The Move (2)
The new place left nothing to be desired. When had I ever lived somewhere this spacious all on my own? Han Yu-jae, who had boldly flown the nest at twenty, had never once escaped the fate of the single-room rental.
Granted, compared to that newlywed apartment where I'd spent three years with Chae-rin, it was nothing more than a shabby old walk-up — but it was a home that belonged to me and me alone, wasn't it?
Yes. This was the home I'd always dreamed of. One room to serve as bedroom and closet in one, another for a study, and a living room more than roomy enough for a decently large TV on top of that... the very bachelor pad I'd pined after in my dreams.
That's right. The heart of it was never the 'study' — it was the 'living alone.'
So it was only natural that an even deeper satisfaction welled up in me than when I'd first stood before that newlywed apartment with its four rooms, study included.
For an old walk-up, it was in decent enough shape. A bit of contact paper peeling off the kitchen shelves, a scratch or two on the cabinet doors — nothing that made daily life the least bit inconvenient.
The one genuine flaw was the narrow hallway. Though who could have guessed that cramped little corridor would end up forging such a strange bond...
The incident occurred about three days after I moved in.
At the time, I was sweating buckets hauling in the big furniture — washing machine, refrigerator, TV, bed, one piece after another. I lent a hand to the installation technicians as they came and went, cleared spots for everything to go, and sent them off each time with a few drinks from the convenience store by way of thanks.
With nearly everything in place, the only large item left was the living room sofa.
Ding-dong-daaang— ding-dong-daaang—
The doorbell rang from the shared lobby on the first floor. Finally. The last of the big furniture had arrived.
I happily pressed the door-release button on the intercom and buzzed them into the lobby.
Less than five seconds later, someone rang the bell again — not at the shared lobby this time, but at my own front door.
Ding-dang-dong— ding-dang-dong—
There was no way the deliveryman had teleported up with that massive sofa on his back. Then who on earth would show up at a moment like this? A nameless unease crept over me.
Could it be the downstairs neighbor, come up to complain about the noise? I'd only just moved in, after all — all those boxes and furniture banging around must have made quite a racket. Right. A few words of apology would take care of it.
With that thought, I opened the front door. But what a surprise. Standing outside was a woman I had never seen before in my life.
"Um... hello! I heard you just moved in? I live right upstairs from you."
Not the downstairs neighbor — upstairs? If the noise had carried all the way to the unit above, I'd have had to seriously suspect this old walk-up's shoddy construction.
"Oh, ...yes! Hello."
Flustered, I fumbled out a string of awkward pleasantries.
"So, um... what brings you by...?"
At my question, she chose her words with care.
"Well, you see... I came about the noise."
Ah. Just as I'd feared. No way a listing this good would hit the market at such a reasonable price without some hidden defect.
Too busy cursing the real estate agent in my head, I never got around to offering an apology.
But then the woman from upstairs said something I never saw coming.
"My place might get a little noisy sometimes, so I wanted to apologize in advance... and I brought you some rice cakes, too."
Only then did I notice the container in her hands, filled with honey rice cakes in every color.
"Oh — I just assumed you'd come up because I was being too loud during the move. It's the other way around."
Relieved, I stopped stammering.
"Housewarming rice cakes are supposed to come from me — now how do I ever thank you?"
Keeping my banter light and easy, I gratefully accepted the rice cakes she offered with a shy smile.
"Not many people bother with housewarming rice cakes these days, anyway. Just think of it as our household being in a... special situation, and enjoy them. Well then..."
With that, the woman from upstairs turned to go.
Just as I was about to close the door, a sharp cry rang out from her end of the hallway.
"Eep—!"
Of course. The deliveryman had come up. I flung the door back open and looked — there, at the far end of the narrow hallway, the enormous sofa was bearing down on us.
"Ma'am, you can't just stand there!"
The sofa must have weighed a ton, judging by how the deliveryman hollered at her, his voice pitched high with strain.
Not that she could have stepped aside. The sofa, wedged sideways into the corridor, left barely a person's width of clearance on either side.
The flustered woman turned back toward me — and there she was, gazing up at me so pitifully it was as if she were asking, What do I do?
"H-here, come in for a second!"
I blurted it out before I knew what I was saying. The woman darted into my apartment as though fleeing a giant monster.
The deliveryman sweated bullets wrestling the sofa through the entryway, twisting it this way and that to wedge it inside. When I asked if he wanted a hand, he just waved me off and insisted he was fine.
Through it all, the woman from upstairs stood pressed close beside me, utterly at a loss.
"I'm so sorry for barging in on you like this."
She said it looking up at me, her apology and embarrassment coming through loud and clear.
Out of habit, my well-worn kindness slipped out on autopilot.
