Splendid Numbers and Clumsy Sincerity
By this point, his notebook had stopped feeling like a simple memo pad and had started resembling a family-reaction observation log. Still, writing everything down helped settle his mind a little. He was learning, albeit very late, that opposition and worry were often just different faces of the same concern.
When lunchtime approached, hunger finally registered. He realized he had not eaten properly since the day before. Chi-yeol opened the fridge, but aside from wilting kimchi, two eggs, leftover pickled radish, and a half-empty water bottle, there was nothing worth mentioning. He considered boiling ramen, then decided to step outside instead. Staying indoors too long made his thoughts circle the same spot. A person needed to fill their stomach, but sometimes their eyes needed fresh air too.
He threw on a jacket and walked a loop around the neighborhood. The weekday lunch-hour streets moved at an oddly slow pace. Walking around when he was neither a student nor an office worker felt faintly embarrassing, yet there was also a strange sense of freedom. In front of the gimbap shop, hands moved briskly preparing takeout orders; inside the set-meal restaurant, the sound of ladles clinking against pots drifted out. Chi-yeol scanned the scenes without much thought, then caught himself reading signs, studying menu compositions, and counting the flow of customers. Only yesterday he had been a laid-off salaryman; today he already had an eye for the local commercial district. The realization made him chuckle at himself.
Turning a corner, he spotted an old chicken-franchise store. A discount-event poster was taped to the glass door, and inside, an employee was wiping tables in the empty hall, apparently preparing for lunch. Chi-yeol slowed his steps. Chicken shops were everywhere in every neighborhood—common, fiercely competitive, the kind of business anyone could imagine. Perhaps that was exactly why the choice looked so reckless. Yet oddly, he did not entirely dislike that commonness. It meant people ate the food every day. Not a trendy menu that would fade, but one people would remember even if the place went under. He felt that suited his personality better. He was the type who preferred guarding something that did not grow tiresome over moving faster than everyone else.
In the end, he settled for sundae-guk for lunch. A few solitary diners sat scattered inside the old restaurant while a daytime drama rerun played on the television. Chi-yeol picked up his spoon in front of the soup and suddenly thought: back when he worked at the company, he had wolfed down lunch so hurriedly, but now he could even watch the broth cool. It was strange. Having more time was not necessarily a good thing. At least the taste registered more clearly. Once the hot soup went down, he felt a little more alive than before.
As he was paying, the restaurant auntie asked casually, “Not going to work today?”
Chi-yeol hesitated. It was natural for her to wonder; until yesterday he had been a regular who stopped by even on weekday lunches, and now he was eating at a leisurely pace. “I’m taking a short break.”
“That’s good. Everyone needs rest sometimes.”
The auntie had probably meant nothing by it, yet the words lingered strangely. That’s good. Everyone needs rest sometimes. It was the first time anyone had accepted the fact of his layoff so lightly. Some people worried, some sighed, some stated the reality, but this auntie simply concluded that he was resting. On reflection, it was not entirely wrong. Perhaps life had not pushed him away so much as stopped him in his tracks—though not in the way he had wanted.
The moment he returned home, he opened his laptop again. This time he searched for reviews written by individuals rather than franchise advertisements. Franchise recommendation posts tended to be overly glossy, while stories of closure were more honest in their darkness. He tried to find balance between the two. He did not want to rush in knowing nothing, but he also did not want to read only failure stories and give up out of fear. Above all, Chi-yeol knew his own personality too well. Once his mind was set, he was the type to carry it through for a long time. That was precisely why he had to be careful. Plenty of people in the world ended up suffering greater losses because they fixated on something and refused to let go.
A memory surfaced. It was right before university graduation, when jobs were hard to come by. His friends were frantically chasing corporate internships and open recruitment, while Chi-yeol moved a little more slowly. Even then, his mother had once told him, “You worry me because once you fixate on something, you stay with it for a long time.” It meant that when he found something he liked, he clung to it more persistently than others, but he was slow to change his mind and therefore took losses. The words had not resonated at the time, yet now they seemed to fit in many ways. Perhaps his inability to date was also due to that personality—failing to approach someone decent, then nursing a feeling alone for far too long once his heart finally moved. Hearts that never even began.
