By Zephyria 
Modern compiler performance is beyond imagination. They skip over uncalled variables without reading them, or even remove them entirely on their own.
Upon returning from Thailand and heading to work, Yi-ho found a flashy new laptop sitting at his desk. Looking closer, it was a professional model costing thousands of dollars. Even the options had all been upgraded to the highest specs. As Yi-ho stood there wondering what on earth this was, Department Head Gye gave him a hearty pat on the back.
“The company prepared this specially so our Team Leader Song can keep working hard. This is yours from now on. You can even take it home.”
“Mine? You mean you’re just giving it to me?”
“Yeah, it’s a company-issued item.”
Setting aside how much they intended to work him like a slave, he couldn’t help but be thrilled enough to jump for joy! Yi-ho spent the entire day working while hugging the laptop tight, and after clocking out, he laid a cushion in the backseat of his car and carefully escorted the laptop home on top of it.
Sitting in his study, he turned it on with a fluttering heart, and the booting speed alone was on another level.
“Wow….”
The moment Yi-ho touched it, the AI began churning out code at lightning speed. On the blank screen, lines of code automatically increased by three per second. Yi-ho watched the screen move with the expression of a devoted fan watching their favorite idol.
Having finished the code in an instant, the super-laptop executed the programmed script. The speed at which the compiler execution logs appeared was fast enough to bring tears of emotion to his eyes.
‘Song-yiho’ ver.33.8 has just started . . .
It even already knew Yi-ho’s name, which he had never entered. …But was this really something it could know just by him touching the laptop? The moment Yi-ho felt a belated suspicion, the file that had been running smoothly suddenly hitched.
IOException : No space left on device
“Eh?”
Why is a disk space exceeded error popping up on a laptop I just started using today…? Out of habit, Yi-ho pressed the debugging shortcut. The laptop began searching for the cause of the error with terrifying momentum. And then.
Variable ‘Unrequited Love’ . .
Has not been used for 15 years . .
Currently occupying excessive memory . .
Deleting useless memory . . .
“Huh?!”
Executing process automatically.
A flash of electricity surged through Yi-ho’s fingertips resting on the laptop. Simultaneously, an unidentified error message began to burrow into his mind. Bright red warning windows were overlaid onto Yi-ho’s past memories like seizure notices from a loan shark. Cha Min-gyu as a high schooler, Cha Min-gyu as a college student, Cha Min-gyu as a new employee, and the face of the Min-gyu currently living next door—they were erased as if they had been torn away. The warning windows then began to eat away at the rest of his memories.
No, it’s mine!
I’ll just leave it. Don’t delete it, leave it alone!
Regardless of how expensive the laptop was, Yi-ho slammed it onto the floor to force a shutdown. The discarded laptop made a crackling sound and suddenly bounced up with a thump. It clamped down firmly on his head. Yi-ho’s memories were gradually being dragged into the laptop. Even the memory of receiving cruel yet tender concern at the hotel during the business trip, and the memory of masturbating the next day while calling Min-gyu’s name in a fever. A particularly bright red light was flashing over that part.
Stop it!
I really won’t make it obvious anymore, I won’t be greedy, please…!
“Noooo!”
Bolting upright, Yi-ho found himself staring at his bedroom wallpaper.
A darkened bedroom, silence flowing through the dim room. Fortunately, the super-laptop that had turned into a monster was nowhere to be seen.
“…Haa….”
His body slowly collapsed backward. It didn’t feel like lying down, but rather like being sucked into a swamp. His back felt damp as it touched the mattress again. While his entire body was drenched in cold sweat, his arms trembled chillily.
A complete fever dream, and a complete case of the chills.
∗ ∗ ∗
All day long, Min-gyu couldn’t take his eyes off the ‘Away’ status on Song Yi-ho’s messenger. Yi-ho didn’t read the texts, nor did he answer the phone.
“…….”
A strange sense of discomfort and sighs of suppressed frustration were directed toward the desk of the development team, which had changed owners. It was more frustrating than he thought that the person who was always there, just a few steps away, had vanished without a word.
Eventually, Min-gyu couldn’t even wait until lunchtime and sent a message to Deputy General Manager Yoon of the development team, adding a pretext that he had a work-related matter for the development team leader. The reply arrived immediately.
Yoon Gwan-young (Deputy General Manager)
[Mr. Yi-ho is on sick leave, so if you pass it to me, I will check it first]
“Sick leave?”
Song Yi-ho is sick? But why do I have to hear that news from someone else.
After a few more one-sided messages from Min-gyu piled up in the chat room with Yi-ho, a reply finally flew back.
Song-i Song-iho
[Not dead]
[Body ache]
[(Emoticon)]
It was an emoticon of a bear with swirling eyes, but that wasn’t an “I’m sick” emoticon; it was a “completely wasted” emoticon. It seemed he didn’t even have the mental capacity to look at things properly.
“…….”
His emotions swung pathetically just from receiving a short reply. The boiling heat in his chest quickly shifted into worry.
“I’ll be heading out early today.”
Min-gyu left work an hour early. It was the first time in a long while that he utilized the flexible working system since becoming a team leader—a position where even having three bodies wouldn’t be enough.
Running through the streets, which were brighter and quieter than usual, he called a porridge shop in the apartment complex’s shopping center. He placed a takeout order for vegetable porridge and abalone porridge.
As he picked up the hot porridge from the shop and was about to head back to the car, his gaze landed on the pharmacy next to the porridge shop. A moment later, Min-gyu got into the driver’s seat with another bag, as large as the shopping bag containing the porridge, hanging from his wrist. The passenger seat was full once he set down the items he had purchased.
