CHDY 4

Jaeon relaxed his shoulders. As he handed over the umbrella, he looked down at the man’s hand touching the handle. His hands are big, he thought, as if for the first time.

“What time do you get off work? I’ll use it and bring it right back.”

“No, I can just use the staff one, so you can bring it back slowly in a few days.”

The man stood there for a moment, touching the back of his hair, seemingly lost in thought.

“Then I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He said, giving the umbrella a little shake. Jaeon nodded in spite of himself.

A wave of tension swept over him and passed. Jaeon stepped back towards the chair in the corner and slumped down. He tried to stand as much as possible, conscious of the manager who disliked him sitting, but this time it was unavoidable.

“…….”

After blinking his eyes for a few minutes, he rummaged through his pocket. He took out the long pack of caramel the man had given him. He stared at it for a moment, then carefully peeled back the wrapper. He took out one piece and, with a rustle, removed the inner wrapper as well.

A sweet plum scent wafted up. Jaeon placed it on his palm and observed it intently. He watched the ordinary piece of caramel as if it were a rare mineral.

He picked up the caramel with his index finger and thumb and placed it on his tongue. A sweet aroma filled his tongue as it slowly melted. Chewing, he slowly blinked his eyelids. In his mind, the image of the man he had seen today passed by like a film in a projector.

The way the bright blue baseball cap suited his fair skin. The way the piercings in his earlobes glistened, wet from the rain. The clear glint in his eyes, and even the scent of his perfume, which felt particularly distinct, perhaps due to the high humidity. He recalled every single detail vividly, without any distortion.

‘Then I’ll see you tomorrow.’

It was an ordinary phrase. He did not know why common words felt so special when they came from the man’s mouth.

Then,

I’ll see you,

tomorrow.

He murmured the words the man had left behind, breaking them up. Holding onto the lingering resonance of the utterance, Jaeon looked out the window. For the first time, the damp and gloomy weather did not feel unpleasant.

Before he knew it, the time was past 3 in the afternoon. Waiting for the person who was later than usual, Jaeon let out an unwitting sigh. Was it because their words had been exchanged like a promise to meet? He found himself waiting even more eagerly today. He also really wanted to tell him that the caramel was delicious.

He peeked towards the entrance whenever he had a chance. His senses were on high alert at the slightest sign of a person. His heart would drop at the sound of the door opening, only to calm down after confirming it was not him. The same repetition gradually induced fatigue. Just as his nerves were becoming dull to the comings and goings of customers, the man appeared. It was an hour before Jaeon’s shift ended.

“Thanks to you lending it to me, I got around comfortably. Thank you.”

As soon as he entered, he held out the umbrella he had borrowed. Jaeon accepted what he had lent with a passive response of, “No problem.”

Today, the man was wearing black-rimmed glasses. It blended with his slightly long hairstyle, creating a different atmosphere. It did not look stuffy; rather, it was intellectual. Today, for some reason, he looked not like an ordinary student, but like someone who worked as a model.

Next to the man was another person. Jaeon knew at first glance that the person who had been holding his arm since they entered was an omega.

The two people standing side by side looked very good together, like a couple who worked as models. They fit together like pieces of a single puzzle, without any sense of disharmony.

“Ah, my head hurts…….”

The omega standing next to him leaned his head against the man’s chest. The man lightly patted the back of his companion, who was complaining of a headache.

“I told you to just rest.”

“I don’t want to, I’m not leaving your side, hyung…….”

The two moved as if they were one body. From picking out items to placing them on the counter, their attached bodies did not separate. Jaeon could not look up properly and focused only on the task at hand. Still, they kept entering the corner of his vision.

The man often came like this with someone else. The last time he was accompanied by a woman, the atmosphere had not been this intimate. Judging from various circumstances, it seemed this male omega was the person he was currently dating.

“Yoowon-ah, move away a bit. I need to pay.”

The man seemed a little troubled by the whining and clinging behavior. He soothed his lover and took out his wallet with one hand. His lover continued to playfully bother him. The man told him to stop but did not push him away. He managed to take out his card and inserted it into the terminal. While the payment was being processed, his lover pressed even more boldly against him and whispered something in his ear.

