Jin-Kyong’s Apartment
Shibuya, JPN
November 2016
“Jin-Kyong. Jin-Kyong.”
A rapt knock on the
door.
“Jin-Kyong. You have to let me inside or I’ll use your spare key.”
No
reply.
“Jin-Kyong.”
Park Eun-Seok exhaled at the lack of
response; he knelt and took a silver key from under the flowerpot that was
placed near the door. “You leave me with no choice,” he muttered, standing back
up and using the key to open the door.
He expected to see Jin-Kyong there,
messy-haired and glaring, but to his surprise there was no one there. Lifting
an eyebrow, Eun-Seok entered the lady’s apartment and shut the door behind,
locking it afterward. The male waited quietly for a minute inside, taking in
the sight of her apartment and what had changed since the last time he was there.
Jin-Kyong’s apartment was still the same.
The walls were untouched, the living room seemed neat, and the plants were
still there. To his dismay, there was a pile of letters on the table near the
front door. He picked one of them up and felt a slight wrench in his stomach as
he read the Hangul on the front.
“No wonder she hasn’t picked up,” he
muttered to himself, putting it back and removing his coat. Eun-Seok hung it on
the door and removed his shoes, leaving it on the space where different pairs
of shoes remained. Taking a deep breath, he let himself walk deeper into her
home, determined not to let the somberness of the area get to him.
The
last time I was somewhere this melancholy, he ended
up thinking, it was her funeral. The only
difference is that her funeral smelled of water and lotuses. Jin-Kyong’s
apartment doesn’t have a smell. It seems…unused.
He turned right and walked until he saw a
familiar, pale door. Lifting his fist, Eun-Seok knocked just as he did on her
front door. “Jin-Kyong?”
