How to Avoid the Monday Blues Chapter 14

Sewon looked up intently at the man. With the expression of “Teacher, please help me,” the one he had said the man could not possibly refuse.

“Ha….”

Perhaps the desperate look had worked, because the man ruffled his own hair and said to Sewon,

“Just once.”

“Only once.”

The man, who had let out a short sigh, took a cigarette from the crumpled pack and handed it over. The thin cigarette held between his fingers was plump and tempting, like the forbidden fruit. Sewon swallowed.

“Put it in your mouth.”

“Eh.”

At the man’s command-like words, Sewon put the cigarette between his front teeth and bit down, mmp. When he answered with a muffled pronunciation, the man laughed softly once again.

Click.

When the lid of the Zippo lighter that had come close in front of Sewon opened, a flickering flame revealed itself.

“…”

Sewon brought the cigarette close to the flame. The man’s gaze slowly moved from the flame to Sewon.

“Inhale.”

“What?”

“…That’s how it lights.”

At the man’s words, Sewon answered ah- and inhaled hard on the cigarette. The moment he drew in a deep breath so that his cheeks puffed out, a stuffy, acrid smoke spread inside his mouth. Sewon coughed, cough, cough.

The man lightly patted Sewon’s back, tap tap. Sewon, who had been coughing for a while, took the cigarette awkwardly caught in his mouth into his hand.

“Are you done?”

“Kuhm…. Hmm. The cigarette is, yes.”

The man took the cigarette remaining in Sewon’s hand. The man, who put the cigarette Sewon’s lips had touched between his own, inhaled very skillfully and deeply. Sewon blankly watched the cigarette shortening at a fast rate.

“Do you have anything else you want to try?”

The man, turning his head slightly, asked while letting out a long stream of cigarette smoke. His thick, beautiful profile, as if drawn with a rough brush, was dimly visible in the dense smoke.

Watching that sight, Sewon slowly opened his mouth like someone possessed.

“On Friday….”

“Friday?”

The man repeated after Sewon and asked. The two would stay in Istanbul until Sunday, but the journey they had agreed to share lasted only until Thursday, when Sewon’s sightseeing plans ended.

The man’s eyes, looking at Sewon as he spoke of what came next, were flickering like the flame at the tip of the lighter from a moment ago.

“Yes. On Friday.”

“…”

As the guests who had been smoking together in the smoking area went into the hotel, silence came around the two. It was a tension similar to when they talked about kissing over dinner, when their fingers brushed as they walked side by side down the narrow street, and when their eyes met inside the train where the distance had narrowed.

Sewon, swallowing as if he had made up his mind, looked up at the man and asked with courage.

“Would you like to go to a club with me on Friday?”

As if he had heard something he should not have, the man’s face froze coldly.

Wednesday

“Good morning.”

When Sewon came out of the hotel, the man was standing there with the morning sun at his back. Today the man wore a thin shirt with the buttons undone to reveal his neck, and a black coat over it. It was not a particularly dressed-up outfit, yet he looked excessively handsome.

“You came out early.”

As Sewon smiled with his eyes curved, the man took out his right hand, which had been shoved into his coat pocket. And he raised both hands in a posture as if surrendering.

“I came out early to have a morning cigarette, but I shouldn’t smoke.”

“Why?”

“Because you might ask me to teach you something bad again.”

“I wouldn’t….”

Sewon looked at the man, who had a faint smile hanging on his lips. Unlike himself, whose under-eyes were a little puffy in the morning, the man was flawlessly put together.

“Shall we go?”

“Yeees—”

At the man’s playful question, as if dealing with a young child, Sewon answered in a drawn-out tone as if responding in kind. Under the blue sky without a single cloud, he saw the man wearing a soft smile.

Sewon had learned yesterday just how sharp the man’s eyes, which softened genially when he smiled, could become when he was on guard.

[Would you like to go to a club on Friday?]

[…Why. So you can forget the friend you like.]

[….]

[Are you trying to meet a new woman or something?]

Last night, at Sewon’s question, the man had twisted one corner of his mouth up faintly. Sewon noticed that subtle change immediately.

The man…, had been offended.

Having grown up between a father who remarried before the ink on the divorce papers had even dried and a mother exhausted from raising her son alone while running a restaurant, Sewon was quick to read the room.

A woman….

Mulling over the man’s words, Sewon had let out a belated sigh. He had only been worried about hanging out with Vulkan and his friends, and had not thought of anything else at all.

Unlike himself, who had a crush on a friend who was a “man,” an ordinary person would think of a “woman” in a new encounter. Caught off guard, Sewon resolved to keep his own heart in check.

[It’s not like that—he said it’s a gathering he goes to with exchange students. There’s a hotel staff member named Vulkan, and he introduced me….]

As Sewon rambled on disjointedly and added the excuse, “He said I could bring a friend. It’s my first time at a club, so I’m a bit scared…,” the subtle coldness that had made Sewon tense melted away completely.

In the end, Sewon and the man ended up making an unplanned Friday appointment.

Just as the man and Sewon were about to set off, a man with hair cropped almost to the scalp walked out of the hotel across the street.

“Oh….”

A short exclamation escaped Sewon’s mouth as he looked at that man.

“Why?”

“Ah, I’ll tell you while we walk.”

Instead of answering the man’s question right away, Sewon quietly whispered while minding those around them. The two, having left the alley where the hotel was, walked along the main road. Even though it was early morning, the city was full of people breathing life into it.

In front of a small stall selling simit, round ring-shaped bread covered in sesame seeds, a few tourists had gathered. There was also a couple walking arm in arm, affectionately close, and the man looked like the person he had seen earlier, with his head shaved short.

“You know the hotel across from ours.”

Sewon spoke in an exaggeratedly lowered voice, enough to look suspicious. Though there was no one who would understand Korean, it was because he thought, just in case.

“Yeah.”

“Ever since we first arrived, there have been strangely many people with bandages wrapped around their heads.”

“Bandages?”

Even the man, who was indifferent to others, had a scene that came to mind after hearing Sewon’s words. Some of the men who came out of the hotel across the street had stared intently at the people smoking. Not with a look as if picking a fight, but with a look of pure envy. And they all had something wrapped around their heads.

So that was a bandage.

The man let out ah- slowly and nodded.

“Yes. Last time there was even someone bleeding from his head, so I looked it up online. Because it could have been a strange hotel.”

“…Right.”

The man, watching Sewon emphasize the words “strange hotel,” made an expression as if holding back laughter again. Sewon, now accustomed to the man’s reactions—making a delighted expression even when Sewon had not said anything funny—continued without paying it any mind.

“They say Turkey does the most hair transplant surgeries in the world.”

“Hair transplant? Hair?”

“Yes. The area in front of our hotel is even connected to a clinic, so they say people get their hair planted as soon as they arrive, go sightseeing, and then go home. Did you see the people with their bandages off? If you look closely, it’s like pencil lead is stuck in there.”

“Ah, so that’s why….”

Just then, a man with a closely shaved head passed by the two. As if coordinated, the two’s gazes followed the man.

“…Is baldness genetic?”

At Sewon’s murmur-like question, the man laughed, revealing a cool smile.

“Haha. If your hair ever falls out, you can just come back to Istanbul.”

Imagining the hair volume of a father whose face was even hazy and a paternal grandfather he had never met, Sewon looked at the man’s profile.

The man’s dark brown hair swayed in the wind. No matter from which angle one looked, the man seemed like someone who would never need to worry about something like hair volume.

Today, a packed schedule leading from Galata Tower to the Egyptian Bazaar and then to Süleymaniye Mosque awaited the two.

Before the forced march, they decided to have breakfast first.