The briquette fire blazed in the pork belly restaurant.
It was the full staff dinner for the Michelin two-star restaurant where I worked.
“Alright, a toast to Chef Seong’s debut on Netplus Survival. Cheers!”
“Wow, I heard reservations are already booked solid through next winter.”
In the festive atmosphere, as if the entire place had been rented out, the clinking of soju glasses rang loudly.
But beyond all that commotion, there was a voice grating on my nerves.
The head sommelier and de facto boss of the floor, 37-year-old Team Leader Jeong.
With a face already flushed from drinking, he pressed up close to twenty-three-year-old intern Yerim, who was two years younger than me, and slung his arm around her shoulders.
“Yerim, since we’re heading the same way, let’s just take my car later.”
“…No thanks, Team Leader. I can take the subway!”
“Come on, I’ll call a designated driver, so we’ll get there comfortably. Why suffer for no reason? I won a nice bottle of wine recently, so just come taste one glass at my office-tel.”
His voice, dripping with insinuation, reached even my ears.
Even though Yerim was clearly showing her discomfort, the Team Leader’s hand on her shoulder showed no sign of letting go.
Even I, only five months into my job, had heard multiple times that this guy constantly hit on the female staff.
Rumor had it that several floor employees had already quit because of him.
Still, everyone just kept glancing at the sommelier team leader, the real power at the restaurant, and pretended not to hear or see anything, busy chatting among themselves and clinking glasses.
Even Chef Seong was like that.
The chef was a star who’d earned two Michelin stars, but strangely, he acted weak around the sommelier team leader, as if the guy had some kind of hold on him.
“Yerim, your ears are turning red, so you probably have a weak liver. I’ve got some ginseng wine at my place, you know? It’s great for that.”
“No, I need to leave before the last train…”
“Come on! I’ll hail you a taxi!”
That’s when I locked eyes with Yerim.
Those round eyes seemed to be telling me, “Help me.”
Those moist eyes reminded me of Bori, the border collie I’d lost across the rainbow bridge back in high school, and they also brought to mind my younger sister, busy preparing for graduation.
‘When my sister gets a job, does she have to put up with advances like that from her superiors?’
That’s when I learned something about myself.
I’m the kind of person who can’t let this slide.
“Team Leader, that wine you won at auction, and the ginseng wine too. Mind if I go drink some in Yerim’s place?”
…
…
The pork belly restaurant, hot with briquette fire, went cold as a freezer storing dead tuna.
Eight months after that.
I, Ha Yuseong, successfully transitioned from being an intern at a famous fine dining establishment to a young man who’d been resting.
The sommelier team leader was clearly the one at fault, but somehow I was the one who got forced into a “voluntary resignation.”
Is that just how the working world works?
Eight months have passed, but even now, whenever I close my eyes, that dinner comes back to me and I grind my teeth.
“Ugh, if I was going to get fired anyway, I should’ve at least landed one good punch on Team Leader Jeong’s jaw.”
What goes around comes around.
That’s our family motto.
Anyway.
For the past few weeks, my only conversation partner has been the owner of the convenience store in front of my studio.
The convenience store owner was a woman in her mid-forties who drove a Mercedes.
She had brightly dyed hair and was a stylish one, with a designer bag and a watch.
She had a good head for business, memorized her regulars’ faces, and would secretly slip a free snack into your bag when you bought something.
Beep, beep.
As I was checking out my usual chicken breast and protein drink, the owner asked me in a subtle voice right before I paid.
“Honey, have you seen anyone shoplifting at my store lately?”
“Shoplifting?”
For the record, I quite enjoyed talking to this owner.
Having gone about eight months without any proper conversation partner, that five-minute chat had become precious to me.
The owner frowned, her face full of worry.
“When I do the closing count, the numbers for the lunch boxes, ramyeon, and snacks never match up. I thought maybe the part-timer was stealing, but that doesn’t seem to be it either.”
“Did you check the CCTV?”
“I set aside a whole day and watched it all. Still couldn’t figure it out. So just keep an eye out when you’re at the store, see if you notice anyone stealing.”
The owner handed me a yellow banana milk.
Swoosh.
Since I’d received a service, it was only right to show some courtesy in return.
So that very evening, I visited the convenience store again to grab a meal.
It’s not like I’m a detective or a security guard, so I wasn’t going to do anything grand—just sit at the table and casually glance at the customers coming and going.
The part-timer had the AC on low, probably feeling the chill.
As I opened the lid, the hot steam from the cup ramyeon rose up.
Ah, that’s the stuff.
Just as I was about to take a bite, the convenience store door opened halfway.
Click.
As if someone was about to walk in.
But strangely, no customer came through.
What? Was it the wind?
Wind strong enough to push open the thick glass door of a convenience store?
Is that even possible?
I set aside my curiosity and tried to eat my cup ramyeon again, but.
The hot steam rising from the noodles I’d scooped up with the wooden chopsticks was swaying in a bizarre way.
As if someone had just brushed past me.
Just in case, I turned my head.
