Chapter 6

“‘Going right,’ my ass,” Je-hee muttered under his breath.

In the weeks since their lunch date—or lunch errand, as only one of them had treated it like a date—he had barely heard Si-woon’s voice, let alone seen him in person. His private elation at learning Si-woon wasn’t seeing anyone now felt laughably premature. Did he notice how pleased I looked at the café?

Whenever Je-hee reached out, there was always an obstacle. Once, Si-woon was already booked on another call; the next time, he wasn’t feeling well; after that, a personal matter had come up. The reasons varied, and Si-woon remained unfailingly polite, never giving him concrete grounds to claim he was being avoided—yet something had undeniably shifted between them. Je-hee could feel the distance widening.

“I’m not feeling well… I’m sorry.”

He could still hear the subdued, bone-weary timbre of Si-woon’s voice over the line. The man had always carried a quiet fatigue, though he usually tried to mask it; lately, that exhaustion bled through even a thirty-second phone call. Anyone else might have told Je-hee he was reading too much into a handful of brief calls and text messages, but he had spent months paying close attention to Si-woon’s every inflection. Is something seriously wrong?

The worry left him feeling thoroughly helpless. Whatever was wearing Si-woon down, a client had no right to pry into it. At the same time, a foolish sense of defeat weighed on his chest; he had assumed that a paid driving request, at least, was the one connection Si-woon wouldn’t sever. Glancing down at his phone screen, he stared at the message he had sent three hours ago.

—Si-woon-ssi, do you happen to have any time available this week?

The tiny 1 beside the message remained stubbornly in place, marking it unread. However late the hour, Si-woon had always replied eventually. Why was tonight different?

“…Don’t be pathetic.” Hovering his thumb over the keyboard, Je-hee stopped himself before sending a follow-up text. Everyone had private struggles they didn’t care to share with an acquaintance, and the last thing Si-woon needed was someone else making demands on his energy. Still, this is hard. He wanted, in some small way, to belong to Si-woon’s everyday life, yet he had no idea how to cross the threshold. Even the three-year age gap he had discovered at lunch seemed to work against him. To most people, three years was nothing; to Je-hee, whose two brief past relationships had both been with older men who made the first move, being the older one—and the one pursuing—left him with no experience to fall back on, only an excess of hesitation.

“Haaah…”

He was getting ahead of himself anyway. Si-woon had never given the slightest indication that he viewed him as a romantic prospect, so what sense was there in fretting over how to court him? Closing his eyes, Je-hee found his mind replaying their quiet drives all the same: the low hum of the radio, the occasional unhurried exchange, the stolen glances in the side mirror, the simple peace of sitting side by side without needing to fill the silence. Small, ordinary moments—and yet they had become the part of his week he missed most.

“Ugh…” Admitting how deeply he had fallen did him very little good when he didn’t even know where Si-woon was tonight or whether he had eaten dinner. Opening his contacts, he stared at the familiar name.

[Seo Si-woon]

A text message was more than sufficient to book a drive. The truth, as he finally pressed the call icon and lifted the phone to his ear, was simply that he wanted to hear Si-woon’s voice.

“…”

As the dial tone rang out, Je-hee mentally rehearsed a graceful response in case he was turned down yet again. Nearly a week had passed since their last brief exchange, though it felt far longer.

“—Hello…?”

“…!”

When the call finally connected, Si-woon’s voice came through low and thick, as if he were speaking through cotton. Relief flooded Je-hee so fast that it took him a beat to register how unusual the man sounded. “Si-woon-ssi, it’s Kwon Je-hee.”

“—Yes…”

“Would you happen to be free to drive for me this Thursday?”

“—…”

After all the gentle openings he had practiced in his head—asking how Si-woon had been feeling, whether everything was all right—he had defaulted straight to business out of sheer nerves. When only silence answered him from the other end, Je-hee swallowed against his dry throat.

Click.

“Huh?”

Had Si-woon just hung up on him without a word? Lowering the phone, Je-hee stared blankly at the screen. Call ended: 0:23. Seconds ticked by, and neither a callback nor a text message arrived.

“It must have been a mistake.” He forced a brittle smile at the empty room. People accidentally brushed the end-call button or lost reception all the time. Don’t they?

“…”

He watched the dark screen until worry got the better of his pride. Just one more try. If Si-woon didn’t pick up this time, he would leave him be—though perhaps a brief text afterward to make sure nothing had happened wouldn’t be out of line. Pressing redial, he held his breath.

Barely two rings later, the line connected. “Si-woon-ssi? It’s me, Kwon Je-hee.”

“—Kwon Je-hee… Yes, Je-hee-ssi. This is Seo Si-woon.”

The tightness in Je-hee’s chest eased at once; so it really had been an accidental disconnect. “Are you free to talk right now? I won’t keep you long—just a moment.”

