“Where did I put that tape measure? I’m sure I bought one when I moved in.”
Song Hyunsoo bustled around the room, searching here and there.
But the tape measure was nowhere to be seen.
“Try checking the shoe cabinet drawer or something. Don’t just look in your room.”
Jeongho said, glancing up from his phone.
He was sitting with his back against the mattress, casually scrolling.
Hyunsoo had asked him to come over today to finally get the thermal bubble wrap installed before it got any colder.
“I only keep tools in there, though.”
“Yeah, well, you probably shouldn’t trust the past you so much.”
He checked the desk drawer he’d already looked in earlier, just in case, but still no tape measure.
“That fuzzy thing you’re wearing is distracting as hell.”
Jeongho complained, eyeing Hyunsoo’s feet.
He was wearing bunny slippers with long ears dangling from them— a gift from Chaeyoung, who got them because the floor was too cold.
“Hey, these are super warm, okay?”
“You practically recoiled in horror when she first gave them to you. Now look at you. Ugh, seriously, go check outside the room already.”
In the end, it seemed he had no choice but to take Jeongho’s advice.
“I swear it’s not in there…”
Hyunsoo muttered as he ruffled his hair and headed to the kitchen.
The rooftop room of this old house, built 40 years ago, was a bit run-down, but it was spacious— about 8 pyeong— with a separate kitchen, not just a one-room studio.
Hyunsoo always insisted on calling it a “separated studio.”
“……”
Like some kind of joke, the tape measure was sitting right there in the shoe cabinet drawer— in plain sight.
“Why the hell is it here? I’m gonna lose my mind.”
He had spent over ten minutes looking for it, only for it to be there the whole time.
He felt utterly deflated.
When Hyunsoo came back holding the tape measure, Jeongho flashed a smug grin.
“Told you. You can’t trust the past.”
“Yeah, yeah. Just open that box, will you?”
Hyunsoo pointed to the box in the corner of the room— it was the thermal bubble wrap they’d ordered.
The delivery had arrived a few days ago, but they hadn’t gotten around to it until now.
“Damn, you bought a ton. What’re you gonna do with all this?”
“Stick it on every window. In the room, the bathroom, boiler room, front door— everything.”
“Why’d you even call me for this? It’s just sticking bubble wrap. You could’ve done it alone.”
Hyunsoo flopped down across from him and started unwrapping the plastic.
Jeongho, though thorough with clean up, was notoriously slow.
“Effective heating cost reduction!”
As expected, Jeongho started getting distracted before he even finished opening one.
He read the ad slogan on the packaging aloud.
“Easy installation with no water needed!”
Meanwhile, Hyunsoo had already unwrapped several sheets and spread them out on the floor.
“Okay, that I understand. But what’s this about ‘interior design appeal’? What kind of interior design effect does bubble wrap have? If anything, it ruins the aesthetics. They’re just saying whatever now.”
While Jeongho chuckled to himself over that nonsense, Hyunsoo eyed the spread-out sheets, roughly estimating how much they had.
This should be enough to cover the windows in the room at least.
The room’s window was pretty big— which let in lots of sunlight, sure, but also let in way too much cold air.
“Hey, come over here and hold this end.”
Jeongho set the packaging down and got up, taking the end of the tape measure Hyunsoo handed him.
“Wow, holy crap, it’s freezing. Is this window open or what?”
He hunched his shoulders dramatically as he stood in front of the window.
“Quit being so dramatic.”
“I’m not! Look— my hair’s blowing! You still think I’m overreacting?”
The wind leaking through the gap between the frame and the glass was indeed strong enough to stir Jeongho’s long hair.
It hovered right around shoulder-length— his pride and joy.
For some reason, he always said, “Guys live or die by their hair.”
“Less whining, more holding. If you let go, I’ll kill you.”
Hyunsoo grabbed the main body of the tape measure and pulled it across to the other side of the window.
Two hundred… twenty?
Thirty?
Bigger than I thought.
“Uh, dude. That’s tilted.”
“So what? It’s just for insulation.”
“Doesn’t it bother you when stuff’s crooked like that?”
“Nope, not at all. Now help me measure the height— bring that chair over.”
