Chapter 9

The taxi stopped at the entrance of the alley.

Ju-shin had planned to part ways right there. That was until he saw the woman get out of the car and collapse onto the pavement after just two steps, committing such an embarrassing sight.

Ultimately having hailed the taxi back, he hoisted Woojung onto his back and walked through the neighborhood.

She seemed to eat well enough, so why had her growth stunted halfway? He felt like she had been slightly taller than him back when they were kids. A strong smell of soju vibrated through her breath, which had previously exhaled sweet sugar scents, and she even mixed drinks and flattered people pretty skillfully with the very hands that used to play in the dirt and hang from the pull-up bar. She was affectionate to everyone. Fairly and equally to everyone.

Watching her made irritation well up. The cheap smiles, the cheap touches, the cheap kindness. Yet his gaze was drawn to her. Like an irresistible force.

Was this also out of spite? Was the current situation of personally escorting her home because he hated the idea of her falling into Ha Yun-sang’s hands, and the surge of irritation welling up inside him, merely out of spite?

Checking the navigation app, Ju-shin entered a pathway heading toward higher ground. The road leading to her home repeated flights of stairs and slopes. Even the few streetlights were faded and murky, hardly serving any real purpose.

“……”

Was there no dormitory at the company? Lowering his chin to glare for no good reason at the crown of her head visible in his field of vision, a mumbling voice drifted into his ear.

“Oh… mister… I have a companion…”

Her two dangling arms fell limply in front of his sturdy shoulders, swaying like a paper doll.

“I’d be better than anyone. I’m handsome. I’m young and I’ve got plenty of money.”

“No way…”

Jung Woojung, who had been cackling against the back of his head, poked her neck out to get a look at the face of the one carrying her. Finding that difficult, her thrashing head bobbed and dropped heavily onto his shoulder. Her lips, leaning against his cheek, were so close they nearly touched his shirt collar.

As the even, shallow exhales of her breath brushed against the back of his neck, his prominently protruding Adam’s apple rose and fell slowly. The reason for his slightly quickened breathing had nothing to do with the act of walking.

Unaware of the situation and completely out of it, Jung Woojung chattered on and on quite eloquently.

“My companion… you have no idea how cool he is… without even knowing…”

“Which companion.”

His tone was tinged with an arrogant laugh. As if he already knew the name that was about to be brought up.

“Hehe… PR teeeam…”

“The PR team.”

“Ha!”

“Ha?”

“Yun!”

“……”

“Sang!”

Halt. The sound of dress shoes echoing through the alley stopped abruptly. Veins stood out on his smooth forehead.

“Should I just drop her?”

He should have just let her sleep on the pavement; he picked her up for nothing. What was so cool about Ha Yun-sang, who looked like a soggy rice cake anyway? Her taste in people was truly terrible, too.

Around the time her breathy, shy giggles subsided, the mobile phone navigation announced the end of its guidance. The place they arrived at was a village of studio apartments lined with similar villas.

Scanning the worn exterior, Ju-shin gave a couple of light, upward bumps with his hands supporting her thighs to wake Jung Woojung up.

“We’ve arrived, customer.”

“……”

“Officer…”

“Oh!”

Jerking her head up, Woojung abruptly bolted her leaning upper body upright. Her two legs crossed back and forth as if asking to be put down. The moment her feet touched the ground, he caught her body as it wobbled to topple over, and her bleary eyes looked up at the person holding her for a good long while.

“Oh…? Intern…? Why… are you here…? Hiccup!”

“You could say that, couldn’t you?”

Standing beneath the entrance stairs, Ju-shin still had a higher vantage point than Woojung.

With both hands shoved into his pants pockets, he gave a slight nod of his chin telling her to go inside, and Woojung copied him precisely. As if telling him to get going instead. Even while doing so, her open mouth didn’t stop mumbling.

“Senior… hiccup!… lacks strength so… hiccup!… sorry… hiccup!… she… …wishes…”

“……”

“Manager Kang, that bastard… why is he acting up… ugh! …hope you drop dead… hiccup!… don’t lose heart! Got it!”

Like hell he’s going to drop dead.

“I get it, so go on inside.”

“Yeah… have a good trip…”

The glass door, against which she leaned her slouched back, opened slightly and repeatedly closed. Even while struggling to keep her balance, Jung Woojung kept her post, fluttering and waving her hand lazily. Insisting as a matter of senior duty that she needed to watch her junior off.

In the end, she even stubbornly shoved his back. Though it was a force no stronger than a cat’s kick, Ju-shin readily turned on his heel.

The walk back down, which had been two people going up and was now just one going down, was exceptionally quiet. Were there always this many stairs? Though his body was lighter than when he had carried a person up, his feet felt heavy. It felt unsettling. Like he had left something behind.

