Chapter 7

“…”

Tipping the green glass bottle, Si-woon refilled his shot glass. Tonight would be the end of his wallowing; starting tomorrow, he would get back to work. Across his small folding table sat bottles of soju, a triangle kimbap, and a cup of instant ramyeon—a lavish spread by his frugal standards. Warm and heavy-limbed with alcohol, he flicked an empty glass bottle with his fingernail. Clink. The clear ring sounded oddly foreign in the quiet room. Even on the rare nights he drank alone, he usually bought the cheaper plastic bottles of soju; buying glass bottles tonight had been a laughable little act of rebellion.

“…?”

He was reaching to twist the cap off a third bottle when his phone—almost always silent at this hour—began to vibrate against the floor.

[Kwon Je-hee]

That name again. Lifting the phone, he answered thickly. “Hello…?”

“—Si-woon-ssi, it’s Kwon Je-hee.”

“Yes…”

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

Before Si-woon had quite realized it, Je-hee had become the person who reached out to him more regularly than anyone else in his life. Another driving request was hardly unusual, yet hearing that low, measured voice stirred a quiet warmth in his chest that he couldn’t explain. After weeks of turning the man down with one vague excuse after another, he felt selfish for being so glad to hear from him. Fighting to sound sober, he set the phone down on the folding table and reached to tap the speaker icon so he could hear him more clearly.

Click.

“Why did it hang up…?” Aiming for the speaker button with unsteady fingers, he had tapped End Call instead, though in his tipsy haze it took him several seconds to piece together what had happened. “Did something come up on his end…?” Folding his hands neatly on his knees, Si-woon stared down at the dark screen. If the line had dropped by mistake, surely Je-hee would call back; if he didn’t, he must have been busy. Better to wait quietly.

Bzzzt.

“…!” Sprawled half across the low table, Si-woon jerked upright. See? He didn’t mean to hang up. Tapping the screen carefully this time, he heard Je-hee’s voice fill the room.

“—Si-woon-ssi? It’s me, Kwon Je-hee.”

“Kwon Je-hee… Yes, Je-hee-ssi. This is Seo Si-woon.” He had looked at those three syllables on his screen dozens of times, yet speaking the full name aloud felt oddly intimate on his tongue.

“—Are you free to talk right now? I won’t keep you long—just a moment.”

“…?” Wasn’t Je-hee the one who was busy? Why did he sound so rushed? Si-woon was already home for the night with nothing left to do; for once, time was the one thing he had in abundance. He could listen for as long as Je-hee wanted to talk.

“—Have you been keeping well lately?”

It was a standard polite inquiry, nothing more, yet the quiet gentleness behind it loosened something tight behind Si-woon’s ribs. Swallowing hard against the sudden heat rising in his throat, he pressed a hand over his chest.

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

“Uh—!”

His elbow bumped an empty soju bottle, sending it teetering over the edge of the folding table. Lunging forward, Si-woon caught it just before it struck the floor. Thank goodness. At least the glass hadn’t shattered.

“It hung up again…” When he looked back at his phone, the screen had gone dark once more; his palm must have brushed the end-call button while he was scrambling to catch the bottle. I need to stop drinking. At this rate he was going to hurt himself, and he still had to report to the office in the morning. It was time to clear the table.

Shouldn’t I apologize first, though? Even after rinsing the cup and wiping down the folding table, Si-woon couldn’t shake his uneasiness over cutting off the call twice in a row. Accidental or not, hanging up mid-sentence without a word of explanation was terribly rude—especially after he had spent the past few weeks turning down every single one of Je-hee’s requests. What if he thinks I don’t want to drive for him anymore? Je-hee had no way of knowing about the auction or the mess Si-woon’s life was in, and yet the man had never once complained or pried into his excuses. Even if Si-woon couldn’t bring himself to explain his personal troubles to a client, he owed him a proper apology.

[Kwon Je-hee]

Hovering his thumb over the contact, Si-woon hesitated. He had never once been the one to call Je-hee first, and the hour was late—perhaps too late. Before he could talk himself out of it, he pressed dial.

“Je-hee-ssi.”

“—Si-woon-ssi? The line kept cutting out earlier. Are you all right?”

I should have just gone straight to bed. Je-hee sounded completely composed and sober on the other end, whereas Si-woon had spent the evening making one clumsy, drunken blunder after another. Heat rushed to his ears, but now that he had placed the call, he had to see it through. “Um… something came up here for a second. I’m sorry the call cut out.”

“—Oh, were you in the middle of something? I should have texted to check before calling so late. I’m sorry.”

“And… I’m sorry I kept turning you down every time you reached out lately.”

“—Not at all. What is there to apologize for?”

