Chapter 10

The message continued.

[My only regret is.]

The sentences that started again had exceptionally thick and bold letters. The handwriting was neat, as if they had pressed down each letter while burdened with many thoughts.

[That I can no longer receive that child’s phone calls.]

Kim Ju-shin, twenty-seven and no longer a child, quietly traced the rough surface of the paper.

[I want to apologize. To say that I had no choice but to push even you away because it was too hard, and that it was the best I could do back then. If I had been that honest, you would have understood and said, “Is that so.” There’s no way to do that now, though…….]

“…….”

[See, I told you we should meet once. You played hard to get a lot kekekke]

He wanted to meet. Desperately enough that you couldn’t even imagine. He endured every day hoping for just that. If there was a reason he still couldn’t step forward easily, it was because he was scared.

What if you already knew what Kim Sang-ho had done, and what if you shuddered upon realizing he was a member of that household?

Such assumptions made him hesitate. They blocked his voice and hid his identity.

[Anyway! Sorry. And thank you.]

His heart beat hard enough to make him feel nauseous.

[If it’s fate, there will be a day we meet again.]

A complexly tangled set of emotions churned throughout his body. It felt like anger, like sorrow, and like ecstasy.

“If you’re grateful, you should repay it.”

Ju-shin stared fixedly at the peacefully sleeping face.

“Can’t just take it for free.”

Around the early summer when he was fourteen years old. He had suffered through a terrible fever.

It was peculiarly that kind of period. It was a very annoying illness called undifferentiated fever, where fevers boiled and subsided without reason. With no one to accept it, he wanted to indulge in a childish whim he had never tried before, which inevitably made him press that child’s number. A nasty and mischievous illness.

When heat filled the brain, judgment naturally became clouded. His heart grew weak, and his patience weakened along with it. After giving it justification, his heart grew impatient beyond endurance. Right then, he left the house and found a public telephone booth.

Jung Woojung’s number remained clear in his mind even after four years. He didn’t even need to search for the memo he had written down. The monotonous connection tone played for a long time. The longer the signal lasted, the more anxious he grew. Because of the thought that the number might have changed.

And,

-Hello.

There was such a moment. The moment a slender voice existing within faint memories tickled his ears, falling under the illusion that it was the entire world. A bizarre moment gripped by the hallucination that the night-bound surroundings had grown bright.

-Hello?

The call he had hesitated over for four years ended just like that. The world plunged back into darkness.

He put the receiver back in its place and sank down sliding. When he pressed with his hand against his beating heart that pierced his lungs painfully, a ragged breath burst out. Only then did he realize he had been holding his breath. The pain squeezing his solar plexus was indescribably agonizing.

Though it was a voice he hadn’t heard in a long time, he couldn’t mistake it. Because his senses had reacted first. Jung Woojung. Kim Ju-shin’s first and last friend. Therefore, his only friend.

Anything was hard the first time. Once he started, his hands shook like a sick person just at the sight of a public phone booth. The first time was truly a terrifying thing. Both the power it held and its meaning.

And the time he found the public telephone again was that year in December, on a night when violent first snow fell.

Jung Woojung’s voice, which reached him only near the cut-off, was muffled, and she cried until dawn broke. Only at the end of the call did he know. That child was at a funeral hall right now, and had lost her mother.

Ever since that day, Jung Woojung gladly accepted the calls of the unilateral caller. Although the frequency gradually slowed down because she entered her main family home, there was always hope that she could contact them anytime.

Growing briskly over five years, that hope inflated its size only to extinguish vainly when Woojung’s number disappeared without warning. Just like a candle fluttering and creating a shadow called hope, blown out by a brief wind, vanishing just as futilely. Leaving behind only a distant sense of loss like a pitch-black burned wick.

Ju-shin, waking from his reverie, put the notebook back in its place and lowered his gaze to the bedside. Jung Woojung giggled repeatedly even while sleeping, wondering what kind of dream she was having.

Dark energy rippled in the pupils that blankly examined her grinning face. It felt like a hot craving, or like a damp desire.

Pausing for a long time and glaring as if to devour her, he blocked his field of vision by pulling the scattered duvet up to the top of her head. He didn’t forget to tightly close the curtains where streetlight leaked.

A mumbled sound, unsure whether it was whining or laughing, leaked through the duvet. Putting on his shoes slowly, Ju-shin gave a dry laugh.

“Understood. I’ll get going safely.”

