case 02

chapter 18: parts of a whole

Jungwoo’s knees were knocking. His knuckles were white against the steering wheel, and he could barely hear his own breath under the whirr of the idling engine.

“Can’t you step on it?” Wendy cried, panic and anxiety unsettling the croak of her voice.

“I can’t– I can’t!” Jungwoo groaned frustratedly. “Wen, you’re making it even worse!”

Immediately, Wendy burst into tears, erupting in the waterworks she had been fighting to hold back. As the car rolled to a stop at a fateful red light, Yuta passed Wendy his handkerchief and smacked Jungwoo on the shoulder.

“Stop it. You’re the one making it worse.” Yuta’s admonishing tone sent a current of guilt through Jungwoo’s already sinking heart.

Perched on the middle seat, Seulgi stared blankly at her feet. She had held her silence for the entirety of the ride, keeping her eyes trained away from everyone else. It was as though she was in a different time and space, as though a single movement would send her back to reality and break her into a million pieces.

Wordlessly, Jaehyun slipped his hand into hers, intertwining their fingers. He gave her hand a squeeze – a strong one, because she needed to know that someone was there. Everyone did. Everyone needed to know that someone was there.

Seulgi squeezed back. Jaehyun let out a slow exhale.

Jungwoo finally swerved into a parking lot. Perhaps two, but that didn’t matter. They kicked the doors open and emerged from the car – Yuta in his velvet suit, Wendy in a floor-length chiffon dress, Jungwoo in his Snoopy pajamas, Seulgi in her ill-fitting pencil skirt, and Jaehyun in his unmatched socks, shoes nowhere to be seen. They bolted out, sprinting through the night and into the blinding white lights of the emergency hall.

They stopped at the first corridor. On a row of empty seats was Johnny, eyes fixated on the ground, hands covered in blood.

All five ran for him.

12.00am.

12.00am.

Seulgi watched the red droplets on her finger dissolve under the running water. It should have stung, but the alcohol had numbed out most of her senses. She couldn’t feel the alcohol, she couldn’t feel the water, she couldn’t feel the cut, she couldn’t feel the pain – she wondered if that was how Johnny had felt for the past five years.

“–so why would you try and open a can like that?” Jungwoo reprimanded, heaving his umpteenth sigh for the night. He pressed an ethanol-soaked gauze to her skin, patting her softly, and then replacing it with a band-aid. Like a band-aid can close an open wound, Seulgi thought to herself.

After Jungwoo had finished his nursing, Seulgi stumbled her way into the dining room, grabbing the godforsaken can and raising it to her lips. No surprise – the beer tasted like nothing.

“Didn’t you just drink with Jaehyun? Why’re you drinking again?” Jungwoo looked at her with furrowed brows.

Seulgi thought of all the times she had found Johnny at one of the green tents near their office, slumped on a flimsy plastic table. He was usually half-frothing, still trying to take another shot, rambling about things they both didn’t want to hear, things they didn’t want to remember.

“You just drank with Changmin-sunbae! Why are you drinking again?” Seulgi would say.

Johnny would give her a drunken, subconscious smile. “I want to feel something, Seulgi.”

Rubbish, Seulgi thought. Her head was pounding. I still can’t feel anything.

“Just because,” Seulgi replied, watching Jungwoo pull a chair across her. He had shadows under his eyes and lines on his face. She could make out his bones under his old Snoopy pajamas. She didn’t know why he was still up. Then again, she was, too.

Jungwoo turned his eyes to the clock perched atop their shelves. “It’s today, isn’t it?”

Seulgi nodded quietly. She took another sip of her beer. There was a dull ache under her ribs, but Seulgi could barely feel it. Jungwoo’s eyes tracked Seulgi as she fiddled with the beer can, slipping in and out of focus.

From his periphery, he saw a half-open six-pack. “Pass me one,” he said, and in her haziness, Seulgi slid him something – beer, probably, but she knew he could figure it out by himself.

