It was a day when the whole body was drenched in sticky sweat due to the humid weather. On top of that, the rain that had suddenly started to fall soaked everything from shoes to clothes, leaving him feeling incredibly uncomfortable. Yi-an, whose hair was completely drenched, grabbed the doorknob on a corner of the container building and turned it with his hands, through which rainwater was dripping down.
Creak, creak.
It wasn’t as if he had flailed his hands in vain. However, only a loud metallic clang came from the doorknob, and it showed absolutely no sign of opening.
“Ah… what’s wrong again?”
Yi-an narrowed his smooth brows and tightened his grip on the doorknob. Clunk, clunk. Only when his other hand joined in and shook it violently did the creaking door begin to open slowly.
As Yi-an stepped into the room, which was just as humid as the outside, he fumbled along the wall. He pressed the light switch caught on his fingertips, and the fluorescent light on the ceiling flickered as it came on. As the dim space instantly brightened, he instinctively squinted. Puddles of water had formed here and there on the yellow linoleum floor.
Yi-an looked up and checked the ceiling. There were no traces of rainwater left on the seams of the container ceiling, where he had temporarily sealed them with silicone the last time. It seemed likely that another hole had opened up elsewhere in the ceiling. It was a house where problems kept arising no matter how many times it was fixed, but there was nothing he could do. Muttering that he needed to find the source of the leak quickly, he took off his wet shoes.
“It’s a relief that this happened before Yiseo arrived…….”
With his body feeling uncomfortable, he quickly looked around the small house. Upon inspection, there were just three holes where the rain was leaking slightly. Even after using two buckets, one was still not enough, so he placed a soup bowl on the floor as a makeshift solution. Still, it was a relief that the rain was leaking everywhere except in Yiseo’s room, which was the only independent space in the house aside from the bathroom.
Just as he had finally caught my breath, buzz. The phone he had kept in his pants pocket vibrated. On the flashing screen was the name of the person he had been thinking about all day. It was Yi-an’s younger sibling, Yiseo.
Yiseo, Yi-an’s only blood relative, was his younger sister born after his father remarried; although they were not half-siblings, she was someone who followed him without hesitation. His stepmother, who became part of the family with Yiseo’s birth, was not incredibly close to him, but she did not mistreat him like a stepmother in a fairy tale; thanks to this, Yi-an spent his childhood within the protective embrace of a family that, while not exactly affluent, was reasonably harmonious.
Then one day, the stepmother, who suddenly found herself in charge of the two children after losing the father in a sudden accident, disappeared not long after the funeral.
Needless to say, what happened after that was even more so. His stepmother practically cut off all contact with Yi-an. Although she seemed to keep in touch with Yiseo occasionally, even that was a rare occurrence. That is why Yi-an had an extraordinary attachment to his younger sibling.
As soon as he saw the name appear on the screen, a bright smile spread across Yi’an’s face, which had just moments before been on the verge of collapsing from exhaustion.
“Yeah, Yiseo?”
[Oppa, are you okay at home? It was raining so hard.]
“Well… it’s fine. Don’t worry. Aren’t you having class right now?”
[Yeah. There’s only self-study today. I was worried… You had such a hard time last time it rained.]
“You worry about everything. I’m fine today. Is your umbrella at school?”
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