After work, I came into my room and sat on the bed without even washing up.
I was staring blankly at the wall when the events of today kept coming back to me, as if rewind had been pressed again and again.
Director So shook the papers in the morning and said the deadline had been moved up. His tone and gestures were exactly the same as yesterday. Jiwon noona said she'd buy kimbap, and even that was exactly what I'd expected.
But then she asked why my face was so pale, and that had been completely unexpected. Director So's line repeated word for word, not a single syllable off, but that one sentence was something I'd never heard before. Come to think of it, it made sense. There was no way a face that had just died and come back to life would look normal, so that wasn't a repeated line at all; it was something she said right there, seeing how I looked at the moment.
That meant the things that were fixed would still come as they were, and some things could change depending on what I did.
It was scary, but at the same time, a relief. If everything had been decided already, I wouldn't have been able to lift a finger.
At the end of that thought, that night naturally came back to me.
What were the odds that perfectly fine brakes would suddenly stop working like that? Dongmin's last murmured words still lingered in my ears.
"...This car was assigned by Section Chief Seongho."
It might not have been a simple accident. There was no way to check right now, though.
What kept pulling at my heart even more was something else. How had we ended up like that?
A single bandage he'd貼? no, not Chinese. A bandage he put on the back of my hand. The ramen we ate side by side at the snack shop. The cake I forced on him for his birthday. The umbrella he held over me on rainy days. Small things like that piled up, and before I knew it I liked him, and we started dating, and then we died together in the same car.
If both of us being there meant both of us died, then this time I just needed one of the two of us to be there.
'Don't get close. Don't get involved in his work. And absolutely, don't fall for him again.'
Three was enough. I just had to keep them.
I fiddled with the watch on my wrist. A crack in the glass caught on my fingertip.
*
The next morning, when the elevator doors opened, Dongmin was already inside.
I didn't greet him and just stood quietly in the corner. The doors closed. Normally this would have been the moment I said hello first, but I just let it pass.
Dongmin glanced over this way.
"...Not saying hello today?"
It was polite speech. But something in his voice caught. If I asked him head-on, I couldn't ignore him all the way through.
"...Hello."
It came out reluctantly. He gave a slight nod and looked forward again.
No one spoke until we reached the fourth floor. It was the first time it had ever been this quiet. When the doors opened, I got off first and walked down the hall. Behind me, I heard Dongmin stepping out a little later. It was the distance we would normally have walked side by side, but today there were about two steps between us.
*
Around ten in the morning, the office door opened.
It was Dongmin. He was holding a small box in his hand.
"...I think this got sent to the wrong place."
It was a delivery box. The address was right for our office, but the recipient column had the name of a BND Research employee. It was the kind of mix-up that happened often between neighboring offices.
Even in the past, this sort of thing had happened.
Back then Dongmin had shaken the box and said,"What's in here that's so heavy? Did they pack bricks or something?"as he made a silly remark. I had laughed with him too. Then, after we finished sorting everything out, I had asked, pretending not to think much of it,
"...Do you want to have dinner after work today?"
As if I didn't think much of it. The few seconds I waited for an answer felt unusually long. After a long pause, Dongmin said sure. That was where it started.
"What's in here that's so heavy? Did they pack bricks or something?"
It was a familiar line.
"...Ah, yes. Thank you."
I took it with a short reply and didn't say anything else. Dongmin stood there for a moment, then turned away with a look like he had wanted to say something else and stopped himself.
As soon as the door closed, Jiwon noona dragged a chair over and came up to me.
"What's going on with you two? And did that guy really come all the way here for that? He's the type who's hard to even see in person."
"No. They said the package was sent here by mistake."
In the past, he seemed excited when we made dinner plans,
but this time I said it like it was nothing.
*
At lunchtime, I deliberately took the stairs down. I didn't want to run into him in the elevator again.
As I stepped out of the building, I saw Dongmin standing in front of the snack shop I always went to. He was shifting his feet in front of the glass door, hesitating like he wasn't sure whether to go in. Normally, that would have been the spot where I waved first.
'...Back then, that was where he first told me about himself.'
The smell of tteokbokki sauce cooling off, his side profile sitting on a plastic chair. I remember it all, but now I'll never hear that story again. I don't know why that makes me feel so sad.
Then a strange face came running up and grabbed Dongmin.
"Hyung! I thought I was going to die from getting stuck on the night shift today. You didn't forget you said you'd buy me dinner, right?"
He was a boy with a youthful face. He seemed to already know Dongmin. The offer to get dinner this time wasn't aimed at me. Instead of answering, Dongmin just gave a short nod and pushed open the glass door first. The boy followed behind him with a spring in his step.
I turned and walked the other way as if I hadn't seen it.
After walking a few steps, I couldn't hold back and looked behind me. The glass door was already closed. Inside, I could faintly see the two of them settling in.
I had decided not to get close, and yet all day I'd been keeping only his day in my sight.
Back at the office, I looked at the watch on my wrist. The crack in the glass was still there. It stayed sharp and clear without even fading, like proof that this day had really happened.
