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“Eomma! Eomma!” The pounding of Gi-hun’s small feet across the hardwood as he bursts through the front door reverberates off the walls of the modest house like a full-blown stampede. When he reaches the kitchen, he shrugs his schoolbag onto the floor with a thud and hurls his arms around his mother’s unsuspecting leg.
Gi-hun’s mother jolts at the contact, the knife she’d been using to chop vegetables for their dinner clattering onto the wooden cutting board. “Good grief, Gi-hun, what is going on?” she frets, crouching down to Gi-hun’s level and reaching up to smooth the front of his bowl cut out of his tear-filled eyes.
Gi-hun sniffles, leaning into his mother’s embrace. “Sang-woo wasn’t at school today,” he hiccups into the soft cotton of her shirt.
His mother’s body relaxes against his own, and she exhales a sigh of relief. “And here I thought the sky was falling,” she chuckles, giving an amused shake of her head.
“He’s never missed school before!”
Gi-hun’s mother hums for a moment, running her hand slowly up and down his trembling back. “He’s probably just sick,” she muses, “or maybe he has something important going on.”
Gi-hun manages to slow his breathing to a normal rhythm, though his face remains pulled into a frown. He hopes Sang-woo isn’t sick; the cold Gi-hun caught a few months back had kept him home for three days, and the idea of having to wait even half that long to play with his best friend again is enough to make him shudder. “Can I call him?” he asks in a voice much smaller than before.
His mother smiles, her eyes crinkling at the corners. “I don’t see why not; I’ll ring his mother and see if he can talk.” She squeezes Gi-hun’s shoulder once, then rises to her feet and shuffles in the direction of the landline mounted near the doorway on the other side of the kitchen. Gi-hun fidgets with his hands while she dials the number for the Cho household, lifting the receiver to her ear and waiting a few moments for Sang-woo’s mother to pick up before greeting her jovially. They spend several minutes bantering in grown-up language before Gi-hun becomes impatient and tugs at the hem of his mother’s shirt, after which she finally asks for Sang-woo himself before handing Gi-hun the phone with a smile and a nod. “She said she’s getting him now.”
While his mother resumes cutting vegetables, Gi-hun leans back and forth on his heels, waiting to hear anything other than static on the other end of the line as he holds the phone to his ear. Finally, he hears muffled movement, then his favorite voice speaking his favorite word.
“Hyung?”
All at once, Gi-hun’s face lights up with a smile entirely too big for it. “Oh, Sang-woo-ya, you are alive! Why weren’t you at school today, dongsaeng? I finally lost in Squid Game, and you missed it!”
“I’m just a little sick,” Sang-woo replies, a slight scratchiness to his voice that Gi-hun recognizes as separate from the crackle of the landline. “Serves you right; you always beat me.”
“Hey! You may be a loser, but at least you’re smarter than me; you never want to save any genius for the rest of us!”
Sang-woo laughs, but it sounds clipped, like he’s trying to stop himself from coughing. “How would that even work, hyung?”
Gi-hun ignores the question. “When are you coming back? Tomorrow?” Please say tomorrow.
“I’m not that sick, so whenever Eomma says I can, I guess.”
Gi-hun sighs. “But it’s no fun without you,” he mumbles into the transmitter, crossing his unoccupied arm over his chest.
“You’ll live,” Sang-woo assures him with another giggle, this time failing to suppress the dry-sounding cough that follows in its footsteps. “Eomma says it’s dinnertime now; I’ll see you, hyung.”
“See you,” Gi-hun parrots, making no further move until he hears the line click. “You were right; he’s sick,” he relays to his mother as he stands on his tiptoes to hang the handset back up. “He said it wasn’t bad, but he didn’t sound great either, and I don’t want to have to wait for him!”
The rhythmic clacking of the knife against the cutting board pauses for a moment as Gi-hun’s mother ponders his words. “Maybe you can do something nice for him, then,” she suggests. “I bet he’d feel better quicker.”
“Like what?” Gi-hun asks, but his mother only shrugs and resumes chopping carrots, indicating he has some serious brainstorming to do if he wants his friend back anytime soon.
A few hours and a hearty plate of bibimbap later, Gi-hun has a plan—one he decides is best not to inform his mother of before leaving the house again lest he receive a smack on the hand for so much as thinking about doing what he’s about to do. The sun is hanging low in the sky, meaning he’ll need to act fast, but desperate times call for desperate measures; he needs Sang-woo back at school tomorrow, and if a little delinquency is what it takes to get him there, he’ll reap any consequences he has to.
