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Yoon Ena hears the sound of a car engine near her window turning on, then fading away. Yet she doesn’t get up immediately; she remains lying on her bed, continuing to play the game on her phone.
Did the Curry Man come today as well?
There’s only one way to know—by leaving her room to check.
She stands on the stair landing and descends, taking each step slowly, her earlier question occupying her mind along with another:
Did he bring the same thing as before?
Or perhaps he did not come at all, and she went through the trouble of coming down for nothing.
Ena slides her hands along the banister as she passes, unable to ignore the way her breathing grows faint with every step she takes, her gaze alternating between downwards and upwards, counting the remaining stairs ahead of her.
The first thing she sees before reaching the bottom is a new cup of coffee placed on the table beside the rest of the identical cups. She freezes in place.
This is utterly absurd! He hasn’t given up yet. Day after day, for eight days straight, he has kept bringing her the very same thing.
Yoon Ena has no idea how he can bring himself to waste his time like this, despite the busy, work-immersed nature of him as a detective that she knows all too well—still making the effort to come here each time with the same offering, expecting no return.
She stands motionless before the table for a moment. The familiar aroma of coffee drifts into her nose, and she reaches out to pick up the cup, still retaining its warmth. She lifts it and opens the lid to inhale it more closely. It seems to be exactly the type she actually prefers.
Lowering the cup slightly, Ena tilts her head to the side; truthfully, she cannot grasp how he remembers her precise taste in coffee. She does not even know how he managed to memorize it that first time he ordered for them both—despite being exhausted and complaining of a headache.
So, how will this coffee taste now?
Is it really prepared in the very way she likes to drink it?
Or did he forget something this time?
Ena won’t know for certain until she takes at least one sip. And so she raises the cup and drinks a little.
The coffee is exactly to her liking, as she’d believed: a double shot latte with oat milk.
Yoon Ena isn’t the type to indulge in nonsensical ideas about taste being tied to certain moods or circumstances. But there is something different about this time, something she isn’t used to.
The taste carried within it a noticeable warmth… distinctive… overwhelmingly so, to the point that it made her wonder: had it always been this delicious? As her shoulders relax, and her eyelids grow heavy, her breathing slows into a calmer rhythm. Her mind empties of everything—of anything—except the cup, its contents, and the way her hands close around it, holding it more firmly, and also, to her surprise: who had brought it to her.
Such a state, she has experienced only once before: when she found herself gradually drawn to staying at the Curry Man’s place. At first, she had regarded it merely as a suitable hideout to ensure secrecy for their investigations; then as a new place—comforting in its liveliness; and it developed into something more—into a place she had grown accustomed to: peaceful, familiar—being there with the Curry Man and learning to navigate differences, change, routine, and the habits that shaped its atmosphere. It had not been dreadful or unsettling, nor nerve-racking.
The fact of his presence—or even simply the idea that the place belonged to him—never failed to seep into her thoughts whenever she rested her head, dispersing the darkness, the emptiness, and the fear lurking in some corner of her memories of nights at her own home, those exhausting, sleepless nights. And so, she found herself more and more inclined to spend the night there.
As for explaining all of that and the reasons behind it, Yoon Ena does not even attempt to think it through. Everything is better this way, just as it is.
Now, she realizes one thing only, with every sense of her being, something she knows by heart…
Trust. She trusts that even if the whole world does not understand her turmoil or her feelings, or care for her present solitude, and certainly won't stop or change because of it or for her, Han Saem is the only one who understands, who cares, who is affected—in this clinging, peculiar way of his, of letting her know and proving to her that he is there for her, standing with steadfastness and resolve fitting his faithful nature, waiting patiently for her return, hoping for it, no matter how long it may take.
For him to do this, he must think of her as he once did his friend—whom he wanted to show his support to during a difficult time, by constantly bringing him to his home to eat the curry his mother made, convincing him he had to try it just to make sure it really tasted like jjajang.
Ena shrugs her shoulders: good thing he didn’t try the same approach with her!
The corners of her lips lift slightly upward; she can’t help but find the whole matter amusing, even a little endearing.
Humming softly, she heads back to her room with the cup of coffee in hand, unable to bring herself to leave it behind. The sound of her steps and the rhythm of her breathing are now a little different than before.
In her stay there, Yoon Ena can sense that something within her, in her conviction, has shifted and changed.
She is certain now that the matter of her stepping out, of freeing herself from the darkness surrounding her, will not take much longer anymore.