Stepping out of the villa, the evening air, which had grown a notch cooler, struck her cheeks.

Her footsteps returning after double-checking the curtained window were quite light.

Chirp, chirp.

“…….”

Round eyes flew open. The twittering of the sparrow sent a chill down her spine. Saliva swallowed heavily down a dry throat. Her heart beat slowly. Please, please, praying inwardly with blurry eyes, Woojung checked her phone and sprang up with a gasp.

“Am I even human?”

Struggling against a hangover the entire weekend, she had completely forgotten to set her alarm.

Are you really even a creature with a human soul? An office worker on the brink of being late moved at superhuman speed. Standing under the shower, she washed her face with the hair-washing water and brushed her teeth. Blech, a dry heave brought stinging tears to her eyes.

It’s always like this. Whenever she drank, it was invariably this way. The magic moment of opening her eyes to find herself on her own bedroom bed, despite always vowing never to drink until her memory blacked out. If her learning capacity was this poor, she might genuinely be an animal.

Boldly skipping the extravagant process of drying her hair and frantically pulling on her pants, Woojung pressed a hand to her forehead as a scene suddenly came to mind. As she finished zipping up, a heavy sigh spilled out as if it might cave in the floor.

‘My, name, is, Jung, Woo, jung, even backward, it’s, Jung, Woojung!’

“……Damn it.”

She had gone and chanted it again. The Jung Woojung theme song. As Kim Ju-shin came to mind looking at her somewhat pitifully, a wretched sense of shame wriggled inside her.

It was her first company dinner, so she wanted to set a good example. She had intended to show the qualifications of a reliable and cool senior—taking care of the guy if he got drunk, putting him in a taxi, and snapping a photo of the license plate to text it. Her plan had been just that…….

Separating from Kang Jin-sung went well, but her plan was ruined because she got stuck at the team leader’s table and ended up in charge of making somaek. A strict voice from Department Head Go seemed to faintly cross her mind, and Kang Jin-sung seemed to have sneered too, but nothing was as clear as river water after rain.

When she opened her eyes from mixing somaek, it was noon on Saturday. Instead of cleanly cut-off memories, an unfamiliar ceiling came into view, and her unwashed body reeked of pork belly.

Above all, how she had gotten home was a mystery. It felt like she had been hanging from somewhere high, but it was hard to tell if it was a dream or reality.

“No way…….”

She couldn’t possibly have been piggybacked home by Assistant Manager Ha, could she……? The duty of taking care of her when she was drunk used to naturally fall to Ha Yoon-sang. Her shoes were neatly arranged, though—could he possibly have come all the way inside her room……? What had the state of her room been like? Tearing at her hair as she stood leaning against the train wall, Woojung straightened up at the announcement that they would arrive shortly.

Mixed in with the rushing crowd, she walked diligently. Deciding to ask about the details after getting to work.

Leaving the subway exit and rounding a large building, the final crosswalk came into view. If she just walked quickly, it looked like she might barely manage to avoid being late.

It was when she was tapping her feet and looking back and forth between her watch and the traffic light.

Recognizing the driver of a vehicle making a right turn from the opposite lane, Woojung instinctively raised a finger.

“Hey!”

Even viewed past the passenger seat, the person with overwhelming presence was definitely Kim Ju-shin. Whether their eyes meeting wasn’t just her own delusion, he greeted her by folding the corners of his eyes into a smile. Woojung smiled back accordingly. It was a fawning smile meant to convey that since he saw her, he should give her a ride.

However, Kim Ju-shin had never lived up to expectations. This was the case this time as well. Chasing after the rear of the sedan as it slipped away without a shred of hesitation, Woojung glared.

“Does the car wear out if you give someone a ride? Such a stingy bastard.”

Before she could leisurely hurl insults, the traffic light changed. Pressing down her wind-blown, flipped-back bangs with her palm, Team Leader Jung sprinted toward the office building.

Watching Woo-shin grow smaller in the side mirror, Ju-shin tapped lightly, tap, tap, on the steering wheel he held loosely.

“Find someone for me.”

Someone? Kwon Seon-o’s questioning voice flowed from the vehicle speaker connected via Bluetooth.

“Ah. Is it not a person?”

-I’d prefer it if it were a person.

Chuckling at the blunt response, Ju-shin rested his elbow on the window frame and slowly stroked his lower lip.

“Everything entangled with Jung Woojung since she turned twenty. Regardless of gender or age.”

The half-lowered eyelids slowly lifted.

“I need to know.”