TWELVE 12

“I think I got hurt while working. I only realized it later.”

“Is that true?”

“It’s true. Ah, but loosen your grip a bit. My wrist is going to get cut off because of you.”

I naturally pulled my arm out of his hand. I was afraid the cold sweat breaking out on me might rub off on him. I was also afraid he might catch me lying.

“Oof, I’m tired. I should sleep now.”

I stood up to avoid Gi Seoin’s gaze.

“You should go home and sleep soon too. It’s late.”

Gi Seoin looked up at me with an expression that said he had a lot to say, but he remained silent and prepared to leave. Soon, I followed him as he headed toward the entrance.

Having silently put on his shoes, he stood up straight. I waved my hand.

“My puppy, drive safely.”

I thought that exhausting day would finally end like that.

“Seungkyung.”

“Yeah?”

“I’ll pay off Jeon Juseok’s debt for you.”

“…That again?”

Gi Seoin’s gaze lingered on my bruised shoulder. He seemed to still suspect Jeon Juseok was the main culprit behind the bruise. He had such unnecessarily good intuition. There was a reason the saying ‘ignorance is bliss’ had been passed down since ancient times.

“We already finished talking about that.”

Gi Seoin lowered his head and then lifted it back up.

“Then, don’t go out when Jeon Juseok calls.”

I wanted to do that, too. I was the person who most yearned for Jeon Juseok and me to grow apart. Because I couldn’t, that yearning only grew stronger. There were even times I wished one of us would meet with an unfortunate accident so we would never see each other again.

“I don’t meet him unless there’s a specific reason. You know that.”

“From where I’m standing, ten times out of ten, those are situations where you don’t have to meet him.”

Up until now, I had deliberately hidden my dealings with Jeon Juseok from Gi Seoin. I was worried about how Gi Seoin would react, and it was obvious that talking about it would only result in two people feeling miserable.

So, while Gi Seoin might know that Jeon Juseok was a rude bastard, he wouldn’t know exactly how wicked he was. Even so, seeing him try to block the guy like that was both fascinating and scary.

“Once you pay back the money, it’s over. You don’t need to do anything more.”

“I know that too…”

I couldn’t swallow my sigh.

“I know, but anyway, since I’m in the position of the one in need, there are situations where I have no choice.”

“Those situations where you have ‘no choice’—I hate that you’re stuck in them.”

“Do you think I like it?”

“Think about it carefully, Woo Seungkyung.”

Gi Seoin’s gaze was resolute.

“What I said is still valid.”

“I…”

I started to speak, but I couldn’t choose any words. I just looked at Gi Seoin.

“It will remain valid until you say yes.”

Every single word of Gi Seoin’s becomes a storm. I sway helplessly like a dry branch.

The bank balance hitting rock bottom clouds my vision. That is my life. But Gi Seoin reaches out his hand, saying he will pull me out of this cave. He lures me, saying he will show me the light.

But I…

“I appreciate the sentiment.”

I refuse, feeling as though I am swallowing needles instead of the sweet water laid out right in front of me.

“Just hearing you say that gives me strength. Thank you, truly.”

Just as Gi Seoin’s desire to help me remained valid, my desire to remain proper friends with him was also the same.

“Just, Seoin. Pray for my success.”

For me, Gi Seoin’s heart alone was sincerely enough.

Gi Seoin might not understand me. Even from the expression he showed now, I could read his dissatisfied feelings. His lips flickered as if he were about to say something, but in the end, he didn’t let me hear his voice.

“Ah, and…”

I caught Gi Seoin as he was about to step out the front door.

“You don’t have to come tomorrow morning. I’ll eat tonight’s lunch box for that. And don’t do the cleaning anymore, either.”

Gi Seoin, who I thought would ask ‘Why?’, turned his back without any expression of agreement or disagreement. I wondered if he was finally starting to understand my feelings. I should have felt relieved, but I felt lonely.

It wasn’t me, but my selfishness that was holding onto Gi Seoin. Reason and emotion confronted each other like enemy forces.

What would it have been like if we weren’t this different? If I were someone who suited Gi Seoin better than I do now…

Let’s stop. It was a pointless thought. I headed to bed.

“Work? There isn’t any.”

I visited the foreman with the feeling of grasping at straws, but the answer that came back was that there was no work.

“Isn’t it peak season lately?”

“The economy is bad, so there isn’t much work. For the work there is, workers are lined up.”

Wiping his sweat, the foreman stared at me with narrowed eyes.

“Why, do you need money?”

“Yes, well, I do.”

“You’re not doing something like gambling, are you?”

“Hey, I don’t even have money to live on right now, so how could I gamble?”

“Geez… You said you were paying off your grandmother’s hospital bills.”

When you get deployed to a site and work for over a month, you naturally end up sharing your circumstances with the other workers. The foreman remembered something I had said in passing while mixed in the crowd.

“I’ll ask around.”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Hang in there. You’re young! Don’t worry too much.”

“Yes, sir! They say the hardships you face while young aren’t even real hardships.”

“Right, I like that you’re energetic.”

The foreman patted my back. I laughed, but my mind was busy worrying about whether I should stop by a day labor office in the evening.

“Seungkyung, I heard you’re looking for work?”