As he reeled in at the end of the tape measure, Song Hyunsoo pointed to the chair behind Jeongho.
It was the only chair in the apartment. Jeongho grumbled as he brought it over.
“It feels colder because the wind from the Han River is blowing straight at us.”
“Yeah, but it was nice and cool when we grilled pork belly up here on the rooftop, wasn’t it?”
“Invite me again when the weather gets warm in the spring.”
Jeongho tucked a strand of hair behind his ear and gave a mischievous smile.
Climbing onto the wobbly chair— one of the screws holding the legs steady had gone missing— Song Hyunsoo extended the tape vertically this time to measure the window height.
“But seriously, no matter when I come here… how should I put it, this room always feels kind of gloomy.”
“Compared to your copy-paste SNS worthy room, I suppose it does.”
“You should at least get a new comforter. There are tons of cute and cheap ones these days.”
“As long as the blanket’s clean, what does it matter if it’s pretty?”
Jeongho shook his head with a look of exasperation.
“When I first met you, I thought, ‘Wow, he’s so handsome, how does he not have a girlfriend?’ But now I get it.”
“What’s wrong with this place? Don’t you get the romance of a rooftop apartment?”
“What part of this is romantic?”
Jeongho looked around the room and frowned: a mattress without a bed frame, worn out furniture clearly bought second hand or given away for free, and a clothes rack where every item hung in plain view.
Like Song Hyunsoo, Jeongho also lived alone.
His studio apartment was smaller than the rooftop, but it was much cleaner and more presentable.
It had a piloti parking space on the ground floor, a shared entrance that required a passcode, and even an elevator.
Hyunsoo had been impressed— until he heard how much the rent was and nearly had a heart attack.
Unlike Hyunsoo, who could only work three days a week due to his commitments with the theater troupe, Jeongho was a full-time employee working five days a week as a server at a bar called “Jessica.”
Naturally, his life was a little more comfortable.
Jeongho had done a good job of decorating his tiny place.
The items were cheap ones he’d hunted down online, and though a closer look revealed their flaws, they looked great in photos.
“I’m going to be a star soon, you know? I’ll probably end up on talk shows or variety shows. Don’t you think I need a story like, ‘Back in my struggling days, I lived in a rooftop room like this’?”
Hyunsoo stepped down from the chair with a triumphant look.
“What are you talking about? Are you really twenty-eight?”
“What?”
“These days, people prefer celebrities who come from money, you know.”
“…Really?”
Hyunsoo scratched the back of his neck and looked down at the floor.
Jeongho quickly changed his tone.
“I mean, that’s just how kids are. Elementary and middle schoolers. But self-made success stories? Those are timeless.”
“Right?”
“Of course!”
The two of them squatted in front of the bubble wrap spread out on the floor to cut it to size.
“You said you signed a one-year lease here, right?”
“Yeah.”
“The location’s a little inconvenient and the place is really old, but the room’s actually kind of nice and spacious.”
“And more importantly, it’s cheap. I walked 30,000 steps a day for a week just to find this place.”
“You’re going to renew, right?”
“Of course. It’ll be hard to find better terms than this.”
After “that whole mess” at the end of last year, and around February of this year, the agency he had been with— UB — had essentially been dissolved.
Hyunsoo had no choice but to move out of the company dorm he’d been living in.
With Seoul’s cost of living, the money Hyunsoo had as an unknown actor was nowhere near enough.
And he couldn’t bring himself to ask his grandparents for help, especially since they thought he was doing fine on his own in the city.
Even if he had asked, they didn’t have much to give.
It was a place he’d found through sheer determination, walking so much his feet blistered.
A 10 million won deposit and 400,000 won monthly rent.
No fresh wallpapering, no repairs, and no appliances like a fridge or washer— those were the conditions that made it affordable.
The lack of appliances would’ve been a deal breaker, but he’d been allowed to take the furniture and electronics from the dorm, which made moving in possible.
The mattress on the floor without a bedframe, the gas stove that sputtered out when turned too low, the noisy fridge from years of use— they were all from the dorm.
From the UB dorm he had once shared with Choi Hongseo, Jung Jiin… all of them.