1.2 | Anemoia

3| three

Shin didn't quite like his Aunt Segye. He didn't like sagged face or the constant weariness in her eyes, he didn't like the way she looked at him and said; "HwaShinnie, you didn't have troubles on your way, did you?"

As if someone is waiting to swoop down from the past and steal Shin away, break his bones and bash his head on concrete, reducing him to a vegetative state. Her eyes— a blurry shade of flawed midnight— always looking at him and wondering the same thing.

You're lucky to be alive, Shin. Extremely lucky.

"No problem." Shin replied courteously. He walked to the table and sat down, cross-legged, too scared to put his feet down in the pit. It was silly, and Shin was too old to get scared of monsters sitting inside the leg area, waiting to drag him down to a burning inferno and maybe fry his heart in fat-free oil. There's no such thing as fat free. There's fat everywhere, and a peak reason why Shin was seeing so many obese patients lately.

"How's work?" Segye asked.

"It's the same. I lucked out with a free weekend today."

"There was an accident recently. Be careful." Uncle DanTae was a stern man of few emotions, but his words when he saw Shin were always the same. He would bring up a random road accident and then end the conversation by offering Shin a car. He had been doing that for three years and Shin could read him like a textbook. His expressionless eyes felt unwilling to hold a contact with Shin for more than a second, his words, sharp like steel daggers, now blunt and rusted, like worn out cogs of a machine.

Shin's physical sight hurt him. And he wouldn't even tell why.

If you dislike me so much, why even see me? I'm not asking anything.

"And your grandfather?"

"He's watching crap telly. This week, he cooked four pots of braised chicken. I'm quite full of that taste now."

"Is it that far already?" Segye's brows dipped in concern. "You should move to a better house, HwaShin-ah. Get a few attendants. With your job, how do you even manage everything?"

"The upstairs ahjumma checks Halabeoji every couple hours, and he keeps himself really well," Shin said. "And then we'd be leaving this city next year so there's not quite much time left."

A deep sigh from DanTae interrupted Shin. Segye looked between her husband and Shin, her hand reaching out on the table to squeeze DanTae's fist in a sense of morbid comfort.

"Where's Hwan?" Segye asked.

"He said he'll be late. Got into a road incident. Had to take a detour."

"He should arrive fast so that we could eat, our Shinnie is starving here, isn't he?" Auntie Segye's face lit up for a short second, crow's feet wrinkling on her bare face. She looked better when she did that.

"Yes," Dantae said. A minute passed in silence, Segye hoped her grey-haired husband would say something more but it never came. Kim Dantae disliked Shin to a point that he never talked about him. He snapped his fingers and the waiter slid the wooden door, bowing his head down and signaling something on the other side.

"Even so, what would you like to eat, Shinnie?"

"Shrimp?" Shin said vaguely, for he knew the question was vague. Everything in the deepest corner of Shin's gluttonous desires was going to take form when the waiters came in with food trays. Smoked salmon, shrimps, roast duck noodles; hand stretched and knife-cut. Steaming hot broths and sesame rice, making Shin feel lousy and not quite respectable enough to actually eat that.