Living with Kai was, in many ways, similar to living with Kris. Part of it was that the layout of our apartments was exactly the same. I ended up in the room that corresponded to my bedroom in my old apartment. On a superficial level, nothing had really changed except for the view outside my window. I was going through the same motions of life, adhering to the same rituals. I still woke up before the sun, went to school far earlier than I should have, suffered through boring classes and pretentious teachers, and competently performed all the basic functions of life.

It really was all the same, and yet, completely different. It was as if I were conducting my daily affairs in an alternate – albeit parallel – reality. I thought I was used to living with other people. But as I belatedly realized, Kai was not Kris.

When I thought about it some more, I realized that, in a sense, I had never really lived with Kris. He’d been gone so often that it had been like having the place to myself. In Kai’s apartment, it was impossible to forget that he lived there. His clothes were everywhere – on the floor, in the bathroom, and occasionally, on the kitchen counter. He his music to an unreasonable volume every morning, for a “creative energy boost” and to “correct positivity imbalances”. He sang in the shower – and speaking of the shower, he hogged the bathroom. He hogged it in the morning and he hogged it at night. He was the only person I knew who took two showers a day, every day. I had only a vague idea of what else he did in there, though from the array of products that took up all the space in the cabinets and on the counter, I surmised that Kai spent a lot of time worrying about his complexion, hair, dark circles, and bowel movements. In short, he was the fussiest boy I had ever met.

And yet, as much as Kai cared about how he looked, it seemed that all he ate was junk food. Kris and I had never been the healthiest eaters – our apartment had been filled with canned food and instant ramen – but we were substantially better than Kai. Like us, Kai had nothing perishable. His refrigerator was completely empty. His cabinets, however, were filled completely with spam. He had a huge bag of rice under the sink. As I soon learned, his breakfasts and dinners comprised of spam and instant rice.

“I thought you were a conscientious eater,” I’d said upon first exploring the kitchen.

“I am!” he protested. “But all this fresh stuff is way too expensive. It’s ridiculous. You know how much a carrot costs?”

I stared at him blankly. “Where are you shopping? Carrots are cheap. Vegetables are all cheap. The only reason Kris and I stuck with canned food is because it was more convenient to prepare. You know that spam is more expensive than a bunch of carrots, right? Spam is practically a luxury.”

Kai rattled off a long list of places he’d looked for vegetables. They were all located in the neighborhoods rich people lived.

“Why didn’t you try any of the cheaper places around here?” I asked.

“I did! I went to the convenience stores to get the spam and rice.”

“I meant like chain grocery stores.”

“How am I supposed to know what those look like?”

“Have you ever heard of Google?”

He changed the subject. “An all protein diet is healthy and great for weight loss. You should try it.”

“Are you implying that I’m fat?”

He shut up after that.

Despite his frugality with food, Kai was weirdly out of sync with the rest of his finances. Here, the bills came often and Kai left them carelessly around the apartment. Some of the statements, like rent, were predictable. But there were other receipts that absolutely boggled my mind. Why was Kai spending money on baskets of persimmons and star fruit? Why did he have a membership to an elite fitness center when there was a cheap recreation center just down the street? How could he justify spending so much money on premium subscriptions to three different anime-streaming websites?

When I confronted Kai in the kitchen with a folder of the incriminating information, he didn’t seem the least bit concerned that I had just dug through his private life. I suppose he wasn’t that concerned because his spending fell into two categories: stereotypical teenage boy or just plain bizarre. There wasn’t much to make of his receipts, except that he had a spending problem and an unrealistic vision of the world.

“Kai,” I said, “you are spending way too much money. You’ve spent forty thousand won on non-necessities in the last two weeks.”

“It’s fine,” he said, not looking up from his laptop. “I put it all on credit card, so I have until the end of the month to find some money before I start having to worry about interest rates and all that.”

“You need to remember that you’re seven million won poorer now.”

“I know. It’s not that bad. I’ll just find some part time work. One of my friends promised to hook me up.”

“Okay. But let’s talk about this.” I highlighted a few lines on his credit card statement. “Do you really need all these anime subscriptions?”

“Yes. They give me happiness.”

“You don’t make any sense,” I said, exasperated. I sank down in the chair across from him. “Remember that time you got locked out of your apartment? You said that you didn’t have enough money to call a locksmith. Why didn’t you just put it on credit card then?”

He set his laptop aside and smirked. “I didn’t think there was any other way to get you to invite me over.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“I’m right, aren’t I?” His smirk grew wider.

“You’re so ridiculous.”

“I am so right.”

And despite it all, I found myself smiling.