Chapter 44 – Episode 44. Empathy and Sympathy
I think Song Ji-eun is right.
I also lived in a residential village with studios like this, but the atmosphere is quite different.
Very different.
When I was in college, I often got to know the people living in the boarding house or studio where I live.
When we meet, we greet each other, and it becomes easy for us to become brothers and sisters.
However, in this gosichon, people living around them do not get along very well.
It may be because of the awareness of one’s own situation.
When I was in college, I felt like I was ahead of society.
There’s nothing wrong with it, but it seems like there’s infinite potential for something.
Especially when I was in the lower grades, I felt like I would do great things once I graduated.
The world is beautiful. Until time dilutes it.
In Goshichon, the situation is a little different.
Regardless of age, people live with a sense of crisis.
Such a sense of crisis also excludes the leisure to care about the people around you.
I looked around once.
There are many windows in each building, but somehow it seems that everyone is isolated.
Even when I was in college, I got to know the hyungs who lived around me and somehow had a sense of solidarity, but it’s hard to find anything like that here.
Thinking of that, I sympathized with Song Ji-eun.
“That’s right. Maybe it’s because we were all at the same university when we lived in front of the university, or maybe it’s because we’re living a little more leisurely than now, so I think we became close quickly.”
“Whoops, yes. I miss that time.”
As Song Ji-eun laughed while saying that, I suddenly became curious about her age.
He says he misses him, but it’s because he looks like he’s in his early to mid-twenties, and it seems that those days haven’t passed long.
“Really? You must have just graduated… Excuse me, but how old are you?”
“How old do you think you are?”
“Um~.”
While she looks like she has the freshness of an early 20’s, Song Ji-eun has a bit of an innocence that is hard to have in her early 20’s, but she has a bit of an air of pride.
So, when I saw her, I thought that she would be in her mid-20s or something, to the extent that she was just out of her early 20s.
I answered.
“Twenty-three or twenty-four?”
“Oh, that’s right. I’m twenty-four.”
Also matched
I think I’m mostly guessing, unless it’s a girl group member who has managed so incredibly ridiculously like Kwon Se-ah.
“That’s right, I’m twenty-six.”
“You’re my brother? Ah~, please feel free to talk~.”
“Is that so?”
After a short moment after I answered, Song Ji-eun started talking to me.
“Have you had dinner?”
She could see that she wanted to talk to me.
In the middle of the night, even after coming down to the 1st floor to separate collection, he didn’t bother to go in and started talking to me more.
She was wearing an extra, slightly longer jacket, but she wasn’t entirely warm.
Originally, it seemed that he was going to enter right away, but he seemed to want to talk a little more because he had a variable called me.
And like her, I also wanted to talk more with Song Ji-eun.
So I accepted her conversation.
“Uh. There’s a fried pork restaurant to the left of the discount store over there, right? There.”
“Ah~. It’s really nice there. It’s okay to serve one person in an earthen pot, right?”
Song Ji-eun seemed to know the house too.
It seemed that where I thought I was okay, there was a high probability that other people would also be considered that way.
“Um. That’s right, there. I heard they gave you a Coke too.”
“Coke? I’ve never had one, but…”
Starting there, Song Ji-eun and I talked about the food around here.
It could also be seen as a common history that can be encountered often.
Also, there were quite a lot of food in this area, so there was a lot to say even with that alone.
There are so many places to eat around here, from snack bars that sell tteokbokki and gimbap, to late-night restaurants that sell bossam and pork feet, and to places that sell dumplings that you can easily eat.
“The biggest advantage here is that there are a lot of places to eat? The restaurants are endless, right?”
“That’s right~, there’s nothing missing. It’s often hidden in good places.”
“Uh. What’s that? That~, homemade hamburger alley. They make good meat even in the slightly remote alley there.”
“Oh, I’ve been there too. The signboard is a bit shabby.”
“Um, there, there.”
Song Ji-eun and I talked a little more.
There were a few more stories that didn’t really matter.
I don’t think it really matters that much what this is talking about.
I think the main thing is who I talked to and what emotions I felt.
There are almost infinitely many people to talk to, and conversations are almost buried in memory unless they come to mind momentarily by a specific occasion.
Anyway, when tomorrow comes, I will only remember what we talked about.
