2.13 ARTIFICIAL LOVE: Picturesque

Beomseok wakes up to an empty house. Scant clouds billow over the horizon, vermilion from the early sun.

He goes to feed the dog.

With dawn's light painting orange streaks in the sky, everything is picturesque. It's no different than a cheap, cliche drama, he thinks. As always, Beomseok is the star.

There's no humor in the thought, not this time around. Beomseok slaves away with chores.

The nearest corner store is a half-hour walk away and Beomseok braves it because he must. The fridge is still stocked with food but Beomseok's mother was never one for booze. Alcoholism has to be a trait that Beomseok inherited from his shit dad.

When he's back after the trip, the dog greets him, barking and wagging its curled tail, bouncing with unprecedented excitement.

"Get off me, dumb mutt," Beomseok wrestles with the creature to unlatch the clip on the collar, letting the animal roam free in the yard. 

The dog celebrates its freedom with a few springy leaps before bounding off into the distance, making laps around the edifice.

Beomseok realizes belatedly that he doesn't even know this mutt's name.

Maybe he should ask Yejun. Yejun probably knows.

The house is like an old friend, a comforting presence that has grown distant over time, becoming a nostalgic shadow in the corners of Beomseok's heart. He loves it and he hates it, and his mother had left it annoyingly clean so Beomseok doesn't really have much to do.

He puts away the forgotten pile of laundry in the master bedroom before he saunters over to his old room. The soft mattress welcomes him but there's a distinct scent of dust that lingers, an emptiness that stretches from all the time elapsed.

Beomseok stares listlessly at the ceiling. His suitcases sit at the foot of the bed, untouched because he has no willpower to move.

No, scratch that, he only has the willpower to reach over for alcohol but the can of beer doesn't hit quite right so Beomseok goes for the orange juice and vodka instead.

Better, he thinks. And luckily he's too exhausted and lonely to drink himself stupid because Yejun comes knocking on the door a lot earlier than Beomseok expects.

He stumbles downstairs and wordlessly lets his little brother inside.

"I called off work," Yejun explains. The darkness under his eyes is deep. "Let's go and sort out her things."

"Yeah," Beomseok agrees mindlessly and follows after his baby brother, who, only 20 and has a fiancee. They marry pretty young in these rural parts so it's not that out of the norm. But still, the thought makes Beomseok feel old.

The two brothers labor. 

In hindsight, there's no real reason to be sorting their mother's belongings this early. The funeral hasn't even been arranged yet. But they do it anyways, unthinking and almost robotic.

The two brothers who haven't seen or spoken to each other do most of it in silence. They go through the kitchen and sort out the valuables. 

Their mother's death was sudden and she doesn't have a will so they will have to distribute her property amongst themselves. 

There are two aunts, and of course, her shitty ex-husband that they might have to deal with. Beomseok's chest tightens at the mere thought. He feels sick and dizzy and his hands tremble so he attempts to soothe it with more vodka.

"You better not turn out like dad," is the only comment that Yejun makes as he tosses some silverware in the box.

Beomseok snarls at him like a civilized person and gives his brother the finger.

The conversation ends there.

Beomseok has no idea where the time goes because it's soon afternoon and Yejun leaves after being harassed by phone calls from his fiancee. 

Before he slips into his car he looks over his shoulder at Beomseok and asks, "Do you want the house?"

The words, even, calm, have a knifing effect and Beomseok doesn't know why he feels so fucking breathless, like his heart hass just been torn from his chest. He should say yes, it's not like he has anywhere else to stay, so he spits out, "No, fuck that—"

Wait, that turned out a bit differently but Beomseok doesn't correct himself when Yejun nods and slips into his car.

Beomseok is once again, left alone.

He finds out that it had been a car accident. A drunk driver came at her, full speed. She tried to swerve the car away, but it didn't work. There had been a collision. Her car flipped over several times before crashing into a tree. 

And that was that.

A person's life is as easy to extinguish as that. 

Beomseok sits on the patio again and recalls the time his mom would relax outside to watch the dog in the yard and Beomseok would seek her out to avoid his father. His young self didn't know what was so interesting about staring at the setting sun but his mom always told him that it's beautiful. And that there will come a time when life will slow down enough for him to appreciate all the beauty littered about his daily life.

