PSY CH 11

“Take care!”

“Uh, yeah… You too. Be safe.”

After exiting the building, Jooyoung headed toward the bus stop, while Arin made her way to Viking Karaoke. Just in time, a bus bound for home arrived, and Jooyoung got on. Arin, who had been smoking next to the glowing LED sign, spotted him and waved. Jooyoung, expressionless, lifted a hand and waved back.

Despite her sharp first impression, Arin turned out to have a surprisingly bright personality. She laughed easily and joked often. Thanks to that, even Jooyoung, who usually took time to warm up to people, quickly grew close to her.

As he plugged in his earphones, Jooyoung chuckled to himself. He hadn’t expected to make any friends in Maeyang… but this unexpected connection wasn’t so bad.

He stared blankly at the scenery while listening to music. His uncle’s house was on the outskirts of Maeyang. After another 30 minutes on the bus, he got off at Ujeong Villa Station.

It was the restaurant’s day off, so Jooyoung figured everyone would be home, except for Mingyu, who had gone to cram school. But as soon as he opened the front door, he was hit with the sound of Mingyu crying.

“Huwaaah! It’s not like that!”

“Who told you to go into your brother’s room like that!”

For some reason, Mingyu was sobbing uncontrollably, caught by the arm as his aunt scolded him.

“You’re back.”

Spotting Jooyoung, his uncle got up from the sofa with a tired face. He grabbed his cigarettes and walked past Mingyu, who was crying and making a scene, heading out to the kitchen balcony.

It wasn’t Jooyoung’s first time seeing Mingyu get scolded, but it was the first time he’d seen him cry this hard with tears and snot pouring out. Jooyoung wanted to slip away too, just like his uncle. But unfortunately, the commotion was happening right in front of his bedroom door, and he had no choice but to face it.

“Don’t you know better than to mess with other people’s stuff? Who said you could just barge into your brother’s room like that?!”

“It’s not like that! Sniff… I-I just went in to look for this… huuhhuh…”

In Mingyu’s hand was his handheld game console—the one he always carried around.

“It was in his room, so I had to go in to get it… why, hic, why am I the only one getting yelled at…”

Despite being breathless and overwhelmed with tears, Mingyu kept stubbornly defending himself—perhaps out of a sense of unfairness—even though it would only earn him more scolding.

“Aunt, what’s going on?”

Jooyoung cautiously approached them.

His aunt turned toward him with a frown. Her face was filled with discomfort, and Jooyoung asked again what had happened.

“Young-ah, it’s just… nothing serious. It’s just that Mingyu went into your room without asking. So I was scolding him a bit.”

“He went into my room?”

“You took my game console, didn’t you, hyung?!”

“Kim Mingyu!”

“Waaah!”

At the mention of the game console, Jooyoung looked even more puzzled. He knew which one Mingyu meant, but he had never taken it.

“I couldn’t find it, sniff, and it turned up in your room, hic, so that means you took it…”

Mingyu scrubbed his eyes with his free hand. His face was soaked with tears.

“…It was in this room?”

Jooyoung’s gaze slowly shifted between the game console in Mingyu’s hand and the room behind them. 

“I only grabbed this. I didn’t touch—sniff—didn’t touch anything else…”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake.”

His aunt seemed to think Mingyu was lying. She let go of his arm with a sharp sigh and pressed her hand to her forehead.

“I don’t know who he takes after, lying like that.” 

She pulled out a jug of barley tea from the fridge, filled a glass to the brim, and gulped it down in one go. Even then, her frustration didn’t seem to subside, and she pounded her chest a couple of times. 

“Kim Mingyu! Are you going to keep lying?”

“I’m not lying!”

With a dismissive wave, she muttered, “Young-ah, we’ll talk later. I really don’t know what’s wrong with him,” and disappeared into the master bedroom. Mingyu’s crying only grew louder in her absence.

“…”

Jooyoung stepped closer and gently patted the boy’s small back. At first, Mingyu flinched and pulled away, but soon fell still.

When his sobs had settled somewhat, Jooyoung asked quietly:

“Mingyu… are you sure the game console was in my room?”

“Yes… I’m not lying. It really was—hic—it really was there. I didn’t just check your room, I checked all the others too…”

“…”

“I just grabbed this and came right out—hic—I swear…”

It didn’t sound like he was lying. The room had originally been used as a storage space, and even now, half of it was taken up by cardboard boxes from the post office. Jooyoung hadn’t brought many belongings with him either, so there was little reason for Mingyu to sneak in.

