Haneul’s jaw worked. “Didn’t think I’d stay.”
“Planning to vanish again?”
“Wasn’t planning anything.”
Yul lit another cigarette. “Mm. That’s your problem.”
??????
The days passed slow.
Four nights in the upstairs office. Four nights of cold rice and vending machine cans. He didn’t dance. Didn’t serve. Just went to college and skated during the day, then came back and curled up like a fox in the closet den. His jacket hung over the back of the futon. The fox mask, for once, stayed untouched.
He told himself it was just space. Not exile.
He told himself he’d needed to reset.
But by the third day, he was brushing his teeth with hotel freebies and using cotton pads from the club bathroom as makeshift towels. The whole thing was starting to feel like cosplay. Like pretending he was still the boy who used to squat in karaoke booths and steal triangle kimbap to stay alive.
He wasn’t.
But he didn’t know who he was becoming, either.
The couch still smelled like old incense and printer ink. Not detergent. Not cedar shampoo. Not heat.
Haneul pretended that was better.
He folded his clothes too tight, like he was trying to shrink his own edges. Brushed his teeth and froze when he reached for a drawer that didn’t exist here. Realized, with a strange twist in his stomach, that he didn’t know where the toothpaste belonged anymore.
He started using “I” again.
It tasted sour, after almost two months of using “we”.
“I’ll be back late.”
“I forgot to buy ramen.”
“I don’t know if I’m hungry.”
No one answered. And he told himself that was good. That this silence was cleaner.
But his phone kept lighting up. Once. Twice. Each time, he looked.
Each time, it wasn’t the name he didn’t save, but knew by rhythm.
Seungho had only sent one message:
I know you needed space.
I won’t ask questions.
Just come home safe.
He hadn’t sent anything since. Hadn’t begged. Hadn’t followed.
And that was the worst part.
Because Seungho wasn’t caging him.
