Spark Chapter 3.4 - Detonation

‘Ah, Lee Hojin?’

Cha Hongjo rested his elbow on the armrest of the sofa, pressed his temple with his fingers, and looked at Manager Kim. Kim Yongmin paced back and forth, smoking a cigarette or biting his thumbnail. He seemed quite anxious.

‘He’s alright, right?’

‘Yeah? He is, right?’

Kim Yongmin’s face brightened.

‘Yes. But.’

‘But……?’

Even Cha Hongjo thought that, as Manager Kim said, Lee Hojin’s films weren’t bad. He wasn’t a star director like Kim Doyoung or Choi Palho, but he was quite recognized in Chungmuro.

‘That bastard seemed to have cast me not as an actor, but as a host bar worker. To indirectly solicit investors from the wives, did I misunderstand?’

The brightness on Kim Yongmin’s face turned gray.

Kim Yongmin, the very person who dragged Cha Hongjo in front of Lee Hojin and the prospective investors, couldn’t have been unaware of what that meeting was for. Therefore, there was no room for excuses.

‘Hongjo.’

Kim Yongmin sat close to Cha Hongjo.

‘It’s all because the director likes you so much, so that you can build relationships with influential people in advance…….’

‘Ah, relationships.’

Cha Hongjo lit a cigarette, openly sneering.

‘I’m not going to be friends with anyone anymore…….’

‘…….’

Kim Yongmin looked as if he was about to cry. Cha Hongjo smoked half of his cigarette, then left, turning his back on him. His gaze lingered for a moment on the CEO’s office beyond the manager’s office. His steps were directed outwards.

Go Baekwoo said he was going on a business trip with his father for a few days. He neither asked nor heard what the business trip was for. He felt like he had left something behind as he exited the gray building.

February, winter at its end, was pouring down arrow-like streams of rain.

Thanks to Kim Yongmin calling him to the company without Park Solchan today, he could walk alone for the first time in a while. Cha Hongjo opened a black umbrella and stepped onto the asphalt road, pockmarked with puddles. He walked towards his house, eventually reached it, and continued walking past it. He circled the neighborhood round and round like a carousel.

Umbrella, eaves, cars, ground……. He liked the rain, which indiscriminately pounded everything. The sound of the rain was much more pleasant to listen to than any song. He wasn’t the sentimental type to have his mood swayed by the weather, but now he was different. He didn’t know why. While they say people can’t be changed, sometimes they can suddenly change like another person. For example, there’s a saying that people change when they’re about to die.

Like weeds covering his father’s grave. Thoughts of death, left to grow, spread uncontrollably fast. He wanted to die, and he would die. He made no effort to fight off that resolve, which had permeated every crevice of his mind. After all, any being that breathes will eventually die. Therefore, Cha Hongjo did not consider his resolve to be wrong.

He chose the independent film by the unknown director Choi Leetae as his next project after solidifying that resolve.

In <Ode to Youth>, Yeo Jitae walks down a snowy road and meets the ending. That’s it.

However, the protagonist of the yet-to-be-titled film actually commits suicide. Unlike Yeo Jitae’s case, where he didn’t have to personally confirm the death, the protagonist’s ending is explicitly shown. He was drawn to that point.

Cha Hongjo didn’t realize that the reason he was fascinated by tragedy was due to a profound melancholy and accumulated loneliness.

After circling the neighborhood countless times, Cha Hongjo arrived in front of his house once again. This time he stopped. Tilting his umbrella back, he looked up at the rain-streaked sky, and then lowered his head to look down at the ground where his breath spread and disappeared. The rain that landed on his black shoes slipped off weakly and was crushed under his own feet.

Just as raindrops falling towards the bottom never go back up, Cha Hongjo felt like he was endlessly falling. Suddenly, he disliked the rain.

🔥

As soon as he entered the house after finishing his meeting with Director Choi Leetae, a large form rushed at him.

“Cha Hongjo.”

Go Baekwoo, embracing Cha Hongjo as if to bind him, whispered, his nose touching his shoulder.

“I missed you.”

Go Baekwoo, still in his jacket, seemed to have just arrived, and a chill emanated from him.

Go Baekwoo, lifting his face buried in Cha Hongjo’s shoulder, caressed his cheek and asked,

“How have you been?”

It had only been four days. But Go Baekwoo wore a longing as if they were reunited after decades.

“Just.”

It was a perfunctory reply, not even half as sincere as the greeting he received. Go Baekwoo, accustomed to this indifferent, short, and rude manner of speaking, followed Cha Hongjo across the living room without a care. Cha Hongjo, feeling the presence behind him on his heels, thought for the first time in a long while that Go Baekwoo was like a ‘dog’.

Cha Hongjo showered first, and then Go Baekwoo, having washed next, approached him dressed comfortably. Cha Hongjo, who had been sitting in the middle of the sofa, shifted slightly to make room, and Go Baekwoo opened the living room window and sat beside him.

The freezing wind, frozen solid by the late winter chill that acted as a last-ditch effort of the departing winter, rushed in. The hair of the two men fluttered in the same direction.

