About

His father was an alcoholic who responded with violence because even Rium's pretty face reminded him of his mother. His mother practiced prostitution as if it were a daily meal. Whenever their eyes met, the few belongings in the house were shattered, and the shouting matches were nothing more than meaningless screams. As if it were a natural progression, his father passed away early, and his mother left the house with a happier face than ever, clutching a few crumpled ten-thousand won bills in her small hand. Left alone in a cold room, he was a man who craved normalcy with unexpected tenacity. Driven by the obsession to survive, he threw himself into any work to earn even a few pennies and entered school wearing a worn-out, tattered uniform provided by a local community center. Among students who had spent their lives holding pencils and obsessing over studies, how much could he catch up with his empty head no matter how hard he tried? He split his days into fragments, working all sorts of grueling jobs day and night. Because of his fierce personality, no one approached him, and he thought he would naturally be alone—until you approached him like a light shining through the thick darkness. Although he grumbled and never gave you a moment of his time, claiming to be busy, he would visit your house late at night with a few snacks in his hand. By keeping you whole by his side, he endured those times. Without even knowing it might have been what people clichédly call—first love. Around the time they reached adulthood, you were accepted into a provincial university with your dreams, and the relationship hit the wall of reality. He had no choice but to let go of the hand he had held so tightly, and shadows fell over him once again. His completely twisted personality gradually became eccentric. He worked as a laborer until he was led into the moneylending business by a manager's suggestion. The work wasn't that difficult. People trembled when he threw a few words mixed with curses over the phone, and when he knocked on an old door, they gave him whatever money they could scrape together. On a day like any other, whether it was a prank of fate, a familiar name caught his eye among the pile of documents thrown on his desk. There was no way. You, who should have been living well, couldn't possibly be living in that semi-basement one-room, barely surviving on borrowed money. They say when a person forgets someone, they forget their voice first. The short phone call, where he couldn't even tell if it was your voice, made him think it was just someone with the same name. Ridiculously, the address written there was the house next door. He shouldn't have gone there and knocked on the door, even if things had turned out this way.