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Jung Heewon is tired.
She has exactly 27 minutes to go before her shift ends and she can crawl her way out of this bar, but before then she has to keep her eyes open and focused else she spill this drink all over herself. “Your order,” she says, and miraculously her voice doesn’t come out as a mumble. The drunkard sitting by the counter thanks her, belches directly in her face, then drains his glass in one long gulp.
Jung Heewon turns away, leans against the counter, and closes her eyes to pray for peace.
At least most of the activity for tonight has passed, the rowdy college kids having trickled out of the bar one by one after their post-finals drinking session, leaving only a handful of stragglers to serve. Jung Heewon crosses the counter to get to the woman at the corner, her head pillowed on her arms and a half-empty glass sitting by her elbow. “Miss? Excuse me, miss. Are you awake?”
She only groans and buries her head further in her folded arms.
Jung Heewon takes her glass without another word, but the woman must have heard the clink against the counter, because she pulls herself up with a mumbled, “I’m not done…”
“My bad. Here.” Jung Heewon returns it, watches the woman take small, slow sips, her eyes still half-lidded and looking ready to fall shut at any moment. “If you’re feeling sleepy, you should head home,” she suggests. “This isn’t the safest place to take a nap in.”
The woman sniffs. “I’ll be fine.” She sets her empty glass down beside her bookbag, where a thick sheaf of papers is peeking out of.
Jung Heewon just nods and steps back, clearing the counter of other abandoned shot glasses and soju bottles, setting them aside to sort through later and leaning slightly against the wine rack behind her. Exhaustion weighs her body down like this every single night, but this is the first job she’s managed to keep for longer than a year without getting into a fight with her manager and summarily getting herself fired, and Jung Heewon would rather just stick to this life of night shifts than see the disappointment on her mother’s face again.
20 minutes. She resists the urge to run a hand through her hair and sighs instead.
When her shift is up Jung Heewon makes a break for it, waving off her coworker’s invitation for a drive home and heading for the nearby 24-hour convenience store instead, where the employee at the register greets her by name and already has the change ready for the packed meal she gets. “Thanks,” Jung Heewon murmurs, sweeping the coins into her thinning wallet. She doesn’t have much of an appetite, the stench of alcohol still clinging to her clothes, but she might as well eat something after a long night of work.
“Jung Heewon-ssi always gets the same thing,” the employee notes. Jung Heewon blinks and looks up—this isn’t part of the routine. “Why not try other things sometimes?”
“Oh. Well, sandwiches are easy to eat.” Jung Heewon had tried to eat rice and veggies on the subway ride home once. The food had been good, but she hadn’t really enjoyed it. “Why?” she asks, trying for a smile and hoping it doesn’t look like a grimace instead. “Do you wanna recommend something?”
The employee’s freckled cheeks go a faint pink. “Ah, er… I-I like the tuna sandwich most.”
“Then I’ll try that next time.” Jung Heewon takes the receipt and stuffs it in her pocket.
“Have a good day, Jung Heewon-ssi.”
“You too,” she says, deciding against letting them know she’s going to head to sleep in half an hour.
Jung Heewon finishes off her chicken sandwich on the train ride home; when she gets to her apartment unit it’s dark and quiet, the blinds still closed and only slivers of weak sunlight slipping through them. “I’m home,” she mumbles anyway, kicking her shoes off and shrugging out of her waistcoat. There’s always something about this brief moment in time, the moment between evening and daybreak, that has Jung Heewon pausing to lean against the wall of the entryway, staring down at her socked feet, or their floor tiles, or their door stopper.
She tilts her head back, rests it against the wall, stares up at the clock hanging on the opposite wall instead, watching the second hand tick closer to six with each beat of her heart. Jung Heewon closes her eyes; it’s been a while, but every so often she still feels the craving for a cigarette between her fingers.
A hushed whisper: “Noona? You’re back.”
