[Episode 2 — Something Else Got In]
The doorknob was brass. I reached out, then hesitated.
The fingers were slender. The nails were round and smooth, as if someone had shaped them. I have never done my nails. I never had the time, or any reason to. It felt like opening someone else’s door with someone else’s hand. No, it was not a feeling. It was a fact.
I pushed. The door was not heavy.
The smell of coffee came first. Then wood, then paper. Bookshelves reaching the ceiling, low lamps, a few dark wooden tables. It looked less like a cafe and more like someone’s study. In thirty-four years I had never sat in a place like this. Places like this were not for people like me. So the coziness that should have put me at ease only made me uneasy.
There was a man behind the counter. He looked up from polishing a glass.
"Welcome… hm?? How did you find the door?"
"Sorry??"
It was a strange greeting. Not a welcome, but a question about finding the door. The man was looking at me. More precisely, his eyes looked at me without seeming to see me. Cold eyes. The thought that he was handsome came a beat later. What came first was the sense that I had done something wrong.
"I am so sorry. Are you not open yet? Is this a new place? Still under construction…?"
There had been no sign like that. From outside, the lights had definitely been on. I trailed off and backed away. A familiar move. Slipping quietly out of a place I should not have entered. That, I am good at.
"Careful, there…"
"Whoa~~"
My heel caught on the threshold. My body tipped backward. This body was lighter than mine, so it fell faster too.
But I never hit the floor.
A hand was at my waist. It was the man. The man who had been behind the counter was suddenly in front of me. Too silent to have run, too far to have walked. He flew. There was no other way to put it. It was a speed hard to call human.
Our eyes met.
My face flushed hot. I looked away. Thirty-four years old, and blushing because a man caught me by the waist once. In that brief moment of wondering whether this body was strange or I was—
The man’s expression twisted.
"Something else got in."
There was no time to ask what he meant. He flung me away just like that. I landed shoulder first on the floor. It hurt. The shock was bigger than the pain. That was the same hand that had just caught me.
"Who are you, to get into that girl’s body!"
The man shouted. An angry voice. No, angry was not enough of a word. At that sound the air in the room grew heavy all at once. The lamps seemed to sway. I could hardly breathe.
I was scared. Scared beyond any reason I could name. A thirty-four-year-old adult, slumped on the floor of a cafe I had never seen before, about to burst into tears. I did not cry when I lost my lease deposit. I did not cry in front of the ICU window. But when this man shouted, I felt like crying. My throat closed up. I did not know why. Not back then.
"Eunwoo, calm down."
It came from the stairs to the second floor. A clear, pure voice, steady without a single tremor. If angels had voices, I thought, they would sound like this. My tight throat loosened at that one sound.
"You are frightening the lady, Eunwoo. She surely did not choose to end up like this."
Two people were coming down the stairs. In front was a man with a strangely youthful face, neatly dressed in hanbok. Behind him came a sturdy man who looked like his aide. He wore hanbok too. Now that I looked, the man at the counter was also in something like modern hanbok. A themed cafe? I had no room for thoughts like that, yet the thought came anyway.
The youthful man came up to me. He seemed to glide rather than walk. He held out a hand, helped me up, and smiled gently.
It was strange. A moment ago I had been close to tears from fear, but that one smile somehow eased my heart. No reason. It just did.
"Nice to meet you, Jian. I am Cha Woojin, the owner of Cafe QUANTARO. This is our barista, Moon Eunwoo. And this sturdy fellow who came down with me is Choi Gunwoo."
"Nice to meet you, Jian. I am Choi Gunwoo."
The sturdy man said only that and stepped back. His voice was low and his face blank.
I looked at the three of them in turn. Every man here was overflowing with his own charm, genuinely handsome. This was no time to be distracted by that. Ever since I got into this body, my eyes kept wandering to the wrong things. Or maybe I had always been that kind of person and just never had the chance to look.
I was lost in thought for a moment when Moon Eunwoo seemed to bow his head briefly, then spoke in a rush.
"Sir, that thing is not human! No, it is neither living nor dead! We must remove it at once!!"
Remove.
The word lodged somewhere in my body. Neither living nor dead was what I had told myself in front of the ICU window. More than how this man knew that, the word that followed rang louder.
"Eunwoo, I told you to calm down. I know as well."
