A warm spring day in March, with pale pink petals scattering through the air.
In front of an officetel located on the outskirts of Gwangmyeong-si, Gyeonggi-do.
A professional delivery rider for Kkokko Chicken brought his motorcycle to a slanted halt beneath a flowering tree.
Because it coincided with rush hour, the area in front of the elevators was packed with office workers.
The delivery rider was only able to board an elevator after letting two completely full ones pass right before his eyes.
Squeezing through the crowded people, he barely managed to stretch his hand out and press the button for the twelfth floor.
Today’s delivery destination was Room 1206.
Around this time every single year, this was a household that ordered a single box of seasoned chicken every two days.
For some reason, they had ordered fried chicken today, but the point was that regardless of what they ordered, they were a long-time regular customer.
“Excuse me, I’m getting off here.”
As the elevator stopped at various intervals while making its way up toward the twelfth floor, the savory scent of chicken gently drifted through the air inside the cabin.
The delivery rider self-consciously tightened the opening of the plastic bag for no particular reason.
An office worker standing diagonally in front of him rolled his eyes anxiously before ultimately opening a food delivery app.
As it happened, a banner for Kkokko Chicken popped up right at the very top.
The advertising model for Kkokko Chicken, Gye Yusin, was pointing his hand toward a hot-pink event title that read ‘10% Discount Coupon.’
Flawless skin and a neat smile.
Looking at Gye Yusin, who possessed an impression as gentle as an angel, women praised him by saying a pretty man was truly the best, while men cursed him by calling him a pretty boy who looked like a male courtesan.
On the day Kkokko F&B selected Gye Yusin as the exclusive model for their brand, an interview with the CEO was published in an article stating that they had chosen him as a model because Player Gye’s last name reminded people of a chicken, but everyone knew the real reason was his outstanding physical appearance.
Of course, the public’s preference also played a significant role.
Gye Yusin was an active professional volleyball player.
Ever since he appeared as a pinch server in the fateful Korea-Japan match a few years ago and brought home a thrilling come-from-behind victory, there was no one in the Republic of Korea who did not know him.
The video of Gye Yusin’s seven consecutive serve aces from that time was still being talked about even now, stimulating the patriotism of the citizens.
In fact, after Gye Yusin took on the role of advertising model for Kkokko Chicken, the sales of Kkokko F&B skyrocketed in a sharp, vertical ascent.
Naturally, love calls poured in from all kinds of brands.
However, the only advertising proposal Gye Yusin accepted was from Kkokko F&B.
Whether they found Gye Yusin’s unique behavior offensive, a few netizens began to dig into Gye Yusin’s past.
What they had been anticipating was a collection of filthy rumors surrounding Gye Yusin or some kind of substantial material that would be perfect to turn him into a target for criticism, but it only produced the exact opposite effect.
Instead, as information spread that he was the descendant of an independence activist and the youngest grandson of ‘Gyehwa Hospital,’ a famous domestic hospital, Gye Yusin rose even higher while earning the affectionate nickname of the nation’s son-in-law.
Of course, there were a few things that could be dragged up maliciously.
For instance, the fact that his uncle, who had been a professional volleyball player just like Gye Yusin, committed suicide after failing to overcome the slump that came after an injury.
Or the rumors that women never ceased to surround Gye Yusin.
Yet even those details were transformed into his charm as a player and as a man, so Gye Yusin was truly the ultimate sports star of this era.
The regular customer in Room 1206, today’s delivery destination, might very well be a fan of Gye Yusin as well.
This was because Kkokko F&B was currently running its own promotional event period, meaning they were unconditionally presenting a free full-length poster of Gye Yusin to any customer who ordered a single box of Kkokko Chicken.
Ding-dong.
With a cheerful notification sound, the elevator arrived on the twelfth floor.
Stepping out of the elevator, the delivery rider familiarly turned to the left and headed toward the front of Room 1206.
“The chicken has arrived. Please enjoy your meal.”
Although they were a regular customer who must have contributed a non-negligible amount to the sales of the Gwangmyeong branch of Kkokko Chicken, the delivery rider had never once seen the face of the customer in Room 1206.
Having completed the contactless delivery exactly as requested in the delivery notes to leave it in front of the door, he quickly departed from the hallway.
His next deliveries were piled up like a mountain.
The sound of footsteps rapidly grew distant.
Soon, the sensor light in the hallway clicked off.
The elevator, which had been opening and closing without a moment’s rest while spitting people out, also came to a dead halt once the rush hour passed.
Silence settled over the hallway.
A long time later, the door to Room 1206 opened, and a single pale, thin hand quickly snatched the delivery bag before vanishing inside.
Gu Yeohui had not opened the curtains of her room for the past six years.
If she were to open the curtains, she would catch a glimpse of the cityscape where high-rise apartments shot up into the sky, the people moving back and forth along the roadsides, and the scenery painted together by flying birds and the blue sky, but she did not know the world beyond those blackout curtains.