Chicken was the same. When he liked something, he liked it for a long time. Even when a brand disappeared, he felt lingering regret, and if a small neighborhood shop was good, he kept going back for years. Chi-yeol closed the search window and suddenly opened the memo app on his phone. He typed a title: Chickens I’ve Loved. He felt ridiculous writing it, yet it somehow seemed necessary. He began listing the places he remembered—the fried-chicken shop near campus he used to frequent, the yangnyeom chicken he ordered alone after receiving his first paycheck, the soy-sauce chicken eaten at dawn after overnight team work, the old whole-chicken place he inexplicably craved on rainy days.
Once he started noting not just that the food was delicious but why it stayed in memory, the list grew longer than expected: the batter was not too thick yet stayed crisp for a long time; even takeout did not get soggy easily; the sauce was rich but not heavy at the end; no chicken smell at all; the radish was tasty; the cola was cold; there was even a place where the wings tasted better than the drumsticks.
After writing for a while, he doubted himself. Was this really something a newly unemployed person should be doing? At the same time, he realized he had not been thinking about opening a chicken shop on a complete whim. At least there was consistency in the way he liked things. It was not merely “I like chicken, so why not try?” Of course that alone would not make a business succeed, but it was at least a starting point.
Chi-yeol typed a line in the corner of his laptop screen: Liking something and knowing it well are different. Still, it is better than knowing nothing.
As the sun began to sink, a bank-app notification arrived saying part of his severance pay had been deposited. The amount was slightly less than expected after various settlements and deductions, yet seeing the number felt strange. So twelve years of time were deposited in this manner. The fact that a person’s time, stamina, and patience given to a company ultimately remained as a single line of digits in an account struck him as absurd. Chi-yeol stared at the number for a long while. For someone it could be startup capital; for someone else it might be nothing more than living expenses to get by. Right now, for him, the money was both. Hope and terror at once.
He opened the spreadsheet again and entered the number. Then he began listing several scenarios under estimated initial startup costs: small franchise store, delivery-focused small store, small store with his own brand, minimal-interior option, possibility of using secondhand equipment. The more items he added, the more his fear grew alongside them. The costs could be far higher than expected, or far lower, but either way they were never light. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. At the company, he had needed someone else’s approval to move to the next stage; now the fact that no one would approve anything felt more frightening. A life where everything became his own responsibility. It was freedom, yet it also felt suffocating.
Just then the doorbell rang cautiously. Startled, Chi-yeol stood up. Wondering who would visit at this hour, he opened the door to find the landlady from downstairs holding a delivery box. “Mr. Kang, this package was delivered to the wrong floor.”
“Ah, thank you.”
“You’re home these days?”
The question was light, but Chi-yeol unconsciously straightened his posture. “Yes, I’m… taking a short break.”
“I see. While you’re resting, don’t forget the rent date, all right?”
Even when the world pretended to be kind, it never missed the main point. Chi-yeol nodded quickly. “Yes, I haven’t forgotten that.”
“Even when you have things going on, you mustn’t forget money dates.”
The landlady handed over the package and went downstairs saying that. Chi-yeol stood still for a long time after closing the door. He was not particularly offended. What she said was also correct. When correct words kept piling up, a person did not necessarily feel upset—they simply grew smaller. He looked down at the delivery box. It was a book about chicken shops he had ordered online a while ago. At the time he had simply thought he would read it, but arriving at this particular moment made the coincidence feel too blatant. When he opened the box, the cover appeared: How to Survive as a Small Chicken Shop.
Chi-yeol laughed hollowly. The title seemed exaggerated, yet in his current situation the exaggeration felt honest. How to Survive. Yes. What he needed right now was not how to become impressive or how to succeed, but first and foremost how to survive. He flipped through the book and slowly read the sentence written on the first page: Business begins with taste, but the strength to endure ultimately comes from people.
Reading that sentence, something in his chest stirred strangely. People. At the company he had grown exhausted because of people, and now in business he would have to endure again because of people. Why did life always circle back to people? Still, he did not dislike the words. After all, selling chicken would also mean taking responsibility for someone’s one meal a day.
