Chapter 1
A samgyeopsal restaurant, its charcoal briquettes blazing away.
It was the staff dinner for the Michelin two-star restaurant where I worked.
“Now, let’s raise a glass to Chef Seong’s debut on the Netplus survival show! Cheers!”
“Wow, I hear you’re already fully booked through next winter!”
In the festive atmosphere, as if the whole restaurant had been booked out, the clinking of soju glasses rang out noisily.
But beyond all that raucous noise, there was a voice grating on my nerves.
The head sommelier, the real power on the floor: Team Leader Jeong, thirty-seven years old.
Already drunk and red-faced, he pressed close to Yerim, the twenty-three-year-old stagiaire two years younger than me, and draped an arm around her shoulders.
“Yerim, we’re headed the same way, so why don’t you ride with me when we leave?”
“…No, Team Leader. I can take the subway!”
“Come on, it’s easy to call a designated driver. Why make things hard for yourself? I just won a nice bottle of wine at auction. Come over to my apartment and try just one glass.”
His lowered, oily voice reached even my ears.
Even though Yerim was openly showing how uncomfortable she felt, the team leader’s hand stayed on her shoulder.
I’d heard plenty of times, even in my five months on the job, that this guy hit on the female employees whenever he got the chance.
Rumor had it that several dining-room staff had already quit because of him.
But everyone was too busy clinking glasses and chatting among themselves, pretending not to hear or see anything, all the while keeping an eye on the restaurant’s powerful sommelier team leader.
Even Chef Seong was the same.
The chef was a star chef with two Michelin stars, but for some reason he acted timid around the sommelier team leader, as if the man had something on him.
“Yerim, your ears are red. Looks like you have a weak liver. I’ve got ginseng liquor at home, too. It’s really good for your liver.”
“No, I have to leave before the last train…”
“Come on! I’ll get you a taxi!”
Just then, Yerim and I made eye contact.
Her round eyes seemed to be saying, ‘Help me.’
Those dewy eyes reminded me of Bori, the border collie who’d crossed the rainbow bridge when I was in high school. They also brought to mind my younger sister, who was busy getting ready to graduate.
‘If my little sister gets a job, will she have to put up with this kind of come-on from her bosses?’
That was when I learned something about myself.
I guess I’m the kind of person who can’t stand this sort of thing─.
“Team Leader, that wine you won at auction and the ginseng liquor. Would you mind if I went to drink them in Yerim’s place?”
……
…….
The sweltering samgyeopsal restaurant suddenly turned as cold as a freezer full of dead tuna.
Eight months later─.
I, Ha Yu-seong, had successfully switched careers from stagiaire at a famous fine-dining restaurant to a NEET.
The sommelier team leader was clearly the one at fault, yet somehow I was more or less forced to ‘voluntarily resign.’
Is that just how working life is?
Even after eight months, whenever I close my eyes, I still remember what happened at that staff dinner, and my teeth grind with rage.
“Damn it, if I was going to get fired anyway, I should’ve punched Team Leader Jeong right in the jaw.”
Give back as much as you get─.
That was our family motto, after all.
Anyway.
For the past few weeks, the only person I’d had to talk to was the owner of the convenience store in front of my studio apartment.
The store owner was a woman in her mid-forties who drove a Benz.
She was stylish, with brightly dyed hair, a designer handbag, and a watch.
Maybe she had a knack for business, because she remembered her regulars’ faces and would discreetly slip them a free Nunettine snack when they bought something.
Beep, beep-.
As I was paying for my usual chicken breast and protein drink, the owner asked me in a knowing voice just before the payment went through.
“Honey, have you seen anyone stealing from our convenience store lately?”
“Stealing?”
For the record, I quite liked talking with the owner.
I hadn’t had a proper conversation partner in about eight months, so those five-minute chats had become really precious to me.
The owner frowned, her face full of worry, and said:
“When I close up, the counts for lunch boxes, ramen, snacks, and stuff are always off. I thought the part-timers were sneaking food, but that doesn’t seem to be it.”
“Have you checked the security cameras?”
“I picked a day and watched the whole thing. Still couldn’t figure it out. So when you come by, keep an eye out now and then, okay? See if anyone’s stealing.”
The owner held out a yellow banana milk to me.
Swish-.
Since she’d given me something for free, it was only right to show some courtesy.
So that very evening, I went back to the convenience store to grab a quick bite.
It wasn’t like I was a detective or a security guard, so I wasn’t going to keep a serious lookout. I just sat at a table and casually watched the customers.
The convenience store clerk had the air conditioner turned down low, maybe because she felt cold.
When I opened the lid, heat billowed up from the cup noodles.
Ahh, this hits the spot.
Just as I was about to take a bite, the convenience store door opened halfway.
Clunk-.
As if someone were about to come in.
But strangely, no customer came inside.
What was that? Did a gust of wind blow it open?
A gust strong enough to open the convenience store’s thick glass door?
Could that happen?
I set aside my confusion and was about to eat my cup noodles again when─.
I saw the steam rising from the noodles I’d lifted with my wooden chopsticks waver strangely.
