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There is a customer still in the shop. Wonwoo notices this as heʼs about to lock the door—he has one hand on the shitty neon open sign, half his mind already back home in his kitchen, curled up on a barstool with a beer while watching Mingyu make noodles. It takes him a second to stitch the shadow in the world literature aisle into a person, his gaze distracted by the long, liquid limbs bent into a crouch; by the green-tinted sunglasses dangling off an upturned brown collar; by the burgundy overcoat brushing the floor (a bit ridiculous, really, since itʼs the middle of July), but then it hits him, and then it hits him again.
You see, as a child, Wonwoo read a book about a mythical fox. When this fox turned fifty years old, it stood up on two legs and became a human. For months Wonwoo was preoccupied with sussing out such foxes in his daily life: he smiled at homeless people at the bus stop, he asked all his classmates where they were from, he read newspaper stories about hikers who had vanished in the woods. And now the idea takes root in him again. The idea of an otherworldly being, drifting in the slush of human life with a glint in its eye, like there is a point to this business after all.
“Excuse me.” Wonwooʼs voice comes out sort of weird and loud (although, voices always turn weird in this shop: the air in here is so heavy and ancient that sound travels as though through water). “Excuse me—” he says again, “hi.”
The fox just squints at him over a burgundy shoulder. Itʼs not quite a glare, but there is coldness in those eyes, his jaw tensed as if ready to swallow a very large and bitter pill.
“Did you—um.” Wonwooʼs pulse beats in his throat. He flexes his fingers. “Did you need any help?”
“Ah. No, thank you,” says the fox, in a light, edgeless voice, already returning to the poetry collection in his hands. The sunglasses catch the overhead fluorescents like a wink.
Right.
Wonwoo walks back to the register, open sign still switched on, and sits down in his desk chair. The time on the computer monitor reads 19:03.
His boss only pays for overtime if there is a legitimate reason—Wonwoo wonders how he should explain.
A fox snuck into the shop as I was closing. I know, I asked, but it wouldn’t leave.
Although he didn’t exactly ask—he panicked and walked away.
And here he is.
At 19:04.
Mingyu has probably finished his noodles.
Outside the smoggy display window, rush hour traffic is calming down. The thin slice of sky above the high-rises is an ominous shade of grey. Wonwoo remembers thinking about the weather on his way to work this morning; remembers a weird chill in the air as he waited at a traffic light. There was a cigarette butt on the ground, still leaking smoke, so he stepped on it and watched the ashes smear out. He was only wearing a Hawaiian shirt and his skin felt stiff. As the cars breezed by, he had a vague, unpleasant feeling that the best days of summer had already gone.
Once when his dad came to Seoul to visit him at uni, his dad embarrassed him by asking a redheaded tourist if she was Scarlett Johansson. Both Wonwoo and his dad were obsessed with The Avengers back then, desperate in their separate ways for escapism, and so they saw references everywhere like Christians with Jesus toast. Something similar must be happening here. Wonwoo has been spacing out all day; he barely slept last night; he is overworked and lonely and in the throes of what Seungkwan likes to call the summer purples (not quite as bad as the blues, but bad enough). That hint of an accent was probably just in his head. Ah. No, thank you. You canʼt tell if someone has an accent from four syllables.
Surely.
Wonwoo shakes his head, digs nails into his palms, and watches stoically as the time turns to 19:06. 19:07. 19:08.
At 19:12, the floorboards creak, and the fox appears behind a shelf. Despite his heavy coat and the weight of his carry-on, he has the refined posture of a dancer; nimble all the way to the tips of his painted fingernails as he places the poetry collection on Wonwooʼs desk.
“You read a lot of poetry?” Wonwoo asks, hands trembling as he scans the barcode.
“A bit,” says the fox.
“Any favourites?”
He looks briefly at the ceiling. “There’s one about the sea and a vegetable patch—it’s quite sad. Though Iʼm not sure how it would translate.”
“Ah,” says Wonwoo, heart sinking, and then they both wait in silence as the archaic POS system churns out the receipt.
Up close, the fox is all poreless skin, silky hair. His eyebrows have been lovingly trimmed into crisp, symmetrical arches, and his nose is as straight and delicate as a mannequinʼs. It’s an aching kind of beauty that seems hard to grasp, hard to explain. Like one of those ghostly summer mists that fade with the sunrise.
Wonwoo slides the poetry collection into a paper bag, and, just as heʼs about to hand it over, adds an embarrassing owl-shaped bookmark from a random stack on the counter.
“Watch out for the rain,” he mumbles.
“The rain?”
“It might rain.”
The fox shoots a glance out the display window, as though the idea is vaguely enticing. “Sure.” He gives a little bow. “Well—have a nice night.”
“You too,” Wonwoo says, and then heʼs alone.
The time reads 19:15.
When Wonwoo leaves his chair: 19:31.