More than that, I think Song Ji-eun’s emotions are more important to me.
Perhaps, unknowingly, I got the impression that Song Ji-eun is quite attractive.
It’s because I’m talking with her like this, even as I’ve been trying to slightly exclude her relationship with people lately.
And she also doesn’t go in as if thinking I’m fine, and talks to me.
After talking with Song Ji-eun for a while, a person who lives in the same building sometimes passes by to move to his room.
It wasn’t until that time that the surroundings became slightly ventilated.
And I came to realize again that Jieun Song and I stood and shared quite a few stories in front of the separate collection area on the 1st floor.
When that happened, Song Ji-eun proposed to me.
“If you don’t mind, would you like to talk on the roof for a while and then go in? There are chairs there…”
“Is it so? Isn’t it cold? Your clothes look a little cold.”
“This is warmer than it looks. Still, I think I should wear more. Oppa, please go to your room for a while~”
“I’m fine.”
Song Ji-eun and I went up to the roof together again.
Song Ji-eun said, she put on a slightly warmer coat when she went in and out, and I didn’t think it was that cold, so I didn’t put on any extra clothes on her.
Still, I went in and out of the house for a while.
It was to bring two cans of beer and come out.
I thought the story would be a bit long, so I brought out another beer, one for me and one for hers.
When she saw the beer, Song Ji-eun said that she would bring her side dishes.
Song Ji-eun and I were seated at a wooden table on the roof.
There is a wooden table on the roof, and there are chairs that can sit on both sides because it is integrated with the table.
It can seat up to 6 people at a time.
I had seen a table with a slightly larger wooden table and chairs in one piece in an army smoking area before, but it was similar to that.
Normally, I’d rather drink beer while looking down from the rooftop, so I didn’t really sit down and eat here.
This time, I was going to have a drink while talking with Song Ji-eun, so I settled down.
Song Ji-eun and I sat next to each other, drinking cans and talking as we bumped into each other as if toasting each other.
“Shall we have a toast?”
“Yeah~.”
“Bad~.”
It’s nice to talk with Song Ji-eun, but I didn’t intend to spend that long.
It was because I wanted to study tomorrow in the best condition.
I was determined to play just enough time to drink another can of beer, then go back down to sleep.
Jeeeun and I drank beer and talked about various things.
As a result, a story came up in the middle of what she and I were doing.
Like most people living in this area, I was a student preparing for civil service exams, but Song Ji-eun was not.
She was already a civil servant.
When I first heard it, I was a bit surprised.
However, when I thought about it, I also wanted to be like that.
Occasionally, there are people who live here even though they are civil servants.
In this gosichon, transportation is quite good.
It’s not that far from the subway, and the subway route is pretty good whether you go to Gangdong or Gangseo, so it’s not too much to live on this side for a while longer.
And, I’ve seen people around me who didn’t leave this place even after passing the exam.
It was the point at which, after I came up to this goshichon and before I moved into my current one-room apartment, I had a lot of headaches because of the defects in each house as I moved houses here and there.
In the meantime, there was a time when I was living in a gosiwon, and one of the men who had passed the civil service exam lived in the room next to me at the gosiwon.
Perhaps the man who lived in the room next to me at that time long ago lived in a gosiwon for a while to save money.
It is because of the monthly rent of the studio.
500,000 ~ 600,000 won disappears.
At least, goshiwon is cheap.
If you look closely, you can find a goshiwon room that might seem a bit difficult for a person in the 200,000 won range to live in, and you can usually get it for 300,000 won.
However, there was one fact that I learned while looking at many rooms.
Anything more expensive is better.
It may be natural.
However, it seems safe to say that many people, including myself, wanted to turn away from the truth, at least in this goshichon.
Like I did, I want to find a cheap and good house.
It’s not a house I’ll live in anyway, and I’ll use it only for sleeping after studying all day, so I don’t need a nice house.
Although there are landlords in Gosichon, tenants try to find a house as cheap as possible because there are many students who are not economically competent or who work part-time jobs.
The biggest downside of the cheap house was the soundproofing.
It was hard for me to have to hear all the sounds from the next room.
In the end, I wanted to live in a house with even a little better soundproofing, even if I could earn more money by working more part-time jobs, so I ended up living in the house now.
