Only then did I realize there was nothing to take with me.

“Yes. Because I didn’t know it would turn out like this.”

“I guess so. What did he like when he was alive?”

“He often ate red bean bread.”

I answered and surprised myself. Compared to how hard I tried to forget my father, the answer came too easily.

Above all, I never dreamed I would have this kind of conversation with someone.

“There’s no red bean bread in the restaurant right now…”

Choi Yoon waved his hands in surprise.

“It’s okay.”

Kim Ye Rin blinked with a pensive expression, then went back into the restaurant and came out with something. It was pruning shears.

Kim Ye Rin crossed the yard and rummaged through the magnolia stems that had grown taller than the fence. She grabbed only the plump white flowers.

Choi Yoon had no time to decline. With a few snips, the bouquet bloomed lavishly.

Kim Ye Rin stuck the scissors blade-down into the soil and stood up, handing the flowers to Choi Yoon.

He received them in his arms without thinking. The fragrance was thick.

When Choi Yoon looked up to offer thanks, Kim Ye Rin was already walking towards the back of the restaurant.

Choi Yoon carefully held the flowers and followed. He went out through the small side gate in the back yard after Kim Ye Rin.

They walked for a while through a narrow space overgrown with vegetation, barely resembling a path.

Soon the view opened up. There was a single grave on a quiet plot covered with short grass.

Kim Ye Rin gestured with her chin towards the back.

“I’ll stay a bit away. Come when you’re done. We’ll go down together.”

Saying that, Kim Ye Rin stepped back and leaned against a nearby tree. She shoved her hands into her apron pockets and looked elsewhere.

Choi Yoon placed the flowers on the grave.

He was inwardly grateful for the modest bouquet that smelled fresh from being newly cut. If there had been no flowers, he wouldn’t have known what to do.

He would have just stood in front of the grave like someone more dead than the dead person.

He had never properly mourned his father.

He just endured by throwing himself into work.

Memorizing scripts over and over, taking on another completely opposite role as soon as he finished one, that intense labor of putting on a mask and becoming a perfect stranger, helped him endure the moment when an irreparable flaw appeared in his life.

When the body is exhausted, sorrow comes slowly behind. Like a belated wave.

When he should have mourned, he didn’t know the proper way, and now it was too late and the sorrow had faded, so Choi Yoon didn’t know what to say in front of the grave.

The flower petals swayed in the wind.

“Dad. I’m here.”

After carefully uttering a greeting, Choi Yoon bit his lip. He blinked rapidly. The tears that had been welling up scattered and flew away before they could fall.

He stood like that for a while.

Swallowing countless words, Choi Yoon turned around. He didn’t know when he would come back if he left now.

Knowing better than anyone that he was too weak to ever set foot here again, having intentionally shown his face at lavish gatherings on death anniversaries to forget, Choi Yoon turned his back on the grave and walked down.

Kim Ye Rin, who had been leaning against the tree crushing dirt with the toe of her sneaker, looked up.

Instead of asking if he was already done, she took the lead going down again.

Staring blankly at the shape of her loosely tied hair swaying behind her back, Choi Yoon quietly spoke.

“Thank you. Thanks to you, I was able to see my dad.”

“You don’t have to thank me. I did it because I wanted to.”

Kim Ye Rin answered without looking back.

Back at the restaurant, Choi Yoon was guided by Kim Ye Rin.

The first floor was used as the restaurant, the second floor had bedrooms, a guest room, bathroom, and laundry room, and there was a storage room hidden diagonally on the landing between the first and second floors.

The structure was not much different from the house he used to live in, so Choi Yoon was overcome with a strange feeling.

Especially the bedroom on the second floor.

The direction of the afternoon sun coming in, the dust sparkling and swimming in that sunlight, the wide window that made one wall feel almost non-existent, the bedding placed like a square cloud without a frame and the simple furniture.

Choi Yoon felt déjà vu.

“There’s not much in the way of household goods.”

Kim Ye Rin leaned crookedly against the doorway and smiled with the corners of her mouth in lieu of an answer. Because her eyes weren’t smiling at all, Choi Yoon felt rather offended.

Kim Ye Rin had allowed Choi Yoon’s eyes to reach even private spaces like the bedroom and bathroom, but it was clearly just consideration for a homeowner reminiscing about his old house, nothing more or less.

In fact, this kind of polite coldness was unfamiliar to Choi Yoon. He had always been revered in all sorts of ways.

So the cold smile Kim Ye Rin was wearing now was something he only saw from acting partners, never in private.

Because Kim Ye Rin either swallowed or smoothed over with a smile all the trivial questions Choi Yoon threw out, in the end even Choi Yoon, being human, became less talkative.

However, when he discovered the long wooden shelf attached to one wall of the guest room, Choi Yoon couldn’t help but ask.

“Oh, this…”

Unable to even finish his words properly, Choi Yoon ran his fingertips over the shelf.

The size and usage were quite different from his memory, but the glossy surface was the same. He knew because he had traced the grain with his hand every night before falling asleep.

Choi Yoon’s hand stopped at a deeply sunken knot. Sunlight pooled in the concave part, warm as if alive.

“This seems to be the bed I used when I was young…”

Kim Ye Rin seemed surprised.

“Yes, that’s right. How did you recognize this?”

“The pattern here is exactly the same. If you do this here…”

Choi Yoon moved his finger along the grain of the shelf.

“It’s a whale shape. And below like this, a wave shape. This is a wave. A whale on the waves.”

