with me and then stood me up without a word — you’d think she’d at least apologize, but there was nothing.
I thought I’d let go of all my expectations of my mom that day — but the fact that I still felt disappointed told me I was truly hopeless.
***
It seemed to have weighed on him, the fact that I’d spent that whole day sick — because Cha Jae-woo stopped practically living at the studio the way he’d been doing, and started coming home consistently.
At first I worried that his work had hit another wall — but seeing him go back to the studio after having dinner with me, it didn’t seem like that was it.
This made it hard to tell who was helping whom — and it left me feeling oddly unsettled.
In my head, I knew Cha Jae-woo was pushing himself too hard. But at the same time, there was a contradictory part of me that wanted him to keep staying by my side like this.
Then, without realizing it, I flinched at my own thoughts. I felt unsettled by what I’d just been thinking.
Wanting Cha Jae-woo to keep being beside me — what kind of nonsense was that.
“……After how long we’ve lived together, and this is where I am.”
This was what made long histories dangerous.
After the breakup, I thought I’d successfully built my own space — but the moment we started living together again, that boundary had crumbled.
This won’t do. Thinking that, I turned it over in my mind the whole way home from work. Maybe it was too late — but shouldn’t I separate our living situations now, even now? I was wrestling with that thought as I took off my shoes in the entryway.
“I’m home.”
I turned my head toward where I could sense a presence, out of habit — and flinched.
Because standing there was Cha Jae-woo with nothing on from the waist up, wearing only his pants, clearly having just stepped out of the shower.
Water dripped from his still-damp hair, running down the precisely sculpted muscles of his torso — the kind you’d expect to see carved from marble.
It felt less like looking at a person’s body and more like looking at a finely made work of art.
It was a body I was, in a way, familiar with. Up until a few months ago, I’d seen it and touched it almost every day. But now that we’d become complete strangers, I didn’t know where to look — it was awkward.
“You’re back?”
“……Yeah.”
Unlike me, who had gotten flustered for no real reason, Cha Jae-woo seemed completely unbothered.
Then again — the Cha Jae-woo with no memory of us dating wouldn’t care whether I was walking around in just my pants, or nothing at all.
“Still — does this guy have no awareness that I’m gay?”
The fact that we’d dated meant I liked men. And that meant living together like this — who knew what could happen.
But Cha Jae-woo either trusted me too much, or had zero awareness that we’d ever been together — he didn’t just seem unbothered, he seemed completely at ease.
That carelessness grated on me for no real reason.
Enough that I felt the urge to make him feel what it was like to be betrayed by something you thought was safe.
Lately, Cha Jae-woo had started to get under my skin and occupy my thoughts again the way he used to — while he, for his part, seemed to have no regard whatsoever for the fact that we were living together. This was not a good sign.
I had an ominous feeling that the same thing as before might repeat itself.
Maybe it was the aftermath of being sick recently — my thoughts were running toward the extreme, and I knew it. But like a splinter lodged under a fingernail, I couldn’t just let it go.
A clearer boundary between Cha Jae-woo and me was necessary. That was the conclusion I came to.
I need to start seeing someone new.
