DFLT 41

“Mr. Yeonoh, do not be so discouraged.”

Perhaps feeling sorry for Yeonoh, who looked dejected all day, Team Leader Park Hosung led him to a barbecue restaurant near the company after work and poured him a glass of soju.

“…I am sorry. This is all because of me.”

“You are the one who got chewed out, so why are you apologizing to me? Drink up, drink up.”

Two soju glasses clinked in the air. The clear liquid filling the glass went down his throat, and unlike usual, it went down smoothly. Perhaps because his mouth was bitter, the alcohol tasted sweet. As soon as Yeonoh emptied his glass, Team Leader Park quickly refilled it. Yeonoh, in turn, poured a second glass for Team Leader Park. Had he ever understood the saying that office workers find solace for their sorrows in alcohol so well before? With every swallow of alcohol, he felt the layers of his accumulated frustrations wash away little by little.

“The Senior Managing Director must have said all that because he wants you to do well. Just think if he had no interest in you. He would not even bother pointing things out.”

“…Do you think so?”

“Of course. You know it too, Mr. Yeonoh. The Senior Managing Director is fundamentally indifferent to other people.”

For a person who rarely showed interest in others and did not express his emotions well to suddenly fly into a rage was surprising, but the shame of how pathetic his own conduct must have been to cause it was the greatest feeling of all.

He had thought that after three years, he had learned a fair amount about company life, but Seo Heonyoung’s question of what he had learned all this time left Yeonoh unable to shake off his gloomy mood.

Thinking about being kicked out of the secretarial team and today’s incident side by side, he wondered if he had now fallen out of Seo Heonyoung’s favor. Did it just mean he should quit on his own? The more tangled the knot of his worries became, the more the empty soju bottles multiplied.

“Team Leader-nim, you are such a good person….”

The problem was that his tongue was getting tangled as well. Having drunk more than his usual limit, Yeonoh’s cheeks were flushed. Team Leader Park, looking at him with concern, furrowed his eyebrows and asked.

“Mr. Yeonoh, will you be able to get home okay?”

“Of course!”

Yeonoh was looking down at his phone screen with drowsy eyes, saying he would catch a taxi.

“Then I will go pay the bill.”

However, there was one thing Team Leader Park had overlooked: Ji Yeonoh was highly socialized. He was barely managing to act like a person, suppressing the urge to just bury his face and fall asleep right then and there. It was as if metal weights were attached to his eyelids; it was an ordeal every time he blinked his eyes shut and opened them again.

The sound of a couple of leftover pieces of meat sizzling and burning on the grill sounded like a crackling fire, making him even sleepier. It seemed like the same sound he had heard when they burned the bonfire logs at a school retreat when he was young.

Perhaps because of the alcohol, heat circulated quickly through his body, while in contrast, the thought processes in his head slowed down. The surrounding noise sounded twice as loud, then became distantly faint again.

“Mr. Yeonoh? Mr. Yeonoh!”

The voice of Team Leader Park Hosung calling him also grew fainter and fainter. In the end, defeated by the alcohol, Yeonoh’s head fell with a thud, landing lightly on the steel table. His mind had not completely faded away yet, but while he sluggishly told himself he needed to get up, he did not have enough strength left to even lift a finger.

“Oh my, what am I going to do with him.”

Just as Team Leader Park, who had to go home quickly due to his wife’s urging, was at a loss for what to do, Yeonoh’s phone on the table rang.

“Dojin sunbae?”

Assuming from the title ‘sunbae’ that they must have a close relationship, Team Leader Park quickly answered the phone.

“Hello. Yes, I am Ji Yeonoh-ssi’s superior at work, and Yeonoh-ssi is drunk. He did drink quite a lot. Ah, you will come in person? Where we are right now is….”

Dojin sunbae is coming…. He had been at a loss as to how to get home, but this was a relief. I have to get up and be sure to thank sunbae. I will buy him a meal, and coffee too. Yeonoh’s consciousness faded away as Team Leader Park finished the conversation telling Dojin the location.

As he drifted through a black unconsciousness for a while, a low voice pierced his ear.

‘Ji Yeonoh.’

It was his name. Is that Dojin’s voice…. For that, the tone was chilly and the vocal range was quite low. Dojin always called him by his first name without the surname, or by a ridiculous nickname like ‘Tofu.’ Yeonoh, whose head and senses were all hazy, slightly opened his eyes.

‘…Huh.’

The owner of the voice really was Seo Heonyoung. Sculpted features and neat eyebrows. A furrowed brow on clean skin. Anyone could see it was Seo Heonyoung.

