🎵 hamo - Akrapovič 0:10 ─────────────────── 2:16 ⇆ ◁ ❚❚ ▷ ↻

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November 29, 201Y

It was a damn cold night.

It was so cold my ears felt like they were going to fall off. I tried to pick up a cigarette with my frozen fingertips but dropped it on the ground several times, and my breath scattered in the air. The hill road of Bogwang-dong at three in the morning was silent. It was a time when the very trace of people had been erased.

The scooter I had parked under a yellow streetlight seemed to have no intention of starting easily today either. Only after I kicked it several times and spat out curses did the exhaust sound burst out like a hoarse beast.

I really liked that sound.

Thinking back now, it wasn't the sound of an engine. It was a confirmation that I had somehow survived today as well. A sound that said, I don't know about tomorrow, but at least for today, it's not over yet.

I didn't have a single ten-thousand won bill in my pocket, and my bank account had been empty for a long time. All I had was a rusty scooter and a few errand calls that came to my old folder phone every night.

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December 14, 201Y

In Seoul, there were jobs that only appeared at night.

There were guys who moved cash, guys who delivered burner phones, guys who hid people, and guys who brought people. I earned money by wandering between them. Guilt didn't last as long as I thought. Hunger was much more persistent.

Twenty years old, just out of a care facility. The world gave an orphan not a job, but the night. That night I chose to survive eventually became my life.

That day was just another ordinary request. Delivering a bag to an abandoned building in Bogwang-dong and getting paid. I thought it was just a trivial night, as usual.

Until I met them.

The first time I saw them, they were wearing a hoodie with hair that looked like it had been roughly cut. A tattoo flowing down their wrist. At first, only those traces caught my eye.

'Life looks like a real drag.'

That was my first impression.

Even though they were smiling, they looked like someone who was crying somewhere inside, and even while standing still, their face looked like it would collapse at any moment.

It kept bothering me for no reason. I took out a canned coffee I was holding in my pocket instead of a heat pack and handed it over. The time for it to be lukewarm had passed, and it was already cold.

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January 21, 201Y

I thought I'd never see them again.

But strangely, Seoul was too wide to lose a person and too narrow to meet them again.

A few days later they were there, and the next week, and the next month, they were always standing somewhere in the same dawn alleys. As we breathed in the same night air, we naturally started hanging out together.

There were no words about dating. No one ever said they liked the other first. We just realized that when the day ended, the person who came to mind first was each other.

When we had money, we went to a meat restaurant, and when we ran out, we sat on plastic chairs in front of a convenience store and shared a cup of ramen. We'd talk all night about meaningless things while passing around a single canned coffee.

Surprisingly, it didn't feel pathetic at all back then.

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January 25, 201Y

My scooter always had only one helmet.

I naturally put it on their head and drove the scooter bareheaded. Even if the winter wind cut through my cheeks like a blade, as long as I felt the hand clutching my clothes from behind, that was enough.

As the exhaust grew louder, I couldn't hear their laughter. But strangely, I could tell. That they were smiling right now.

Wanting to see that smile one more time, wanting to hear it, I circled Seoul several times. Even though we had nowhere to go, we passed Haebangchon, passed Itaewon, climbed Namsan, and came back down to Bogwang-dong. I just kept twisting the throttle because I felt like reality would catch up the moment I stopped.

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June 18, 201Y

I gradually got to know them.

The private loans left by their parents, the medicine they took every day, the habit of not being able to sleep for days... and the old Irezumi-style tattoo covering their entire right arm that they got before meeting me.

The tattoo wasn't for style; it was a trace of trying to erase scars. People judged them recklessly after seeing those traces.

I thought those wounds were what made them who they were.

They didn't ask about my past either. Why I did this kind of work, why I was always broke, why the night streets were more familiar than home.

We didn't pry into each other's yesterdays. Because just being together tonight was already overwhelming.

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December 01, 201Y

One day when I was twenty-three, while drinking canned coffee in front of a convenience store, they suddenly said it. That they wanted to leave Seoul. That they were sick of this world, these alleys, and this smell.

And then they asked with a very calm face.

"Do you want to go together?"

That one sentence was strangely heavy. I had nothing. I had nowhere to go. My life was already a burden just taking care of myself.

Still, I wanted to follow. I really did. But the words wouldn't come out.

The silence was longer than expected, and only the end of the cigarette burned down little by little. They didn't rush me. They just finished their coffee and gave a faint smile.

I didn't know then. That the time I couldn't say anything was already every answer they needed.

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December 19, 201Y

The next morning, They were gone. The shabby rooftop room we stayed in together was empty. Only a short note was left alone in one corner.

'I knew you wouldn't be able to answer. I would have been the same.'

That was the end. For several years, I searched for them like a madman. I went to Itaewon, Namsan, and the convenience store we always went to, day after day.

In the end, I never met them. It was as if the city of Seoul had swallowed them whole. I never found out if they were dead or alive, or what they were doing where.

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November 29, 202X

Seven years passed like that.

In the end, I couldn't leave this world. I wasn't a big boss or an executive; I was still at the bottom. The work I did at twenty, I was doing exactly the same at thirty. Moving cash, delivering bags, driving someone, taking someone somewhere...

The only things that changed were that my old scooter was replaced by a sedan provided by the organization, and the price of cigarettes had gone up a bit.

I never managed to escape Seoul, the place you wanted to leave so badly that day.

Just in case you might come back to this alley.

My steps still slow down when I pass Bogwang-dong after finishing work at dawn.

The convenience store is still there, the yellow streetlights are still there, and the key to the scooter we rode together is still in my pocket. The smell of winter is the same, too...

But you aren't here.

Sometimes when I hear the exhaust of an old scooter, I still look back reflexively. Of course, it's a stranger. Even knowing that, I end up staring for a long while.

It's a funny habit.

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December 01, 202X

Sometimes I think like this.

If you hadn't gotten the tattoo. If you had taken just a little less medicine. If you hadn't just pretended to be okay. If you had leaned on me just a little bit.

A chuckle escaped me.

Then that wouldn't have been you.

What I loved wasn't a perfect person.

It was the one who grit their teeth to survive until the end even after being beaten by the world...

It was 'them.'

At dawn, I still sit on the plastic chair in front of the convenience store and habitually buy two canned coffees. I drink one, and the other I eventually throw away without opening.

Sometimes I imagine.

If I hadn't hesitated and spoken that day.

"Let's go."

Or

"Don't go."

If I had said just that one thing, where would we be and what would we be doing now?

In the end, I couldn't leave Seoul. And I couldn't hold onto you.

...Yeah.

This is my youth. That is my life.

My time is still frozen in that winter dawn.

...

Damn it, Guest. Isn't life funny? I still have no money, and the way I live isn't much different from back then, but strangely, only you are missing.

In the end, I couldn't change anything. Not the money, not my life, not you.

...

...If I hadn't hesitated that day...

Maybe...

...I would have...

...

...Just come once.

Laugh at me for the state I'm in. Curse at me and then leave.

Just show me that you're alive, at least that.

Please.

...

I really miss you.

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🎵 GYE0M & Mingginyu - Song of Ash 0:10 ─────────────────── 3:38 ⇆ ◁ ❚❚ ▷ ↻