PHUW 59

The construction site, with no workers present, was brightly lit. Jeong Mok turned on the light on his safety helmet and slowly looked around the site. Since he had memorized the blueprints, he did not bother to unfold them when he was only checking things alone without needing to confirm with anyone else. On top of that, his injured arm bothered him, and it was difficult to even unfold them.

The building, with its framework completed, was in the middle of interior work. While carefully checking the plastering, he found crooked tiles and sloppy silicone finishing. At this level, they had to be removed and redone. Normally, he would have repaired it himself. Today, with his condition not good, he decided to only mark it. He reached for a construction water-based marker from his tool belt to make the mark.

Thud.

His grip weakened, and the marker rolled across the floor.

The injured arm was his left, but he wondered why his right was also losing strength. Just as he was about to pick up the marker that had fallen to the ground, his vision spun. It lasted only a moment, but since he had never felt dizzy even once since becoming an adult, he was startled.

Just in case, he took off his work gloves and pressed his forehead. It was hot. He had not thought that even after stitching up his arm, he would run a fever from it. He was sweating cold, but it seemed the antibiotics and painkillers had kept him from noticing the heat.

‘Is it the flu.’

Thinking about it, it made sense. Too many things had happened since morning. Not just physical exhaustion, but also mental fatigue had piled up, and on top of that, he had lost a lot of blood.

‘So it cannot be helped.’

He picked up the marker and simply left the building.

Rather than lying around miserably sick, it was better to rest well at the right time and recover his condition. If he happened to collapse, it would be shameful conduct unbecoming of an adult, and worse, it might end up alerting his family home. Choi Jieon was already pressing him about when he would show his face at home, and there was no need to give any excuse for that.

He gathered the last of his strength, drove the truck, and headed to a nearby restaurant. It was the place that provided lunch for the site workers. When he went in, they served him a set meal without a word. He filled his hunger as best as he could and took the prescribed medicine.

After leaving the restaurant, he hesitated briefly about where to go. He could not go home. If he saw Haeri in this condition, he might say something, or even do something. He could end up lashing out from self-reproach and unease, and Gom-i might completely tear into him.

‘I will not be able to drive long anyway.’

He considered going to a nearby motel, then suddenly thought of the workers’ lodging. Since the area around the site was desolate, they had rented a lodging on purpose so that when work ended late or after company gatherings with alcohol, workers would not drive under the influence. It was only three minutes away by car.

The lodging, which he thought would be empty, had its lights on. He didn’t want to surprise anyone, so he rang the doorbell, and someone came out. It was Mr. Jang.

“Director Jeong?”

When Mr. Jang saw Jeong Mok, his eyes widened. Over his shoulder, the living room could be seen with a cheap blanket spread out. Beside it were a half-eaten bag of shrimp chips and a soju bottle, and in one corner, a green blanket and red hwatu cards lay scattered.

“Is someone else here?”

“No. I’m alone. Just playing by myself. But what brings you here?”

“I am going to sleep here tonight.”

“What?”

Startled, Mr. Jang looked him up and down.

“Did you not say your house is nearby? It is dirty and uncomfortable here since it has not been cleaned.”

Mr. Jang openly showed his dislike. Jeong Mok did not particularly like it either. But with a fever, flu symptoms, and strong antibiotics coursing through him, he had no thought of driving again.

“So it has turned out.”

“Ha, really.”

Mr. Jang did not seem willing to step aside. Jeong Mok wanted to lie down quickly, he pushed past him and went inside.

As Mr. Jang said, the inside was filthy. Who would bother cleaning a shared lodging used by rough men. The whole place reeked of stale sweat and cigarette smoke. In the master bedroom was a single-size bed, and in the other room piles of dirty clothes filled the space. They were things the workers had brought and half left behind.

“Where will you sleep? There is only one bed, and I am using it.”

The single-size bed could not accommodate Jeong Mok’s height in the first place, and with its sheet yellowed, he felt no desire to lie down on it or even go near. The small room, full of musty-smelling old clothes, was the same.

“I will sleep on the living room floor.”

He spoke as he pushed the soju bottle aside.

Mr. Jang frowned, then gathered up the soju bottle and the hwatu board and went into the bedroom. From the half-closed room, trot music kept playing.

He turned off the living room light and lay down on the dirty blanket. The blanket gave off a foul smell, but he just endured it. Once he lay down, the dizziness was so severe that he could not get up.

His ears hurt from the loud trot music, completely opposite to his taste, and the noise of the road outside. Yet strangely, his head grew muffled, as if wrapped in a soundproof barrier.

‘Is it the effect of the medicine.’

