2.2 | A Lifetime Of You ✓

chapter 1

When Joon was a high school student, his parents used to tell him to get high grades and enter into one of the S.K.Y universities. Life would sail smoothly hence. When Joon got into the school of economics in Yonsei University, his parents told him to get a high GPA and aim for a top level conglomerate. Life would sail smoothly hence. When Joon got assigned the permanent employee card of a Team Leader in the Sales department of Empire Electronics, he found that his parents had been lying for a long, long time. 

Maybe they lied because they wanted him to lead a comfortable life, or maybe... maybe they lied to themselves too.

There was no happiness in a twelfth floor Gangnam apartment. No happiness in restaurants of Itaewon. No happiness in life. He did not desire the colorless world in which his parents lived. They worked hard, both, to afford a pricey apartment in the fanciful city of Seoul, put bread on the table, afford the electricity bills for Joon to have run the air conditioner all night long while studying for exams. 

He understood it. He was thankful. But he didn't wish for a life like that. As twenties passed and Joon entered his thirties, he began to wonder. What was life? What was the essence of living everyday? It was all the same. Every single damn day. 

Being a corporate salary man had made him wear a tag around his neck. He went to a large building, did something he neither liked nor understood, went out on terraces with steaming cups of coffee, argued about football, politics, weather, life, with his pot-bellied, receding hairline-d, gloomy faced colleagues.  

Occasionally, on company dinner nights, Joon would get drunk. And he would curse the world to his heart's content, take all his anger out. And when he would waddle back to his car, he would realise there was no one waiting for him (except the designated driver he called). To return home. To be safe. 

Such was life. 

Until he met Seo Cyan. 

It was for a task force meeting, a four month  drudged training for the chosen employees. Joon had initially rejected the application, but for some reason, his section Chief told him to go. Have fun. Take a break. And return with valuable information from other departments. Joon didn't know what to make of other departments' information but he needed to have some fun. Desperately. 

The people who work at an office know that, but the words entrepreneurs, creative, innovation, are only words that TF uses to beat around the bush. No one was amused, and everyone looked like they had been dragged there. Everyone, except supervisor Seo from the graphic design team. He was the only smiling face in the head count of over fifty people in the meeting room, and for some inexplicable reason, Joon felt attracted to that smile. 

Years later, he would call it a stroke of luck. A rare chance. That he had been paired up with Seo Cyan. 

"Good afternoon," Seo Cyan smiled, a gracious expression lighting his tired face. "I look forward to working with you." 

A smiling face. A tired posture. A perfectionist. That was Joon's first impression of Cyan. 

"Same," Joon replied, and looked away. 

"Since it is the first day, I'll let you all get acquainted with your partners and have a clear insight on our goals and objectives for this TF." The team leader was a tall, wiry man with spectacles, who said everything with an air of self proclamation and self importance. But within minutes of his ending statement, the audience dispersed themselves to their assigned partners and made bee lines for the exit doors. 

"Don't forget to visit the warehouses!" 

"Yes Sir!" Joon's voice was among the less enthusiastic ones that replied. He was more focused on erasing the awkward atmosphere between him and Seo Cyan, and on looking forward to seeing how a factory actually worked. 

Him and Seo Cyan had a distance between them. 

A distance that could fit two people between them on a subway. And yet, they looked away from each other, like small kindergarteners forced to sit on one bench. There was no ill will, Joon understood that. It was just that… he wasn't willing to bridge the gap. 

"Do you mind if I stop by here?" Cyan stopped before a cheap kiosk just next to the subway station on the road. Baffled, Joon answered yes, and saw him buy two thick mufflers from the haggling old lady. 

"That would be twenty five thousand," the stringy old woman said. Her hands were thin, like chopsticks which could break anytime, and her lips were pressed in an even thinner line. 

"Okay." Supervisor Seo was more than happy to buy those cheap mufflers. But what baffled Joon the most was that he offered the grey coloured one to Joon, and said, "You can't walk around the city in this weather without catching a cold. Wear this." 

His hand, weak and frail, outstretched towards Joon with a muffler in his palm. Joon stared at it and took a moment to think. When was the last time he had received a gift? Joon took the muffler without a word and wrapped it around his neck, silencing the air of awkwardness along with the winter cold. 

"Have you ever been here before?" Supervisor Seo looked at him, and Joon was suddenly taken aback by his closeness. When had the gap between them bridged? Supervisor Seo was shorter than him. Maybe just a few centimeters, but when he looked up, his hair tickled Joon's chin and Joon liked that. 

That ticklish, fleeting moment of happiness. It gave butterflies to Joon. 

"Just once," he said, "a couple years back. When I was an assistant manager." 

"Time passes so quickly." Supervisor Seo had an expression of a pleasant sadness in his eyes, as he looked at the approaching factory grounds. "I've never been here. Even once." 

Even if supervisor Seo said he was unacquainted with how the workers functioned, he was rather friendly and warm. And somewhere in between, those laughs and pleasant smiles and surveys and talks and intel, Joon felt that the distance between them had zeroed. 

He discussed everything. From pay structures to medical insurance, lifestyle to work environment. And then, he treated everyone to a bottle of ginseng tonic. Joon wondered what kind of a man he was. And what was his story. For when he talked, sometimes, stretched between the worlds of his words far and wide, Joon caught a fleeting glimpse of sadness. 

And then, at that moment, Joon wished he had a camera. He wished to remember that moment forever. The tilt of Seo Cyan's neck, the dim light in his eyes, the whirring wind from the stand fan ruffling his ashy hair. Seo Cyan was beautiful. 

Joon looked away and choked on his spit. "Nothing," he said when Cyan and the head of the workers' union looked at him with concern, "just a little cold."

Just a cold. But Joon's neck felt warm. Maybe it was just the muffler.