Cha Woojin was still smiling.
"If she came here, that too must be the will of heaven. She is not an evil spirit. Not a vengeful ghost either. For some reason she has simply entered another body for a while. We must help her find that reason."
Moon Eunwoo’s mouth opened and closed.
"As it happens, Eunwoo is off duty all this week, so he can help her find the cause."
"What???!!! What do you mean…"
"Eunwoo."
Just one word. His voice did not even rise. Yet Moon Eunwoo stopped right there, jaw clenched. Watching that, I understood the pecking order of this cafe. And that there are people who can stop others without ever raising their voice.
"Jian, please sit. Your legs will shake if you keep standing."
They were shaking. I sat as told. The wooden chair was cold, then soon grew warm.
Choi Gunwoo set down a cup and left. Without a word. It was coffee. I did not touch it. Lifting someone else’s cup with someone else’s hand was still too much.
Cha Woojin sat across from me. Moon Eunwoo did not go back behind the counter but stood by a pillar, arms crossed. He kept watching me. Arms crossed with the hands that had just caught my waist, watching with the eyes that had just thrown me aside.
I asked. I had no strength to beat around the bush.
"Why did this happen to me?"
"That is something you will have to find out, Jian."
"Can I go back?"
"That too."
Cha Woojin answered nothing, still smiling. Strangely, I was not angry. Something else came instead.
"Not just anyone can see this door. The fact that you saw it, Jian, is the first clue."
The door. A door that was not there until yesterday. A door only I could see. I nodded. And as I nodded, I realized a beat late.
I had never told these people my name.
Nice to meet you, Jian. He had called me that from the start. Not this body’s name, but mine. I opened my mouth to ask. But Cha Woojin spoke first.
"Do you have somewhere to go tonight?"
I did not. I did not know where this body lived. The key to my tiny gosiwon room was in the bag of the woman lying in the ICU. Having nowhere to go was familiar, but this time that familiarity was no comfort at all.
Cha Woojin stood up. Then he came and sat beside me. Not across, but beside.
"Jian."
"…Yes."
"This is not your fault, Jian."
Something gave way at those words. No one had said that to me when I lost my deposit. Not when I fell down the stairs, not in front of the ICU window. No one had told me it was not my fault. Not even me. I always blamed myself first. Even bad luck was, in the end, just my fate.
"Whatever the reason, it is not one you made, Jian. So rest easy here. No one here will harm you. I will make sure of it."
I nearly cried. A different kind of tears than before. Not from fear, but because someone said they were on my side. Words I had not heard in thirty-four years. Right then, I wanted to lean on this youthful-faced man. I did not yet know how dangerous a feeling that was.
"…Thank you."
"No need to thank me. Eunwoo will help you."
The man by the pillar openly scowled. Cha Woojin saw it, smiled anyway, and stood.
"I will head upstairs. Eunwoo, I am counting on you."
"…Yes, sir."
Cha Woojin went up the stairs. Choi Gunwoo followed like a shadow. Once they were gone, the cafe suddenly felt bigger. All that remained was me and the man who had thrown me.
The silence was long. I fiddled with the cup, and Moon Eunwoo watched me with his arms crossed. The hand that had caught my waist, the voice that had shouted. Sitting alone with him, I did not know where to look.
He was the one who spoke first.
"So you plan to stay here, then?"
"…No, I mean…"
"Got somewhere to go?"
I could not say no. But it must have been written all over my face. Moon Eunwoo let out something between a sigh and a click of the tongue, and took something from inside his robe.
Cards. A whole deck. He began shuffling it in his hands, with a no-helping-it look. The movements of someone doing what he did not want to, yet his hands were strangely fast.
"Call out three numbers. Whatever comes to mind."
"…Sorry?"
"Three. Any."
Out of nowhere??? What is this about? I looked at him. He only looked at the cards. He did not seem about to explain. Flustered, I said whatever came to mind.
"…Seventeen. Thirty-four. Three."
Only later did I realize my age had slipped in.
Light came from Moon Eunwoo’s eyes.
A blue light. I was not imagining it. Something blue lit up deep in his pupils. At the same moment, three of the dozens of cards in his hands glowed the same blue and drifted up into the air. The three cards shuffled among themselves in midair. No one was stirring them, yet they shuffled. Then, one by one, they slowly turned over and settled onto the table in front of me.