Because of the sudden fever spike, maybe the pressure in his ears was off, and his eardrums were actually muffled. That was better. Wrapped in an invisible film, reality slowly grew distant. Thanks to that, the nerves that had been sharp like broken glass began to ease.

He stared quietly at the dark ceiling. As he blinked sluggishly, the distorted face of the one he had abandoned faintly surfaced.

‘What is he doing now.’

Crying, maybe. Most likely. His barley-tea-colored eyes had shone especially bright the last time he saw them.

Ahn Haeri, without even putting on his shoes properly, had half-slipped while chasing after him. Not knowing the danger, he had run in front of the truck, and Jeong Mok’s heart froze. Instead of worrying for him, he got angry and shouted. The pale face staring at him froze.

Why was he doing this, he was sorry, could he not go, Haeri had pleaded half in tears.

I do not want this. It is not your fault. You do not have to go. He had wanted to say that. If he had not driven away immediately, he might have.

As he left the neighborhood, he saw Haeri growing distant in the rearview mirror. Standing there blankly with his shoulders drooping, he had looked unbearably lonely and desolate. Just like a child abandoned.

‘Not just like. I really abandoned him. I abandoned him, me.’

Though Haeri had said he did not want it, he had coaxed him into coming to his home. He had loved him as he pleased, then discarded him as he pleased.

He was trash. Hopeless trash that could not even be recycled.

Unconsciously, he raised his arm to cover his eyes. It happened to be the injured one. The stitches pressed against his skin. It was painful since the painkillers had not fully dulled the sensation in his arm, but he left it.

The heat in his head and the throbbing pain in his arm whipped the cowardly Jeong Mok. Because of that, it almost felt like he could survive. It was fine if he hurt. He had to suffer more.

But then this petty and childish self-harm suddenly felt revolting. It was nothing but the selfish self-consolation of a pitiful sentimentalist. It would be better not to regret, not to feel sorry, and to brazenly go on living. At least that would mean accepting the trash he had committed as it was. His neither-this-nor-that state was all the more disgusting. Maybe that was why. Though he was dizzy enough to lose consciousness, sleep never came.

Even when Mr. Jang, drunk on trot rhythms, fell asleep, and late at night when the vehicles running along the nearby highway had completely disappeared, Jeong Mok was sunk in suffocating silence. The stale darkness clung everywhere, and by the time dawn crept in, acrid like exhaust, it was quiet.

Through the entire night, no texts or calls came.

What was I waiting for.

After committing something less than human, cruel beyond words. After so heartlessly driving away someone who had said he was terrified of being abandoned, someone who had been forced to keep a puppy he could not handle. And now, he was pretending to be pitiful, pretending to be tormented, what was a hypocrite like him waiting for.

Morning broke, and a day colder than yesterday began.

He lifted his dizzy head, dazed from the strong medicine, and staggered around the site. All day, the only things that came were work calls and random spam messages from who-knows-where. Other than that, the only personal contact was nagging calls from Choi Jieon, demanding when he would visit the family home, and the professor’s message asking if he was doing well.

It was near sunset. At last, the message he had been waiting for, and at the same time the one he absolutely did not want, arrived.

Haeri

I moved out

Thank you si much for everything

Jeong Mok could not hide his dismay at the two sentences.

‘After only one day? Too soon.’

It was too hasty. As if he had been counting the hours to leave.

You can stay longer. Leave more slowly. Did you really leave just because I told you to? Is this all our relationship amounted to? Or should we talk again?

He barely stopped his busy fingers from completing that cowardly sentence. He must not say that. After wounding him so deeply, to still cling on would not only be cruel, it would be pitifully shameless. He swallowed down the words he had no right to say. After steadying himself, he typed the short words, ‘Where to?’ In that moment, another message came.

Haeri

Take care of yourself

It arrived just as his own message was sent. Then he added another cowardly line, “Have you packed everything you need?” “How’s the house you found?” “If you don’t like, you can stay at my house for a month and take it slowly.” But none of Jeong Mok’s messages showed any sign of being read.

Was he busy unpacking. Or was something wrong. He grew anxious, so he called.

–The number you have dialed cannot be reached…

Without even ending the call, he climbed into his truck and rushed home.

Speeding, ignoring signals, he arrived to find no one there. Not Haeri, not Gom-i. Not even traces that they had stayed. So he ran to Haeri’s room. Even when cleaned, the room had carried someone’s presence. Now it was clean and barren, just as it had been.

Back to the way it was. Song-i had left, and the one who had appeared suddenly like Song-i was someone he had driven away. Now he was alone.

As it should be. Just as he had decided, even at the cost of hurting the other.

Jeong Mok was completely alone.