The moment the elevator doors opened, I froze on the spot.
To be precise, my feet wouldn’t move, as if they were glued to the floor.
Up until just a moment ago, I had been perfectly fine.
I had safely finished my first meeting after receiving an offer for a print edition,
awkwardly smiled and exchanged greetings with the CEO and editorial team of PageOn Publishing,
and even made sure to take the envelope containing the contract materials with me.
In other words, at least until the elevator doors opened,
I had been nothing more than an extremely ordinary, nervous web novel author.
But the instant those doors opened, that ordinariness shattered into pieces.
Because of the man standing inside.
A man in a black shirt and a dark coat.
The knuckles visible above his wrist looked unusually neat,
and the line of his shoulders was excessively straight.
His hair was tidy, not a single strand out of place,
but strangely, it didn’t look stifling. If anything, it drew the eye even more.
Sometimes, when you see someone so handsome they don’t seem real,
the first thing you doubt in that moment is your own eyes.
‘Is that really a human face?’
That was the first thought that came to me.
But that wasn’t the problem.
The real problem was that I knew that face.
I had definitely seen it a few days ago. Very clearly.
Not just in passing, either. I had stared at it for a long time.
I had zoomed in, flipped through profile shots, and even read the profile text.
Because I couldn’t believe it. Because I wondered if a man who looked like that really existed in this world.
The man standing inside the elevator slowly walked out.
The closer he came, the more unreal he seemed.
His eyes were long and quiet rather than sharp, his nose bridge was straight,
and his lips had softer lines than I had expected.
Overall, he looked cold, but strangely enough, his face
wasn’t one that completely pushed people away.
Someone indifferent, but not crossing the line.
Someone who wouldn’t bother pretending to be kind in front of a stranger,
but wouldn’t be unkind either.
For some reason, that was the impression I got first.
I swallowed once.
Only then did I notice the access card hanging from his neck.
On the card attached to the end of a black lanyard, there was a logo and English text I had never seen before, printed small.
I didn’t know it then. That on the upper floor of the publishing company building I had just left after my meeting,
the Boyfriend Shopping Mall operations lounge was also located.
He stopped in front of me.
“You’re Ms. Lee Dohee, correct?”
At that moment, the screen of my phone from a few days ago flashed through my mind.
[Boyfriend Shopping Mall]
[S-Class Premium Partner / Do Hwajun]
I opened my mouth very slowly.
“…Do Hwajun?”
His name slipped out of my mouth far too honestly.
Maybe because I was startled, or maybe because it was absurd, my voice came out about half a tone higher than usual.
Whether the man didn’t find it strange that his name had come from my mouth,
or whether he had already expected it, he smiled very faintly.
And his smiling face was a foul.
Shouldn’t good-looking people lose a little something when they smile?
Or at least look more human?
But even in the moment he smiled, that man was far too complete.
“Yes. I’m Do Hwajun.”
For a brief moment, my mind went completely blank.
‘Why are you coming out of there?’
The words rose all the way to my throat, but I barely managed to swallow them.
Do Hwajun.
The first time I saw that man was a few days ago.
To be exact, it was the night when the disaster named Oh Yeonsu
shook up my life however she pleased.
The moment love ended was less dramatic than I expected.
Some people cry and cling, some people throw glasses of alcohol,
and some people say that at the very least, rain ought to pour down,
but on the day my relationship actually ended, all that remained on the table were a few chicken bones, soggy fried batter,
and tteokbokki that had gone half cold.
Chicken and tteokbokki.
Ridiculously enough, that was my favorite combination,
and at the same time, it was also the title of the web novel I was serializing.
‘Chi-Tteok-Ppa: The Day Chicken Fell for Tteokbokki’
It was a romantic comedy I had been serializing for over a year.
A story about a female lead who liked chicken and a male lead who liked tteokbokki,
who bickered over something as simple as food preferences before eventually falling into each other’s lives.
The kind of love I had wanted to write best.
A relationship that was sweet, spicy, funny, and sometimes made you tear up for no reason.
The problem was that the model for the male lead of that novel
was Kang Chiyeol, who was sitting across from me right now.
“Dohee.”
Kang Chiyeol called my name.
I stopped while closing the container of pickled radish. His voice was a little drier than usual.
But people become strangely dull in the face of subtle changes in the person they love.
No, they pretend to be dull. Even when they get a bad feeling, they deliberately pretend not to hear it.
Because the moment they hear it, it becomes real.
“Yeah?”
“Let’s break up.”
I dropped the container of pickled radish I was holding.
The plastic container rattled on the table.
That sound seemed unusually loud. It was strange.
For the sound of the world collapsing, it was far too light.
“What?”
