One day in late summer, I heard someone was playing a show at Rolling Hall in Hongdae and went out to check it out.
I was chatting with a friend about this and that when something at the edge of my downward line of sight kept nagging at me, so I looked down.
There was some small, pretty girl crouched down smoking a cigarette, and when I looked down at her she looked up at me and — whether it was because of me or the sunlight — scrunched up her face and said something I don’t really remember.
All that stuck with me was a vague, intense impression, and then I forgot about it.
The following summer, the moment I finished paying off the debt to Moonhee, I quit GST — handed the practice room off to a junior, and moved into a rooftop room in Gwangheungchang.
I’d been at GST a year and a half, and my plan was to stretch the 5 million won severance payout over a year or two.
Since the rooftop room had been paid for out of the money from clearing out the practice room, I had no rent to worry about, so as long as I didn’t go out drinking and acting like an idiot, it was plenty.
That summer was brutally hot, and the rooftop room was basically a sauna.
I’d soak about ten towels in water, fold them into brick shapes, and stack them neatly in the freezer.
Around 5pm, once the radiant heat really started pouring in, I’d pull one frozen towel out and unfold it — it’d crack open, still holding its shape, into a wide towel-sized sheet.
Take your shirt off, drape it over your shoulders, and the heat would back off for a while.
You had to run the fan on low with it, though — on high it’d just drag hot air along with it and cut the effect in half.
I was holed up in that rooftop room studying JSP and Flash more seriously, investing in myself for whatever my next way of making a living would turn out to be, whenever that ended up happening.
One night I got a call from Sharon.
What are you doing?
Studying.
I’m coming over.
No.
About an hour later, the iron stairs up to the rooftop went clanging and banging.
Ugh — I told her not to come.
Sharon, Yeongran, and some girl I didn’t know showed up at my door completely wasted, each holding a plastic bag stuffed with a few bottles of soju and beer.
The drinking went on for a while.
Sharon and Yeongran passed out, and I ended up talking with the girl I didn’t know until almost morning — the two of us eventually fell asleep in front of the kitchen.
That winter, after a show wrapped up and we were at the afterparty, that same girl showed up.
We drank together for a while and went our separate ways.
She said she still had my drumstick bag and asked when the next show was.
After that she started coming up to the rooftop a lot.
It felt like a lot of pressure.
I was in the middle of studying, and I figured it was an important stretch of my life, so I wanted to cut back on drinking and going out — and honestly I had no money either, and wasn’t in any headspace for a relationship.
When I kept telling her to stop coming by so much, she started talking mutual friends of ours into it instead, showing up with 7 or 8 people at a time.
There was no turning them away once they showed up loaded down with samgyeopsal.
Ugh.
Am I getting dragged into this again?
One morning, the guys who’d all crashed at my place started peeling off one by one to head home, until it was just her and me left.
I told her straight: don’t come anymore!
She left.
That same night, the iron stairs went clanging and banging again.
It was her.
Both hands full — suitcases.
And that’s how we ended up living together.
Still are, to this day.
My wife, Miyoung.