Stay With Me a Little Longer
“What is that?”
Kwon Hyun-jin looked at me with open puzzlement as I came toward him, both hands cradling a steaming paper bowl of broth that sloshed with every careful step.
“Ramen.”
The hot bar clamped between my teeth mashed the word into something almost unintelligible. When I dug a triangle kimbap out of my pocket and set it down as well, a perfect Han River set was laid out across the table.
“You bought me dinner last time.”
Of course it couldn’t compare to that expensive sushi… but for a meal by the Han, this was as fine a feast as anyone could ask for.
“I don’t eat ramen.”
“It’s not that you don’t. It’s that you can’t.”
“What?”
“You’re bad with spicy food. Hang on.”
I’d already known he would say that, so I’d left a bowl of Chapagetti cooking on the machine for him as well.
“What the hell is this. It’s black…”
Hyun-jin stared down at the Chapagetti with even more distrust than the time I’d put ketchup in kimchi stew.
“Have you never seen Chapagetti before?”
“I don’t eat stuff like this.”
I’d even handed him a pair of wooden chopsticks, but he only popped the cap off his drink with a surly little twist. He was going to eat it just fine and still acted like this.
“Just try it once, okay?”
“I’m good.”
“One bite.”
“…”
“Hyun-jin. Please.”
Under my relentless pestering he poked reluctantly through the noodles, and at last put one bite into his mouth.
“See? It’s good, right?”
“…”
His eyebrows gave a little jump. I definitely saw it. The salty-savory taste of Chapagetti, brand-new to him, must have suited him more than he’d expected. After that Hyun-jin quietly, diligently cleaned the bowl to the last scrap. At that point I couldn’t not ask.
“Did you skip meals today?”
“Yeah.”
“You really didn’t eat a single thing?”
He answered by dropping his gaze. So because I’d said I was coming this morning, the kid had been starving himself the whole time.
I felt genuinely sorry. I peeled the wrapper off the hot bar and pushed it toward him, then fished the whole egg out of my own ramen and set it in front of him too.
“Not just anyone can put an egg in properly. Keeping the yolk from breaking is a skill.”
His appetite must have woken up; he opened his mouth with a soft ah, so I slipped the egg right in. He could grumble all he wanted, but once something went into his mouth he always went quiet afterward.
“You eat well.”
I smiled, pleased, and Hyun-jin immediately cut me a sideways look.
“No—I mean it’s nice to watch…”
It was the end of the year, and party boats drifted along the Han with their lights on. Against the black river water the golden lanterns glittered extravagantly. Beyond the Han, red backlight points dotted the far shore in a long chain.
You could tell without looking how completely the roads were jammed with lines of cars, but right now we were only distant, idle spectators. The drivers up there might be burning up with frustration; to us, the view was rather beautiful.
“Where in England were you?”
“London.”
He answered without even glancing at me, busy clearing the messy table.
“I’ve never been to London, so I wouldn’t know… but of course it must be nice there too.”
He lifted his eyes just enough to look at me. His face said, What is she even talking about?
“But you know.”
“…”
“Seoul is really nice too.”
I wanted him to love this talkative, troublesome city. I wanted this lonely boy not to be lonely anymore.
It wasn’t only my wish. It was my mother’s wish as well—the wish of everyone who had watched over Kwon Hyun-jin for a long time.
“Look at that night view. Isn’t it really pretty?”
For a boy who had spent his entire formative years abroad, this city would feel foreign, hard to grow attached to. He had no friends here, and no one he could truly call family either.
And Seoul was a difficult city to settle into. Even for someone born and raised here like me, it had always been that way.
That dazzling nightscape I envied was, right now, forged out of the hardships of people still working at this late hour. How ironic—that someone else’s hard labor could become, from the other side of a Han River bridge, another person’s hope and romance.
“Heaven can become hell, and even in hell a person can live as if they were in heaven.”
“…”
“Those are the Chairman’s words.”
The original source of that maxim was probably someone else. There was no way Chairman Kwon had come up with such a stylish line himself.
“Wherever you live is only the background. The real heaven and hell are inside a person’s heart. Everything depends on how you decide to take it. I think that’s what he meant.”
I didn’t take my eyes off the Han River nightscape. Hyun-jin was looking at the same place.
Buried deep in the plastic chairs, we watched the cruise boats drift over the water.
“Our grandpa acts all solemn when he goes around, but he’s just a grandfather. Same as any other old man.”
“Mm.”
Well, of course he would seem that way to you. He’s your blood. Your grandfather.
“He worries a lot—do this, don’t do that, make sure you eat properly—lots of nagging… just an ordinary old man. Our grandpa.”
Hyun-jin kept insisting that Chairman Kwon was no different from anyone else.
Honestly, it didn’t land for me.
Even the boy sitting right beside me was proof. To a stranger walking past we might look like ordinary friends, but Kwon Hyun-jin was the “young master” of Hannam-dong, and I was only the cook’s daughter—one of that household’s many employees.
And yet, with standing like mine…
Was it even right for me to feel sorry for him?
When it came to Kwon Hyun-jin, I seemed to lose all sense of my place.
“He gives his grandson pocket money the second he sees his face, wants to do so much for him…”
“…”
“Because he has no parents. He’s scared I’ll go out and get called a little bastard and feel small.”
I was clearly not in my right mind.
That hollow little smile of his looked sad and lonely enough that I wanted to pull him into my arms.
“I should get going.”
“Lee Na-hee. You’re leaving already…?”
Hyun-jin’s eyes creased with open disappointment.
It wasn’t even ten yet. He said as much, then closed his mouth and simply looked at me.
Those eyes, which looked endlessly black tonight, felt as cold and pitiful as the winter river.
“Then… should we stay a little longer…?”
“Yeah.”
His face brightened the instant he answered.
“Stay with me, Lee Na-hee.”
“…”
When I called my mother, she confirmed that Chairman Kwon was at a year-end gathering, as expected. The Vice Chairman and his wife, who both loved their drinks, wouldn’t be home until dawn either.
Just past midnight would be fine. A little deviation like this wouldn’t hurt, would it? It was the night I turned twenty, after all.
“Listen to the Chairman a bit more. Don’t be so contrary. He only does it because he wants the best for you. He’s your family.”
In a hard world where most people could barely look after themselves, the only ones who truly worried about you were your own blood.
“He wants to put only good things in your mouth and take the bad ones away. That’s how the Chairman feels.”
“Now you’re nagging too.”
“The only person who really thinks about you is the Chairman.”
“Wow. So fucking mature of you.”
I’d said it because I understood the Chairman, but to Hyun-jin it must have sounded like lecture from some old fogey. A teasing hand reached for my cheek.
“Looking all middle-school.”
“Ah, stop it.”
I twisted my head this way and that to dodge him as he tried to torment me—and then Hyun-jin’s eyes went round and he stared straight into my face.
“Lee Na-hee, are you cold?”
“What, you’re not cold in this weather?”
Come to think of it, even in the dead of winter he had left his coat and muffler draped to the side. Maybe he ran hot. He didn’t seem to feel the cold much.
“Let’s walk a little. Sitting makes you colder.”
“…”
Going home wasn’t even on the menu, apparently. Still, Hyun-jin wrapped his own muffler around my neck. It was a soft burgundy, similar to the knit I’d worn before.
His scent clung to the soft fabric—an unreal, pretty flower fragrance.
It felt exactly as it had when I’d been buried against him in the elevator: as if I were being held by Kwon Hyun-jin himself.
We walked along the riverside, talking about one silly thing after another.