Tae Pyung woke up early on a Sunday with the foot of Ji Won poking his jaw. He gently tapped his son’s thigh and the boy stirred, eventually moving his leg away from his Dad’s face. After only a few seconds, Ji Won’s foot was back to rubbing Tae Pyung’s stubbled jaw.
But instead of trying to rouse the kid and remove it, he decided to just go back to sleep because that foot had always found its way back to his cheeks anyway.
Thirty minutes later, Tae Pyung’s alarm went off and his hand almost automatically groped for his phone on the bedside table to cancel it without opening his eyes. Then, he sluggishly sat up and stretched his arms.
In reality, it took him another thirty minutes before he was able to push himself up and got out of bed, as it was a tight competition between sleeping in and getting some breakfast. However, the smell of brewed coffee and freshly-baked bread easily won him over in the end.
“Can I have some of that please?” he asked in the middle of a big yawn as he perched himself on the counter stool in the kitchen.
Before he even finished stretching, a mug of steaming coffee was placed in front of him.
“Thank you, Auntie,” Tae Pyung said through half-shut eyes.
“Good heavens, Tae Pyung! You look like you’re having a terrible hangover,” said the middle-aged woman standing in front of him across the counter. “Would you like me to make you some soup?”
Tae Pyung shook his head to politely refuse, then mindlessly took a sip of his coffee. In no time, he blurted ‘Hot! Hot!’ with his burnt tongue sticking out like a puppy’s.
“You careless brat,” his Auntie scolded him. “Why do you still drink when you know for sure that you’d be wasted the next day doing all kinds of stupid things?”
“It’s not a hangover, Auntie,” he told her. “It’s just that I've been losing so much sleep these past weeks because of a case we’re working on. Then, I stayed up so late last night too after working on Ji Won’s practice sheets.”
He then blew on the coffee thrice before carefully taking a sip for the second time.
“Practice sheets?” his aunt asked. “You mean, for his Math class?”
He bashfully nodded while hiding his smile behind the mug in his hands, thereby making Auntie shake her head with deep regret.
“Poor Ji Won,” she lamented. “Does he know that you flunked Algebra when you were in grade school?”
“Of course not, Auntie,” Tae Pyung admitted. “Don’t tell him, though. He said I looked so cool when I was bent on solving the last problem. Let’s leave it at that.”
“Alright, alright,” his aunt promised with a smile as she reached out to gently pat Tae Pyung’s head, like how she did when he was still a young boy.
“By the way, when did you get back home?” he asked her. “You could have called me to pick you up at the bus station.”
The woman waved off his suggestion and said, “It’s not a big deal. I had to buy some breakfast for us anyway.”
Tae Pyung continued to ask about his aunt’s recent trip to the city where her son was studying. They talked about how his cousin — a guy named Su Bin — was doing as the latter was still in the process of adapting to his new life at the dorm. Tae Pyung also offered his apologies for unintentionally delaying her planned visit since he was not able to come home in the last couple of weeks due to work.
A few moments later, Tae Pyung turned when he heard footsteps of someone descending the stairs. It was Ji Won, who looked still half-asleep with his hair sticking out in different directions. He dragged himself towards the kitchen to join his dad on the counter, only to rest his arms on the table and bury his head between them.
“Hey, Kim Ji Won,” Tae Pyung said as he gently poked the boy’s shoulder. "If you’re still sleepy, why don’t you just go back to your room? Don’t sleep here. It’ll make you uncomfortable and I would have no space left for my breakfast.”
Ji Won shook his head and said while his face was still dug in his forearms, “But you said that we’d practice pitching today.”
“Did I? I don’t —”
Tae Pyung’s aunt reached out and gave him a pinch in the arm, which elicited a voiceless ‘ouch’ from him.
“He’s been talking about that non-stop,” Auntie whispered. “He even turned down his classmates’ invites to play baseball every single afternoon last week because he was looking forward to your promise.”
Suddenly remembering their conversation from two weeks before, Tae Pyung helplessly sighed as he accepted that it wasn’t a good time to catch the amount of decent sleep he sorely missed over the last couple of days after all.
The next morning, Tae Pyung arrived at the station two hours earlier than usual after he received a call from Kyung Won informing him that they got a lead on the current whereabouts of the suspected murderer in the case of the dead man at the river.
“Fill me in, Kyung Won,” he said as soon as he came through the doors of the station.