And then, beyond the steam from the ramyeon, something like a heat haze was moving.
What?
I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, so I rubbed them and opened them wide, and then something strange happened.
With a dazed feeling in my head, the things that looked like a heat haze grew clearer and clearer.
Like old paint peeling away, the shape of something began to appear in front of the convenience store shelves.
‘What the hell?’
The first thing I saw was a thick puffer jacket.
That’s weird.
It’s August, summer.
Who wears a puffer jacket in summer?
But that unidentified someone was shoving snacks and lunch boxes into the inside of their jacket, then bolted out of the convenience store.
I pulled myself together and asked the part-timer.
“Excuse me, did you see that person just now?”
“…”
A female part-timer who looked like she’d just turned twenty frowned as she lifted her eyes from her phone screen.
She probably thought I was trying to hit on her.
Or maybe she was so glued to her phone that she genuinely didn’t see that “puffer jacket person.”
Feeling like I’d found the culprit behind the “theft incidents” the owner had mentioned, I dashed out of the convenience store.
The thief was waddling off in the distance through the winding alleyways of studio apartments near this university district.
Then it slipped into the underground parking lot of a studio apartment building.
Thump, thump.
Without a moment to calm my pounding heart, I followed it into the parking lot. The musty, moldy smell unique to old building basements made me feel strangely uneasy.
「Please don’t feed the cats.」
「If I see a cat food bowl, I’ll really sprinkle Tylenol on the food.」
As I passed the pillars of the underground parking lot with those grim messages, I heard a crunch, crunch—a sound coming from between the cars that grated on my brain.
Was it a stray cat eating food someone had scattered?
I crept between the cars and finally found the source of the sound in the farthest corner of the underground parking lot.
Crunch, crunch, crunch.
Scattered ramyeon bags lying carelessly on the ground.
Crushed bits of uncooked ramyeon.
And the round shape of the back of a head wearing a puffer jacket.
The build is a bit small.
Elementary school age, maybe?
‘I can definitely take them in a fight.’
Thump, thump, thump.
After a brief calculation of my odds, I reached out toward the thing.
“Gotcha, you damn thief!!!”
“……!!!”
The puffer jacket person, whose wrist I’d grabbed, jumped in surprise.
The thing kept squirming and babbling in an incomprehensible language.
“…Mecha Chef? Mecha Chef! Mecha Cheeeef!?”
Mecha Chef? Chef? Is this someone who knows I worked in fine dining?
Of course, I wasn’t a chef—I was just an intern, basically a grunt.
Whatever the case, the good news was that there was a police box within three hundred meters.
I marched into the nearby police box with the culprit’s wrist firmly in my grip.
And then.
“Sir, so you’re saying you caught a thief in the act?”
“Where is that person now?”
The baffled look on the police officer’s face caught me off guard.
“What? Can’t you see them? Look at this! They’re right here, caught in my hand!”
“Come on, there’s no one here! Sir, messing around like this isn’t funny.”
“Officer Kim, don’t you think that guy’s drunk?”
“No, I haven’t had a single drop. They’re definitely right here…”
A sudden wave of emotion cut me off.
I clearly had something in my grip—the heavy padding of a jacket and the squirming of a bizarre figure.
But the police were acting like they couldn’t see it at all.
Don’t mess around?
That’s what I should be saying!
Then a chill ran down my spine, making me forget the season and go cold.
‘Am I really seeing things?’
Is it because I ate a hot cup ramyeon in a hot season?
I must’ve gotten heatstroke.
Eventually, I was shooed out by the officers and found myself in the police box parking lot.
I stared, half-dazed, at the thief still caught in my grip.
“…”
“…”
The thing wasn’t squirming, and it wasn’t babbling in that strange language.
It was just standing there, perfectly still.
What the hell is this thing? A ghost?
Invisible to everyone else, wearing a puffer jacket in midsummer.
It was utterly surreal, and an inexplicable strangeness tingled from the pit of my stomach all the way to my fingertips and toes.
That’s when I heard it—grrrr.
The thief hunched its back and clutched its stomach with one hand.
Come to think of it, this thing had been eating uncooked ramyeon before I caught it.
“Do ghosts get hungry too? Do they steal from convenience stores to survive?”
“…”
Still no response from the thief.
So, now what?
Come to think of it, the laundry I put in the washer should be done by now.
If I don’t hang it up properly, it’s going to get musty.
‘Right, let’s just go home.’
I guess I’ve been resting too long, and now I’m seeing things.
They say when people live in isolation for too long, their brains start producing hallucinations to cope with the loneliness.
Like that guy on the deserted island talking to a volleyball.
Yeah, that’s definitely what’s happening to me.
I’ll go home, catch up on chores, get a good night’s sleep, and by tomorrow morning, this whole bizarre commotion will be gone like it never happened.
That’s when I heard a sound behind me.
Pat, pat.
‘…It’s following me, isn’t it?’
The feeling of being chased by a bizarre being invisible to everyone else, visible only to me.
A summer night, age twenty-six.
Me.
I think I’ve been possessed.