But the most beautiful thing in that memory isn't the orange glow of the sun or the swaying greenery teased by the wind. It's his mother's warm smile that tugs her lips as she leans back against the patio chair, humming a light, nostalgic tune.

'Dammit mom,' Beomseok thinks, 'I don't think I ever even got the chance to appreciate you like a damned proper son.'

"…"

Beomseok feels that prickly feeling in his chest and eyes, a suffocating build up in his throat. 

A sob escapes and he curls up on himself.

His grief is interrupted by his own ringtone but fuck—

—fuck that. He puts his phone on silent and ignores the 99+ messages that sit in his inbox and cries.

…

Nana is a professional hairstylist.

She's worked with plenty of celebrities before and has dealt with their odd and odder personalities. Rarely, are they as they seem on screen.

Kang Siwoo is particularly weird, and though she's worked with the man proclaimed as the nation's sweetheart for years, she still can't quite figure him out.

So she does her best to ignore his glares and his muttering and continues to work on his hair, slathering on a layer of color.

Siwoo is busy staring at his phone and Nana tries her best to feign disinterest because really, it's none of her business. But it's hard to pretend like she didn't see the dozens of missed calls on his phone screen.

Yikes.

When she leans in to work on a tight spot behind his ear, she swears she hears something along the lines of, "I didn't mean for her to die, dammit. And it was already too late, why couldn't you just cancel the…"

"…"

Probably just her imagination.

She feels sorry for the thousands, if not millions of fans out there that put this guy on a pedestal. They'd be heartbroken to know that he's a creepy weirdo who mutters to himself.

It's not Nana's fault when she catches him clicking the call button again. Of course, this time, like all other times, it doesn't go through. 

She ignores him when he says, "Can't you finish up faster?" Because she assumes he's being weird and not talking to her.

"Hey," Siwoo snaps again, "Can't you finish up faster?"

"…?" Nana blinks, eyes wide as her gaze falls upon Kang Siwoo who glares at her as though she might be the scum of the earth.

"…I'm sorry Kang-ssi. But the color needs time to set and I still need to fix the cut—"

"Finish it in an hour. I want it done quickly."

She's stupefied. And annoyed as well, "I'm sorry, but that won't be possible—"

"Then skip the cut. I don't even care if it looks like shit. Just do what you have to do in an hour."

What the heck!? Where did this sudden rudeness come from? And even if Kang Siwoo didn't care, his company sure would! And Nana wasn't about to earn a bad rep just from one asshole's bitchy tendencies.

She cursed at him and her shitty luck, doing everything she could to deal with Kang Siwoo's hair in an hour or less.

He made good of his promise and proceeded out the damned door when an hour was up, obsessing over his phone like a damn freak.

"What an asshole!" Nana curses, stomping her feet in annoyance and rage. Why did she ever think it was a good idea to work with celebrities? Because it sure as heck isn't!

…

At night, Beomseok finds sleep difficult. His childhood home grants him no warmth.

So he shoots out of bed and saunters into the kitchen, grabs a can of beer, and laments that he has no more. It's close to midnight but the corner store opens till two. If not, there's always the gas station that's about an hour walk out from his— mom's— place.

So he walks and walks. He gets more beer and vodka and somehow forgets the orange juice but it's fine, he thinks, it doesn't need to taste good, it just needs to do the trick.

He meanders the dark roads, obscure without flashing billboards and street lights to illuminate the way. Beomseok wanders to a hillside, where there's a steep cliff. He remembers how his mother always warned him from playing there as a kid because it's dangerous and he could fall and hurt himself. He remembers all the dumb and crazy ghost stories his middle school peers liked to propagate. When in reality it was probably just some high schoolers loitering around for a fuck.

At this hour, there's only Beomseok so he sits at the cliff's edge and goes straight for the vodka.

The moon's silver glow hides behind thick clouds and the night is somber, much like Beomseok's heart. His light at the end of his proverbial tunnel is extinguished, just like that.