“Baek Siyun!”
The manager’s voice rang out so loudly it carried beyond the food court.
I turned my head, duster in hand.
It was lunchtime at a food court shop in a Seoul amusement park.
The tray return station was empty, and I’d already wiped all the tables once, so there was nothing left to touch. Customers only passed by here and there; almost no one actually came up to our shop.
The manager leaned against the cashier counter and looked at me.
“Hey, you opened today, right?”
“Yes.”
“There aren’t any customers today and it’s slow. Want to leave early?”
I thought the word “yes” would pop right out the moment I heard that, but strangely, I paused for a second.
Leaving early.
Just hearing it sounded sweet as hell. But on days like this, it somehow felt like I was getting cheated.
If you’re going to send me home early, then tell me not to come in from the start. They’re always going on about how busy it is and how they need to hire part-timers, but they never actually hire anyone. They just work the people they already have to death. Then on days with no customers, they toss out, “Want to leave early?” like they’re doing you a favor.
For no reason, I smacked my lips.
“Hmm~...”
The manager raised one eyebrow.
“What, you don’t want to go home?”
It wasn’t that either.
I shrugged and smiled.
“Nope? I will be leaving early! Please, absolutely let me!”
The manager snorted.
“Fine. Then clock out at one and go.”
“Yes, sir.”
I answered lightly, but I felt odd inside. It was nice, but it was also kind of annoying to admit that it was nice.
I looked around the hall.
The shining food court signs, the smell of oil, the smell of food, the vague mixed scent of fried stuff, the voices of kids coming from far away.
Working inside an amusement park sounds like working somewhere glamorous, but once you see it every day, it’s just a noisy workplace. Rather than a land of dreams and adventure, it’s closer to a land where you wipe tables and spoons to death.
Cleaning up didn’t take long.
I wiped a few tables one more time, lined up the chairs, checked around the return station, and made sure nothing was backed up.
Normally this kind of thing was comfortable with two people... but thanks to them not hiring anyone, I was always the only one getting worked like a dog. It was seriously dogshit.
One o’clock.
As soon as I clocked out and came outside, I let out a long breath.
“Haa...”
It was nice. It really was.
But my mood wasn’t exactly refreshed.
When was my day off again? Did I have Monday off and then Sunday off? Or was it Tuesday and Sunday? Anyway, it was always like that. I never got two days off in a row.
It was fucking bullshit.
If you’re going to let someone rest, just put the two days together and let them rest properly. But no, they always give me Monday off, make me work a few days, then give me Sunday off. Some weeks it’s Tuesday off, then Sunday off.
When it’s like that, a day off doesn’t feel like a day off. After resting one day, I immediately start thinking about going back to work. It’s not resting. It’s barely catching my breath.
I rode the employee elevator down, chewing on curses in my head.
They said it was hard because they were short on people, that they should hire part-timers, that they were doing interviews, but in reality they hired no one, worked the existing people even harder, and when there were no customers, they tossed out early leave like it was consideration.
‘Aaaah, fuck.’
If you’re going to do this, why not just use me like a full-time employee? Ah, right. I’m a part-timer, but I’m working more than a full-time employee, aren’t I? And getting paid fucking minimum wage? No, well, there are incentives, but...
Once my thoughts got that far, I ended up letting out a hollow laugh.
I hated being a full-time employee even more. Work under those people? I had no intention of staking my life on this job to that extent.
Just earning enough, living enough, enduring enough.
That was my way.
I’d already eaten lunch. Even if I went home, there was nothing to do. I’d probably play games, look at my phone, read webtoons or web novels, or lie in bed and kill time.
Today, that felt a little wasteful.
The weather was better than I expected. The sky had opened faintly, and though the wind was still a bit cold, it didn’t have that blade-like feeling of winter.
Spring.
Suddenly, I remembered a post I’d seen somewhere a few days ago.
It said the plum blossoms had bloomed, didn’t it?
So instead of going home, I changed direction.
‘Hadong Maesil Street in Seongdong-gu.’
They said you could see plum blossoms there.
I took the subway, swayed while standing among the people, then got off and walked again. Even as I did, the curses I hadn’t finished earlier kept circling in my head.
It was bullshit that I didn’t get two days off in a row, bullshit that they only talked about hiring part-timers because they were short on people and never actually hired anyone, and bullshit that they tossed out some half-assed early leave like today and acted proud of themselves for it.
But the funny thing was, even while cursing like that, I’d be going back to work tomorrow.
Rent went out every month, credit card bills came steadily rolling in, and Seoul was a city where money melted faster than expected... no, faster than you could even imagine.
I was born in Busan.
I went to school in Busan, grew up in Busan, and stayed there until I was roughly past twenty.
Seoul was a vague object of longing. Just a city I wanted to try living in once. Everyone went up there, and there was something there. If I kept living only in Busan, it felt like my whole life would really end in Busan, and for some reason, I hated that.
So I used college as an excuse to come up to Seoul.
At first, I really did have some intention of attending school. But after going for a while, it just wasn’t right. Waking up in the morning, going into lecture halls, marking attendance, listening to subjects I didn’t care about, and half-heartedly mixing in among people. That life didn’t stick to me.
In the end, I dropped out.
I was pretty nervous when I told my parents, but they didn’t oppose me to the end. I said I wanted to try living in Seoul, said I would work, and I really did work. That work was a hall part-time job at a food court in a Seoul amusement park.
