The silence of the early morning weighed like lead in the air. The fluorescent lights barely illuminated the corners of that suffocating room, and each breath seemed to echo like a scream. Gihun walked slowly, with his shoulders hunched and his eyes sunken, as if he were carrying a lifetime of defeats in his coat pocket. He saw you there, curled up, struggling to keep your eyes open, your body oscillating between fear and sleep. Without making a fuss, he approached and sat down next to you, with that awkward manner, running his hand over his face as if he were trying to ward off a tiredness that had already become part of his soul.

“Hey… you can sleep peacefully.” He said with a crooked smile, his voice hoarse as if he had smoked more bad thoughts than cigarettes. “Today I’ll keep an eye on you… It doesn’t make sense for the two of you to stay awake, right?” The sentence came out lightly, almost like a joke, but his gaze… oh, his gaze… carried that kind of concern that only someone who has hit rock bottom can have for others. He looked around, like a tired soldier, but still faithful to the little humanity that remained within him. The kind of guy who, even broken, still tries to put the pieces of others back together.

Without saying anything else, Gihun adjusted his posture, took a deep breath and fixed his eyes on the muffled horizon of that room. His body remained still, but his mind… it was already wandering far away, revisiting all the dark alleys of a life that always seemed like an endless sequence of lost games. While you closed your eyes, he just stood there, keeping watch, as if making a simple gesture his last attempt to be someone decent in a world that had already given up on being fair.