Who Told You to Leave So Soon

Her brother died in a sudden accident.

A drunk driver, a hit-and-run. It happened the very day he'd submitted his resignation to the law firm to prepare for opening his own practice — struck down on his way home late after his farewell dinner.

"Aaagh! Lee-hwan! My son, my precious son!"

Listening to his mother's soul-tearing scream, Lee-jin forced down her tears. The whole sequence of events felt as unreal as a dream.

She prayed and prayed that it was only a nightmare, one that would vanish when she woke — but she knew all too well it was a hope that would go unanswered.

"Please come this way. Yes, you can leave that there."

It had been twenty-three years since their father passed, and the three of them had leaned on no one but each other in their small, humble household. There were no decent relatives to consult on family matters.

Which meant the chief mourner — her — had no choice but to keep her head on straight.

"Thank you for coming. Please take care on your way."

She greeted and saw off visitors over and over, like a machine. Friends and university club members came to pay their respects, but since they couldn't take her place as chief mourner, she sent them home early.

"Lee-hwan… my son…."

Truthfully, a big part of it was that she didn't want them watching her like this.

She found herself ridiculous for clinging to such a petty pride even in these circumstances.

Even as she mocked herself, her mother's wailing went on and on. What if she collapsed in that state? Lee-jin couldn't bring herself to tell her to stop — she knew exactly what her brother had meant to her mother. To her mother, he had been everything, the very light of her life.

Lee-jin stared blankly at Lee-hwan's portrait.

It was the photo taken on the day he passed the bar exam. A face lit up with a smile without a single shadow in it — which only made the picture hurt all the more.

She had been gazing at her brother's portrait in a daze when a weighty presence filled the funeral hall.

A man of extraordinary height and build swept the space in a single stride, utterly unlike any of the visitors who had come before, and called her name in a voice pitched low and quiet.

"Seo Lee-jin."

She flinched, surfacing from her thoughts, then turned toward the man who had spoken her name.

"Kang-hyun…."

His name spilled from her lips like a murmur.

Moon Kang-hyun — her brother's friend, who had come and gone from their house so often his footsteps wore down the threshold all through their school days.

It was the first time she'd seen him in five years, since his contact had abruptly gone silent.

"It's been a while."

The casual greeting sounded exactly like it always had — except the older brother who used to clown around beside him, thumping people playfully on the back, no longer existed in this world.

Crushed by the realization that descended on her like a disaster, Lee-jin bit her lip before offering her greeting a beat too late.

"So you heard, oppa. I didn't think you'd come, but… thank you for being here. Lee-hwan oppa would be glad."

At her deliberately flat words, Kang-hyun's gaze traveled slowly, searchingly across her face. Then, without a word, he turned his head to look at Lee-hwan's portrait.

In his eyes, a sorrow he could not quite hide pooled in a hollow crescent. After staring at the photo for a long moment, he laid a single chrysanthemum before it and offered a silent prayer for the dead.

"Lee-hwan, my son…."

Go Myeong-sun, her strength for wailing spent, was muttering her son's name like a groan in a voice hoarse and cracked. Kang-hyun took her hand.

The firm grip closing around her own felt so much like her son's that Go Myeong-sun abruptly stopped crying and lifted her head.

"Ma'am, it's me. Kang-hyun."

"K-Kang-hyun?"

Focus slowly returned to her eyes. She clutched her son's friend's hand as if he were her own flesh and blood.

"Kang-hyun, my Lee-hwan… he wasn't meant to go like that…."

Unable to withstand the grief that surged up in her again, Go Myeong-sun broke down into open sobs, and Kang-hyun silently patted her shoulder.

After weeping for a long while, she finally fell asleep as though she'd fainted. Having tucked her into a small room off the funeral hall, Lee-jin came back out and let out a long breath.

Then her eyes met Kang-hyun's.

He hadn't left after paying his respects. He'd stayed the entire time, helping with everything — as though he were family.

It struck her as funny, sending everyone else away while accepting his help without hesitation. But it also made her realize something: this situation was far more than she could shoulder alone.

It was late at night, when no more mourners came, and the hall stood empty.

"Have a seat."

Kang-hyun tipped his chin toward the floor. The two of them sat side by side against the wall, backs resting against it.

"Thanks for helping."

"Of course I'd help. Lee-hwan wasn't a stranger."

Not a stranger, but why did you cut off contact for five whole years? The question flickered through Lee-jin's mind, but she didn't ask. Since Lee-hwan had never said anything on the subject either, she figured there must be something between them that she didn't know about.

