Place to Be Chapter 14

Jang Wigeon tilted his head slightly and looked at Seo Chiyoung. To him, who likely had no memories triggered by looking at Seo Chiyoung’s face other than the fact that he didn’t look very old yet, Seo Chiyoung only smiled. “I’m the same age as you,” he said only to himself.

“If you lived in this neighborhood, the school districts overlap quite closely, so maybe we’re alumni from the same school.”

Jang Wigeon muttered abruptly. Seo Chiyoung’s heart gave a large thud, but Jang Wigeon didn’t pry further, as if it were just a passing thought.

Suddenly, a strange feeling washed over him. He and this man had spent three years in the same space and time, yet their memories and feelings regarding those days were different. Just as it is for every individual.

“…Back in your school days, was it fun?”

Jang Wigeon raised his eyebrows as if Seo Chiyoung’s sudden question was unexpected, but after appearing lost in thought for a moment, he answered readily.

“Well, I think I just spent it reasonably enjoyably. There was nothing particularly difficult, nor anything exceptionally fun… but come to think of it, I also think that time was like the golden age of my life.”

“I was fine even if I stayed up for several nights in a row,” Jang Wigeon added with a joke-like laugh before asking back.

“How about you, Boss? I feel like you would have had a rewarding youth.”

Giving a bitter smile at that unfamiliar and awkward title, Seo Chiyoung also immersed himself in thought. About how he was in high school.

“It’s similar for me. Nothing particularly hard, nothing fun… but, you’re right. I think that time was when I shined the most. Even if nothing special happened, just each and every day. …Talking like this makes me feel like an old man somehow.”

Seo Chiyoung laughed awkwardly. After smiling silently for a moment, Seo Chiyoung added like a monologue, “But.”

“I like it now, too. …Living without the thought of ‘I want to live more happily than I do now’—looking back, I think those have been my most satisfying days. That’s how it is now.”

Seo Chiyoung was satisfied with the present, living diligently while doing what he had to do without thoughts of like or dislike. “Of course, I often think it would be nice to have no debts, though,” he thought to himself with a shy smile.

Then suddenly, his eyes met Jang Wigeon’s, who was staring at him intently, and the smile vanished from Seo Chiyoung’s face. Receiving that gaze, which looked at him with strange eyes, he lowered his head in pointless embarrassment.

He had said something stupid. Sitting across from a man who lived without lacking a single thing, how ridiculous must it have looked—squatting in a crumbling, worn-out shop, picking off entrails residue while reciting a poem about satisfying days.

“Uh… I said something strange.”

Seo Chiyoung laughed awkwardly, wiping his heating earlobes with the back of his hand. He rinsed his hands, which were slippery with grease, in water once and began tearing off the residue again.

Jang Wigeon, who had been watching Seo Chiyoung, soon smiled and waved his hand.

“No, not at all. I’m actually jealous because it sounds like you had a wonderful time in school.”

Seo Chiyoung just gave a thin smile. “The one who shined the brightest in those wonderful school days was you,” he swallowed those words. However, the smile vanished upon hearing the words Jang Wigeon added with a narrow, eye-crinkling grin.

“I think I know why Junyoung likes you.”

At the low words that were close to a monologue, Seo Chiyoung looked at him instinctively. Yoon Junyoung… certainly liked Seo Chiyoung’s entrails very much, but the context of the conversation didn’t fit, so he blinked his eyes in bewilderment.

“When I asked him if he came here often, he said so. That the entrails are delicious and he likes the owner.”

“…Me?”

It was the most absurd thing he had heard lately. Seo Chiyoung, eyes wide, couldn’t even speak for a while.

As if proving that “speak of the devil and he shall appear,” while Seo Chiyoung was staring at Jang Wigeon with a dumbfounded face, there was the sound of the vinyl tent fluttering. When he turned his head blankly, Yoon Junyoung was standing there with his usual indifferent face.

“…What are you doing?”