“Ah, it really is.”

Choi Yoon flinched as he quietly traced the surface with his fingertips.

Kim Ye Rin was standing close beside him, intently staring at the shelf where Choi Yoon’s finger had stopped.

Her cold black eyes were quite serious, and her round shoulders were almost touching Choi Yoon’s arm. Afraid Kim Ye Rin might be startled and move away if his breath touched her, Choi Yoon gently suppressed his breathing.

She murmured while looking at the shelf.

“It seemed a shame to throw it away. The wood grain was pretty. I tried to utilize it by splitting it lengthwise.”

Then Kim Ye Rin began removing the books placed on the shelf one by one.

“Take it.”

“No. I didn’t mean that.”

“It’s a memento. The screws at the bottom come out easily.”

“It’s okay. Really.”

Kim Ye Rin, who had been about to pull the shelf off the wall, quietly put the books back.

After looking around the attic where he had to stoop because of the low ceiling, Choi Yoon followed Kim Ye Rin down to the first floor.

“Thank you for showing me around. It must have been inconvenient.”

“Not at all.”

Kim Ye Rin still had no expression to speak of.

“Um, I have something to ask.”

Careful and gentle, afraid he might not get an answer.

“Besides the shelf from earlier, I saw many traces of the past. I used to measure my height on the wooden wall when I was young, and that piece is still there, and in the yard the swing still has the original board with just the ropes changed. It seems like you deliberately kept and placed old materials when renovating the house.”

“Yes. I did.”

“Why?”

“Well…”

Kim Ye Rin hesitated. There was no sign of difficulty, she just seemed to be choosing her words, so Choi Yoon felt somewhat relieved and poured his gaze onto Kim Ye Rin freely.

“Because I envied it.”

Choi Yoon blinked quietly.

Kim Ye Rin continued.

“I don’t have that kind of childhood. Because I don’t have parents.”

“I’m sorry. For bringing up something personal.”

“It’s okay. It’s not my fault.”

“Of course. It’s not your fault, Ye Rin.”

After saying that, Choi Yoon was quite startled.

Because a smile appeared on Kim Ye Rin’s face.

It wasn’t as bright as last night. It was faint and dim, but that alone made Choi Yoon’s face flush hot. He was even more flustered because he hadn’t been prepared at all.

He turned his head and pressed the back of his hand against his cheek for no reason. It was hot. For a moment, he couldn’t even remember what he had said.

That’s when it happened.

The restaurant door burst open.

“Ye Rin, we’re here…!”

The door that had opened forcefully lost its strength and stopped with a creaking sound as it hit the wall.

Beyond it, the villagers were crowded together. They were all staring this way with wide eyes.

A man with a huge beak instead of a mouth, a woman with long rabbit ears above her hat, a child with thin dragonfly wings drooping behind their back… There were more than dozens.

It had been a really long time since he had encountered so many spirits at once in his life.

Only in a spirit-filled place like this could spirits roam freely, it was impossible in a big city like Seoul. Most spirits went about hunching their shoulders and lowering their heads like criminals, as if they weren’t there.

Someone muttered.

“It’s Choi Yoon.”

The villagers who were already clustered together suddenly pressed even closer as if by agreement.

They looked just like a group of penguins huddling against a snowstorm.

Choi Yoon noticed familiar things among the densely packed residents.

He saw in turn his full-body printed standee, promotional materials with his face printed on them, pamphlets with him as the model that had been sent nationwide.

They all had phrases like ‘Choi Yoon OUT’ or ‘Oppose Full Investigation’ scrawled in large letters.

“…”

Feeling Choi Yoon’s gaze, someone rustled and hid the standee behind their back.

However, the life-size standee was taller than any of the villagers who had come, so it wasn’t hidden at all despite being hidden.

Someone else muttered while staring intently at Choi Yoon.

“Ye Rin. After saying you’d kill him… You finally went through with it.”

A small frog spirit standing in the back hopped up and down, croaking.

“I can’t see! What’s going on?”

The dragonfly spirit at the very front answered without taking their eyes off Choi Yoon.

“Ye Rin kidnapped Choi Yoon.”

There was a moment of silence.

Choi Yoon blankly looked at Kim Ye Rin.

How much must she have disliked me normally, for them to misunderstand it as kidnapping just from us being together?

Kim Ye Rin hurriedly waved both hands.

“Wait! No! It’s not like that!”

But the villagers didn’t seem to hear. Rather, they closed ranks even more, becoming one mass. They murmured with wary glances.

“I knew this would happen someday.”

“Ye Rin. No matter what, this isn’t right.”

“Is it true? Did Ye Rin really do this because she couldn’t take it anymore?”

“Why else would Choi Yoon be here? Ye Rin must have lured him here with her face.”

Kim Ye Rin just moved her lips for a while, then finally burst out shouting.

“No, what do you take me for?”

Then she pointed at Choi Yoon.

It wasn’t quite a finger point or a hand gesture, but an ambiguous hand motion as if she was doing something she didn’t want to do.

She enunciated clearly.

“He walked in here on his own two feet, this person did!”

That form of address seemed utterly incomprehensible to the villagers. Some muttered as if they couldn’t believe it.

“This person…?”

Kim Ye Rin hurriedly corrected herself.

“No, not this person, this thing!”

This time Choi Yoon furrowed his brow. He retorted in a low voice.

“This thing…?”

“Damn it, this man! He’s the owner of the restaurant. The building owner!”

The villagers’ eyes grew round.

“Building owner…?”