~
The only other time Wonwoo recalls seeing a mythical fox was at a house party in his first month of uni. All night everyone kept hyping up a friend of theirs; someone part of their circle who apparently was late because of work. When this mystery person eventually showed up, everyone was so drunk that they crowded him in the hallway, falling over each other in their attempts to hug him and kiss him and tell him who had made out with whom. Wonwoo watched him slowly extricate himself from the love pile and sneak into the kitchen to make a cup of tea, which he drank in tiny sips while leaning on the wall, wearing a crooked tie and a wrinkled white shirt, smiling faintly as his friends began their third round of beer pong. After a while, without saying a word to anyone, he pulled a pack of cigarettes from his slacks, stepped back into his dress shoes, and left the apartment. Wonwoo never saw him again. He never found out why his friends revered him so much, or what ache that cup of tea was meant to soothe. But even as Wonwoo found his bearings at uni—even as he fell in with another group of friends and went to other house parties, where he played messy games of beer pong and made out with girls and sometimes boys—he kept thinking about that guy, and he stayed a little bit in love with him. Such is the power of a mythical fox.
~
“Would you like another one of those?”
It’s twenty minutes later. Wonwoo is huddled underneath the leaky awning of a corner shop, drinking a red bull and listening to the hiss of rain against asphalt. He had to decompress some more. Had to watch his shoelaces for a while. If he had gone straight home, Mingyu would have noticed something was off and would have fussed over him in that unhelpful way he has: would have made too much noodles, would have hovered too close without actually touching, would have talked too much without ever getting to a point.
But here is the fox again, framed against the hazy grey street, overcoat dripping water into a growing puddle on the paving stones. He shakes a few stripes of hair from his face, and it seems almost cruelly planned, the way sterile light from the corner shop climbs up his cheekbones to crinkle his eyes.
“Youʼre the guy from the bookstore, right?”
“That’s me. Jeon Wonwoo.”
“Wonwoo-ssi—Iʼm Minghao.”
Wonwoo picks at the tab on the red bull can. “I know.”
The fox actually smiles at this; a small, tight-lipped thing, as though heʼs pleased to be called out for pretending. “Anyway,” he says. “Can I buy you another drink?”
“Sorry?”
“I owe you one—I didn’t watch out for the rain.”
Wonwoo just blinks.
“And you looked sort of lonely under here.”
“Oh. Well. Iʼm just killing time.”
The fox nods a little. He leans against a tomato crate with his arms crossed, breathing out a sigh that forms a puff of smoke in the air. The rain adds a surreal intimacy to the whole thing—Wonwoo might have finally lost it.
“Wonʼt you catch a cold?”
“Colds are a part of life.” The fox sniffs. “Iʼve called my manager. It’s her day off, but sheʼll be here in a bit.”
It might be the accent, but his way of speaking is oddly serene, as though nothing in this world could really surprise or bother him. Maybe thatʼs what it’s like to have people fawning over you wherever you go—things tend to work themselves out. But then Wonwoo thinks of that first look of apprehension in the bookstore. He sloshes his drink, staring at where the foxʼs white-knuckled fingers dig into his trembling arms.
“Perhaps youʼd like to wait someplace warm?” he asks.
~
There are nine empty beer bottles and four sets of dirty dishes on the kitchen table. Wonwoo contemplates them while the fox is in the bathroom. He has clear memories of a barbecue with Mingyuʼs friends, some night in autumn years ago, where he sat squished in the corner of a leather sofa and ate ssam and half-listened to a discussion of the Blue Dragon Film Awards. That yearʼs nominees list had just been revealed, and Mingyu and his gaggle of film major friends had very strong opinions on who should win. Wonwoo had seen the thriller they were rooting for—everyone had—but all he really remembered from it was the ending; a scene where the fox bled out from a gunshot wound while the sun rose on a beach. That weird superimposition: Mingyu and his handsome friends and their jargon, the sizzle of fat on the grill, utter loneliness while blinking sand from tired eyes.
Wonwoo checks his phone. Mingyu hasn’t texted him, but Wonwoo assumes heʼs having fun, wherever he is.
He turns on the tv in the living room, letting the news channel chatter mingle with the rain and the water running in the shower. The beer bottles add another layer of reality, so he doesn’t clear them away. Instead he curls up on a barstool and attempts to clean his glasses, rubbing at the little stains and scratches that he deep down knows are there to stay.
At last, the fox emerges wearing a pink cardigan and purple leopard-print slacks. His hair has been blow-dried and combed loosely out of his face. He leans on the doorframe, looking mildly expectant.
Wonwoo puts his glasses back on. “Would you like a beer before you go?” He gestures at the collection on the table, belatedly realising it makes it seem as if he drank all nine of them by himself.
“No thanks.”
“Some water?”
“Kinda had enough of water.”
“I was gonna make noodles—you hungry?”
“Really, I should go. My rideʼs here.”
“Of course,” Wonwoo says.
“But thanks for all your help.”
Wonwoo thinks of slender fingers around a teacup. Of an apartment door clicking shut. Of that melancholy sting of regret, somehow still painful after seven years. “Iʼm sorry if this is weird,” he says, blushing, “but I think youʼre fantastic. Iʼm the one who should be thanking you.”
The fox smiles again. “That’s sweet.”
“Well. Donʼt mention it.”
He guides him to the hallway, and soon theyʼre waving goodbye to each other a little awkwardly. He has just opened naver to pathetically search for Chinese poems about vegetable patches, when thereʼs a soft knock on the door, and the fox steps back inside.
“Did you forget something?” Wonwoo asks, dazed.
“Just one thing,” the fox says.
Wonwoo moves out of the way, but the foxʼs eyes follow him, and then drop gently to his lips.