Jang Wigeon saw Yoon Junyoung and stood up from where he had been crouching next to Seo Chiyoung. “You got here faster than I thought,” he said with a smile, and the joy bleeding through his voice was conveyed entirely to Seo Chiyoung’s ears.

“I was checking out what kind of person my rival would be. I think I know why you like him.”

The sound of Jang Wigeon joking playfully followed. Seo Chiyoung, not knowing what expression to make, looked at them with a strange face before lowering his head.

“Rival”—that word, which seemed like a joke but might not be a joke, brought out a bitter smile. “No, that will never happen,” his powerless, muttering voice did not come out of his mouth.

“Talking nonsense again,” Yoon Junyoung dismissed Jang Wigeon’s words with a snort and left the shop with Jang Wigeon, saying they should eat first. Seo Chiyoung stared blankly at the two as they left after a brief “I’ll be back later.”

Inside the shaded, dark shop, they looked dazzling under the bright afternoon sunlight. Seo Chiyoung captures in his eyes the sun-like smile that rose on Jang Wigeon’s face as brightly as that sunlight. The moment Yoon Junyoung’s voice was heard, even before turning around, Jang Wigeon’s face had crumbled with joy.

Suddenly, a bitter taste resembling regret lingered around his heart.

“…”

But Seo Chiyoung did not tell a lie.

Now was a satisfying time in his life. Because he didn’t have expectations like “I want to live more happily”—wishing to achieve a dream that was like a fantasy.

∞ ∞ ∞

During high school, he had never been close to those three, but among them, he didn’t even have a memory of exchanging a single word in passing with Kwon Kanghee. He was especially quiet and almost never opened his mouth first unless it was to those two friends, let alone to Seo Chiyoung, who had no connection to him other than being in the same class.

Come to think of it, even though it seemed Kwon Kanghee was the first person to find Seo Chiyoung’s shop, perhaps that was why he hadn’t recognized him. Because when he saw him visiting again with the others, he vaguely remembered his face.

Just as in high school, his impression was still desolate. Perhaps it was even more so because his taciturn and blunt personality was revealed on his face. However, at that time, he might have been a “bad” person, but he wasn’t a “mean” person, and even now, his impression didn’t seem much different.

Unlike the two who he saw often, Kwon Kanghee didn’t come very frequently. Even when he did come occasionally, he didn’t talk much, so it was equally quiet whether two people came or three.

“…”

Seo Chiyoung was sitting across from the three who were sitting side by side at the outer seats in front of the cooking counter, then glanced behind him. The inside of the shop, with only one table occupied, was clean. Seo Chiyoung had already tidied it up reasonably well.

Since he was sitting across from the three with a narrow table between them, it felt as if he were sitting at the same table as them. Feeling awkward, he used to stand up quickly whenever something needed to be done, but since the shop was all organized and the people at the inner table didn’t order anything, he had no choice but to sit in front of the three of them idly. Unlike Seo Chiyoung who was feeling awkward alone, the three of them were talking without even paying attention to him.

“I heard you were playing around after quitting the company, but I heard you’ve been going around looking for a shop site lately.”

Kwon Kanghee’s large hand, which made the soju glass look exceptionally small, set down an empty glass. When he came a couple of times before, he had only had three or four glasses of soju, barely wetting his lips, but today he was emptying almost a whole bottle. Perhaps because of that, he seemed a bit more talkative than before.

Jang Wigeon glanced back at Kwon Kanghee and laughed.

“How did you find out about that? To be precise, rather than quitting, I’m just looking around leisurely while playing during a long vacation. But wait, which of the places I looked at was your territory?”

“Uimin hyung-nim mentioned it while we were drinking a while ago. That you were looking around to open a new shop.”

“Hyung? Hyung told me he was busy to death and even broke the promise to have dinner together, yet he drank with you?”

“Wow, I should go to the shop and act like a nuisance once,” Jang Wigeon laughed, and Kwon Kanghee gave a short laugh too.