Go Baekwoo brushed up his scattered bangs and took in Cha Hongjo with his unobstructed view. Cha Hongjo also brushed back the hair that had fallen over his eyes. He appreciated the moment as if it were a scene of sunlight streaming in after curtains were drawn back. How could Cha Hongjo be new every time he saw him? That’s probably why he always missed him.

“I heard you chose a movie.”

Simultaneously with Go Baekwoo’s words, Cha Hongjo lay down lengthwise. Cha Hongjo’s long feet settled on Go Baekwoo’s thighs. Go Baekwoo momentarily gazed at his neat toenails and white instep with prominent blue veins.

“……Choi Leetae? I’ve never heard of him. How did you choose it?”

“I read the script.”

Of course he chose it after reading the script. Go Baekwoo felt awkward at Cha Hongjo’s reply. Cha Hongjo blinked his eyes open and closed, then reached for the cigarette pack on the table.

“How was the script?”

Go Baekwoo subtly grasped Cha Hongjo’s ankle. Cha Hongjo’s big toe twitched, moving slightly.

“Just, well…….”

Cha Hongjo, inhaling the cigarette, exhaled a long stream of smoke outwards and muttered.

“Fucking liked it.”

“Manager Kim seemed to want you to do another director’s movie.”

“Son of a bitch.”

At Go Baekwoo’s thoughtless remark, Cha Hongjo fiercely furrowed his brow.

“Kim Yongmin, that bastard isn’t a manager, he’s a pimp.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You don’t need to know.”

Cha Hongjo seemed like he didn’t want to talk any further. Even without seeing or hearing, he could guess. Manager Kim would have calculated the company’s profits and wanted Cha Hongjo to appear in a famous director’s film. But to choose an independent film by a poor, unknown director who wandered around Chungmuro like a ghost, he knew what he must have done to Cha Hongjo.

“Okay.”

Go Baekwoo nodded. The hand that had been wrapped around Cha Hongjo’s ankle had by now climbed up to his shin.

“Do whatever you want.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really.”

“It’s reassuring that the CEO has my back.”

Cha Hongjo smiled innocently, trailing cigarette smoke. Go Baekwoo’s lips also curved into a smile.

“That’s why I became the CEO. Even if it’s just a figurehead.”

“To have my back?”

“Yeah.”

“……Well.”

Cha Hongjo dropped the finished cigarette into a paper cup on the table.

“You said you wanted to be my manager before.”

“I still want to.”

“Being the CEO is better.”

Cha Hongjo, muttering, shifted his body and moved his foot. Go Baekwoo’s hand, which had been massaging his shin, fell away.

“Don’t you think so, Baekwoo?”

The foot that had risen slightly in the air went to Go Baekwoo’s waist, spread its toes, grabbed his t-shirt, and pulled it up.

“Have my back, and get fucked as payment.”

“…….”

Cha Hongjo’s cheeks, hands, and feet were cold. When the cool sole of his foot touched his stomach, Go Baekwoo reflexively tightened his abdominal muscles.

“I never wanted payment.”

“Oh, really?”

Cha Hongjo asked back as if to say that was fine, then abruptly tried to pull his foot away. Go Baekwoo quickly grabbed his ankle, which had emerged from under his t-shirt.

“That’s a lie.”

Go Baekwoo, placing both his legs on the sofa, traced Cha Hongjo’s body from his ankle upwards, approaching his face. Go Baekwoo’s shadow enveloped Cha Hongjo’s entire body.

“I always want it.”

Cha Hongjo cupped Go Baekwoo’s cheeks and rubbed his finely arched eyebrows with his thumb, asking,

“What.”

Go Baekwoo answered.

“Cha Hongjo.”

“Who’s that?”

It was a nonsensical question. However, Cha Hongjo was expressionless, as if serious. Go Baekwoo was too.

The answer was short and clear.

“My first love.”

Cha Hongjo gazed steadily at the gaze directed at him, filled with blind and obsessive affection. First love, first, love. He ruminated on the word inwardly.

His vision and chest were completely filled with Go Baekwoo.

Go Baekwoo is also his first love. He admits it. But he didn’t carelessly flaunt it. Because he believed that a true confession would someday fade into falsehood and deception.

“You forget your first the quickest.”

That’s why he deliberately downplayed his first love.

“No.”

Go Baekwoo shook his head from side to side and then met Cha Hongjo’s eyes again.

“You can never forget your first, never erase it. Like a name.”

“You’re not going to love me till you die, are you?”

Cha Hongjo, while being persuaded by Go Baekwoo’s recitation of pure love, stubbornly denied it.

“Baekwoo, do you remember when you first walked? When you first ate?”

“…….”

“You don’t remember shit, right?”

“……You.”

Go Baekwoo clenched his lower lip, then uttered in a subdued voice.

“I remember when I started loving you.”

“When was that.”

Cha Hongjo asked nonchalantly, and Go Baekwoo quickly relaxed his expression and asked back.

“Cigarette?”

Go Baekwoo, having regained his expression, brushed Cha Hongjo’s bangs aside and said,

“……when you asked that. Then.”

“…….”

