GBAS 45

“Didn’t you come here to show me something?”

“Well, yes, but.”

Hyunwoo said, pushing up his glasses awkwardly.

“I tend to do a lot of trial and error when I’m drafting, so it’s a bit pressuring if you watch from the beginning…”

It seemed he felt quite burdened by being watched out of curiosity. As Jooin stood up without a word, Hyunwoo added.

“I’ll let you know when I have a rough guide. You can come and see it then.”

As if worried he might have sulked, Hyunwoo looked up at Jooin with his neck craned back. At the gesture that strangely seemed to plead for an answer, he found himself nodding, and Hyunwoo, flashing a grin, turned his gaze back to the monitor.

Jooin looked down at Hyunwoo, who was quickly engrossed in his work, and blankly rubbed the tip of his nose. It was clearly his own home, yet he felt a strange sense of abandonment.

Jooin’s eyes, pondering what to do, landed on a heaping pile of laundry.

👾🎮

Once he started on one thing, the work seemed endless.

After putting the laundry in the washing machine, he came out and saw the pile of dishes in the kitchen. After washing the mostly-cup dishes clean and turning them upside down, the grease-splattered stove caught his eye. In the end, Jooin, having practically scoured the entire kitchen, had just finished wiping the floor clean when, with perfect timing, the melody signaling the end of the laundry cycle rang out.

Jooin, carrying the wet laundry, went out to the rooftop. He spread out and hung each heavy piece of laundry, and took down the bone-dry clothes. Having moved his whole body in the summer heat before the sun had fully set, his entire body felt sticky.

It was a good thing he had turned on the air conditioner.

Coming inside, the air was incomparably pleasant compared to outside, and he could finally breathe. Closing the front door and coming up to the room, Jooin cast his gaze towards Hyunwoo, next to the spinning fan. Seeing his fingers move furiously, it seemed he was still in the thick of it.

Jooin placed the laundry basket in the middle of the room, pulled out a white t-shirt and underwear, and headed to the bathroom.

👾🎮

Jooin, having finished cleaning the bathroom under the guise of taking a shower, stubbed out the cigarette he was smoking. As he was about to go into the room, he stared intently at the can filled with cigarette butts and finally picked it up.

If it hadn’t been for the guest, he would have made do with this can for a while longer.

Glancing at the already rusting can, Jooin muttered.

“Who does he think he is.”

And what’s so special about this dump of a place? You can’t turn a pumpkin into a watermelon just by drawing lines on it, so he had no idea why he was scrubbing and polishing it.

Tsk, Jooin clicked his tongue and looked up at the coral-colored sky.

They had met in the middle of the day, but the sun was slowly setting. Since it was summer, when the sun sets late, it was probably around eight o’clock.

The sunset was beautiful, perhaps signaling that rain was coming soon.

‘Should I call him out.’

The thought suddenly occurred to him, and Jooin, looking through the window, clicked his tongue again. Just what kind of amazing thing was he making to be like that? Hyunwoo was still stuck to the monitor as if he had become one with it.

Having run out of things to do, Jooin sat down on the mattress. He planned to work on a technique he had been conceptualizing recently.

Jooin pulled over the guitar he kept within reach for practice anytime, and connected the cable to the bottom of the body. Since it was work that didn’t require an effects pedal, he connected the other end of the cable to the amp and turned it on.

He could play right away, but if he did, he could get reported by neighbors within a 500m radius, so Jooin connected headphones to the amp.

Placing the headphones on his head, Jooin picked up the pick he had tucked between the strings and the fret. He strummed all the strings to check if tuning was needed, and the crisp sound of the electric guitar, even without correction, came through the headphones.

Looking at the tuner attached to the headstock, he gently turned the pegs, and the out-of-tune notes were quickly sorted out.

👾🎮

If he just nailed down the details a bit more, it wouldn’t be a problem to perform it live.

It had been about an hour since he started practicing. A proud smile graced Jooin’s lips as he had completed about 80% of the fingering style he had only imagined. His fingertips ached, probably because he had put more force than usual when pressing the fretboard. To be able to practice with the band tomorrow, it would be best to stop before blisters formed.

Just as he was about to turn off the amp and tidy up the cables, a single scream pierced through his headphones.

“Aaargh!”

Jooin took off his headphones and asked Hyunwoo, who was clutching his head.