Kyung Won, who happened to be in the middle of slurping a bowl of ramen, stood up in an instant to follow Tae Pyung to his office and inform him about the details they collected about the culprit.
“Let’s prepare for a stakeout tonight,” Tae Pyung ordered after he was briefed by his second-in-command.
He was livid as he sat behind his desk, arms crossed over his chest while mulling over the current situation.
“We can’t afford to lose him this time," he told Kyung Won shortly after, who nodded in acknowledgement before stepping out of his office.
Tae Pyung rested his elbows on his desk, his fingers trying to smoothen out the crease that was forming between his knitted brows. He was already dreading the long night — or nights, if they were not lucky enough — that loomed ahead of them.
By noon, Tae Pyung gathered his team and told them that they will be having lunch at the nearby restaurant. Everyone was excited since it was their team leader’s treat and because the eatery was pretty famous for their beef spareribs. Kyung Won, specifically, was ecstatic and relieved that they will be able to eat a complete, sumptuous meal before they headed out to their mission later that night.
Nevertheless, as soon as they stepped out of the main doors of the station, a black sedan drove past the gates and pulled over in front of them, stopping everyone in their tracks.
The heavily-tinted window of the passenger seat rolled down, thus revealing the identity of the driver: a sophisticated woman with long, dark brown hair who was wearing a stylish black leather jacket over a fit black top.
“Kim Tae Pyung,” Eon Jin called out as she slowly took off her aviators, flipping her hair over her shoulders in the process. “I thought I’d take you up on your offer to have lunch. I hope you’re free.”
All of Tae Pyung’s team members were dumbstruck when they saw the gorgeous woman who apparently just asked their team leader out. And even Tae Pyung seemed to be in a daze for a fleeting moment, surprised by her spontaneity.
Taking pride at their reactions, Eon Jin flashed an eye smile that complemented her cherry pink lips. Tae Pyung swore, albeit against his better judgement, that the image of her at that moment would be etched in his memory for life.
“Let’s go, Officer Kim. I only have an hour to eat out,” she told him with a wink, in a voice that clearly established who was calling the shots.
Even so, Tae Pyung offered to drive, which drew no protest from Eon Jin.
After about five to ten minutes of repeatedly asking each other for suggestions before heading out, Eon Jin and Tae Pyung ultimately agreed to go to a samgyupsal place a few kilometres away from the police station.
Although the place was a bit crowded by the time they arrived, Tae Pyung was able to get them a table in only under five minutes. Eon Jin was sure that this was not entirely due to luck because she saw for herself how Tae Pyung actually had to sweet-talk the elderly woman who owned the place.
“You sure are an older woman magnet,” she told Tae Pyung as soon as they were seated, remembering Hyo Jin’s remark about the man the first time they talked about him at her house over tea.
“What do you mean?” he asked while one of the restaurant staff placed side dishes on their table.
She meant to shrug at his question, but was not able to do so as Tae Pyung’s phone suddenly rang. He excused himself, and it was not lost on Eon Jin how the corners of his lips curved slightly upwards upon seeing the name of the caller. She also observed how light and carefree his tone was when he spoke on the phone. Before she knew it, she was already eavesdropping.
The meat arrived as soon as Tae Pyung hung up the call. He offered to do the grilling, which left Eon Jin to munch on the banchan while waiting for the meat to be cooked.
“If you want to ask me something, ask away,” Tae Pyung sighed as he placed some grilled pork on top of Eon Jin’s bowl of rice.
“What would I want to ask from you?” she threw the question back to his court, then reached out to get a lettuce leaf from the pile near Tae Pyung.
“I don’t know,” he said in a casual tone, still focused with his task at hand. “Maybe, something like ‘To whom were you speaking a while ago?'”
Eon Jin scoffed at his bluntness, but asked him anyway.
“Will you be honest with your answers, though?”
Tae Pyung nodded without taking his eyes away from the neatly lined up pork strips on top of the metal grill plate.
“But I get to ask one question, too,” he clarified.
“Fine,” she said, her tone dismissive.
Eon Jin took a deep breath as she rubbed her palms on her beige pencil cut skirt, then cautioned, “Just so you know, I am asking this because it’s not really proper to take a call when you are out with someone —”
“You mean, ‘when on a date’?” Tae Pyung teased, eyeing her with genuine curiosity.
“Whatever you want to call it,” she replied, her tone snappish.