The crack of the aluminum ring resounded through the apartment. It echoed through her ears, like the sound of her heart did that day every year.

Slowly, Jungwoo raised his can. “To Haneul,” he mumbled.

Seulgi tapped her can against his. “To Haneul.”

Jaehyun crossed the threshold, towards the faint spill of light. He found Yuta at the dining table, in between various patches of colorful fabrics and his old sewing machine. It whittled and whirred, filling up the rest of the empty apartment.

Noticing Jaehyun’s presence, Yuta stopped his machine and looked up. “Hey,” he said. “Back from guitar practice?”

“Yeah,” Jaehyun replied. He angled his head in the direction of Johnny’s room, where the door was left ajar. “Johnny not back?”

“He came back earlier to get a change of clothes, but then he left,” Yuta murmured. He averted his eyes back to his fabrics. “You know he usually tries to get there before twelve.”

Jaehyun nodded and wordlessly moved to the kitchen. He pressed a glass to the filter, watching the water trickle in until an empty glass became full. If only empty places were filled so easily in real life, Jaehyun thought. He leaned against the fridge, sipping at his water and watching Yuta weave pieces of cloth in and out of the sewing machine.

“Jumpsuit this year?” Jaehyun observed.

“Yep.” Yuta held up the bright pink one-piece, smiling at the sewed-on rhinestones. “I realized that I’ve only made her dresses for the past few years. What if she grew up a tomboy?”

Jaehyun chuckled softly. “Another Seulgi?”

They both laughed at the thought. They could imagine a young girl romping around in a muddy jumpsuit, chasing after butterflies in a grass field and climbing up trees to look for squirrels. She would clutch on the wrong branch and lose her balance but wouldn’t need to fear for a thing, because there would be six idiots knocking themselves over to break her fall.

Haneul, Johnny and Irene had named her, even when they didn’t know her gender. Jaehyun had once thought it was such a silly, common place name. But Johnny and Irene wanted her to be their sky, beautiful and bright, never to fall. They didn’t think she’d only be able to be in the sky.  

“You know,” Jaehyun mused, tilting his head back, “I was going to ask Johnny if I could be her godfather.”

Yuta snorted. “You would’ve lost that fight. The only reason I didn’t contest you being Johnny’s Best Man for his wedding was that Johnny promised me I’d be godfather to his first child.”

Jaehyun raised his brows. “And did he promise Jungwoo that role to his second?”

“Nah,” Yuta shook his head. “Who in the right mind would let Kim Jungwoo be a godfather to their child? It’s like asking a child to care for a child.”

“Fair enough,” Jaehyun laughed.

Their quiet laughter quickly dissolved into a cold, intentional silence. It was the only time in the year that Jaehyun wished their place wouldn’t be as quiet.

“The world is unfair, huh?” Yuta said absentmindedly. He ran a thread through a silvery button. He was too deft with his fingers to prick himself, but he honestly wouldn’t mind too much if he did. “Some people can love children who don’t even come into the world, and others give away their children without even looking at them.”

Jaehyun tried not to wince, though something stung in his chest. He stepped towards Yuta, picking up one of the lone pink bows he had set aside. “I’ll help you,” Jaehyun offered, pulling a chair.

Yuta smiled. “You can start with the ribbons.”

Seulgi’s gaze flickered over the dark, empty room across hers – Johnny’s office, a place usually full of light and noise. She almost expected him to emerge from his office, stumbling over his oversized leather loafers and garbling about the overly drunken night he had. She would offer him aspirin and stale crackers, he would tell her about how much he craved the pork bone stew from the cafeteria at their law school, and Seulgi would laugh.

Sungchan rapped on her door, fracturing her thoughts. “Hey, Seulgi-noona,” he called, waving his documents at her, “have a minute? I’m done with these.”

“Yeah, sure,” Seulgi said quickly, gesturing for him to enter.

While Seulgi reviewed his work, Sungchan stared at Johnny’s empty office. “Johnny-hyung’s not in today?” he asked, eyes widened. “I thought you