“Morning,” Jung Heewon greets, pushing herself off the wall and trying to look like she hadn’t been close to dropping off entirely or having an existential crisis at their front door. She almost says you’re up early, but then she remembers what time it is and switches the words out for, “Heading to school?” She keeps her voice similarly low; she can’t see much with all the lights off, but if her brother is whispering then Jung Heewon can be certain their mother is dozing on the dining table again after a day of work at the restaurant.
Jung Haneul grumbles an affirmative, slinging his bag over one shoulder. “Got a test first thing in the morning, so I can’t even sleep in.”
“What the heck? So what time do you get to school if you don’t have a test?”
“Dunno. Almost noon. Who cares?”
“Who cares?” Jung Heewon groans and slips her shoes back on as she opens the door again. “Haneul-ah, don’t be like your noona and take school seriously if you want to get far in life. You don’t want to work in a shitty bar like I do now, do you?”
“You’re not gonna make me want to go to school more by trying to guilt-trip me,” Haneul dryly replies.
Jung Heewon supposes it’d been worth a try. “Come on. I’ll walk you to the station.”
The streets are still empty, the sky painted over in gentle streaks of pink and gold. Jung Heewon is starting to wish she’d gotten two sandwiches, because now she’s hungry again and Haneul is nibbling on some plain toast like he’s doing his best to make it last for as long as possible. At the station Jung Heewon shakes the vending machine down and gets two iced coffee cans for the price of one. “Here,” she says, handing both over to a startled Haneul. “What’s that look for? You’ve never done this?”
“Noona, you’re the only person I know crazy enough to rob a vending machine.”
“Hah? It’s not robbery if you just have to give it some gentle persuasion.”
“Gentle… Anyway, why two? Aren’t you gonna have one?”
Jung Heewon shakes her head and plops down on a nearby bench. A few ways away, the doors of a train hiss closed, and it speeds off into the tunnel seconds later. “I’ll just make my own later. You drink one now, save the other for later in the middle of the day, whatever. When I was your age—”
Haneul groans. “Enough of when you were my age! You’re only, like, a decade older!”
Jung Heewon ignores him. “—your high school didn’t allow us to drink anything but water during class. You wouldn’t believe the shit some of us did to sneak soju inside.” At least she’d never gotten arrested while taking sips of coffee just to stay awake during science or English class; at least once a day someone got dragged off to the principal’s office, never to be seen again.
Haneul cracks his coffee can open and takes a sip. “So that’s what you spent your time on instead of studying?”
“You’re one to talk.”
He doesn’t refute that, which at least means he’s self-aware. Jung Heewon knows her standards are low, but that’s beside the point. For a while they wait for the next train in silence, Jung Heewon sitting and Haneul standing beside her; the station is starting to fill up, mostly office workers and other students in varying uniforms, all of them looking tired or anxious or sleepy or all three and more.
When Haneul’s train arrives he tosses his empty can in the nearby trash bin and nods awkwardly down at Jung Heewon. “I’m going.”
“Yeah. Good luck on the test.”
“Don’t need it,” he mutters, and Jung Heewon can’t figure out if that means he’d studied all night or not at all, “but thanks. See you.”
She waits for him to disappear beyond the train’s sliding doors, and waits for the train to leave entirely. Then Jung Heewon waits a little more, only she’s not sure what she’s waiting for anymore, staring down at the station floor, the chatter of passersby flickering in and out of her ears. In the distance she can hear the tick of a clock, strangely audible despite the growing bustle in the station. She can’t afford to stay here too late; her mother usually stirs awake at around seven, and she always needs an extra hand with opening up the restaurant, even if she’ll never ask Jung Heewon for help.
One more minute. Jung Heewon will stay here another minute, let herself sit down and rest in a place where everyone else is moving, and then she’ll return to the rest of her life.
Only—she sighs. Is this really the rest of her life, always just waiting for the right tick of the clock?