Tae Pyung tried to suppress his laugh as he pretended to turn his attention back to grilling.
“Anyhow, who was it then?” she asked as she fixed herself a big lettuce wrap, avoiding having to look at the man in front of her. “The person seemed important to you.”
Tae Pyung smiled in spite of himself, then answered, “That was my son.”
“Ahh... I don’t remember you mentioning that you already have a family,” she replied with an extra effort of feigning indifference before pushing the ssambap into her mouth.
“I’m sorry about that,” Tae Pyung offered as he looked straight at Eon Jin, who was busy pretending to pick on the side dishes.
“His name is Kim Ji Won,” he continued. “He’s eleven.”
Eon Jin quickly did the arithmetic in her mind, trying to guess at what age he got married.
“And he’s at school? Are you supposed to pick him up now?”
“He lives in the suburbs with my Aunt in the house I grew up in.”
“Not with his mother?” she asked almost at once.
Tae Pyung gave her a warm smile before raising his hand to show an empty ring finger.
“Ji Won is not my biological child. He was five years old when I found him in a very” — he paused, hesitating — “unfortunate situation. I officially adopted him two years later. You can say that he’s my life’s turning point.”
Eon Jin nodded her head at a moderate pace in full understanding of his response.
Then, Tae Pyung cleared his throat and told her, “Now, I get to ask you a question.”
Eon Jin placed her chopsticks down and said, “Go for it.”
“Have we known each other before?” he asked in a straightforward manner.
As soon as he said it, Eon Jin was able to read between the lines and knew what Tae Pyung was driving at. She seriously thought it over, trying to come up with the best way to answer his question at a level that he would understand without divulging any unnecessary information pertaining to her existence.
“I believe so,” she replied with utmost sincerity. “Not in this life of yours, I assume, but a different one.”
He scowled, clearly baffled with her answer, and uttered, “How —”
Eon Jin tried to tone down the absurdity of the topic by making another lettuce wrap.
“I know you have been experiencing flashes of memories. I can see the recognition in your face when it happens, which quickly turns into confusion once it’s over,” she told him matter-of-factly. “The most recent incident was at the coffee shop, correct?”
When he did not answer, Eon Jin lifted her eyes to meet his perplexed stare and said, “I’m certain of it because I’ve seen the flashbacks, too.”
Tae Pyung leaned back on his chair, his mouth set in a tight line as he tried to piece together everything Eon Jin told him so far.
“I haven’t figured it out, though. It’s a bit tricky, this situation that we’re in,” she confessed as she fidgeted again with her food, her tone distant. She took a big bite of the ssambap, chewing without much enthusiasm.
“I know that you have been trying to get close to me to see if I have an inkling of the reason behind all of this. What is the connection between us and the memories, what triggers these flashbacks, what these recollections mean, what purpose do they serve... Believe me, I ask the exact same questions myself,” she continued shortly after. “The truth is: I don’t have the answers, unfortunately.”
“Yet,” she added. “Regardless how bizarre this predicament of ours is, I will make sure to find them.”
Tae Pyung was rendered speechless, clearly lost in his thoughts.
“Too much information for one day, Officer Kim?” Eon Jin asked, raising one teasing eyebrow at Tae Pyung.
A few moments passed with neither of them talking nor moving while the people around them carried on with their usual agenda.
“We’ll find them together,” Tae Pyung said, finally breaking the uncomfortable silence between them.
His resolve was clearly reflected in his face, especially in his intense, dark brown eyes.
To that, Eon Jin did not know how to respond. For the longest time, she was used to working all by herself. She neither received nor accepted help, not that she asked for it from anyone — let alone, a mortal — in all those three hundred and seventeen years.
She was, beyond everything, a physical manifestation of a god.
“You can’t solve this alone, or else you would have already done so,” Tae Pyung told her, seemingly able to read her thoughts. “We will figure it out, Son Eon Jin.”
Knowing that Tae Pyung was correct with his observation, Eon Jin carefully considered his proposal.
“Sure, Officer Kim, sure,” she replied impassively, then shifted her focus back to the food in front of her.
“But we need to be honest with each other,” Tae Pyung demanded, his candor catching Eon Jin’s attention once again. “If we’ll be working on this, there shouldn’t be any secrets between us.”
Eon Jin smiled at him before she responded, her words measured with caution.
“I will answer your questions truthfully,” she assured him. “That much I can promise you.”
Photo by SJ . on Unsplash
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