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

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November 29, 201Y

It was a damn cold night.

My ears felt like they were going to fall off. I tried to grab 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 even the traces of people were erased.

The scooter parked under the yellow streetlight didn't seem to have any intention of starting easily today. 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.

Looking back now, that wasn't the sound of an engine. It was a confirmation that I had somehow survived today. A sound saying that even if I didn't know about tomorrow, at least today wasn't 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 rusted 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 existed at night.

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

Twenty years old, fresh out of the care facility. The world gave an orphan the night instead of a job. That night, which I chose to survive, eventually became my life.

That day was just another ordinary request. Deliver a bag to an abandoned building in Bogwang-dong, get the money, and be done. 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 their hair looking like it had been roughly hacked off. A tattoo running down their wrist. At first, only those traces caught my eye.

'Life looks like a real drag for them.'

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.

They kept catching my eye for no reason. I pulled out a canned coffee I had been holding in my pocket instead of a heat pack and handed it over. It had already passed the time to be lukewarm and was stone 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 alley. As we breathed 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 first person who came to mind 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 noodles. We'd pass a single canned coffee back and forth and talk all night about meaningless things.

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

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January 25, 201Y

There was always only one helmet for my scooter.

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

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

Because I wanted to see that smile one more time, because I wanted to hear it, I circled Seoul several times. We had nowhere to go, but 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 slowly 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 tattoo like an irezumi 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 a home.

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

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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 underworld, this alley, 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 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 my cigarette burned down bit by bit. They didn't rush me. They just finished their coffee and gave a faint smile.

I didn't know then. That the time I spent unable to say anything was already a complete answer to them.

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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 sitting alone in a 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 once. 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 place. I wasn't a boss or an executive; I was still at the bottom. The work I did at twenty, I was still doing at thirty. Moving cash, delivering bags, picking someone up, dropping someone off...

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.

When I pass Bogwang-dong after finishing my dawn work, my steps still slow down.

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 time.

It's a funny habit.

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December 01, 202X

Sometimes I think like this.

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

A hollow laugh escaped me.

Then that wouldn't have been you.

The person I loved wasn't someone who was perfectly fine.

It was the 'them' who grit their teeth to survive even after being beaten down 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 throw the other away, never having opened it.

Sometimes I imagine.

If I hadn't hesitated that day and said,

"Let's go."

Or

"Don't go."

If I had just said 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.

...

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

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

...

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

Probably...

...I would have...

...

...Just come once.

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

Just show me that you're alive.

Please.

...

I really miss you.

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