Already Broken Toy (3)
I could only feel time slipping past with dead, vacant eyes.
Another day had probably already gone by.
At some point, when I stopped by the convenience store for a fresh pack of cigarettes—mine having run out—I bought alcohol along with them. Burning through this stretch of time on cigarettes alone just wasn't cost-effective. All I was doing was getting through a single day, after all. So I bought the booze too. I was starting to feel hungry anyway.
When I came back inside, a smell I'd never encountered in my life was saturating my room. I flipped on the light and found cigarette ash—black and gray—scattered across the floor. Some of it had been ground in under my heel; some still held its original shape where it had fallen.
Belatedly, I made a halfhearted show of sweeping it up. I shoved the mess into a corner, cleared a space, and brought over the soju to get ready to drink. Beside the bottle I set a cup of instant noodles with hot water already poured in.
Ah…
I should've at least bought a paper cup.
Why can't I ever get anything right in one go?
What a fucking idiot.
I went to pour the soju, but there was no proper glass. I didn't want to drink it out of a water cup either, so I just put my mouth to the bottle and drank. I'd always wanted to try that at least once.
How much can I even hold? I still didn't know—I'd never drunk enough to find out. Thinking that, I tipped the bottle back and drank in long gulps. It didn't go down as far as I'd expected, though. Already my body was answering the alcohol; a buzz was rising, and my mood lifted in a strange, floaty way.
And then, all at once, I was flooded with the urge to smoke. Was it because of the drinking? The craving hit me hard and sudden. I was glad I'd bought the cup noodles. Once I finished them, I could use the empty container as an ashtray. Of everything I'd done today, that felt like the one decision that actually deserved a little credit.
I kept draining the soju straight from the bottle and chain-smoking at the same time, and before long I was a little drunk. An empty soju bottle rolled across the floor. The way it tumbled, I tumbled with it—lying down and rolling around on the floor myself. I even laughed under my breath, alone. The whole situation was just funny. That pathetic version of me, doing this. It was so absurd I laughed.
Smoking in my own room. Getting drunk and sprawling on the floor. The corners of my mouth that had curled up in that quiet snicker soon dropped again.
I was sad.
I was miserable.
This version of myself felt foreign. I didn't understand how I'd become like this. Smoking at home, drunk and rolling on the floor—the sight of myself now was so wretched it made me ache.
If I hadn't stuck my nose in back then, I would've still been hanging around with Seoa.
I wouldn't have ended up like this.
I should've at least told her how I really felt. Who knows—maybe it wouldn't have ended this way.
At some point my computer came into view, thick with dust. Work… I hadn't even thought about it in ages. When had I last touched the thing? What was I even doing with myself right now? There were things I clearly needed to do, and still I couldn't bring myself to put a hand to any of them.
Sebin noona.
I'd finally thought I'd gotten close to someone new, and of course it had to be at a timing like this—we might drift apart all over again.
I was sad. Miserable. Lonely.
I cried out loud, alone. Face buried against the floor, I sobbed by myself. Cigarette ash smeared black across my cheeks, and I wiped it away roughly with the tears running down.
My mental state felt extremely unstable. One moment a sudden surge of anger would make me clench my fists alone; the next, some baseless hollowness would have me clutching at my chest. I'd break into tears out of nowhere, then laugh just as suddenly.
The thought that the world would keep turning fine without me made me feel wretched too. And the most fucked-up part was imagining that, unlike me, Seoa was probably doing just fine right now—that was what really got to me.
While I'm like this…
I was starting to sink into the dark again.
What pulled me out of it was my phone, ringing loud and insistent.
It was Sebin noona.
Without thinking at all, I answered the call.
Maybe it was because I'd been crying nonstop until just now. Or because I'd been drowning in self-loathing. The words came out emotional before I even realized it.
A brief silence settled between us.
What was this?
Why was Seoa suddenly coming out of noona's mouth?
I wondered what expression Seoa had made. The reason I wasn't coming to school was her, and noona—who knew nothing—had been asking her about it.
At that, a laugh burst out of me. After showing up at my place like that just yesterday, she'd told noona she had no idea where I lived—why was that so funny?