I watched without breathing. I had been through plenty of strange things since entering this body, but this was the first time I had seen cards fly before my eyes.
Moon Eunwoo looked down at the three. The first, the second. No expression. At the third, his eyebrow moved slightly.
"First, go back to where you switched."
"…Sorry?"
"Go to the place where you switched with your original body. Go there and you will find a place to sleep. As for that body, you will find answers there too."
The stairs. The gosiwon stairs. I was about to ask again when his next words stopped me.
"Your heart is pitif… hm… never mind. I saw more than I needed to."
"…Saw what?"
"Just go. You and I will meet when the time comes."
I had no chance to ask what that meant. Moon Eunwoo swept up the cards, stood, and pushed me out of the shop. A shove on my back. The door opened, cold air touched my face, and I was standing on a street corner. When I looked back, he was standing in the doorway, waving his arm as if shooing away a fly.
And then the shop door vanished.
It really vanished. The brass sign, the light through the gap, the wooden door. Between the convenience store and the closed laundromat, just like before, just like yesterday, there was only a blank wall.
Was it a dream?
But the pale skin, the thin wrists, and the long hair falling past my shoulders told me this was real. I opened my palm. Shaped nails. Someone else’s hand. It was not a dream.
Strange people. And since they were strange people, I would do as they said. There was no other way anyway.
Oddly, the rain had stopped outside. I went straight back to the gosiwon.
⁎
The stairs were just as they were. The stairs I fell down yesterday. Still damp, and the "Stairs are slippery, be careful" note the realtor had stuck up was half peeled off and flapping. I stood in front of it.
What am I supposed to do here.
He said I would find a place to sleep. My room is up there, but I have no key. I do not even know where this body’s room is. I just stood there blankly, staring up the stairs.
"Excuse me~"
A voice came from behind. I turned around.
It was some boy, about fifteen, in his last year of middle school. A hoodie over his school uniform, a phone and a small bag in his hands. They were not mine. But the boy held them out to me.
"These are yours, right, miss? When you went to the hospital earlier, I kept them so no one would steal them."
He blushed as he said it. Miss. He was saying it to this face. It meant this kid had seen this body fall here yesterday.
"Huh? Oh… thanks."
I took the things. The boy, maybe embarrassed, started to say something more, stopped, and hurried off. Not up the stairs, but toward the alley. He was gone in a moment.
The bag was light. A small crossbody bag, the kind girls carry. I had never carried a bag like that.
I opened it.
A wallet, lip balm, earphones. And a single key. White tape was wrapped around the key ring, with a number written on it in marker.
307.
It was a gosiwon room number, marked the way this gosiwon marked its rooms. I was in room 208. This was the floor right above mine.
This woman had lived here.
We had not just bumped on the stairs. She lived in the same building. Someone I had never once passed on stairs I climbed twice a day for half a year. Or maybe I had passed her and just did not remember. I rarely looked at other people’s faces. I had no reason to.
He said I would find a place to sleep. This was what he meant.
I climbed the stairs. Past the second floor to the third. Second from the end of the hall, 307. The key went in. It turned. The door opened.
It was the same size as my room. Yet it was the exact opposite.
For half a year my room had only piled up boxes. In this room, someone was living. Living, and living hard.
One whole wall was paper. A calendar made of taped-together A4 sheets, crammed with ballpoint writing. "○○ Chicken 7pm" "Mart grand opening 11am" "Senior center visit" "Festival application — X" "Festival application — X" "Practice room 06:00". All local places. Not a single broadcaster or big stage. Yet there were almost no empty boxes. Yesterday had "○○ Chicken 7pm" too, and beside it, in small letters, "home after".
On the rack hung one outfit under a plastic cover. Sparkly fabric. Stage clothes. The inside of the sleeve was stitched with a different color thread. Someone had mended it by hand. On the floor below, two pairs of sneakers. One with soles half worn down, one brand-new and still in its box. Saved for something special. I used to save my shoes like that too.
The desk was all makeup. Not drugstore stuff, but rows of all different kinds. Was this not what people on TV used? Next to it, a box of bandages, a roll of ankle tape, blister cream. And one notebook.
