CH 27

Upon entering my room, I noticed how average it seemed, so much so that it didn’t fit in with the house. It was filled with basic furniture—a vanity with a mirror, a television, a bed, a nightstand, a table and chair, and various other pieces.

Other than the fact that there was a vent instead of a window, it looked a lot like a motel room around the vicinity of Seoul Station. To word it poorly, the interior was furnished carelessly. The ivory-colored walls seemed to be wallpapered recently because they smelled fresh.

“…” I threw my luggage on the floor and sat back in the chair. A sigh escaped my lips.

I chose the tonkatsu lunch because I thought it might be better than bulgogi, but… it was made of minced meat. I didn’t really feel like eating it. I checked the time as I sipped from my half-melted cup of iced coffee. There were about 40 minutes left until two.

Knock knock.

Just then, someone knocked on my door. Someone came to visit me. I didn’t need to wonder who it was, since I already knew. I got up while making an unwilling face. There was only one person who would come visit me at this time.

Hyehyun Ham.

“If you haven’t eaten yet, let’s eat together. You also have to take some of your stuff.” As expected, outside my door was Hyehyun with his lunch and the remainder of my luggage. I recalled that Hyehyun was carrying everything else, excluding my clothes and towels. Most importantly, he was carrying the bag with my phone charger. I didn’t care about anything else—I needed to take that back at least.

I cocked my head, inviting him inside while mumbling inwardly, ‘I guess I can’t rest comfortably.’ The muscles around my eyes felt strained.

“They had coffee? With ice?” Hyehyun saw my coffee resting on the table and opened his eyes wide. He looked like he didn’t even imagine being able to drink coffee made with a shot of espresso instead of instant coffee. He placed his lunchbox on the table and took a sip of my coffee. “Geez, Haeseo, you should tell me about these things. How could you keep the nice things to yourself?”

I just shrugged.

Because I was a smoker, I picked up the habit of chewing on whatever was in my mouth. Hyehyun must have seen that the straw stuck in the recyclable cup had a bunch of tooth marks, but he didn’t seem to care. Well, of course. Among the people who lugged around such things so calmly, I’d never seen anyone who didn’t have a strong stomach.

Hyehyun crunched on an ice cube and said, “Have you heard? The elevator from just now can’t carry people down. It was made so that it can only take people upstairs to the top floor. No wonder there were no numbers or anything. So I timed it when it came back up.”

“You even timed it?”

Hyehyun must have taken it as a compliment since he replied with a grin. “Of course.”

His clearly intentional smile was filled with flattery and charm. “It took around 10 seconds after the doors closed. How high do you think we are then? Don’t you think you’d be able to find the exit by guessing the number of floors and going backward from there?”

I never said that I wanted to win the show. Moreover, there was no guarantee that the velocity of the elevator was comparable to other elevators.

However, I knew he would get angry if I had said that, so I kept my mouth shut. I wanted to avoid pointlessly clashing for as long as we were here.

I dug through the luggage that Hyehyun carried up and picked out my stuff. There were a lot more little things than I thought. I could understand why I packed a bottle of anti-inflammatory an*lgesic and a heating pad, but I had no idea why I brought a dolphin-shaped eraser. There was surely a reason, but I couldn’t remember.

Nobody was listening, yet Hyehyun continued to talk. “You said last time that you really wanted to appear on this show. Then I should help you at least. You’re not just any old person, you were my brother’s friend…”

“Friend.” The word that suddenly popped up made me stop digging around.

I remembered. The dolphin-shaped eraser was something Yeonseon gave me. He said he found it when he happened to go into a stationery store that he chanced upon after having lunch. He tossed it to me saying that it reminded him of me because it was the only yellow one among the sky-blue erasers.

Wasn’t that funny? There was probably only one yellow one left after getting sold out, yet he said that it was just like me. I retorted that it was probably just a popular color. He readily agreed and nodded, looking very pleased for some reason.

I must have spontaneously packed it, thinking that I didn’t want to forget that moment. I knew there were no new memories to make, but I was scared at the thought that without mementos, the memories that I retained would fade away.