For some reason, he was lying in a bed, and Seo Heonyoung was looking down at him from above. It must be a dream. It made no sense for Seo Heonyoung to appear above him while he was lying down.

‘It is the Senior Managing Director.’

Why does this dream feel so real? He wanted to pinch his cheek, but as if to prove it was a dream, he could not lift a single finger.

‘Are you awake now?’

‘Why have you only now appeared in my dream?’

‘What?’

There had been days when he thought of nothing but Seo Heonyoung from the moment he woke up in the morning until he fell asleep at night. And when he opened his eyes again the next morning, he would even feel resentful. He thought that after all this, it was about time he appeared in his dream at least once.

‘I have been waiting for so long.’

‘Ha.’

Why did it have to be today of all days? At this very moment, when his hands and feet were consumed by alcohol and he could not do anything.

‘You are still not in your right mind.’

Even in a dream, Seo Heonyoung was the epitome of cynicism. He had said that Yeonoh had learned nothing for three years under him, but that was a complete lie. How could he say he had learned nothing when the Seo Heonyoung in his dream, created entirely from the data in his own head, was so vivid?

‘If you are going to be a drunken nuisance, just go to sleep.’

‘Why, why do I have to listen to the Senior Managing Director even in my dream?’

Was that not true? This was his dream, yet he did not like his attitude, acting as if he had to obey Seo Heonyoung’s words even here.

‘You always say such harsh things.’

‘Are you crazy? Get a grip.’

His head was completely blank, as if submerged underwater. Like someone desperately gasping for oxygen underwater, Yeonoh breathed by spitting out the words that were blocking the back of his throat.

‘Do not do that. Please do not hate me.’

‘Ji Yeonoh.’

‘Sometimes it hurts so much….’

Strangely, the corners of his eyes felt hot. In the midst of it all, he must have been feeling wronged, because he sobbed, shedding tears drop by drop.

‘I will not do, hic, anything to be hated.’

He could not tell what emotions were contained in Heonyoung’s eyes as he stared intently at him, but at least no more harsh words flew his way. Maybe because it was a dream, it seemed like Heonyoung was listening to him well.

Yeonoh, who had been shedding tears for a long time, eventually closed his eyes when the rims turned red. Just as Heonyoung’s breathing and the white noise of the humidifier faded into the distance, he heard Heonyoung’s final words, which sounded as if they were being crushed between his molars.

‘You had better not remember this when you wake up.’

At that moment, snap, Yeonoh’s closed eyes flew wide open. The first thing he saw was an ivory-colored ceiling.

“Ah, Dojin sunbae.”

Concluding from the fact that his last memory was of Dojin coming to where he was and from the familiar interior, Yeonoh was certain this was Dojin’s apartment. He shot up from the bed as if spring-loaded and flung open the closed door.

“Sunbae!”

Yeonoh called out with a sorry expression to the figure who was surely Dojin, sitting on the living room sofa. However, he had truly not expected that figure to be Seo Heonyoung.

“Senior… Managing Director-nim.”

Heonyoung, who had been staring at a tablet while sitting on the sofa, lifted his gaze from the screen and looked up at Yeonoh. He wore a look that suggested he was not at all surprised to see Yeonoh here. On the contrary, it was Yeonoh who froze and hesitated.

“The owner of the apartment went to work out.”

Heonyoung spoke up after looking at Yeonoh for a moment, then turned his attention back to the tablet. The digital clock for interior decoration on the shelf showed the time as 6:37 AM. What time in the world did Seo Heonyoung, who was already perfectly dressed and ready for work at this hour, wake up? That question was the first to enter Yeonoh’s mind.

“…Ah, I see.”

He said they were close friends, so is that why he comes and goes so freely? They are in the same building, too. In reality, it takes less than three minutes if you just take the elevator.

“It seems you do not remember what happened yesterday.”

“What? Uh, yesterday?”

Yeonoh was so surprised that he reacted in a way that made it obvious to anyone he felt a pang of guilt. Perhaps finding that funny, Heonyoung let out a dry laugh.

“Though it seems you have something on your conscience.”

In that instant, a few irritated phrases flashed through his mind.

‘Ji Yeonoh.’

‘You are still not in your right mind.’

‘If you are going to be a drunken nuisance, just go to sleep.’

‘Are you crazy? Get a grip.’

Could it be that this was not a dream, but reality that I vaguely heard in my sleep? That Heonyoung had been taking care of him while he was dead drunk, and got annoyed with him for being a nuisance. He still could not remember what had happened while his memory was blacked out, but as the circumstances began to piece themselves together, Yeonoh’s face turned pale.