“—Yes, I can… talk. I’m listening.”

“Have you been keeping well lately?”

“—…”

“About this Thursday, would you be able to drive—”

Click.

“…?”

The line went dead a second time. Why? Si-woon had just said he was listening. Staring down at the disconnected screen, Je-hee couldn’t make head or tail of it. What on earth was happening on the other end of the line tonight?

* * *

Some days, Si-woon felt as though his spirits had sunk past any depth from which they might ever rise again. Today was one of those days: the court had formally approved the sale of his home at auction.

[Notice]
20XX Ta-gyeong Voluntary (Compulsory) Real Estate Auction
Debtor: Heo Gil-seong

He had found the first court notice buried among the flyers in his mailbox around this time last year, and every month since had blurred into one long, frantic struggle. Heo Gil-seong. The name printed beside Debtor had been sickeningly familiar. Digging out his lease agreement with trembling hands, Si-woon had found the confirmation he dreaded.

[Landlord: Heo Gil-seong]

Occupancy status. Deadline for dividend distribution claims. Declaration of tenant rights. None of the legal jargon had meant anything to him at first, beyond the unmistakable certainty that something had gone terribly wrong. He had spent that entire first night searching online until dawn, finding cold comfort in every page he read.

He had moved in barely a year and a half ago; his initial two-year lease wasn’t even up yet. From a cramped gosiwon room to a tiny studio, and finally to this modest two-room villa apartment, he had climbed his way toward a little breathing space one grueling step at a time. He had wanted a proper roof where his sister and Do-gyeom could stretch out and sleep over whenever they traveled up from the provinces, rather than rushing to catch a late-night bus back. For once in his life, he had allowed himself to want a home that felt slightly better than bare survival. Was even that too much to ask?

Unable to accept that his life’s savings could simply evaporate, he had clung to the hope of an exception—some legal loophole the internet forums had missed. Carving hours out of an already punishing work schedule, he had visited every free legal-aid clinic he could find.

“Unfortunately, because the mortgage lien predates your move-in registration, your claim is lower priority…” one legal counselor had told him.

“In principle, you have the right to sue the landlord for the unreturned deposit,” another had explained, “but even if you win a civil judgment, collecting from an insolvent debtor is another matter entirely.”

Every consultation ended the same way. Filing a lawsuit would demand time and legal fees he didn’t possess, with virtually zero prospect of recovering his jeonse deposit at the end of it. Eight years of savings—eight years of working day and night until weekdays and weekends had blurred into a single unending shift—were gone. Having only just begun to feel as though his feet were on solid ground, he now faced starting over from scratch, and with a housing loan still hanging over his head.

There’s nothing left I can do.

For weeks he had told no one, moving mechanically through his shifts while forcing himself to swallow the reality piece by piece. If he kept working, he wouldn’t starve. The remaining bank loan wasn’t insurmountable, and no bailiff was throwing him onto the street tomorrow; he had been told the auction process would take at least six months, perhaps over a year if bidding stalled. That gave him time to pay down the loan and prepare. He owned very little anyway. He could go back to a one-room studio, or even a gosiwon if he had to. Paying monthly rent again would sting, and he would neither recover his lost deposit nor renew his lease, yet he could survive.

What am I going to tell Noona, though? If Ji-woon found out he had fallen victim to jeonse fraud, she would try to scrape together money to help him, which was precisely why she had to be kept in the dark until the very end. He had leaned on her enough growing up; being his older sister had already cost her too much of her own youth. And Do-gyeom is going to be so disappointed. Losing the apartment itself was something he could endure, but losing the one place where his nephew could come stay for the weekend hurt more than he cared to admit. Until he could afford a decent place again, he would have to come up with an excuse that wouldn’t make an eight-year-old worry about his uncle.

On days like this, Si-woon was almost grateful he had no partner or dependents of his own; when hope failed him, sheer stubbornness was enough to keep him putting one foot in front of the other. Little by little, he had forced himself back into a routine, steeling himself for the inevitable—until the latest court notice arrived and brought the panic rushing back. Only two weeks after learning that a winning bidder had claimed the property, the court had issued its final approval of sale. His time under this roof was running out, and knowing the outcome was sealed did nothing to steady his nerves.

What were all those years of work even for? The hollowness of it made his focus slip at every turn. This is the last of it, he told himself. Over the past few nights, he had boxed up his bulkier belongings in advance and scrubbed every corner of the apartment. Resentment flared without warning at times, hot and unfamiliar in his throat, but he forced it down; anger wouldn’t bring back a single won. With the free evenings he had left by turning down driving calls, he had slept without setting an alarm, watched old movies, and eaten whatever caught his eye at the convenience store—small indulgences he had denied his body and mind for years.