He heard a harsh knock on the door; he wasn’t expecting anyone. He was just going to lay around the house for the day—after all, it was a Saturday. He walked towards the door in his satin pajamas, eye bags dripping down his insomnia like cold drip coffee. He wasn’t really thinking about much, maybe it was his secretary, the police, or some guy who held a grudge against him back in 2016 who had come to stab him. He grabbed the gun he hid in the cabinet next to the door and slid it behind his back as he opened the door with his left hand.

As the door creaked open, a young girl was standing there—unwelcome, but her presence made the entrance of this quiet mansion a lot brighter.

A kid… — A kid?? Ji-won’s eyes widened in concern and surprise.

“Hi?..”

“Hello, uncle, we just moved in next door with my older sister. She said I should go greet the neighbours and give them some of the rice cakes she made.”

She handed over the rice cakes before he had the chance to turn her down.

“By the way, your house is really big. Do any girls my age live here?”

He felt a bit guilty and ashamed to say that in this huge mansion, he was the only one who lived there.

“No, just me. But the house down the road has two young girls around your age. You should go play with them.”

The kid had a poker face; if she gambled, I’m sure she would’ve won just with that expression, he thought.

“Oh, thanks for telling me. Though... it must be lonely.”

His expression stiffened, flustered, but he gave out a small, reassuring smirk.

“Lonely? What makes you think so?” He spoke softly.

“This house is so big, but there’s only you. That must be why you look tired.”

He felt a bit offended. Was she calling me ugly? He thought. No, no… it can’t be. Me? Ugly? I’m not satisfied with many things, but my face was surely not one of them. Kids are always the most honest—almost painfully so.

“I just haven’t washed my face yet. Anyways, see you around!” — He shut the girl off and closed the door.

He rested his back on the door and put the gun back in the cabinet as he took a long breath in.

“The day hasn’t even started, yet I’m already exhausted.”

He stared down at the rice cakes in his hands; they were colourful, something that didn’t really belong in his mansion.

He sat down at the kitchen table and tried each rice cake, each colour in the order of the rainbow. He actually enjoyed them so much that he finished them in a couple of minutes, but then the only bright colours in this house suddenly faded.

He was back to that solitude.

He took out a cigarette box from the kitchen drawer and a bottle of wine—that was like his weekend routine. One cigarette after another until the whole box was emptied, and his lifespan was shortened. One sip after another, and he couldn’t think or move right. The smoke filled the living room, and the windows were tightly shut.

The kid saw the smoke through the closed windows as she stared into the house.

“Hae-in!! Sister! I think there’s a fire in Uncle’s house!”

“What? Uncle’s house? You know him?” Hae-in responded as she stared at the foggy window.

“Yes, I gave Uncle the rice cakes you gave me. He lives there alone… he looked very tired, but he was nice. He told me there are girls my age in the house down the road.”

Perhaps it was the “tired look” that triggered a certain unfortunate thought in Hae-in’s mind, but a lump in her throat grew like a golden seed, and she began contemplating a certain thought as she ran her hands through her hair in contemplation.

She walked up to the front door and started knocking on it. She knocked more and more as her anxiety grew when no one responded back to her as she shouted.

Ji-won was already passed out drunk, with the red wine spilled all over him.

She ran over to the living room window and attempted to look through it, but the smoke was too dense to see anything.

She tried to open the window, but it was locked, and her thoughts began to grow wilder by the second.

In haste, she grabbed a huge rock, backed up a bit, and threw it straight at the window.

The window shattered as she rushed inside. She kept coughing because of the heavy cigarette smoke, then she finally found him. He was covered in wine—a quite misleading scene, in many ways—but she did not know that.

She ran to him and kept slapping his face to wake him up.

“Hello!!?? Are you okay??!” Her voice almost sobered him up. His eyes narrowly widened; he thought he was seeing things, then he finally fell back into his beauty sleep.

The smoke began to flee through the shattered window, and she stared at his face with his head in her arms.

He reeked of alcohol, then she saw the spilled wine bottle and the cigarette box.

That's when she realized she had misunderstood a lot.