By Zephyria 
Jang Ui-geon estimated how long he would have to wait and frowned slightly. “The timing is quite awkward,” he muttered, glancing at his watch. Seo Chi-young, who was placing dishes in the sink, spoke up.
“You can wait here. ….If you don’t mind.”
Jang Ui-geon seemed to widen his eyes slightly as he looked at Seo Chi-young. However, he soon beamed a smile and replied, “I’ll do that then. Thank you.” “It’s nothing,” Seo Chi-young replied with a blunt shake of his head, quickly finishing the dishes and moving into his afternoon routine.
For some reason, he felt a strange sensation. In the bright light of day, a man who seemed completely out of place in such a shabby shop sat composedly. Having entered the vinyl tent to sit on a plastic chair, the man occasionally glanced at his watch and struck up a few words of conversation with Seo Chi-young, who stole glances at him in between his responses.
It wasn’t that he hadn’t changed at all. Over a decade of time had left its mark on him; while the way he drew people in with a cheerfully radiant aura and his smile remained, he felt more refined than he had been ten years ago.
Even in high school, Jang Ui-geon had been playful and energetic, yet somehow mature. Still, back then, there were the unpolished edges characteristic of a teenager—a precarious kind of ambition, a confidence whose weight wavered.
But now, all those instabilities had been meticulously and smoothly polished. From his mature, refreshing smile devoid of childishness, to the way he treated everyone with a rounded kindness—though it felt as if the lines he drew between himself and others had become clearer than before.
The man sitting there had become an adult who seemed as bright and warm as the late afternoon sun, yet left no gap through which one could penetrate.
A faint sense of regret seeped into Chi-young’s chest. He had moved forward in his own way, the other man in his, and time had flowed equitably for both.
“Hmm, so that’s how you flip them… Do you have to pick out all those residue-like bits by hand? I feel like I’d have to stay up all night to do that. Doesn’t it just come off if you rub it hard?”
Jang Ui-geon asked this while watching with interest as Seo Chi-young used the tip of long frying chopsticks to push the intestines over and pick out the black and yellow residue one by one. Sitting on a low stool while prepping the intestines, Seo Chi-young gave a faint smile and replied, “Well, it would come off, but…”
“It wouldn’t come off cleanly, so it’s easy to get caught on while chewing.”
“Ah,” Jang Ui-geon nodded. He stood up abruptly and stepped further into the shop. He crouched down beside Seo Chi-young to get a closer look.
“Whoa, you’re fast… You won’t have to stay up all night.”
Seo Chi-young let out a short laugh at Jang Ui-geon’s amused tone.
“When I first started, I really thought I’d be up all night. Later on, my fingers would cramp up, and I could barely straighten my back when I walked home.”
Whatever it is, the beginning and the period shortly after are always the hardest. The most difficult part was binding the desire to quit until the body adapted to the unfamiliar work. Even when the walk home every night felt like dragging a body made of water-soaked cotton, even when his knees buckled and he tumbled down the stairs of his semi-basement, even when he was pushed around by people and cried out of unfairness with no one to listen—he had no choice but to keep going. In truth, it wasn’t so much that he controlled the urge to quit with his own will, but rather that there was no other option.
“Ah… I guess staying in this position for so long would be bad for your back. Doesn’t your girlfriend complain?”
Jang Ui-geon still possessed the knack for making a joke that could potentially be offensive without actually offending. At his words, Seo Chi-young fell silent for a moment. However, he soon gave an awkward smile and muttered simply.
“I don’t have one…”
“It’s okay,” he added softly.
“Really? The women around you must have poor taste.”
Seo Chi-young only smiled silently. There were hardly any women around him, but even if there were, they would have to be described as having exceptionally keen eyes. Because Seo Chi-young had never liked women in the past, and likely never would in the future.
“Does this place not appear on ‘famous restaurant’ lists? I see a lot of shops doing that for promotion these days.”
“No, not really… I should only do as much as I can handle.”
When Seo Chi-young shook his head, Jang Ui-geon laughed. “Still, it seems like once a broadcast airs, it attracts quite a few customers,” Jang Ui-geon said, though he had never seen the shop run by Chi-young’s family on such a program. In fact, a shop like this would likely lose customers if it appeared on that kind of broadcast.
“You’re diligent. I guess that’s why you already have your own shop. You still look very young.”
Jang Ui-geon tilted his head slightly to look at Seo Chi-young. To a man who could recall nothing from looking at Seo Chi-young’s face other than the fact that he didn’t look very old, Seo Chi-young only smiled. We’re the same age, he said only in his mind.
“If you lived in this neighborhood, our school districts would have barely overlapped, so we might even be alumni,” Jang Ui-geon suddenly muttered. Seo Chi-young’s heart gave a heavy thud, but Jang Ui-geon didn’t pry further, as if he had spoken without much thought.
Suddenly, he felt a strange sensation. This man and he had spent the same time in the same space for three years, yet what they remembered and felt about those days was different. Just as it is for everyone.