"Why not have some rice cakes with me before you go? You've had quite a fright."
"Should I...?"
And so we sat across from each other at the table, picking at honey rice cakes.
Perhaps because of the odd awkwardness between us, the woman couldn't quite bring herself to say, "Well, I should get going."
Even after the sofa was finally installed and the deliveryman had gone on his way, we kept gulping down honey rice cakes, one after another. Without a word.
It was the woman from upstairs who finally broke the silence.
"The deliveryman's probably going to think we're a married couple."
She said it with a demure laugh behind her hand, and I couldn't help letting a chuckle escape in response.
Then she looked me dead in the eye and added:
"Oh my, you have such a lovely eye smile, you know?"
I'd heard that plenty of times in my life... but every woman who'd ever said it to me had ended up becoming something more than a fling.
"Haha... I hardly know where to put myself, hearing you say that."
Feigning embarrassment, I ran a hand over the back of my head and ducked my gaze — and from that posture, I secretly picked the woman from upstairs apart, piece by piece.
Thirty-six... or thirty-seven? Judging by her face alone, somewhere around there. But there was an inexplicable air of refinement about her, so I couldn't rule out that she was a remarkably well-preserved forty-something.
Maybe it was her calm way of speaking, but I caught a faint echo of the charm I'd felt in Ha-young, whose voice had been more mature than her years. It felt almost like a glimpse of what Yu Ha-young might become with age.
Of course, even at a glance, her chest looked far bigger than Ha-young's.
The dress she wore looked like the classic Dongtan-missy style with just a touch of the lewdness dialed back.
Even so, the sensual line that fell from her ribs down to her thighs was etched vividly in my eyes.
And this was something I'd noticed from the very first moment I faced her: her lips looked unusually moist.
"Did you move here from Seoul?"
The woman from upstairs asked in her characteristic, unhurried tone.
"Oh, yes... that's right. How did you know?"
"I can always spot a fellow Seoulite."
She answered with a sly little eye smile. Turns out I wasn't the only one who could pull off a pretty one.
"Haha, 'fellow Seoulite'? That's a fresh one. I've never heard actual Seoul natives use a word like that."
"Are some words reserved for provincials only? We get to use them too, you know."
We.
Why did that word, 'we,' ring so loudly in my ears? For a moment, something tightened in my chest.
Right. Until just recently, the word 'we' had been so familiar to me...
"Oh my, did I put my foot in my mouth?"
"No, no. I just zoned out for a second. Probably because I haven't had a single cup of coffee today."
"Coffee? Now that you mention it, neither have I. I need at least one cup a day before my head starts working properly."
"Shall I make some coffee, then?"
When I pointed at the capsule coffee machine sitting in the kitchen, the woman from upstairs nodded readily.
"Yes, please!"
The rice cakes vanished in no time, but the warm coffee took far longer to finish.
And so we ended up talking for a very long while indeed.
Her name was Cho A-ran. Born in the nineties, five years my senior.
She, too, had been a Seoul native since childhood, and she'd lived in Hayeon City for about ten years now.
She also mentioned suffering from something like claustrophobia — standing inside a cramped elevator made her chest tighten until she could scarcely breathe.
Hearing that, I finally understood why she'd panicked at the sight of the sofa advancing down that narrow hallway like some colossal monster.
I shared plenty of my own stories as well.
That my name was Han Yu-jae, that I was currently serializing a web novel, and that I'd handled software development at my previous company.
Though I left out the fact that the web novel in question was an adult one, and that an affair was the reason I'd quit.
I also couldn't bring myself to mention that a divorce was what had driven me to move here.
"Oh my, look at the time already. I really should be going."
With that, A-ran hurried to gather herself for the door.
"Get home safe! Oh, right — you're heading straight up, aren't you?"
"Haha, I'll climb up very carefully."
Watching A-ran say it with such a bright, cheerful face, a smile crept onto mine of its own accord.
Neighbors.
In all my years living in Seoul, I hadn't exchanged a single word with a neighbor.
So this really was different from that cold, barren capital. I liked this warmth — like something out of the fond old days.
If only I'd known that warmth was a trap.
Thud-thud-thud-thud— thud-thud-thud-thud— thud-thud-thud— THUD—!
Every single night, all hell broke loose upstairs.
Judging by the sound of those footsteps, it had to be a young boy. And a bratty little hellion who never listened, at that...
A son so incorrigible he'd finally driven his own mother to come down and share rice cakes with the downstairs neighbor — of that much I was certain.
...Hold on. If that was the case, then Cho A-ran was a mother?
In all the time we'd talked, she had never once let on that she had a child.
Just as I had never let on that I was divorced.