With a tense expression, Jooyoung stared past the half-open door.

“Jooyoung-ah, you know you still need to be careful, right?”

His mother’s voice, tinged with worry, flashed through his mind.

Suddenly, his heart dropped like a rollercoaster plunging from its peak. He felt hurled back into reality, hard and fast.

Since coming to Maeyang, the tension inside him had gradually unraveled, little by little. Surrounded by unfamiliar faces and a new routine, he slowly began to forget the problems he’d left behind in Seoul. It was a stifling life, but a quiet one, and that quiet had made him careless. He had no right to let his guard down, and yet he had.

“Hyung, what’s—hic—what’s wrong?”

“…Huh?”

“Are you s-sick?”

Tears still clinging to his cheeks, Mingyu looked up at him with concern. Only then did Jooyoung realize how heavily he was breathing. His heart was pounding like a drum—a dull pressure pressed against his chest, tightening with every beat, making his eyes sting.

“I’m fine.”

Jooyoung forced himself to focus. He thought about the time he had left.

One year—it could feel long or short, depending on how you looked at it.

“…It’s okay. It’s okay.”

Jooyoung steadied his trembling fingers and gave Mingyu’s back a gentle pat. It was a comfort meant for no one in particular.

His eyes remained locked on the dimly lit room. His expression was frozen in place. Thump, thump. The pounding in his chest only grew louder, faster. His heartbeat refused to grant him any peace. 

***

“Excuse me.”

“…”

“Excuse me!”

Snapped out of his thoughts by a voice calling to him, Jooyoung blinked and quickly stood from his seat. He opened the counter’s window wide.

“What were you thinking about so hard you didn’t even notice someone was here?”

“I’m sorry.”

The middle-aged woman clicked her tongue and gave him a once-over. Her sharp gaze gradually softened—and it was clear why. Jooyoung’s features were strikingly pretty, enough to disarm even the most critical look.

“You look just like a princess.”

“…Pardon?”

Taken aback by the word “princess,” Jooyoung looked confused, which made the woman burst out laughing. 

“I meant it as a compliment. You look like my daughter.”

“Ah… thank you.”

Jooyoung scratched the back of his neck awkwardly. The rain had been falling for days without a break, and the dampness clung to his skin like a second layer.

After dropping off some jewelry, the woman praised his looks one more time before exiting the pawnshop. 

“Sigh…”

He slumped back into the chair, tilting his head toward the ceiling. His eyes felt dry and gritty from the lack of sleep. No matter how much he tossed and turned last night, sleep never came. His mind was a tangled mess of thoughts that refused to leave him alone.

Though the situation with Mingyu’s game console ended with his aunt brushing it off, telling him to “just be more careful next time,” Jooyoung couldn’t shake it. If anything, it had snapped him wide awake. His thoughts, which had been wandering, caught between adjusting to the new environment and seeing the change in his childhood friend, swiftly returned to their place.

He couldn’t calm the unease inside him. He’d been zoning out all day, to the point of not noticing when customers came in. 

Just as the ceiling lights began to sting his eyes, his phone vibrated. He reached out sluggishly and picked it up.

[Manager-nim, how’ve you been?]

[(Emoji)]

It was a text from Seoah, one of the coworkers he had gotten along with especially well.

They had been keeping in touch even after he resigned. Their shifts used to line up a lot, and since their job involved dealing with people all day, the coworkers naturally became tight-knit. But after moving and dealing with everything else, Jooyoung had unintentionally ghosted her messages for a while. He debated replying, but when he saw the crying-on-the-floor emoji, he gave in.

Seoah read the message right away. They caught up a bit—Jooyoung shared that he’d returned to his hometown. She gossiped about a new hire, ranted about a notoriously annoying customer. Upon hearing that, the memories of his work life came rushing back, vivid and familiar.

They ended the chat with a “Let’s meet when you come to Seoul again.”

“…”

Of all times, why now? Why a message from a former coworker?

The circumstances that had forced him to quit, the worried faces of his family, and even the lies he told to those who were sorry to see him go—all the memories he had buried began to resurface, making his stomach churn.

“Sigh…”

He ran his hands over his face and slumped over the desk. Outside, the sound of rain kept drizzling against his ears, deepening the gloom in his heart.