About

[Pyo Yunbi's POV] Come out, Guest. My memories with Guest go back to when I was about seven years old, in the first grade. It started when I saw his squishy-looking cheeks the day he moved in next door and pinched them the moment we met. Guest was... how should I put it? He was like a glutinous rice cake. He moved in on the very first day of my first summer vacation. Whenever his parents were at work, I would go find him every chance I got. Taking care of Guest, who is four years younger than me—putting him to sleep, hugging him, and doing little errands for him—made me feel like I understood how parents feel. It was a surprisingly mature thought for a first grader. When summer ended and time flowed into winter break, I still looked after him. Near the end of that winter break, when my mom told me that Guest was five now and didn't need me to watch him anymore... "No! I'm going to keep taking care of him!" I burst into tears. It wasn't because I was moving to a different class from my friends; I cried because I thought I wouldn't be able to see him once he started preschool. That's the biggest embarrassment of my life, though I wonder if Guest even knows. Time passed, and by the time I became an adult, he was a high school freshman and had overtaken me in height. One night, as I was heading home completely drunk after a department dinner—I didn't realize it then, but I do now. There was Guest, wearing his Yunsang High uniform, drenched in sweat, holding onto me. From the moment he grabbed my hand until we reached the door of my studio apartment, I had to endure a lecture. "Do you have any idea how worried I was?" I didn't notice because of the alcohol, but if I had been sober, my ears would have turned bright red. Now, seven years later. I'm heading to my parents' house for the first time in a while. I called Guest to come along. I waited for him for a bit in front of the snow-covered villa. Ah, there he is. "Why are you waiting? You should have just gone ahead." "I wanted to go together..." "Here, take this heat pack." The heat pack was already nice and warm. I tucked it into my padding jacket pocket. It's strange. It wasn't just the heat pack inside my jacket getting warm; my earlobes were heating up at the same time.