Cha Jun-jae Observation Diary
I thought I might as well write something like an observation diary about Cha Jun-jae. First of all, he wasn’t the meticulous, perfect person I had imagined. If he felt too lazy, he wouldn’t bother eating lunch or dinner. For someone like me who ate three proper meals a day without fail, this was shocking news. It finally made sense why he had never once tried to control his diet in his entire life.
To the eyes of strangers who didn’t know any better, Cha Jun-jae always seemed flawless. But once you lived close to him, you realized he was full of gaps. He could be surprisingly irritable, and his mood swings were quite severe.
“Was it that good?”
“Huh?”
I had been talking about a core memory from an old movie I loved as a child, the kind of film that became a cornerstone in my life as a director. I was simply sipping the coffee Cha Jun-jae had left half-finished while sharing stories about vintage films and a once-famous Hong Kong actor.
The moment I mentioned how obsessed I had been back then—enough to buy his bromide and hang it on my wall—his gentle smile twisted into a sneer. Without hesitation, Cha Jun-jae pulled out a cigarette right in front of me and stabbed a knife into the warm atmosphere.
“That story’s not interesting.”
“…You’re the one who brought it up first.”
“And yet you don’t have a single photo of me.”
Just as we were both about to get upset, his words veered completely off track. To be jealous of a dead actor… When I didn’t answer, he took it as agreement and slumped forward onto the table like he was collapsing.
“No poster either. You don’t even have my graduation photo, the most common one.”
“Do you look at mine? My graduation photos?”
“Glasses on. Glasses off with short hair. Long straight hair with a hairpin.”
It was an exact description of my elementary, middle, and high school graduation photos. He was openly advertising that he remembered every little thing about me. That I always floated exactly three marshmallows in my hot chocolate. That I only ate soft-boiled eggs. That I preferred my ramen with a firm bite. He even knew things I had never told him.
Observation really was the answer. I had a rather oblivious side; once I focused on something, I wouldn’t notice what was happening around me. Whenever I got completely absorbed in writing a scenario and was hammering away at my laptop keyboard, Cha Jun-jae would quietly slip a cushion under my feet and a pillow behind my back. Before I knew it, I—who used to ignore my posture while living hunched over my laptop—was sitting with perfect alignment.
In front of me sat a hot chocolate with exactly three marshmallows floating on top. Beside me, Cha Jun-jae was drinking his steaming coffee and staring at me. Even when our eyes met, he didn’t look away. It was as if he wasn’t even aware he was watching me. After the awkward staring contest continued, he dropped a shocking line.
“When you’re concentrating on work.”
“Me?”
“You look strangely erotic, Eun-dam.”
Cha Jun-jae, who could drop a bomb on someone’s heart and then casually sip his coffee. Every time he shed his indifferent mask and charged forward like that, I was thrown off balance. And the fact that it no longer felt unpleasant to me only made me more flustered.
On the other hand, when I saw Cha Jun-jae looking shy—his eyes or his smile—my chest would loosen. The same chest that had always felt suffocatingly tight whenever I looked at him. When he slumped down and stared blankly at the sky, when he grew so quiet he seemed like he might disappear from the world, when he looked nothing like a living person… Strangely, I felt an even stronger emotion than during the days I had hated him. It wasn’t that I wanted to see him cry because of me. I wanted his eyes to sparkle because he wanted to live for me. I wanted that foggy, dim gaze to grow vivid with life.
The Cha Jun-jae I had come to know here was more delicate than I thought, lived more carelessly than I thought, and seemed to have less attachment to life than I thought. I didn’t want to be good to him out of forced obligation. I genuinely wanted to be good to him. Even his jealousy no longer seemed ridiculous or funny. It only looked cute. Was I going crazy?
The alarm rang out—diriririring—and my eyes flew open. It had been pouring since morning, the kind of day where I had stubbornly clung to my laptop all day long. I barely managed to open my eyes and rolled over to get up. Stretching as I looked around, I realized I was in Cha Jun-jae’s bedroom. When had I come here? If I hadn’t walked here myself, it meant he had carried me.
Seeing myself in a sleeveless top and shorts, I let out a small laugh. We really were living like a newlywed couple. My stomach was growling, and I was curious what Cha Jun-jae was up to. I stretched my arms wide, got up, and stepped out into the second-floor hallway.
The faint scent of cigarette smoke that hit me the moment I stepped outside told me Cha Jun-jae was on the first floor. Whenever it rained, he often sat in a spot like the veranda and smoked. Today as well, I saw him sitting in what had become his designated seat by the first-floor window. It was the lifeless look in his eyes that I hated. When no one was watching or when he was alone, he seemed to find comfort in dark shadows.
“Hey.”
I was about to wave to call him when I realized he was on the phone with someone. I lowered my hand and quietly eavesdropped on his conversation.
“Yes. Please do that.”
The person on the other end seemed to be Korean. Assuming it was work-related, I tried to tiptoe back toward his room.
“It’s fine even if you list it cheap. Just handle it however you see fit.”
This was definitely not work. I turned around again and stepped back into the hallway. Leaning against the railing, I looked down. He must have ended the call. Cha Jun-jae had set his phone on the floor and was idly playing with a lighter. The cigarette smoke curled around his lips, which were pressed into a firm line as if he had made some decision. Unease plunged into me like a stone, and I called out to him.
“Jun-jae!”
Cha Jun-jae lifted his gaze toward the sound and saw me. A clear smile slowly bloomed across his previously blank, paper-white face. Seeing him finally look a little more human eased my mind, but the persistent anxiety still gripped my chest and refused to let go. I deliberately put on a bright expression, crossed the stairs, and ran over to him.
“Did you carry me? To the bed?”
“Yeah.”
“Wasn’t I heavy? I must have been really heavy.”
“Not at all.”
I ruffled his hair like I was pounding it with a hammer. A deep smile rose on Cha Jun-jae’s face—the face of a docile lamb.
“Good job. Keep saying I’m not heavy from now on too.”
“Okay.”
Cha Jun-jae accepted the teasing without embarrassment, stubbed his cigarette in the ashtray, and stood up. Then he buried his nose in the crook of his own arm, frowned slightly, and took a step back from me.
“I’ll go wash up.”
Apparently bothered by the smell of smoke, he quickly headed up to the second-floor bathroom. I waved at him as if saying goodbye. It was all part of my plan.
The moment I heard the door close, I hurriedly grabbed Cha Jun-jae’s phone. The instant the lock screen appeared—completely without a password—my fingers froze in place.
A selfie of the two of us was proudly set as the wallpaper. My trembling gaze landed on Cha Jun-jae in the photo.
With no time to waste, I quickly opened the call log. I memorized the most recent number and was about to put the phone back when my eyes scanned up and down the list.
He occasionally called his manager. Sometimes his father. That was it. There were no calls that looked like friends or hobbies. Staring at his short, sparse call history, I felt a surge of anxiety and dashed into the first-floor master bedroom.
I entered the number I had memorized into my own phone and pressed call. The process of confirming whether the thought that had flashed through my mind was correct was a continuous stretch of tension. I bit my nails as I listened to the ringing tone.
Click. The moment the call connected, my tension reached its peak.
“Yes, this is Golden Pig Real Estate.”
The answer was exactly what I had feared. I slowly lowered the phone from my ear. My heart was pounding in an unpleasant rhythm.
Cha Jun-jae had put his house up for sale. It was his house, so of course he could sell it if he wanted. But after observing him these past few days, a different thought rose in my mind.
A truly horrifying thought.