이 포스팅은 쿠팡 파트너스 활동의 일환으로, 이에 따른 일정액의 수수료를 제공받습니다.
Chapter 99: After Getting Off the Car
Min-jun opened the passenger door, and the air inside flowed out. The warm air that had been trapped in the car met the cold night air of the parking lot, and that boundary touched his face, as if two different worlds were bidding farewell to his skin.
He stood up, his legs trembling slightly. It wasn’t just because he had been sitting for a long time. A deeper tremble was starting from within, from his intestines, his bones, the place where Jun-ho’s words had left a mark.
“You’ve already given it to me,” he muttered to himself.
That sentence was repeating, like a frequency, like a radio signal, resonating somewhere in Min-jun’s brain.
The parking lot was quiet, the night deepening, and most of the cars had left. Only Jun-ho’s black Genesis remained, its engine turned off, like a waiting boat.
Min-jun tried not to look at it, but his gaze automatically returned. To the back seat, the driver’s seat, where Jun-ho still sat. His silhouette was painted black by the parking lot’s fluorescent lights.
Jun-ho didn’t move.
Min-jun started walking, without a particular direction in mind. Just forward, to the end of the parking lot, to the empty space where no cars were parked.
The sound of his footsteps echoed, his sneakers on the asphalt, shattering the silence of the parking lot. And as he realized that the sound was his, Min-jun walked even faster, as if fleeing from his own footsteps.
When he reached the end of the parking lot, he stopped. Ahead of him was the road, the night in Seoul, the street where cars passed by, where people headed home. But no one was going home here; this was a company parking lot, a boundary space after work, where the smell of work still lingered.
His phone rang.
Not a vibration, but a ringtone, set by Jun-ho. Important calls always had a ringtone. Min-jun looked at the screen; it was Jun-ho, with a small icon next to his name, a button to reject the call.
This time, he decided not to press it. Instead, he just picked up, without answering or rejecting, just holding it, without putting it to his ear.
“Min-jun,” Jun-ho’s voice came through the speaker, a very small voice, like a signal from afar.
“I was too harsh on you,” Jun-ho said.
Silence. Min-jun didn’t respond.
“Where are you now?” Jun-ho asked.
“The parking lot,” Min-jun replied.
“Which one?”
“The end,” Min-jun said.
Again, silence, and within that silence, Min-jun could hear Jun-ho getting out of the car, starting the engine, and driving away.
“I need to tell you something,” Jun-ho said, now driving.
“What is it?” Min-jun asked.
“It’s about Park Mi-ra seeing you. That’s not bad. My warning was wrong. I was… I was afraid,” Jun-ho said, his voice lower than usual, almost a whisper.
Min-jun leaned in, Jun-ho’s voice barely audible.
“What were you afraid of?” Min-jun asked.
“Losing you,” Jun-ho replied.
Those words made Min-jun’s breath catch, as if someone was pressing on his lungs with a cold hand, from a deep, dark place.
“I saw you four years ago. I knew then. When I saw your eyes, I knew. And since then, I’ve been watching over you. You know why I show up on set so often, why I ask about your auditions,” Jun-ho continued, his car driving away from the parking lot, onto the street.
“I was afraid that someone else would take you away from me. Like Park Mi-ra, like the directors who adore you, like all the predators in this industry. So I warned you, told you it was dangerous. But that was wrong. I wasn’t trying to protect you; I was trying to keep you for myself,” Jun-ho said, his words sounding like he had been preparing for this moment.
Min-jun was still standing in the parking lot, holding his phone, listening to Jun-ho’s voice over the speaker, the sound diffusing into the night air.
“Hyung,” Min-jun said, his voice barely audible.
“I’m sorry. Really sorry. You deserve to be seen, to be recognized, to have everything. And I was trying to take that away from you, out of my own fear, my own possessiveness,” Jun-ho said.
Jun-ho’s car was now driving through the night streets, passing through intersections, moving away from the parking lot.
“What do you think of me as an actor?” Min-jun asked.
“What do you mean?” Jun-ho replied.
“What kind of actor do you think I am?”
Jun-ho didn’t answer for a while, the sound of the car and the city filling the silence.
“You’re a true actor,” Jun-ho finally said.
“What does that mean?” Min-jun asked.
“You don’t just play roles; you become them. You don’t act; you transform. And that’s the most dangerous thing in this industry, but also the most beautiful,” Jun-ho said, his voice low again.
“So I have to trust you. When you meet directors like Park Mi-ra, you might get destroyed, consumed. But at the same time, you might shine, truly shine. And there’s nothing more terrifying than that, because if that happens, you won’t be mine anymore,” Jun-ho said.
Min-jun took a sip of the chocolate milk, the cold, sweet taste filling his mouth.
“Hyung, what…”
Min-jun started to say, but the sentence remained unfinished.
“I know. I understand,” Jun-ho said, and in that moment, Min-jun knew, saw it in Jun-ho’s voice, the depth, the pain, the truth.
They sat in silence for a while, the distance between them no longer just physical.
Min-jun arrived home at 12:23 AM, the semi-basement room, the mold on the ceiling, his sleeping bag, everything was just as it was.
But something was different. It wasn’t the space itself, but how he saw it, his perspective.
He lay down, looking up at the ceiling, the mold map, still there, like a promise.
His phone buzzed, a message from Park Mi-ra.
“Come to the studio at 10 AM tomorrow. We’ll try a new scene. And this time, we won’t roll the cameras. Just you and me,” the message read.
Min-jun read it, and read it again, trying to understand what it meant.
He closed his eyes, remembering Jun-ho’s words.
“That’s what love is,” Jun-ho had said.
And in that moment, Min-jun fell into a deep sleep, dreamless, without a past, only the present, a sleep that wasn’t rest, but preparation.
Preparation for tomorrow, for Park Mi-ra, and most of all, for himself.