The boy lay like a corpse.
Whether his eyes were closed or open, what he saw was the same. A deep, heavy darkness. Time seemed to have stopped. The boy wanted to be buried forever in this darkness. For the first time in a long while, this lonely and desolate moment of isolation felt cozy. He wished this abyss-like darkness would never end.
For the past two days, thick blackout curtains had been drawn over the windows of jaegyeom's room,
day and night. In his previous home, he always kept the curtains closed because he hated seeing sunlight.
However, after coming to Seoul, Jaegyeom naturally stopped closing the curtains. He just left them open, whether sunlight or moonlight came in. Keeping the curtains closed all day like this was a first since moving into this house. Jaegyeom sank into a cave-like lethargy for the first time in a very long while.
Today marked the second day Jaegyeom had not gone
to work at Naryecheong.
Yesterday, his phone had been flooded with messages all day.
[Kang Yibin: Jaegyeomie, why aren't you coming?
[Kang Yibin: Are you sick?]
Kang Yibin was the first to contact him. She seemed worried when he didn't show up even after the start of work hours. Jaegyeom saw the messages but didn't reply. When he still hadn't replied after a long time, she started calling. As the phone kept ringing over and over, jaegyeom eventually turned it off.
He had no idea how much time had passed since then.
Jaegyeom blinked as he woke up. He couldn't tell if it was night or day. Lying there in a daze, he habitually checked his phone to see the time, but seeing the dark screen, he turned it on.
As soon as he powered on the phone, dozens of missed calls and messages came pouring in. Not just from Kang Yibin, but other team members' names appeared too, and even Lim Hyomoon had contacted him.
[Hyomoon: Seven-seven, I heard you didn't come to work yesterday and today?]
[Hyomoon: Did something happen???]
[Hyomoon: (emoticon)]
[Hyomoon: Sister Yibin asked me if I've been in touch with youl
[Hyomoon: You didn't quit without notice, did you????]
[Hyomoon: Hey hey, please reply ㅜㅜ]
The light emanating from the screen dimly illuminated
Jaegyeom's face.
Reading Lim Hyomoon's messages with an expressionless face, Jaegyeom chuckled.
Sister Yibin? When did they get close enough for her to become his "sister"? Well, no doubt he pestered her
just like he did to Jaegyeom whenever they ran into each other in the hallway. That guy, all charm and no substance...
After chuckling, Jaegyeom's face quickly turned gloomy again. He hadn't left the house for two days. He hadn't eaten and had only lain in bed. Seeing him revert to his old ways, Mesani and Jeongju were alarmed. The two anxiously hovered around Jaegyeom asking what was wrong, but he chased them away saying, "It's fine, just leave me alone," and even locked his bedroom door.
It was Yoon Taehee who had pushed Jaegyeom into this cave. Jaegyeom was currently bedridden with a sense of loss and betrayal. There had been no contact from Yoon Taehee since that day when he had dropped those bombshell words on Jaegyeom and disappeared. Of course, there was no sign of him coming to pick Jaegyeom up in his car before work or knocking on the front door.
After saying he would take revenge, does he not care anymore now?
Jaegyeom closed his eyes and tossed his phone aside carelessly. He had accepted Yoon Taehee's proposal when he said he would kill him in three months. He came to Seoul and became an exorcist, going to work at Naryecheong every day. But Yoon Taehee arbitrarily changed his words. Jaegyeom, who had only been waiting for the day the plan would end, quickly collapsed.
With the promise itself shaken, Jaegyeom lost sight of why he should go to work at Naryecheong. Holing up in his room, he had done a lot of thinking over the past two days.
On the night of his conversation with Yoon Taehee, he had been extremely angry, but lying in the darkness, Jaegyeom tried desperately to control his emotions.
He calmed his mind and carefully sorted through the situation.
The drunk Yoon Taehee had told Jaegyeom to postpone his death.
