Just then, a horn blared outside — whether Seongjun didn’t hear the question or chose not to answer, no response came. It was strange to think that a man who seemed to want for nothing was deceiving the people around him. Yuhyeon stole a glance at Seongjun, who had his eyes fixed on the road ahead. The shadows under his eyes were dark and deep.
Something did seem to be weighing on him.
The remark about having things on his mind drifted back through Yuhyeon’s thoughts. Why did his gaze keep drifting to the tired face of this man? Yuhyeon opened his mouth, partly to keep the conversation going.
“Did something happen? You look exhausted….”
“I haven’t slept properly in about a week. It must be showing.”
“Yes…. Quite a bit.”
“Even so, I’m not at the point of dozing off at the wheel, so you can put your hands down.”
He’d been caught gripping the seatbelt tightly. Seongjun had been keeping his eyes on the road the whole time — how had he noticed? Yuhyeon carefully lowered his hands onto his thighs and studied Seongjun’s face. Fortunately, his expression showed no great change, so it didn’t seem as though the gesture had bothered him.
“Something got tangled up in my work. I’m sorting it out.”
“I hope it resolves well.”
Something tangled up. It was the kind of remark that invited curiosity, but Yuhyeon swallowed it and let the conversation close there. Trying to satisfy his curiosity might lead him to bring up something impolite all over again.
Before long, Gyeongwon Station came into view. Yuhyeon started rustling around to get ready to get out, and the car eased to a stop at the roadside.
“Take your time.”
He had to get the things from the back seat too, so his movements grew fairly busy. Seongjun told him to take his time, that he would wait — and thanks to that, Yuhyeon was able to collect all the ingredients from the back at his own pace before bowing his head.
“Thank you for the ride.”
“Take care going home.”
Seongjun accepted the farewell and set the car back in motion. The car picked up speed and was quickly out of sight, and Yuhyeon, driven by the single thought that he ought to get going before the bags got any heavier, started walking toward his apartment.
I didn’t know the owner was this kind.
Seongjun’s build was large enough to obscure Yuhyeon entirely, which gave him a somewhat imposing air. On top of that, his face carried little expression and stayed dry and closed-off, which made him feel difficult to approach.
But seeing a man like that extend warmth first made Yuhyeon let down the guard he’d held up around Seongjun — the awkwardness and unfamiliarity that had kept him at a distance. Thanks to Seongjun, he’d saved on the fare and cut down his travel time, and his steps felt lighter for it.
Yuhyeon’s studio apartment wasn’t far from Gyeongwon Station. Past the busy commercial strip and into a lane that climbed a steep hill, the familiar cluster of single-room buildings came into view.
The building Yuhyeon lived in was close to the station, yet old enough that the rent came in on the cheaper side. The inside was as worn as the outside — wallpaper peeling, mold creeping in — but it wasn’t uninhabitable. The building that some wouldn’t spare a second glance at was Yuhyeon’s only home.
Arriving at the front door, Yuhyeon set down the bags he’d been carrying. He needed both hands free to fish the key out of his trouser pocket. Click — the moment the door opened, he stepped right over the threshold and slipped off his shoes. Past the entryway cabinet that barely left room for one person to stand, he stepped into the interior and a small, cozy space opened up around him. Yuhyeon dragged the ingredients over to the refrigerator.
“This one still has some time left on it — if I freeze it, it’ll last longer.”
Not wanting the precious ingredients to go to waste, he put the raw chicken in the freezer. The refrigerator was old and low-spec, so even the freezer compartment never got cold enough to be fully reliable. Bags of ice he’d put in would be half-melted before long, which made him uneasy, but it was still better than the main compartment. Yuhyeon took out a pencil and reached for the notepad stuck to the refrigerator door.
[ Refrigerator: salad (10/8), cheese (10/12), smoked salmon (10/9), seafood (10/9)
Freezer: beef tartare (10/22 *make miyeokguk), salmon head (10/16 *eat soon, told to hurry) ]
It was a sheet for ingredients that didn’t come with expiry labels, where he’d jotted down what the head chef had told him. Being careful not to knock the page loose, Yuhyeon added the raw chicken, assorted fruit, and kiwis.
He’d finished putting things away and was about to take out his pajamas to get ready to wash up when a clear knock came from the direction of the front door. 10:30 PM. Far too late for anyone to be paying a visit.
There’s no one who would come.
He racked his brain for any appointment he might have forgotten, but no one came to mind. Could it be the landlady? But then again, he was keeping up with his rent — barely, but consistently. There was no use speculating when he couldn’t think of anyone with a reason to come knocking at this hour of the night. He’d been about to ignore it and get in the wash, but the nagging feeling turned him around.