I barely opened my mouth.
Kang Chiyeol didn’t avoid my expression.
He didn’t look sorry, and he didn’t look pained.
That was the most humiliating part. If he had at least looked sorry, I might have felt less miserable,
but he looked like someone who had already thought everything through by himself a long time ago.
“I don’t think we fit anymore.”
‘We don’t fit.’
I rolled those words around in my mind once.
Not fitting is such a convenient expression.
You don’t have to give a specific reason,
you don’t have to stab the other person precisely with a knife,
and you can make yourself look like less of a bad person.
But that day, I learned for the first time
that vague words like that can hurt a person for much longer.
“Why, all of a sudden?”
“It’s not all of a sudden.”
Kang Chiyeol turned his phone face down and leaned back in his chair.
For some reason, that attitude grated on me.
As if he were someone delivering feedback after a meeting.
It wasn’t a relationship. It was a wrap-up. It didn’t feel like love, but like settlement.
“I’ll be honest. These days, when I’m with you, I feel kind of stifled.”
“What did I do?”
“You don’t have to do something for me to feel stifled.”
For a moment, I was at a loss for words.
I know that people don’t necessarily need some huge reason to start disliking someone.
But at least for someone you’ve dated for a long time,
shouldn’t you use a slightly more precise sentence?
Stifled? That’s it? What kind of person I am,
how we loved each other, and how many seasons we passed through together
can all be summed up in that one word in the end?
“Kang Chiyeol.”
I called his name in a low voice.
“Did you maybe meet another woman?”
His eyebrows moved very slightly.
With just that tiny reaction, people usually know the answer.
Even so, I waited. For him to say no.
For him to at least tell me that much of a lie.
Even knowing it was a cowardly expectation,
people hope until the very end that the other person will choose the less terrible option.
But Kang Chiyeol betrayed me
in a much easier way than I had expected.
“I did.”
The moment those words fell, strangely, the tears didn’t come right away.
Instead, it felt like something inside me quietly cracked apart.
Like a very thin glass cup forming a fracture.
Without even the sound of it shattering, only the inside slowly collapsing.
“Since when?”
“Is that important?”
“It is to me.”
“Dohee, this kind of clingy thing doesn’t suit us.”
At that moment, I really did laugh.
‘Clingy.’
You were the one who cheated, you were the one who notified me we were breaking up,
and you were the one who told me to my face that there was another woman,
but somehow I’m the one being clingy here.
Love always gives the person who ends it far more to say.
To lessen their own guilt.
“You’re really the worst.”
When I said it quietly, Kang Chiyeol sighed.
That sigh wasn’t from feeling sorry. It was a sigh of annoyance.
And he truly was the worst until the very end.
“To be honest, I’m kind of sick of eating chicken and tteokbokki all the time now.”
For a while, I couldn’t say anything.
‘Sick of chicken and tteokbokki.’
Those words were so absurd
that the real sentence hidden behind them sounded even clearer instead.
‘I’m sick of you too.’
‘I’m sick of the time I spend with you.’
‘I’m tired of everything you like.’
There really were all kinds of ways to discard a person.
He could have simply said his feelings had changed,
but he just had to lump together even the things I loved and call them tiresome.
A way of leaving that made even the small preferences and habits I had loved for so long
feel insignificant.
Did he think I would become smaller if he said it that way?
“Are you insane?”
When I barely muttered that, Kang Chiyeol rubbed his jaw with an irritated look.
“Watch your mouth.”
At those words, my vision really did flicker for a moment.
‘Who does this cheating bastard think he’s telling to watch her mouth?’
In the end, I laughed. It wasn’t a pretty laugh. It was closer to a sneer.
“You should try living prettily yourself.”
Kang Chiyeol stood up with a face that said there was no value in continuing the conversation.
He must have already paid, because only the card receipt sat alone on one side of the table.
So this really was the end. So a breakup could be this lacking in dignity.
It didn’t have to be as cool as in a movie, but couldn’t it at least have been humane?
“I’m going.”
“Get lost.”
I didn’t cling to him until the very end.
Not because I didn’t want to,
but because I thought I would become too pitiful if I clung in that moment.
He had already ended the love. I couldn’t be the one to throw away my pride on top of that.
After the door closed, only then did I look down at the table.
‘Leftover chicken.’
‘Cold tteokbokki.’
‘Sauce with the oil congealing.’
Strangely, it felt exactly like my relationship.
That night, I ended up crying.
I cried in the taxi on the way home,
cried while leaning against the closed front door,
and cried beneath the sound of the shower. I cried until I was exhausted and collapsed onto my bed,
and even then, out of habit, I opened my laptop.
A white document window.
A blinking cursor.
