The Weight of Ordinary Days
Yeo-won rolled the plump wild strawberry between her fingers for a long time. She stared at it with vacant eyes, then glanced around the house. It still felt like she was trapped inside a dream.
From beyond the window came the sound of someone laughing, a phone ringing, the blare of car horns. Noises that had never bothered her before now struck her as strangely loud.
His room, so quiet that even the sound of breathing felt deafening. The apricot tree that had filled the vast garden with its fully bloomed flowers. Those golden eyes that glowed with eerie brilliance in the darkness.
Once the thoughts surfaced, they chained together endlessly, one after another.
That bewitching smile. The low, velvety voice. The tongue that had coiled around hers with sticky heat.
When her mind reached that point, Yeo-won unconsciously clenched her fist.
“Ah……”
The wild strawberry she’d been holding was completely crushed, staining her hand. Overwhelmed by a sudden rush of shame, she squeezed her eyes shut as if to deny everything, then opened them again and rose from the bed.
After washing her hands in the bathroom and lifting her head, the mirror showed a face flushed an almost grotesque shade of red. Only after splashing her face with cold water did Yeo-won finally step out of the bathroom.
The moment she entered the living room, her phone rang as if it had been waiting for her. The unfamiliar ringtone made her jump. She checked the screen. It was her client.
A wave of foreboding washed over her.
Most work-related matters and conversations were handled through email. If a phone call was necessary, they usually coordinated a time in advance via email.
Sudden calls without any prior notice were almost always bad news…….
Yeo-won cleared her throat, composed herself, and pressed the call button.
“Hello, sir. How have you been?”
The project manager on the other end greeted her with exaggerated cheer. Beneath the familiar business tone, unmistakable anxiety leaked through. After a brief exchange of pleasantries, they moved straight to the main issue.
As the manager continued speaking, Yeo-won’s expression grew darker and darker. By the time the call neared its end, she couldn’t stop rubbing her dry face with her hands.
“……I’ll check and call you back.”
The call had mostly consisted of excuses and apologies, but when summarized, it boiled down to one staff member having given her the wrong deadline.
And not just by a day—by a full three days. A single day might have been manageable, but three was catastrophic.
K Corporation had tried negotiating with the client, but their situation seemed just as difficult. Yeo-won immediately turned on her computer and opened the project files. Thanks to the work she had already completed in advance, the progress was around seventy percent. The real problem was time.
“By noon tomorrow……”
Yeo-won leaned her head against the back of her chair and mentally divided the remaining hours into minutes.
“If I pull an all-nighter, I might just make it.”
The issue was revisions, but since they had said they would accept it without edits as long as it arrived on time, it seemed doable. Once she finished organizing her thoughts, she suddenly found herself laughing at her own situation.
“Reality just hit me all at once.”
Just moments ago she had felt like she was still dreaming, yet now that something like this had happened, she actually felt relieved. A situation that would normally have left her irritated and uncomfortable now felt almost peaceful.
She had sung about having to work in front of Shin-wol, and her words had come true.
The absurdity of it made a dry laugh escape her.
Yeo-won counted to ten in her head to steady her mind, then immediately threw herself into the task.
The next day, 11:24 a.m.
The phone rang beside her, but Yeo-won ignored it and kept working. She didn’t need to look at the screen to know who it was. It had to be that problematic manager who had been calling nonstop since eight-thirty.
The first call—she figured he was worried. The second—she could understand. The third—she told herself to endure it. But from the fourth call onward, she couldn’t comprehend it.
She had politely explained that she was busy and asked him not to call, assuring him she would send it before noon. Yet the manager only repeated “I’m sorry” like a parrot.
‘If you’re sorry, then stop calling.’
Under normal circumstances, she might have felt sorry for him and offered a word of comfort, but right now she was in no position to do so.
Yeo-won flipped her phone over and focused on the final touches. She proofread for typos one last time, then opened her email. Normally she would have started with a polite greeting, but today she didn’t have the luxury.
She attached the file and sent the email, then dropped her head onto the desk.
She had done it. She had actually done it.
She wanted to shout in triumph, but at that moment she didn’t even want to lift a single finger.
Her phone vibrated. It was a text from the manager. The long message was more than half filled with “ㅠㅠ” symbols and so riddled with typos that it was hard to read.
“If you have time to send texts, you should have been proofreading……”
Without reading the entire message, Yeo-won replied with “Yes, thank you for your hard work.” and turned off the screen.
In truth, she probably wouldn’t have finished it under normal conditions.
But every time her concentration wavered, Shin-wol’s face would rise in her mind, and to shake him off she had thrown herself even deeper into the work.
She felt like she could fall asleep the moment she lay down on the bed, yet the strange excitement and sense of accomplishment made her doubt she could actually rest right away. As she lay on her stomach, staring blankly into space, her stomach began to growl.