As if someone had brushed past me.
On a hunch, I turned my head.
And beyond the steam rising from the ramen, something like a heat haze was moving.
What was that?
Thinking my eyes were playing tricks on me, I rubbed them, then opened them wide—and something strange happened.
Along with a dazed feeling in my head, the things that had looked like a heat haze grew clearer and clearer.
As if old paint were peeling away, the shape of something began to appear in front of the convenience store shelves.
‘What the…?’
The first thing I saw was a thick padded jacket.
How strange.
It was August, the middle of summer.
Who wears a padded jacket in summer?
But the mysterious person shoved snacks and lunch boxes inside their jacket, then bolted out of the convenience store.
I shook off my daze and asked the clerk.
“Excuse me, didn’t you see that person just now?”
“……”
The female clerk, who looked barely twenty, lifted her eyes from her phone and frowned.
Maybe she thought I was hitting on her?
Or maybe she was so absorbed in her phone that she really hadn’t seen that ‘person in a padded jacket.’
Feeling like I’d found the culprit behind the ‘thefts’ the owner had mentioned, I dashed out of the convenience store.
The thief was waddling some distance away through the winding alleys of studio apartments near the university.
Then they slipped into the underground parking garage of one of the apartment buildings.
Thud-thud-thud-.
Without a moment to calm my pounding heart, I followed them into the garage. The stale, moldy smell peculiar to the basement of an old building somehow made me feel strangely uneasy.
「Please don’t feed the cats.」
「If I see cat food bowls, I’ll put Tylenol in the food.」
After passing the pillars in the underground parking garage with their ominous messages, I heard a crunching sound between the cars that set my nerves on edge.
Was it a stray cat eating food someone had left out?
I crept between the cars and finally found the source of the sound in the farthest corner of the underground garage.
Crunch, crunch, crunch─.
Ramen wrappers strewn carelessly about.
Crumbs of crushed dry ramen.
And the rounded back of someone in a padded jacket.
They were pretty small.
Elementary-school age, maybe?
‘I could take them in a fight.’
Thump-thump-thump─.
I calculated my chances in an instant, then reached out toward the little guy.
“Gotcha, you thieeeef!!!”
“………!!!”
The person in the padded jacket, whose wrist I’d grabbed, jumped in surprise.
They kept squirming and babbling something incomprehensible.
“…Mecha Chef? Mecha Chef! Mecha Cheeeef!?”
Mecha Chef? Chef? Did this person know I’d worked in fine dining?
Of course, I wasn’t a chef, just a glorified errand boy of a stagiaire.
Whatever the case, the good news was that there was a police box within 300 meters.
Holding the wrist of the thief I’d caught red-handed, I marched confidently into the nearby police box.
And then───.
“Sir, you’re saying you caught someone red-handed stealing?”
“Where is that person now?”
The policeman’s bewildered expression threw me off.
“What do you mean, you can’t see them? Look at them! I’ve got them right here!”
“Good grief, who are you talking about? Sir, you can’t go around playing pranks like this.”
“Officer Kim, is that guy drunk?”
“No, I haven’t had a drop. They’re right here…”
A sudden wave of emotion washed over me, and I couldn’t finish speaking.
I could clearly feel the thick lining of the padded jacket in my hand, along with the strange person struggling in my grip.
But the police acted as though they couldn’t see them at all.
Don’t play pranks?
That’s what I want to say to you!
A chill ran through me, and I felt cold despite the summer heat.
‘Am I really seeing things?’
Was it because I’d eaten piping-hot cup noodles in the middle of the hot season?
Had I gotten heatstroke?
In the end, the policeman shoved me out into the police box parking lot.
I stared at the thief still caught in my grip, half dazed.
“……”
“……”
The little guy wasn’t struggling or babbling incomprehensible things anymore.
They just stood there quietly.
What the hell was this thing? A ghost?
It was invisible to everyone else, and wore a padded jacket in the middle of summer─.
It was utterly surreal, and an inexplicable eeriness tingled from below my navel all the way to my fingertips.
Then came a gruuuuurrr─.
The thief hunched over and clutched their stomach with one hand.
Come to think of it, before I caught them, that little guy had been eating dry ramen.
“Do ghosts get hungry too, and steal food from convenience stores?”
“……”
The thief still didn’t answer.
So what was I supposed to do now?
Come to think of it, the washing machine should be done by now.
If I didn’t hang the laundry up properly, it would get musty.
‘Right, let’s go home for now.’
Maybe I’d been resting too long and started seeing things.
They say when people live in isolation for too long, their brains start making hallucinations to help them forget how lonely they are, right?
Like that guy on a deserted island who talked to a volleyball.
Yeah, that must be what was happening to me.
If I went home, did the chores I’d been putting off, and got a good night’s sleep, maybe this bizarre incident would vanish without a trace by the next morning.
A sound came from behind me.
Tap, tap-.
‘…It’s following me?’
The feeling of being pursued by a strange being invisible to everyone else, visible only to me.
A summer night at age twenty-six.
Me.
Looks like I’d been bewitched.