The only thing she knew was her own small world that existed inside a ten-pyeong officetel.
A world of exclusive monopoly completely filled with Gye Yusin, her one and only living god who was present twenty-four hours a day without her ever needing to open the curtains, look out the window, or lift her head.
On the walls, where almost no empty space remained, pictures of Gye Yusin printed using shared Printing Box codes were plastered everywhere.
His photo cards were kept one by one inside top loaders decorated with colorful parts, slotted into display stands like books.
Next to the monitor that emitted a pale blue light while displaying broadcast footage of Gye Yusin’s volleyball matches, there was a cheering wand that she was always shaking for him.
The cup holders stacked next to it were also merchandise.
Precious merchandise that she had gathered step by step by hiring a proxy attendee every single time a birthday cafe was held for Gye Yusin.
It was perfectly fine to view the single-sized bed positioned against the wall as a merchandise zone as well.
Lined up by her bedside were plush dolls of Gye Yusin that Yeohui had custom-ordered herself, along with cushions printed with Gye Yusin’s face.
The items located in the small attached kitchen were also entirely related to Gye Yusin, rather than actual cooking utensils or kitchenware.
Things like acrylic stands of Gye Yusin embellishing the top of the built-in induction cooktop.
If the club possessed a sane mind, there was no way they would flatten their own perfectly alive and well player into a two-dimensional form and sell character illustrations that drew his head as large as a general’s.
The same went for the real-life photo acrylic stands where the player’s bare upper torso was exposed starkly depending on the angle of the light reflecting off it.
Since there was no way they would sell this kind of thing as official merchandise, these were all unofficial goods that Yeohui had acquired with great difficulty by searching far and wide online.
Among them, she had obtained the shirtless acrylic stand with the absolute greatest amount of difficulty.
Because she had been watching the live broadcast of Yusin’s regular league match, she ended up learning about the sales news far too late.
By the time Yeohui accessed the link, it was already sold out.
Despairing, Yeohui pressed the refresh button every single day while waiting only for a reproduction batch, but what returned was nothing more than a completely evaporated social media account along with the news of the golden-handed creator leaving the fandom to return to their main idol fandom.
She could not even send a long, rambling direct message that began with the sentence stating that she loved their site photos the most in the entire world.
Because the account was gone.
It is not illegal for golden-handed creators to leave a fandom.
However, shouldn’t deleting an account that is fully stocked with daily spiritual sustenance be designated as illegal by law?
She spent several nights crying so sorrowfully that the shapes of her eyes, nose, and mouth were left imprinted on her pillow.
Every day, she felt envy and jealousy toward those who possessed Yusin’s naked acrylic stand.
Ultimately, Yeohui was barely able to get her hands on the acrylic stand only after tacking on a massive premium price on a secondhand trading website.
She paid a price that was roughly ten times the original cost, but she had no regrets.
The quality of Yusin’s acrylic stand was incredibly satisfying, even without purposely tilting it diagonally to peek at his bare skin.
For that very reason, Yeohui had not opened the curtains of her room for the past six years.
Since she could complete transactions through a proxy whenever a piece of merchandise she needed became available, she did not go outside either.
Her family members treated Yeohui like human trash, dealing with her as if she were a piece of hazardous waste that was difficult to dispose of, but even that was perfectly fine.
Just like the saying that it is better to live as a dog than to die as a king, living like a bug was far better than dying.
Her older sister thought it was pathetic of her to waste her life cooped up in a cramped room, but at the very least, she was safe as long as she stayed like this.
Confronting danger like her mom and dad did was far too terrifying, and Yeohui did not possess even a single gram of courage to do so.
And as long as she was in this place, Yusin always existed here.
–Kkokko Chicken has arrived!!! ૮₍ •̀ ⩊ •́ ₎ა
Yeohui uploaded a post to social media along with the text emoticon she used frequently.
Unwrapping the delivery bag, she pulled out Gye Yusin’s full-length poster before the chicken.
It was the full-length poster of Yusin that she had been waiting for non-stop from the very day she heard news of the event.
Yusin, who was wearing a white shirt and smiling gently, was truly God himself.
Hopping all around the cramped room while rejoicing with her entire body, Yeohui posted consecutive updates while letting out a silly, loose smile.
–The poster has also arrived (⁄ ⁄>⁄ ▽ ⁄<⁄ ⁄) I’m so happy
–I’ll try eating the chicken later while running along with Yusin Oppa’s match~ („• ᴗ •„)
Yeohui taped Yusin’s full-length poster to the built-in wardrobe next to the front door.
Then, she logged into Yusin’s fan cafe, which she had been running all by herself for several years, to upload proof shots and leave a long, descriptive essay about how magnificent the quality of this particular poster truly was.
“So handsome…”
Blushing bashfully, she even spun around and around in circles in front of the poster.
In reality, he must be even more handsome.
His height must be incredibly tall, too.
Yeohui, who was deeply immersed in an ecstatic imagination, only opened the chicken box after a rumbling sound echoed from her stomach.