Jaeon felt himself shrinking for no reason. It was because of the paranoid thought that they might be talking about his clothes. The clothes he was wearing were clean, having been washed, but they had a worn-out feel as he had been wearing them since middle school. Even though he knew the clothes he wore underneath were not very visible because of his uniform, the pointless thoughts did not stop.

“Ah.”

The man, who was leaving after paying, suddenly turned back. Jaeon, who had been pulling at the shabby end of his sleeve as if to hide it, quickly raised his head.

“Did you like it?”

“……Pardon?”

He did not immediately understand what he was asking. The gazes of the two people fell on the dazed Jaeon.

“Ah…… ah, yes, that, it was delicious.”

He finally answered, realizing he was talking about the caramel. The man’s lips curled up as if satisfied.

“It’s surprisingly addictive, isn’t it?”

“Ah…… yes.”

Jaeon forced an awkward smile. Next to the man, his lover was slumping, with an expression that said he wanted to leave as soon as possible.

“Well then…… get home safely.”

Jaeon offered a farewell first so that they could leave. The man, who lacked a bit of tact, smiled faintly and replied after a few seconds of pause.

“See you again.”

Jaeon nodded awkwardly and replied, “Yes.” The man, who had been standing there looking at Jaeon until then, turned and left the convenience store. Just before he went out the open door, his companion glanced back at Jaeon once.

Left alone, Jaeon worked as usual. When that work was done, he did another job, and when that job was done, he did yet another. By the time he returned home after finishing all his given tasks, his limbs were limp.

He laid his exhausted body in bed. He was hungry, but he did not want to eat anything. The act of getting up and moving his hands and feet itself was repulsive. Even the act of chewing and swallowing food felt bothersisome.

Closing his eyes did not mean sleep would come. In the dark room, fatigue was riding on his lying body, crushing him. Jaeon, who had not moved a muscle, exhaled a long breath through his nose. He opened his eyes as if surrendering. It was a dawn where darkness had settled in layers.

When he opened his phone, it was blinding. He stared blankly at the screen with his dazzled eyes. His fingers moved first, as if carrying out a task he had intended to do for a long time.

Once he made up his mind, it was easier than eating cold porridge. Just by entering the name into the search bar of a social networking service, he immediately found the man’s account.

After a brief hesitation, he tapped the screen one by one. He was stunned within a few minutes of looking around because he found out the man’s age. The man was a full two years younger than Jaeon, who was twenty-three. His behavior was so mature that he had not thought he would be younger. He had vaguely assumed he was the same age or older.

His account was neatly organized. Most of the uploaded photos were works that were presumed to be drawn by him. Photos from exhibitions or of objects and landscapes also occasionally caught his eye.

He thought there might be a picture taken with his lover, but there was not. Surprisingly, there was only one picture of himself uploaded.

Jaeon brought up the only picture of the man on the screen. He stared at the screen glowing in the darkness. Since his surroundings were dark, it felt like he was being sucked in, like watching a movie in a theater. By staring intently, he had the illusion of being in the place in the photo.

The man in the photo had shorter hair than he did now. He was smiling with only his side profile showing towards the camera, as if in the middle of a conversation. His nape was clean. He wondered if it was before he got the tattoo, but he soon realized it was the opposite side from where the tattoo was.

Jaeon kept looking at the same picture. He only looked at the man’s side profile. He took a screenshot without realizing it, then his heart pounded like a guilty person’s, and he turned off the screen. As if escaping from a crime scene, he pushed his phone far away and pulled the blanket up to the top of his head.

He did not feel right. Making a promise to himself not to enter the man’s account again, Jaeon squeezed his eyes shut.

The promise did not even last a few days properly. On a day the man did not show up at the convenience store, he became curious about how he was doing and entered his account. By the time he came to his senses, it had become a daily routine to access the account at least once a day.

It was always the same state every time he entered, but it did not matter. Jaeon just liked to savor the traces the man had left there. That alone was satisfying enough.

