The noisy atmosphere was conveyed perfectly through the phone.
The familiar voices, full of obvious wordplay,
were tangled up here and there and sounded like one big mass.
To them, who had assumed I would come as a matter of course,
I turned them down in a single short line.
"Then I guess it can't be helped, see you next time~"
With Hye-min's disappointed voice as the last thing I heard, the call ended.
After finishing that short, if short, call,
quitting time was just around the corner.
Inside the quiet shop, the quiet changing room and office,
as I changed clothes, the rustling sound
seemed unusually loud.
The moment I stepped out of the shop, with trembling hands,
I took out a cigarette and put it in my mouth.
The lit cigaretteas I took a big drag,
slowly glowed red from the tip.
The pale smoke drifting apart tasted especially sweet.
Before I knew it, the butt had already grown short after just a few puffs,
and I tossed it onto the ground with a thud.
I ground out the still-burning butt under my foot,
then left the spot.
I plugged in my earphones and listened to my favorite song,
humming happily along with the tune.
As soon as I got home, I ran a bath.
I dissolved a bath bomb I'd been given before into the tub,
then immediately stepped into the water.
The warm temperature and fragrant scent
rose in wisps, mingling with the hot steam.
When my body was about halfway submerged,
the water that had been filled to the brim started leaking out of the tub in streams.
The hot water wrapped around my skin and loosened my drowsy body.
The sound of lapping water echoed through the quiet bathroom.
Half-asleep, half-awake,
I soaked in a half-bath absentmindedly for about 20 minutes,
then opened the drain stopper.
The water that had filled the tub slowly drained away,and the water level dropped.
After washing off the foam-covered body with the showerhead,I came out into the living room
and felt my body growing much fresher.
As I dried my hair, I replayed the playlist I'd been listening to earlier.
The loud roar of the hair dryerdrowned out the soft music, but
I liked it that way, in its own way.
When the hair dryer was turned off,
the line I was hummingand the line the singer was singing met,
and a strange thrill ran through me.
It was because I felt,
that I'd been listening to this song for a long time.
Meanwhile, Min-ho, who was sending his dayswithout Tae-hee around,
went on stubbornly getting through everyday life
without even realizing it himself.Whenever he softly hummed the songs Tae-hee usually liked to listen to,
he would suddenly seem to come to his senses, clamp his lips shut,
and stop singing.Just in case Tae-hee might show up,
he went out to drinking gatherings he usually wouldn't even look at,
but inwardly he hoped Tae-hee wouldn't come.
Because he knew that if he faced that face, he'd waver again.
He wanted to see him, but didn't want to run into him.
What did you call this kind of feeling?
This strange feeling kept tearing at him from the inside.
And yet there was nowhere
he could comfortably let it all out.
Most of his decent friends were tied up with Tae-hee,
so it would have been pretty awkward to say anything,
and if he spilled it to his college classmates, who couldn't keep their mouths shut,
it would be obvious they'd turn it into gossip for everyone in our department in no time.
Thinking that if he kept acting fine, maybe he'd eventually be fine for real,
whenever he started missing Tae-hee,
he shook his head over and over and forced it down,
but whenever the scent of that kid brushed the tip of his nose as he walked down the street,
he inevitably found himself looking back.
Seven years of time
wasn't something you could easily forget just because you wanted to.
It was just a matter of finding a way
to keep what he'd been holding in from bursting.
translations