Yi-ho had stopped replying again after that brief message. Upon arriving at the apartment, Min-gyu walked toward unit 2 instead of his own unit 1.
Naturally, he tapped the back of his finger against the door lock. Numbers appeared on the pad. The code, as familiar as his own password, was entered by his fingers through habitual motion. However, Min-gyu paused for a moment while looking at the pad.
“…….”
It wasn’t as if invading each other’s territory was anything new, yet he felt a hesitation in unlocking the door and entering.
For a while after returning from Thailand, he hadn’t been able to get in touch with Yi-ho. Yi-ho had said he had a lot of travel fatigue and wanted to rest. Since he had been abroad, he would have to see his mother, and there would be a lot of work to organize from the time he was away. Even though they lived right next door to each other, there were occasional times when they wouldn’t contact each other for three or four days depending on their circumstances, so Min-gyu understood.
No, he pretended to understand. That ‘pretense’ ended after he heard the news about the sick leave.
To think that while not sending a single message, he was lying sick behind this door. Even though there was a friend who would cross over immediately if he had just said he was hurting.
The porridge shopping bag and the pharmacy bag hanging on his arm rustled as they collided. The input time expired, and the pad emitted a short warning beep and turned off. Min-gyu let out a small sigh and touched the pad again to enter the password. Yi-ho’s space opened without resistance.
The inside of the house was completely dark. Also, there was no sign of presence, as if no one was there. The study, the bathroom—all the doors were open without any caution.
The only sound in the house was the faint sound of the wind from the air conditioner in the living room. Having moved deep inside, Min-gyu stopped in front of the bedroom door. Since it was summer, the sun hadn’t set yet, and thanks to the blinds that seemed to have no intention of blocking the light properly, the inside was clearly visible. Yi-ho’s bed was heaped up in a mound, and his two feet were sticking out from under the blanket. On the left side of the blanket mound, his two hands were overlapped, with his fingertips twitching occasionally. As he stood there for a moment, he heard the sound of labored breathing.
“Song-i.”
“…….”
“Yi-ho. Song Yi-ho.”
There was no sleep-talking or tossing and turning from the sleeping person.
Min-gyu turned around, went to the bathroom, and washed his hands thoroughly. Then, he entered the room where the patient was sleeping. Even though someone had approached right in front of him, Yi-ho showed no sign of waking up. He had thought Yi-ho looked drained of vitality even during the Thailand trip, but now, anyone would see him and call him a patient a hundred times out of a hundred. His eyes and lips looked beyond pale—they looked almost bluish. Meanwhile, perhaps due to the fever, the area around his hair was all damp.
Min-gyu’s palm covered Yi-ho’s forehead. As expected, it was burning hot. Only then did Yi-ho react to the touch. He still showed no sign of opening his eyes, but his eyebrows flickered as if brushing away something annoying.
He took a cooling patch out of the pharmacy bag. He never thought he’d use the knowledge he gained from having a much younger sibling on this friend of his. First, Min-gyu straightened Yi-ho’s body, which had been lying on its side. As he put his hand under the blanket to push his shoulder, he felt a hot body temperature through the damp t-shirt.
“…….”
The hand that had entered the blanket without hesitation came out tightly clenched.
He brushed aside the bangs clinging to the forehead and applied the cooling patch there. Yi-ho slept soundly in the direction Min-gyu had repositioned him.
He should start feeling the cold sensation on his forehead soon.
Min-gyu’s tongue swept across the inside of his mouth. Whenever he looked at Song Yi-ho, he occasionally felt a strange anxiety. It was like the dizziness one feels when standing in a high place, or when one’s feet don’t touch the bottom in water.
Song Yi-ho is too defenseless.
He’s shy, yet he’s so soft that he doesn’t know how to push people away. Rather, the more uncomfortable a situation is, the more he becomes a ‘yes-man’ to end the moment quickly.
Despite that, he has no talent for being on guard. What would he do if the person who broke in here right now wasn’t me, but some other strange guy?
Looking at the flushed face, Min-gyu pulled the blanket covering his chest down so the fever could cool. The t-shirt he was wearing was damp, making the contours of his chest slightly prominent.
“…….”
There it was again. He felt a chill at his fingertips and a bad mood, as if he were alone in a household. Min-gyu turned his head and stepped out of the bedroom.
Looking at the state of the house, it seemed he hadn’t eaten anything all day, let alone gone to a hospital. Min-gyu transferred the porridge and side dishes, which hadn’t lost their heat, into bowls and placed them on a tray with utensils. Then, he put bottled water into the electric kettle—one of the few appliances in Yi-ho’s house that wasn’t neglected—and boiled it. The old, outdated kettle made a rattling sound as it heated the water.
“…Cha Min-gyu?”
Yi-ho, whom he thought wouldn’t wake up until the meal was fully prepared, woke up. A heavily raspy voice drifted from the bedroom.
Soon, after some rustling sounds, the patient came outside. Seeing him in the light, his complexion was even more disastrous. Blinking his swollen eyes, he discovered the porridge tray on the dining table.
“Did you buy this?”
“…….”
Min-gyu didn’t particularly expect a thank you. What was there he couldn’t do for Song Yi-ho while he was sick? However, seeing Yi-ho’s reluctant expression, as if he had received a burdensome gift, Min-gyu didn’t feel like answering.
It was also a question that didn’t particularly require an answer. Unless a secret house-spirit lived in this home, the source of the suddenly appeared porridge could only be Cha Min-gyu.
Without a word, Min-gyu placed a steaming mug in front of Yi-ho. Yi-ho took it with a half-asleep expression.
“Hey, Cha Min-gyu….”
“I’m not ‘Cha Min-gyu’.”