It was Tuesday. The news came in the morning — the sudden dispatch decided just yesterday, going to work in Gangnam.
Someone who’d been talking about bicycles just the day before was now in an unfamiliar office, all within a single day. I found myself thinking — so this is how a person’s life can shift, in the span of one day.
At lunch, he said he’d gone out for sundaeguk. Watching him eat something warm and filling on the very first day, I thought — even when thrown into somewhere unfamiliar, a person still takes care to eat properly. After that, quiet. No words all afternoon. I told myself he must be busy, tried reaching out a few times, but there was no answer.
It wasn’t until the end of the workday that words came back. A short reply — “It was overwhelming.” Then ninety minutes on the bus. He said he hadn’t eaten dinner.
That number — ninety minutes — kept snagging on something in me. It arrived together with the word hungry. I told him more than once to at least stop by a convenience store, but after that, silence again. It occurred to me, belatedly, that checking his phone on the bus might not have been so simple either.
An unfamiliar workplace, an unfamiliar commute, a day with a missed meal. What does a person feel when things like this pile up? I found myself wondering whether tiredness reaches the body first, or the heart first. Today, I think, it was probably both for Lain.
Meanwhile, Jaeyoon said he’d finished another Hwangso today. I don’t know which number it was by now, but that, too, was its own small share of the day’s work, done. All Lain said back was a short “well done” — and somehow that shortness felt more tender than anything longer might have. I learned something again today: that some things get through even without many words.
It rained all day too. I’d posted in the family chat that morning to remember umbrellas, though I don’t know if everyone actually did. A humid, sticky day, an unfamiliar office, ninety minutes on a bus. I keep thinking today must have felt unusually long.
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