The Outsider
I parted ways with Park So-yeon at the fork in the road and walked home alone. It was the same route I always took. The path I'd walked yesterday, the day before, ten years ago. I knew every crack in every wall, knew exactly where each neighborhood dog would start barking.
And yet today, somehow, that familiar road felt strange.
The simple absence of someone chattering beside me made everything so different. It was the same alley, but today it stretched unusually long and fell unusually quiet. Even the streetlights looked paler somehow.
So this is how much a landscape changes when one person is missing.
I was turning that thought over when Mother's house came into view.
A light was on in the window. Faint steam rose from the kitchen side — Mother must have been making dinner.
Any other day, I would have simply opened that door and walked in.
Mother, I'm home. And she would have wiped her hands and come out smiling, asking if I'd eaten.
I walked past Mother's house.
A few more steps brought me to the front gate of my parents' house. It was right next door, and yet I couldn't remember the last time I'd walked this stretch of road so directly.
When I opened the front door, a cool draft swept over me. Only my shoes sat in the entryway.
The spacious living room was dark and utterly silent. Warmth is supposed to linger in places where people have passed through, but this house held none of it.
Hearing someone come in, a housekeeper emerged from the back.
"Young master, you're home. Shall I prepare a meal?"
"Something simple, please."
At my answer, she hesitated for a beat.
"Oh? You're not going next door tonight?"
The words had barely left her mouth before her face went white. I had no idea what my expression looked like. Whoever saw it simply bowed their head in a hurry.
"I'm sorry, young master. I spoke out of turn."
"It's fine."
I answered briefly and chose my next words carefully.
She had worked in this house a long time. The question was only natural. Everyone under this roof knew where the owner's son ate his dinner every evening.
How many days a year had a place ever been set for me at this table?
"I'll probably be eating here for a while. Please prepare a portion for me from now on."
"...Yes. Understood."
She looked like she wanted to ask more, but this time she didn't.
I went upstairs, set down my bag, and took a quick shower. Even under the water, my mind was strangely quiet.
When I came back down, the table was set.
There were many side dishes. Two kinds of soup, and grilled fish as well. Neatly arranged bowls lined the wide table in a row.
I sat alone at that vast table.
There was only one set of utensils.
I picked up my chopsticks and ate piece by piece, but somehow nothing tasted like anything. It wasn't the food's fault. The housekeeper's cooking had always been excellent.
At Mother's table, there had never been this many dishes. Some kimchi, a few seasoned vegetables, and a single soup. And yet that rice had always tasted so much better.
Woo Han-gyul would chatter noisily while Mother scolded her to quiet down and just eat, and something would keep getting piled onto my bowl. It was rice eaten amid all that disorderly noise.
The table at my parents' house was wide and clean and silent. The clink of utensils rang out with unnatural loudness. Listening to that sound, I found my throat strangely tight.
In the end, I set down my chopsticks with half the food still left.
I went back upstairs, sat at my desk, and opened a workbook out of habit.
Then my hand suddenly stopped.
Why am I studying?
I didn't need the grades. College wasn't urgent, and I had nothing left to prove in this house. The material in front of me was all things I'd already learned once before. I was diligently solving problems every evening that taught me nothing new.
It was pure inertia. After dinner, I would check her homework, then use whatever time remained for my own. That sequence had sunk so deep into my body that now I was opening the book for no reason at all.
Even now, when there was no one left whose homework I needed to check.
I rolled my pen between my fingers, then found myself reaching for my phone without thinking.
The screen was quiet.
At this hour, she always used to message me. Ji-an, what are you doing. Ji-an, I'm bored. Ji-an, I don't get this. Empty little things, several times a day.
Today there was nothing.
I turned the screen off, then on again a moment later. Only then did I realize what I was doing.
I was waiting.
Waiting for a message. Waiting for her to reach out to me.
I was the one who had decided to step back. And yet here I was, waiting for her to extend a hand first. It was ridiculous.