I opened the notebook. Lyrics. Handwritten song lyrics, struck through in red pen, revised and revised again. In the margins: "Breathe here" "Low, not high" "Swap the youngest a better part". The last page had just one line.
One more stage today.
I closed the notebook. I thought I knew what kind of life was lived in this room. A girl who sings. Who sings where no one is watching.
I took the wallet from the bag. This time I was afraid to open it. I opened it. A few bills, a transit card, and an ID. I looked at the name. This woman had a name. She was twenty-two. Twelve years younger than me. I could not read the name aloud. Reading someone else’s name with someone else’s mouth felt strangely wrong.
I turned on the phone. Lock screen. I did not know the passcode. But when I raised the screen, it unlocked.
The face. This face was the key.
Notifications poured in. Dozens of unread messages.
"Practice tomorrow 10am, do not be late"
"Boss: ○○ Mart next week confirmed. Pay 50,000 won. Split it four ways, sorry"
"Festival team: After review, we are unable to work with you this time"
"Youngest: Sis are you okay?? Which hospital T_T please pick up"
"Youngest: Sis"
"Youngest: Sis please"
Nineteen missed calls. All from the same name.
I opened the photo album. Four women in matching outfits. This face was in the middle. A platform too small to call a stage, with fewer than ten people in front. Half of them were looking at their phones. But the four in the photo were smiling. Truly smiling. The next photo too, and the one after that. The stage was small every time, and the smiles were big every time.
I sat on the bed.
It was a kind of life I knew. Getting up alone at dawn when no one notices. Sending in another application knowing it will not work. Saving a pair of shoes in their box. That was how I spent my twenty-second year. Working three part-time jobs and getting nosebleeds. Back then my room had a calendar like this too. Only it was shift schedules instead of stages.
But I fell down the stairs at thirty-four, and this girl bumped into me at twenty-two.
Where did this girl go?
That thought came for the first time. At the hospital, at the cafe, I had only worried about myself. Where am I, can I go back. Not once had I thought about where this body’s owner was now. Only after seeing this room did I realize she was a person. Someone who had to be at the practice room at ten tomorrow morning, call the youngest back, and stand on stage at a mart grand opening next week.
As for that body, you will find answers there too.
It was not an answer. Instead of an answer, I gained a debt. Not as if I had borrowed someone’s body, but as if I had stolen someone’s whole day.
And what on earth had that man seen in my heart? Pitiful, or never mind? What did he mean, he saw more than he needed to?
You and I will meet when the time comes.
Those words kept lingering. More than the vanishing door, more than the flying cards, those words lingered most.
The phone rang again. The youngest. Nineteen calls I had not answered. The twentieth I picked up. I do not know why. Probably because "Sis please" kept haunting me.
"Sis!! Sis, are you okay?? Where are you now, the hospital? The boss said you fell down the stairs, I was so…"
She was crying. The moment I heard it, what came out of my mouth was not my voice. No, it was my voice. That was the problem. It was too much mine.
"Aigoo, hey, hey, don’t you cry now. Sis is fine. Just took a lil tumble, is all. Folks take a tumble and live, y’know."
Silence.
"…Sis?"
"What? You eaten yet? Had cup noodles again, didn’tcha? Practice is at ten tomorrow, so don’t be late, get to bed early. Sis’ll see ya tomorrow and we’ll talk, alright?"
"…Sis, why does your voice sound…"
"Why? Guess I caught a cold. Hangin’ up now, go to sleep. Lock your door good."
I hung up. Then I stared at the phone for a long while.
What did I just say?
That was Busan dialect, which had never once slipped out the whole time I worked in Seoul, not in front of clients, not in front of bosses. And it all burst out at the sound of a barely-twenty kid crying. In an unmistakably thirtysomething way of talking, too. Exactly the tone I used soothing crying juniors through a good ten part-time jobs. You eaten yet, lock your door good. I had sounded less like her big sister and more like her aunt.
A text came from the youngest.
"Sis, you are really okay, right…?"
Okay? Not exactly. I did not reply. Then I spread out the blanket.
It smelled of someone else. Sweat, pain-relief patches, and cheap shampoo. In that smell, for the first time in thirty-four years, I lay down in someone else’s bed.
Just my luck.
But today, those words never came out.
(End of Episode 2)