“Make me a meal, he said...”
“I-I’ll buy the ingredients, so I’m asking you to do it just until I leave for school.”
‘Well, cooking for him isn’t exactly a problem, but.’
“Can’t you just order delivery for that?”
“Uh... I don’t exactly have much money right now, either...”
“Haah...”
— Flinch
“For starters, I haven’t been able to go home for almost twenty-four hours now...?”
“I’ll think about it and contact you around tomorrow.”
“Y-yeah.”
— Click
“You’re really going?”
— Hollow
— Beep
“He’s gone...”
I Hoeseo looked down at the empty bowl.
‘So the house gets this much bigger just because one person left... Ah, or did I just get smaller...?’
“Hup.”
With all sorts of pointless thoughts, he carefully picked up the finished bowl and walked to the sink.
“This too is up to my chest now... Fucking inconvenient.”
On one side of the sink, there was a pan drenched in water, perhaps washed by Ha Gangin earlier before he left.
— Swooooosh
“Ugh... why isn’t this washing off?”
Before, he would just squeeze detergent into the bowl and scrub with his hands, but I Hoeseo’s hands had become too soft, leaving them woefully inadequate for serving as a dishcloth.
“Then I’ll use a paper towel...”
“Ah.”
He glanced up. The spot where the paper towels originally hung was now too high for I Hoeseo’s hands to reach.
“Sigh...”
‘I’ll go get some toilet paper from the bathroom.’
— Rustle
The result of tearing off about four sheets of toilet paper and diligently scrubbing with them.
— Squeak
“Done. Whew...”
“Eeeek!”
He placed the bowl, which he had barely managed to degrease, into the drying rack and then turned back toward the living room.
A folded-out folding table and one small refrigerator.
‘Looking at it like this, there really isn’t much here.’
“...I’m tired, maybe I should take a nap.”
It was only around 2 PM, but I Hoeseo had occasionally taken naps at this hour before.
— Trudge, trudge
With his tasks finished, as if the tension in his body had released, feeling drowsy, I Hoeseo opened the door and went into the room.
“Ugh, pew...”
He wrinkled his nose at the distinctly stale, stuffy odor unique to high school boys wafting from the room.
‘To think I lived without knowing about this until now.’
— Clack
‘Ventilate.’
“Ugh, the control button is...”
— Beep
— Whiiiiir
‘Increase the air purifier output.’
“Now I have to lay out the mattress, but...”
Turning his back to the desk and looking around, a mattress almost as big as I Hoeseo himself was propped up in the corner of the room.
“Haah...”
“Hng, hnnng!”
— Thud!
“Huehh... Finally got it laid out.”
— Thud
‘Is just doing this one thing supposed to be this hard...?’
“Now, I should wash up...”
“Nah, I barely broke a sweat, so I’ll just sleep—”
I Hoeseo felt a strange sense of déjà vu, as if he had definitely said something similar two days ago.
‘If I count today, it’s been three days since I washed.’
But he was barely holding onto consciousness that felt like it might slip away at any moment, and he had no energy left to care anymore.
“I don’t know. I’ll think about it tomorrow.”
— Plop
When he laid his head on the pillow, the mattress—which previously had his feet nearly sticking out—now felt wide enough to roll around on.
It was but for a moment that I Hoeseo realized the preciousness of the things he used every day, after having been apart from them for a day.
“Sniff.”
‘Was my body odor always this bad?’
Something strange kept stimulating his olfactory cells, but he ignored it and tried to sleep.
‘Well, whatever.’
I Hoeseo took a sip of water from the bottle by his pillow.
Then, only after laying his head on the pillow and laboriously pulling the blanket up over his head did he...
“Kuaaa...”
The clock read 3:24 PM. I Hoeseo was finally able to fall into an early slumber.
*
“Hey. What are you doing not following? There’s only four hundred meters left now, so hurry up.”
“Huh? Oh, oh. Coming!”
The high, blue sky and the contrasting colorful autumn leaves carpeting the ground.
I had come on an autumn hike with Ha Gangin today.
“Huuuuh. Hey, I told you to go a little slower.”
“What are you talking about? It’s not that I’m fast, you’re just slow.”
“You with such long legs—if you’re going to let them go to waste, you might as well give me ten centimeters of your height.”
“What’s that supposed to mean. But do you know what?”
“What?”
I immediately took a stance and then ran forward, shouting.
— Tap-tap-tap
“Even if I took that much from you, I’d still be bigger than you, punk!”
“Ugh... Hey! Where are you going alone?”
“Huff, huff.”
“Hey, see, see? I told you I can do it when I try!”
“Fat chance...”
“Just a dying chopstick, you.”
Even as he said that, the guy was already taking out two lunchboxes from his backpack.
“Oh, what’d you pack?”
“One roll of gimbap and one set of inari sushi.”
“I don’t eat gimbap, so this one’s yours.”
— Thud
Ha Gangin handed me the container with gimbap and said,
“Hey, I don’t usually go outside, but I came because you kept nagging me to go out.”
“Oh, that’s right... Thanks...?”
“No, that’s not what I meant—I’m asking if you like it.”
“You said it was your dream to eat gimbap after climbing to a mountaintop with autumn leaves.”
“Hmm... No.”
“What now?”