Then a notification chimed.
My heart jumped. I checked the screen at once.
It was an unknown number. A message from a strange account that hadn't even been added as a friend.
Kim Seol-ah. I had no idea how she'd gotten my number. The fact that the first message she'd gone to all that trouble to send was a scolding about a handkerchief was almost funny.
With that, the screen went quiet. Cutting things off clean before you could get another word in — that was pure Kim Seol-ah.
I stared at the conversation window for a moment, then turned off the screen.
And turned it back on.
Still nothing from her.
In the end, I was the one who pressed first.
I waited a long time. It took about three minutes for a reply to come.
Of course. I swallowed a sigh and sent a reply.
Another long stretch passed before the next message arrived.
After sending those two words, I sat staring at the screen for a moment. Not knowing what else to say. Or rather, feeling like I shouldn't say anything more.
I'd decided to step back, and yet here I was still making sure she took her medicine. I no longer even knew if this counted as stepping back. I just couldn't stand by and watch her skip her doses.
Then another message appeared on the screen.
I read that sentence several times over.
Why would Mother want to see me? It wasn't hard to guess. I'd cut off all contact with that house these past few days — of course something would have looked off to her.
And then it went quiet.
I set the phone down on the desk.
The moment the words that had been passing through my hands cut off, the room suddenly felt hollowed out. On the screen, even a few exchanged lines had sounded like the noise of someone living. The second I turned it off, all of that vanished.
Just a moment ago, I had clearly been connected to someone. And turning off a single screen was enough to leave me this alone.
It was a large room. It was quiet. There were signs of life downstairs, but those weren't the sounds of a person — just the house running itself.
I leaned back in the chair and looked up at the ceiling.
There had always been people in this house. But there had never been anyone waiting for me.
My parents came home a few times a year. The days they spent outside Korea far outnumbered the ones they spent in it, and even phone calls only happened when there was business. I had never felt particularly hurt by it. That was simply how this house worked, and I was used to the arrangement.
Instead, I had Mother's house.
On nights when no one was home here, I would open that front door. Mother would ask if I'd eaten, and Woo Han-gyul would shout that Ji-an was here. There was always a place setting waiting at my seat at that table.
I had thought of that seat as mine. Every time Mother piled side dishes onto my rice bowl, I had felt like I belonged to that house.
...But had it really been my place?
The thought came to me suddenly.
I had sat at that table for a long time, but I was not Mother's son. I was not her family either. A guest who stays long enough does not become family — they simply become a guest who stayed a long time.
It had been a seat I could occupy because I had a role. The person who looked after her. The person who took care of her. Now that I had let go of that role, what claim did I have left to sit at that table?
The moment the thought reached that far, I hurried to turn off the light.
It felt like something I shouldn't dig any deeper into.
The next morning.
I woke to my alarm, washed my face, and put on my school uniform. The same sequence as always.
And just as always, I found myself standing in front of Mother's front gate.
Mother had asked me to come. So standing here wasn't strange.
And yet my hand paused for a moment in front of the doorknob.
I had simply opened this door for nearly twenty years. I had never knocked, never hesitated. Opening this door had always felt far more natural than opening the door to my parents' house.
But today, my hand stopped.
Had a single door always been this heavy a thing?
Until recently, I would have opened it without a second thought. But from the moment I decided to step back, this door seemed to have become a different door entirely.
I was not Mother's son. Mother had treated me like a son, but that was how she treated me — it did not make me her son. I had sat beside that girl, but I had never been her family.
There had been no place for me in my parents' house, and there had been a place for me in Mother's. But that place had never been mine to begin with.
I had only ever been an outsider they had held close for a long time. An outsider who stayed so long he mistook the house for his own.
I only understood that standing at the door, after twenty years.
I closed my eyes for a moment, then opened them.
And pulled the doorknob the way I always had. A familiar voice drifted out from inside.