Whenever I kneel on the floor of my barely-six-pyeong studio apartment, my joints always creak first. After putting in a single mattress, the room had become so cramped there was barely space to set foot anywhere. I carefully pulled out the top drawer of the plastic cabinet in one corner and dumped its contents onto the floor.
Rattle, clink.
What spilled out with a cheerful yet somehow weighty sound was forty rolls of masking tape in every color. Pastel plaid, night-sky patterns delicately coated with silver foil, vintage botanical illustrations, and Japanese solid-color rolls that bled through with the clarity of watercolor paint when layered. Gathered together, the little rolls looked almost like adorable macarons in a bakery's glass display case.
“Why did I ever buy all of this?”
A self-deprecating laugh escaped me. I leaned the tapes against the sunlit windowsill and took them out one by one from the dusty acrylic holder, lining them up. I needed to take a picture. I opened my phone's camera and aligned the grid. The colorful waves of circles visible beyond the viewfinder were somehow restoring an entire season of my teens, every detail intact.
I was fourteen. It was the month my parents had first started giving me a regular monthly allowance of 30,000 won. My friends bought idol photocards or headed to tteokbokki shops, but after school, I found myself walking as if hypnotized toward a large stationery store downtown. At the bottom of the stairs leading underground was that distinctive smell of freshly printed paper and plastic. In the most secret and dazzling corner of the store, towers of masking tape were always displayed in layers.
Two thousand won apiece, or five thousand for the expensive imported ones. They cost as much as a meal or a serving of tteokbokki, but whenever I saw the patterns glittering beyond the clear plastic wrapping, my heart raced. The thin, crinkly texture of the paper against my fingertips as I opened the package, the cheerful sound when the adhesive backing peeled away. Once I tore off barely three centimeters and stuck it onto the corner of my diary, the remaining several meters of tape became purely decorative, but I didn't care. Just opening the drawer and looking down at all those colors packed tightly into perfect circles filled me with a sense of security no rich person in the world could have given a child like me.
Whenever Mom saw my drawer, she clicked her tongue and said I was “spending money to collect pretty trash.” But that “pretty trash” was the first universe I had ever built entirely with my own allowance, filling my own drawer during a time when nothing in the world went the way I wanted. It was my comfort, too.
Time passed before I knew it, and it had been years since I lost the luxury of carefully decorating a diary. The tapes trapped in the drawer for years had collected dust along their sides, and some of the adhesive had stiffened slightly under the weight of time. Still, they were pieces far too vivid and precious to throw away.
[Forty rolls of masking tape for sale as a bundle (some limited editions included)] They show a little wear, but most have at least 80% left. I can't sell them individually and am looking for someone who can take them all as a bundle. I'd love for someone who enjoys diary decorating or gift wrapping to take them home. Price: 15,000 won
I carefully took four photos, uploaded them, and tapped the “Complete” button. Before an hour had passed, a familiar vibration sounded from the smartphone in my pocket.
“Carrot!”
[Daughter-Doting Dad: Hello! Is this still available? My third-grade daughter has been obsessed with collecting tapes like these lately. Would in-person pickup be possible on my way home from work this evening?]
The profile picture showed a middle-aged man in a yellow hard hat, smiling brightly. His manner score was 42.8 degrees.
[Me: Yes, it's available. Could we meet in front of the CU Baekma Villa branch around 7:30?] [Daughter-Doting Dad: Yes! I'll be there on time. Thank you!]
After sending my reply, I began carefully placing the forty scattered rolls of tape into a clear zip-top bag. Each time the colorful circles slipped into the plastic, a strange, bittersweet feeling settled in my throat, along with the illusion that one corner of my cramped room was growing just a little wider.
At 7:20 p.m., ten minutes before our meeting time, I left the alley with my hands shoved into the loose pockets of my hoodie zip-up. The late-autumn air had turned sharp almost the moment the sun went down. The bluish fluorescent lights of the CU Baekma Villa branch cast a cold sheen over the darkening asphalt, while the red glow from the convenience store's hot-drink warmer flickered beyond the windows.
The bundle of forty masking tapes in the zip-top bag rattled with a solid weight inside my puffer jacket pocket. Treasures that had occupied the safest spot in my desk drawer for more than a decade were now wrapped in a single palm-sized layer of plastic, ready to pass into a stranger's hands.
“I've arrived. I'm wearing a gray long puffer and glasses.”
Just as I was about to send the message in the chat, I spotted a man running around the corner of the convenience store, panting for breath. He had taken off his hard hat, but he was still wearing dark navy work clothes lightly dusted with pale dirt. A crossbody bag with a large thermos hung from his shoulder, and he carefully held a convenience-store plastic bag in one hand. He was the man from the profile picture with the yellow hard hat, username “Daughter-Doting Dad.”
“Excuse me... are you the Carrot... masking tape seller?”
The man caught his breath and adjusted his glasses. Beads of sweat on his forehead steamed in the chilly night air.
“Yes, I'm the seller. It's really cold out, so thank you for coming all the way here after work.”
“Not at all. The bus was backed up, and I was afraid I'd be late, so I ran all the way from the stop. Being late to a transaction wouldn't be very respectful.”
He wiped away his sweat with an embarrassed smile. Deep calluses marked his rough knuckles, but his expression was as clear as a child's, as though he had completely forgotten the exhaustion of the workday.
I took the clear zip-top bag full of masking tape from my puffer pocket and handed it to him.
The man accepted it, then carefully cradled it in both hands as if he were handling glasswork. Under the convenience store lights, he held the bag up to admire the tapes and let out a gasp.
“Wow... the colors are beautiful. These days, our Seoyeon comes home late because she stops in front of the stationery store to look at the tapes after school. I asked her what she liked so much about them, and she said that just looking at all the colors made her feel happy. Honestly, I don't know much about this stuff, so whenever I go to a stationery store, I have no idea what to buy her... Thank you so much for giving her so many beautiful ones.”
“It's nothing. I started collecting them at exactly her age, too. Even though I couldn't use them all in my diary, just keeping them in a drawer made me feel full and secure. I'd be really happy if Seoyeon likes them.”
The corners of the man's eyes curved into a smile. The unconditional tenderness that spread across his face whenever he said his daughter's name overlapped with the stiff back of my own father. He used to scold me for collecting “useless pretty trash,” yet every birthday, he would secretly leave a stationery gift certificate on my desk.
“It's not much, but I picked this up on the way. It was awfully cold.”
The man held out 15,000 won and placed a warm canned coffee from the other hand into my palm. The solid warmth radiating from the can slowly melted each frozen knuckle.
“Thank you. I'll enjoy it. Get home safely!”
“You too, seller! Don't catch a cold, and have a wonderful year!”
He tucked the zip-top bag carefully into the inner pocket over his chest, then hurried away down the dark alley. The long shadow trailing behind his light footsteps, racing toward his daughter, swayed warmly beneath the streetlamp.
I returned to my studio, locked the door, and turned on the light.
The top drawer of the plastic cabinet, where forty round rolls had once been stacked like a tower, was now an empty rectangular space beside my desk. I wiped the circular dust marks from the plastic bottom with a wet tissue, and a clean white emptiness emerged clearly in their place.
I opened the lid of the warm canned coffee in my hand. A sweet, bittersweet caramel scent gently filled the cramped room.
The circular rings that had held captive the excitement of my first allowance and my teenage years would now become a new universe in another child's drawer, shining brightly. Letting go of an object wasn't the same as erasing a memory. It was making room for new air to enter an old heart. I finally understood that as I quietly gazed at the small empty space in the drawer.