Shit Cars and the Man Who Walked Away

"Oppa, walk with me!"

"Our Ji-su is perfect in every way, except she's so slow."

It wasn't that she was slow for no reason — she was trailing behind because she was carrying all the apples and meat they'd just paid for at the mart, entirely on her own.

Kim Young-baek, acting as though he simply couldn't endure the heat, shaded his forehead with one hand while fanning his face with the other. His steps toward the parking lot were quick, showing not the slightest consideration for his girlfriend struggling behind him. However ferocious the August afternoon sun might be, it was no excuse to abandon a woman laden with heavy bags and flee to the car.

"Ji-su. Hurry up and open the car door. I'm dying here. Turn on the AC, come on."

"Can you at least hold this while you talk?"

"What? Hey! Even my own mom doesn't make me do that. You picked it up, so you carry it. You really have to make me do that one little thing? Besides, it's for your mom anyway."

"Oppa! How can you say that right now……"

Having grunted and groaned through loading the trunk by herself, Ji-su finally climbed into the driver's seat. Young-baek, sprawled in the passenger seat with the recliner tilted all the way back, urged her on again.

"AC. Now. Ji-su, I'm hot."

"Yes, I just started the engine. Give it a minute. It'll cool down."

"Ha…… Being in the countryside makes it feel even hotter. The country just doesn't suit me. I told you that before we came, didn't I? I hate it. Are you sure your parents' house actually has air conditioning?"

Gyechon-ri, Gyechon-eup, Cheongsan-gun, North Gyeongsang Province — this was Im Ji-su's hometown.

They had just stopped by Gyechon Mart, the only mid-sized grocery store in town, to buy fruit and meat as gifts for her mother before heading out again.

"Oppa. Even if the countryside doesn't suit you, this is still my hometown. If you're going to marry me, you have to at least greet my mother properly. Would you stop complaining already?"

"But…… did I really have to be the one to come? Think about it. There are two of us, right? If it's your mom coming to see us, then only one of us needs to show up. Completely rational, right?"

Ji-su swallowed her anger with a sigh. She wasn't married yet, so she didn't want to call him father-in-law either — but still, "your mom" was pushing it, wasn't it?

Then again, she knew from experience that getting angry changed nothing, so she gradually calmed down and started overthinking instead. Was it because she was the weaker party in this marriage that this man reached for "rationality" whenever courtesy was called for? Because she was the one with less power in this relationship? Because she was poor? Or because she was a daughter raised by a single mother?

"Ji-su, you're not mad, are you? You know I didn't mean anything bad by it. I'm just the kind of guy who doesn't hold grudges, you know? And hey, the important thing is that we made it here at all."

Right. Young-baek isn't…… a bad person, really. He was oblivious and terrible at reading the room, but kind-hearted at his core. She turned his one virtue over in her mind, trying to settle her heart.

"By the way, Ji-su, why isn't this car getting any cooler? Hey! That's hot air coming out! Ugh, so annoying."

"Oppa, we're almost there, so just bear with it a little. Once we get moving, the temperature will drop. I'm pulling out now."

When she rolled down the window, a blast of scorching wind rushed in, and the air conditioner seemed to have developed some kind of problem. She hurried the car out of the lot.

But it wasn't just the AC. The car was seriously ill. It sputtered along with an ominous, rattling noise before limping to a stop at the side of the road, not even a few hundred meters from the mart. Then, to top it all off, a thin ribbon of smoke began to curl up from under the hood.

"Oh god! Hey! Is it on fire? That's terrifying! I want to go home."

"Oppa, what are you even saying? Go home? We are heading to my home."

Young-baek flung open the door and scrambled out at lightning speed, then ran a good distance away and stamped his feet in a panic.

"Hey, have you never seen a movie? It's going to go boom and blow up any second! I'm leaving. I refuse to die in this middle of nowhere on my way to marry you."

"Oppa, wait. Just calm down. It might…… yes, all right, it might be scary. But listen—"

"I don't care, I'm leaving. I knew I didn't want to come."

Just as Young-baek threw open his phone in a flap to call a taxi—

"Need some help?"

A man dressed in what anyone would recognize as a mechanic's uniform came over and spoke. A six-pack bundle of bottled water was slung over his shoulder. Apparently he'd walked all the way from the mart.

Ji-su felt as though she'd been handed a savior. Glancing back and forth between her car — so sun-faded it was impossible to tell whether it had once been mint, sky blue, or beige — and the man, she said, "Oh, hello. Yes, please help us! Thank you in advance! The car just suddenly…… the AC wasn't working properly when I started the engine, and we barely made it this far after turning right out of the mart parking lot before it just died."

"Give me the key. Let me take a look."

After politely handing the key to the mechanic, Ji-su walked over to Young-baek, who was sweating buckets and grumbling away.