He listened to the songs the man had shared until they were worn out. The other day, he was humming that song while working when the man came in, and he was startled. At that time, he kept his mouth shut and pretended not to know. He treated him like a person who still knew nothing about him. While ringing him up, he felt a sense of guilt, as if he had secretly taken a part of him, and a strange excitement stemming from the one-sidedly shortened distance.

Of course, the private life the man shared was only a very small part of him. Jaeon knew it was not just a part, but more like a crumb. It was just that even a crumb was fine. It was a private life he would never have known if not for this method, and perhaps for that reason, just a little peek made him feel like he had gotten to know him much more.

As time passed, the snooping expanded. Jaeon started looking not only at the man’s account but also at the accounts of those around him.

The man’s friends, like any other college students, posted many pictures. They shared every moment of meeting various people, eating trendy food, and going wherever they wanted.

While looking, Jaeon felt a sense of freedom and normalcy that he had forgotten. It was a daily life that one forgets when cooped up indoors all day, and it existed there.

Surprisingly, pictures of the man were found more often on his friends’ accounts. He could see that while Jaeon was restocking at the convenience store and handling payments at the PC bang, the man was studying at school and spending time with his friends outside.

The man looked like the main character in any photo. The cliché expression ‘shining youth’ suited him without being trite. He himself was like the shining youth from a movie.

“Hah…….”

Jaeon straightened his back in the middle of doing his hand laundry. His whole body was stiff from crouching for so long. After showering and doing the laundry, he quickly prepared a meal. He finished a simple meal of rice in leftover seaweed soup, and before spreading out his bedding, he started cleaning the floor.

Belying the season of spring, the room was ice-cold. When the sun went down, the indoors still felt like winter. Jaeon, who was wiping the floor with a rag, repeatedly clenched and unclenched his hands. After finishing the laundry with cold hands and then wiping the floor, his joints felt stiff and did not move well.

He shook his hands as if to shake them off and wiped the floor again. He had wiped it last night and this morning, but it still looked messy. Even without dirty filth or dust, it was a room that looked far from clean.

He found an unidentifiable stain left by the previous tenant and fought a battle with it. Jaeon checked the time, and at the same time, the strength drained from his shoulders. It was already getting close to 3 in the morning.

He lay down in bed with his body completely drained. However, his exhausted and limp hand moved on its own. He lifted his phone as if it were his last routine of the day. As a habit, Jaeon looked through the man’s account and his friends’ accounts. Luckily, he found a recently uploaded picture of the man on one of the accounts.

It was a picture of him looking down at his phone in a place with a nice atmosphere. Judging from the alcohol on the table, the lighting interior in the background, and the night view, it seemed to be a space like a rooftop bar.

Jaeon imagined a place he had never been to. He imagined what the man would be like there. Because it was full of unknowns, his imagination was not smooth, as if the brakes were on.

The post was from an hour ago. An hour ago, he might still be here, he thought, looking at the tagged location. An imagination of going there and running into him as if by chance unfolded. Snapping back to his senses, Jaeon put down his phone. He found his own gloomy and pathetic desires ridiculous and disgusting.

Do I want to be friends with that person?

He asked himself, and suddenly a hollow laugh escaped him. It was because of the realization of what on earth he could do even if he became friends with the man. There was nothing he could do with him. There was not the slightest thing, not even a speck of dust, that they could share.

In the first place, it was a relationship where they could not even meet unless the man came to the convenience store. They lived in the same world, but it seemed like they were living on different levels. Other than being of a similar age, there were no commonalities between the man and Jaeon.

The man’s daily life was new and interesting to Jaeon in every way, but the fact that Jaeon’s daily life would be consistently trivial and boring to the man was something he could know without even having to interact.

Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump…….

He closed his phone and his eyes, but this time something else put his nerves on edge. It was the sound of a mouse scurrying on the ceiling.

Scratch-scratch-scratch-scratch-scratch-scratch, he heard the sound of it rapidly scratching a corner of the ceiling. Jaeon got goosebumps and curled up. He pulled the blanket over his head. He pressed his thighs to his chest and covered his ears with his hands.

The scene of a mouse crawling out of a hole gnawed through the ceiling kept playing in his mind. As he struggled to push away the imagination, at some point, he fell into a bottomless sleep.