Cha Hongjo quietly recalled his first meeting with Go Baekwoo. He didn’t remember it clearly. Only the fact that the place was a cigarette shop, and that the face of the customer who entered was very pretty, was vivid. As if light poured only on Go Baekwoo, whom he encountered in a dark cave.

Cha Hongjo, emerging from the vague memory that seemed to have cut everything out except for Go Baekwoo, blinked and asked,

“Then, and so?”

“You lit a cigarette with a lighter.”

Go Baekwoo remembered every speck of dust that flew in the ray of light that day, so he spoke without hesitation.

“You tilted your face. The long flame flickered in front of your nose bridge, and you slightly pursed your lips. You took the cigarette out of your mouth and tilted your face slightly, very slightly, to the other side, and then you looked at me. Our eyes met, and I…….”

“…….”

“I thought you lit the lighter again.”

His double-lidded eyelids lowered. His curved eyelashes, like a bow, densely covered his brown eyes. Just like that, Go Baekwoo murmured, staring somewhere down below.

“My eyes, meeting yours, hurt like they were burned. My face felt hot. Like I’d drunk alcohol. Like I was drunk, I felt dizzy. I got goosebumps like I was hanging in the sky just before falling. I was scared. We were strangers…… Suddenly, I was worried you’d abandon me.”

Gulp. Go Baekwoo’s Adam’s apple bobbed, and he raised his eyelids.

Painful and hot. Dizzy. Skin prickling and fearful. Worried……. A confession that sounded like a statement. Honest eyes. Brown eyes. Go Baekwoo.

Cha Hongjo bit his lower lip. It wasn’t a situation where he should feel hurt pride or shame, but an unbearable emotion welled up.

“After that day, you know, Hongjo, it’s like the world I lived in crumbled and died, but then was reborn inside you.”

A sharp pain stabbed beneath his chest.

“As if Cha Hongjo was my beginning, you come to mind first no matter what I do……. When I breathe, smoke, drink, eat, sleep, and wake up, Cha Hongjo is the first thing I wonder about.”

Cha Hongjo stopped breathing, involuntarily and voluntarily.

“When I think of you, my heart races, but I can’t breathe.”

“…….”

He felt as if his innermost feelings were being completely exposed to Go Baekwoo in an instant.

“When I’m with you, only then can I breathe properly. My heart keeps racing, though……. What I mean is.”

Go Baekwoo didn’t stop.

“When you’re not here, I can’t breathe because I miss you, but I’m still alive. Living like that, I just wait for you, but what difference would dying make.”

“…….”

“Did you ask if I’d love you until I die? No.”

A drop of blood seeped from his lips, which had turned pale from biting. Go Baekwoo, looking directly into Cha Hongjo’s bloodshot eyes, pulled his bleeding lip with his thumb. His lower lip parted easily. A round bead of blood flowed and smeared on Go Baekwoo’s fingerprint.

“I’d probably love you even after I die.”

“……Ha…….”

Cha Hongjo exhaled a stale breath. And then.

“Why, do, you, make me…….”

He burst into tears.

“Unable, to, leave you, first……”

Because Go Baekwoo, who bloomed in a world soon to reach its end, was pitiful. Because he was sorry.

Because he, the protagonist who occupied a miraculous moment in a human’s life, was pathetic and terrifying for only being able to envision a mournful ending for himself.

“It’s okay, Hongjo, it’s okay.”

Unaware that more ash remained than flames, Go Baekwoo embraced Cha Hongjo and patted his back.

“Don’t abandon anything, it’s okay to have everything you want. I’ll make it happen.”

“…….”

For the first time in his life, Cha Hongjo smeared his tears on someone else’s chest.

“So…… let’s stay together. Let’s live together.”

Don’t go anywhere, let’s love each other forever. Go Baekwoo whispered such words. It was a confession and a comfort. Cha Hongjo sobbed even louder, listening to the warm, gentle whispers he had never experienced before.

He wasn’t just a flower. Cha Hongjo thought as he wept as if melting away. Go Baekwoo wasn’t a plant that took root in his land, and he had never set foot on his land. He was the one who jumped in first.

Go Baekwoo was the sea. A sea that grasped sunlight on its surface and emitted light, calmly rippled, and sometimes, beautifully surged to induce excitement.

It was one day. Suddenly, the high tide touched his toes. He was looking at the foam left behind by the current when he looked up and saw the horizon stretching endlessly. Wide and vast. The vast sea spoke as if waiting for him. Come to me. I will embrace you.

He jumped in because the light swimming on the surface was beautiful, because he wanted to wrap his body in the gently undulating patterns, because he wanted to be swept away by the waves. He forgot that he was a flame and mingled with the sea.

He was mistaken. Not knowing that he had to leave on his own feet, he was so busy being driven out that he forgot where he was. And finally, he realized. While he hadn’t realized it, Go Baekwoo had permeated his entire being. Splash, splash……. When he thought of Go Baekwoo, he heard the sound of water in his head. Or was it the sound of crying?

Cha Hongjo wept uncontrollably, as if trying to pull out Go Baekwoo, who had filled him to the brim.