I was in the middle of working again when Lee Jongki approached and spoke to me. It seemed the foreman had asked the workers if there was any work.

“Yeah, do you know of a place?”

Lee Jongki was the only one around my age among the people working at the site. He said he had boldly taken out loans to jump into a business but failed miserably, and was now working at whatever he could find to clear his debt. Someone like him might know of some lucrative work.

“There is something… Is it very urgent?”

“Kinda, yeah.”

Since the topic was money, I couldn’t help but frown even as I laughed.

“I’m not even spending more, so why am I so hard up? It’s weird.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

As he spoke, Lee Jongki put a cigarette in his mouth. Soon, having exhaled smoke, he continued the conversation.

“But why are you trying to work at a construction site? You’ve got this going for you.”

Lee Jongki held out his hand with the cigarette and made a gesture as if wiping the front of his own face. I let out a dry laugh.

“Someone like me can’t make a living with their face.”

“That’s disappointing to hear. Hey, if I looked as good as you, I would have gone to auditions immediately.”

He probably saw that I was struggling and was trying to cheer me up with some empty praise. He wasn’t even someone I was usually close with, so I was really grateful.

Lee Jongki scattered cigarette smoke like a sigh.

“Anyway, there is a job. I passed on it because I couldn’t do it, but it pays well. The work is much easier than physical labor, too.”

“What kind of work? Why can’t you do it?”

“It’s a bar run by a hyung I know, and he said all you have to do is serve. It’s a membership club, so there are almost no difficult customers and the tips are generous. And I, damn it, got cut at the entrance because they said they’re picking handsome people.”

Lee Jongki made a comical face. I was going to give him a hollow compliment saying he looked pretty good too, but seeing that expression, I just laughed.

“But are handsome guys that common? I told him to poach them from other bars or something. But then I remembered when I heard you were looking for work. How about it? Interested?”

“A bar… I don’t know.”

“It’s not a weird place. It’s a bar opened by a hyung who’s a silver spoon with a shitload of money and loves alcohol a shitload too. You know the kind of place where refined kids come to drink quietly and then leave?”

I had never been to one, but it wasn’t hard to imagine the kind of bar a second-generation chaebol protagonist would go to in a drama or movie.

“Is it divided into separate rooms?”

“There are spots like that, and spots that aren’t. I went once when it opened. The atmosphere was pretty good.”

“By any chance, do you know what the pay is?”

Honestly, it wasn’t tempting. If I said I found a new job, Gi Seoin would ask about it, and I could already see him adamantly opposing it if I said it was a ‘bar.’ I wondered if I really had to care about his opinion even when earning money, but it seemed more right to look for other work first rather than bicker with him.

“The pay? I don’t remember well, but I think it paid much better than a construction site. I’m telling you, I would have done it if I met the requirements. I’ll ask if he’s looking for people again and find out the pay too.”

“Yeah, thanks.”

“No problem. If I introduce you, that hyung will probably give me expensive alcohol as a thank you.”

The guy, having finished his cigarette, slapped my shoulder hard. Luckily, it wasn’t the part Jeon Juseok had hit.

“Let’s hang in there, both of us. The day we see the light will come.”

Regardless, I received encouragement from many people today. They were truly kind people.

After bumping fists, Lee Jongki and I scattered to our respective work areas.

For some reason, things aren’t going according to plan. I couldn’t get a job introduction from the foreman I trusted, and the bar Jongki was introducing me to wasn’t satisfactory. Even at this moment, the debt repayment date was approaching. While I thought there must be a place for this one body to work, a sense of anxiety washed over me. The worry about money was as heavy as the bricks I carried on my shoulders.

It was unusually heavy.

“Ugh…!”

I slumped down, put the bricks back down, and clutched my shoulder. It was the left shoulder Jeon Juseok had hit. However, it wasn’t just pain from being hit.

“Hey there! What’s wrong?”

The site supervisor, seeing that I looked strange, approached and asked.

“My shoulder suddenly hurts. Maybe it’s a cramp…”

“Let me see.”

The supervisor grabbed my left arm and simultaneously pressed around my shoulder. A massive pain spread instantly, and I squeezed my eyes shut. It hurt so much that my lip, which I bit to keep from screaming reflexively, felt like it would burst.

“Looks like you’re hurt?”

“But nothing happened for me to get hurt?”

“Can you move it?”

The supervisor grabbed his own shoulder and rotated his arm back and forth, telling me to follow along.

“Uuugh.”

The movement I thought would be naturally possible was impossible. As soon as I moved my shoulder, I felt a pain that made me cry out.

“It hurts too much…”

“This, this, looking at it, it’s definitely a ruptured shoulder ligament.”

“Just suddenly like this?”

“While working construction, even perfectly fine ligaments suddenly snap one day. Did you overdo it while lifting bricks?”

“It was the same as usual…”

The supervisor clicked his tongue.

“Go to the hospital first. I’ll call the foreman, so talk to him well.”

“Yes…”

After the supervisor disappeared, I tried to move my shoulder again. However, only groans of pain came out of my mouth, and my shoulder wouldn’t follow along, as if it belonged to someone else.

Whether it was a temporary cramp or a ruptured ligament, working today was out of the question. Sights were exhaled one after another. My heart sank with an ominous foreboding.