12:00 p.m.
The moment the second hand ticks past twelve, the staff member in charge opens the door, and the dense crowd packed in front of the building presses even closer.
“Please don’t come inside.”
At the staff member’s flat, administrative warning, people who can’t quite bring themselves to cross the threshold clasp their hands together and crane their necks to peer inside.
No one dares make a phone call yet, gripping their phones tightly instead.
After a few minutes, the inside of the building grows noisy, and the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs echoes through the corridor.
The faces emerging from the building look exhausted for the most part.
After being glued to desks and wracking their brains nonstop for over two hours, there’s even a trace of complete burnout in their expressions.
Among the pouring crowd, parents who spot their children quickly raise their hands or shout their names, and the examinees who recognize their parents stagger toward their families as if collapsing.
[20XX Academic Year Korea University Entrance Essay Examination]
The sound of pats on the back saying “You worked hard,” complaints about how difficult it was, voices laughing, voices crying.
The entrance, packed so tightly that no one can pass through, looks like it will remain clogged for quite some time.
Standing with her back against the wall amid the crowd, Ju Hayan slightly lifts her head.
She watches families clinging to one another as if it’s a story from another country, then turns away.
As she shifts her gaze to check the time, her eyes meet those of a staff member, and she awkwardly dips her head in greeting.
Zziiing—
[Ju Hayan! Did you get out of the building?]
After checking the text message, Ju Hayan slips her hand back into the padded jacket pocket holding her phone.
The small flip phone is easy enough to operate with one hand.
Each press of the worn keypad makes a sharp clicking sound.
[Nope, still stuck inside. You outside?]
[Just came out. I’m in the alley before the building entrance, hurry.]
[Yeah, wait.]
Replying briefly to the urging message, Ju Hayan slides the phone she had been staring at back into her pocket.
The line of people finally shows signs of starting to move.
She knows it’s a touching family reunion and all, but she really wishes they’d take it outside.
Only after forcing her way through the still-chaotic crowd even after exiting the building does she finally reach the alley.
Kim Jaesik, leaning crookedly against a streetlight at the corner, recognizes Ju Hayan and waves his hand.
“Damn, why are there so many people?”
“Right? The competition rate this year’s probably brutal.”
“So, how’d the exam go?”
“Eh, it was okay. You?”
“I crushed it, obviously.”
Watching Kim Jaesik shrug smugly, Ju Hayan laughs and calls him a liar, and Kim Jaesik pretends to get offended and swats her on the back.
It doesn’t hurt.
He’s just a loud kid who can’t rein in his naturally playful personality.
“Thinking that hard made me starving.”
“Same.”
“I’m gonna go home and eat like a maniac.”
He curls his hand as if gripping a spoon, then swings his arm aggressively, scooping air into his mouth.
Embarrassed, Ju Hayan steps away, but gets caught and ends up walking right next to him again.
Among the people brushing past their shoulders nonstop are some heading in the opposite direction and others moving the same way.
It’s her first time here, but as long as she follows the crowd, she probably won’t get lost.
All the way to the athletic field, Kim Jaesik complains about how unnecessarily huge the school is, and Ju Hayan nods along.
If only it were flat ground, but even so, her breath comes short on its own.
“Welcome back. Did you do well on the exam?”
As the athletic field comes into view in the distance, Kim Jaesik makes a call somewhere, and soon a middle-aged woman comes up the stairs.
She greets her son with warm eyes, then pats Ju Hayan on the back as well, telling her she did a good job.
Ju Hayan bows politely.
“Thank you.”
“Oh, it’s nothing. Let’s hurry. Traffic will be worse than earlier, so it’ll take longer.”
Since she’d already imposed on them just getting here, Ju Hayan thanks her again and climbs into the back seat.
Kim Jaesik, sitting in the passenger seat, slumps heavily into it the moment he fastens his seatbelt.
Watching her son groan about how exhausting the exam was, his mother scolds him for being noisy, and Ju Hayan lets out a quiet laugh from the back seat.
“Were the questions really that hard?”
“There was some interest rate problem and stuff. Man, writing nonstop for two hours made my hand go numb.”
“So what, you’re saying you were the only one who found it hard?”
“No, that’s not what I mean.”
Rubbing the fleshy part of his right palm as he boasts about how much he suffered, he looks exactly like a youngest child throwing a tantrum.
The woman plays along, teasing him deliberately, and soon Kim Jaesik’s aggrieved voice echoes through the car.
It’s entertaining enough just to watch, but thinking they might be inviting her into the conversation, Ju Hayan lifts her upper body from where she was leaning and grips the passenger seat.
“The exam really was hard. I think a lot of people ran out of time.”
“See!”
“Really? I can’t trust the words of a chronic exaggerator.”
“Mom, try trusting your son a little.”
“Still, Hayan, you did well, right?”
“Of course she did. Ju Hayan’s insanely good at studying.”
At the woman’s words, Kim Jaesik jumps in first, giving a thumbs-up.
Ju Hayan hadn’t expected the attention to shift to her so suddenly.
At Kim Jaesik’s added comment, she smiles awkwardly and waves her hands in denial.