I turned my back on the guy and looked down at the mountain below.
And I said,
“It was a dream, wasn’t it? I fulfilled it today, didn’t I?”
— Swish
“So, what I’m saying is...”
Ha Gangin suddenly fell silent.
“Huh? Why so quiet all of a...”
— Whoooosh
“Ugh—”
At the sudden gust of wind, my eyes closed reflexively.
“Kuhuk.”
— Gurgle
When I opened my eyes again, I was underwater, surrounded by ashen vortexes everywhere.
‘A-air... breath...’
What I saw through barely opened slitted eyes was utterly obscure.
Small hands, long hair, short legs...
And all of it was gray.
“Ugh.”
It was a dream.
— Tap
I Hoeseo tapped at the screen of the smartphone placed beside him.
‘4:10 AM...’
For having slept nearly twelve and a half hours, it felt like a rather short dream.
‘Why do I keep having nightmares lately...’
Two days ago, and today too.
‘Come to think of it, at the hospital yesterday it was fine. Probably because I was too exhausted to dream at all.’
That was the only difference.
It was still a dark blue hour, not yet bright enough to start the day.
‘I’ll just go back to sleep...’
I Hoeseo still had enough fatigue to sleep at least eight more hours.
Perhaps because he had sweated profusely from the nightmare, just as he was adjusting his posture, his body somehow feeling lighter...
— Squish
“Huh.”
He urgently lifted the blanket and shone the phone light on it. There, the white comforter had clearly turned a different color from its original hue.
“Ah, seriously. Fuck.”
‘I thought it was sweat. I knew it was!’
As if mocking I Hoeseo’s desperate wish right to his face, a faint smell of urine wafted up.
‘Pissing the bed at this age......’
However, there was something more important than the miserable feeling of not acting his age.
‘I... only have one set of clothes, one mattress, and one blanket...’
Moreover, I Hoeseo’s attire was still exactly what he had changed into at the hospital yesterday.
He couldn’t go out alone, and he couldn’t ask Ha Gangin—a perfectly normal adult man—to buy little girls’ underwear for him, either.
So he was still going commando.
‘I should’ve just worn my old ones even if they didn’t fit...’
The first menstruation of his life, experienced as a female, which had flooded because underwear failed to block it as the first line of defense, was truly a disaster that had occurred while he slept.
‘Uwaaaah! Fuck, nothing is going right!’
He felt like screaming or bawling his eyes out, but with the time being what it was, and the building having absolutely no soundproofing, being unable to do so only heightened I Hoeseo’s distress.
I Hoeseo listed the problems of the current situation.
‘First, if I get out from under the blanket like this, the whole room will become a field of piss.’
That was the first problem that came to mind.
‘Second, with this body, it’s questionable whether I can even wash clothes properly.’
That was the biggest problem.
‘Lastly... if I try to go back to sleep like this, it’s gross, so I have to wash!’
This was the cause that distressed I Hoeseo the most.
— Click
— Drip drip drip
“Ungh.”
‘Fucking cold!’
I Hoeseo turned the shower on as gently as possible and rubbed his body while completely naked.
Already unable to see well, and with moving his body being uncomfortable, just getting to the bathroom had been no small ordeal.
‘How did I stub my pinky toe once, my knees twice, and my arms twice just moving that short distance...’
— Click
“Ugh, cold.”
Fortunately, there was a towel that I Hoeseo had taken out a few days ago and dropped on the floor. He dried his body with that, and wrapped the one hanging up entirely around his body.
‘Whew...’
— Click
‘It’s already five...’
I Hoeseo lay on the opposite side from where he had lain earlier, avoiding the urine as much as possible.
‘For now, just sleep... and think about it tomorrow. Yeah, that’s right.’
‘Now I have no clothes so it’s fucking cold. I might even catch a cold tomorrow.’
— Gulp, gulp
— Rustle
I Hoeseo drank all the remaining water, turned the blanket to the clean side, rolled himself up, and tried to sleep again.
*
— Beep beep beep
— Beep beep—
“Ugh...”
The second waking on Monday.
The phone clock was pointing at 10:40.
He hadn’t dared to try fingerprint recognition yet out of fear, so he unlocked the phone with a pattern and saw several notifications.
‘Daily quest, daily quest, daily quest... a text?’
Naturally, the text was from Ha Gangin.
- Game this afternoon? So you can get used to things too.
The text had come at 10.
Probably chosen with I Hoeseo’s usual waking time in mind.
‘Diligent bastard...’
Just as he was about to send a quick reply, he felt a somehow familiar dampness.
The gross wetness between his legs, and the towel and blanket wet up to around his waist.
‘Ugh.’
“...Ewwww!”
— Ding
- You read it, so why no reply?
- Fell back asleep?
Another text from Ha Gangin.
I Hoeseo felt too guilty to leave him on read again this time, so he decided to roughly express his current situation in a roundabout way.
- Ah, sorry
- Just woke up but something happened
- What is it again.
- Nothing much, pissed the bed
‘Ah, fuck, I messed up.’
— Bzzzt
Then a call came from Ha Gangin.
“Hey... when you said you pissed, is it what I’m thinking...?”
“Uh, th-that’s...”
“Yeah...”
I Hoeseo felt like he might just lose his mind.