Had my mood loosened up all of a sudden? I'd been so depressed just a moment ago, and now I was feeling better just like that. Maybe the drinking was making my emotions swing hard.
So I called Sebin noona over to my neighborhood. I'd given her my address without really expecting her to show up right away—but noona was serious. That made me a little grateful. Honestly, I'd been thinking, Who am I that she'd go out of her way like this for me? The most plausible reason was the one I'd brought up on the phone earlier—that she needed my skills. Still, for now I decided to believe only what I could see. Even if that reason was true, the fact that she was coming all this way out of concern for me was also true, wasn't it? That much was real. So I chose to trust only the facts unfolding in front of me. I didn't have the mental bandwidth to dig any deeper right now.
Still, if I was going to meet noona, I should at least wash up. While she was on her way to my neighborhood, I took a shower for the first time in a long while. I needed to sober up a bit while I was at it.
"It's been a while."
"You actually came…"
"Yeah. But I've never been to this neighborhood before. Lead the way, Minjae."
"Okay. We're going to the PC bang, right?"
"Unless you'd rather go somewhere else?"
"Mm… the PC bang's fine."
Just like she'd said, it really had been a long time since we'd seen each other. And noona's face, after all that time, still gave me that same soft, warm feeling.
"You're not going to tell me what's going on even if I ask, are you?"
"I'm sorry. It's a little hard to talk about."
"If we get closer, will you tell me then?"
"I—I don't know… It's not like I'm holding back for that reason…"
If noona and I did get closer, that would only make it even harder to say anything. I didn't want her to see me like this. If I took her to my place right now and showed her my room, what would Sebin noona's reaction be? Obvious. She'd be horrified. Every scrap of goodwill she had for me would evaporate and she'd run. That was exactly why I was carefully avoiding any mention of this whole situation with her.
Trading those kinds of words, we arrived at the PC bang before I knew it. We sat side by side without thinking about it, powered on the computers, and logged into the game we'd played last time. I hadn't meant to look at Sebin noona's screen, but the in-game messenger was flooded with notifications. Well—I decided not to think too hard about it. We were just playing games together, that was all.
Noona ordered mint chocolate again, and handed me a warm americano. I hadn't said I wanted anything; she must have ordered mine along with hers.
"Ah—I'll transfer you the money separately."
"Don't worry about it. It's nothing. In exchange, you're carrying us today, okay?"
"Th-thank you. I'll enjoy it. The carrying part might be a little rough, though…"
Noona laughed out loud at that. Then she held her phone up at an angle, framing the two of us.
"Look over here for a sec."
"Huh?"
I was probably captured looking awkward. A selfie, out of nowhere…
Noona fiddled with her phone for a bit, and then a notification went off on mine too. She'd posted a story. And the fact that I'd gotten a notification meant she'd tagged me in it. I shared the story to my own account as well. The face I saw of myself wasn't anything I particularly liked, but… well. Apparently I was at least good enough for a pretty noona like her to share a photo of us together on her SNS. Lucky me, I guess. Or maybe she was just that kind of person.
We played for a while after that. Same as last time, the second noona got into a game her personality flipped a full hundred and eighty degrees. Watching that was more fun for me than the game itself. Time really did fly when I was with her. It was so much better than burning hours on cigarettes and booze. I felt like some life was coming back into me.
Mid-game, a notification chimed—a message had arrived on my SNS account. It was from Seoa.
That was the message. I started to reply, then stopped—why did I even need to answer? Instead, I blocked Seoa from my account. Something about it felt like she was spying on what I was doing, and it rubbed me the wrong way. For all I knew, she might see a photo like this and start another rumor. Blocking her was a preemptive measure too.
Just like that, I blocked one of the few people still on my account. Earlier, noona had said we seemed close—probably because Seoa was one of the handful of people following my SNS, and noona had inferred it from that.
"What? Did someone message you?"
"Ah—no… it's nothing. Let's just play."
Even with a little alcohol still in my system, I could play pretty decently. I didn't know if noona could tell I was drunk. We just talked, laughed, and played—that was all.