How to Avoid the Monday Blues Chapter 3

Though Sewon felt a bit disheartened by the word “boring,” Volkan’s point made total sense to him. After all, he wouldn’t exactly say a foreigner had seen the “real Seoul” just because they toured Gyeongbokgung Palace, Changdeokgung Palace, and Namsan Tower.

“The Sultan’s palaces and giant mosques are nice and all, but if you want to see the real Istanbul, you need a local guide like me.”

“…Where do I have to go to see the real Istanbul?”

At Sewon’s question, Volkan curled his lips up into a smirk. His revealed teeth gleamed white.

“I’m going to a club with my friends on Friday—wanna come with?”

Today was Monday, so there was plenty of time until Friday. Since he didn’t have many sightseeing plans scheduled from Thursday onward, freeing up Friday evening wouldn’t be much of a hassle.

It was other things that lingered on Sewon’s mind—like whether he might inadvertently ruin the mood and make things awkward while Volkan’s friends were out having fun.

“But I don’t speak Turkish, so won’t your friends feel uncomfortable?”

“Don’t worry about that. Exchange students are coming along too. It’s a very international gathering.”

Volkan smiled, putting Sewon at ease. Pulling out his mobile phone, Volkan showed him photos from their last hangout. In a commemorative picture that seemed to have been taken in front of a club, young people of various ethnicities stood with cheerful expressions.

Everyone’s faces were flushed, looking thoroughly tipsy. The excited, upbeat vibe seemed to radiate straight out of the screen.

“…Okay. What time on Friday?”

“Hmm, let’s meet around 9:00 PM and grab a few drinks first.”

“And do some hookah, too.”

Adding that, Volkan mimicked blowing air out—phew. As Sewon stood there with an awkward expression, Volkan chuckled and gave him his phone number.

Without even having been to a club back home in Korea, he had somehow ended up going to one for the first time in an unfamiliar travel destination.

Returning to his hotel room, Sewon stashed half of his cash inside the safe provided in the back of the closet. After double-checking meticulously to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything, he left the room.

“Cleaning?”

A middle-aged woman cleaning the hallway looked toward Sewon and asked using short English words. Sewon nodded and added a word of thanks.

“Minibar?”

Not catching the context, Sewon tilted his head slightly to the side. The woman, repeating “Minibar, minibar,” held up a water bottle and jiggled it. She seemed to be asking if he wanted to take the two bottles of water provided daily.

“Yes.”

Even though he had already taken the water Volkan gave him, having more couldn’t hurt. Sewon nodded and answered with clear, deliberate pronunciation.

He recalled the semester breaks he spent preparing frantically for TOEIC and OPiC exams to land a job. The difficult vocabulary and flashy sentence structures he had mastered back then were completely useless for basic communication.

Sincerity in the message you want to convey matters more than ornate expressions. A quote he had seen somewhere flashed through his mind.

Since the only texts he had read recently were all about job hunting, it was probably written under some corporate ideal employee persona profile.

It was ironic that he only realized something he hadn’t known while desperately stressing over the need to get a job quickly after he had half-given up.

Every time she handed over a bottle of water, the woman repeated, “Minibar, minibar.” As Sewon tightly held the water bottles in both hands, the corners of the woman’s mouth curled up. When she flashed a bright smile, all the spots for her molars were completely empty.

[Sigh… I really need to go to the dentist sometime.]

Was it because they looked to be around the same age, or because the weariness etched onto her face felt so similar? Looking at the woman made Sewon think of his mother.

His mother, who had occasionally mentioned her teeth feeling sensitive, ultimately never made it to the dentist and was admitted to the hospital instead. What followed was a painful, agonizing battle with illness—severe enough that she couldn’t afford to pay attention to temporary toothaches.

Sensing that the water bottle in his hand felt much softer than the ones back in Korea, Sewon forced the corners of his mouth upward.

Exchanging a nod with Volkan in the lobby, Sewon passed through the hotel’s revolving door and stepped outside. In the smoking area right beside the hotel, he saw several people standing around and smoking.