“Still… I really am sorry.”

“—…”

When Je-hee—who always had a ready, reassuring answer—fell momentarily silent, Si-woon lost his nerve and rushed to close the call before he could embarrass himself further. “I can drive for you this Thursday. Please get some rest.”

Click.

Staring at the ended call, he winced. I did it again. What if he thinks I’m angry with him? Still, he couldn’t muster the courage to dial a second time.

“…”

Opening his photo gallery, Si-woon scrolled back through his recent pictures until he stopped on a snapshot from his previous visit to Naeju, where all four of them—Ji-woon, her husband, Do-gyeom, and himself—were smiling side by side. Ordinarily he avoided lingering over family photos late at night, knowing where his thoughts would go, but the soju had left him defenseless.

“Dad…”

Both of his parents had passed away one after the other when he was still in school. More than a decade had gone by, yet the hollow they left behind still ambushed him when he least expected it: the day he got his driver’s license, the afternoon he walked his sister down the aisle, the day he signed the lease on this very apartment. He had wanted them there at every milestone, and in a thousand ordinary evenings in between. He had wanted to show them that he had finally grown into a capable adult, to thank them for raising him, even to boast a little and hear them tell him he had done well. Now there was no one left to tell.

Perhaps raising Do-gyeom had helped Ji-woon make peace with their absence; Si-woon couldn’t know for sure. He only knew that even as his parents’ faces grew fainter around the edges of his memory, the ache of missing them remained as sharp as ever on nights like this.

“…”

Scrunching his face into a fierce grimace, Si-woon wrinkled his nose, bit down on his lower lip, and swiped hurriedly to the next image. Enough. Whatever else happened tonight, he refused to sit here and cry.

“There’s Do-gyeom,” he murmured, his voice steadying as his nephew’s beaming grin filled the screen. Even though they only saw each other three or four times a year, the boy’s affection never wavered. “I need to bring him this soon.”

Setting down the phone, he went to his wardrobe and took out the small paper bag Je-hee had returned to him at lunch. Do-gyeom had been begging for a capybara keychain—specifically the one with a tiny tangerine perched on its head—for months. Still guilty over sneaking out during his last visit, Si-woon had fed an embarrassing amount of pocket change into an arcade claw machine until he finally snagged the exact plushie; ordering one online would have been cheaper, of course, but Do-gyeom had been adamant that claw-machine prizes were special.

Hooking the metal ring around his index finger, Si-woon gave the plump brown creature a gentle shake and snapped two quick photos with his phone.

[Photo]
[Photo]
—Do-gyeom, Uncle won the capybara! I’ll bring it down next week, so please stop being mad at me, okay?

Since Do-gyeom was still too young for a phone of his own, Si-woon sent the messages to Ji-woon’s account. The unread marker vanished almost immediately, and a moment later two notifications chimed in quick succession at the top of his screen—one from his sister, and one from Je-hee.

—If you’re coming down next week, I’ll show Gyeom in the morning.
—Si-woon-ssi, are you sure everything is all right?

Tapping into his sister’s chat first, Si-woon typed a brief reply.

—Yeah. Thanks.

He meant to open Je-hee’s message next, only for a sudden wave of drunken exhaustion to pull him flat onto his back on the floor. “I already called him… anyway…” he mumbled to the ceiling. It’ll be fine if I reply in the morning. Clinging to that hazy reassurance, he sank into a deep, dreamless sleep.

* * *

After spending a restless night turning their strange phone calls over and over in his head, Je-hee woke to find a message waiting on his screen and opened it at once.

—I apologize. Something came up yesterday, so I wasn’t able to reply right away.
—And for constantly turning you down whenever you reached out lately… I’m truly sorry about that, too.

Something had come up, then—though Si-woon offered not a single clue as to what. Reading the lines a second time, Je-hee paused at the slightly stiff, fragmented phrasing and remembered the low, unguarded softness in the man’s voice the night before. “Wait… had he been drinking?” he murmured aloud.

In his anxiety over the dropped calls, he had completely missed it at the time, but looking back, there had been a faint slur at the edges of Si-woon’s pronunciation and an emotional rawness that the composed, buttoned-up man he knew never allowed to show. For a few brief seconds over the phone, Si-woon had sounded like someone else entirely.

“Well, he said he’d drive for me on Thursday. At least there’s that.” Compared to the cold dread that Si-woon might cut ties with him altogether, last night’s oddness was a minor mystery.

—It’s completely fine. See you on Thursday, then. 😊

Sending the reply, Je-hee leaned back against his pillows and closed his eyes. He still had a dozen unanswered questions, but knowing they would see each other again soon was enough for now.

* * *