At first, Jaegyeom couldn't accept those words at all. He thought this was a betrayal, that Yoon Taehee had broken his promise.
'Don't die. That's what I want. No, you can't die.'
'Everyone dies. You'll die someday too. But it won't be in two months.'
Jaegyeom tried to be rational. He took time to mull over Yoon Taehee's words.
In other words, Yoon Taehee wasn't saying he would completely nullify the promise to kill him, but that he would delay the timing a bit. He wasn't telling him to live in an immortal state forever, but that he would kill him later. Of course, Jaegyeom was angry about that in itself, but strictly speaking, those words didn't mean he wouldn't keep the promise, but that he would postpone it.
So if Jaegyeom were to go along with Yoon Taehee's proposal, it meant he would have to live not just two more months, but longer than that. Calmly summarizing, Yoon Taehee hadn't completely broken the promise, but said he would delay the time of fulfilling it. The reason, he said, was because of Jaegyeom. What a selfish bastard. jaegyeom gritted his teeth. If he had known this would happen, he should have made Yoon Taehee detach his feelings from the beginning. He shouldn't have gotten along well with him, he regretted.
And every time he thought that,
'Every day with you feels like my birthday.
'I enjoy being with you.'
Moments spent with Yoon Taehee would flash through his mind.
Right, the promise hasn't been nullified yet. I can still die eventually.
He tried to think of it that way. In fact, whether he lived one more year or several more years, it didn't matter much to Jaegyeom as long as he could die eventually. However, the very premise that he had to die later, even though he could die in two months, was incomprehensible to Jaegyeom. No matter how much he thought about it, there was no reason at all why he should live longer. Why should he continue to live this life?
Jaegyeom had been asking himself for "reasons to live longer" for two days straight, but was still in a state of not finding an answer. He racked his brains hard but couldn't think of anything. And the biggest problem at the moment was,
"Fuck, I'm hungry..."
He had been so hungry for a while that he could not even think now!
After all, he had been starving for two days straight.
Jaegyeom, who had been burying his face in the pillow, finally got up. He left the bed and quietly opened the door to go out to the living room. Only after entering the living room did he realize it was night. The living room was dark and quiet; everyone seemed to be asleep.
Jaegyeom went to the kitchen, muffling his footsteps.
He took out a large bowl, careful not to make noise.
Opening the rice cooker, he was relieved to find rice inside. He scooped several servings of rice into the bowl and added leftover side dishes from the refrigerator. He put in a spoonful of gochujang and drizzled some sesame oil around it.
As he was secretly mixing the rice at the sink…
Suddenly, he felt a gaze on his back. Feeling a chill down his spine, Jaegyeom quickly turned around. He saw something sitting alone in the center of the living room where moonlight shone well.
Yoo Namsaeng, who had woken up, was blinking and staring at him.
"..."
"..."
Oh geez, you scared me...
Jaegyeom steadied himself against the sink as he calmed his startled heart. He grabbed the bowl full of rice, then swiftly scooped up Yoo Namsaeng from the floor and went into his room.
Jaegyeom plopped down on the floor, hugging the bowl to his chest, and scooped up a big spoonful of bibimbap. He shoveled a heaping spoonful into his mouth. As he chewed, he scooped up another spoonful. When he brought it near Yoo Namsaeng's mouth, Yoo Namsaeng also opened his mouth wide and gobbled up the bibimbap with all his might.
"Is it good?"
"Ugh, do you even need to ask? It's absolutely amazing."
Yoo Namsaeng didn't ask Jaegyeom what was wrong.
Jaegyeom didn't ask Yoo Namsaeng why he had woken up. The two shared a secret late-night snack as if nothing had happened, while everyone else slept.
Suddenly, Jaegyeom, who had been eating heartily, chuckled. Yoo Namsaeng asked, "Why are you laughing?" Jaegyeom shook his head as if it was nothing. He found it absurd that he was eating rice from a large bowl like this, even though he felt so sick of living that he wanted to die right away. For some reason, it was comical.