……It’s barely the second floor, she surely made it up just fine.

“……”

Who cares.

Though he thought that way, the steps that came to an abrupt halt at the start of the slope showed no sign of moving forward.

After blankly watching the cars parked to the best of their abilities in the narrow alley, turning his body to face backward, and then eventually trying to move forward again, his feet ultimately retraced the path he had come.

He decided that if he was going to show off his goodwill, he needed to verify all the way to seeing her enter. For someone who had been acting like it was a mortal hassle, his expression wasn’t all that bad.

“……”

That was what he thought.

Until he saw Jung Woojung slumped over and asleep, wedged halfway inside the glass door.

“……Unbelievable.”

The dress shoes approaching the drunkard gave her shins a few gentle taps.

“Officer. Wake up.”

“……”

“I said wake up.”

“……Mm-gh.”

“Hey.”

Looking down askance, Ju-shin chewed on a low curse. Then, bending his knees, he scooped up the body sprawled on the floor with ease. The placid face of hers, burrowing into his arms in search of warmth, was a sight to behold. There wasn’t an ounce of vigilance in her.

If Driver Jung ahjussi knew his daughter was acting like this, he’d be beating his chest in despair. Bad habits could only be cured by pulling out the roots, after all.

Standing before the door, he guided her finger to the door lock, and she punched in the password out of sheer habit. The machine, which let out a few reluctant beeps, finally unlocked just as its patience ran out.

Briefly standing in the tiny entryway where she could barely plant her feet, Ju-shin dumped the woman he was carrying onto the bed as if tossing a sack, stripped off her shoes, and tossed them toward the hallway. Glancing down at the woman curling herself into a ball, he propped a hand on his waist and swept his gaze around the room.

“Damn this is tiny.”

A room integrated with the kitchen, barely measuring around eight pyeong (approx. 26 square meters). The interior of the studio apartment wasn’t much different from its worn-out exterior. A bed, a wardrobe, a bed. It was crammed with nothing special in the way of furniture, leaving zero breathing room. Security was also vulnerable.

An entryway anyone could easily wolly into, a flimsy front door, and a height far too low to be considered a second floor. With an outdoor air conditioning unit right in front of the window, it was a structure practically begging someone to step on it and break in. Its defenselessness was the spitting image of its owner.

Scanning the cramped room like an investigator without even needing to look around much, his eyes landed on a framed picture on the desk.

Little Jung Woojung, smiling bravely while holding a bouquet of flowers inside the frame. Judging by the school building in the background, it looked like a photo taken on her graduation day.

“Has she changed at all?”

She had been completely fearless even as a child, and she had grown up into the exact same kind of adult. Though could you even call this an adult?

Tsk. Clicking his tongue briefly, Ju-shin flicked the frame with the tip of his finger and set it back down. Next to it were neatly arranged books. They looked clean, as if meant purely for decoration.

Just as a small chuckle slipped from Ju-shin and he was about to head back, a particularly worn-out notebook caught his eye in a strange way. It was a diary.

The inscription warning never to open it only served to stoke his curiosity. After all, telling someone not to do something only makes them want to do it more.

His fingers, tapping against the desk, finally picked up the notebook. The streetlamp light leaking through the window illuminated the faded paper. Written with a thin pen, the words told the story of twenty-year-old Jung Woojung, mostly concerning her college life.

Impressions of her first independent living, the joys and hardships of life in Seoul, and the personalities of her newly made friends.

Up to the middle, she seemed to have spent relatively pleasant days, but as the pages turned further, only gloomy emotions were jotted down in brief snippets.

Things like it’s hard, it’s lonely, I’m scared, I need help but there’s no one to turn to. Checking the dates at the top, it was around that time. The period when she changed her number without a word and went off the grid.

“……”

His pitch-black eyes sank low.

Perhaps because she had painted over it with a ballpen out of complicated feelings, the paper soaked entirely in black looked like a burnt heart, or perhaps like black tears.

Flipping casually through the notebook—which had been left unrecorded and blank since around May—his hand stopped at the last page. Drunk-looking, staggering handwriting covered the entire page densely.

His indifferent gaze swept diagonally across the page to read the contents.

[The hell finally ended right at the edge of my twenties. I praise myself for holding out stubbornly. For some reason, winter in Seoul felt even colder. I miss Dad. I changed my phone number. I can finally breathe. After making such a fuss and changing my number, that bastard will probably keep quiet for a while, too.]

The edge of twenty, hell, phone number, breathing room, that bastard.

Mulling over the disjointed sentences, Ju-shin connected the prominent keywords.

“……So.”

A chilling, unusual gleam spun in his eyes as he muttered low.

“She changed her number because of some asshole?”