Upon reaching his destination, Gi-hun performs a careful scan of the place, breathing a sigh of relief when it turns up no signs of the willowy, white-haired Ms. Eun: his lifelong neighbor and the Ssangmun-dong-renowned owner of the immaculate garden he’s about to exploit in the interest of his mission. After glancing back at the houses behind him to ensure no one else is watching, he begins to creep forward, slinking through a row of marigold bushes and crouching before the dainty red blossoms that lie just beyond them with a victorious grin. He takes only a moment to admire the intricate swirl of petals on each one before plucking one off the bush, then another, and then—
“Seong Gi-hun, you little beast, is that you?!”
Gi-hun had been prepared for this possibility, but he hadn’t expected it to come to fruition so soon after his arrival. He yanks one more flower from the bush before scrambling to his feet and bolting back toward the sidewalk, Ms. Eun’s shrill holler—though not Ms. Eun herself—following closely behind, informing him his mother will be hearing from her tonight. Desecrating an elderly woman’s pride and joy would have racked him with guilt if he was doing it for anyone other than Sang-woo, but instead, he feels invincible, clutching the three stems in his hand as tightly as he can as he races in the direction of his second home.
By the time Sang-woo’s house comes into view over the hill he and Gi-hun have coasted down hundreds of times on their bicycles, the latter’s lungs are screaming for oxygen, but he doesn’t dare stop; he’s already in trouble, but he’ll be in even more trouble if he gets home after dark, so he needs to make his delivery quick. He allows himself a few moments to catch his breath upon reaching the front door, not wanting to look like he’s on the brink of fainting in front of his sick friend, then reaches up with the hand not holding the flowers to ring the doorbell.
A few moments later, Gi-hun hears small feet approaching the door from inside; the door opens a few inches, and a pajama-clad Sang-woo gapes at him through the crack before swinging it all the way open, stepping out onto the porch and staring wide-eyed up at Gi-hun. “Hyung, what are you doing here so late?” he whispers.
“Here,” Gi-hun says, face pulling into a lopsided grin as he holds the flowers out to Sang-woo.
Sang-woo stares down at the ruby-red blossoms in Gi-hun’s hand, mouth still agape but expression indecipherable nonetheless. Gi-hun frowns, lowering his hand slightly. “Do you not like roses?” he asks, brows knitting with worry.
Finally, Sang-woo lets out a shaky breath, lips quirking into a smile as he reaches out to accept the flowers. “Carnations,” he says softly, “they’re called carnations.”
Heat rushes to Gi-hun’s cheeks, and he rolls his eyes. “Roses, car…carna—whatever you just called them—what’s the difference? They’re both red, aren’t they?”
Sang-woo smiles even wider at Gi-hun’s words, lifting his free hand to cover his mouth while he giggles before reaching down to run his fingers over the soft petals. “I like them. They’re pretty,” he says, eyes flitting back up to meet Gi-hun’s. “Thank you, hyung.”
Those three words alone are enough to make Gi-hun feel fifty feet tall. He grins, reaching out to clap Sang-woo over the shoulder. “You don’t look so bad, dongsaeng,” he remarks, “will you be back at school tomorrow?"
Sang-woo shrugs. “Maybe; I had a fever earlier, but it went away, and Eomma said I could go back if it’s still gone in the morning.”
Gi-hun pumps his fist, whooping triumphantly and earning himself a look from Sang-woo that’s equal parts bewildered and amused. “You are so strange, hyung,” Sang-woo snickers, shaking his head. “You should go home before your mom sends the whole neighborhood looking for you.”
Gi-hun ruffles Sang-woo’s hair, prompting the latter’s nose to scrunch in annoyance and his hands to fly up to his head in an effort to fix it. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Sang-woo-ya,” Gi-hun says before spinning on his heel and heading for the sidewalk again with a newfound spring in his step.
“I said maybe!”
“I’ll see you tomorrow!” Gi-hun repeats, turning back around to wave a final farewell before beginning his journey home. Dusk is falling now, settling over Ssangmun-dong like a soft, inky blanket, but he’s in no hurry anymore; no punishment from his mother will be enough to pull the clouds from beneath his feet.