Come to think of it, she had gone an entire day without eating. Her throat was parched from not drinking a single sip of water. She considered ordering delivery, but the desire to walk a little won out, so she decided to go out. Ghosts didn’t appear as often during the day.
“If I sleep now, I probably won’t wake up for a while anyway. I should stay up until tonight and then sleep.”
After nearly twelve hours in the chair, Yeo-won stood up, stretched, and let out a long yawn. Too lazy to wash up, she pulled on a cap and left the house.
She had planned to go somewhere nearby, but the memory of what happened at the crosswalk made her decide to go a little farther. The café she reached after walking slowly was fairly crowded even though it was a weekday afternoon.
When Yeo-won ordered an iced coffee and a Monte Cristo sandwich, the friendly employee smiled brightly and added an explanation.
“Our Monte Cristo tastes even better when you dip it in the wild strawberry jam. It’s homemade, so it’s not too sweet and pairs perfectly. It’s a separate item, so you’ll need to add it—would you like me to include it?”
“Ah, yes. Please add it.”
At the words “wild strawberry,” Yeo-won flinched slightly. The name had brought Shin-wol to mind like an involuntary memory.
“Will you be eating here?”
“Ah, um……”
Yeo-won looked around. After glancing up toward the second floor, she nodded with a strangely determined expression.
“Yes. I’ll eat here.”
“Then I’ll serve it on a proper plate for you.”
The employee seemed puzzled by her behavior, but for Yeo-won it had taken considerable courage. Her drink and food arrived quickly, and she went upstairs to sit in a corner seat.
Taking a sip of coffee sent caffeine into her empty stomach, and the sensation felt strangely pleasant.
‘It’s probably terrible for my health, though.’
She took a big bite of the sandwich and chewed. The small dish of bright red jam caught her eye. Following the employee’s suggestion, she dipped the sandwich in it. The perfect balance of sweet and salty created an exquisite flavor.
Yeo-won took another long sip of coffee and looked around the café.
There was a group that looked like college students, and several people studying. Soft background music mingled with quiet conversation. Thankfully, she couldn’t see anything that wasn’t human among them.
‘I didn’t see any on the way here either.’
Ghosts were generally rare during broad daylight, but it wasn’t always the case. Yeo-won usually didn’t linger long in cafés precisely because of the ghosts mixed in among the people.
A few years ago, when she had boldly gone to a café to work, she had dropped her pen. It had rolled all the way to the feet of the person sitting next to her. Just as she was about to cautiously ask for it, the person on the other side of that seat had picked it up and handed it to her.
The pen had passed straight through the body of the person sitting beside her.
Yeo-won had accepted the pen with the most casual expression she could manage, then fled the café exactly ten minutes later and run straight home.
After that, she hadn’t gone to cafés for a long time. Just thinking about how she had almost spoken to it gave her goosebumps all over.
As she recalled that day, the ice in her cup rattled. She had already finished her drink without realizing it.
Yeo-won put a piece of ice in her mouth, rolling it around as she savored the peace she hadn’t felt in a long time.
‘Is this Shin-wol’s influence too?’
Had he cast some kind of spell on her? She pondered it for a moment before letting out a small snort of laughter. Spell? More like a curse, if anything.
Though he spoke gentle words in that soft voice, he was far from kind. He could casually utter terrifying things as if they were nothing, and he possessed a unique arrogance and rudeness.
Yet he had an appearance so striking that all of that seemed insignificant.
But did he really need to be that handsome? If he could transform into different forms, she wished he would choose a slightly more ordinary face.
Whenever he pushed his face close to hers, she was overwhelmed by his flawless beauty and rendered speechless.
‘Maybe I should tell him next time we meet.’
But how would she meet him? She had no way to contact him. Oh, right—she should call Grandmother.
Her thoughts jumped from one unrelated idea to another as she popped the last piece of ice into her mouth and crunched it loudly. When she checked the time, she realized she had been sitting there leisurely for a whole hour. Since this was so rare for her, she even felt a little moved.
‘So this is what an ordinary person’s life feels like.’
Looking at the cleanly emptied plate and the cup with no ice left, she was just thinking it was time to leave.
At that exact moment, a chilling tinnitus like nails scraping across a chalkboard pierced her ears.
“……!!”
She reflexively hunched over and covered her ears, but it was no use. She clenched her teeth to hold back the scream threatening to burst out, yet a small groan still slipped through.
A coldness began at the tips of her limbs and spread, wrapping her entire body in icy dread.
A sensation so eerie it made her skin prickle.
It was a ghost.
And not an ordinary one—something that felt similar to the ghost from the crosswalk that day.
‘Maybe even worse than then…….’
The horror paralyzed her whole body. Her tightly clenched fists trembled violently.
Something sinister was slithering closer. It was trying to climb the stairs.