A brief silence settled between them, and Lee-jin found it wasn't awkward at all.

That, in itself, said something — that even after five years apart, Kang-hyun was as easy to be around as her own brother.

Sitting still, exhaustion crept over her. She'd spent the whole day swallowing back tears, and now her head throbbed dully.

Watching her press her fingertips hard into her temples, Kang-hyun asked,

"Are you okay?"

"Oh… I'm fine. Just tired. If I get some rest, I'll be—"

"I didn't ask about your body. I asked if this was okay."

He thumped his own chest with a fist. The gesture couldn't have been more careless, but the meaning behind it was anything but. He was asking whether her heart — not her body — was all right. When the meaning landed, Lee-jin's eyes trembled faintly.

"You haven't cried once yet, have you?"

How does he know that? For a moment, her mind went blank.

"That's, um, because… someone has to keep it together…."

"Seo Lee-jin, you haven't changed one bit. Acting like you're the only one living in this world."

"What's that supposed to—"

Just as she flared up, a large hand came to rest on top of her head.

"You're not alone anymore. So it's okay to be sad."

What did that mean. What was that huge, rough hand.

The grief she had pressed down and down until now burst through its banks and flooded everything.

The tears poured down. She'd held out so well for so long — and now, absurdly, they broke free with hardly any resistance at all.

"Hic— oppa… they said our oppa died. That I'll never see him again. I can't believe it, not even a little, what do I do?"

"Yeah. I don't believe it either."

"He had his whole life ahead of him. He was so happy about opening his own practice soon. And then…."

Why our oppa? Why him, of all people?

Despair swallowed her whole, and her crying deepened. Kang-hyun's hand stayed where it was, resting on her hair.

Perhaps because that big hand shielded her face, she was able to cry as much as she needed.

How long did she cry? It might have been the first time in her life she'd let herself weep her fill. Because smiling and saying she was fine for her struggling mother had hardened into habit, she'd never known she was someone capable of crying this long.

When she came back to herself, embarrassment rushed in.

"Thank you, oppa. I'm all cried out now."

She reached up to pull his wrist down from her head.

But instead of dropping away, his hand lingered — brushed once across her wet cheek — and only then withdrew.

Through a blur of brimming tears, his face came into focus. The face of Moon Kang-hyun — just a little different from the brother's friend she remembered.

Certain she must have seen something wrong, Lee-jin blinked rapidly. The tears that had pooled in her eyes spilled over and her vision cleared, and there was Kang-hyun's face, perfectly ordinary as always.

Right, of course. I must've imagined it. She dismissed it without much thought.

"It's really late. You should head home. Don't you have work tomorrow, oppa?"

"Tomorrow's my day off, doesn't matter. I'll keep watch here, so go get some sleep."

"Huh? Really?"

Startled by the unexpected answer, she hesitated for a moment.

"As Lee-hwan's best friend, I figure I can at least do this much."

When he said he wanted to keep vigil for his friend, there was no way to refuse. Honestly, she was in no position to refuse his kindness at all.

"Thank you. Then I'll just close my eyes for a bit over on that side. Wake me right away if anything happens."

When she moved to settle herself on the bare floor, Kang-hyun clicked his tongue.

"What am I going to do with you."

"What?"

"If you're going to sleep, sleep properly. Go get a pillow and a blanket."

Lee-jin jutted out her lips in a sulk — the habit that always surfaced whenever something displeased her.

"Fine."

She brought back a pillow and a thin blanket from the room where her mother slept.

"I really will sleep just a little. Wake me if you're getting tired, oppa. Got it?"

"Yes, yes. Got it."

Kang-hyun waved her off, telling her to quit it and sleep. Muttering a thank-you, Lee-jin closed her eyes.

Blindsided by the sudden news, she'd gone two days without a wink of sleep — and she drifted off almost instantly.

Curled into a tight ball with the blanket pulled up to her chin, she looked so small it seemed a single handful could hold her. Her eyes were rimmed red from all the crying. Kang-hyun gently peeled away the stray strands clinging to her cheek and tucked them behind her ear.

Then, letting out a long sigh, he murmured his best friend's name.

"Seo Lee-hwan, you bastard. Who told you to leave this fast, huh?"

You said you'd guard the gates, didn't you? Said not a speck of dust was getting in her eyes until the day you died? Then you should have kept that promise to the end.

He heaped reproach after reproach on the friend he would never see again, then added quietly,

"I'm better than some random guy, aren't I? So this time, look the other way for me."

The tangle of emotions laid bare in his eyes sank into something dark and deep.