Arriving in Bupyeong

Whoosh…. The moment she stepped off the subway car where the heater had been blasting full force, a frigid wind wrapped around her entire body. Hoo. Ji-eum exhaled a white puff of breath and peered around the unfamiliar station.

“…….”

She had really come all this way.

Bupyeong-gu, Incheon Metropolitan City.

It was close enough to Seoul and a place she had heard of plenty of times, yet this was her first actual visit. Having arrived at Bupyeong Station a mere forty-four minutes after leaving her studio in Sillim-dong, Ji-eum quickly pulled out her phone.

Tap. Tap.

The other person must have been staring at the chat window too, because the read receipt popped up in real time. As always, the reply arrived at the speed of light.

Why? Why wouldn’t she be able to find it? Before she could even guess at the reason, the next messages landed.

“Huh?”

Ji-eum had to doubt her own eyes.

…Weird… weird exit?

Truthfully, this wasn’t the first time she had seen Jemulpo Puppy’s bizarre spelling. Until now she had simply written it off as typos without much thought, but somehow “weird exit” left her with an uneasy feeling….

“Um….”

Belated regret darkened her face in an instant. For someone like Ji-eum—universally acknowledged as having lived the most ordinary life imaginable—this kind of deviation was a first.

She had come here in secret without telling a soul, and suddenly worry flooded in. Maybe she should have at least told Na-hee.

But… but….

“Ah, how am I supposed to say it.”

That she was going to Incheon to meet a guy she had met on an app.

If Na-hee ever found out that she was using an app with a name so childish it made her face burn, and that she had arranged to meet the guy she had been chatting with there in Bupyeong, Incheon… just imagining it made her stomach churn.

Ji-eum looked down at the phone screen where the app was still open.

A random-chat application with a simple, uncomplicated interface: Thumping Planet. Shortened to “ThumpPlanet.”

You typed whatever you wanted to say and hit send, and the message dropped randomly onto someone’s planet. If that person replied, a chat room opened. If they didn’t, the message crumbled into black ash and vanished.

When it first launched it had been a smash hit, sitting near the top of the monthly download charts for quite a while. But times changed. Famous overseas apps entered the Korean market, and ThumpPlanet gradually faded from people’s memories.

The reason Lee Ji-eum had reached for this dead app was Ma Seung-jo—her high-school classmate and fellow student at the same university.

Seung-jo had gone to Europe for winter break and fallen for a girl he met in Rome. The fact that the first person he ever showed interest in wasn’t her had been too sad and too hard to bear.

She had shut herself in her studio trying to forget, but it hadn’t been as easy as she hoped. She had tried to look away, yet the emotion she felt was unmistakably a wound. Her long unrequited love had collapsed in a heap, leaving a vivid blue bruise on her heart.

When she searched for ways to overcome heartbreak, the advice said that venting somewhere was more helpful than bottling it up alone.

Would that really work? Who could she possibly unload a long, secret crush on at this point? Searching with swollen eyes, she had stumbled across this very app.

In other words… a digital bamboo forest. It seemed perfect for pouring her heart out. The app was already deserted anyway, and it was anonymous.

…Send.

She had done it. Her hands had trembled while typing, but once it was gone the tightness in her chest eased a little. In a way it felt safer than a diary. After that, whenever Ji-eum had something she wanted to say, she used ThumpPlanet anonymously.

Most of them were pathetic messages written through tears. She sent several, but no replies ever came, and she didn’t mind.

Then, on the third night…

That night she borrowed the power of anonymity again and sent a message. Unexpectedly, a reply flew back.

Huh?

…What? What the hell was Boksechimeok?

She couldn’t just let it slide, so she hit reply.

That was how it began—her conversations with the guy who went by Jemulpo Puppy.

What the…. So he was saying he was a total virgin. He didn’t know anything himself yet he was giving advice? And what was with that tone. Had he never learned basic online manners? Seriously.

Ji-eum’s fingers flew across the keyboard.

The conversation with Jemulpo Puppy kept going. How old are you, I’m not telling that’s my business, is it only your business, I’ve got a say too….

After an exchange of ridiculously childish banter that gave her goosebumps, they called a truce due to sheer exhaustion and switched to trivial everyday talk. The chat had started because of Seung-jo, but they never brought up the unrequited love again. They never asked each other for private details like names or jobs either. Maybe that was why it felt so easy.

With Jemulpo Puppy she became an online friend who simply shared the ordinary bits of daily life. Being able to talk so freely with a stranger in the anonymous space of ThumpPlanet felt refreshingly new.

After nearly a month of chatting with Jemulpo Puppy and slowly healing her aching wound, Seung-jo returned from Europe.

“Ji-eum, I keep wishing you’d come with me. Still regret it.”

“Sorry…. I suddenly got busy then. More importantly, you said you had something to tell me!”

“Ah, that…. I decided to go out with Ha-na. The one I met in Rome.”

“For real…? How long have you even known her? This is your first girlfriend. Jumping in this fast….”

“Well, turns out how long you’ve known someone isn’t what matters.”

“…She must be that good, huh? Anyway, congratulations…. Wow…. I’m so surprised I can’t even talk.”

Ji-eum forced the corners of her mouth up into a smile, but she felt her insides blackening and burning. No—more than burning, it felt like a hole had been punched straight through her heart.

A few months earlier Seung-jo had mentioned wanting to go to Europe for winter break and asked her to come along. She had wanted to so badly, but as always money was the problem.

She was already covering her own tuition and living expenses. Her mother had just remarried and seemed to walk on eggshells around her new stepfather, so Ji-eum couldn’t ask for help…. When she called her father she had heard words that left an even deeper wound.

She had diligently saved all semester like a squirrel gathering acorns and had nearly reached her goal when a bolt from the blue struck: the landlord announced a rent hike.

“Seung-jo. Something came up and I don’t think I can go. Take another friend.”

The cowardly desire not to look pathetic in front of the person she liked had manufactured a lie. She couldn’t bring herself to admit she simply didn’t have enough money, so she claimed she had already promised to help Na-hee with her café part-time job during that period.

If they had gone on the trip together, would something have changed? She knew the answer was no, yet the foolish lingering regret refused to disappear easily.