Not long after she moved into her new place, Jaehee started noticing something unnerving. Every night at ten, some man would come to her building and stare up at her window.

—Well, jeonse rentals are pretty rare now, maybe he’s a realtor?

Despite my glib reply, I was a little bothered by the whole thing. Once, she said she was in her underwear, drying her hair, when their eyes happened to meet. Jaehee added that the ceilings were low and she was only on the second floor, so he could easily climb into her apartment using the balcony. If she was so worried, why didn’t she let me stay over for a couple of nights, given that despite everything I was still a man? Jaehee replied she wasn’t that worried, but it was pretty boring at night and she wouldn’t mind the company.

Like a schoolboy going on a class trip, I packed underwear and a tank top and shorts for clothes to sleep in and headed to Jaehee’s apartment. We made Japanese curry and watched an idiotic TV show, on which panelists gave advice about the love lives of celebrities, while we simultaneously criticized everything the panelists were saying. I lay in bed and fiddled around with my phone while Jaehee took a shower. She had come out toweling her hair when I glimpsed a shadow behind the curtain. I was looking at it, my brain as blank as a sheet, when Jaehee strode to the window and whipped back the curtain. A man as skinny as a twig was crouched next to the air conditioner’s outdoor fan unit. Oh wow, it’s true, I had just barely managed to think, before Jaehee, in a series of tightly executed moves, slid open the door to the balcony and kicked the dumbstruck man in the face. He fell over backwards. He moaned and raised his head, blood spurting from his nose and mouth. Jaehee had been brought up in a neighborhood where they took education seriously, which meant she had taken piano and tae kwon do lessons since kindergarten, achieving dan 2 in the second grade; such was the power of early learning. I held on to the man, who was barely conscious at that point, and shouted at Jaehee to call both 112 (the police) and 119 (the medics). It was hard not to laugh.

Four days later, I put all of my things into a bag and moved into Jaehee’s apartment.

We didn’t have a contract or anything. I agreed to pay her 300,000 won in rent and half the utilities. A lot of my things were already in her house anyway, 350 square feet was more than enough space for two to live comfortably, and neither of us had ever had a real relationship by the time we reached our mid-twenties, which meant the closest person we had at the time was each other.