"Hey. Im Ji-su. Did you know you can't get a taxi with an app out here? There are still places this backward in the world? God, this is infuriating."

"Oppa, keep your voice down! He said he'd fix the car. Let's just wait a little. Okay?"

Things were less convenient here than in Seoul, sure — but this was still a place where people lived, and right now they were depending on the kindness of one of those very people, so hearing him trash the whole town made Ji-su scramble to shut him down. She prayed desperately that the man inspecting the car couldn't hear a word Young-baek was saying.

"I can't be quiet! And I can't wait. Can't you see I'm sweating my skin off? My mom always said sunscreen is useless once you start sweating — ugh, I'm so annoyed. There isn't a speck of shade anywhere. What is this place! And the mechanic stuck out here in the boonies is probably useless too. He'll never fix it."

"……Oppa. Enough."

"Enough? I wouldn't have come if I'd known it'd be like this!"

"Are you even hearing yourself? If you hadn't come, how exactly would we be getting married?"

The irritation she'd been holding back finally burst. Ji-su was only human. How long was she supposed to endure this whining, more unbearable than the heat itself? She'd hit her limit.

"Oppa, did I beg you to marry me? Am I marrying myself? Getting married means you greet each other's parents, then have the families meet, and you prepare and coordinate everything step by step — isn't that how it works?"

"Why are you getting so worked up? You wouldn't know, you've never done it……"

"Done what, exactly? How many times have you done it? This is my first time too! It's just common sense!"

That one word from Ji-su pressed Young-baek's tantrum button.

"Common sense? Did you just say common sense to me? Right. Must be nice, being a Hankuk University graduate. I'm just a high school grad with no common sense. I'll get out of your way, then, since I'm so senseless."

"Oppa! That's not what I meant!"

"Then listen carefully. Honestly, other than your fancy degree and your pretty face, what do you even have going for you? Huh?"

Young-baek was panting, gearing up to tear her down further, when—

"Excuse me, ma'am. Could you come over here a moment?"

The mechanic's call cut their argument short.

"Yes, sir?"

"Just looking at it like this, I can't tell for certain. I'd need to open her up."

"……I'm sorry?"

"Well, to be perfectly honest…… the right thing would be to tell you there's no hope. In any case, this isn't something one or two replacement parts will fix."

Okay. So what do I do now? The heavy bags in the trunk, carrying them all the way to her mother's house…… But before she could even stare blankly at the thought of the journey ahead, Young-baek's racket yanked her back to reality.

"Oh! There's a taxi! Taxi! TAXI!"

He hollered at the cab approaching in the distance, waving his short arms like semaphore flags.

"Hey, Im Ji-su. I'm leaving. I did at least come all the way out to this town, so you'd better explain things nicely to your mom. Tell her something urgent came up and I had to go back. I did come all this way, so I've paid my respects, haven't I? And you'd better explain it to my mom properly too, got it?"

"Oppa! You can't be serious."

Young-baek really did get into the taxi that pulled up before them, his expression instantly relaxing now that the interior was cool. From inside the car, he waved at Ji-su. Soon the taxi kicked up a cloud of dust and vanished into the distance.

Ji-su felt as if someone had dumped a bucket of ice water over her head.

She was so stunned she couldn't even feel the heat.

The boyfriend who had come to greet her mother before their wedding had just disappeared. Waving goodbye with a smile on his face.

"Ha. Unbelievable."

The dust the taxi had scattered must have blown into her eyes. That was obviously why tears were welling up. She was absolutely not crying.

No — she was crying because she was heartbroken, humiliated, and hurting.

What was she supposed to tell her mother? What if the shock made her collapse again?

She wiped the tears away quickly, refusing to cry — but no amount of wiping could erase the traces of misfortune.

"Miss. You know what they say — out with the shit car, in with the Benz."

"Sob. I didn't know that. Please just fix the car, and fast."

"I don't think this is something fixing can solve……"

"……"

"Let it go. Don't look back."

She couldn't tell whether he was talking about the car — or about the boyfriend who had just abandoned her here and ridden off alone in a taxi.

"It is not a shit car."

"It's a shit car. A first-class shit car, at that."

The man, his face and forearms smeared with grease, closed the hood of the car Young-baek had given Ji-su as a job-hunting gift — a secondhand compact that had already logged 280,000 kilometers by the time she received it, its rear window still bearing a sun-bleached Student Driver sticker.

Everything that wrapped around the two of them was intense — the sweltering air, the still-relentless sunlight, and the heat in the man's eyes.

"So let it go. Ji-su."

If letting go were as easy as being let go of, I'd have let go long ago.

The patchwork of a six-year relationship. And this car, too.

And yet—

"Im Ji-su. Do you remember me?"