I didn’t have any grand dream, but at least I had the feeling that I was paying the price of remaining in Seoul myself.
That was how I became who I was now.
A studio apartment on the outskirts of Seoul.
A five-day-a-week part-time job.
Games, web novels, YouTube.
Occasional exercise.
Few friends, even fewer messages, and a mostly quiet life.
It wasn’t completely ruined, but it wasn’t going well either.
A life rolling along ambiguously.
Still, a life that hadn’t stopped.
While I was thinking such things, I arrived at Hadong Maesil Street.
The plum blossoms were quieter than I expected.
They weren’t flowers that swept in all at once like cherry blossoms. You had to get close to see them, and you had to look up to see how pretty they were.
White, pale, and thin.
The petals clinging to each branch trembled lightly under the sunlight.
Because they weren’t too flashy, I ended up looking at them even longer.
I stood there for a long while, gazing up at them.
A light wind blew. The petals swayed ever so slightly.
I remembered my childhood.
When I was young in Busan, I’d once seen plum blossoms while walking somewhere with my mom.
I didn’t remember exactly which neighborhood it had been. I only vaguely remembered that a cool breeze had been blowing that day too, just like now, and that my mom had said something like, “Aren’t the plum blossoms pretty?”
Cherry blossoms are like a festival, and plum blossoms are like a prelude. Flowers that feel like something is just about to begin.
I think she said something like that too.
The memory was blurry, but the sensation remained.
I looked up at the plum blossoms and lifted my tumbler. I took a sip of the café latte I’d made at home. It tasted a little heavy on the milk. Somehow, that suited today.
“They’re like words winter couldn’t quite swallow.”
The mutter slipped out of my mouth.
After saying it, I gave a small laugh.
‘What am I doing?’
I left early from my food court hall job, came to look at flowers, and now I’m suddenly pretending to be a poet.
Still, today was a little like that.
I’d gotten off work early, seen plum blossoms, the sky was clear, and strangely, everything looked okay.
‘Pretty things never last long.’
After muttering again, I soon mocked myself inwardly.
‘What are you acting like you know? Seeing a few plum blossoms doesn’t make life literature. So what if today’s nice~ I’ve got work again tomorrow.’
That made it even funnier.
It was a good day, but something kept catching, making it hard to simply say it was good.
My life was exactly like that.
Not completely bad, but too ambiguous to call comfortably good.
I walked for a while longer.
I only took a few photos. I was never good at leaving things like that behind. Even if I did, I wouldn’t look at them again.
Instead, I looked with my eyes for a long time.
White petals, thin branches, shadows reflected on the ground, people’s footsteps, the texture of the wind... things like that.
Then, when the sun had tilted a little, I returned home.
When I opened the door to my studio apartment, a familiar smell greeted me.
The particular stillness of a small room, the smell of unused electronics, the smell of detergent, the smell of clothes, and the very faint smell of dust.
I took off my coat, threw it toward the chair, and flopped straight down onto the bed.
The springs pressed down once beneath my body.
I didn’t want to do anything.
I didn’t want to look at my phone, didn’t want to turn on a game, and even washing up was a pain. So I just lay there. Staring at the ceiling, breathing, feeling the plum blossoms I’d seen earlier still lingering in my head.
‘It was a good day.’
That thought came to me.
Well, not that it had been incredibly good or anything.
The moment I thought that.
Something inside my stomach twisted hard.
“Urgh.”
My eyes flew open.
I thought maybe I had indigestion, but that wasn’t it.
It wasn’t just my abdomen that hurt. Something deep inside my body was knotting, twisting, and burrowing in all at once. It didn’t feel like pain, but like something had entered my body and was widening a space for itself.
My heart sank.
By reflex, I tried to sit up.
And the next instant.
My whole body began to hurt as if it would burst.
“Ggh... urgh...!”
I couldn’t breathe.
Arms, legs, shoulders, ribs, neck, fingers. There wasn’t a single place that didn’t hurt. It felt like a group of people were beating my entire body with blunt weapons.
No, it was worse than that. For a moment, I thought of those discharge beatings from the army, but the thought was erased right away.
Ten times worse than that crap.
No, even ten times wasn’t enough.
It felt like my blood was boiling, like my bones melted and hardened again, like iron nails were being driven between every strand of muscle.
I rolled off the bed.
My shoulder slammed into the floor, but even that was swallowed by the greater pain covering my whole body.
“Hah, hck...! Ggh...!”
I couldn’t even scream properly.
Then that pain rushed into my eyes.
The backs of my eyes burned.
It felt like someone had pried my eyeballs open and poured fire inside. It hurt so much my throat closed up. I tried to scream, but no sound came out. With my mouth hanging open, only strange noises leaked out. Ggh, kk, hk.
I didn’t know how much time passed.
Whether it was a few seconds.
Whether it was a few minutes.
I didn’t even know if I had fainted and woken up again.
Then, at some point, the pain went out like a lie.
Drenched in cold sweat, I lay sprawled on the floor and gasped for breath. My fingertips trembled. My heart was pounding like mad. It felt like my entire body had died once and barely come back.
Only after a long while did I barely lift my head.
“...Goddamn, fuck.”
The moment those words came out.
A “window” appeared in the air before my eyes.
A translucent window, with a very thin blue light flowing through it.
It popped up suddenly like an advertisement, but it was strangely clear.
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