“No, not really. I barely finished within the time too.”
She refutes it quickly, but the two of them seem to take it as nothing more than modesty.
“Ju Hayan’s always in the top five of her class. I think she was like that in first and second year too.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. And I heard her CSAT scores were good too. Right?”
“Well…”
Since it was true, she just nods awkwardly.
“See? She’s basically a genius.”
“Then what does that make my son?”
“Huh?”
“If your friend’s a genius, shouldn’t you have learned something by watching her?”
“Why are the arrows suddenly flying at me?”
“Ever since the CSAT ended, all you do is play games all night. If you fail this essay exam, just you wait.”
“That’s harsh. That and this are different situations.”
The conversation feels like a roller coaster.
So Kim Jaesik’s personality really is a family trait.
Having escaped the embarrassing praise, Ju Hayan leans back into her seat again.
The woman keeps scolding him about how he didn’t study while his friend worked hard, but in truth, Kim Jaesik and Ju Hayan are just classmates, nothing more.
As college entrance exams approach, third-year students tend to grow timid, forming a quiet sense of closeness with others aiming for the same schools, but aside from recently, they’ve barely spoken more than a few times over the past year.
Because of that, Ju Hayan is doing her best not to show how uncomfortable she feels.
She keeps busy forcing polite smiles no matter who’s talking.
She can be sociable when needed, but at her core, Ju Hayan is shy around people.
“Did you contact your parents?”
“Huh?”
Absentmindedly fiddling with her phone, Ju Hayan jerks her head up.
She hurriedly exits the bomb-connecting game she’s played what feels like a thousand times.
“Did you tell them the exam’s over?”
“Huh? Uh… yeah.”
“What did they say? Told you you’re all grown up now?”
“Yeah. They just… said good job, that I worked hard.”
They were the most common, perfunctory words anyone could say to an examinee.
Ju Hayan quickly slips the phone back into her pocket.
The old phone, already more than four years old, hasn’t rung even once since she turned it back on after the exam.
Ah, except for Kim Jaesik.
“Yeah. You really worked hard. You think it’ll all be over after the CSAT, but there’s always another exam.”
The woman speaks in a deliberately sympathetic voice.
“These days, you really can’t survive on your own. I could come today since it’s the weekend, but if it were a weekday, I’d be stuck at work.”
The official reason Ju Hayan came to the exam alone today is ‘both parents working.’
The woman must have heard about it too.
That’s probably why she offered to give Ju Hayan a ride without hesitation.
Since Kim Jaesik’s parents are also both working, she must have felt some sympathy and concern.
Even to Ju Hayan, who barely knows her, the woman’s tone sounds warm.
Once again, it seems Kim Jaesik’s personality really does run in the family.
Bathed in the gentle atmosphere radiating from the two of them, Ju Hayan responds weakly, “Yeah, I guess so,” while absently rubbing her knee with her palm.
“Take care!”
“You really worked hard. Thank you for the ride!”
“Alright. Get home safely.”
Ju Hayan starts bowing her thanks even before opening the car door, and continues bowing several times after stepping out, until the car finally pulls away.
As expected, getting back to her neighborhood takes about forty minutes longer than it did in the morning.
Feeling bad for imposing on them, Ju Hayan had asked to be dropped off near the school, but the woman insisted on taking her all the way home and turned the car around.
The moment the apartment complex entrance comes into view, Ju Hayan taps the passenger seat repeatedly, asking them to stop there.
“Hoo…”
She’s definitely back in her own neighborhood, but for some reason she feels utterly exhausted.
Rubbing her stiff neck, Ju Hayan turns in a small circle, using her right arm as leverage, then enters the apartment complex out of habit.
Usang-dong.
The neighborhood where Ju Hayan was born and raised.
There’s nowhere here she doesn’t know.
Especially not the apartment complex she’s lived in for nearly half her life.
Without even looking at the row of apartment entrances lined up near the main gate, Ju Hayan walks straight past them.
She cuts across the complex, navigating the maze-like buildings with practiced ease, heading straight for the side entrance that would leave a first-time visitor lost.
Her steps never hesitate or second-guess the path.
Five minutes after rounding the corner, she reaches the bus stop.
After riding the local bus for twenty minutes, she gets off, then walks another seven minutes.
The scenery shifts from residential houses to an aging commercial district, then back to residential again.
At last, Ju Hayan enters a villa building.
Whether day or night, the stairwell is always dim.
She goes down the stairs, pulls out a metal-smelling key, and opens the door.
“I’m home.”
It’s a habitual greeting, but of course, no reply comes back.
She hadn’t expected one, so there’s no disappointment as she takes off her shoes.
The studio apartment is so small that she knows no one’s home the moment she opens the door.
Stepping inside barefoot, cold seeps up through her thick socks.
She’s sure she turned the boiler on before leaving that morning, but in an old villa like this, the heating system tends to cut out.
She turns the boiler back on first, then slips under the blanket that she hasn’t even aired out yet.
Her bag, heavy with essay prep materials, is tossed aside.
In a semi-basement apartment that barely gets sunlight, it’s hard to endure the cold without the boiler running.
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