“……..Were you happy during your school days?”
Perhaps the sudden question was unexpected, as Jang Ui-geon raised an eyebrow, but after a moment of reflection, he answered readily.
“Well, I think I spent them moderately happily. There was nothing particularly hard, nor anything exceptionally joyful… But thinking back, I feel like that was the golden age of my life.”
“Because I was perfectly fine even after staying up for several nights in a row,” Jang Ui-geon added with a joking laugh, then asked back.
“How about you, CEO? I imagine you had a very fulfilling adolescence.”
Giving a bitter smile at the unfamiliar and awkward title, Seo Chi-young sank into thought. How had he been in high school?
“I’m similar. Not particularly hard, not particularly joyful… But, you’re right. I think that was when I shone the most. Even if nothing happened, just day by day. ……Talking like this makes me feel like an old man.”
Seo Chi-young laughed awkwardly. After smiling in silence for a moment, he added as if talking to himself, “I like it now, too. …..Because looking back, the most satisfying days were those when I lived without thinking that I wanted to live more happily than I do now. It’s like that now.”
Regardless of whether he liked it or not, Seo Chi-young was satisfied with his present, simply living while working hard at what he had to do. Though I do often think it would be nice if I didn’t have debt, he thought to himself, smiling shyly.
Then, suddenly, his eyes met Jang Ui-geon’s, who was staring at him intently, and the smile vanished from Seo Chi-young’s face. Receiving that peculiar gaze, he felt inexplicably flustered and lowered his head.
He had said something foolish. In front of a man who lived without lacking a single thing, how ridiculous must he have looked, crouching in a crumbling, worn-out shop, picking out intestine residue and murmuring about satisfying days.
“Uh… I said something strange.”
Seo Chi-young laughed awkwardly, rubbing his heating earlobes with the back of his hand. He rinsed his greasy, slippery hands in water once and began picking out the residue again.
Jang Ui-geon, who had been watching him, soon laughed and waved his hand.
“No, not at all. I’m actually envious because it sounds like you had a wonderful time in school.”
Seo Chi-young gave a thin smile. He swallowed the words: The one who shone the most in those wonderful school days was you. However, upon hearing what Jang Ui-geon added with a narrow-eyed smile, he erased that smile.
“I think I know why Jun-young likes you.”
At the low words, which were almost a monologue, Seo Chi-young instinctively looked at him. Yoon Jun-young………. It was true that he liked Seo Chi-young’s intestines very much, but the context of the conversation didn’t fit, so he blinked in confusion.
“I asked if he comes here often, and he said so. That the intestines are delicious and he likes the owner.”
“………. Me?”
It was the most absurd thing he had heard recently. With wide eyes, Seo Chi-young was speechless for a while.
As if he wasn’t finished, while Seo Chi-young was staring at Jang Ui-geon with a bewildered face, the vinyl tent fluttered. Turning his head, he saw Yoon Jun-young standing there with his usual indifferent expression.
“…..What are you doing?”
Upon seeing Yoon Jun-young, Jang Ui-geon rose from his crouched position beside Seo Chi-young. “You came sooner than I thought,” he said with a smile, and the unmistakable joy bleeding through his voice reached Seo Chi-young’s ears clearly.
“I was observing what kind of person my rival would be. I think I see why you like him.”
Jang Ui-geon’s playful joke followed. Not knowing what expression to make, Seo Chi-young looked at them with a strange face before lowering his head.
Rival. The word, which seemed like a joke but might not have been, brought a bitter smile. No, that will never happen. The powerless mutter did not leave his lips.
“Talking nonsense again,” Yoon Jun-young dismissed Jang Ui-geon’s words with a snort and left the shop with him, saying they should eat first. Seo Chi-young gazed blankly at the two of them as they left after a short goodbye of “I’ll be back later.”
Inside the shaded, dim shop, they looked dazzling under the afternoon sunlight. Seo Chi-young took in the sun-like smile that bloomed on Jang Ui-geon’s face, as bright as that sunlight. The way Jang Ui-geon’s face had crumbled with joy the moment he heard Yoon Jun-young’s voice, even before turning around.
Suddenly, a bitterness resembling regret lingered around his heart.
“………”
But Seo Chi-young did not lie.
Right now was a satisfying time in his life. Because he didn’t harbor expectations—dreams like a fantasy—of wanting to live more happily.
He had never been close to those three in high school, and among them, he didn’t even remember exchanging words with Kwon Kang-hee. Kang-hee was particularly taciturn and rarely spoke first unless it was to those two friends; since Seo Chi-young had no connection to him other than being in the same class, there was nothing to say.
Thinking back, it seemed Kwon Kang-hee was the first person to visit Seo Chi-young’s shop, and perhaps that was why he hadn’t recognized him. It was only when he saw him again with the others that his face vaguely came back to him.