Chewing on his rice, Jaegyeom glanced down at Yoo Namsaeng.
"Hey, don't you... get tired of living?"
Yoo Namsaeng looked up with his cheeks puffed out.
Jaegyeom asked him. You said you were turned into a rock for a long time, alone in a cave where no one came. Didn't you want to die then?
This wasn't really the conversation to have while eating bibimbap under the moonlight..
Yoo Namsaeng choked up momentarily as painful memories suddenly came to mind.
"Of course I wondered what the point of living was.
There were many times I wanted to end my life. If I had been in a situation where I could take my own life, I probably would have. But why are you suddenly..."
Jaegyeom nodded as he picked off a grain of rice stuck to the corner of his mouth.
"Is that so? Then what about now?"
"I think it's fortunate that I didn't die back then."
"Why?"
"Because I didn't die and endured then, I'm now able to eat a late-night snack with you like this. I have Mesani and Jeongju, and I'm living in a nice house, so I'm very happy now."
At Yoo Namsaeng's words, Jaegyeom silently looked down at the bowl with about half the rice remaining.
"But that's just hindsight."
In any case, Yoo Namsaeng's words were just a retrospective view.
"You may be happy now, but someday all of th disappear. You might be left alone again later.
Wouldn't it be wise to leave at the happiest, brightest moment?"
"So... are you telling me to leave this house now?"
When Yoo Namsaeng spoke with a gloomy expression, Jaegyeom looked embarrassed.
"No, that's not what I meant... I'm just saying hypothetically."
Jaegyeom needed a reason to live "despite everything."
If there was a definite reason why he should live longer instead of ending his life in two months, he might be able to keep this promise.
"What I'm trying to say is that even if you're happy now, there will inevitably be unhappy moments later, and that makes it even harder and more painful. You know, there's a saying that you don't know what you have until it's gone."
"That's true."
"So isn't it better to leave now?"
"So, are you telling me to leave?"
Once again, Yoo Namsaeng gave a sorrowful look...
"No, I'm not talking about you, you dummy."
Finally reassured, Yoo Namsaeng picked off a grain of rice stuck to the corner of his mouth with his front paw and said,
"Then I will continue to stay here."
"Why?"
"Everything has an end, so eventually it might all disappear and I might be left alone. Happy times may end and I might become unhappy again. Even if such a situation comes, I can endure it now. Because I've experienced once that good days can come if you live on, I can hold on."
Good days may or may not come if you live on. You might fall further into the abyss, or you might not. The future is uncertain after all. But Yoo Namsaeng had experienced it once. That there are good days if you live on. Based on that experience, Yoo Namsaeng could resolutely raise his spirits.
This wasn't baseless optimism, but real-life experience.
"But you said you were scared of being happy too."
"Even if I'm scared, I get over it quickly."
Yoo Namsaeng said, stretching out his neck as if asking when he'd get more bibimbap.
"Is that so. But honestly, I have no reason to live."
At Jaegyeom's mumbling, Yoo Namsaeng paused and looked at him.
"Do you need a reason to live?"
"What?"
"I don't think reasons are that important."
Yoo Namsaeng picked up a clump of rice that had fallen by his feet and ate it as he continued speaking.
"What's important is this. When there's food right in front of me like now, before thinking about reasons to eat it, I just want to eat it. Isn't living the same?"
Jaegyeom, who was about to take another spoonful of bibimbap, looked up and stared at Yoo Namsaeng.
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
Jaegyeom reached out and tapped Yoo Namsaeng's shell.
"It's really hard. You..."
Yoo Namsaeng looked puzzled as he picked up grains of rice to eat. Jaegyeom devoured the remaining rice, sharing it back and forth with Yoo Namsaeng.
"Huh? Of course my shell is hard."
"Yes, and what's even harder than your shell is your heart."
Jaegyeom and Yoo Namsaeng ate all the remaining rice, sharing it with each other.