“What’s wrong?”

“Save, the save…!”

The problem was that the computer’s RAM was insufficient, and it couldn’t save the work he had done so far. It was an unfortunate event.

Hyunwoo seemed extremely distraught, even kneeling and crying on the floor. Just as he was about to put his guitar aside to pat his back, Hyunwoo’s heaving shoulders stopped, and he shot his head up.

“But?”

“…”

“Been through it all, land, sea, and air. A situation like this is nothing to a final-year design student who has experienced all sorts of ridiculous bullshit.”

Hyunwoo shot up from his spot and squatted in front of the computer again. He glared at the frozen screen, unable to save or undo. Before long, a pop-up window filled with English text appeared.

Hyunwoo didn’t press the single ‘OK’ button in the middle of the window; instead, he dragged the pop-up window itself to the side. Then he took his phone out of his pocket.

Click-!

Only after taking several photos of the barely-breathing work could Hyunwoo press the ‘OK’ button without any lingering regrets.

Taking advantage of the moment, Jooin peeked over and stole a glance at the monitor. His eyes widened slightly. The things on the screen, though captured in a fleeting moment, looked clean and cool. He wanted to see more, but the lagging program forcibly shut down, leaving Jooin to smack his lips in disappointment.

Hyunwoo restarted the program, checked the file he had saved before entering the final stage, and copied it to his external hard drive.

Then he uninstalled the programs he had installed one by one, disconnected the cable from the main unit, and began to pack his things. After closing the case that had held the external hard drive and putting it in his bag, Hyunwoo tilted his head slightly towards where Jooin was.

His eyes were tired from staring at the screen for too long. Hyunwoo took off his glasses, pressed the sides of his nose, and asked.

“Hyung. What are you doing tomorrow?”

“…Concert practice?”

Jooin’s answer sounded half like a question. It was partly because he had no other plans besides practice, but also because he couldn’t figure out the intention behind Hyunwoo’s question. Hyunwoo spoke again.

“What time do you start?”

“Around two.”

“In this neighborhood?”

“No, near the concert venue.”

“Sangsu?”

‘How did he know that?’ 

Jooin thought, frowning slightly. Had he mentioned it before? He wasn’t sure. While Jooin was racking his brain, Hyunwoo shot up from his seat.

“That’s great.”

Then he lifted the neatly packed bag next to the floor chair and said.

“Can you come out a little earlier tomorrow? An hour, no, thirty minutes should be enough to check everything.”

Jooin, who was sitting hugging his guitar, looked up at Hyunwoo blankly and asked.

“You’re leaving?”

…Was he not supposed to leave?

At the question, which seemed to have omitted all sorts of adverbs, Hyunwoo, who was about to sling his bag over his shoulder, stopped moving and looked at Jooin.

“…”

When did he wash up?

Hyunwoo, catching sight of Baek Jooin in short shorts that revealed his pale thighs and a loose white t-shirt, clamped a hand over his lower face.

Come to think of it, this was Baek Jooin’s house. Was it because he was in his own territory? Jooin, who seemed to have let his guard down, had a slightly dazed expression compared to when he was outside.

Hyunwoo, meeting the eyes of Jooin who was sitting on the messy bed blinking, squeezed his eyes shut.

His heart, which had plummeted, started to pound wildly. It was like a counterpunch that flew in during a moment of carelessness, hitting him without a chance to dodge, and the internal damage was severe.

That’s right. In his strange sense of justice that he couldn’t just leave something ugly as it was, he had completely forgotten something important. Why he had come to meet Baek Jooin today. His purpose.

But this.

‘Fuck. Seeing him like that, who, who could…!’

An overly stimulating visual and auditory material was fluttering before his eyes. Thinking, how was that done again? His head was spinning.

He must have seduced me just like that, that day too.

When he peeked again, Baek Jooin was still there, looking up at him.

….

A fire raged inside him.

Hyunwoo washed his face with his dry hands to get a grip on himself. He puffed out his cheeks and let out a deep breath, and blinked his eyes a few times, which seemed to have gotten blurry from rubbing them so much. Finally getting a hold of himself, Hyunwoo opened his mouth.

“What, what more do I have to do?”

Jooin, who was staring blankly at Hyunwoo, whose ear tips were flushed red, turned his gaze to the window, then back to Hyunwoo.