Place to Be Chapter 30

Seo Chiyoung was satisfied with things as they were. An acquaintance with whom he had become able to exchange conversation fairly comfortably.

Continuing like this in the future. He liked that.

And yet.

Simultaneously with the sense of relief, his wayward heart recalled a faint lingering regret.

“Hmm—if we’re alumni… Chiyoung… Seo Chiyoung… Suddenly trying to drop the honorifics feels a bit awkward, and calling you Boss has become a habit so it’s most comfortable, but that’s also a bit ambiguous… Would it be okay if I called you Mr. Chiyoung?”

He, who had been muttering as if troubled, asked Seo Chiyoung with a smile, and Seo Chiyoung nodded. Yes, you can call me that when you address me, he replied; and with those words as the end, the man left behind his usual smile, appearing neither self-conscious nor awkward any longer.

It was the same after that.

As before, he would drop by with Yoon Junyoung or alone on his way past, but there was no change at all in his attitude toward Seo Chiyoung. Nor did he draw a line under a serene attitude as he had done previously. The only thing that had changed was the form of address. From “Boss” to “Mr. Chiyoung.”

Everything was exactly like the time Seo Chiyoung had been spending with satisfaction.

Even so, it was desolate. As if a crisp, chillingly dry air were lingering, the loneliness cast over his heart did not vanish.

“…”

Again, his chest throbbed, tightening and then releasing.

Seo Chiyoung rubbed his aching heart and let out a quiet sigh. Inside the bus, which had stopped again at a traffic light immediately after crossing the Han River, he looked down at the time. In the middle of a road that was even more congested now that he had crossed the river, the clock pointed to a fretful hour.

However, a fretful mood was actually better.

When a desolate feeling like this set in, the busier he was, the better it was. So that there would be no room for other complicated thoughts to occupy his mind. Today, too, once he started helping with the opening preparations, the evening would pass without him even having the spirit to think of anything else. Just as it had last night.

But the traffic was truly starting to back up. At this rate, he would be late.

Wondering if it would be better to call the senior and tell him he might be a little late, Seo Chiyoung scanned the wide road that was blocked all the way ahead and opened his phone’s flip cover. And it was just as he began searching for the senior’s phone number.

Beep-beep, along with a short signal tone, a new message arrived. Seo Chiyoung, who checked the message with wonder, read the contents slowly twice and then closed the flip cover. Then he put the phone in his pocket. There was no need to call the senior, and now there was no need to be anxious.

It was a short message saying that, although it was sudden and he was sorry, this evening’s work was canceled.

“…”

The senior had always been somewhat self-indulgent, but he hadn’t expected such a sudden cancellation. Judging by his hasty personality, it was highly likely that, as had happened several times before, once one small thing went wrong, he had flared up in a temper and told everyone to just quit.

That senior would probably regret it after just an hour or two, but at any rate, this evening’s work had fallen through.

The heart that had been shrinking while constantly staring at the clock anxiously lost its tension all at once. His mood sank a bit darkly with a bitter sense of disappointment and emptiness.

Suddenly, he was left with free time. His body was still exhausted and his heart was gloomy—perhaps that was why even more so—he didn’t feel like returning home just like this.

What should he do? While thinking vacantly, the shopping mall that was approaching largely across the street caught Seo Chiyoung’s eye. And beside it, the stairs that led long toward the hill.

Seo Chiyoung impulsively got off the bus before he could even think.

Until the time he had collapsed because his body could no longer endure the overwork piled up over several years since graduating high school, he was too busy making a living to have any leeway to pay attention to other things. From the moment he opened his eyes until he fell asleep, he was only busy finishing the mountain of tasks, thinking, What should I do next? What should I do after this? When he finally finished the day and returned home in the middle of the night, he would often collapse on his blankets with a body limp like water-soaked cotton and sleep as if he had passed out.

He thought that a person’s body might degenerate if it isn’t used. As if the body deemed those functions unnecessary and they had slowly faded away, he had lived exceedingly plainly these past few years. It was to the point where, now, if he didn’t have an erection when he woke up in the morning, he might think his genitals had simply fallen asleep forever.

Well, to begin with, it was an object that had never once had a “utility” that could truly be of help.

“…”

Seo Chiyoung let out a quiet sigh. He had no memory of any “utility” that hadn’t been helpful, either. Seo Chiyoung raised his head and scanned the surroundings with his eyes.

The park he had sought out for the first time in several years had half of it cut away and turned into a parking lot. It wasn’t a very large park to begin with, but now that half of it had been changed into a parking lot, it seemed more accurate to call it a resting area to stop by briefly rather than a park. Following the stairs that led to the far corner of the parking lot, there was a large shopping mall with a movie theater attached. He had heard in passing that the building, completed two or three years ago, rarely had customers, whether due to the recession or a problem with the location. Even now on a holiday evening, looking from a distance, the area near the building didn’t seem crowded.

Even here, which they had presumably bought and turned into a parking lot thinking the building’s own parking lot wouldn’t be enough at first, cars were standing only sparsely.

He saw people coming up the stairs. A young man and a young woman, a pair.

Whether they had parked their car near the park, as they approached this way and saw Seo Chiyoung sitting on a bench in the corner of the small, ambiguously sized park, they exchanged a few small words and then went off in their car with a giggle. Seo Chiyoung felt needlessly sheepish and hunched his interlaced hands.

As expected, was this a mistake?

He had already been sitting here for nearly an hour, but nothing happened. Perhaps the location had changed. No, being stuck right against the parking lot of such a large shopping mall, it was only natural that it had changed.

It was already several years ago. Just once, when his body was tired and weary but his heart had nowhere to lean and he felt like he might die crushed by loneliness, he had painstakingly looked into it. Where do people like him meet others? Surely he wasn’t the only man in this world who likes men.

Relying on rumors he had overheard by chance, he had painstakingly sought out a bar of that sort, but it felt uncomfortable as if he were wearing clothes that didn’t fit.

Clean and plush chairs he had never sat in, rows of expensive-looking liquor bottles on the shelf behind the bartender’s back, glass cups hanging upside down in a line reflecting the dim lighting, the sound of low and languid music filling the space, and men dressed in sophisticated attire chatting in groups.

It didn’t feel like a place where he belonged. So Seo Chiyoung had sat there restlessly, barely drinking a single cocktail he had ordered from the cheapest options, before hurriedly coming out.

Rather than a place like that, the terminals, the shopping districts near Jongno, or movie theaters—where the bartender had said in a passing manner, “Until a while ago, people used to meet in places like that too. It’s almost at the end now, though” —were actually more comfortable for his heart.

One of the “places like that” he had learned about then was right here, the park where Seo Chiyoung was currently sitting. Although the last time he had come a few years ago, it had been a bit more spacious and secluded.

However, even then, in the end, after meeting and not having even said a few words, he found it difficult to endure the subtle, groping hands that reached out as a matter of course while he was still tense; so he had never once properly achieved his goal. Fortunately, it seemed that not all gay men went as far as penetrative sex, so those who had come out to meet Seo Chiyoung—who was so tense he was frozen to the tips of his hair—backed off easily enough to make him lose his tension.

When he first went out, it seemed there had been expectation along with the nervousness. It was a vague expectation, so much so that even what kind of expectation it was wasn’t clear. But when he actually went out and associated with strangers, it was neither as good as he had vaguely anticipated, nor was it that bad.

Ultimately, even if he reasonably satisfied his desire when he returned home, nothing beyond that was filled. After going out like that once or twice, he felt a sense of futility, wondering what he was doing and feeling like he was escaping, so as he dived back into his grueling life, those deviations had ended with those one or two times.

“…”