And standing right there was the man.

It was the man who had shared an awkward greeting with him in the hotel lobby yesterday. Snuffing out his stubbed cigarette, the man stepped into a taxi that arrived shortly after. In that fleeting moment, Sewon found himself holding his breath, watching him intently.

The man was wearing a black turtleneck knit and trousers. The camel-colored coat fluttering in the wind looked exceedingly soft. It was actually ordinary attire, but perhaps thanks to the man’s appearance, it looked extraordinarily striking. He looked mature, with a sense of ascetic restraint.

Sewon needlessly looked down at the thick hoodie he was wearing. It was an extreme contrast.

I’m overthinking the weirdest things…

Reaching that conclusion, Sewon pulled out his mobile phone from his hoodie pocket. Messages had arrived from his job-prep study group, his department group chat, and Jaehee Han.

After a moment of hesitation, Sewon took a breath and checked Jaehee Han’s message.

Jaehee Han: Did you say you were going to Hagia Sophia today? Go enjoy everything we learned back in Turkish Culture & Art!

Back in their freshman year, Sewon and Jaehee had both failed their course registrations side-by-side and ended up taking a general elective called “Turkish Culture and Art,” famous for giving out stingy grades.

So you remembered.

Sewon took in the text message Jaehee Han had sent one more time before turning off the screen. Although the screen went black, Jaehee Han’s profile picture remained lingering in Sewon’s mind like an afterimage.

Jaehee Han’s updated profile picture was a photo taken with his new girlfriend. The two of them pressed their cheeks together, smiling affectionately—a handsome man and a beautiful woman who looked exceptionally well-matched.

Envying the two of them felt terribly shameless and sinful.

Under what circumstances do people seek out the Almighty?

It was a question that had suddenly crossed his mind aboard the plane slicing through the clouds. From the moment his mother suddenly fell gravely ill until her eventual passing, Sewon was often gently advised by those around him to lean on religion. But at the time, the situation was so urgent that he didn’t even have the luxury to hope for a miracle.

What on earth was the driving force that kept people serving God without pause?

“Wow….”

An exclamation leaked from Sewon’s lips naturally. Hagia Sophia was identical to its appearance in the study materials Sewon had memorized by heart during his freshman year.

The scale was far larger than he had imagined. The sight of the minarets rising high as if to touch the blue sky was nothing short of wondrous.

It might have been an exaggerated emotion stemming from the excitement of a trip away from daily routine, but Sewon didn’t particularly want to restrain or suppress the feeling.

Hagia Sophia was constructed as a cathedral back when Istanbul was Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire. Though it had stood in the exact same spot for over a thousand years, its purpose shifted over time to a cathedral, a mosque, and then a museum. As a flagship landmark that immediately came to mind when thinking of Istanbul, the sheer number of tourists was substantial.

From the entrance, the queue snaked in a winding line. Right behind Sewon, standing among the tourists, an unfriendly voice suddenly rang out.

“Ah, let’s move forward quickly, quickly!”

Sewon, who was standing quietly in line, slowly turned his head at the sudden scolding. Before he even had time to protest why they were making a fuss when he was walking along just fine, a thunderous, yelling voice erupted like a bolt out of the blue.

“I was standing here earlier, so why are you cutting in line?!”

“Do you have proof? Do you have proof?!”

One of the people in the party standing behind Sewon was raising their voice and arguing fiercely with another tourist, putting on quite a show. As the commotion grew louder, people’s gazes began to cluster. As the murmurs swelled, a police officer standing far off in the distance began making moves to approach. The family originally standing behind Sewon had already been pushed way back.

In the end, justice was not served, and the shouting match reached a lull. Tensing up naturally, Sewon gulped down the water he was holding. It seemed he had picked the wrong spot to stand in line.

“Move forward!”

The group that won the spot-fighting argument against the other tourist was riding high on their momentum. At least, that was how it appeared to Sewon.

“I am moving…!”

Sewon answered with a fair bit of grit so as not to be pushed around, but it didn’t seem to work at all. Scanning Sewon up and down, they pushed him once again.