“Who’s there?”
Yuhyeon called out, standing at the front door. The person on the other side would have done better to identify themselves and get to the point, but for some reason, no answer came back.
“…Who’s there?”
He asked again, thinking perhaps they hadn’t heard.
— It’s me.
“Hyung?”
The voice belonged to Kim Gyeongjin, an older acquaintance from Yuhyeon’s neighborhood. They had met five years ago through a part-time kitchen assistant job, and he was a year older than Yuhyeon. He was also the one who had recommended this place when Yuhyeon had been looking for a cheap apartment. But after Gyeongjin declared he was going to start studying for the civil service exam, the closeness between them had gradually faded. They lived close enough to practically trip over each other, but Yuhyeon was caught up with part-time work and Gyeongjin was consumed by exam prep. It was in the middle of that drifting that he had shown up now.
Yuhyeon hurried to open the door so Gyeongjin could come in from outside. As the door swung open and cut through the air, a silhouette came into view. It was around that same moment that Yuhyeon’s mouth, which had been about to ask what brought him by without any warning, fell shut instead.
“Hyung, what happened to your face!”
He forgot it was late and let the words come out loud — Gyeongjin’s face was that much of a mess. Yuhyeon clapped a hand over his mouth and looked Gyeongjin over in a hurry. His lip was split — likely from being hit — and his cheek was bruised a deep, dark purple. Given that his clothes were clean, it wasn’t the kind of injury that came from a trip or a tumble.
“I wasn’t going to say anything so you wouldn’t worry, but I figured you needed to know in case he came here.”
“What?”
Even though Yuhyeon had stepped aside to let him in, Gyeongjin didn’t cross the threshold. He just stood there in the corridor, intending to say only what needed to be said. Whatever he had come to tell him, he wasn’t finding it easy to get out. Gyeongjin’s face had been rigid the whole time, having come here late at night. Yuhyeon sensed that whatever he was about to bring up was not going to be light.
“Your father…. He seems to have found out you’re living here. He was yelling at the landlady, trying to get her to hand over the deposit.”
“…What?”
“Since you weren’t picking up his calls, it looked like he was trying to find another way to get money out of the situation. I happened to catch it and stopped him, but….”
“So that means — did my dad do that to your face?”
Yuhyeon had moved away and gone off the grid without his biological father knowing. He had no idea how the man had tracked down the address, but the thought of it made it hard to breathe. And if he’d been yelling at the landlady — that meant he had also figured out that she lived in unit 301, right above him. In an instant, goosebumps broke out all over his body and a chill ran through him. Yuhyeon steadied his rattled nerves and reached toward Gyeongjin’s injured face, but Gyeongjin took a step back.
“Don’t worry about this. I just came to warn you. I’ll be heading off.”
“Oh — okay….”
Watching Gyeongjin’s back as he turned and left having said only what he came to say, Yuhyeon was flooded with a mix of guilt and shame. Getting hit for something that had nothing to do with him — anyone would have had reason to be furious — and yet he hadn’t added a single word of resentment. Which only made it harder to face him.
He’s nothing short of an enemy….
It had been about a year since Yuhyeon had deliberately cut contact with his biological father. After falling into gambling, the man had run up debts — and turned to Yuhyeon to pay them off. His circumstances were already far from comfortable, and handing over money on top of that naturally led Yuhyeon to struggle with basic living costs.
Deciding that staying as things were wasn’t going to work — for his own sake if nothing else — he had stopped giving him a share of his wages some time ago and blocked his number as well. For a month after that, the man had come to his front door and pleaded — and eventually resorted to threats backed by violence. Yuhyeon had held out as long as he could before moving, but in the end, his location had been found out anyway.
What face am I supposed to show the landlady now….
The one saving grace was that the landlady already knew something of Yuhyeon’s situation. The day he moved into this studio, worried that his father might come looking for him, the first thing he’d done was give the landlady a heads-up. His father had a tendency toward violence when money was involved, and he’d decided the people around him needed to know in advance. Laying his own shame bare in front of others was mortifying, but the things his father had done were too large to keep quiet about. What his father had done in the past had left wounds in Yuhyeon that had never fully healed.
His biological father had gone to someone who had been Yuhyeon’s closest friend since school and borrowed money from them. If anyone heard this, they’d probably shake their hands and tell him to stop exaggerating — that it was impossible. And yet his own father had done exactly that.