And the title floating at the very top.
‘Chi-Tteok-Ppa: The Day Chicken Fell for Tteokbokki’
I stared at that title for a long time, then eventually closed the laptop.
‘I’m someone who writes love, but my love has ended.’
Then how am I supposed to write the next sentence now?
A few days later, Oh Yeonsu barged into my house.
“Hey, get up.”
“I’m not getting up.”
“Are you dead?”
“Yeah.”
Even with the blanket pulled over my head, Yeonsu’s voice pierced through the ceiling.
Without even opening my eyes, I hugged my pillow tighter.
Shouldn’t a person have the right to become one with their bed for at least three days after a breakup?
But the people around me were all far too healthy. Sensible,
diligent people who ate and slept even when they were angry.
In that sense, Oh Yeonsu was truly the worst friend of my life.
Because she was so fine that she rarely gave me time to wallow and fall apart.
“Wash up and come out. Let’s drink.”
“It’s daytime.”
“So? Day drinking goes down easier.”
“I’m not drinking.”
“Then I’ll pry your mouth open and pour it in.”
In the end, I kicked off the blanket and sat up.
The face in the mirror was, no matter who looked at it, the face of someone who had recently been dumped.
My eyes were swollen, my skin was rough, and my hair was a mess.
And yet Yeonsu leaned against the doorway, looked at me, and said very calmly,
“You’re less dead than I expected.”
“Try comforting me for once.”
“Hey, I didn’t come to your funeral, okay?”
Even as she said that, Yeonsu opened the refrigerator and took out bottled water for me first.
That was the kind of girl she was. Her mouth was the rudest thing in the world, but her hands were strangely quick.
To others, she might seem like a mean friend, but I knew.
A truly mean friend wouldn’t bother checking in on the fact that I hadn’t written a manuscript for ten days,
or that I was drinking only water instead of eating.
In the end, we sat down at a neighborhood bar.
Yeonsu ordered chicken feet, and I felt nauseated just smelling them,
so I only held on to my soju glass.
Yeonsu stared at my face for a long time before finally opening her mouth as if she couldn’t hold back anymore.
“But seriously, what kind of bastard is he?”
“Don’t.”
“Why? I can’t even curse out your ex-boyfriend?”
“Don’t say ex-boyfriend.”
“Then what should I call him? Ex-bastard?”
I let out a small laugh,
then felt wronged for laughing and quickly bit my lip.
Yeonsu saw that and sighed.
There were many emotions mixed into that sigh.
Frustration, sadness, irritation, and, in the end, worry for her friend.
“Hey, Lee Dohee. Get it together. He cheated.
And he was fucking shameless about it too. He’s exactly the type
who’d be happiest if you’re here unable to eat or write because of him.”
“Would he really be happy?”
“He would. He’d fill up his ego thinking, ‘She still hasn’t gotten over me.’”
It was so accurate that it annoyed me even more.
I took a sip of soju. My throat burned.
Even though I couldn’t handle spicy food or alcohol,
when people are hurting, they strangely keep seeking things that set their insides on fire.
“But I really don’t understand.”
I muttered as I set down my glass.
“What?”
“How can anyone get sick of chicken and tteokbokki?”
Yeonsu stared at me blankly for a moment, then burst out laughing.
“Hey, that’s what upsets you most after getting dumped?”
“It’s not that… No, that’s also true.”
I muttered sulkily.
“Ugh… I’m so annoyed. Fine, whatever, he stopped liking me,
but it makes me even angrier that he lumped in the things I liked and said he was sick of them too.”
Yeonsu looked at my face for a moment, then clicked her tongue.
“You can really tell you dated him for a long time.
A normal person who got dumped would curse the other woman first.”
“I don’t even know her face. What am I supposed to curse?”
“That’s the problem. You’re always way too sincere with your emotions toward people.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“When it comes to dating, it can be.
Because you end up being polite even to a guy who’s ruined.”
I silently emptied my glass.
Yeonsu wasn’t wrong. When I liked someone, I liked them for a long time,
and I maintained courtesy toward someone I had given my heart to for longer than expected.
Even after breaking up, I was never good at hating the other person carelessly.
I didn’t know whether that was a good thing or a bad thing,
but at least for me right now, it was poison. If only I were a simpler person who could curse Kang Chiyeol in the most vulgar terms,
tear up his photos, and delete his number, maybe it would hurt less.
“Forget it.”
Yeonsu suddenly took out her phone and shoved it toward me.
“Look at this.”
I frowned and looked at the screen.
A bright pink icon.
And the name was even more absurd.
Boyfriend Shopping Mall
“…What is this?”
Yeonsu lifted the corner of her mouth.
“A whole new world.”