Just as he was in high school, his impression was still bleak. It might be because his taciturn and blunt personality was written on his face. However, while he might have been a “bad” person back then, he wasn’t a “mean” person, and his impression didn’t seem to have changed much now.
Unlike the other two, whom he saw often, Kwon Kang-hee didn’t come that frequently. Even when he did come, he didn’t say much, so whether two people came or three, it was equally quiet.
“……….”
Seo Chi-young, who had been sitting opposite the three men seated side-by-side at the outer counter, glanced back. The shop, with only one table occupied, was clean. Seo Chi-young had already tidied up appropriately.
Sitting opposite the three of them across a narrow table made it feel as if he were sitting at the same table with them. Feeling awkward, he would quickly stand up whenever something happened, but since the shop was organized and the people at the inner table hadn’t ordered anything, he had no choice but to sit in front of the three of them. Unlike Seo Chi-young, who was alone in his awkwardness, the three of them were chatting without paying him any mind.
“I heard you quit the company to play around, but that you’ve been looking for a shop lately.”
Kwon Kang-hee’s large hand, which made the soju glass look exceptionally small, set down the empty glass. When he had visited a couple of times previously, he had only had three or four glasses of soju, barely wetting his lips, but today he had nearly emptied a whole bottle. Perhaps because of that, he seemed slightly more talkative than before.
Jang Ui-geon glanced at Kwon Kang-hee and smiled.
“How did you find that out? To be precise, it’s not that I quit, but I’m on a long-term leave and looking around leisurely while I play. But wait, which of the places I looked at was in your territory?”
“Ui-min Hyung mentioned it while we were drinking the other day. That you’re looking to open a new shop.”
“Hyung? Hyung broke a promise to eat with me, saying he was dying of busyness, yet he drank with you?”
“Ah, I’ll have to go to his shop and cause a scene,” Jang Ui-geon laughed, and Kwon Kang-hee gave a short laugh as well.
“Even if Hyung hadn’t told me, it would have reached my ears anyway. I heard you’re looking around this area too.”
“What, just looking around this neighborhood gets back to your ears?”
“If there’s a guy walking around with billions of won, it reaches my ears. So, what kind of shop are you planning?”
“A duck place.”
“Duck?”
Kwon Kang-hee looked surprised at Jang Ui-geon’s concise, smiling answer. Yoon Jun-young, who had been silently tilting his glass, looked at Jang Ui-geon with a similar expression.
“Is it an import again this time?”
“No, this time I’m going with my own brand. My father suddenly dumped it on me, so I’m looking into it, but well, I’ll have to try it to see how it goes. Preparations are going reasonably well. Everything else is fine, but there’s one farm I’ve picked out that seems good, but they refused, saying their volume is too low to open a new trade, so I’m pondering that.”
“By farm, you mean a duck farm? Aren’t there plenty of others?”
“The ducks at that farm are pretty.”
“A pretty cake tastes better,” Jang Ui-geon laughed.
Seo Chi-young blinked as he listened to the conversation, which reached his ears even without trying to listen.
I see. He had overheard something to the effect of him quitting the company. Since he was occasionally seen on weekday afternoons, he had vaguely thought he was resting leisurely.
Jang Ui-geon was spending his time doing what he had to do. Furthermore, although it was just a simple feeling without evidence, if it was a task Jang Ui-geon was handling, it would ultimately be flawless, even if he spoke about it so loosely. The farm he mentioned was one Seo Chi-young had also heard of. Among the traders he had encountered several times when he used to go to the slaughter market himself, there was one who mainly dealt with poultry, and he had heard it from that person. That the farm was the most reliable and of the best quality, despite the low volume.
The trader had told him to get in touch if he ever changed his business line, but Seo Chi-young had been too preoccupied with digging deep into his current work to remember.
Seeing him mention the name of a place that was known only to a few because it operated on a small scale through word-of-mouth, Seo Chi-young felt that Jang Ui-geon was preparing thoroughly in other aspects as well.
“Right, if there’s anything I can help with, let me know.”
“Haha, sure. I’ll count on you. Then first, I need to go to my Hyung’s shop and cause a scene, so send me three or four people.”
“Three or four people would be overwhelmed just dealing with Ui-min Hyung alone.”
Seo Chi-young watched them exchange trivial jokes and laugh with a strange feeling. It felt surreal that they were sharing everyday conversations in front of him. In high school, they had seemed like people from a different world, and he had never sat side-by-side with them in such close proximity.
Without realizing it, Seo Chi-young found himself staring at them. At that moment, his eyes met with Yoon Jun-young’s, who was just about to pick up his glass. Their eyes met at some point, without knowing since when he had been watching. Feeling suddenly flustered, Seo Chi-young stood up impulsively.
“Uh… would you like anything else?”
However, the food and alcohol bottles placed before them still had a fair amount left. Yoon Jun-young toyed with his glass for a moment while looking at Seo Chi-young, then silently shook his head. As he dropped his gaze back to the glass, Seo Chi-young slowly sat back down.