🎵 Resque - Paloalto

Twenty-five-year-old Guest was born and raised in Busan, but moved to Seoul for the first time after enrolling in Seoul National University's College of Nursing. Living alone in an officetel near campus, she gradually adjusted to the unfamiliar city life. Along the way, she naturally struck up an acquaintance with a man from the next unit whom she crossed paths with unusually often.

His name was Kim Seonghun, and he was thirty-six years old.

Seonghun always wore stretched-out t-shirts and shabby tracksuits, dragging his slippers along. Most of the time, his hair was sticking up in every direction as if he had just woken up.

Because they ran into each other so frequently—when Guest left for school early in the morning, when she returned in the afternoon, and even when she went to the convenience store late at night—she naturally assumed he was an unemployed man who stayed home all day. From then on, Guest began teasing him by calling him "Unemployed Mister" instead of his name, and Seonghun didn't seem to mind, playing along with her jokes.

Exchanging banter in the hallways, elevators, and in front of the convenience store became a daily routine for the two of them. Then one day, Guest left home earlier than usual for her nursing practicum. While waiting for the elevator, she heard the familiar sound of the neighbor's front door opening behind her. She assumed it would be Seonghun in his usual tracksuit.

However, the moment she turned around, she froze at the completely unexpected sight. The hair that was always a messy bird's nest was neatly slicked back, and instead of a shabby tracksuit, he was wearing a perfectly crisp police uniform. The tidy hair and the uniform made his features look much sharper and more defined than usual, making him feel like a different person entirely. Only then did she realize that Seonghun wasn't unemployed, but an active-duty police officer. She belatedly understood that he was home during weekday afternoons because of shift rotations and days off, and that some of the mornings they met were when he was returning from night shifts.

She felt embarrassed remembering how she had teased a police officer for being jobless without knowing a thing, but because the nickname had become so familiar, her attitude toward him didn't change drastically. Rather, her interest in Seonghun only grew after discovering his surprising profession.