As a result, I am still satisfied with the house itself, but the deposit and monthly rent are quite high.
However, it is said that this is also cheap compared to the monthly rent corresponding to other office worker areas, so the monthly rent seems to be very high.
Many of those things are forgotten the moment I talk to Song Ji-eun.
So maybe it’s fun to be with people.
“Ji-Eun, you passed the exam very quickly, are you saying that you are already a civil servant and going to work? What is your serial number?”
“It’s a general administrative job.”
“Um~. Seeing that you haven’t left here yet, is it for thrift and saving?”
“Haha, uh, this is where I moved my house once.”
“Okay?”
“Yes. Originally, I lived in a gosiwon. I passed, took out a loan and received some money from my parents, and rented a rooftop room.”
“That’s right~.”
She didn’t ask exactly how much she got for the deposit, but the burden must have been considerably reduced.
The higher the deposit, the cheaper the monthly rent.
From my point of view, the room can be seen as a normal studio, which is better than her rooftop, and it also has a veranda, although it looks a little odd.
My burden has no choice but to be greater.
It can’t be irony.
The more money there is, the less money goes out.
If you are the son of the landlord, your money will be 0 won, and if you say you bought a house because you have some money, you will pay the maintenance fee.
In the end, if you have no base like me, you pay the monthly rent in full, so if you look at a studio of a similar size for a year, your raw money will fly away from as little as 6 million won to as much as 8 million won.
If the landlord collects all this money from a lot of people for three years, he will be able to build a bigger rental business by adding more houses.
I know the world is unfair, but looking at it like this makes me laugh.
I wonder if this is correct.
Still, in the story with Song Ji-eun, I can’t think of such chronic serious things as temporarily great.
She seemed to forget, even for a moment, that the time I was with her brought on a pleasant feeling that I didn’t know existed.
“Then you work at a community center like this?”
“Uh, yes. That’s also the reason I didn’t move far from here. If you go down a bit from here, there’s a three-way intersection, right?”
“Hmm.”
“I work at the community center upstairs. It’s great.”
“Wow. Coming to work is almost in front of the house? What’s so sweet about it?”
Haha, but you don’t know when you’ll be moving again, aren’t you a public servant? And…”
“Uh.”
“I’m a bit worried. It’s so different from the public servant life I thought.”
Song Ji-eun smiled slightly bitterly as she tore off a peanut.
I asked her, quenching her throat with a sip of her beer.
“What about it?”
“Since it is a general administrative position, I thought that I should do well in general administrative duties.”
“Hmm.”
“But rather than the feeling of doing administrative work, there’s a feeling of just doing chores in a slightly stuffy environment… And also… Oppa, do you know that? The stupid law of conservation of mass.”
“Haha, ah~, I think you know what it is?”
“Yes. Even if there are a lot of good people, I get tired if there are weird people among my superiors. Also, public servants often live together for a long time because they are not fired well, so it may take a long time to see them.”
“Yes.”
As expected, it seems that work and people are always separated in the world.
Even if you do hard work, if the people you work with are like angels, that place can become heaven, and even if you do very comfortable things, if the people you work with are madmen, that place can become hell.
Song Ji-eun continued.
“That’s that, but also, sometimes the complaints about the truth are really… And they’re forced to make nonsense.”
“Is that everywhere? What the hell is going on if you force it on people who solve it according to the rules?”
I sympathized.
Empathy is one of the most important skills for me.
Women especially like to talk to me about things.
In general, there are many cases where I have to break into a cold sweat to lead a conversation with women, but in my case, there are many cases where I am attracted by listening to their stories and continuing the flow in moderation.
It’s not like that for all, but unlike men who like manners and games, women tend to have very different styles as soon as they’re girls, so it’s necessary to match them every now and then.
In response to my reply, she followed her own words.
“Really.
If you compare the level of stress from customers and co-workers in a typical case, I think the stress from co-workers will be greater.
Because a customer is a one-time thing, but a colleague always needs to be seen.
However, Song Ji-eun seemed to know what she was talking about.
Some of our customers are truly insane.
Even though it’s a one-time thing, it’s a great truth, and there are people who can pour out more stress than the colleagues you see every day.
I said as if to encourage Song Ji-eun.
“Still, I think you, the author, will appease you very well, right? Such complaints too.”
