As in the heart of a great opera, all that happened outside every window and poured through the stairwell doorway could only be a Friday-night rooftop gathering. In such a place, it was everything Seongjun was not used to, a sterile soundproofed gala. It was a riot with laughter, the sizzle of meat on a portable grill, and the clinking of soju bottles. Twenty minutes, that is how long he Managed to keep himself at the dark door of his room, like some field anthropologist observing a new tribe.
Park Mina was the nucleus. From this small sun danced every single thing in this little cosmos. She was flipping pork belly on the grill, laughing at ricocheting grease squirted on her face. This privilege of after-bantering best friend, Lee Seyeon-sharp, intelligent eyes and blunt cut bob seemed to punctuate every opinion she cared to offer in court, was dramatically flying her hands. There were other neighbors: ever-gossipy Grandma Kim, a young couple from the third floor, and Mr. Bang, the building's superintendent, who was already red-faced and jovial from soju.
Seongjun shrugged immediately. Fatigue, illness, anything would justify it. This was too much, too soon. It was the raw, unprocessed realism that was really just too much to bear. However, the sunlight of Mina's grin reminded him of the warmth curled within the first authentic touch of his kimchi jjigae, the first actual thoughtfulness he'd known on this new life adventure. Here was the experiment. Hiding in his room was failing.
He took a deep breath, calmed down, and emerged from the shadows.
With that, the conversations halted for a split second before all of their attention turned to him. His body was too stiff to move, and the simple gray hoodie and jeans he wore felt like some kind of unconvincing dress-up.
"Ah! Kim Seongjun-ssi! You came!" Mina burst out to cut through the awkwardness: bright and welcoming as she waved for him. "Come, come; we saved for you. This is Lee Seyeon, my best friend. Seyeon, this is our new neighbor, Kim Seongjun."
Seyeon gave him a long, inspecting look that felt more like a security scan than a greeting. "So, you are the rooftop guy everyone is talking about," she said, a teasing tone in her voice with a sharp undertone. "The one who turned his cashmere into a doll-sized sweater."
Laughter rippled out through the group. Seongjun forced a small, tight smile. "A lesson learned the hard way."
"We've all been there," chimed the young wife from the third floor. "Welcome."
Mina pressed a cold bottle of beer into his hand. "Here. Food's almost ready. Just make yourself comfortable."
That concept did not apply at all. He found a place on an upturned crate, feeling like an exhibit in a museum. All around him swirled complaints about jobs, updates on schools children attended, local gossip. The language of litany shared in struggle and small victories. Completely apart from boardroom strategies and stock prices, it carried me away. He contributed nothing to the conversation just nodded or said, more or less: "Is that so" if anybody talked directly to him.
Seyeon was more persistent than that. She stooped toward him, her eyes narrowing in mock reproach. "So, Kim Seongjun-ssi," says Mina you're a data analyst. Sounds a bit cheesy. What does a data analyst do, anyway?"
It was a simple question for which he had an immediate but very dull answer prepared. However, that lie evasively felt flimsy under Seyeon's penetrating gaze. "I just... analyze data sets. For a small IT firm. Sales figures, market trends. It was mostly spreadsheets."
"Boring," said Seyeon, very much still looking at him. "Where's the firm? What part of town?"
"Very simple: Gangnam," and before he could even think, the name of that affluent district came out. That was a mistake. The dynamics of the group changed just slightly. Gangnam is literally a different world-geographically as well as economically.
"Gangnam?" Mr. Bang slurred. "Takes a long time to get there on that salary, eh? Must be tough."
Seongjun's mind raced with that. It was an easy adjustment to "seamless articulation" he normally used to catch up with whatever story he had fleshed out as a cover life. "Finally, the company actually provides a transportation stipend," he did quickly fabricate; this corporate jargon sounded so alien in this setting.
Mina, interpreting his discomfort, quickly changed the topic. "Who listens to spreadsheets? The meat is ready! Seongjun-ssi, you should try this. This is from the butcher just across the street-the best price for the quality."
She piled up his plate with grilled pork belly, ssam vegetables, and a dollop of spicy doenjang. It was so maternal, so effortless in its generosity, that it left him speechless but awkward as he tried to wrap the meat in a perilla leaf with the insistently awkward struggle of carrying out ingredients; Mina laughed at it, not at him but with the warmest sincerity.
"This way," she said, her fingers skillfully arranging ssam for him with expert grace. "Here."
He took it from her. The flavors were bold, messy, and wonderfully delectable. Shared food, eaten with fingers in loud conversation, made for a momentary forgetfulness concerning soon-to-come Jang Dohoon business, about the encrypted phone that was burning a hole in his pocket, and about the life he was living under dubious circumstances. He was simply a man on a rooftop, enjoying tasty cuisine displayed by a warm woman.
No, that moment was excruciatingly interrupted by pervasive vibrations against his thigh. Once. Twice. Pattern he had specific for Hong Manager. Urgent.
He mumbled something about a phone call as excuse, and walked away into one far edge of the roof, near the humming air conditioning unit. The cheerful noise of the loud partying faded away in the background.
"'Report,' he whispered, low enough to be heard above the laughter behind him."
"'Sir, this is Dohoon. He moved faster than we had anticipated. His press conference is scheduled for Monday morning to announce the rival bid for the Jeju project. He named it `Eco-Paradise,` casting us as the destructive old guard.'"
With those words, Seongjun regained focus. The tapes of the roof-patter, beer, and his earlier kindness evaporated. "Get me everything on this `Eco-Paradise`. Who's behind it? What are the specs? I want a pre-emptive strike: draft a white paper on our sustainable activities over the last decade. Leak it to the press by tonight. I want his announcement to look nothing more than a cheap copy for the press."
"Tonight, sir? The team—"
"Pay them triple. I don't care; just do it." He ended the call as an old adrenaline rush of corporate warfare charged through his body.
He stood there a minute more, letting the cold night air cool the heat of command from his face. Turning back, it felt almost unreal. Here were people worrying about rent and school fees while he himself waged a billion-won war from their laundry lines.
Mina was watching him, and a faint line of concern lay in the space between her brows. She walked over with two fresh beers in hand. "Everything okay? You look... intense."
He softened his features, a technique perfected over a thousand boardrooms. "Just work. A small crisis."
"On a Friday night? That's tough," she offered, handing him a beer. "Don't let it get to you. Sometimes you just have to turn it off, you know? Be here now."
*Be here now.* Oh, the concept was so straightforward and yet so completely alien to him. To him, it felt like a life in constant calculus, involving future moves and past consequences. When he looked at her back and forth and saw true compassion inside those eyes, something sharp, like needles piercing his conscience, pricked at him.
"You are highly skilled at that," he heard himself say, surprised.
"Skilled at what?"
"Being... here."
Mina smiled a little sadly. "When your life is one `right now` after another, you don't have much of a choice. You can't afford to get lost thinking about tomorrow's problems. Or you will drown." She clinked her bottle against his. "So the crisis waits till tomorrow."
He nodded, taking a long swig of the cheap beer. It tasted better than before. He was cementing his foundations, his grandfather would be proud. Yet the more he laughed, accepted drink or food, or connected in any way, the more he began to feel like his existential construction was turning into a trap. The echoes of that true life on the rooftop kept reminding him this peace was borrowed with interest, and that one day the interest was going to fall due.
***