As evening drew near, Chi-yeol suddenly felt the urge to go outside. His head was filled only with numbers and sentences, which made him feel stifled instead. He took only his wallet and phone and left the house. The sun had already sunk low, and the alley lay in a peculiar stillness before the evening commute. Walking without any particular destination, he stopped again in front of the chicken shop where he had ordered takeout the day before. Through the glass door the kitchen now looked fairly busy. The sound of chicken frying crisply, sauce containers opening and closing, and folding takeout boxes all spilled out at once.
People strangely gravitated toward the smell of what they liked when their hearts were unsettled. He opened the door and went inside, this time sitting in the hall. The employee taking orders asked, “What would you like?”
Chi-yeol studied the menu for a while before answering. “One order of original fried chicken, please. And… a bottle of beer.”
“Certainly.”
A moment later a cold beer bottle and glass arrived first, followed by radish. Chi-yeol poured the beer while looking around the hall. There were solo customers, two men who had loosened their ties after work, a couple with a child, and takeout bags waiting to be handed to delivery riders. Different people had gathered under the same smell. The scene felt strangely pleasant. Chicken shops were always like that. They had no excessive formality, yet they were not completely casual either; they felt like places where someone could loosen the day a little. When the chicken came out, Chi-yeol almost reflexively checked the skin first—whether the color was not too dark, whether the oil had drained well, whether the batter was evenly coated. Then he took a bite. The crisp sound rang out very clearly. Listening to it, he took a sip of beer. Cold, bitter, refreshing. For an evening meal belonging to someone who had been pushed out of a company, it tasted decent enough.
He ate one piece, then picked up another. Suddenly he felt he understood a little why he liked scenes like this. There was a strange comfort in chicken. It was not grand or sophisticated, yet it was food that said “let’s eat first” at the end of the day. Whether things had gone wrong or right, whether one had fought or cried, after taking one bite a person returned to reality a little. Chi-yeol liked that simplicity. Perhaps he had needed that kind of comfort all his life. He set down his chopsticks and opened the memo app on his phone. He wrote a very short line: Chicken makes a person a little less miserable for a while.
After writing it he felt embarrassed for no reason and turned off the screen. Still, the sentence seemed likely to stay. If he really did open a shop someday, he hoped his own store could play that role for someone—not a grand life turnaround or spectacular success, but at least a place that could say “let’s eat this first” to someone whose day had gone completely wrong. A shop like that might make starting late feel a little less shameful.
Back home that night, Chi-yeol opened the spreadsheet again. The numbers were still frightening, the initial costs were still large, and the fact that he could not manage without a loan had not changed. Yet something was different from the morning. The sense of being overwhelmed had become a little more concrete. It was no longer a vague wall saying “this is impossible,” but a wall where he could see where to begin checking. He added one more line at the bottom of his memo: Better to be concretely afraid than vaguely afraid.
He stared at the sentence for a long time. It seemed correct. At least if the fear was concrete, he could see where to fix things. That night, with a hand that trembled a little less than the day before, he created a new section.
Things to do tomorrow
Compare at least two startup consultation services
Visit the neighborhood commercial district in person
Read more chicken-shop startup reviews
Check bank loan conditions
Think of friends who run businesses
And at the very end he wrote, very carefully: Ask myself again whether I truly want to do this.
Even after finishing the sentences, he did not close the laptop. The cursor blinked as if to say it was not over yet, as if there was still more to write. Chi-yeol slowly added one more line beneath the blank space: Still… I want to try.
The sentence was shorter than the others, yet it was also the heaviest sentence of the entire day. The severance pay was still insufficient, the loan was frightening, his family was worried, and reality was not easy in any way. Yet a remaining feeling persisted—a very small, foolish-looking, clumsy feeling. The desire to turn on the lights under his own name at least once. From a window across the street, the faint sound of evening news leaked out. The world would continue to lay people off, save others, start businesses, and close doors. In that vast current, Kang Chi-yeol’s resolve would probably be so small it would not even register. But people’s lives had always changed direction because of such small, ridiculous resolutions. He slowly closed the laptop. He had not made a complete decision. Yet he could not return to the beginning either. Only one thing was clearer than yesterday: the severance pay was not an ending. It might, perhaps, be a very humble beginning.